And another thing...

Tonight, to make it all ok, all I needed was your arms around me.

590 Days

When I close my eyes no time has passed. It's the same ache, the same confusion that I haven't felt for almost two years. Creeping down the hall-alone, hug myself and watch the minutes tick by. Again, it's my fault. Again, I'm trembling at the edge of the bed waiting to fall off. I want to do something radical and stupid to pinch myself out of this nightmare, only this time there are no mistakes left to make. This time no one will notice if I slip away, no one will care to see that I've come home. If I've come home.

Last night for a handful of minutes I felt alive for the first time in months. I was living an old dream again, and it was beautiful except that I forgot one part. The part where he rolls over and won't deign to touch me again, the part with the cutting remarks and insults that seep into my skin to be absorbed over time. And then there's the end of the dream, where I shake myself into nothing and then stare at a blank document and blinking curser. Here I am. Nothing's changed. Same dream, different man.

The worst part is, now I'm addicted to the adrenaline. I can't wait to dream again.

128

Tonight I will not write the crisp plot floating around the back of my head. Tonight I can't do crisp. Tonight is all fuzzy and blurred lines. Somehow want came into the equation long ago and things changed. What I should want, how I should want, who I should want. Want ruins things.

Tonight, and tomorrow night, and the night after that will all be cut out of a cookie cutter pattern. I don't have excitement, I haven't earned it or I can't handle it anymore. Better to go slowly crazy as the days drip by then create a cacophonous crash of a mess. I miss mess now, life is too clean and too expectable. I will never be happy here in this life, but I will never be that painfully unhappy either. I will spend days floating in this in between. I'm not the girl I once was, passionate and brazen and headstrong. I feel like false advertisement on those few occasions my emotions get stirred. My wings have been clipped.

One thing, at least, is true. I am sold to the first person who tells me they want me. Going, going, gone.

Someday I'll fly away.

Sleep is safe.
I think now, sleep is the only thing. Close my eyes, shut off alarms, ignore calls. This is what I do. Turtle. It works well, for a while. I can be mindless and dreamy, living in a half world.
Sleep is safe. Goodnight world.

Geometry

Life really does work in circles. A year and a half later, same questions, different person. Wonder why you were so stupid to invest everything, wonder if they will ever feel the same way, and fear that you were just as stupid and naive as everyone said.
Probably.
So now, perhaps pick life up and start again. Waiting for what goes around to come around.
Give it a couple years, I'll be right back here again.

Today was a fairy tale

Just like those guilty pleasure songs that I used to roll down my window and fling out my arm to. Something about the wind whipping through my fingers, everything around me became so alive. If I didn't known better, I would think that I had traveled back a year through time. We were still playing card games, I was still pretending to watch tv while really smiling at you playing your game. Once, only, I lost it. I saw those words and saw your hurt and I lost it, silently turning my back to the camera and letting the salt stream down. You told me I'm worth it, told me I'm pretty, told me all the things you're supposed to say. More then that, you meant them.

Day by day I get better, day by day I relearn myself. Now, I don't flinch at those heavy lace up boots and crew cut. Now, I can think about the slanted ceiling and rough smell practically, from a writer's point of view. I could still write murder, if I wanted, but the past is a tool now and no longer the cause. I hear that he's hurting, I hear that he crumbling like I did once. Used to be I waited for this day, prayed for it even. Now I feel pity, genuine pity. I hope he doesn't lose himself, I hope he wakes up to the world. It's a passing thought, gone before I even realize it's there. We live in different universes now, and everything is as it should be.

None of this makes sense, I know. It is 12:58 pm and I will be up again at six to drive myself to my thoroughly frustrating dream job. I am babbling, and it is your fault. I'm so unused to happiness, to contentment, how should I know what to do with it? I am always as voraciously happy as I am sad, it's the actress in me. You can take the girl out of the theater, love, but you can't take the theater out of the girl.

Soon I will be driving, and we will be dancing, and then we will be alone. Too soon again I will be crying and driving, then throwing myself exhausted onto clay stained sheets and pulling your hoodie close in this 106 degree weather. This fall, perhaps, things will be different. As for right now, I'm just happy. Well Miss Swift, I did it, I found somebody today who actually will treat me well.

Postscript- I'm back again. I'm not even sure you knew I was gone, but you're right you know. I can't give this up, it's who I am.