If it's too good to be true... Buy it?

Like many times in my life, I grew bored. 

Simple days became dull, honest conversations made it impossible for me to tell the truth. When you asked how my day was it took all my strength to not tell you I had robbed a bank during lunch. 

Where I reached for intrigue, you sought after routine. While most of us feared winding up alone, I lay sleepless at night, anxiety ridden over complacency.

I had left a long time before I before my bags were ever pack, you said.

Guilty Filthy Soul

Driving down lake road. I'm speeding. You're lying. I can feel your eyes on me even though you're ahead of me. Anxiety is racing through me, only now it's pure fear. There's nothing romantic about this crazy that consumes me. I can feel your eyes burning a hole into me.

There's blood on my lip when I come to. It's pitch black and I'm in bed. The first thing I recognize is the taste of my blood followed by a  heaviness on my chest. You whisper so lightly I can't make out what you are saying. Your weight is on me and I can barely breathe.

This is love. Do you know how I know? Because if you didn't love me, you wouldn't try to control me.

It's a long day of meetings and they haven't even begun yet. I'm freezing but sweat is forming under my bangs. I'm walking as fast as I can in heels without it being considered running. My pocket is buzzing. You are fuming. I have ruined your day again. You're favorite shoes on my feet.

My wrist is bleeding through my sweater. No one is noticing, at least they aren't saying anything if they do. I slide my arm under the table. You slam the door open and I get up to stop you. 93 pounds is nothing until it hits the wood floor.

This is love. Do you know how I know? Because you only get mad out of fear. I may find someone better if I make new friends.

It's my day and I ruined it. The same present you got me I already received. I'm sorry I hurt you by accepting it. I don't understand why I torture you either.

When the neighbor knocks on the door, you are already gone and

I'm cleaned up. The sun is peaking through my blinds. My phone is buzzing. You want to know what I decided to wear today.

October

You can feel the sharpness when it cuts your lungs.

The minutes before you are completely awake are the hardest to bear.

Glass is smashing against side walks while you walk home. 

I'm wondering if it's a Heineken or a Budlight. 

He whispers 'I love you' & you pretend to be asleep.

The zip code hasn't changed. 

Goodness

We spend our lives searching for something that we only catch glimpses of in passing. Something that we want to believe is real so badly we end up convincing ourselves of its existence. It is this belief that we hold on to. We tell ourselves it can be found at the end of cold October nights; promise that it is lost within mundane activities, that we will feel it's true power while changing sheets and washing pots. We think it's seen in one another from across crowded rooms. It's the goodness that keeps us going.

Until it doesn't. Until you realize that this goodness you've sought for has never existed. Ever. Everything caves in and crumbles then. We learn the foundation to which we stood was never there.  Everyone is a liar. Moments are nothing more than 60 seconds of time that pass between inhaling. We learn people are inherently evil. 

We ourselves, the preservers of the goodness we seek - liars too. Caught lying to ourselves. We're all cowards. All willing to do anything to conceal who we really are.  

You come out of your trance with a new perspective. A straight path ahead of you and new belief that the only person you can trust is yourself. Deep down you know, even then you are walking a very fine line.

When She Was Young

When they look back on my life, they will say this was a defining period. A time that changed who I was. Not in the twenty-something-quit-your-job-and-hitch-hike-out-west kind of way.  There was nothing angelic about the 29 months in which I did not move an inch. 

In October, it was all pumpkin margaritas with candy corn in the bottom of sugar rimmed glasses. Big flowery scarfs and black button downs kept us warm outside run down bars and empty city streets. We were thin then, but no one was asking why our thighs didn't touch. It was the beginning of the coldest winter we'd ever see and the first that I slept with a fan.

No one will say I changed for the worse. Lowered eyes and soft voices will give way to the fact that during this period I didn't crumble. I shriveled.

Before we could put away our flip flops it was snowing. And snowing and snowing. Everything was frozen before Halloween. Heath Ledger Halloween masks gave us anxiety attacks in the driveway and the love seat on the porch became a bedroom. Blankets left in the foyer, shoes lined the hallway upstairs. We didn't complain, we didn't lock our doors because we weren't scared. 

