pain

It’s been about eight months now, and the pain is not as bad as it once was, but I still feel it sometimes, and it still hurts me.  What hurts even more are memories of the ways I hurt you, like the time I picked you up from the airport and wouldn’t hug you or kiss you.  The pain of this memory is on the same level of that which I felt the night my grandmother passed away.  My mother, aunt, sister and myself were there that night. I wasn’t in the room when it happened. My aunt’s animal-like cries coming from my grandmother’s room told me she was gone.  That finality, that profound loss, that is what I feel when I remember how I hurt you.  But this pain is not just for hurting you; it is also for myself as I reflect on the fact that I was too afraid to fully embrace love – your love – when it was exactly what I wanted.

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