Do You Know What Alone Feels Like?

Do you know what alone feels like?  Do you know what betrayal feels like?

I thought I did.

But that night showed me just how overwhelmingly credulous I had been. I did not know alone until that night. I did not know betrayal until him.

How naive of me to have believed I had been hurt before, that I had felt heartbreak before. How naive of me to have believed that he had hurt me before, that he had broken my heart before. Everything I had known were mere cracks in my heart’s exterior, but this night it was ripped from me and shattered on the ground.

In a moment, every memory loosely associated with him charred and became cringing to look at. I felt nothing where my heart should be and a tremendous pit in my stomach. I was utterly hollow and catastrophically heavy.

If he could, who wouldn’t? The devastating consequences of someone that I had shared my soul’s intimacy with cutting it out of me. It went dark around me, there was no one, I didn’t even have myself.

Safe as a concept vanishes when what you believed was supposed to protect you is the cunning evil that defiles you. You used to be afraid of legendary boogiemen in the night, now you’re afraid of even the most familiar touch.

I did not blame God, because I believe he does not control any human’s decisions. But I felt a tear in the string connected from me to God. He had spoken so adamantly about God, he had held me while we prayed, he had consoled me out of a faithless despair. He had the speech of a disciple, but the soul of the devil. It’s often only too late that we can see through the disguise. Only from the miles I’ve walked did I know to separate God and his intentions from the act of a sick and suffering soul.

That night changed me. As much of myself I try to hold on to and rebuild, that night will always have some part of me I’ll never get back. As the memory becomes distant, it will forever play vividly in the night from time to time.

The hollow will begin to fill again. I’ll believe in people again. But I will look both ways before every step and after every step I will instinctively look behind me. I’ll always see a sinister shadow there, even though you may not. My eyes will see things differently. I’ll notice more – more beauty, more pain. My heart will sting more from sadness, and sometimes sting from joy. He was once joy, so I will carry with me the thought of what joy can turn into. I will regain my strength, but you see, I will always carry the weight. The weight of knowing absolute loneliness, the weight of knowing cataclysmic betrayal, the weight of that night.