They will never mention you, not now. Your name will never pass through their lips to lay blame or award any credit. But it was you. You crushed me so hard that I never fully recovered. Bones have healed the same way bruises lightened. But the brightness, that honest belief I held in the purity of goodness - this was when I lost it. 

This was what happened after the leaves died. When it dropped too cold to go outside. This was when the emptiness that swallowed me began to take over. And I let it. I welcomed it. 

First Painting Project

I realize how much time has passed while I'm sitting on the floor in the kitchen, surrounded by paint cans and dirty brushes, more paint on my legs then the wall. I send you a picture of the mess and ask if your day is messy to. I laugh out loud, realizing I still share every thought that enters my head.

It was 2:25 in the morning, the first time you picked up a paint brush for me. I starred up at you through tired, half blurry eyes. The belt of robe trailed behind me but I held the back of your leg, like I was the stable part of this trapeze act.  You stood on a step stool rested over the toilet, half of your body leaning on rickety wire shelving- the perfect Thursday night.

 

We're young and in love, even if we're a little old now. That's my favorite part though. I remember that night every time I come with a can of paint or surprise you with a new bedroom wall color. My favorite as of late has been that green though. The original. 

I smile to myself while I type that very thought to you. 

A few minutes later, you tell me to get back to painting because you want to see a Summer Rain kitchen ready for fall when you get home.

Middle of the night green, circa winter 2012

Over the Rails

The grass isn't always greener on the other side. 

You get there and there's mildew, 

you get there and the grass is dry like hay.

You get there and everything is dead.

Election Night

I had felt this way for some time, but nothing about it registered until we were waiting for our table at my favorite restaurant in the city and one that I suspected you probably (I learned later, definitely) hated. It was small and filled with democrats and grad students clinking glasses, chanting 4 more years louder with each round. Your hand would tighten on my knee each time someone would knock into me or jab you with an elbow. With every smile, I felt my lips loosening your clenched jaw.

As far as I was concerned, we could have been the only two people at that bar. We stole kisses from one another like we were alone on my couch. And I felt every word you said, every story you shared pulled me further to you. I sunk into your soft voice and closed my eyes, burying my head against your shoulder. To this day, I can still feel your happiness as we sat looking through pictures. 

I tell people I don't cry. I am a lot of things: tough, independent, driven. I'm stubborn, determined even known to be cold at times, but emotional? I'd say no. Most people would tell you confidently that I could hold my own in a crowd, on a stage - under the heat of distress my convictions have carried me. But you, you saw what others haven't.

It was my tears in the middle of the night that jolted you awake and back to the reality you tried to push us from. You found my sadness among the insecurities that leave me awake. You searched my darkness and promised to soothe the anxieties I successfully kept hidden for 25 years. You pulled each one out into the light and set free. 

I have since cried in front of complete strangers. Falling apart in the arms of people I've never met, hoping that I will look up and see you reaching down to tell me I'm beautiful.  

I lay in the bed you built blocks for to stop from moving as I toss and turn. In the depth of my subconscious I still believe I will feel you when I reach behind me. I often look for you in the darkest time of night, when the silence is so heavy I can feel it against my chest. I am brought back to your bedroom, where the weeping willows once swayed along side us while it rained. You are lonesome for me too, I feel it. 

To see your darkness now scares me. It pulls me apart from the inside and seeps out, in a way no emotion has ever escaped me. I still believe in the goodness I felt when our hands found each other between bar stools and locked knees. Even now, as the wolves you threw me back to close in, I hold steady. The warmth of your heart still resonates within me and I am confident that its you who will save me. 

It was a Tuesday night in November when I realized that it was love that was I feeling- that I had been in love with you since the very beginning. 

Fiona, The Great

The morning woke me to face a destruction I wasn't use to.  As the sun peaked its head out from behind the clouds, I caught a smirk cross your beautiful face. It is the same soft voice that whispers good morning that also soothes me to sleep while windows shake. I toss and turn until you pull me into you.

 

My heart is heavy with your love. The saturation is so deep that there are times, when the moon is hanging low against the night, that I am stricken with the severity of just how I feel. I watch you sleep and want to know what you dream and what you fear. I want to know your stream of consciousness as you think it. It scares me how intensely I want to know you.

