Have you ever felt the weight of your heart ON your chest? This is how I have felt much of today.
Every so often, I am almost overcome by this feeling.
My heart aches.
I remember, I lament, I dwell.


Of all the things I would seek therapy for, this is it. My inability to completely let things go ~ old matters of the heart.
I think about old boyfriends and wonder where they are. I contemplate how I would find them to ask. I daydream about what life would have been like if we had stayed together.
Much of this is focused on my boyfriend that died when I was 18. Shawn. We had broken up and were not speaking. I had gone to his house one night, flirting with reconciliation, only to be in the car -thinking- when another car pulled up with another girl in it. She went into the house, I did not.
We went to community college together, shared several classes. After that moment in the car in his driveway, I knew it was over.

There was one day he was sitting at a table within sight of my friend and I in the MU. He looked unhappy, like something had happened. I was worried, but unwilling to break our uncomfortable silence, thus I sent my friend to ask him what was wrong. He told her things were not so great, but did not elaborate.
I would later find out that girl that went into his house came out pregnant.

He died only 2 weeks after that. Skateboarding and hit a rock. No helmet. Brain damage, on life support to donate his organs, which were wonderfully passed along to those in need. I will never forget that phone call from his mother. I will never forget the support his friend gave me, even though we were no longer together. I cannot forget, even if I tried.

It was a hard pill to swallow. I loved him, even though he was a jerk. I often have to remind myself to stop making him out to be something he was not, turning him into some kind of saint in death.
But this is only one of those I often wonder about. The biggest. The ache that will never subside, the words never spoken. No true closure. There are others, who have taken pieces of my heart; the holes they left that ache like today.

I believe Shawn's death sparked my problem. Now I am always looking back, wondering. Was there something more. Did I hurt someone. Do they still love me.
I suppose I must need to believe that they have kept those pieces of my heart with them, that they were not taken away for nothing. That they still have some kind of meaning for the holder.

I read a quote once that said "I go to my death not regretting the things I did, but the things I did not do". I don't remember who said it, and usually do not remember quotes at all. But this rings in my head during these times of remembrance.........

I do not really believe in regret and have gone out of my way to commit to my decisions fully. I know each of my lost loves and relationships were for one reason or another, most ended by me, also for a reason.

And yet, days like this when I pass that community college, with such a heavy chest I labor to breathe, I cry.