The going gets tough...

...but staying would have been cruel.

Good memories tend to fade into one another, but bad memories always stand out.  I remember distinctly the only time I've truly felt betrayed in all of the last few years: 

I heard all of the reasons why I should have got over her but none of them mattered - I knew despite all that, she and I really felt the same way about each other. And even when I knew we didn't feel exactly the same, I knew our feelings were similar.  But when I started to accept that how we felt was truly different, I was ready to hear the truth.  So it was told to me.

We were different; while I tried to keep her anonymous to the onlooking gossipers but important to my family and closest friends, absorbing the embarrassment of publicly unrequieted love, she was emphasizing her disinterest in me to the gossipy mob.  She did not repay the favour of my anonymity. All that extra blog traffic, was just more onlookers - more people whom she decided to tell that my blog posts are  - to her embarrassment - dedicated to my feelings for her.  Last summer in our silence I came to realize this, her only betrayal. The rest of our drama will be looked upon as bad luck, bad timing, fate, circumstance, but that one was hurtful, against me and unnecessary. Yet it hurt because it was true - directly and indirectly my words were for her. 

No words were spared and no words were wasted on this blog.  Honesty is never broke, there's always enough to give.  I felt what I felt, and I felt like writing about it.  But the words were nothing more than empty hope, hers and mine, so they had to be put away.  I buried inside me the words she used against me, and kept secret the words she used in my favour.  They'll stay buried, those words. Nobody will ever hear them so they won't make a sound.

She was generous though. She saw me standing over the grave where our words were buried, watering the sadness and joy we once shared hoping it would grow.  She knew I was still looking, still reading, still enjoying the words she had for me. So she salted the earth. The words were gone forever.

Months ago she freed me, so later I returned the favour. I stopped writing in my own blog, for her.  She freed me but I realized I had not freed her. I forgot that we were both shackled.  She kept reading - each day, standing over the gravesite, wondering perhaps if she had properly salted the seeds of sorrow while letting joyful memories blossom. Each day she read, each day I saw she read, each day that mattered less.  She should not read, she needs to let go, she just can't. So I ended it. I stopped my blog. Me, without writing?!  That wasn't for me.  It just needed to be over for her.

Now it is, she has been freed, just as I had been.  My words in her life serve only as public embarassment, so she will never crave them.  She doesn't come here anymore, and she has travelled farther from me than sound. The favour has been repayed.  Now I can come home to myself, in my wordy abode.

Now...to my next adventure.