There is a pang in my gut.  Not pain of a physical nature but one born of emotional loss.  Empty space once filled with something special now gone.  I have lived with this pang since memory began.  It is as if there were something left behind yet I know not what.

Love?

Romance, I have indulged in over the years.  Not frequently and never for long.  Once, when intimacy had passed and closeness was about to begin, a feeling of deep regret began to fill that area of pang.  Not knowing why, I ended the relationship.  The regret hiding deep in my gut dispersed leaving only the emptiness once more.

So … love?  Have I been in love before but prior to memory?  If so I have no recollection of its occurrence, its start or ending or even who I bestowed it upon?  I want to love.  But, I fear it as well.  Why?  Not for any complication it might add to my life.  Complication is an understatement for a life so rumpled; it resembles a cotton shirt left too long in the dryer after the cycle has stopped.  What would another wrinkle add but more intrigue.

I feel like a lone sailor in his long boat fighting through a storm desperately fixed on the dim glow of a lighthouse showing the way home.  Home, another egg I put in the same basket as love.  I have never felt comfortable in this skin I wear, nor have I truly found a home with hearth to warm me through the night.

My labors are many but sweated through in solitude; no one to share them with.  Yet, like a small pin stabbed through the back of my brain, the feeling that there once was love radiates like hardening cement.

Was there?

Is there still?

Will I find them?

And if not, will I ever be able to accept someone new?

Why these reminiscences of a possible lost love?  A movie, a chick flick if you will with all the emotions wrapped up pretty and ready to be opened.  Yet, I have given up on this present and live another day alone, wrapped in the blanket of solitude that will, God willing, give me the focus to find my way home.