I HOPE IT HURTS


So here I sit, drinking water after water, preparing for my yoga class, waiting for that 90 minutes in a 105 degree room where I will punish my body to the point of exhaustion. I sweat and sweat and feel pain like never before. The pain stills that bird in my ribcage and allows me time to be inside my own mind alone. It is the only time I have where I can resist thinking about you.

Sooner or later I will have to find something else to take my mind off you. Whatever it is, I hope it hurts just as much. This, my very last love letter to you, hurts enough for now.

Whatever else can be said for us in the long road of this affair, I will say that I never stopped loving you. I will die loving you as fiercely as I ever have, feeling those tendrils of pain creeping up my spine and into my ribcage, choking the very breathe from my body. That love has been enough to carry me this far and it will have to do for my future without you. I will have to adapt. I know this as well as I know you just don't have it in you to try. If you did I would be hearing your voice in my ear right now while my hand held yours - I would be able to smell your hair and feel your heat - you would feel the gentle rise and fall of my chest as I cried tears of joy to have you with me, sobbing with that release which I will never know.

I am sobbing now, just letting it come out. It's ok, I keep telling myself, not really believing it. This is the end of a terrible year for us. It's all over now. Keep crying, I tell myself, it's all over. It will be ok. Don't be sad, don't be scared. Everything will work out like it has to. It can be no other way. You'll heal, you will heal. Breathe deep and let it take over. Keep breathing, keep breathing - there's nothing to be afraid of anymore. You're almost there.

If I believed in God I would say the same pathetic prayer every night, over and over bargaining my very life away for one last hour in your loving and happy presence: "God, if you can hear me, take my life, my limbs, my sanity, anything but please, God, please let me just hold her and show her that everything is going to be ok."



the love letter collection