When I'd finally looked up from where I sat weeping silently, I had found myself on the very same park bench where years ago, broken, hungry, and alone, I used to sleep.
The coming together of these two separate phases in my life was eye-opening in many more ways than I would have realized just at that moment.
There were many ways the heart could break. By then I knew how and thought I was an old hand at it. I'd been broken, beaten, bruised. I'd been betrayed and like an animal that had been treated much the same, it was hard for me to trust again. But unfortunately for me, I did. And there I was in that exact same place.
At times, my mind chisels away at the idea of a promise. The way that, more often than not, the genetic makeup of a promise was just flat words. Words that fade, much like bruises eventually do.
Words like 'never' and 'always' are meant to be absolute and yet they cannot ever be. In whatever form they are used, even if the intent in that moment was for that ideal absolute, these words slip and slide, they're resized and reconfigure to suit the convenience of the user.
Anytime I get close to opening the door to trust again, I remember the bench. I remember the utter and complete disconsolation. A permanent scar that my fingers return to absent-mindedly, even after healing. I remember the way I start awake and remember those cold words that broke everything, and the door slams in my face again, lock turning from the other side.
