Do things ever really work out?
 
This Valentine’s Day put me at pause with that thought as I lay dying, staring at the neutral-colored walls of my bedroom while listening to the sounds of silence in an ever-enclosing prison of flu-ridden paralysis. 
 
Time stood still.  When it does so, my mind agonizes and over-analyzes.
 
The past.  The present.  The future. 
 
All of it.
 
I think about love often.  What it means.  What it means to me now.  How it should be expressed. How it should be approached and carried out.
 
I’ve never kept a woman.  I’ve only ever admired one for a fleeting moment before she disappeared from my life. Leaving me to deal with the damages, however great or small they may be, to either learn from or discard what was necessary and applicable to my development as a better man.
 
Linzi was the fairy tale romance. The only evidence I will ever need to know that love exists.  Fairy tales for me, however, tend to turn to either nightmares or tragedies of a foregone Shakespearean era.
 
It was tragic. It was beautiful. It was bittersweet.
 
It cannot be replicated, merely recited to the best of one’s abilities in a futile attempt to recapture what once made it stand as a classic to begin with.
 
Her existence was temporary. Her impact was permanent.
 

 
At my core, I’m a hopeless romantic, bound by the parameters of traditional chivalry and gentlemanly mannerisms and discourse.
 
At my core, I yearn to drink from the depths of someone else once more.
 
Mind. Body. Soul.
 
The more I make attempts as time passes from Linzi’s death, and the more times I’m met with disappointment, the less they affect me and less I seem to care.  It’s not the man I used to be.  Neither is it the man I want to be.
 
So, when I woke up this Valentine’s Day and allowed my mind to do what it does best, without any strength of my own to push back, I wondered if I should be concerned.
 
Perhaps my mind is focused on other things.  Perhaps I’m finally starting to step into what it means to accept and love myself and be content.  Perhaps I’m failing to deliver on a promise I made to Linzi while sitting in her car in a church parking lot at 2AM.
 
Will I one day return to that place? Will I once again lay bare my vulnerabilities to someone I deem capable of accepting them?
  
Maybe.
 
…maybe not.
 
The hope is that it will be so again one day.
  
There is only one thing I feel at this moment: indifference.