I CAME HERE LOOKING FOR MONEYIn the end, it just became too much.

He kind of knew that the end was inevitable.  There were just too many stories, too many challenges, too many things that did not seem real.  He remained committed to an ideal that simply did not exist beyond his own mind, and in the end when his heart just could not bear the burden of the stories told by the mind, he had to go his own way.

He can’t blame her.  No, he had tried to tell himself that what he saw was not real.  He had tried to tell himself to believebut in the final minute his heart gave way to the fact that the mantra no longer worked.  No, this was all his fault.  He could just not believe.

So, he let her go.  He would miss her, and he would hurt for eternity.  He would suffer.  But he would grow from it all and find freedom.  Even in the sadness of the moment he find an excitement in what was to come.  He could feel it like an electricity flowing through his body tempered only by the desire that she could come along for the journey.

Human love seems to be an unpredictable animal within the experience of man.  It bites his flesh and tears at his mind while it soothes and protects him.  It ebbs and flows like a blue mechanical wave in a tiny glass box.  When it flows it can be the most beautiful of experiences, and when it ebbs it can take the very life out of a man’s body.  It can make him feel strong and weak at the same time.  It can give him breath and strangle him.  In its flow we feel invincible, but when it ebbs we search for strength from any place we dare look in the very discourse of untold weakness.  We may pretend to be strong, but when the love of our life falters we all search for strength in the darkest of places.  Eventually, for the weathered among us, we return to the light.

He felt weakness even in the strength.  In that weakness he desperately tried to find something to hold on to.  He would close his eyes and feel the warmth of her body next to his and hold on to that.  Eventually that vision would fade, replaced by another sight that would challenge his heart again.  He would tell himself it didn’t exist, and then he would turn to her because she was so good at convincing him it didn’t.  He’d hold on to that truth until the next time.  There would always be a next time.

He could never tell if she actually fought for him.  He knew certainly that she fought with him, but he could never tell if she ever fought for him.  He wanted to believe she had, that she hadn’t simply placed every burden of transformation squarely on him.  He eventually just had to believe that those shadows he saw in their relationship would always be there, that the mysteries and the stories and the issues would continually come up.  Eventually he had, had enough of it and he simply caved.  He knew his own wounds well, and he could not withstand the flirtations and the issues that seemed to always come up in the middle of their story.

In the end he couldn’t expect or ask her to change it.  She didn’t appear capable or willing.  He was incapable of overlooking those things.  He had changed quite a bit, but those wounds such behavior opened were simply too much for him to overlook.  They were perfect together in every way other than the one he needed the most.  His every effort went into changing that part of him, and in the end he failed and in the end he could not get up from falling yet again even as he prayed again for the voice that comforted him, the dream the sustained him, and the light he felt just by hearing her name in a crowded room.

In his fantasy she fought for him.  In his dream she recognized this part of him and eliminated the shadows.  She stood up, she caressed his face and told him it would be alright.  In the mist of his heart she said “enough, what do I need to do for you” and then did it.  In the fog of his mind she said “none of them matter, only you do.  I will do whatever it takes to be with you.”  That was his dream, and in his heart those words would have exploded into a warmth never seen before.

In the end she laughed at his assertion.  In the end she said “goodbye”.  In the end she simply walked away.  No fight, just silence.  In the end the silence spoke louder than any word she had ever said to him.  In the end the absence of protest said more than any story she had ever told him.  In the end it was simply the end.  Nothing more.

So now the lights go out and the eyes close to squeeze out yet another tear.  His lips allow another sigh and another sob as the silence reigns in the evening air.  His mind journeys to where she is and his heart holds her one more time.  She never knew these moments, and she may never discover them.  He wanted to succeed here like he never wanted to succeed anywhere before in his life.  He couldn’t, and in the end he failed his vision and his love.  That’s his burden, and he would carry it for a lifetime.  A great story was over, and in the end he cried his cries and sobbed his sobs as a testament not only to the failure, but to the great love in his heart.

In the end the love was there as it always would be.  In the end he would scream her name and in the end he would see her once again.  He knew it, he felt it, and it was a truth he could not escape.  In the end it was truly all that he felt was real.  In the end he wished there was no end at all.

I wish you could feel how I feel
And I wish I could feel how you feel
I wish I could know the truth through your eyes
And taste the taste from your lips
So that the next heartbeat, the next breath
Would be the only questions I would ever have.