#mimisoltero

She awakes suddenly to her heart pounding loudly in her chest. The room is pitch black except for a sliver of moon shining through the blinds. He visited her dreams again tonight.

She puts one hand on her forehead and sighs; while the other arm reaches across hoping that miraculously the vast absence beside her has been filled. And it only takes five seconds for the truth to settle in. She is alone, more alone than she’s ever been. There’s just something obvious about emptiness even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.

No matter how much you tell yourself you are over someone, your heart knows the truth. You see even if we lie to ourselves during the day the body is compelled to speak the truth at night. Maybe its because we talk so much during the day we can’t hear what the heart is saying. And if you don’t pay attention then it talks to you through a dream or a memory. And a dream is a poem the body writes. Therefore her nights were long and her dreams were endless.

They had broken every promise and vow that they made… and yet she loved him just the same. Dreams were a place her subconscious screamed loudly that it was over. He was gone, the marriage over. Left with only empty space and memories that no one, not even she, could ever erase. So it was always late at night, when everything and everyone else was quiet that those voices would rise up like ghosts, soft and haunting filling her mind until sleep finally came.

But when morning rose she’d always wake up distraught, knowing that her startling reality was much too different. That she couldn’t dive into her dreams and simply pluck them to life. They were just snapshots and short glimpses into where that life could have went had it kept on going in that direction. And she can’t help but wonder if she’ll ever be someone worth holding, someone worth keeping.

So she dreams what she’d not dare say awake. But the nights are not simply long enough to jump start her heart again. After 10 years of marriage, here she was, in a house, in a bed, that once held everything she ever needed to be happy. Left holding only her dreams, the only thing to keep her warm at night with the damned distance unbridgeable

She once heard that time heals all wounds. But she can’t totally agree. She’s come to think that there are wounds that time cannot heal and distances that simply do not make oblivion.

Each night each of us dreams of what we are less aware of during the day. But there are things you never get used to even if you have all the time in the world. You don’t get used to the empty space on the other side of the bed. You’ll never get used to not seeing their smile. Or avoid buying 2 drinks in a bar, or 2 tickets for a concert. Or to avoid smelling their perfume. Or to that feeling of heartbreak every time you look in the mirror and realize that you are the biggest fool of all for letting go the love of your life.

Dear Emily,

I was 20 years old when I initially started getting sick. But this isn’t a blog to describe what I went through. So don’t expect a long overdrawn story about my diagnosis or my medical chart thereafter. I got sick. That’s all you need to know.

 Anyway, I was saying, I was very young. A child still, I’d say, or at least I felt like I was one in hindsight, with all of my ideals, living life through rose colored glasses. Full speed ahead. And then it happened, and overnight your whole world is pulled right from under you. And it was then everything changed.

For a long time I was in duress, but the actual grasp of it didn’t really come till about a year after. After many and I mean many, life or death situations you begin to realize that you’re fighting the tide. The kind there is when the moon is high, or more like a torrential hurricane on the horizon.

After all of that and an emergency surgery my doctors sat me down and gave me “the real talk”. They told me what I could expect of the days ahead, the quality of life I’d live, the things I’d miss out on. For a long time, you don’t believe it, not because you don’t want to but because “la esperanza es lo ultimo que muere.” Hope is the last to die. And it is what you should do. It keeps you going, it gives you purpose, it gives you life.

But life is quick to remind you that you aren’t an extraordinary person who extraordinary things happen to. You are just you. This is your life. And you’ve got to face up, or at least prepare for the worst. See I know I won’t grow old. Eventually all the “Tune up’s” in the world aren’t going to save me. My doctor’s where very realistic with me, and its okay. I’m not dying tomorrow, by any means. But I have a short life span written out. But again this isn’t a blog to describe the details of my life. This is for you. My gift, if nothing else, an opportunity to say all the things I wish I had all the time in the world to say.