She is gone...

The pain of loss is indescribable. The air being taken from your lungs every time you try to breathe, the floor continously falling out from underneath your feet, or even a constant running; being exhausted but never being able to stop.  Perhaps loss is even a combination of those. Loss is the worst fears and worst feelings bundled into one entity and existing in the void in your chest.

I have lost many people in my life.  I have lost family and friends of every make and measure. I have even lost a child. A loss i can compare with no other. And those people were taken from me. Mostly too early, but some in due time.  Life has a cruel way of making sure you never forget what pain feels like; you can never be too happy without that sharp reminder.

Of (almost) all the pain I have had, none hurts as much as the voluntary loss.  Someone choosing to leave me. Someone I chose to be apart of my life. 

Trust doesn't come easy for me. I'll never really hold you closer than an arms length away.  I don't do this by choice but by second nature and self-defense.  This reaction is subconscious and it protects me from more unnecessary pain.  Pain I have suffered enough of.

But the loss, when I do let you inside and you still choose to leave me, is the worst kind of devastating. I can't catch my breath because I no longer I have lungs.  The floor isn't falling, I have fallen onto it and smashed into a million pieces.  I will stop running because the pain has paralyzed me and I cannot move at all.
The emptiness could fill a room.

I lay here imagining my void in a different way. Imagining it with a different ending - one where I am not left alone again.
And the tears stream from my eyes, spattering the pillow beneath my head.
The hollow pit in my stomach churns reminding me not to forget the chasm within.
The waste that was love.
The vacancy that was my heart.