I once loved a person so much that the very cells of my being were changed by the experience. The person I was before and the person during were no more related than two strangers passing on a street, to say nothing about the person after. The glory of loving that deeply is that you are newly alive with the experience, the treachery is that you have nothing to go back to after it is done. I suppose that an enlightened person would see that as an amazing opportunity to create yourself anew. The broken person in me sees it as an extreme loss and feels adrift on a wave of blackness to which I have no bearings and way of knowing which way is up. There are two things which will allow me to find a new course, my kids, as they are the only constant in my life and the only things (and people) I didn't give up, willingly, in trade for this experience. Seeing them and knowing that they need me will allow me to plod one foot infront of the other until one day I notice I am in a completely different place. I remind myself that even a snail changes its surroundings and experience of the world... at its infinitesimal pace. The trick is to not make him into a monster, as a way to protect myself from the pain of the experience. Allowing him the grace to be as I saw him; vibrant, alive, passionate, etc. instead of manipulative, deceitful, vindictive and never satiated. The pain speaks and uses terrible words and examples to show me how it was all there laid out before me like a map from the very start but i know that it is out of protection that it rails and yells. The truth of the matter is I knew from the first moment that I would be lost in this meeting that i would be changed and altered, like a piece of furniture which is stripped down before it can be stained into something new. Knowing that I still stepped forward, into the abyss and into the highs and lows which carried me and changed me more than any other experience (aside from becoming a mom) in my life. Stepped into the chasm where I lay now unknowing how to stand, how to navigate and where to turn. I pray that God has mercy on my soul and shines a path for me, for I havent the strength left to search for it on my own....

I once loved a boy so much it changed EVERYTHING.