What do I have left to defend myself against?

There is no ghost that listens to the phone ring without intentions of saying hello. There is no emptiness to greet while the stage sings every Saturday night. There is no one left to miss. What you did to me, it stunned me. It shocked me. It amazed me. It forced me to believe, that despite all the saving I tried to do, I actually signed away your life to a ventilation system and removed the tubes. For so long, and even a little bit now, I believed I was the one that took your very last breath away, and turned you into someone I couldn’t love. All because of the love I had to relentlessly give to you.

You know, I think about you every day. But it's not my choice.

Though in a way I guess the things that cross our mind are created by our brain somehow. A part of the young girl within me still loves you. But I'll never call you to tell you I love you. I'll never call you to tell you I miss you, if I do. And I will never call you to tell you just how much you broke me.

And for the record, I hope you'll never call either, because I’m terrified I'll forgive you the moment your number appears on my screen.

You are the kryptonite I never asked for. You were a salvation only the smallest part of me has ever known. And then the last bit of you died, and I was left here to mourn the past, and accept that you will never exist in this present.

Through pain I’ve learned the only thing sadder than leaving someone you love, is knowing that you could make it long enough to see the light.

Knowing that you do have enough love to give, even when the pain hurts too bad. Knowing that a piece of you will love someone who no longer exists forever, is a devastation I never thought you'd teach me. But like a dozen calls to nowhere, I finally found it my best interest to turn the other direction when you finally got the nerve to walk away.

From the time I was a little girl all I ever dreamed was that the miles and the steps that made them up would bring me to my biggest dreams, and my wildest loves.

Sometimes the road we take doesn’t always lead us home. Sometimes that road leads us to a detour. Much like the road you took detoured you to me, until you met her. I pray with all I am, that God walked beside you on the way there, and when life got too hard to handle, my friend I hope he carried you.

I hope this because, no matter how much you shattered me, you broke me just enough to know that true love isn’t given to me by a stranger.

It’s given to me by the feeling I’ve known my whole life. The higher power. The woman within me. The greater purpose. And the strangers that I have somehow known for longer than the first words we spoke to one another.

Through your trials I have learned the difference between loving someone, and loving a ghost. And those differences, help me decide where to place all the love that I have to give.

And to the reader, when your ghost haunts you, know that it won’t haunt you forever.

Sometimes in life, you fall in love with something that fades away before you get to say goodbye, and then all you have to say goodbye to is a memory. A memory that's accompanied by a name and face that your heart can only recognize within the memories that you’ve made.

When it does this, you will get a twinge of sadness, but don't let that define who you are.

Don't let that sadness take you away from who you are becoming. And don't let it make you regret the days that you fought to live. You can fall in love again while you're mourning a ghost. You can live beyond those twinges. Because life isn't set in stone like our fate is.

Fate is planned. But life, life is made up of the roads we decide to take when making our way to greet fate.

The ghost will not define you. The memory will not chain you. And the moments, well they happened. You don't have to defend them. You don't have to fight for them. You don't have to hold on to them. You don't have to let them go. You just have to forgive them, and let them pass through you when they wish to come across your mind. You can choose to see the good. You can choose to see the bad.

But there is I had to do to prove to myself that love didn’t stop when he became a ghost, and that's choosing to forgive the chapter that broke my heart in the story of my life.

May you finally see the light shining beyond the shadows of doubt. And may you finally pass over the ghost that haunts you, and be set free.

Sincerely,

The Girl on the Road