It appeared as though the end had arrived. Every word, thought, action was a contradiction. She had traveled to this new city to find something different, to live in a new way. But this newness was very like the old – exhaustion and a sense of futility around every corner. Yes, the corners were more beautiful or more questionable than her former location, but there was no newness in her heart, there was no joy. She has lost that sense of wonder, mystery and awe, and with this departure, the end had arrived. Perhaps she had been fortunate to keep the eye of beauty for so long. This eye allowed her to look at the world with a lens that uncovered the layer of worth even beneath the ugliest of things.

There was nothing slow about the arrival of the end, she simply woke up one morning and there it was. She tried to stay away from the memories, the pictures in her mind of the events and people that led to the demise of the magic. She stopped reading the messages, avoided social media, refused to let the wonderful and terrible times occupy her mind. But these efforts accomplished nothing. Every morning she awoke with that same feeling of desperation, the groan that indicated the lack of desire to rise from the bed. Now there was only an ordinary world waiting outside to greet her.

No longer knowing how to fly, she was like the Captured Goddess in Amy Lowell’s poem; bound, shivering and frightened in the corner, watching the evil deeds of men. She had told the one she loved many times that he must understand; she was a paradox by nature, as strong as a steel bar yet simultaneously as fragile as the petals of a dried rose. The strength could be used to accomplish those difficult tasks in the world, to manifest, but she must be protected, live inside the sweetness of love to keep her from falling apart. But he did not understand; he mistook her strength for manipulation and her fragility for dependence.

Now all she could think and feel was “woe is me, woe is me”.

The popular belief is that these feelings are chosen, that this is simply “feeling sorry for yourself”. Her friend of over 20 years had written her these very words, just before she stopped reading and writing messages. But this was not the truth. The loss she had suffered, the demise of the magic, was real, as real as though someone had broken into her car parked on the street outside and drove it away. The difference being that what she had lost was worth so much more than her old Subaru.