Story for Daddy Dead Legs (and Lungs) - But the Boys Pulled Me Along

Separation Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
They say separation makes the heart grow fonder, but I don’t believe them. The person who first uttered the phrase was looking for an excuse, not an idiom. It’s the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ line before Seinfeld popularized it. Separation, absence, isolation, is painful. It’s heart wrenching and full of guilt and despair. It weakens the heart and sinks you into depression.
Each time I walk into my house I pass my bicycle, and I avoid its gaze. I utter the empty and meaningless words, ‘it’s not you it’s me’. ‘I needed to recover, we’ve spent so much time together recently, I need my space’. But the words bring me no comfort and she sits there and stares at me with her narrow gaze. ‘It hurts me more than it hurts you’ I struggle to justify my decision with lies and deceit, but her silence only intensifies the pain.
Last time out I felt it for the first time. Dead legs. It was the moment of truth, like when I became old enough to realize and feel that eating an entire pie of pizza could also be bad. So much enjoyment, so much escape, but the infinite becomes finite and pain fills the newly defined borders of my existence. So I needed the ‘recovery’ and justified that a few days away will allow me to come back stronger. But it has weakened me. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Separation has made my heart grow weaker.