Cause I've done everything I know to try and change your mind
And I think I'm gonna miss you for a long, long time
Cause I've done everything I know to try and make you mine
And I think I'm gonna love you for a long, long time.
~Long, Long Time -- Lyrics as performed by Linda Ronstadt

Yesterday after work I decided I was going to start breaking down and burning the tree that fell down last month when we had all the fun Missouri spring weather. I needed to break and burn and saw and burn and snap and burn. Fire is cleansing. Watching the flames jump up out of the barrel and the ashes floating on the air I thought about all my journals. Pages and pages and pages...many pages, all devoted to him. Love and hate, spewing vile pain, sorrow. Full of false hope, dead dreams...wasted time. Vanity, pride and denial. Years of sleepless nights.

“I wish I’d made better decisions, Dawn”

I watched the flames and I wanted to run inside and pick those journals off their shelves and throw them in the fire. No page by page burning...just throw them all in at once. Every word of him I wanted to burn. Every single syllable. Every thought, feeling, expression. Every scream, sob, howl of pain. Every begging until my throat was raw episode. Every crumb that he left me just to jerk it away as I reached for it. The Tarot reading. And the pictures. The few that I still have left. They screamed to be let out of their box.

“I wish I’d done things differently. That‘s all I can tell you.”

Thank you Ian. If that is all you can tell me then that will have to be enough. You are choosing to live a life of regret. No action, just regret. That makes me sad for you but I can’t live my life like that. You’ve said all you needed to say, all I needed to hear, and you don’t even know it.

“I‘m sorry I can‘t say those things to you Dawn, the things you wanted me to say. I just can‘t do it.”

It’s not time yet to burn the books. It’s not time to add all of those words to the fire. But soon I think. I’m trying. I’m trying. I’m trying.