Clandestine Confessions

“Can I buy you a drink?”
I stood at the table in the underground bar, observing all the couples, refraining from holding back any expression of sadness when a voice grabbed my attention.
I looked up to lock my tear-filled eyes with an older gentleman.
Was he being kind, or did I look like I needed one that desperately…?
“No motive involved, please know that. I have daughters your age. I know the owner of this place so trying to up his revenue.”
“You are so kind, but I am good for now.”
“You here by yourself tonight?”
“I am,” I tried to not let my voice break under the weight of emotions I felt in those two words.
“Good for you. I admire that. Keep living life so bold.”
I tucked his words away, not yet able to see the truth that laced them.
–
I was holding steady until I took shelter from the storm in a western shop while waiting for the venue doors to open.
Apparently, Kevin Costner shops there…so I was told.
Shania Twain blared loudly from the speakers, making us all feel like a woman.
However, all I was starting to feel was a deep pain with each minute the concert got closer.
We had talked about seeing this artist together – one that significantly defined many of our monumental memories – for years.
And here I was about to see him.
By myself.
In Utah.
To carry with me the deep knowing I am exactly where I am meant to be does not negate the heartache I can still feel in what never was.
And what will never be.
To grieve the living is a unique type of suffering – to know they are still out there but unreachable.
That you still are able to send them a text of you at a concert.
But yet cannot.
The burning of bridges mandatory in order to stay alive.
–
It was never supposed to be this way…
The thought that haunted me through the evening.
But yet it is.
Regardless of how hard I fought for a different ending.
And if there was ever a moment I had to accept our fate, it was now.
–
In the most perfect scenario, I would tell you the rest of the concert was filled with immense joy.
That the roads were perfectly clear on my way home.
That I didn’t narrowly avoid crashing my car ten times.
That I instantaneously found my healing by the end of the night.
But that wouldn’t make for a very good story now, would it?
–
The concert was an hour and a half of me crying – trying my best to enjoy what will only happen once in this lifetime but unable to see past the sorrow.
It was a heartache that would haunt me far past the ending of the concert…
–
The trip home was about as dangerous as it could get – the snow, with its refusal to stop, turning an hour drive into two.
Me relying solely on the rumble strip to gauge if I was even in a lane.
Cars and trucks slid all about around me.
Others acted like we were not driving on an ice rink and sped by.
I watched in envy as the plows cleared the opposite side of the road.
–
And then there is the matter of my healing…
The ghosts of the past made a jarring return as the emotional anguish beckoned them for relief.
For numbness.
For control.
To become the J again that existed those many years ago…as if that will bring me back to safety in the situation.
To bring me back to something familiar…
Their presence only lasted a couple of weeks but left a lifetime mark on me.
–
As I awoke from the lapse, taking my first breath back in the light of truth, I spoke only gratitude.
The response revealed all that I needed to see and feel in order to bring myself closure.
There could have been no louder shout that what I was in was a slow death of my spirit…and that I was okay to let it all go.
I was okay to reclaim the landscape of my heart he walked.
I was okay to live with “what ifs” – letting them forever remain as questions without answers.
I was okay to remember the good. And take off the rose-colored glasses for the bad.
I was okay to live as the J that would have never had the privilege to exist before.
–
To think of the life that I would have lost had I never saved myself.
The love that is coming my way that I would have never known.
And I will always have the snow to thank for that…