Long Distance (part 2): Living with a ghost

Long distance (part 2): Living with a ghost

         Now they are gone for good, you realize deep down that nothing will ever be the same.

The comfort, the warmth, the joys and sadness were all tied to that presence, to that single person whom you might have taken for granted but now came to acknowledge their huge impact on your life.

They have left, and all you have now is a ghost, you are living with a ghost inside your head.

At every corner, memories come to haunt you, there you used to go for dinner, here was your favorite sport… you got used to being constantly with them that unconsciously their road has become your road home.  You still pass by their house, then realize they are no longer living in the same country, indeed they are thousands of miles away for you.

You wish you could go into the room one more time, sit where they used to sit, feel their presence, let their scent tickle your face and nose, relive those precious moments.

How can time pass so quickly when you are together? The years pass like days; whereas when apart time seems to freeze as if to prolong your agony.

Emptiness, bitterness and sorrow, you try to make new memories and say we had Beirut and we still have a promising future…but when one is still living in the past in Beirut and when the other moved to a new country to the future: you grasp the harshness of the situation and its complexity. If one is living in the past and the other in the future, where is the present? No one is living the present, steps have been skipped and the equations are unbalanced now.

Love is not something taken, it is given. Although you considered yourself to be rational rather than emotional, you quickly come to realize how weak a human can be, in those dark hours before going to bed, when the loneliness takes over you cannot hold your tears anymore. The masks fall off and you are vulnerable, the only substantial hope is hoping to see their face one more time, after a month, 6 months or a year.

Will we be the same? Can we pick up the broken pieces and move on? Love is strong but when stretched over continents a rupture may occur.

You want to move forward and you know that in time you will get used to the situation but you cannot help yourself but linger on old pictures, every piece of clothes, every smell, every place you have been, all the memories. One thing is sure, you cannot forget even if you try.

      Finally, each partner copes differently with the new situation at hand, each at their own pace. The hardest part will be if one side of the scale tips over and one seem to be further ahead than the other.

You are not here physically anymore, you are in my heart in my every thought, and you are my memories.

You are the ghost that haunts me every night, the one that puts me to sleep and the one that wakes me up screaming for your name.

End of part 2