make you forget

I've been having these dreams that I won't bore you with the details of, but I will blather on about the type. They tend to be hyper-realistic to the point that if I don't wake up exactly when my alarm goes off the first time, I'm never entirely sure I was dreaming until I check to make sure some bruise or something I've acquired in the dream hasn't actually appeared in reality. Which, considering the way some of these dreams go, is a little disconcerting. I'll dream that I've woken up or that I'm doing that sleep drowning where you just never pull yourself out of the dream, and the whole time I've never actually surfaced at all.

  It used to scare the hell out of me but now I've been chasing after them. Maybe because the content changed just enough that it no longer feels like someone is trying to smother me.

So, it must be the six month stretch because things I didn't know before, I'm learning now. About the Cass. Seriously, every six months I find out things I probably wish I hadn't ever found out. This round wasn't so bad, but thing is, I don't think the round is over because these things usually end with her being the one to tell me things, not just me finding out from other people. I guess the plus side is that without the other habitual truth-to-taffy person in my life, I no longer have to worry about that shoe dropping, huh? And yet, years of conditioning mean that I'm still waiting for that as well.

When I said that I wanted to hear other people's thoughts on the new Tori album, I didn't mean that I wanted LKH to mention it. Hurumph. Must be more precise in these things, I guess.

In the midst of a bit of a crushing moment of loneliness. Not exactly lonely, but awfully close. Ironically enough, I was beyond pissed when my morning of being alone was dashed. I know, logic and I obviously broke up last summer, too. Go figure. But sometimes you need to crank the music no one else likes, dance around the dogs, cart the cat around, and just forget that the rest of humanity exists, especially those bits that are awfully good at being utterly awful.

Oh, Maine, would it kill you to do me a favor and crush a certain someone under your shoe?

I believe

I believe in the darkness. In the dark I can believe that everything will work out, that tomorrow you'll wake up and remember everything you ever loved about me. Lying here in the dark, my hand so close to you that I can feel the heat of your skin radiating outward, I can believe that you're dreaming of me, that when you cry out, it's for all the right reasons. That the tears that I can see in the flashes of moonlight are somehow good things. That they don't mean the end of everything I have ever known or wanted. Here, in the dark, I can believe in the forever you promised me well before you realized it was never yours to give.

Here in the dark I can believe in so many things.

In the dark my heart is still in one piece. We never fought, we never fight, and in the morning the lumps at the foot of the bed will turn out to be a pile of presents or maybe the dogs, even if you've never let them in the room before. In the dark they aren't your suitcases, packed after you thought I'd fallen asleep, hastily throwing in all the things you cannot begin to live without. Your favorite pair of shoes, your lucky shirts (because you can never have too much luck, right?), the bear your sister gave you the summer before she got sick, the journal you think I don't know you keep under the mattress. Your favorite sheets from the hall closet. All the things you can burn my memory from, given enough time. And all that you can't? You'll leave behind with me. Consolation prizes. I can't have you anymore, but I can have all the stuff that didn't mean enough to you to take.

In the dark I can believe I will live through this. I can believe that somewhere in the future, some wiser, smarter, better version of me is going on about my day, not thinking twice about you and the moment it all came crashing down. Maybe I'll have someone new. Maybe I'll have cycled through that someone new three or four times. Maybe I'll be happy.

Maybe you'll be happier still, tomorrow in the morning when you leave, ever so quiet until you go to close the door behind you, when it all slams into you. The years we spent together, all the things you're throwing away, all the things we never fought for in the right way. It'll hit you then, love, and you'll be so overcome with everything that your perfect exit will fall by the wayside as you slam the door so hard that things inside our tiny little corner of the universe will fall from their perch, shattering well before they hit the floor.

In the dark I can pretend this future is nothing more than the lingering after burn of a dream that's slow to leave.

I believe in the darkness.