Forever and Always Page 8

  I can function as a being but not as a person. I wake up and I go about my routine but only as a robot, not as myself. Even my name does not resonate with me anymore because when she left, she took my identity with her. She took it all.

  I wish I could do more than dwell in my sadness but when you love someone truly with your entirety, letting go is just about the hardest thing you can do.

  Georgia was more than just my partner. A partner is one which you want to spend time with, someone to love and who you have respect for. The word is fitting but does not come near to sufficing for how much she means to me.

  It sounds cliche I’m sure, but she was my soulmate, my best friend and more than anything else, she was the only person who ever knew me. The only one I could ever trust. Before her, I never had friends.

  People are untrustworthy and I learned that the hard way. We are social creatures but before our sociability, we are selfish and all we want is gratification. We might pretend that we look out for others, and some of us actually do. But we are consumed by our own dreams and that is what holds us back as a specie.

  I tried to have faith in humanity only to be shot down every time. This was always followed by being hurt by those who disguise themselves as sheep but in the solitude of their own desires, they are as fierce as wolves.

  The world is cold.

  We live in an idealistic society whereby people want to pretend that everything is okay when it isn’t. How can it be okay?The hypocrisy of those who proclaim that everything is jolly is completely sickening.

  Growing up, we are told to have ambitions relating to finding love but isn’t it ironic that those who tell us such nonsense are the same people who never found love?

  Life is about settling for the best you can get. We can’t all be heroes, we cannot all change the world. We are not all created equal and so inevitably, we are all in different positions in the race right from the moment of birth. Nobody tells children that.

  I have been called pessimistic for stating such things but all that means is that those who dislike such a truth are just hiding from it. They are incapable like so many others to face the reality of human life. So they cover their ears with falsehood to keep them warm and in doing so, they pretend that the cold outside of their layers of temporary protection does not exist.

  Love is an idealistic concept. You might say that love exists but how many people have actually experienced it?

  I would go as far as saying that the majority of people who claim to have experienced love, actually haven’t. Because whenever a so called ‘loving’ relationship ends, they feel sad for a while and move on. That to me isn’t love. Not true love, anyway.

  To me, true love does exist but it is rare. It is a gem that is utterly timeless. It knows no boundaries and not even death can come between it. That’s the kind of love I had with Georgia. Never have two human beings connected on such a profound level.

  The closest I can get to describing our love is through Virginia Woolf’s view of the ‘self’. I read her book “The Waves” three years ago and it changed my perception of the definition of love. Woolf speaks about the ways in which we are the product of our relationships with others. We have the ability to become fluid and immerse ourselves in the lives and personalities of others. We are not individuals but rather the embodied result of those who impact our existence: past, present and future.

  Maybe that’s why I have a hardened view of life. Only one person has ever been allowed into my little circle of being. In such a way, I am raw. I am not corrupted like others who have a whole host of people taking away their own individuality. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing to have a lot of people in your life, but it’s not the way I am wired.

  In my rawness, I found the true definition of personhood. Being me means being me. Nothing more and nothing less. It’s a crystal clear lake and Georgia was the only one who was ever allowed to swim in it.

  This lake runs through my spirit with a little bit of salt. Georgia’s impact on my life is that salt. The salt that provides meaning, taste and flavour to the complexity that is the flow. The salt is vital yet if consumed by the wrong person, it can be damaging and even poisonous.

  Georgia was my purpose. I wish she was here. Her absence makes everything so painful. There is a fine line between true love and obsession. I will be the first to admit that I am obsessed with her, just as she once was with me.

  I wish I can say that I kept her promise and that I did what she wanted, but it was too hard to live without her. You see, heaven gained an angel that day and one week later, the one who loved that angel followed. We never cared about what we left behind here. It was always just background noise for a story of two misfits trying to get by in a world that never belonged to us in the same manner that we never belonged to it. Nothing mattered but the love we had and love can transcend death. So as I kissed my body goodbye, I did not see my life flash before my very eyes, I felt my love as it rose out of my body to find the one who created it in the first place. Because love is the only thing that will ever live between us in this world or the next, forever and always.

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  About the Author

  Megan Jeffery is an author of romance fiction from a small town in Surrey, United Kingdom.

  'Throughout my years at university, I would lose myself in the world of romantic fiction. In many ways, those books were my escape and it was during these early days that I began drafting my first plots which would later become my publications. When I started, I set out to bring something truly authentic to the genre. For me, that meant writing books that reflected the lived experiences of lesbians and their love lives. To this extent, every single book I write contains some element of reality to it. Whether that's based on my own love life or that of someone I know, using real events as inspiration can genuinely help to shape a story that is both relatable and captivating.'

  When she isn't reading or writing, Megan is a strong advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and co-runs two blogs which focus on helping intersex individuals to find a safe sense of community, aiding in body positivity and sharing awareness.

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  Twitter: @meganjeffery0