I’m Sorry I Didn’t Meet You

I broke our connection when you reached out and I didn’t meet you in our place. The place of love and peace which we made together. The place which I told you would always be there waiting and prepared for you.

And, ever since, it’s felt as if we’ve never gone back inside. We both sit outside in the cold and long for home. The home we know we had and now ache for to come back again and be, once more.

A home we are both afraid is no longer there.

And I’m the one that shut us out when you came home. I’m the one who’d turned out the lights and snuffed out the hearth. It was dark and cold when you got home.

I let fear get inside while you were gone… I didn’t protect our home very well. But we both sit outside it. I see that we both do. We sometimes peer into the window and long to see brightness and warmth to welcome us back in. But when we see it is empty still, and dark yet, we turn back to slouch against the wall and bury our heads in our hands.

And maybe we’ve both tried to forget it–our home of love. But it still is there as an ache and a longing for something that cannot exist outside of it. It cannot be matched nor replaced.

I’ve tried to forget it, and I’ve seen you try to build something similar with another, but neither of us can forget what this used to be.

We’ve sat on the porch a few times since then. Hoping that its beautiful past history still hangs as an aura around it. We sit and talk under its eaves, hoping it will offer the same blanket of peace and protection that it once was. An enveloping sense of home.

But, the four walls, we’ve not managed to recreate.

As I sit on the porch, or sometimes, I go inside to remember, I see you, peering at our home from the street. You don’t stay long, but you consider it. You fear that it will not be what you expect, right? Just like it let you down the last time you fell into it? You fear that the stability you crave will be a lie when you step in? So you dream.

Sometimes I see a small frown and a nod before you walk away. It is a goodbye in parting each time. And I ache for you to come inside. To trust again once more. To give these four walls another chance to be a haven.

I ache to walk outside and meet you there at our mailbox and talk to you and tell you my fears and listen to yours. I ache for us to figure this out and fix it and patch up the holes we’ve made or have let be gnawed into our home.

I crave to sit before a new fire in our hearth– once again lit, as before, but stronger and fiercer.

I long to sit upon that couch and lay my head upon your chest and feel the beat of your proof of living. The surge of your beautiful heart.

I long to awake near you. I yearn for connection with you. I pray for our home to be beautiful once again. Once-again alive and well and warm and swelled with our love. I pray for this, I ache for this, I crave for this anew.

I’m sorry that I promised a warm home and then didn’t meet you there.

That I promised you a home where you’d be met with love and peace, but it was dark with clouds of fear and cold from a dampened hearth. I’m sorry that I didn’t prove to be the escape to peace which I intended to be.

I’m sorry that you felt alone. This saddens me so deeply.

I hear you say, and it rings as an echo, “I came back because I felt the depth of our connection. And I did not find that elsewhere. I knew you’d love me and bring me warmth and peace.”

But the lights were off when you came knocking upon the door. The hearth had been snuffed just as you arrived. And that was my fault.

I wish I’d listened to my gut, instead of the fear. I wish I’d been your listening ear. I wish I’d met you with the love you came to trust and lean on. But when I assumed that the world was right and I was wrong I let it in. I let the world into our space and the world was unkind to it and destroyed it. …And I let it, unknowingly. It promised a fix. It promised to be truth. But it was a lie. And I let the lies in. And so when you came, in search of a rock of truth, you met the lies you were shrouded in outside. And then, inside was no different from outside,… so why be inside at all, right?

And so you walked away, saying home wasn’t there anymore.

…I’m sorry I didn’t connect with you.

I’m sorry I didn’t protect our home while you were gone. I’m sorry you came home to lies and no preparation for your arrival. I’m sorry I didn’t believe our own truth to protect it and stand up for it. I’m sorry I made you feel like outside was somehow better.

And it kills me to remember you shaking your head, after you came to me in tears, and walking out that door to never come knocking again.

I’m sorry I didn’t meet you in the home we both knew.