Getting Better at This

Man, I slept like a rock last night. I’m getting better and waking up earlier. Maybe, god forbid, I’m turning into a morning person.

Forgetting You

I even went so far tonight as to go downstairs, knock on my neighbor’s door, and ask her to stop talking so loudly on the phone this late at night. I had myself convinced that the muffled Mandarin seeping up through the hardwood floor was alone responsible for keeping me awake.

She’s quiet now, but without the infuriating nuisance of her interruptions, my mind still won’t rest. ‘Round and ’round and ’round it goes, and where it stops, I always know.

I’m becoming a pro at pushing you from my mind. It’s not so hard; I do it a thousand times a day. And a thousand times a night. I use any manner of mechanism to put away thoughts of you. There’s the book on the nightstand, but ultimately it settles upon me that the reason I’m reading it is because it proffers advice on how to deal with you. So I put the book away. There’s the peephole on the back door, which I can just see from bed. Often, I try to focus on it long enough to make my eyes grow heavy and fall shut of their own accord. More often, I see you standing there, staring out of it, just checking. So I move to the sofa, content that the change of scenery will lend itself to peaceful slumber. But if I lie there long enough, my photographic memory convinces me that you are there, where my feet now rest, with your hands clasped behind your head, grinning at me like a delinquent schoolboy. So I turn on a movie and it consumes me for a short time. Ultimately, given our similar tastes in movies, an exceptionally quotable line will surface and there you go again.

Finally, I submit and drag my weary body to the cupboard where the over-the-counter sleeping pills are kept. How many will it take this time to shut down my brain? Three? Five? And even twenty minutes later, as they begin to work their ineffable magic, my minds beats against the lethargy that slowly overtakes it, finally to succumb only once it forgets against what it was fighting in the first place.

I feel incredibly restless tonight. I can’t sit still long enough to watch a movie, can’t focus long enough to complete one task before moving to another, and can’t pinpoint exactly what it is that’s making me this way. It’s a feeling like something is wrong somewhere and I just haven’t found out what it is yet.

Sleep, always an evasive luxury, shall prove doubly intrepid tonight.

Not a sound from the pavement

The loneliness is nearly unbearable tonight. Late night, nothing but the hum of the air conditioner to fill  the silence. My cat abandoned me long ago and is sleeping contentedly on the arm of the sofa. I can’t think of going to bed alone.

For quite some time now, I’ve enjoyed, in fact, reveled in my autonomy and single lifestyle. I make the rules, I set the expectations, I go about my routine and I’ve been happy with my life. Since returning from vacation though, I can’t deny that I do miss having a companion. As it stands, the very first person I speak to every morning is the security guard in my parking garage. I don’t even use my vocal chords until after 9:00 am. Unless I swim with Amanda in the mornings.

 Exhaustion sets in too quickly and I must consider a choice: comfort but loneliness in my large Queen bed, or discomfort but selfish justification on the big red sofa. Despite the means, the end is the same. Sleep will bring the dawning of another day. Another day that brings me ever closer to plummeting off the precipice I see ahead of me, not so far away now. As hard as I fight it, there’s something there, tugging me ever closer. Until at last, again, I plunge headlong into that all too familiar chasm; a fall that is only broken by solid, unmoving, rock bottom.

The Polarization of Night

Sometimes I’m comforted by thoughts of you, by imaginings that seem to stem from truth but are somehow cast in the embellishing shadows of fiction. Some nights I can remember every word you said that day, every exact path of your hand and every place your lips touched, and some nights the images bring warmth to my bed and I sleep with a smile. On those nights I forget that I’m alone, I forget that there’s no one out there somewhere, smiling in bed and thinking of me as well. And on those nights I think maybe the memories are all the companionship I’ll ever need.

Sometimes the same thoughts that grace my lips those nights bring pain and loneliness. On those nights, my skin stings where your hand used to be and I sleep on the stains of tears. I scream into my pillow and pray to anyone who is listening for something – someone – to occupy my attention and my time, to simply keep me distracted enough to fool myself into believing those feelings have gone, and that these memories are false. Illusions, just as the dreams themselves. On these nights, I think maybe no companionship will ever be enough.

Sometimes your absence is more apparent than your presence ever was. A familiar restaurant, the hostess seats us at the exact same table you and I occupied once and I pray that he will claim the same seat that you did. But he doesn’t, and the lack of you is there, goading me throughout an otherwise pleasant meal with someone I should be falling in love with. Shuffling through old – very old! – papers shoved in folders in my desk, I glimpse your handwriting and stop short, helpless to preempt the memory of you there at my desk, in your green shirt and perfectly coordinating tie, sketching the diagram on the sheet with my pen. I thought I’d gotten rid of all those papers. But they, like you, creep up on me at the worst moments.

I have found some comfort in the arms of another, and with him I seem to keep the memories at bay. But more often than not, alone finds me vulnerable. The past three nights, I’ve dreamed of you, and now sleep both threatens and seduces me. I helplessly comply, only hoping that tonight, should the memories come, they come with a smile.

Ahoy

I just had a dream that my father and I had killed someone and hid the body in the attic of this old school building. Analyze that!