It always starts off with the most wishful of intents. The long nights filled with conversations and realizations that you are connected in ways you never dreamed could possibly happen. The fuzzy feeling that makes you completely unable to focus, and then finally, you feel whole. like you’ve found that missing cog in your production line.

Childhood living

Is easy to do

The things you wanted

I bought them for you

But then at some point change happens. You either grow together and find ways to overcome things, or you end up growing on your own and taking on an insurmountable amount of responsibility while resentment and a flurry of other negative emotions begin to fester.

Graceless lady

You know who I am

You know I can’t let you

Slide through my hands

At what point in the same cycle do you finally say it’s time to get off? Stuck in a centrifuge that seems to just go in the same direction with the same results. At some point it has to stop; at some point you have decide that the cycle you’re in needs to end.

I watched you suffer

A dull aching pain

Now you’ve decided

To show me the same

So how do you do that? How do you try to stop something that already feels so in the midst of cycling that to interrupt it would be absolute chaos?

No sweeping exit

Or offstage lines

Could make me feel bitter

Or treat you unkind

There are no easy answers, there are no easy solutions, but pulling the bandage off has to happen. The wound is already gaping, no amount of cauterization, no amount of triage can fix it.

I know I’ve dreamed you

A sin and a lie

I have my freedom

But I don’t have much time

The pain is real. The emotions are still very raw, but I know this is what’s right, so why the hell does it feel so wrong?

Faith has been broken

Tears must be cried

Let’s do some living

After we die

I keep thinking about something someone said to me recently that isn’t even remotely related to this, but still resonates.

“Campfire rules. Leave things better than when you found it.”

Failure and being alone aren’t the things that worry me in this situation; I’m used to those feelings and emotions. In a fucked up way, they’re the most common emotions I’ve felt in my existence. While I think I’ve left things better than I found them, I still worry about what this will do to him.

But I can’t keep going in this circle anymore. It doesn’t benefit either of us, and the longer we take avoiding this situation the more the situation will become its own beast.

Even though it feels correct, it still hurts, but we really should do some living after we die.