Love's labor lost.

Scanning a dictionary with words swimming through the yellow tint of the worn out pages, one word catches my eye and sends remorse coursing through my veins.

One word which encapsulates my life’s entire being.
One word that is apt to be my epitaph.

‘Maimed’
Definition: Rendered inoperative, Injured

"Love is like war: Easy to begin but hard to end." – Anonymous
Despite the warning, I set off on the war path…

The Opponent:

Sparkling eyes, a charming smile, an overwhelming aura.
He was the angel I once thought heaven sent for me.
He was the sun that I believed shone only for me.

The Weapons & the Blows:

A silence that conveyed volumes, shattered by the noise of the truth.
A trust that defied reason, betrayed with such brutality.
A love that rebelled against logic, maimed by ruthlessness.
A fragile heart surrendered in hope, damaged beyond repair.

My walls came crashing down leaving me defenseless against the blows that were yet to come. Hanging on with a faint pulse of doubt, a brain numbed of its senses, eyes blinded by sorrow and a life devoid of any spirit, Love blew me away and here I lie in ruins…

The Post-War Trauma:

Only survivors know just how incapacitating love can be. An emotion so potent can bring about nothing but devastation.

Like the water that threatens to gush forth, swallowing everything in its wake, like the night that creeps up, engulfing all in its never ending enormity, I regained consciousness only to find myself with nothing but a glimpse of heaven and a maimed love.

The dawn of every morning now finds me anticipating the worst as dread looms large on the horizon.

Happy and sad, laughing and crying, victorious and defeated, physically able and emotionally disabled, in a crowd and still alone...the two faces of one person.

The world seems to zoom past me, while I stand rooted in the past clutching onto a future that will never be.

Suddenly I’ve become my best company, harboring the assumption that every kind act disguises a sinister motive. Happy people come across as notorious. You guessed right. Cynicism now makes up for all the lost time.

My tears have a new found flamboyance. They showcase their shimmering best, no longer wary of the presence of an audience.

Grief, despair, tears, agony, etc., are all synonyms for solace…English really is a funny language.

Life is a weary, uphill climb...and they have the audacity to sing ‘ain’t no mountain high enough’.
Their climb was definitely not steep enough!

Life’s screenplay has become taxing; wringing me dry of any emotion and making me want to skip right through to ‘The End’.

Looking out the window at the setting sun, a sun setting on me, no longer in the skies just for me, realization dawns with stealth that my angel was never sent for me.
That glimpse of heaven was never meant to be, as a maimed love has come to be my identity.