I never thought I would do it again. I never thought I could do it again. My last was the best. I gave all of my heart to it for 9 years and it in turn gave life to my heart. It became a part of me, almost to the point of defining me. When it ended it felt like my world had split in two and my heart ripped from me. No one knowingly subjects themselves to sorrow and pain of that  magnitude and so I went on with my life, finding new distractions, new ways of organizing my days, new sources of joy, and finding a new identity.

I didn’t expect that I would encounter, so soon,  sorrow followed by even more sorrow – more than I had ever known before. And these sorrows were met alone without the comforts of my past. And unlike my past encounters with sadness, this time of darkness was anything but brief. It became my constant companion, it weighed on my heart, it depleted my energy, it ended nearly every day with tears, and it made laughter a sound of foreign origin.

I began to pine for the comforts of my past. The identity I once embodied. I needed something to fill the void, to become the target of my focus, to make my heart whole again, to invigorate my days, to reorient the drudgery that had taken over my life and chase away the darkness – something that would give me the high of being in love again.

Life isn’t meant to be lived alone. My new home, though full of stuff, feels devoid of life – no matter how cozy I try to make it with items from happier times back when and other decorative fluff. Emptiness has greeted me at the end of every work day and just made the darkness dig in deeper.

And so I gave in and decided to go back to who I once was, even though it would mean that I would be the one left behind, out of the limelight, and completely exhausted – at the beginning at least. It is time.

I am once again, a girl and her dog.

Out of the ashes of the past two years – the loss, the grief, the growth, the discovery comes the promise of hope and the light and the warmth of a new life. Meet Ember, registered name Elkhorn Mountain Southpaw’s Ember of My Heart. He has stolen my heart and will hopefully begin to heal it.