Anniversary

Fifteen years ago today, on an unseasonably warm all hallow's eve, it came out that the love of my life was not the person sitting across from me. A couple of days later, I would be given a first clue as to why. However, I would remain unenlightened for some time to come. "How could I be so blind?" For one thing, infatuation has a way of doing that. For another, not unlike many women, whatever flaws I was not consciously aware of were thought of as something that could be 'overcome'. It was an illusion, as much as the individual I was speaking to was as much a figment of my imagination as the stranger they would become. 'Stranger' would be putting it politely. It was perhaps my first lesson that passion when felt is not reciprocated. Nor is the capacity to understand another something others can do. It would be years too late to undo what I wished I had from the reaction: one that has exponentially snowballed to this day, taking with it one human life so far, with at least one attempt to take another before that, or the suggestion was there. One that someone else in the past had acted on, at their request. A life cut short, simply by asking someone as infatuated or more. What really happened I'll never know; I was only given their version. There is no doubt another side to the story. That a life ended by their decision is a part that's true, twice now. One unborn, another cut off from their family, no longer able to breathe, or get to know the next generation they brought joy to.