Each scar of her leaving
Engraves her image
Deeper inside of me
Ember
I'm keeping Ember at arm's length for my own sanity. I've been burned before and am wary of being burned again.
Perhaps I'm being overly cautious, but it doesn't hurt to be patient―what hurts is what happened to me with my ex. I leaped without looking and am still paying for that mistake.
It was weird though, admitting to Ember that we shared a life before in the past and then sending her away without a kiss.
But then, that's me―once hurt, it takes a long time for me to trust again.
I go for a long hike on the trail hoping it will ease my anxiety. It helps diminish it somewhat, but being on the trail conjures strange feelings inside me that are at once familiar and yet remote from me.
The darkness of the autumn sky stirs a longing for something lost but as yet unknown to me.
I return from the hike more unsettled and troubled than when I first began.
As the afternoon wears on the sadness deepens. The autumn gloom increases, until finally it rains... and weirdly, that provides some relief from this grief.
Once again I feel chilled as I did a few days before so I try the remedy I used then and make a rum hot chocolate and light a fire. The combination works a second time and before long I'm warm and drowsy. It's not long before I drift off to sleep.
I begin to dream and it's always about Ember. We're saying goodbye as I'm about to leave on a trip. But all I can see when she's gone is her sad face. Her anguished expression sears into my head as if I stared too long at the sun and was now seeing suns everywhere.
All I can feel is deep hopelessness and regret ...and yet, fool that I am, I still went.
I awoke to a feeling of profound abandonment coupled with the inability to go back and remedy it.
It was at that moment I understood the emptiness and despair I often experienced. It often appeared seemingly without cause, over the course of my life, but now I knew its origin.
I was dimly perceiving vestiges from a forgotten and probably repressed memory of this moment from my previous life when I deserted Ember and went to Spain despite my regrets.
That's why autumn gloom seems doubly sad―I was experiencing flashbacks of Ember and the growing awareness of the mistake I made in that previous life.
I wanted to phone Ember and tell her, but something stopped me. Even if what I was recalling in dreams actually happened, there was no guarantee it wouldn't happen again.
And as much as I wanted at this moment to be with her, I had no way of knowing if it was just a selfish urge on my part to assuage my guilt.
I hated this feeling, but had to be sure whatever prompted me previously to leave her wouldn't happen again.
I wasn't just thinking of myself but thinking of her―seeing that look of profound sorrow on her face was hard and I didn't want to ever cause this girl pain again.