TheBanyanTree: Crash and Burn

[Rob McMonigal]

After four plus years, it's over, probably (though not quite 100% sure, more
like 99.9%) for good.  She's leaving me, because I'm just not able to give
her the romance she wants in her life, whatever that means.

I gave her love, I gave her support, I gave her everything I had, including
my dignity when I cried and begged her not to go.

She drove off anyway.

It is time now for me to crash and burn, to let the old oak of myself be
consumed by the flames so the seed that brings rebirth can open in fertile
soil and let me grow again.  I can't let the fire ranger through to douse
the flames---I need to just let it happen.

But Lord help me, I don't want to.

I don't hate her, not at all.  I just wish she'd given me a chance to make
things right, or at least told me sooner that she was unhappy.  She told me
that there were pieces missing for her--I hope she finds them on her own.  I
hope she graduates and goes on to a wonderful life, free of me and whatever
I was doing to hold her back.

I wish she'd drive back.  I keep waiting for the lights and to hear her key
in the door, just like it was.  I wait for this because I'm an ass.

I'm going home to my parents for awhile.  Maybe just for a month, maybe for
a year.  Maybe for as long as they'll let me, I really don't know.  Part of
me feels like somewhere along the path of my life, I took a serious
sidetrack, and now that I'm finally derailed, it's time to see just who Rob
is--again.

Maybe that's just the way of life, to keep wondering who you are and what
you are.  Or maybe it's just me and my messed-up cranium.

Either way, it's time to regroup.  Let the seed germinate and hope for
plenty of sun and water.  To do otherwise would just be letting the old
tree, scarred and burned, just sit, waiting to die.  I can't do that.  At
least not yet.

But oh God, that fire burns.

-Rob