Losing

Watched La Môme (La Vie En Rose) on Tuesday - wonderful movie, horribly depressing, utterly incomparable performance by Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf.

But that night, after post-movie drinks, chat, supper, when I eventually found myself in the welcome silence of solitude, I found myself thinking about something I hadn't thought of in over a year: a fear of loving so as to lose. Piaf had loved and lost so many, and so tragically presented in the movie, I couldn't help but be reminded of my own losses, however paltry in comparison.

That's a risk of swinging free. I not only forget how it is to love, I stop thinking how it is to lose...but I never forget how it is to lose.

First times and last times are always the most crimson fresh in the memory.

A lone figure slouching away down an empty tree- and car-lined street, orange under the street lamps, while I climb up on the fence to watch him walk away for the last time.

Pressing my face onto a broad, warm chest and weeping hard against it, and then letting go to let him walk past me to leave.

I realise I've never stopped loving anyone before the relationship ended. So every one that ended was an acute loss. Each one of them upon exit left a gash and a gap that filled with silent screams till they eventually filled up and healed.

So yes, I'm still deathly afraid of losing people I love or come to love.

Told a friend recently that being a cynical optimist where human relations is concerned allows one to know and understand all the risks and inevitable hurts that will come with opening your heart to someone, and yet still do so with an incredible amount of hope that the journey will be worth all of the hurt.

I guess some of the paths I took were almost worth it for the lessons learnt and their formative effect - I am who I am because of each one of them.

The fear of losing will never go away. It's just a matter of not letting it cripple me.