stuck in neutral

I went back to my previous job, working with the team I love, with students that are so engaged they seek me out and come to me with questions I would have asked my chefs in another lifetime. My first week back was harrowing, not because the job was hard, but because my heart was hard. This was the job I took when my mom first got sick, and I worried about my brother constantly. I literally flew back to interview for this job in between my mom’s chemo treatments. This job holds mixed feelings for me. I felt my heart grow cold and harden, one of my students died and I saw someone have a heart attack and pass away right before me. This was also the job I had before I started to feel warm and unravelled, felt the glow of spring, kissed summer til I was breathless. It holds so much potential and so much that is unpredictable that I woke up every day this week with a dodgeball of gravel in my stomach.
You want something so desperately to work that you sometimes ignore the signs. You look into that person’s eyes when they have captured you and you see nothing else; pitfalls, heartbreak, the inconsistencies in the cracks of the mundane and the thrum of constance. You…should not….have to work so hard. At holding on to your love for them, at hoping against hope that they will wake up and know. If its that hard, maybe neither of you wanted it that bad, or even, the universe has other plans. Yes, the universe has other plans, don’t you remember falling before, or even more recently, where you were when you fell for her. “And then what happened?” The inevitable grand reveal. You: knew all along who you were but couldnt admit it for fear or them not loving you for it. Them: you kept thinking it would change or together things would be different. Then that moment of clarity comes and you either: accept it, or ignore it depending on how warm the water is.
I know some things about myself now, that I was a little nearsighted, that what I loved about us was the vast difference. She: stable, constant, even keeled, reserved even. Me: silly, loud, tempramental (yes, shocking for a chef I know), impetuous. I thought she could change me, I thought I could change her. Love would be enough, she might see actually how much I loved her.
I used to tout that I was full of firsts, had not fallen for a girl before, really hard before, only slightly. Had not talked about having a home, and a shared life. I want to go back to that place where someone looks at me helplessly and knows that I love them, that I would push them down and lavish them with affection, equinanimous passion, fearlessly and confidently. I see people in love every weekend, I admire their ambition. I only see them for one night, but they are beautiful to me, like an exhibit, like art. I long for that, and yet, after all I have been through I would rather die alone than get hurt again, and that seems the saddest proposition of all.