http://girlsareprettyforever.tumblr.com/post/34269119659/henrys-alive-again-day

This is the love I idealize. 

Someone leaves, the other person seems to move on -- but. Their feelings lay dormant, launching them into decisive action at the slightest hope of reunification. All can be forgiven, and all the years apart can fall away, for two people who are meant to be. 

That kind of love takes casualties -- but. The greater tragedy would be in not surrendering to it. Because what kind of life is it to mire through the regret of what might have been? The life where a lukewarm six years, a fine six years (fun though they may have been) are enough to settle for instead?

And this idea weaves its spell like a kind of magic, a divine text where it's not God loving you but another human being. Which makes it all the more awe-inspiring really -- that two flawed unique people could want each other more than the comfortable lives they created apart. It's a comforting hope, this possibility that although today you might not seem to matter to someone who matters to you, you could. Someday.

Thinking about this is a balm across all my hurts. A kiss on the forehead after a fight. A hug that lasts too long to be appropriate. A dream where everything ends up right in the end.

But awake I wonder, how does one get to 'dormant,' to savoring the 'fine'? Because how do you learn to love in chalk outlines when you painted before?

And even those are the romantic, poetic questions that imprison me in this belief. They pretend it's not my faith hiding my paintbrushes away, saying I lost them. They whisper the reassurance that this kind of romance isn't disordered, and that nothing's wrong with me. That everything will eventually be fine as long as I believe.

I'm trapped in a hell of my own making, and salvation is a fantasy. And hell is the fantasy too. Because really, I'm alone and cold no matter who's next to me. The distance between us is space I create, but that doesn't make it any less real. Or any less empty.