Hurt

Have you ever played a contact sport of any kind with any real level of intensity? If you have, you've probably been hit. I'm not talking about a bump or a shove, but a real, honest to God, hit. The kind that leaves you counting your teeth and trying to catch your breath.

Remember?

Right when it happens, there's nothing. Oh, there's the strict progression of events, but no feeling; just a comfortable numbness. You see the hit, and your body reacts to it, but the brain seems unable to process what just happened. And so you sit there feeling an empty nothing where you know there should be some feeling.

And, frequently, you cling to that numbness. Because what is coming next is such exquisite agony that you would practically sell your soul to avoid it. All those jangled, tortured nerves begin to scream at you. The block that your mind put in place crumbles under the onslaught.

How long does it last? Minutes? Hours? Days? However long, it seems too long. But it is ultimately replaced. It fades into the background. And you feel almost normal. But you still get twinges. If you push at it, or move just wrong, the pain comes back.

As time passes, the pain comes back weaker and weaker, ultimately becoming nothing but a memory. And you move on.

That's what it's like. That process is nearly identical no matter what the trauma.

First came the initial hit. The call. “It's not you. It's me.” 99 times out of 100, that's one of the biggest lies in the female vocabulary. This time though, because of the particulars of the situation, I think she's being honest.

That's the blow. Like my world had just stopped. I couldn't breathe. I could barely think. I wanted to cry, to scream, to beg...but I couldn't.

And I'm left alone. Gasping for air in the sudden vacuum. My emotions suddenly completely isolated. I knew I should feel something, anything. Rage, betrayal, loss, mourning... Hell, I'd have settled for depression. Instead, there was a vast emptiness inside. A numb void overwhelming my heart and my mind.

How long did it last? That gray nothing? No color. No taste. Every breath taken with effort. Every thought moving sluggishly through a deadened mind. Every step twice as difficult as ever before.

Minutes? Hours? Both too long and not long enough.

Because what happened next nearly killed me. What had happened finally hit home. I had spent months loving this woman. I'd shared with her things that had never been shared with anyone. Hopes, dreams, fears... everything that makes me who I am, she knew.

I had grown used to having her with me. A spot in my mind was reserved for her. Awake, asleep, it didn't matter. She was there. I could close my eyes and see her beautiful face. When I fell asleep, even when she wasn't physically present, I fell asleep with her beside me.

All of that gone. And it hurts. It hurts worse than anything I've ever experienced. I've had bones broken, I've had an injured back, a bad shoulder, a bum knee... and I'd take all that pain combined and multiplied over this agony of the heart and mind.

Once that hit, I devoted myself to it. I screamed. I raged. I cried like a baby. How do you release love? Because I loved her, and still do. How do you turn that off?

For the first time in months, I sleep alone. For the first time in months, her smiling face isn't there to greet me. For the first time in months, I can't feel her arms around me at the end of a hard day.

For the first time in months, I'm alone.

After the initial pain, that first agony, passed, I felt almost a swell of relief. I could laugh again. Color returned. Movement and breathing resumed their normal ease. I could taste food.

But sometimes, once in a while, when I'm least expecting it, something sets me off again. And I feel that loss. I feel that pain. In the middle of a joke, I'll tear up. In the middle of the brightest day, my sight dims. Sitting beside a heater, I'll grow cold.

And, after a while, it passes again. And it cycles. Sometimes most of a day will pass. Other times, I'll be lucky to last minutes.

It would be easier if I could hate her. God, it would be easier. But that's not even an option. I look inside, and can't find even a trace of bitterness, a wisp of anger.

And she made me a better man. Maybe she doesn't know it, maybe she'll never know it, but she did. I'm stronger now than I was. I'm more open to trying new things, to meeting people. I'm more willing to take a risk.

Most importantly, she showed me that I could love again. I'd retreated into a shell that she pulled me out of.

But it still hurts. It's not constant, but it's there. And sometimes, like it did not an hour ago, it feels almost like my world has ended.

Because, in a way, it has.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suicidal. And I know that there still is a future for me. But the future I had built is gone. And I'm starting again from scratch. The only difference is that I have some new tools with which to build. Some tools she helped me discover.

But all of that is sometime in the “tomorrow.” The reality is “today.” And right now, today, I just want to cry and to scream and to beg.