I Miss You More Than I Should

I walked away from you. Said goodbye. It sounds trite to say it was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made but it was. In that moment it was. And each moment after that has been nearly as hard, hard to remember why it was the right choice to make, hard to not wish I could take it all back. The ringing phone, hazel eyes, laughter, Brooklyn, late nights, high heels and stockings, the smell of your cologne a touch on the small of my back. All you. Something always brings me back to you.

 

Everything in slow motion, I watch myself move through the city, going through the motions. I feel fragile, brittle, as if I might break at any time so I hold my back unnaturally straight, head high, hands empty, and I keep moving because I don't know what else to do. Besides sleep. And in dreams I seek you out where there are no tears, the sick feeing vanished, as if it never existed. If only I could stay asleep. But dreams are fragile things and reality has a way of forcing itself  through, and then I'm falling, wrenched back to earth where consciousness is painful. I curl in on myself, clinging to that too seductive oblivion. You can only hold reality at bay for so long though before you must continue- it's another day, another day of trying not to think, trying not feel, trying not to feel disgust for the fact that I'm still under you spell. I don't know what you feel, can't know, shouldn't care, and still my thoughts chase themselves round and round wanting, needing to know. To know if you're hurt, if you miss me, if you regret that we'll never love or laugh together again. Won't ever again smell me on your clothes and skin, or explore my shape, memorize my face in the darkness. Do you reach for me and find me gone? Or have you found someone else to reach for? Someone else to tease and laugh with, to tell your stories to, someone else to ease the knots out of tired muscles?

 

"And I know it's easy to say,

But it's harder to feel this way,

I miss you more than I should,

Than I thought I could,

Can't get my mind off of you.

And I hate the phone, 

But I wish you'd call,

Thought being alone

Was better than, 

Was better than...."

 

Moving Through Madness or "Einstein on the Beach"

Thoughts two minutes into the first scene of Einstein on the Beach: "This is music to go mad by." The quasi-hypnotic reiterations which only reluctantly allow you up for air, pummel you, coax, and finally suck you under. It is at that moment, when you feel you can't possibly take it any longer that it releases you with a suddenness that makes you gasp. You find you've passed some invisible threshold which allows you to breath without panicking, without drowning in the seemingly directionless frenetic repetitions. It is suddenly possible to see past all this static to the larger ebb and flow of the music as it bears you along, always in motion developing in monumental increments.

Collision

Going over the Brooklyn Bridge, watching reflections collide in the window. Fast, ruthless, and inevitable as life. My life. Controlled chaos, hurtling forward -barely evading disaster- on tracks I'm no longer sure are of my own choosing. There are entirely new vistas opening on every side and I'm moving too quickly to be sure of the choices I'm making. There have been turning points recently that seem altogether inevitable and perfectly reckless, a force or momentum drawing me irresistibly forward, and in my helplessness there has been a kind of wild joy and vulnerability . I have never felt this vulnerable in my life, this susceptible. Soon there will be a split in these tracks and I'll find out if I have the nerve to relinquish my death-grip on control and learn what it means to risk a collision and emerge -still breathing- on the other side.

"Love is the most beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares."

They told me I'd fall someday and when I did fall finally, I'd fall hard and fast. They said you never forget your first love - you'll experience both joy like you never thought possible and despair that seems never ending. Sleepless, breathless, boundless, can't concentrate, can't stop thinking of you, feeling crazy, mad, obsessive, tormented. Addicted. Can't step back from this cliff despite the danger. I know I'm not your first love, most likely not your last - I can't have your past nor do I covet your future but for now, love me a little. I could almost be content with that....almost.

Under Construction

Caution tape and scaffolding. Soul under construction. Somewhere along the way something in me was damaged and I never noticed until you. You are ruthless, a bright light seeking out my weakness; I cannot bear your heat but crave it all the same. I thought I was strong until you touched me, walls I didn't know I'd built shattered like spun glass, melted like sugar. I am left naked, exposed and breathless, elated and devastated all at once. You demand so little which seems like everything to me. I don't know how to reveal my secrets, reveal myself, but somehow I know, without a doubt, that I will regret it the rest of my life if I don't learn. I'll lose you, lose myself. Utterly.

Do you know what you have done? What you are doing? Why choose me? What do you see in me? The same things I thought I knew about myself? Why am I suddenly so unsure? Suddenly feeling like I don't know myself at all and at the same time on the verge of discovering who I could become? I have never feared disappointing someone quite so much: I feel young and foolish, my experiences suddenly seem mundane when set next to yours. You both inspire and paralyze me. I feel as if I have always known you and will never know you. There are times when you look at me like I'm everything and times when your eyes go cold-suddenly a stranger- and I am nothing. Nothing except who I am, who I will always be, who I can yet become, regardless of whose eyes may look at me like I'm everything or nothing.

When I met you I said you were my catalyst. I did not realize at the time how true those words would prove to be. So go ahead, tear down the scaffolding, disregard the caution tape, reveal me to myself. My soul is under construction but I am strong enough to learn. Strong enough to grow.