I wish I could say I did not know why. But I do know. I know very well. And it saddens me beyond belief.

I beg it to come back. I carry my pad and pen with me to all places, at all times. I sit in locations where inspiration would be common for long, long hours. I free up my time, an hour a day at least, where I sit silently and wait, lest an idea, forgotten somewhere in the recesses of my mind, should come back.

But it does not. The ideas do not head my desperate calls. The inspiration has left me.

This is not how it always was. Before, the inspiration was a constant thing, never ceasing to nag at my mind. Ever present. Before, if an idea came to me and no paper was in my possession, I would quickly, quickly and urgently, find something to write it on. Even a napkin would do. And if I was even at a loss for that, then I would write the idea on my own skin. Sometimes the writing wouldn’t fade away from my arm for weeks.

But none of that bothered me. I was happy…..enough. I knew there was something missing in my life, though the joy I felt in writing was more than sufficient to bring many a smile to my face. But I knew I was missing love.

Funny, isn’t it, how twisted your image of something could be? How you can long for something, believe with every fiber of your being that if you had it, your life would be simply perfect…..yet, when it arrives, it only brings misery?

Quite.

Oh, I found love. Perhaps a more suitable expression would be that it found me. He found me.

But the story of our joining is not relevant now. Or is it? I would be quite deceitful if I said I could answer that question. For I can’t, no more than I could find those ideas. Tiny events that would trigger a tiny lever in my brain, a lever that would open up a hatch, where ideas would come springing out as if they had been contained in the hatch for centuries. Centuries, I say! They would hop and hop about, and I’d write them all down, just to satisfy their urgent needs, just so they would quiet down.

The tiny events are still there. And so is the hatch. It’s the lever that’s missing.

The lever that my lover stole from me.

I love him so much. Oh, God truly knows how much I love him. He was my life, as I once was his. I remember the day he first said he loved me….he said, “I know now why I was brought to this earth. For you.”

That was the way he acted, too. He’d look at me like I was the most beautiful woman in the world. He’d sometimes do strange things, like absentmindedly grasping my hand or stroking my hair. And when I inquired as to why this was, he’d smile and say that he did so to make sure I wasn’t a dream.

We completed each other.

It baffles me how a love so flawless can collapse. Perhaps, if things such as this could fail, then there is no such thing as perfection.

I have just now, just now, my friend, realized that I am actually writing this down on paper.

Could the ideas be coming back?

Oh no. My heart just sank again, after it briefly rose. It is because I know that this is not an idea. This is not inspiration. This is not something that popped out of my hatch. This is not a fictional story I am writing about a girl named Kim or Sarah or Jeanette. Or better yet, a story about a quite romantic hero who is mourning over the parting of his beloved.

This is real. This is happening to me.

I think I truly understand it now. I know how it’s better not to have something at all, then to have it, enjoy it’s beauty and perfection and completion, and, after you’ve come to depend on it, have it mercilessly snatched away.

The inspiration has left me. The inspiration has left me.