Life is no respecter of persons:
sometimes it goes on even when we'd rather it stop so we could catch our breath.

Maybe we have to learn to get through a couple days without being able to breathe.

But then what? Your brain is addled from lack of oxygen. Your eyes can't focus. Your heart palpitations are all kinds of off-beat. Your stomach can't even think about food.

You are, literally, a mess.

And if you're still in emotional pain, still struggling to draw that next breath for whatever reason, still straining against the grain to smile and laugh...

That's when you get angry. Angry that someone has such control over you and your emotions and your responses, angry that they're gone once again and you don't know if they're coming back this time, angry, even, that your anger would do nothing to sway their decision.

Anger.
But anger requires breath. And lots of it.

So you let go of anger. It takes too much effort. Or maybe your body recognizes that it can't go on like that, so it just dissipates. Regardless, all of your anger boils down to one thing, where you can sit in one place and not have to worry about breathing, because you've given up on it and its not entirely necessary. When the anger fades, all thats left is

Hurt.

Because you can go on if you're hurt. Anger, you'd have to do something about. You'd have to find an outlet in order to be able to survive. But hurt you can pass off. Hurt you can hide, try to explain, talk away, sing away, or just run away from. Hurt you can handle.

Of course, occasionally, the hurt pushes at the boundaries of its confines and leaks into anger again. Anger that the presence of hurt isn't bringing them back. Anger that they ever left in the first place. Anger that there's people in their life that they don't feel the need to disappear from, and anger that you can't ever be one of those.

But always, before it could do you any good, the anger regresses, and the hurt returns. Maybe we consider it safe. Maybe, to a non-confrontational who is afraid of only one thing, it seems a better state to be in.

And days later, when your body gets tired of handling the hurt, when it no longer wants to deal with the short flares of anger that ignite the heartbeat and steal the oxygen from your breath, that is when all the hurt and any leftover aggression simply becomes

Love.

Because that's all that you have left.
Its what got you into this. And maybe, just maybe, if you hold on to it, maybe that will be what can get you out.

Maybe love will bring them back. Maybe love will keep them here the next time. Maybe love will protect your relationship.

Maybe love will become your breath.

Because life isn't going to pause for you to catch it.