Trust Me

I ran into a friend last night, a friend that I haven't talked to in quite a few months. I felt a bit awkward since I was wearing a name tag with my new name on it and I saw her look at it quizzically. Since she is far too classy to point to my chest and say "What the hell???" (which would have been my reaction), I sort of blurted out my life story for the past 7 months.

She then told me her similar story from a few years ago.

And I asked her the question that I haven't been able to really ask anyone yet because no one would understand unless they have walked this path.

How do you ever enter a relationship and trust anyone again?

I can make jokes about it and be a glib smart ass but it wasn't until that question passed my lips with such desperate earnestness that I realized how truly lost I feel.

I have such a wonderful circle of friends, both women and men, that I love and trust and would do anything for but then I go home. I go home and find my own heart in my closet and it's in so many pieces. I can hold it in my hands and cry myself to sleep and wake up in the morning and go through my day but when I return home, it's still there in pieces.

The hardest thing is realizing that there isn't any reason why I should mourn about my broken heart. I never had a healthy relationship. I may have loved but I was never loved in return. I was with a person who believed that love was being taken care of and taking what he wanted, when he wanted it.

Maybe I cry because I feel so foolish? Am I mourning 17 years of being an idiot? I know I stand back at times, still staggered by the amount of pain that one person can bring about in this universe. The very fact that I can still be surprised by it makes me feel foolish all over again.

It's the questions of the heart that are so deep and hidden, that can only be broached in the guise of a joke, that will take you out at the knees.

Crying, not laughing, can sometimes be the hardest thing.