How Empty Words Can Be

It's been a fight this week. A true fight to stay where you can see me and not succumb to the darkness creeping in around the edges. To fight for equilibrium, to temper the anger and hurt and pain, the sharp and constant pain and accept the quiet. I'm barely hanging on sometimes, going minute to minute, reeling from emptiness to acquiescence just to lurch back again.

At some points, the minutes fly by while I stare blankly at the wall or the television, and I'm suddenly frightened by the passage of so much time. Time where I was gone somewhere, back into a minute, a place when things were easier. Other times the moments tick by excruciatingly slow - taking with them another small piece of a shattered me. Notching up the panic bit by bit until it's crushing me and I can't catch my breath between heaving sobs.

The days slide by in a haze while the nights drag on forever. I find myself just dozing off in time to awaken to the melodic tone of your presence. I answer, I doze, I read and answer again. I cannot permit myself to go to the depths of sleep in the chance you might need me. Sleep eludes me, it's too dark, it's too quiet, it's too lonely. The lights and the fan and the movie playing cycles on the laptop do not compensate for your breath as you sleep beside me, the weight of your arm on my waist, our fingers entwined beneath my pillow. Between the sheets I cannot find your radiating warmth, instead I feel only trapped coldness. My mornings are empty and humbling, I stumble around the room searching for the scent of your cologne in the bathroom after you've gone to work. No matter how hard I search I cannot find enough of you to sustain me.

Friends reach out, and they share with me those phrases they think will comfort me most. We've all said them, "you're better off", "this too shall pass", "time heals all wounds." These are emptier than the spaces next to me. They do not allow me to shatter, to feel crushed, to miss and to fall apart. They have no allowance for the good times, the fun things, how sweet the music is with you. They do not comfort me, but leave me colder than the winter wind whistling past my quiet window. They cannot chase from me the dream - that somewhere you murmured that my kisses were the sweetest thing.

Beaten.

We crossed the line
Who pushed who over?
It doesn't matter to you
It matters to me
We're cut adrift
We're still floating
I'm only hanging on
To watch you go down
My love.

What he doesn't know is there is no further down to go.