It’s so much worse than the first time. Your heart isn’t whole. It’s not even a kintsugi heart, a fragile pottery thing broken into pieces and repaired with seams of gold and silver. It’s just dust in the corner on the floor, a few bits and pieces here and there to give you a hint of what it might once have been. You aren’t just vulnerable. You’re all exposed nerve endings. You think you’ve armored up against the assaults of the world, but that’s a silly lie, easily exposed. I mean, shit, you walk down the street and some lady you’ve never met walks past wearing her perfume and suddenly you’re fighting back sobs and hyperventilation. That one song you danced to at your wedding comes on the radio and you have to pull onto the shoulder because you can’t see and you can’t breathe. Armor? Ha.

Now, jumping is a thing of bravery. Before, it was bravado. They’re not the same. Before, you felt invincible. Jumping was a risk, but calculated. You stood to gain so much, after all, right? The love of a good woman is worth any risk. That’s what you thought, then.

Now, you know better.

Now, you know it can be taken away.

Tennyson can go to hell, right? “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Go to hell. You don’t know shit, Alfred.

But…she makes you wonder. It won’t be the same. You won’t forget. It’s not replacing. It’s different. New. Strange and hard to figure out and there’s no words in any language to express how scary it is. But…

Maybe.

The problem is, you can’t inch your way into these waters. There’s no acclimating yourself to the depths, the unfamiliar currents and swirling cold.

It’s dark down there, in the unknown.

Hic sunt dracones.

You just have to fucking jump. You may hit bottom and be broken further. There’s no guarantee. There may be nothing but an endless fall down a well of infinite depth.

Or…or there could be new life. Happiness in a strange, unfamiliar guise. Hands which do not yet know yours. Eyes which have not plumbed your depths. A kiss unpracticed and hesitant. Secrets of your past life must be, yet again, revealed, painfully, fearfully. And now you have more secrets, more pain, more sorrow. It’s all so much.

But the question which drives you onward resounds deafeningly, tolling like a bell in the tremoring depths of your little boy soul: Would it be worth it?

Is SHE worth it?

Only one way to find out:

Jump.

A knock on my door startles me. I step into gym shorts but forget a shirt. Stumble out to the door, tug it open.