Il pleure dans mon coeur...

Well, after nearly 8 months it has ended. A relationship that at first was all that I wanted and needed and everything that I expected that, with time, familiarity went from comfortable to distant. The man that I was in love with fell out of love with me. - - I feel... lost. (Whether these quotes come from these authors or not, I don't know, but they capture how I feel - you can google them if you're interested.)

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights 

“You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because 'it' is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body  

 No, he isn't dead - thank God, because that would be worse... but I feel empty, lost, out-of-place in my own life. I find myself reaching for something and someone that isn't there. I feel a great sense of loss, a need to hang onto him, to fight for him to be with him. My love for him has not faded or withered or gone anywhere but sits folded up in a heap on my chest like a giant imperceptible boulder that is resolute in its mission to crush me.  The love that had been spread all over him and his life and everything that was him, an easy, light film that covered all that he was has retracted into this monstrous thing trying to force its way back into my heart. But what's given can't be taken back and so it just sits there, crushing every bit of me. - - I guess, in some ways, it's easier to have a fiery, angry tantrum of a break-up that leaves you feeling resolute to do 'better' the next go-'round - - but that wasn't how it ended. It was quiet, tenuous, but sweet, as though he was protecting me from what damage might occur if we went any further down this road.

He said he wasn't "in it" anymore, that I didn't have all of his heart, but assured me that no one else had any piece of it. He said that he was unhappy in every feature of his life, that us being together had not caused him to experience anything bad, but that the relationship was not achieving what he wanted and that he felt that if he wasn't in it and had no passion for it that he was doing me and himself a disservice. He said that he could never stop caring about me but he needed to take care of himself for a while and that my role in his life is up to me... beyond the stipulation that we can't be together, for now. This lack of finality, though a hopeful signal that something could be different in the future, makes me feel all the more lost, unsure, and ready to fight for him. The thought of him being with someone else almost razes me right now, I don't know if I can let go... but I also don't know how I can be here in this place where I am. I don't know how to be okay with leaving the door ajar, just in case, without expectation.. without hoping that he'll come back.

I feel transparent, like I want to turn into a thin shadow and hide somewhere unnoticed. I want to let my mind drift and sleep for days on end.

The weather today is trying to outdo me in tears with all the rain and grey clouds - the cause of a few smiles, for me this morning and the reason for the title of this post, the name of a Paul Verlaine poem and a song of Debussy's that I sang on my senior recital. However, unlike Verlaine's poem, though there has been"no treason" I feel like he and I, or the speaker of the poem if you want to get technical, are in the same sort of space. In a relationship of distance, for me now over or at least put on hold..., where the lack of attentiveness from the partner creates a feeling of nervousness and a broken heart within the the partner that's "in too deep".

To the first man I ever thought I could call my husband, and spend the rest of my life with... I miss you every second and trudge on with a tear-streaked face toward somewhere yet undefined. All I want to do is crawl under the covers and have you hold onto me... because I feel like I'm slipping away... to some place I don't want to go... but you're not here because you can't be... the moment when I feel like I need you most of all.