got enough guilt to start my own religion

Sometimes we got lost in love
Sometimes we got lost in our lives
But I, I didn't want to lose you...

Not lost yet, I tell myself. Not lost yet. But me, I don't know what it will take to save it. And I do not know, after hours of contemplation, if trying to save it is the best thing to do...

So now the hard work begins. My mind still searches for busywork to take me away from it, but in the still moments, in the quiet moments, I have to think, and I have to let myself think, about what I don't want to think about. About what's best. About what's going to work. About love, and loss, and...saying goodbye.

I've been raising up my hands--drive another nail in
Where are those angels when you need them?

The ultimate question is, can I salvage the friendship? That's paramount. I do not want to lose him in all parts of my life, it will be...unbearable. Besides, I've done that once, and the terror of trying to rebuild a friendship on the ashes of a love...it didn't work. It's only now that maybe, maybe, there's hope, and...even that took making some fairly severe mistakes I don't like to contemplate.

But the rest of it...I've said before I don't fight well for love. I talk, I try to persuade, I try to cajole, I do my best not to manipulate or deceive to keep, but...that's when others wish to leave me. And I can't fight at all when the other wishes to seek another love, not me, and move on.

But this isn't that. This is the other wishing me to let them go. And the question nagging at the back of the brain is, am I hurting them by trying to keep them? Have I made too many mistakes? Is what we have, what we had, before now, salvageable at all, in any wise?

Is it already over?

Is it still me that makes you sweat?
Am I who you think about in bed?
When the lights are dim and your hands are shaking as you're sliding off your dress?
Then think of what you did
And how I hope to God he was worth it...

Was it all meeting the one that threw it all away? Everything I've gone through here, everything I've carefully built and tended, thrown away because of inattention, because of distraction, because of...was it all that, was that one the final straw, was there no going back past the point of...did the fire start to burn out then?

And we're back to the main, of doing what's best for him, forget about me...me, I know, I bounce, it's what I do. I get wounded, I get more scars, I get more wary...pattern of a life, why does it matter? I don't want to drag the one I love farther down than they have to go...I don't want to be the desperate clinging vine. Even if it's what my heart is screaming, I don't want need to override reason, fear to override understanding.

Am I saying he's more important than I am? Probably.

Cool waves wash over
and drift away with dreams of youth
so time is stolen
I cannot hold you long enough...

But where's the line between what's good for me and what's best for them, and is what I want good for me, for either of us? What the hell do I want, while we're asking? I say I want what I have, but if I did really want that, we wouldn't have come to this point. I say I don't want things to change, but chaos fuels me, powers me, sends me spinning out into the world, and my bones are wrapped in winds of alteration. I mean, really, think of the irony--the shapeshifter wants things to stay the same. Come on, now. Any more irony and I'd be pressed flat by the weight of it.

Tell me what it takes to let you go
Tell me how the pain's supposed to go
Tell me how it is that you can sleep in the night
Without thinking you lost everything that was good in your life to the toss of the dice?
Tell me what it takes to let you go...

And I keep spinning in circles, trying to find the way through the brambles. Any way I choose I get pierced on the thorns, and here I am again, and how does this keep happening? And all I want is a simple solution...that doesn't end with farewell, and maybe that's the point of it, the point of all the pain of contemplation, to force me to see there may not be another way.

It's hard. It's not the hardest thing I've ever done, here--I think that will ever be, my dance with the demon--but gods, it's closer than I want to come. And I never meant to hurt either of them, but especially, not this one. Never wanted any hurt to be dealt by my hands, and I have dealt such grievous hurt as I never knew I could, and the wounds will not heal easily. I want to deny. I want to turn away. I can't do either, because I did this, I am responsible. I have to stay aware of that.

Just tell me what you've got to say to me
I've been waiting for so long to hear the truth
It comes as no surprise at all you see
So cut the crap and tell me that we're through...

And I shy away from this so hard...part of me, as ever, wants to resolve this, solve it, make it done, tuck it away, have it be over, good or bad, right or wrong...my solution to the Gordian knot frequently being to take the damned sword and cut through all the multiwoven strands. But I tremble every time I think of this approach, because it could go so very, very wrong...

On the other hand, will waiting make it better? We are here now, we have all but spoken the words of leavetaking, the words I can't go back on, as much as now, my traitor heart is considering loopholes in the system...and I know it's only due to the potential loss stealing my breath that I'm even considering going back, to anyone I've lost...

...but...will it be worse, stretched out over a week, two weeks, a month, more? Will it be easier to say the words and end things? Will it be harder? It leaves me, it leaves them, trapped in the limbo of my own indecision, and is that wise in the long run? How much pain am I willing to deal before I finally admit there's too much heart's blood on my hands?

How much will I make them endure until I finally gain the courage to say the words I never want to hear?

(Lyric section from the top taken from Tia Carrere's "Why You Wanna Break My Heart". Second segment from Tori Amos' "Crucify". Third stanza from Panic! At the Disco's "Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off". Fourth stanza is from Enya's "On Your Shore". Next-to-the-end chorus from Aerosmith's "What It Takes". Last capture from White Town's "Your Woman". Before anyone goes into overanalysis mode on the song choices...they're all pointed at me, not him.)