Phonies & Facades

Here is today, here is tonight: all good vacation memories and optimisms this morning, now come crashing down around me with the darkness and rejection from a good friend tonight after requesting their company. We all fear the night at least a little: the unknown, the careless hours until certainty rises, but here I fear it more than most. Tonight, the tears were torrents, unexpected, unwanted. Listening to music K brought to me, "the kind of music you like" he said one evening, with that funny smile I loved: a tooth chipped and space between the two fronts as big as promises. And it was the kind I like, the music he brought. If you are curious or careless, you may wish to listen and read: Cold Specks – I Predict A Graceful Expulsion.

Tonight these songs pulled out my memories: our first slow dance, kisses everywhere more important than lips, and the way that smell of someone you really love brings more comfort than anything else. These songs, they were every time I felt adoration, and important, and wanted. They were the constant company of having a partner to come home to. They were the lack of loneliness, the absence of wanting. And so I balled myself up in the three things I keep of K's, and bawled and begged him to come back to me. Crumpled in a pile on my air mattress, the emptiness magnified like quick sand all around me and I let myself sink. Head down, I sobbed and asked to feel everything. Bring me all the pain, the emptiness and fear and anger radiating around me all the time. I pulled off every bit of protection I build up for myself each morning and just. fucking. cried. Until the tears drained out and I felt nothing again. And then I cried some more. Because no matter how hollow, sadness laps at my raw edges, never too far away if I let it in.

And I asked as I have asked many nights, how is this my life? How is that my partner was stolen away, that I belong to no one? I want to belong to someone again. Tell me I belong to myself if you'd like, and that is fine and well. But I don't want to be this person. I want to be K's person. I want to be the woman he was proud of, who fought him over stupidness, who he picked up at the bus stop after work and listened to until I was spent of talking about my day--no matter how long--, the person who loved him. I just want to be the person who knew a love like that, all the hardness and comfort of being about and of another human being. Who knew how to be present in the ease of certainty. Not this person now, who is adrift and confused and small. So tiny and invisible. And you know? Freezing. I'm freezing always, with only sparks of anger to stay warm.

And so. What to do, what to do, when my will just isn't anything at all. And so. I give you my smile, and my heart, my careful cautious abandon, that you might keep them until my feet find ground again. I give you my rejection and hurt, that they might be less sharp in your care. I give you my capability and charisma, my dreams and goals, that they will grow less useless under your gaze. I am listening to Cold Specks, and not exploding gracefully. I am exploding messy and human, boney fragmented blood and sinewed emotions all over these digital pages. I am this person who is me, and is not me. Who has fought so fucking hard to not make death bigger than life, but is losing today.

Tonight, tonight, I crack my facade and feel phony underneath. Because there is no strength to be found here. The motivation is plastic locomotive, a very nice replica of someone who moves forward, truth be told. I feel invisible and forgotten, I feel indifferent and cold. My heart wants to love because it was made to, because not loving feels unnatural, and so it grasps and reaches and finds empty air where K used to be. And it retreats back, scared. I am 30 years old and I feel 500. Ancient and slow and hideous. I feel so ugly, all these feelings all wrapped up and ignored because of my ability to paint a smile. How ugly can a person be, I wonder, can they be uglier than I am right now?

I was asked the other day how I do it, keep this up. I don't. I try very very hard to seem okay, but I am not okay. Worry if you'd like, I can't stop you. I'd tell you not to, but the word pointless comes to mind. Tell me not to swear (someone did recently, don't read this then), question how I am still here and then remember it has been 2 months and 16 days since my world broke open. Know that After still consumes me, and feels like the kind of forever nightmares are made of.

Today was a good day turned bad.  There will be many more. I do not apologize. If you are here with me, you shouldn't either. Cry with me. Be consumed by your anger and hopelessness. Wake up tomorrow and paint your face back on, it's another day and who knows if it will be bad-good, or good-bad, or something else unpredictable and uglier than the day before, or more beautiful and the kind of safe we hope will last. Who ever knows...not I, not I.