Last year was to be my last. My doctor laid it all out on the table. My heart was broken. There was no one to take me by the hand or place their arm around my shoulders. It was just the chair and the decision resting in my lap. Would I do the surgery? The doctor was waiting, and my father couldn’t give me what I really needed, another man’s love. I had to decide. I was alone.
I sat in the hospital afterward, recovering. The line down my chest was angry, red. My heart was quiet. My body moaned from all the holes punctured into my skin. Why did I do this to myself? What was I living for? I wanted more, but I didn’t have more. I just had my life.
I had seen a friend or two before, but they were just that. Friends. There was no man to sit beside me and hold me while I cried. There was no man to take me by the hand or rest his arm across my shoulders. My family was here. They were here for me, but I was still alone.
In the back of my mind, I played through the men in my life. None of them showed me kindness. None of them showed me love. They just broke me, tearing me apart, and I recovered from them. But my heart never did. Now, it has, but where does that leave me?
My parents would take me to their home soon. That’s where I lived a shoebox existence. That was what I was going back to. I would never meet the man of my dreams there, and that thought should have broken my heart. It didn’t. I know now. I was never meant to love.
