Dearest pain,

I hope you don’t mind, but I’d like to put you down for a moment. I’ll just set you here on the table and slide you out of sight. It won’t be forever, I promise, not even for that long, maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours.

I know we’ve been together, in this mess, for so long; you’ve been constant, never wavering, never leaving. And as much as I’ve appreciated the certainty that I’d wake every morning to find you by my side, I must admit, I’ve grown tired of your company. You’ve been a bit suffocating.

But that’s not entirely your fault, now is it? I’ve let you take up too much space. In fairness to myself, I don’t think it was on purpose. I mean, I didn’t intentionally go about life, gathering awful moments so that we’d be saddled together. Life happened to me. Some of it quite unpleasant. And I wasn’t equipped to deal with it.

So maybe you just kept inching more and more into my heart and into my mind, and I liked the company. There, I said it, I didn’t know what else to do or say or how to change much of anything, and feeling you was better than feeling nothing. I invited you in, in the absence of support, justice, healing.

And that was all well and good, but then one day I woke up, rather we woke up, to find you crowding me out. Hogging my life, getting between me and happiness. You displaced so much of me; you know, the way people are supposed to be so multi-dimensional, sometimes joyful, angry, silly, bitter, hopeful, frustrated… I became you. And now, I struggle to know who I am. I only know me as aching.

Are you familiar with aching? An undercurrent of pain, sorrow that supersedes all else.

I’m so tired of aching. I’m tired of you.

And I’m sorry, because I know this all might sound like I’m ungrateful. I’m not. There was a place for you in my life, you were real, and important, and needed whatever time and space was required for you to move through all the things that happened. It was legit. The pain was valid. Until it wasn’t. Because it was I who invited you to stay. I was afraid. It was easier to sit with you than to face the world alone. I hated being alone.

Please don’t be upset with me, please try to understand. No feeling, no matter its nature, can be carried forever. Like all things eventually do, we’ve ran our course.

So, I guess the truth comes out. I’m not setting you down for minute, well, today I am, but it’s because I’m practicing to let you go. Before I head out, I’ll pick you up again and we’ll go back there together, back to where we sleep alone, cry alone, our brokenness masquerading as living.

Hey, do you ever wonder what it might have been like, life I mean, if we hadn’t met?

Or if we had met, but just passed each other in the hallway and never struck up a conversation?

Or if you hadn’t kept coming around, showing up every time shit happened?

What if I never had to leave home; do you remember that place?

I do.

I remember leaving the first home, the second one, the third. Leaving so many homes until no place felt it anymore.

Now it’s just lodgings.

Sometimes, although I know it’s rather pointless, I wonder all those things.

I wonder what life might have been like, if I could have stayed home.

Home… the one I remember.