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You saw it on TV, in the papers. It was the stuff of talk shows and sitcoms, something to amuse you or make you cry. But it never happened to you. Always other people, faceless names or nameless faces that you couldn't bring your self to truly care for.

It was different when it hit home. It was real. All the advice you imagined giving others, all you've read, suddenly useless. She had learned there was no rule, only exceptions. They said it got better, that they pain would fade. So why did hers grow? Why did it hurt more with each passing day, until she wanted to collapse and cry until she was to weak to continue? The mysterious 'they say' didn't have answers for that.

Idlely she flipped through the radio station, trying to find something to end this train of thoughts. Something to make her heart quicken and her feet twitch with the need to dance. By accident she landed on a country station, and suddenly the words being sung reached out to capture her.

   I just want to hold you

    I don't want to hurt you

    I don't want to leave you

    I just want to be with you

    And after living alone

    Lost for so long

    Finally found the love of my life

    Why would I say goodbye

Tears began to run unnoticed down her cheek. The pain was new again, it ripped at her insides like a wild animal. Why do I go on? Why do I keep pretending it will all be better?

    I don't know what it is about the edge of a cliff

    Makes me want to get so close to it

   I guess this time I finally slipped

    What a foolish way to end it

Why? Why did he leave? Why did he have to be so stubborn? So honorable? So convinced he was doing the right thing? Why would he say goodbye? Did he know the pain? Did he feel it too? So many questions without an answer.

    Maybe that's why I'm back here now

    Got both feet back on the ground

    Hopin' you won't turn me down

   When I ask you for forgiveness

If only. If only he was back. She would face anything, do anything, give up anything to have him again. Give up anything for him, anything in the world. Somehow the dark was darker, and the fear a little stronger without him. To have that strength next to her, to know that there was a safe haven in his arms for when the world became to much. She had lost that. Lost forever? She flipped off the radio. Once she had been told that listening to country songs could make a happy person sad and a sad person suicidal. It had seemed a joke then, it wasn't now. Why didn't she? There would be another to take her place, to do her job. Her friends would survive, as they always did. In her heart she knew she couldn't. Somewhere he was waiting for her, expecting she would be strong. Someday she would have him again. It was all she had to cling to, a thin shred of hope. But it was something. It would get her through this night, and the next, and all the others that the pain and loneliness blurred together into an eternity. An eternity without him.

~finis