My Mother

My Mother

I was told vapidly once not long ago that the best revenge is a life well lived, speaking in regards to a girl who broke my heart. I say though, one mustn’t have really loved at all in the first place if taking revenge is the first and foremost desire. Though I’ve no idea how this girl did all that she did in those few months, I’ve, through all my searching and praying concluded that I could never hate her for it.

Something I found that hurt more than taking herself from me was what she took with her, her family, her family I considered my very own, and can now have nothing more to do with other than to simply love them silently in my mind and in my heart.  

O, Provo, “my city,” the place where I grew in to this family. I love it as I love them, with a passionate fondness, yet there is a lurking wariness to that love. Nearly every close relation I have in this place is marred by this very dark time in my life. It’s as if all of my childhood is stained with that blackness that suffocates any good reminiscences from coming to mind. I love them beyond words, yet it is difficult as well beyond words to forget about how much it hurt.

“How can a soul lose so much?” I’ve asked God far too many times. Maybe I was, before the world began designed for this trial, for this path that I currently walk, continually looking over my shoulder as I do throughout the streets that parallel State Street, and those that wind through all of BYU campus.

For the most part I stray from those places where you always run into people you know, like Maceys, and Café Rio. But once and awhile I find myself carefully walking down those grocery store aisles with a hint of hope that I might see someone from my old life, and I have seen them, but I also have said nothing and as a ghost have left the place only glancing back once or twice as I get in my car to leave.

   The last time I saw the woman I considered my second mother was a few months after her daughter’s wedding. There truthfully wasn’t much to say, or there was all too much to say with absolutely no ways to say it all.

Still, at this time I was going through denial that any of this was really happening, that the people I had planned on being with forever were forever slipping away from me. It was the oddest sensation that last meeting of ours, it was as if I felt the love of my life shining through her mother as I embraced her. I stared off into nowhere over her shoulder as we hugged and still even at that time I felt like I was living in a dream world that wasn’t actually real, or all too real, I couldn’t tell which. I still was in utter disbelief that just months ago I was embracing another girl whom I loved with all my heart, but now, as if within a blink of an eye was gone.

Before I left that day I fulfilled something I had wanted to do since the previous Christmas. I presented “my mother” with a small gift wrapped in white wrapping paper. “Something to remember me by,” I said as my eyes started to water, firm faced but shying away from her eyes. Her face scrunched with emotion as the significance of the white paper rested in her mind. She reached out and took my gift slowly; a tear rolled down her face. She reached out and hugged me again. I embraced her again in return.

The gift was something I had wanted to give her family for Christmas but was completely at the time unable to, and it’s not important what it was, suffice it to say it signified my love for her and her family regardless of all that had happened.

I’m not quite sure what the last thing that was said in this last meeting of ours but I knew that she felt like she was losing forever a son, I in return losing a family. I think between this day and the next few weeks became the point in which I became completely and utterly apathetic and emotionless in my days because I simply could not cry any more than I already had. I stopped for a time crying at all, but also ceasing laughter or smiling or showing really any emotion as well. It was just too difficult, especially thinking of the last thing I said to my second mother in an email just a short while later. I would only damn myself if I repeated it in any fashion so I’ll refrain from quoting it. Suffice it to say I think that if I’ve ever said anything in my life that would cause another person to break down and cry all the day long and inside for years to come, that’s what I said. I cried all that day and still think about that email every day since. I’ve not heard back from her and she’s become only a memory in which I’ll forever wonder about, “my mother” who can never be my mother anymore.

In a way, at least to me Provo is a symbol of my relationship with her. Loving her and her family so much, yet unable to say it or truly emphasize it in any way, as if I’ll always be a part of her family, but me to her will always and only ever be an unsolvable enigma that was forced out of it. In no way did I ever want to force her to pick sides between me and her very own daughter but deep down I somehow knew that she was almost just as heartbroken as I was when her daughter left me for a complete stranger.

What was to be done though? I’ve no idea. I do know from my depths though from this experience came a knowledge of so many things that I’d never understood before. Since I’ve come out of this terrible time my understanding of the meaning of life has been magnified. I’ve seen the beauty in sunsets and in the night sky. I’ve hiked through the mountains searching for some sort of solace and seen nature in ways I had never seen it before. I’ve found that life in any form is incredible and that it really does go on even if it takes years to realize it. I know that all these things are for my benefit in the end if I can find the good in them somehow and if I can continue on respecting those events for what they were regardless of how difficult they were.

I’ll never be able to forget that family, and though I was hurt and said some awful things I never meant to hurt them in return. I loved that girl with all of my heart and I still love her but in such a different way now. I would say in a much more mature and respectful way than I’ve ever loved anyone else. Like I said, I have no idea why she did everything that she did, but I truly hope that she is happy with the life that she chose and is able to forget me the way I was when it all ended, and simply remember me the way I was when we were children, innocent and just happy to be together. That’s how I try to remember her because it is the only way I can move on from it. Dwelling on the darkest times only makes me feel horrible inside.

I wish things could have been different. Not necessarily different by still somehow being with this girl, but rather just different in the way I acted when our relationship came to an end. Maybe something still needs to happen, maybe there are still unexpressed feelings on both sides that need to come to light, but I simply am at a loss as to how they ever will.

All I know is, I’ve intimately learned what it means to love. I’ve loved greatly and lost greatly, but there is something inside of me that whispers daily that I’ve not really lost anything, but rather I’ve gained more than anything I could have ever lost in the first place. I’ve gained a true love by losing it, and I’ll always be grateful for that experience, I always will.