March 15, 2012 - 12:03 a.m.
Is this what the next forty years will look like?
washing our faces in the bathroom,
you - asking, are you mad?
no.
are you disappointed?
yes.
why though? The question you didn't ask out loud.
because I'm afraid that you won't muster the energy. i'm afraid that when I need you, to be strong when I'm not, you won't recognize, or intuitively know... that I need you to 'complete me' and help me feel whole, so I can put on a brave face.
When we pulled up to the curb, yards and yards away from where we might have gone. Diamond Dogs. I looked ahead and my mind completed the picture I most feared... walking into the hornet's nest, lion's den, whatever prey and predator metaphor you like, with an open , gaping wound on my back. backless.
exposed. Feeling like you quietly, half-voice your desire to not...
not go,
not stay,
not dance.
I only have one week, when I don't have to be up in the morning,
but am, because I can't imagine not driving you and making you walk.
because I can't physically function at half energy at work, because there is no way to fake it.
And I can't imagine telling you this.
because part of me wants you to just know.
and I don't want you to be sad.
but how many nights can i just go to bed, pretending that the way we met isn't still on my mind. Out and vibrant and alive.
not slowly cocooning away and feeling like the life I had is completely gone, as opposed to just changed.
My friends aren't even my friends anymore. It feels like they've given up on me. I don't go. I don't show up. and I'm fading away.
and you don't notice. because I am full of life. But I feel it draining.
I am a plug at loose ends. I feel like crying.
And when I feel like I'm afraid of what I see ahead of me, and I need most for you to be there and strong at my back, at my side
I feel a gap,
a pull
from you
towards home
but I cannot always be strong inside walls
it makes me forget
that I can be strong anywhere else
it breeds the anxiety
that sometimes, I worry, is taking over
and the bad, childish parts of me want to rebel,
to take up old habits and tantrums,
to make my point.
I am terrified that I am not brave enough to go where I used to, when I feel like the foundation is gone.
When the cracks feel like miles and miles,
and you would rather be asleep than with me, laughing and dancing, like the promise you made in my memory of us dancing as we grew old together.
That was always something I pictured.
and it is so infrequent now.
Marry someone who will dance with you, my mom always said. The only sad part of her, now filled with hobbies and volunteering and dog-children.
I am afraid that I won't know how to be me anymore when I am only myself at home.
Where is the rest of me?
And how can I tell you
why I need this,
why it's about more than just going out one night, and showing my face,
to prove that I still exist
to myself and to the night
without a partner
i don't know how to dance
like a cliche
like noone is watching.
