The Northern Lights

The Prologue

"The past flooded the present.
Old feelings took on a new freshness, reviving a swarm of conflicting memories that lit up in flickering flashes"
  Guillaume Musso " Seven years have passed"

Leaving the past in the past, entering into a new, perhaps, happy, life. Everything sounds so ordinary, so natural, but ... it's monstrously difficult to follow the advice you give everyone else.
But life will force you to do it. You will heal your own wounds, going towards a new day, having already accepted the conscious loss as a sad fact.

Here's a simple question. Have you ever managed to watch with your own eyes the rarest and the most beautiful natural phenomenon — the Northern Lights?
Billions of tiny colored lights-lanterns connect in ribbons and stripes. They flash, sparkle and move in an unknown dance in the dark and starry night sky.
An extravaganza. A stunning sight. It can be observed only in certain parts of our huge planet and at a strictly defined time of a year. A unique chance. It takes your breath away.
Yes, after reading excerpts from scientific literature you can stumble upon an absolutely banal definition:
" The Sun throws plasma and particle streams into the space. The charged particles of the solar wind cause the glowing that we call the northern lights. Luminescence in the upper atmosphere".
Terribly boring and difficult to perceive, I know.

I have always been looking for something magical and incomprehensible in everyday events. I have always wanted to find something that comes from the heart, devoid of pretense and worthy of respect. I has never been satisfied with the explanations and arguments that most people believe in.
To be perfectly honest, I wanted to see the world not as violent, hostile, frightening and unfair as it had always beem.
No... not like that, I had been a different person before I met him.
It was HE WHO pulled me out of the tenacious paws of everyday life, he gave me hope that miracles are possible in my life. The main thing is just to believe in it.
But none of that matters now — this world, its wonders, not my life. As grandiloquent as it sounds.

But I stray off topic again. A disgusting habit. My thoughts are confused, loneliness hits me like a tsunami - it retreats for a moment, but then returns and folds me into its cool and merciless arms. I don't resist.

Going back to where I started — I dreamed of seeing the northern lights all my adult life. And this dream was destined to come true.
That day will always remain in my memory, just as my forbidden and reckless love will.
Memories cannot be torn from our hearts and souls. As it is said in one of some trivial modern novels beloved by young girls :
"Only what is felt and experienced is never forgotten. This is the main component of memories."

You gaze in awe at this profusion of color in the sky, taking on various forms, slowly floating and twisting. Then you blink and everything gradually disappears — bright colors slowly fade.  Neon, blinding and alluring luster disappears, leaving only its echoes at the edges of the indifferent sky.
You close your eyes, trying to remember what you saw, then open and take a quick look at the sky.
Close once again. You don't want it to end to the point of insanity.
You know it will eventually end, you anticipate the ending, but still insist on telling yourself the opposite.
So vehemently denying the idea that happiness also comes to an end.

I would so madly like to go back to the past, return to half-forgotten happiness and relieve it once again.
My memories are slowly but surely killing me. Reviving fragments of events, fragments of feelings. Leaving ragged and unhealed wounds on my crippled and devastated soul, opening healed ones with new force.
The memories come without warning, and I want to disappear, run away, hide from myself, lock them in a small box and throw the key to the bottom of the ocean.
No, I am deceiving myself... my only secret and irresistible desire is to turn back time.
Accept and forgive, don't let go, keep warm in my arms, love endlessly...

I feel moral pain on the physical level. I feel it with every cell of my body, when I'm alone with my thoughts.
Psychologists call it "bereavement syndrome".
But in my case this bereavement syndrome has been going on for almost six months.
I went through all the notorious stages, suffering this irreparable loss.

At first I denied the things that had happened.

I did not want to face the horrifying and inescapable reality. Then came the realization that turned my soul inside out and broke my wretched heart, increasing the pain of loss a billion times.

At times it seemed that I was losing control.
The aching longing did not abate, every movement responded with shooting pain all over my body.
At times I did not feel anything at all - apathy and the first signs of incipient depression, according to my failed savior and part-time psychologist.

Selfless, but unsuccessful attempts to get lost in work. Buying tickets to the most remote corners of the world attempting to start a new life.
Failing over and over again.

The feeling of helplessness, despair, anxiety, emptiness, unspeakable silent longing and the extreme aimlessness of my existence doesn't leave me even now, six months after the day that divided my life into "before" and "after".

Portugal, the Virgin Islands, Mexico, Singapore, the Philippines — this is just a small list of countries that I visited, trying to build my life on the ashes of memories again.

It's February and I'm in Iceland – the "land of fire and ice", the country where all my dreams once came true.
There are volcanoes, glaciers, thermal springs, kilometers of uninhabited territories around me — total harmony of my state of mind and  surrounding nature.

The snowfall has just started, accompanied by heavy gusts of wind, just like on the day I allowed myself to open the door to my heart, giving him my fragile love and accepting his passionate.
At the same time I realized that I was trapped, cornered, and, even if I wanted to, I would never be able to leave him and would never stop loving him. I took a determined risk — I let him get into my heart, I let myself be vulnerable.

I couldn't either tell my story a single soul or admit the tragedy of my situation.
But now I have (almost) convinced myself that sharing my pain doesn't mean becoming weaker.
Although this pain still eats into my tired heart, settling in it, squeezing it from the inside, turning into stone puzzles of memories.
The pain intensifies, deliberately punctures my heart with long needles as soon as I say his name out loud.
Cenk. My Cenk.

A single crystal tear sneaks down my cheek as I troll the Black Sand Beach. I wrap myself in a swamp-colored wool scarf, glance around, look at the volcanic inapproachable cliffs and leaden waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashing down on the shore.
In the distance near the skyline a lone ship sails, constantly swaying from side to side and hiding behind the raging nature.

"Someone says that love is a river, someone says that love is a stupid song, someone says that love is all around us.
It lifts s us to where we belong.
But everyone knows that love is pain "

He was "the northern lights" of my dull life.
He was with me, illuminating my life.
He will forever live in my heart.