Phantoms Of The Past, Shadows Of The Future
When a relationship dies some of us roam the earth like a ghost blocking ourselves from the marvelous light of better days.
Monday Prompt: Ghostly Silhouettes
This is the tale of two heartbreaks. Two relationships that died while I still was attached to them. I didn’t see the warning signs of the disease slowly spreading throughout our union. Maybe I was in denial and didn’t want to see. If I wasn’t so delusional I didn’t need a crystal ball to see the slow death of them both.
When a limb (Arm or leg) dies you have to cut it off or it will spread and kill you. Well I never received the memo that many women do this emotionally before a relationship ends. I’m not judging you or saying you all are bad because of this. I’m saying I was clueless.
It baffled me so many times how my exes where able to move on so fast. How? Their grieving then healing process started while we were still together. Convenient huh? Hey, what are you going to do. I’ll admit I held on way longer than I should have. It was something about the high of that pain that I just kept shooting in my veins.
Love from the past should never be a source of euphoria. Your ex and this world will pass you by. This is a story of a song verse that I wrote at the end of a relationship that I didn’t even know was ending. There’s a twist to all of this so stay on the ride with me.
The song is called Thoughts 2 paper and it’s probably the most personal song that I’ve ever wrote and shared with the world. Verse one was about an extremely toxic past lover. Verse two I wrote in real time. It was an introspective look at my life at that time. I had failed myself.
My power was cut of due to bad budgeting and the feelings that I was feeling were raw when I wrote the song. Keep in mind I’m writing this sad song not even knowing that in 2 months the relationship that I was in while writing this would be over.
Even though we were together there was an emptiness. I’m going through these tribulations and the girlfriend I was with added no spiritual or emotional support. She was just there along for the ride. Of course as a man I take accountability for my life and decisions…but in this world we all need a warrior and a cheerleader. Someone that inspires us.
Anyway in my cold and vacant feeling apt ( Remember this phrase) I wrote the realest and most honest piece of writing of my life. Here it is.
Thought 2 paper
2nd Verse
In the wake of my lessons I got a story to tell I write my vision of my Heaven in the middle of Hell Outside my window Here the ambulances Scream into the night As I write my personal Anthems Phantoms of the past Yesterday is like a Monkey on my back Can’t get it back
Got to let her go Move on through the Storm be strong carry on Death to old things
Cold flings, New days are born
Torn broke from the Bottom
That’s when I become Awake All alone in my home I see the breath Before my face I’m shivering in this
Place Huddled up with my pad Cuddled up with my Pen Ain’t no place to go But deeper in Deeper in He can win, he’s a leader of men and Where it ends The story begins…
Wow. You’ll be surprised of how much of my life is intertwined in that verse. I wrote that song in December of 07. The girlfriend that I was with at the time I broke up with in February of 08. There were no hard feelings because we both knew that relationship had run it’s course. It ran out of fuel.
I lamented over her briefly but then moved on. Later that year in the fall I met my future wife that’s now my ex wife. We separated at 4 years and nine months in. Getting into the specifics is a whole separate article. Our honeymoon stage was like a beautiful Autumn wonderland and we separated it felt like the coldest winter.
I saw the breath before my face and I was shivering in my place. Figuratively the second time and literally the first. My power was cut off again write after the ex wife moved out. When you build a home with someone and they move out the spouse that’s left in the house has to deal with all of the memories that are left behind.
Failure, sadness, regret, and the good times were all saturated in this desolate and abandoned home. I looked blankly at the walls and they looked right back at me.
I lay in shells of decay.
A part of you dies when you get divorced. It’s something I don’t want to experience twice. It took years of solitude and facing myself. It was a long process of healing but by the grace of God I’m here. I made it. I definitely went through years of being comfortable in the past like I was looking at old home videos of myself being happy. Separated from myself looking at a vacant body.
I rather stay connected to what was then take a risk on what could be. If new love was a house I was a ghostly silhouette haunting it. It’s been a process returning back to the living. It’s like a rebirth that I’m excited about. You know when I came up with the idea of writing this story the revelation of that verse really was unbelievable.
You see if you read thoughts to paper again it may have seemed like I was talking about what was going on at that time. I wasn’t. That 2nd verse was a window into the pain, despair and loneliness I went through going through my marriage separation in 2014.
7 years prior to divorce I had no idea what I was writing. It took me until now to realize that it was in plain sight the whole time. God used my pen to prepare me for what was to come. Think about my last line. Where it ends…the story begins. That said it all.
The present me becomes a phantom dwelling in the past but what I wrote was a note to myself warning me of the shadows of the future. Thank you Diana C. This is my first and official prompt. I loved this concept.