 

I find myself lost inside your gaze; the way time passes overcomes me so suddenly that I am left wondering if all of this is really happening. You are gone before I can truly apperciate the time we spend together. When you leave, I wonder if you feel the same torment I do.

 

I’m trying to figure out this path we are heading down. It is obvious that I am already well on my way into the darkness of the woods. The questions that I twirl around meet me at the next mile marker but instead of stopping to face them, I let branches pull me into you. 

 

I am scared now that the sun has set but you promise to guide me out safely. The road is closed but I continue down it; in the end this blame will be mine to bear.

 

The End

'If this is the end,'  she thought,  'then let the world split open at the seams and swallow my heavy heart into it's darkness.'

Niagara is Steady

I'm saying that I want to know you; and I do at the time- more than I have ever wanted to know another being.
You're eyes feel honest when I look into them. The soft, calculated words you use create a comfort I am not use to. This comfort is short lived though and once you are gone so is the calmness you created. When we sleep, I toss and turns.
Our bodies crush together only to break apart by morning.
It's dark when you leave and I have a hard time falling asleep once you're gone.
The weight of what we have done sits on my chest.
Outside my window I can see the sun rising and the reality begins to set in as the wind blows my blinds up.

Love

"It's like putting a label on love. To say, 'You are, forever, my soul mate,' is almost like knowing the end of a story. When you fall madly in love, you think it is forever, and it might be and it might not be - what matters is not to label it."

How to Save Your Own Life

Follow the rules all of your life. Be lazy. Lazy enough to not get into a good private college out west or a mediocre SUNY school in central New York. Be motivated enough to graduate high school not a virgin, with a handful of friends and a handful of good memories that you can use in your yearbook quote.

Follow the path of least resistant. Take the news that your parents are having another baby for face value. Join the Army, Marines, Navy, hell you sign up for the circus. Just get out.

Have fun while you are away: too much fun, with new people in new places. Meet strangers who will one day ask you to be in their wedding. Get a taste of freedom through your travel. See America and feel the heat of a summer spent in the Carolinas. Never fully forget how the sun beat so deliberately against back while you run along vineyards and shorelines.

Excel at the program you chose- whatever it may be. Graduate with honor, graduate with a job and a fiancée to go home to. A dog waits for you –  no – two dogs. Two dogs, a wife and a house. Come back aged, but not withered. Come back and feel the sun differently.

Have a backyard ready for barbecues and birthday celebrations. Fill your house with pictures of your dogs at parks and your wife with sunsets behind her, in a long white dress, lying on a hammock, you cooking over a fire.

Wake up mid-way through your thirties and feel short of breath. Become alarmingly aware of the receding hairline you see in the mirror. Drive to work every day and think about cutting off tractor trailers that would never be able to stop in time. Allow these images to consume you. Arrive at work and have no recollection of how you got there.

Enjoy everything less. Fantasize more about nothing; traveling, the Carolinas during the summer, your youth; fantasize about young coworkers and zero in on the new girl. See her everywhere.

Go home and spend your weekends looking through photo albums. Have no memory of being in any of the places you’re pictured. Feel numb when you look through your wedding album. Feel the clock on the wall watch you try to remember holiday parties and birthdays where you look happy. Recognize your smile.

Befriend, then call her - this co-worker. This distraction, obsess over her. Late at night when you stumble home, sit on your porch and whisper into the phone. Tell her she’s beautiful. Tell her you have never felt this way before. 

Watch her eat up your words. Watch her fall in love with your sincerity and unfaltering calmness. Let your insecurities float through the air of her second floor apartment. Embrace that way she soothes your worries with a finesse you are not use to.

Tell her these things. Find yourself telling her the things you have never told anyone.  Feel light when you are with her. Get lost in the details of her smile while you work side by side. 

At home, sleep beside your wife. Feel what you can only assume is guilt. Wake up at the end of March and leave. 

Leave your house key. Leave your wedding band.  Leave and watch in the rear view mirror as your house explodes with sweater vests and running shoes. Consider going back for the first dog.

