Ish Na Hah

So many things to say....so little urge to say it.

I deliberated over cutting off all ties with Tristan, including Facebook, but something stopped me.  We don't talk anymore, for whatever reason, and that's fine.  It really is.  Under any other circumstances I would be worried or hurt or wondering what the Shadow World is up to, but...there is the matter concerning the nature of our separation.  It is difficult to stand by the side of someone who wouldn't stand by yours when you needed him the most.  But as I said, something stopped me from cutting off everything.  Maybe a show of good will.  Maybe an acknowledgement of the eternal bond we now share, no matter what happens or how far apart we are (this reads lightly but in our case, for people like us, the sharing of virginity is something incredibly sacred and powerful and nothing can erase that). Maybe....maybe an acknowledgement towards the yet-unwritten.

The world is shifting, yet we must press forward.  I must continue to live as if nothing ever happened, as if....really, truth be told, as if I never met Jake.  As if I never met him and never discovered the Unit and the Shadow World and never met Tristan.  I have to live as if I never loved anyone, as if that adventure has yet to be discovered.

For Christmas, Mom made my sister a DVD of my niece's first year, a collection of videos and pictures compiled together with beautiful music.  We all watched it together and we laughed, we cried, and we remembered the fun times we had together as a family.   But amid the tearful happiness at such sweet memories, there were a few moments of bittersweet silence.  Tristan sat on the couch at the baby shower, eating cake, smiling as he watched the goings-on.  He was in a photo from Lila's first week in this world, holding her close and smiling down at her outstretched arm.  As the months of photos and videos progressed, his face flashed here and there in some of the best moments of that year.  There was a photo of us together, arm in arm, smiling.  Happy.  Mom and Nansa "awwwwwed" and I swallowed the lump in my throat.  But the heaviness in the air remained.  And I wondered if anyone, anyone at all, ever took the time to consider that I am not the only one who felt a loss when he broke off our engagement.

"I know you still miss him," Mom said in the car a week later.  "Honey, I can sense that.  And I can see it in your eyes, even when you've done so well to forget it."

I do miss him.  But I have to move on.  I have to keep going.  I can't let him, or the Shadow World, drag me down from whoever I am meant to be.  And the deepest part of my heart knows somehow that Tristan would wholeheartedly agree.

Tristan Keller, the hidden prince of Gora, still has a tale yet untold.  His adventures are only beginning, but the ones with me in them...those are, for now, at an end.