Letters to Strangers
On any given day, here, the sun will shine. I promise. It will do so with such heat as to make me crawl inside my house, close all of the windows, doors, curtains, and hide in a dark, cool corner – potentially that of my closet (which is filled with stale air and muffled with clothes, once folded, now thrown). Death has been getting to me recently – be it the stress, the nightmares, the memories, or the lonliness and fear that are creeping up at all of the wrong times. And while the sun will shine I will stare emptily into the corners of my house, wondering, and the meager sunflowers just off of my porch will bend from the weight of their fruit until their thin spines snap under the pressure; the lawn will be watered, along with my kitchen; the world will pass by. I will remain unnoticed, alone, and quiet.
Today when you left I started crying. It was stupid. I sat on the edge of my bed and the world smacked me in the face and told me to wake up – despite the fact that I haven’t been sleeping. I am, instead, wretched with images of you lying pale in a bathtub – your arm outstretched towards the center of some unknown bathroom; family with their arms dripping of blood; strangers hanged in greenhouses; dark figures wrapping their hands around my throat in the middle of the night. These you passed off as lonliness, and I had, too, until you left and I thought about it. I am not lonley – bored, perhaps, but not lonely. I am afraid. I am being throttled by unneccessary fears; I am being haunted by the ghost of memories. Despite all of the “Sweet Dreams” I have been passed – when I crawl into bed my chest tightens, my lungs ache, and I quietly question how well I am going to sleep – or if I will at all.
The irritating part is that I figured the nightmares had passed; that they were, perhaps, some strange phase my mind decided to go through when I was younger. Now they sit at the back of my mind, waiting, I suppose. And all I want is some extended time where I don’t have to worry about it – where I can put my head on my pillow and know that if it happens again I at least won’t be alone; yet, despite all of the things we’ve done to be together, it still feels like we are constantly apart. Which isn’t true at all. All I want is you to put away this idea that us spending so much time together is bad. All I want is you.
So for some strange reason my karma just isn’t any good lately. Everything has been one solid string of “Well, what the fuck?” and I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t know where to pin this one, I can’t find anyone to blame, I am, simply, at fault somehow. I can accept that, given the opportunity that it might change somehow, but I’m concerned as to whether it will or not. It’s been a long time since I have been this, I suppose I should call it, unlucky. I think it may lie in the fact that I am conflicted (for the most part) as to what I want. Where do I want to go from here? Economics calls all of these things “Opportunity Costs.” I am rigidly aware of what that means – anything I do will take time away from us, will take time away from school, will take time away. I am so concerned about time; it feels like more and more I have less of it. I guess this could come full circle, here, that I am afraid.
I think the big part of the fear is you – or, rather, me. I am the begrudged fucking Queen of Broken Self-Esteem. History shows that castles are built to be torn right down again, and I am no exception. Except, perhaps, I maybe got a barrack built and then it was, simply, ‘bombs-fucking
-away!’ Whether it be mother, or school, or work, or life, I am incapable of simply being. I have to be a bitch, a saint, a demon, a crybaby; a workaholic or lazy teenager; an emotional trainwreck or the epitome of stability. I am not allowed to just be. And no matter where we are, no matter how I am, I miss you, even if you’ve just closed the front door.
So where do I go? Somewhere that doesn’t care whether or not I know what I’m doing with my life, or who I’m with, or how I’m doing. Somewhere completely nuetral and lacking in substance and judgement. I want to be home; but the conclusion remains that I really do not have that. Nor do I have a childhood that I can tap into, or a happy place that isn’t ripe with tension at any given moment. I have you when I have the chance. I had nature, but even that seems to be slowly creeping out of my grasp. I am unable to relax, to sleep, to dream peacefully. I want to fall asleep in your arms without having to worry about what happens when we wake up.
I want to fall asleep without having to worry.
I’m so afraid that I will never stop missing you, and it’s keeping me up at night.
Stumble!