Ode to a Lost Soul

Some days, most days, I wish I had never met him.

I was fine before he came along.  Now he's lost forever, and so am I.

I didn't know what I was missing.  He showed me life; he showed me myself; he showed me I was beautiful.

But I wasn't beautiful.  He made me beautiful.  Without him, there is nothing left but ugliness and sin.

I wish I had never known.  I wish I had never seen that things could be better.

I wish I wasn't the one to drive him away.  I wish he could have stayed.

Love isn't all it's cracked up to be.  He loved me, but I didn't love him enough, and now it's too late.

When he showed me I could have it all, I thought I wanted even more.  I turned my back on him; I went my own way.

I was always broken.  Even after he fixed me, a part of me was still lost, cracked, incomplete.

If I could have stayed who I was, things would have been fine.  If I hadn't been offered a better way, I never would have known any better.

It never would have hurt so bad when I screwed up.

I'd been screwing up all my life.  What right did he have to come along and make me feel guilty for it?

What right did he have to forgive me once, but not forgive me again?

It's his fault I feel this way, and I hate him for it.

I hate him because I loved him, and he loved me, but it wasn't enough.

I wonder sometimes if he thinks of me and wishes we had never met.  Would we both have been better off that way?  I never brought him anything but pain.  At least I was happy for a while.  I don't think he ever really was.

Was and had been.  That's all we have now.  I don't even know where he is, or even if he's alive.

I'm sure he's fine.

I'm not fine, but I'm sure he is.

He told me before I could recover, that I could become something better than I was.

But eventually, even he gave up on that dream.

Part of me just wants to lay down and die, to show him he was wrong at first and right in the end.

Another part of me wants to prove his final words to me to be a lie.

He loved me more than I ever loved him at the time, and now I love him too much to let go.

I'm lost.

I can't find my way back on my own.

Is he what I need, or is what I need inside me, or somewhere else?

I want to say he lost out, but I know he didn't.  I know he's better off without me.

I want to survive; I want to be strong; I want to go on.

It's just hard to do it all alone.

I'll find someone else, but no one quite like him.

He was truly unique, one of a kind.

I'm unique, too.  But I'm lost.  And no one wants to find me.

No one should.

I remember how things once were, and how they can never be again.

What reason do I have to think I'll ever find someone like him again?

What reason do I have to think I can find myself?

He thought me to be strong and then gave up on me at the end, leaving me in my weakness.

I hate him for it.

I hate him so much.

And I feel completely lost without him.

If I ever get another chance at happiness, I'll probably screw it up again.

I know who I am.

We can change, but we can't change who we are deep in our souls.

I will always be lost.

I suppose, in a way, we're all lost.  Some are just better at hiding it than others.  Most don't even know they are lost.

I wish I had never met him.  Then maybe I wouldn't have realized how lost I was.

I have this dream that some day I'll see him again, and I'll smile and him and he'll look surprised to see how well I'm doing.

The first step in that dream is for me to actually be doing well.

I'm not there yet.  I don't think I can ever be.

But maybe someday, if I do see him again, he'll see that I'm not quite so lost, that at least he taught me something.

And as much as I hate him and as much as I hate myself and as much as I wish we'd never met, it's still that hope of being just a little less lost, a little closer to home, that keeps me going.

Someday this lost soul will find its way, not all the way home, but a little further from the edge.

A little safer.

A little more secure.

A little more in love with myself.

I am beautiful, even without him, at least I can try to be.

Someday, I won't care so much that I'm lost because I'll finally, truly accept that we're all just the same, living out our own little existences as lost souls looking for home.

And one day, if we're really lucky, we just might find it.