Thirty-five and now I’m hurting

Ten years ago, I posted ‘Twenty-five today, and it doesn’t hurt,‘ not realising what lay ahead.

Hurt comes in many forms.

Physical pain is probably the one most people think of first, and we’ve all suffered from that in varying degrees, from life-changers to silly mishaps.

For me, it’s an ache of a different sort.

Back in 2014, I fell for a girl, somebody who was funny, three inches shorter than me, yet larger than life, and utterly adorable.

I couldn’t get enough of her quirkiness. The way she looked at life was a mix of unfettered optimism and childish delight, and she helped me to see the fun side of the world, whereas before, the hard knocks had caused me to put my vulnerabilities into a safety deposit box.

Fast forward two years to 2016 and I was living and loving again, enjoying life and finding new purpose in everything. We’d even made plans to set up home together, somewhere far from our current location where we could make a fresh start, buy a parcel of land (a mini-farm of sorts) and adopt a random set of animals.

And then she was gone.

One tragic weekend, she hit rock bottom after almost losing a family member, she pulled down the metaphorical shutters and closed the shop. The phone calls and texts stopped, the door was never answered, and brief sightings became an urgent need for her to hide. Eighteen months of offering help, of giving her the space she obviously needed, of being as available as possible came to naught.

As of this week, I’ve seen her three times in two years, and always in company where our shattered life together couldn’t never be discussed.

And it’s left me broken.

The world is grey instead of gay. All the colour has gone from my rainbow of happiness.

I harboured a faint hope that we might recover from this, but time has proved me to be a naive dreamer.

Somehow, I must move on from this.

But I don’t know how to.