Alone.

I’ve always loved this poem and this video.

I know a lot of things have probably changed in your life since I last posted; a lot of things have changed in mine, too.

I’ve learned how to be alone.

It’s a strange feeling, walking through the rubble of consequences to your actions and choices and forcing yourself – despite the very natural and human response to ignore it, or blame others, or dwell in excuses – to admit that you have nobody to blame but yourself. It is hard, gut-wrenching, to look at the carnage of what once seemed like such a happy, full life and know that this smoking, empty rubble is of your own doing.

The people you hurt. You have to look at them, like a long hallway of morose and accusatory faces. Your partner you failed, your partnership you abandoned. Your child you have let down, whose life you have forever altered because of your own decisions. They all stare down at you as you pass by, and you have to look at them.

On the long walk down that long hall of regrets; decisions made and choices chosen. The long walk down the long hall as you learn to be alone.

You go home to a quiet apartment. Gone is the house full of laughter and memories but instead it’s a new place, that you decorate to your heart’s content in a style you like without worrying about what a partner will think. A hot pink and black bathroom where you take long hot baths with a beer and a good book. Butterflies splashed across the wall’s of the little girl’s bedroom that you try your hardest to make homey for her, to ease the transition and the uprooting that is inevitable.

You cuddle up with your dog in bed, your only bed partner besides the ghosts of your past that come to take up the other ¾ of the queen sized bed you picked out for yourself, with the damask-print bedding you chose without worrying if it was too girly or ugly or the wrong color.

Those ghosts take up more of the bed as time goes on, it seems.

You have nobody to answer to anymore. You have an apartment, though hardly a home. You have a child you love more than your very own life, though you know your choices have altered her own life path. You have regret, and loss, and pain. There’s lots of pain.

You take your long hot baths, eat small meals for one – if you eat at all, there’s nobody to really notice if you eat or not and what the hell, you could stand to drop a few pounds, you watch the TV programs you want and go to bed watching movies like Sex & the City and The Devil Wears Prada and shows on DVD like True Blood, and you fall asleep sprawled across the bed with nobody to complain about it the next morning.

And you mourn.

You mourn long, and hard, because this happy, autonomous façade is just that – a mask for the intense agony of accepting the repercussions for your own actions and decisions.

You look at yourself in the mirror and say out loud, “You did this.”

“You wanted this.”

You mourn the loss of a partner, the loss of what you dreamed it could have been and what you thought was possible at one point. You mourn the pain you’ve caused and the people you’ve hurt. You mourn this apartment that has nothing but hurt in it, even despite your best efforts and pink Christmas trees. You mourn the death of the family your little girl deserves, the death of a dream that died by your own hand.

You did this.

You mourn because this is what you wanted. Right?

The days blur after awhile, a combination of hurt and pain and regret. You learn to sleep without the warmth of that body beside you, the one that was next to you every night for so long, and you wake up to the quiet apartment and the dog at your feet. It starts over again. From the moment you wake up to the moment you get back in that intimidatingly large and empty queen sized bed with the damask comforter set, you fight through the day with regret and hope, sadness and optimism.

Maybe your redemption will come someday. If you beat yourself long enough for the sins you’ve committed against the people you loved, eventually the pain dulls, like a long and complex tattoo. Eventually you learn to live with the pain and the regret.

You feel hope for the future sometimes.

You feel remorse. And regret. So much remorse and regret. You’re so, so sorry. You did this.

And you are alone. And it’s okay. You’ll be okay. He’ll be okay. She’ll be okay. You’ll all be okay. It will be okay.

And that’s what you learn from being alone.