It is when you stop looking that you find what you’re looking for.

What they don’t say is how often the person you were looking for is so often in a bad place or sees you as just a friend.

Or you found them and can’t hold on to them. Hold too tight like a drowning victim to a life preserver; It pops out beyond your reach ejected like a missile, an opposing force to your need. Hold too lightly and they slip past you like trying to grasp mist.

Then where are you left? Back at the beginning, how do you stop looking when you were that close. You don’t. You renew your efforts and end up adrift. A vessel without safe harbor.

You find people who are almost but not quite. Not because they are not seemingly great, but because they can’t accept something about you. You’ve fought your way through the competition and distinguished yourself as a champion but nah, your nose is crooked, you’re not what I thought you were, you aren’t enough in some way.

Denied entry from the outset due to some, to you, superficial slight. What are you left with? What do you do?

Is there some grand gesture I could make that would convince her that I’m worth a second chance? Or are we talking restraining order territory? Who do I ask about this stuff?

I could ask one of my sexual companions, but I’m their comfort not vice versa. I’ve tried going down that road and lost what we Did have.

Should I ask Erica, the last person I had a relationship with? But no, wouldn’t work. I love her and she loves me but we’re not friends. Not any more.

So who do I ask? I suppose I ask you. Sad but you’re my confessor and councilor. .

When I wake from an incredibly detailed dream, wherin I kissed a man with a trimmed beard, it looked good on him. But what woke me was the taste of the Marlboro red double fine that he mixes with menthol and rerolls and the sensation that I got a beard hair stuck in between my teeth.

So I wake up, alone in my bed. I want someone to hold me as I hold them. I think what can I do to chance another chance? Anything, something? But no, my councilor is silence and I’m alone.

I find it hard to write right now
I feel weighed down
Like I’m walking under water
Though it may be that a karmic debt is paid
I once ended a relationship by cutting off communication
I was selfish and capricious
And about a year later I realized how horrible I had been.
I Have thought about and regretted it multiple times a week since then
So to have that happen to me feels a bit like karma.
But it doesn’t change anything, I still regret my inaction.
And the emptiness I feel is like a Phantom limb. You know it’s not there, but you can still feel it.
I guess thats where the metaphor breaks down. Because I still want to hear from you. Still want there to be something there when you clearly feel it’s not.
Still want to contact you.
I’m trying to be mature and let go
But I just want to make some grand gesture like show up at your work with a bouquet of flowers dyed teal and try and sweep you off your feet.
But I won’t because if you truly don’t want me then, I don’t want to make your work awkward. I don’t want you to be unhappy.
….
Well at least the emptiness is gone.

Note: the emotions in this were real but based on a fallacy.  I made a fledgling mistake. Given how long it’s been since I’ve had a standard date, I guess I should have anticipated this. This was no fault of the woman I was courting, for want of a better term, this all happened inside my own skull.