Inspired by a Friend

He was running. But after the first several miles his head started to buzz, and he forgot what it was he was running from in the first place. He thought he was living the life that most average people only dream of, but he was slowly realizing that living there meant he had stopped dreaming altogether.

He loved her at first. He loved her for all the months they were together. And he loved her still, even though she claimed her affections were long since dead, buried in the memory keepsake box with all the drawings and love letters he’d written for her. He’d given her his soul, really. He trusted her to take care of it, but she broke it and broke it again and again every day they were apart. His chest alternated between burning with searing pain and then feeling nothing at all, numbed to everything, like a chair or an old sweater, something not human.

Where did it go wrong? he wondered. He often sat, thumbing through his memories of her like a beloved scrapbook album, one that has the edge of the pages worn since it’s been gone through so many times. Slowly, though, as he reached the end of the album, the facial expressions changed. Her beautiful smile became a frown, and his own adoring glances became possessive and desperate.

He loved her because she flitted, like a bird or a butterfly or something. Could never stay in one place too long. She was adventurous, with big dreams and big ideas, never settling for what had been handed to her by the world and never letting herself be forced into what people thought she should be. She was strong. Her eyes twinkled at the idea of new opportunity, and her laughter was like glitter thrown up into the wind. He always wondered how he was lucky enough to be the one standing close to her, letting the sparkles dance on his skin.

But there wasn’t any glitter anymore. The last remnants of sparkle were starting to flake off the skin on his arms. He was terrified that it might be gone forever. Fear. Fear of losing her. He’d lost so much, and she’d been hurt so much. He wasn’t going to let that happen again. At all costs he would protect her. At all costs he would protect the one thing left that he loved before it slipped away.

But he couldn’t protect her if she didn’t want to be near him. Stupid, he muttered to himself. He wanted forever, and she wanted a new adventure. He’d tried to tame the wild in her, to ground the lighting with himself as the rod, to love the thing that flitted without letting it flit away. Stupid, he muttered to himself.

It was all his fault. He’d stifled her. He’d tried to contain her. And she finally burst free, leaving him in shambles, the rodeo cowboy with a broken nose and black eye watching his beautiful black stallion race away with his hope at finally winning.

Winning what? At anything, really. Love. Winning at love. But you can’t win love. Ugh. He felt all jumbled up inside, like someone took all his insides, put them in blender, and made him swallow it again. He felt like throwing it all up.

He kept wondering how he’d gotten here. I mean, really it was the same scenery he’d always seen. Same dingy walls and quiet streets. But inside of himself he felt disjointed and lost among the familiar. He kept looking in the mirror, searching for some hint of identity in his eyes. But they felt hollow and dull and answerless.

He had no answers left for himself. He’d run out of ideas and excuses. He’d lost his identity because he put all of himself in her, and she’d done the same in him. She just realized it before he did and pulled the plug, claiming back what was herself. Now, it was his turn.

He tried to show her love. He tried to teach her love. But somewhere along the way he’d forgotten what love was. He was now the one who needed teaching. Oh, he had loved her, no doubt. But he now had to find what love looked like without her.

“You have persevered and have endured hardships for My name. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.