Some days

Sometimes when you hurt so much your hands shake. It’s a cliché to say my breath stopped and hitched in the hole that is my chest. The surrounding noises blurring into one giant entity that aches and gnaws away my thoughts. I go still. Like a bird or a mouse spotted by a cat, stone still, like the angels in the graveyards who overlook buried lovers. I try hard to not let it show. I work. I chew on my biscuit. Dutifully, I swallow mouthful after mouthful of flaky sawdust that I don’t taste because I ACHE. I hurt so much inside because I don’t know if you feel the way I do and honestly I probably never will. When the tears gather behind my swollen eyelids from a night spent crying over dreams I know aren’t real but feel so solid I could grasp them and tie a noose around my neck with them, I stop typing. Because I know I will cry right here in my plush little office chair surrounded by people who are going on with their lives while I am here. Tearing up over something I found missing.

Maybe you’re right and I expect too much of you. But I hope you know it’s only because I would’ve done that much too. I hope you know all the million little things I think about when you’re not here. I wouldn’t deny you time living your own life. I just wished I was part of it too. Seeing you once a week after being with you in your bed, in your arms every night for close to three months is like taking the best shot of high grade cocaine and then telling me I have to stop. I’ve got to go cold turkey this instant. You have become a drug I need to cut out but I can’t bring myself to do it. Even if you are a drug, you’re my drug. I love you past the point of destruction and I will probably continue doing so until I have nothing left to give and can no longer find it in me to keep going. I hurt. I’m sure you do too after all the daggers I threw at you in my blind rage to get you to see. To get you to understand that even though you try and see me once a week. It is never enough. I am a demanding lover. If you can’t handle me, walk away. I won’t blame you. Walk away now and forget me. I am wild and adorable when I feel like it, but I am so much more infinitely angry and lonely and sad than I am happy.

I have a month or so left to be here. I promised myself I wouldn’t go the way my ex did, crying and demanding more time, more attention as if I would be dying at the stroke of midnight after this one precious month is over and I go back to the reality of my life. Being here has been a dream and I would have gladly stayed comatose if it would keep me here forever. I will not go the way he did and cling like poison ivy to you. I promised to not control you like your exes, not to hurt you physically, not to be them. I’m sorry if I failed. I can’t help how I feel most of the time and I end up being a weight tied to your leg when what you needed was a raft to carry you. I’m sorry. Forgive me if you feel me letting you go bit by bit. I can’t stand the intensity of this need I have and the physical pain it actually wreaks on me. You are stoic. More than I will ever be. I am full of raw emotions and they don’t process well. So maybe, maybe, if I stop thinking of you so much, stop reminding myself of you so much, stop waiting. Maybe I won’t hurt so much.

Some days it’s better not to feel.