Driving

Silence. Towards an empty home, where I will sleep. Tomorrow I will wake in the same empty home, and the day after. The morning stirrings of another person, long since migrated to another side of the house, will subside completely. Out of habit, I turned on a porch light for someone who won't be returning. ...the mail is being forwarded, but if anything gets missed, set it aside. ...I'll have all my stuff out by Saturday, then I'll give back the key. I spent two years trying to make someone else the most important person in my life, and I think I've failed. I couldn't not push away...it was too long in coming...and one more day would have been too far. No one wants to hear about it, and they change the subject, make a joke, look away...can't I just express? Be allowed to speak? Maybe even cry? Take comfort that I won't be turned from if I can't pretend it hasn't happpened? I think most of my dear friends are too new to me to be comfortable with a level of emotion beyond apathy, self-deprecation, and sarcasm. This is where I have to put it, out here - a baby step to the left of complete suppression. If you're asking if this isn't what I wanted, then you're lucky - it means you've never been here. It's easy to want something and feel completely hollow when it's achieved. I have done the right thing, the best thing, the thing that will make everyone happy in the long run. But it doesn't make it easy to sit here completely alone for the first time in two years. And I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine - it's what I wanted. It IS what I want, but I'm probably not really fine. But I can't tell you that, can I? I can't even tell ME that. This is not remorse - there are no regrets. I am fully grateful to have faced truth, although even in that there is a strange sense of loss. But not remorse - a mere adjustment period I must wade through in order to complete the circle back to the comfort and satisfaction of being alone - because for me, being alone always was a feeling of satisfaction, that I could function solo and in fact even enjoy just being with me. So I can trust that this will soon enough turn into a feeling of relief, of contentment...that I will return to easily living a life of my own, in my own home, and it will be what I make of it, and I will choose to make it good, and real, and fulfilling. Until then, gentle reader.