Shining Alone

I am on the verge of realizing a dream. Just right there-teetering on a precarious edge, so close I can just about touch it. I have worked towards this for more years than I care to count. I have dreamed this dream so vividly I can smell it and taste it and feel how it will feel. I just never pictured myself celebrating the victory alone. I never realized how important it would be to have someone special to share it with. Maybe that is because I never expected to be without that someone special at this time in my life.

Every disappointment I have experienced as a single woman, each tragedy and horrible thing, I have felt so poignantly that I am in it, for the most part, alone. I always thought that this was the most awful-to go through each heartache without the comfort of a mate. I have hated so much to be frightened and not have that person connected to my soul to assist me and help pull me through, nor to be that other soul pulling him through his times of trouble and fear.

Please don't misunderstand; I have been blessed with wonderful family and friends. It just isn't the same. It isn't the same thing at all and those who say it is really don't understand. Any person who is sharing their life with someone they love, picture your joy and that love of your life not there to witness and partake of it. Picture turning to the empty room and saying, "Guess what my love? Guess what just happened?" Envision the response-which is only silence. Now tell me please, if you will, that your victory is near as sweet. It isn't. Not if you are one of those blessed ones who have some real type of love in your life. You know it isn't. It is a victory with a piece of emptiness attached.

I make it a daily, nightly routine to count my blessings which mostly are all of the wonderful people in my life. I have an abundance of them and I don't ever forget it. I even asked myself if I would be willing to give up any one of the blessings in my life simply to have someone to share them with. I realized that it's a stupid question (sometimes there really are stupid questions) as hearts just expand with love. It doesn't take from anyone to love more. It just makes it all bigger.

Would I give up this moment when I am standing at the cusp of my wildest dream coming true just to go back to the beginning and have someone hold my hand and whisper in my ear, "I believe in you. You can do this." even not knowing if the end result would be the same? Yes. In a heartbeat.

As scary and frustrating as the journey has been through all of this, to come to this point, seeing the end of the rainbow within my reach, the colors are somehow dimmer than I had imagined. There is a hollowness hanging around my heart as I am getting close to standing in the light with no one to stand there beside me.

Monika M. Basile