Mandy

Moving through this world is easy. You don't need money, or means, or help. You don't need to know where you are going or why. All you need is willingness.

I couldn't see this. I had to figure everything out before I would take a single step. So... I did. Now, everything makes sense to me. Everything everyone says, every theory on life, every reason that people do the things they do or believe what they believe. It all seems right, so I am able to do what I need to as well. I have the willingness to live, so I do.

This is the one thing that I lacked when I was with her. I was scared. I was paralyzed with fear and I tried everything I could think of to escape forward motion. Booze and insanity worked best. But they were also the enemies of love and they ripped her away from me with a ferocity that I have not seen in any monster I have since faced. I was so scared of losing the situation that I had, the things that I thought were mine, that my ideas of ownership and control caused me to lose the very things, people, and ideas that I was trying so hard to hold onto. I created a world where the valuable love that I had with her was secondary, and then I made that world a reality in order to prove that I was better, stronger than a simple person in love. Now I've come to the end of that world and I realize what I gave up for the chance to explore it.

Now my life is completely different. All of the things I thought I couldn't live without are gone. All of the ideas and knowledge and experience that I thought I needed, I have. I have seen the country. I have fought versions of myself all over America, I have opened and closed doors which lead to corners of reality that I could not have imagined I would ever see. I have lived in the Colorado mountains. I have picked vegetables on Missouri farmland. I have seen an alpaca fight a Doberman in Jersey on a Wednesday. I have seen the Rockafeller Tree in New York at Christmastime. I have seen the places where America started and where it is held together. I've tasted death and know what lies beyond, where I stand in the universe. I've seen my own blood drip out of me and onto carpets and caskets and sidewalks. I have scars and stories and memories from all of these things and all they tell me is that life is easy. None of it worries me.

It has taken all of this to make me realize how beautiful she was. None of what I have seen is as wonderous, as intriguing, as perfect or as frightening as she. The statue of liberty is not as inspiring as her smile, downtown Atlanta is not as dangerous as her eyes. I use her as a comparison for all of it, and nothing stacks up.

To have a great love that I wasn't ready for does not seem fair, and that is where my dissatisfaction still lives. Why did I have to lose her to gain all of this? My mind is still attached to the idea of her, and I can't seem to shake it. Why? My life is amazing, and while I don't know where she is or what she is doing, I can't imagine that she is wasting any time worrying about what could have been. But I do. I think about what could be. What could I do with that challenge now that I am strong, capable, and clear? I try to think that perhaps there will be new connection, a new love, someplace in this life that I will head that is not directly informed by her. But I have seen a hundred women in a dozen cities in the last four months, and I have not come across her equal. She was it for me. I guess that this is the great annoying mystery of the human condition: dissatisfaction.

Obviously, there have been other things to take care of, but I feel like this chapter is closing. New avenues of art and politics are opening up, but my heart still hopes for the heaven of her love. She still lingers in my world, anchoring me to my efforts. I still do everything that I do, running headlong into every fight, because I want to make the world, or myself, better for her. I've let go of every other connection to this world, from the monetary to the philosophical, but somehow she survives. I don't know why. I think that if I could leave her behind, I would be truly free. Maybe I need the idea of her to motivate me to continue. Maybe I'll never feel like I've totally made it up to her, become worthy of her existence in my reality. Or maybe, as my hope dreams, we are not finished with each other. I suppose that isn't my decision. I'll go where this life takes me, and enjoy it either way. Whether it is back towards her or farther out into the world with her memory in the back pocket of my heart, I will simply strive to live in peace, do my best, make the world around me better, and always be willing to continue.