They Said it Needed a Title (So I Gave Them One)

I keep having this strange feeling that I'll wake up some morning, check my phone and you'll have asked me back; like everything would just go back to normal. Wouldn't it? Or would we just wonder when the hell would arise once more? I thought we had something - or at least something more than the nothing we now possess. Maybe I'm just tired of answering the same, tired questions about you, day in and day out, and facing the constant realization that some things never really mend. Maybe we all just lie, maybe we just cut what hurts to feel comfortable again. I guess I'm fine. I'm always fine. I just don't want to have to force it every morning. I guess we don't really get what we want though, do we?

At least I've been gone awhile. Two months. It doesn't seem that long, and in ways feels a lifetime. 68 days since I've set foot in Nashville. It's amazing what 1,632+ hours alone does to perspective.

Someone once asked if I felt like I leave to run from things that haunt me. I asked her how I could run from a haunt? That's like running from disease. Leaving doesn't make the problems dissolve; they all pack their little satchels and hop aboard with you. Try or try not, your brain is in constant motion, things are sorted, and things are thought, and what does and doesn't matter becomes more evident than one could imagine - or even desire, at times. You find that what you felt was troubling, trivial, and pains that you suppressed, overwhelming. If I wanted to run, I'd be an alcoholic; I wouldn't spend months on end by myself on the highway. There is nothing more wrenching than realizing closeness or the lack thereof when you're across the globe and can't get back to address it - that's a haunt you can't escape.

It's not that it's lonely - I've always been fine alone, and loneliness happens anywhere. It's more so the fact that the people you find you miss turn out to be the ones you thought you never would; and the ones you knew you would, drown you.  I can't start complaining, really. It's not like there is anything else I'd rather be doing. I guess, perhaps, I just want to talk through it with someone who is equally as anxious to talk through their own hauntings with someone as haunted as they are.  Maybe that's what I thought we were. 

We're never really going to sit down and have that coffee, are we Darling? 

It doesn't matter. 

I'm in another Panera; go figure. It's always somewhere crowded, and bread filled, and strangely calm. I just sort of watch around and wonder what everyone else is feeling, thinking, who they're missing, what they'll be doing later. Everyone reminds me of something and nothing reminds me of anything certain. It's a blur. I can sort of make things out, they just seem to sort of flush in and out and hit like demons now and then.

I check my own pulse and hold a spoon beneath my nose to check for breathing. Yeah, I'm here. Still alive, still moving. Still thinking, thinking, thinking...I want to turn it off awhile...

         ...what if we never thought - and moved on what we knew would lift us? Dear God, there's a thought.

     What if we weren't scared of being, scared of moving, scared of trust? 

What if we were still...anything, really...