Drive the coast up to New England and spend the weekend intoxicated, texting her and drinking Johnny Walker with your cousin. Feel alive and at peace with the decisions that led you here. Don’t think about it for more than a cheers worth of time. Call her. Tell her you want her. Feel elated when she says she wants you too.

Be happy. Go back to work and hate it. Less with her by your side. Surround yourself with her. Be everywhere she is.  Watch her eyes when she notices your ring is gone.

Make your move. Be in the moment and feel the blindness lift; see her so clearly you are afraid to blink. Stay the night. And be tired the next day. Tell her it’s worth it and think you mean it. Tell her you will always stay the night and think you could probably mean that that too. Listen to her heels click as she approaches your office. Take the long way to the bathroom to cross paths.

Let your phone begin to disrupt dates. Let your other life seep into this new escape route you have mapped out. Let the laziness return. Ignore the signs until she can no longer ignore the signs. Don’t argue when she says you told her “I feel so connected to you” because that sounds like something you would say.

Quit your job. Tell your friends and family you are going back to school. Let her support you while everyone is talking you out of this decision. Let her optimism wash over you and her drive seduce you.  Don’t say good bye on your last day. Just leave.

Lay in your parent’s pool on hot summer days and think about high school, try to remember the girl’s name that you first slept with. Call your friends that you lost touch with through the years; make plans to visit Boston and Chicago. Go to Pittsburgh and feel relieved on the ride there. Don’t think about anything but being consumed by where you are.

Arrive home and feel weathered. Sink into the pool; think about how you got to this point. Think about the tractor trailers and the highways, the money, your dogs waiting for you to never return. Think about the last time you saw her. Think about how easy it could be to just let your legs go limp. Slide under the water silently and count the slow thumps of your heart.

Right Now

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this." 

-  Henry David Thoreau

Paths

Life moves us even when we dream of remaining stagnant, even when we want to stay sitting in the certain comfort of traffic. The days pass even as we will ourselves to remain stuck in time.

Change is constant and while it can feel like we will never move again, never feel the purity a true smile - life has other plans. In the time we spend mourning, life creates something new.

Sand Dunes

 

You take a week to run away from the universe & what it is trying to tell you.

You pack what later is not described as 'lightly' and try to escape this reality that you craved.

You run back in time only to realize that everyone has continued on. 

You look for people who know you best & they are there, right where you need them. 

They are saying things you need to hear. 

You escape to less.

Less movement, less scheduling, less clothing that leads to less sweating. 

You look out to a haze of thick air ahead of you and nothing seems focused.

You accept the film that has taken over your perception.

You are calm in yellow peep toe flats and long blue halter dresses. 

Your hair is long this year, your reflection looks drawn but peaceful.

All the heaviness disappears when the wind blows picks up your curls.

Everything feels disconnected, but know you are whole. 

The Future is Bright

He drove you out to the coast as a birthday surprise. The road is long ahead of us, the summer air crushes me with humidity and I soak in the sunshine like it is Labor Day and not mid August. The airport is hot with people drinking iced coffee. We're all waiting for a sign but the tarmac is empty and the universe silent. I'm sucking down a Bloody Mary hoping it can save my life.

When they find me days later, I'm sunburned to the color of a lobster. Curled up on the floor besides by my bed I'm looking out the window from below. My eyes are dry.

Too Much

It's a sunset after a thunderstorm and I can't help but stare at the veins in your hands. On my way home I think about the driveway where your car sits and the gravel that cradles your tires while they're worn and tired from the 80 mile drive. I clutch the wheel at ten and two and look at how white my knuckles are. You are so pale. 

What you Want

It's a lie, about the long stretches of nothing suffocating me, when I say that I'm feeling suffocated, I really mean the hours of silence calm me. The quiet hum of my engine soothes my concerns about destination.

Where Are You?

Elaina tells me that drinking gin to put me to sleep will only make it harder to wake up. I reassure her that I am not trying to make it easy, that I wake up and drink half a bottle of NyQuil to dim the pain of the bright sun. I wake up and go right back to sleep again. I tell her I am now dreaming of Connecticut as a safe haven and  the Mid West as a nightmare.