The State of My Heart, The State of My Soul

The State of My Heart, The State of My Soul

There’s something I need to get off my chest.

It keeps bubbling up — this emptiness, this sadness that waits for me in all things, already here before I even arrive.

I don’t want to build a new life with someone else.

I don’t want to start again.

I invested everything. I surrendered. I gave all of me — not out of obligation, but as a natural unfolding of love, the instinctive devotion that rose in me for my husband. I have never been so complete. I have never carried such hope for the future, such a dream of building a life together.

Until him, I never understood what it meant to lose yourself in love — not by disappearing, but by expanding. I didn’t know love could be so massive that it made everything around it glow brighter, every ordinary thing suddenly charged with meaning. The first time our eyes met, something eternal opened. The first time we kissed, my soul exploded into an entire universe I never knew existed.

When he asked me to marry him, I was shaken to my core. It scared me — that kind of sincerity, that kind of vulnerability. My yes wasn’t just a response. It was a prayer. It was the sound of my soul answering its own truth. The word came not from my mouth but from the deepest corner of my being.

And on our wedding day — when I spoke the vows and our lips met — my entire soul shifted. My essence transformed. Something in me moved that had only ever moved three times before: once when he first spoke truth into me before we were married, once when his father spoke to us in Tri-Cities, and finally, when I said my vows. Those moments were like earthquakes of the spirit. Since then, nothing else has moved me that way.

In that ceremony, he became embedded in my very core. Because the vows we spoke weren’t rehearsed words — they were truth, gravity, divine alignment. And in that moment, my reason for being wasn’t created; it was revealed. I became not whole, but fully manifest — aware of the truth of who I am and why I was made.

My core, that inner axis that only shifts by divine intention, changed then. It revealed what my love truly is: fire, purpose, creation. And because of him — his voice, his gaze, his touch, his breath — I was not made complete, but made holy. In his presence, I was illuminated. In his love, everything flowed. The world opened.

And without him, everything stopped.

Since the divorce, nothing has stirred me. Not one of the fifty-eight men I’ve tangled with since has made a dent. It’s not for lack of trying — I’ve opened, surrendered, leaned in — but my soul rejects them. My body rejects them. Every interaction feels counterfeit, misaligned, unnatural. I leave them more empty than before, relieved it’s over, drained from trying to connect where there is no spark.

I don’t think they are unworthy. It’s just that I am not made for them. Not in that way.

And when I finally signed those divorce papers, I didn’t realize how much it would unmake me. I thought I was ready. I thought I understood what marriage meant and what its ending would cost. But I didn’t. Not like this.

It hit harder than I could have imagined.

Something fundamental was destroyed — not just the relationship, but the sacred conduit that once tied my soul to the divine through him. That paper, that covenant, was the physical anchor of a spiritual bond. Its destruction shattered the bridge between heaven and earth that love had built.

Now, the current of love still burns inside me, but it has nowhere to go. It swells and suffocates me. Every attempt to redirect it leaves me emptier, because that love was meant to flow through him, and through him into the world. Without him, the current collapses back in on itself.

He made it clear — by silence, by absence, by action — that he no longer wishes to be connected to me, to share life or love with me. And that truth stripped me of everything: my fire, my purpose, my will to build or dream. I have become a ghost of the man I was, a husk of the divine purpose that once moved through me.

I can’t seem to find the strength that once came so naturally — the faith that, with him, I could face anything. Because with him, love made me a warrior. With him, I was more forgiving, more creative, more alive. His love didn’t consume me — it made me limitless.

And now that it’s gone, I feel like a ruin of myself.

Every time I hear his voice in an old video, or catch a trace of his scent in the air, my whole being blooms again, against my will. And when I fight it, my body revolts — sickness, exhaustion, pain. I don’t choose this connection. It’s written into my soul.

But he has chosen otherwise.

He has moved on.

And that truth — as much as I hate it — is clear.

It’s been over a year and a half. He’s found someone else. He didn’t need time to grieve or to heal — only to replace me. The evidence is undeniable. Logically, I know that. My hope has become a burden, a chain.

And so, I have to do the hardest thing I’ve ever done:

I have to leave Pocatello.

If I stay here, I’ll always be looking back. Always waiting for a miracle that isn’t coming. I’ll build for us instead of for myself. I’ll breathe for a ghost.

I have to close the doors, seal the gates, and walk into a future I don’t yet believe in — not because I’ve stopped loving him, but because love that has nowhere to go will drown me if I don’t learn to live without its return.

I don’t think I’ll ever remarry. Maybe not even love again. My soul rejects it. My body refuses it. And yet, I know that if I don’t force myself to let go, I will never find a way to live, even alone.

So this is where I am: standing on the edge of departure, the hope still burning in me like an ember I can’t snuff out, even as it scorches my hands to hold it.

I wish we were still who we were created to be.

I wish we were still talking, still dreaming, still building.

But wishing changes nothing.

And so I will go. I will leave Pocatello.

Not to punish him. Not to erase him.

But to survive him.

Even if the ache never ends.

Even if every step forward feels like betrayal.

Even if my heart never learns how to stop loving him.

Because the truth is, I might never be free of it —

but I can’t die waiting for what isn’t coming back.

Author’s Note

I know I’ve said these things before. I know they keep pouring out of me — over and over, in different words, in different nights of breaking. But it’s because it doesn’t stop. The longing. The hope. The ache. It builds until it explodes and has to go somewhere. Writing is how I breathe through it. It’s not me beating a dead horse; it’s me keeping myself from suffocating beneath the weight of what still lives inside me. These words are me pushing myself toward what I know has to be — even when every part of me still wants to turn around and wait at the door.