The wind, salty and cool, rushed past me, stinging my face and singing to me its ancient song \u2013 but not a lullaby, more like a\u00a0symphony. I heard it and it was compelling. I reached out to you but you had gone and I looked up in the mist and saw you walking far in front of me. The sand made it hard to walk for it was wet and giving \u2014 like walking on a thin layer of quicksand, it was hard to move forward very quickly and I found myself panicking as you disappeared into the mist which, now, had become more than a dense fog; it became a wispy beat with claws cold and without a heart. It swallowed you up in its bowels \u2013 still I walked on trying to find you in the gloom.<\/p>\n
I saw traces of your footprints partially washed away by the restless, foaming surf. The wind was bitter and soulless \u2013 harsh and needy in its desire to control and wound as if it derived pleasure from my panic and pain.<\/p>\n
Schadenfreude in the wind.<\/p>\n
I hurried along the shore as quickly as the conditions would allow, but somehow I knew that once you had disappeared into the crevices of fog and mist, I would never see or hear from you again. I realized you had been disappearing for quite some time before you actually did.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to measure loss \u2013 there is no scale, or instrument like a thermometer or a hospital pain charge for this kind of pain \u2013 just no way to measure it. I\u2019m quite aware there is no panacea, no nepenthe, no opiate or potion that can heal this pain of loss. The emptiness, the void, cannot be filled with song or drink or the company of one or many. It is always there, always gnawing, always eating away the inside of me. Sometimes I feel the pain will explode through my skin in bloody eruptive pustules, disfiguring, debilitating, painful and incurable. You couldn\u2019t have hurt me more if you had impaled me on a stake, and let me bleed out stuck in the middle of some hot, scorpion-infested desert \u2013 far from you, far from comfort, far from peace, and far from the quaintness of feeling oblivious and numb.<\/p>\n
Yes, I felt\u00a0you slipping away into the mist, but I could not\u00a0believe it \u2014 I couldn\u2019t let myself believe it \u2014 I would have died than accept that the fog was closing in and you would choose to lose yourself in it and hide from me forever, I chose the petals of the flowers you tossed me \u2014 little tidbits \u2013 little bits of your time, little bits of your laughter, little bits\u00a0of how you used to feel, how you used to be, how we used to be when the sun used to be\u2014 new friends together\u00a0dancing in the sunshine…our love reflected in the crystal blue sky.<\/p>\n
I am not a fool. I knew you were going long before you went. I should have prepared myself for it \u2014 and in a way, I guess I did. For most of my life I\u2019ve steeled and sealed myself against the pain of losing someone who I loved and trusted. I guess I never really gave much of myself to anything really, I was too afraid the connection would suck me down into the black, swirling vortex when someone died or someone chose to walk away \u2014 as you have.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re out there somewhere \u2014 in the salty fog \u2013 I can hear your voice on the wind. I, the lost soul on this beach of despair cannot utter a single sound \u2014 save for the whimper of a man who cries almost silently, trying in vain to hide his tears from the world.<\/p>\n
Knowing you\u2019re out there something is both a blessing and a curse. I\u2019m blessed I had the time with you and that we shared it well. I\u2019m cursed because I\u2019ll never catch up to you or ever find you again. And so I walk alone of a gloomy beach, the sand sinking beneath my frozen feet, the icy waves washing away the memories of you though I always try so hard to remember.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s odd that I tried to remember you when things were new and good. It only makes my gut ache worse; it only eats away at whatever is left of me. I don\u2019t even know who I am anymore.<\/p>\n
But you\u2019re out there somewhere, but I can\u2019t follow you anymore. I\u2019m tired and weary and my heart is ruined. I lie down on the cold wet sand and wait for the serpentine aqua waves to wash over me and carry me out to the place where ache disappears and the pain and sorrow turns into the peaceful blackness of eternal night.<\/p>\n
I wave goodbye. I don\u2019t know if you see me waving or not \u2014 I can\u2019t see you; I can only sense you\u2019re watching. Don\u2019t pity me. Go on with your life and find happiness. You will you know. Forget me, for soon I will find the peace for which I have craved so long.<\/p>\n
My sorrow will end so your happiness can begin. You\u2019ve let go of me, but don\u2019t ever let go of your dreams. Tomorrow will dawn a brighter day for you and you won\u2019t have to run from me any longer.<\/p>\n
In the end, we all have the same destination \u2014 some of us decide to take a shortcut. A few hundred years from now it won\u2019t matter anyway.<\/p>\n
Goodbye, sweet sadness,<\/p>\n
goodbye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last Walk on the Beach The wind, salty and cool, rushed past me, stinging my face and singing to me its ancient song \u2013 but not a lullaby, more like a\u00a0symphony. I heard it and it was compelling. I reached out to you but you had gone and I looked up in the mist and saw you walking\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10162"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10165,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162\/revisions\/10165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}