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.

You Can't Stop Me

HA! It's Friday night (or Saturday morning I'm not sure). It took me a few tries to sign in, but here I is. I've been hurting and fighting and drowning and tonight - drinking. I'm sure I'll regret this post in the morning but for now, here it is.

You can't stop me. Tonight I was filled with so much ugliness it boiled over my head. It scrambled my brain and whispered in my ears. It made me want to scream at the heavens and tear holes in the universe just to see my own damage. I wanted to jump from the balcony and stand in the parking lot and scream until my voice had deserted me. I wanted to rip out my fingernails just to feel tangible pain and escape the hell in my head.
But I didn't. Instead, I got quiet.
I quietly sat there while she demanded attention, hovered at the entrances and navel-gazed. I sat in the corner, shrouded in darkness and twiddled the fringe of my scarf to avoid scratching out my own eyes. I sat and I listened and I grew quiet and I grew calm. You couldn't stop me.
I drank and I felt and I fuzzed and grew warm at the center. I read and I wrote and I laughed and I cried and somehow, somewhere I died. But you couldn't stop me.
So I stumbled in the door and across the bedroom floor where I found your discarded t-shirt and I donned it. I sprayed it with your cologne and I marveled at the line I drew around myself, lost in the comfort I made and you couldn't stop me.
Tonight I am safe and I am held, even in the absence of your arms. The world is spinney and the bed is empty but I'm ok.
And you couldn't stop me.

Routine

Routine is slowly swallowing me whole.

Every morning I wake at 530 am to begin preparing for the day. Lately, 530 am brings with it a feeling of despair, stress, worry and I spend the next ten minutes contesting my muscles. They want to sleep. I want to sleep. Collectively we would prefer to hide under the mocha duvet, finding comfort and security snuggled in the down. We want to spend the day curled around the heat of last night's sleeping bodies.

The mornings are getting colder now. The floors are cold on my warm toes, frigid whispers of winter's promise. The children protest against my gentle murmers, wanting to remain in the vestiges of sleep where dreams become adventures. I pull them from their reveries with bowls of steaming oatmeal. Bleary-eyed and rosy cheeked, they slowly wind towards the day with complaints dormant on their lips.

It is moments like this that I wonder when I will be able to enjoy them. This. Life. When will the spinning top come screeching to a halt and rust, stuck in the moment. When will I have a chance to pause. Take in. Breathe. Will there come a day that I greet the morning with optimism, pushing up from the calm and not feeling the pressures to perform, dance, create - obtain.

Excellence.

Demanded.

Blurred

We dance, he and I.
We dance in and out of the real,
the imagined,
and tear at the seams.
I reach for him and he skips away,
A shadow of yesterdays.
I feel him slipping,
the whisper of clothing sliding between my fingers.
Hands cramping and fingers splayed I scrabble in desperation.
Bring him closer.

We dance, he and I.
It is ugly and broken.
Our limbs akimbo, we gyrate and sweat.
We curse, we grimace and we hate.
I struggle for the fluid motions of moments gone
While he struggles to find what he has lost.
We spin and the world melts to blur,
Images doubled and distorted, trailing away like the laughter of innocence.

We fall, he and I.
In a jumble of arms and legs we lie piecemeal,
kneeling on pride and crushing spirit.
In a heap I dig,
Fingernails ragged and dirty
Searching.
Beneath the hate and the ugly and the arms and the legs.
Seeping from between hurt pride and broken spirits I know it hides.
Haunting.

We cry, he and I.
Shattered and crushed beneath turmoil and fear.
Panic flutters in his breast and helplessness stays my heart.
We drown in the layers I've exposed,
ugly and broken.
In a chemical haze, we tumble.
Darkened. Lost. Looking.
For the elusive Mickey Blue.


Don't worry. Mommy will find you once again.