From Exes to the Cosmos

Three years ago, I lost my best friend. He didn’t die. I fell in love with him. That was my mistake.

He wasn’t my soulmate to begin with. He was just the only person I truly loved being around. The only one who made the world feel both lighter and more real all at once.

*I can almost hear my friends now, hands cupped over their mouths shouting, “For the Love of God. The magic was you, not him!” And maybe they’re right. Maybe it was my light bouncing off someone who was able to reflect back to me the very thing I was looking for. But please, for a moment (for the 10,000th time), let me write a little of romance. Because whether it was his magic or mine, he pulled something dormant out of me. And I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t romanticize the hell out of that far more than I should. 

I have about a two-hour social limit tops, though I always lie to myself about it in practice. But for some reason, with us, that limit didn’t exist. Time didn’t pass with us, it unfolded. It always unraveled in the most magical and hilarious ways when we were together. It didn’t even feel like life, really. It felt like floating above it, in a cloud only we knew about. We were like kids on a playground, always laughing, always getting into trouble.

There was an odd thing however always in between us. An addiction to suffering he had that I never fully understood. He would retreat to it like a sanctuary every time I left. A kind of familiar ache he didn’t know how to live without.

Life can be an odd thing. The choices we make, the beliefs we hold, stranger still. When we broke up, he told me I needed something he could never offer. Essentially that I needed a place close to God, and he was never going to make that step.

This gap between us surfaced often, mostly in the shows we watched and media we consumed. I’d try to sit through his darker comfort shows, but I rarely made it past the second episode without feeling like a wilted flower in winter.

I brought him to church once, not expecting much, but was genuinely surprised when he looked visibly moved. He glanced at me, almost startled, and said, “There is something very beautiful here.”

“Maybe it’s the human spirit,” he added later, trying to make sense of the way his hair stood on end. It only took about a week for him to convince himself it was nothing. He later claimed he only said anything about it because he thought it’s what I wanted to hear. But I know when people are lying. He was lying. What haunted me more, was that he was lying to himself.

I never tried to change his beliefs. I’m not sure why. Maybe I figured life would teach him what I never could. And I just loved loving him.

It’s a dangerous thing, you know, to reflect on love. I’m not sure why I keep doing it. Maybe it’s because I’m a poet. Or maybe I’m a poet because I’m always reaching for something that's just out of my grasp.

I live in whiplash. Stay in the moment. Leave the past behind you. Dream of a better future. But there’s always something pulling me back. I’ve always been that way. Reaching forward, reaching back, reaching through - for something I can never quite wrap my hands around.

There’s a saying I hear often: Let it go. But hold on to the good. Treasure what was beautiful. Keep it with you. That saying has always disturbed me more than it comforted me. Maybe because it feels like admitting defeat. And there’s something in me that won’t let go until I know the course is set for beauty.

I think there’s something deep in me that knows hopelessness is a lie. That the way we romanticize heartbreak and suffering is an illness, one we’ve been conditioned to accept as normal. Hypnotized, almost. Like a song you hate that gets stuck in your head.

There is a defiance in me. A knowing that rises up from nowhere I can name, that life is meant to be beautiful. That it’s our broken belief systems that keep us small and bound. And that when the truth is finally spoken - everything blooms.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to say. I think I’m still figuring it out. Maybe it’s that we’re all standing on some kind of precipice. That life keeps presenting us with choices. The straight path - or the long road back to Eden.

But I believe we’ll get there. We all will. For some reason I can’t shake the feeling that it’s somehow inevitable. And I’m not afraid of seeming naïve or childish for believing that. I’ve always known children carry more wisdom than we do. They know things innately. That they’re here to play. To wonder. That this is an adventure worth taking. That love and joy was always the point.

So maybe this post is just my way of making peace again. Peace with the path each of us chooses on this big, blue, orbiting globe.

There’s peace in knowing we’re all here on this thing, dancing through the cosmos, even while we work things out here in the dirt.

It is fascinating, isn’t it? The way our galaxy spins through something even larger. How we’re all bound to each other by some strange thing called gravity, moving toward.. somewhere?

In Jewish tradition - one of the most ancient ones we have - stories are cyclical. Always returning again to the source. As if beginnings were never meant to be left behind, only revisited with new eyes. The wisdom is layered, spiraled, returned to again and again - each time carrying us deeper.

Which makes me think, if it really did all began with “Let there be light,” 

then maybe that’s where we’re all headed.

To that second star to the right, 

And straight on ‘til morning.