My head is so very heavy, weighing down on my neck, drooping like a wilted daisy, my few remaining petals precariously dangling. There’s a cloud inside my mind that’s filled with rumbling, grumpy thunder. I can’t seem to ignore it.
Read MoreIt’s been a year to the day since I met him at a French coffee shop on Hawthorne and handed off a hasty birthday gift. I brought oddly flavored M&M’s and suggested we share them, try them together. My mouth dry, from nervousness. Just asking for something so previously mundane to us made my teeth clink together like they were made of glass. My smile hesitant and too wide, unsure he would even consider the request.
Read MoreI deceive myself so easily. I promise myself that I’m absolutely, resolutely fine. I tell myself all I need is to start a new routine. I hold myself up on these stilts of fragile smiles and over-enthusiastic nods. I’m brittle and always off balance.
Read MoreThere’s a heat rising from my nervous stomach, it reaches my face, and flushes my cheeks. It always starts out with disappointment in my gut, eye-roll inducing frustration in my throat, and embarrassment painted across my face. I call it regret reflux, and it’s by no means a medical condition.
Read MoreThere was a time when I knew how he’d answer almost any question. There was a time when I felt his devotion so secure I joked about it. There was a time when all my personal aspirations felt selfish.
Read MoreI had plans, big plans, vacations, reunions, and new adventures. Things were booked but I’d been a soggy heap for the past month. Coalescing into a more-or-less-capable-human shape was exhausting. I was sweating to keep that shape together for my work week, and I was consistently failing.
Read MoreAnd here I am again, engulfed in flames after learning some shitty little detail about his new life. A frenetic pacing begins in my head, as I move from a scenes of my current life to a vision of what his life must be.
Read MoreI was twisted up, like a rag being wrung out. I leaked and leaked for days and then weeks and then a month. Tears, choking sobs, hopes, visions of what might be, and plans for the forthcoming months, it all ebbed out of me. It flowed into every corner of my life.
Read MoreAt first it was security. I wasn’t missing a safeguard against burglars, rapists, or other home invaders. Instead I longed for and worried over what would happen if there was an emergency. Hours spent imagining me in a hospital bed following a car accident; who would come?
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