#dear mt

i had the dream again. with the long twisted corridors and tiny goblin men. the dream where i always end up half-awake by the middle and there's a little man standing at the foot of my bed with a spear pointed at my face and a hand hovering above my leg. i try my best not to move -- i don't want it touching me -- but also can't move my head or neck to get a better angle to look at him. he just stands there. and hovers. and eventually my leg or his hand moves and touches the other and there's a flinch as he completes the contact and i'm just housing shock in my body.

i had the dream again. yanno, the not-quite hallways and the not-quite people and the not-quite but evidently, completely, sleep paralysis. i had the dream again and i woke up -- actually woke up -- filled with such panic that the fact i didn't call you impressed me.

i had the dream again. and processed the dream again. and processed having to process the dream again.

i had the dream again and, for once, i didn't call you.

(and of course i remembered you after, as what else would this be for, but the fact of the matter is that the remembering happened After, not During; it's still a win in my book.)

m,

Sometimes I have to remind myself:

I had a life before you; I'll have a life after.

While I oft yearn for our time once spent,

I know that I lived without you once.

I'll be able to live without you again.

Until then, I shall try and think of you fondly.

No matter how you haunt me.

No matter how changed songs sound or food tastes or places look.

I've been dead to you a long while.

I hope I'll let you go the same way soon.

Despite it all, I love you. Despite it all, I miss you.

Despite it all, I hope you're doing well.

I don't want you yearning in the same way that I've been.

I couldn't bear it.

It's been almost a year since you left me

and I wish I was able to say I've finally left you too.

Damn you, you silly man. Damn you.

i find myself swinging violently between not thinking about you at all and falling heavily into the memory of you.

some days i wake up and i forget. i forget the pain that made home in my chest, a festering pit that's dwelled there long enough now to settle into something unremarkable and almost familiar. it hurts but in the way that everything hurts and it fails to stand out anymore.

some days i wake up and carry on like my entire world view hasn't been torn out and ripped to pieces and spat on on its new home of the pavement. some days i wake up and carry on like nothing has happened because there are other things to think about, tasks to be done and music to be played.

other days i wake up and i look back at all the letters i wrote you. all the poems i started and left half-finished for you. the song i wrote while thinking about you. i play it sometimes. loop it over and over again as i read over the little entries here that i wrote for you and want to pettily send you and make you hurt the same way i'm hurting so i can at least prove that something was real.

other days i wake up and look at where the coat you gave me (and i soon returned) used to hang. the small bottle of cologne that was in said coat's chest pocket that i would spritz any time i was meant to go and see you. the leather bag i snatched from your godmother's house when they were moving country that i now use as my day to day bag when i'm travelling light. the park that separates your house from mine where you'd walk me through late at night because you always wanted me home safe.

other days i wake up think about how you teared up the first time i plainly said i trusted you. how you hugged me the moment you saw me after i called and said my uncle died instead of simply letting me slip into your car and head over to the apartment. how you shared your writing projects with me and listened to the advice i gave despite me not being as well-versed in the subject matter. how you gave me a carton of cigarettes and insisted it was a christmas gift so i wouldn't have to pay you back.

some days i forget. other days i remember.

it's been a month since i said "it'll be a month in a week," and i find myself falling into the pattern of this too. it feels like something i should add to the calendar of Guaranteed Bad Days. february 14th. march 1st. april 29th. may 15th. june 15th. july 31st. august 7th. september 25th. october 12th. november 6th. those three weeks that cover the build up to christmas and the cool down from new year's. maybe that's self-fulfilling prophecy. maybe i'm just too drained to care.

some days i forget. other days i remember.

i don't want to remember you anymore.

i had the oddest dream about you and i'm unsure of how i want to feel.

we are not talking, that is well known. in fact, i've blocked your accounts and your number and have asked of you the same. i said, "forget we ever met; i'll pretend you never existed, and you should do the same."

and yet i had the oddest dream about you, one i'm unsure of how to digest.

i was at a cafe in downtown with two of my dearest friends. the mug in my hands was small and cool to the touch, coffee long abandoned in the throes of impassioned conversation. i looked and there you were, at a table in the corner, across from a mutual (less dear) friend, and you were writing. your letter-sized, 80-paged notebooks we'd used to bring in for school next to his leather bound journal he bought at indigo on a whim one year. discussing, and writing, discussing, and writing and i sat there stunned.

you looked up and caught me looking. a shock of fear rushed through my body and froze to my seat. the world faded away – gone, both your and my companions, the cafe, the hustle and bustle of anywhere near realistic – and it was simply you and me.

you approached. you sat down next to me. you spoke tentatively.

i sat and felt hollow. desperate for the interaction, for despite everything i miss you. but not like this. not when the abasing pit in my gut says i deserve the inconsistency and the lack of transparency, the carrying on like nothing happened like i am not owed an apology or explanation.

oh but how i miss you. it will be nothing but my undoing, but this ache means you're here and the pit will take anything it will get.

and then you kissed me and i knew i was being delusional again.

sometimes i am doing nothing. sometimes i am doing everything. sometimes i am lost and find myself back there. sometimes i feel like i've never left. no matter the twists and turns my mind takes i always wind up back at thoughts of you.

i wish it was a lot more romantic than that.

it'll be a month in a week and i think that that's something. part of me thought i was being nuts again, it couldn't have been that long. but i checked (i hate that i checked) and there it was. 6pm on june 15, an ordinary wednesday. ruined.

i won't sit here and moan about how "i don't know what i've done." you've made it as clear as it needed to be. i supposed i had hoped two and a half years of friendship, that deep and trusting kind, weren't so easily dashed.

i don't know how i'm supposed to feel about it. how i'm supposed to maintain mutual friends when you can't stand to be in the same room as me. how i'm supposed to reassure myself that we've both objectively done nothing wrong when it hurts this bad.

i think about you and i get so angry. i imagine scenarios where you approach me at a party and i brush you off and curl up in the lap of some hot rando and take a sip from their drink all smug. or i walk away and you follow me and we dont yell at each other, i just tell you fuck off and keep walking away. or i spit at your feet and i spill my heart to you because holy shit you hurt me and i don't know how to recover from this.

because i guess it's that. i'm hurt, more than anything. if i'm not mad i'm just desperate to stop feeling this all consuming sadness that i somehow managed to ruin yet another good thing, that i somehow managed to drive away another good person. i want to drink myself into a stupor and feel nothing if it means i can escape this.

i'm tired of crying over men who don't love me. i'm tired crying over men who clearly never saw me. i'm tired crying over men who see my first sign of visible mental illness (mental illness they damn well knew i had) and running away. i'm tired of being a fucking project that gets worked on for two fucking years and then promptly abandoned. i hate being told i was your friend when really i was nothing more than, "no, but really, i can fix them."

i don't know what to do with myself anymore. how do you rebound from someone who wasn't your boyfriend? who wasn't even your friend, apparently? i can't walk in my own fucking neighbourhood because you live across the street. i can't go and see my friend because she's you're fucking roommate and you looked like you wanted to crawl out of your skin the last time i was in your house.

i didn't even do anything wrong. i didn't even do anything different. i was myself as i ever was. a little manic but that's not new. you had seen me like before. i don't fucking get it. did you just never fucking like me? what was the point of it all.

did i even mean anything to you? or was i really just a little fix-it project that the emotional tax just wasn't paying off enough?

i thought you were my fucking friend. i thought i was yours.