text: [Themes: love & dating]
  
  He was right. Even admitting that fact feels wrong, feels like you're abandoning your life, but Garreth was right. You have to take a step back in order to not be overwhelmed. Maybe it's for the best, maybe you just need to focus on other things.
  
  So the next days you focus solely on your body ignoring any other problem. Injuries need time to heal, but corporeal ones heal faster with effort. With grim determination, you force yourself to move properly again. It gives you solace, a place and period of peace. You have Myre reteach you the once familiar drills. Every set move, every twist and every blow strengthens your mind too.
  
  Eventually, you regain some sort of self. You start to feel hope and desires independent from Isabella. The throne room becomes a familiar place once again. Sometimes you feel a looming presence, just out of reach. A flicker of light that turns dark at a mere glance. Garreth says it's your father, coming back to ground to see his child finally grow to maturity. That's pure drivel of course. It has to be.
  
  All this shows you can live a life independent from your true love. Yet it's still incomplete. The days fill with busywork, all for grander purpose, all for empty duty. It doesn't feel alive like the joy and sorrow you'd experienced. Compared to before, everything is grey, motionless, dead.
  
  The days pass by very slowly. Whereas you've kept yourself busy, there's always a hole, a nagging empty feeling that pervades everything you do. As much as you deny it, as much as you try to better yourself, nothing replaces your true love. You don't get it. It is nothing shy of self-sabotage. Yet it is there; she is there, always at the top of our head.
  
  Until one day you can't resist. You feel the strings pull you towards her once again. You'd rather get burnt by the fire than live out another day in the gloom.
  
  Then on the way, you spot your old mentor. Why is he always there, uninvited and unwanted?
  
  "What do you want?" you sigh.
  
  "Saving you from your youthful mistake," he replies with sharp intent.
  
  "It's not worth it, Garreth. Save yourself the air and effort. I want to do this."
  
  "There is another way," he replies, eyes lit with fire. "What you are looking for is connection, a feeling of being wanted. You are not looking for her specifically."
  
  "What are you talking about. Just leave me alone for one moment!"
  
  "You're alone and will forever be when you decide to go with her," Garreth replies without hesitation. "Go with her and you'll continue this desperate cycle of reaching and pushing away. It will be the end of you!" his voice broke at the end.
  
  "I wanted to wait until you came to this conclusion on your own," he continues. "But I see you need me now more than ever. Stop this madness, follow me instead."
  
  He grabs you by the shoulder, his dark eyes boring into yours, imploring you to listen.
  
  > Your shoulders sag in relieve.
  A heavy sigh escapes you. It does not feel bitter, but rather relieved. As you stare back in those eyes you feel another world opening. You couldn't break your bonds on your own.
  
  "Come, follow me."
  
  And you did, you do with a new hint of eagerness. Garreth leads you to his cabin. The place has remained the same from your childhood. It is as if time stopped. A feeling of security wraps itself around you. It's time to finally be at peace.
  
  "Tell me what you feel," he says softly.
  
  "I feel at ease, the cabin takes me back to my childhood, to our memories of that simple time. I was so young and naive back then. I was so full of energy, capable of facing the world."
  
  "You still are. You still can be." You notice a hint of profound hope within the voice of the old man.
  
  "I'm not. I went through too much to remain the same."
  
  "The young boy I knew was strong!" There lied hurt beneath those words. "You are capable of so much more!"
  
  "That young boy was beaten by his father, spurned by his love, betrayed by his liege. They took the innocent vigor out of that young boy and made me into what I am now." He is not the only one who'd been hurt.
  
  "Remember who saved you when you were young? Remember the good instead of the bad. Remember me..."
  
  There hid more beneath those words. As self-centered as you were, you didn't notice until it was unmissable.
  
  "What do you want Garreth?"
  
  "I want you to let me in." The man strong enough to face an entire army alone now stood before you as weak as a lamb.
  
  > see in him something you missed your entire life.
  He accepted you for who you truly were. In times of need, he was there. When you were at your weakest, he bore your struggle as if it were his own. He relieved you, helped you, built you.
  
  You take him in your arms. It's an embrace of two tired men looking towards each other for comfort.
  
  "Thank you, for everything."
  
  Yet nothing needed to be said. You both wished each other nothing but the very best. In that cabin, you found your happiness back again, unmarred by past darkness. It was a beacon of light, holding the fire protected and treasured.
  
  You grew closed together as you moved further away from your past wife. Isabella stayed on your mind of course, but she no longer dominated it. After a while, you remembered her for who she was instead of seeing your own imagination idealized. Garreth helped you forgive her and find your own peace in the process.
  
  In the end, the only way to break free of her bonds was to forge new ones.