Love Proceeds

You sit there silently watching the fits and starts of my sadness and anger, watch it bleeding from me, while slowly unraveling my dignity. My outbursts are like the death throes of a dying monster, whatever I've become in trying to keep you near me. You watch as I succumb to the worst parts of myself, just as your presence once summoned the best of me. Now I struggle to control my demons with self-discipline, struggle for the strength to stop hurting. I try to resist the urge to let pain make me close my heart, although keeping it open has had so many consequences. But I refuse to allow the ignorant world to make me bitter, to make me hard and cold. I proceed, unabashed, into every adventure of the heart because I know that once my heart is moved, I listen to its truths. I stand firm in who I am and who I choose to love. I won't let your shifting sands undermine my feelings nor will I let the pain and anger drown me. What you see in my angry words and bizarre actions is the remnant of a dying wicked spirit, a damaged and evil heart. They say there's no rest for the wicked and this I can tell you is true. I've spent the past year enveloped in my own worst impulses and I sit crumpled on the floor exhausted, weary and without promise of rest, unless I drive myself into my grave. 

I know that I am better than that, I know that this is the final blow. No more can I proceed by taking someone else down with me. It's time that I moved on. 

I'll try to collect myself as best I can, with the embarrassment of the rotten things I've said hanging off me like a scarlet A. I'll pull myself together and take one step today, never regretting the intensity of my feelings, only regretting that they were not respected. I am a woman of deep passion and love without boundaries, who is learning self-control. Your silence has taught me acceptance; let my heart teach you to love. I have faith that you will recover and find that strong man buried in you, the one who is not afraid of love's power. Regardless of whether I ever meet that man again, I know he is you. Remember when I showed you the best of me, because I know that woman intimately, and she is who I'm to become.