day one continued: what if you

do you ever find yourself hypnotized at the passing of time? struck numb by the melodramatic cycle you find yourself in, struggling with an inner battle that seems to want to play hide-and-seek with your sanity. how did loving someone come to make me feel so completely unhinged? it is all supposed to be simple, opening up yourself to someone else, letting yourself fall with that unnamed trust that you will be caught. on paper it all looks so beautiful, but words are just a random combination of letters lined up together in their sunday best. pick me, they say, and link arms together, we will whisper to you something sticky and sweet.

it hits at the oddest times, standing in the grocery aisle reading the back of a cereal box, and it pulses through me, fast and rough. it reminds me of those days when my bloodstream was seasoned with chemicals, the sleepless nights and pounding of my heart causing me to take a misstep, to almost find myself falling flat to the ground. i remember it, the electric buzz of sound echoing in that space between my ears; and the light, that flash and flicker almost like a bulb going off, but with no time to smile and say cheese. i used to run my mouth off for hours trying to work through the high, trying to spit out every thought and feeling i have ever held true. but now, all i do now is find ways to tuck truths into lies, promises painted in the spaces between, all of it glued together by some addictive kind of hope.

the first time i felt this way i had some remnant of warning. he was my friend, too. hell, most of that year we were more friends than lovers. although there were those stolen moments that no one ever saw, clutched tight and close in the passenger seat, both of us squeezing in together. he can tell any version of it he wants to, how i was some final test of his sexuality, that i was the deciding factor. but, i was there in those breath stealing hit-and-run passions. i remember your tongue in my mouth, your hands in my hair, the way your body felt pressed hard against my own.

it transcended gender, it bypassed what your friends thought of me, it was everything we both never admitted, not even to each other. and, even years later, sitting across from one another as two people who had gone and grown up apart; we both still felt it. in this life you are only given chances at love a mere few times, if at all, and we both know how foolish we were to let it slip through our fingers. the two of us left forever wondering in those lonely three am hours what could have been.

something died in me that night on the beach, and no, not when those words were spoken, but later when it was just us two. we stood there under the pier with the ocean leaving salt water stains on our shoes. you would not look at me, but i could feel your tears even with your body turned away. i wanted to grab hold of your hands and tell you that we could just forget the last things said, that maybe if we held each other tight enough we could force the world to rewind. or, that maybe we could just hop in the car, fill the tank with our last pocket change, and start anew somewhere else. instead, i just stood there shaking, watching you turn into something foreign and strange, the you i knew vanishing into the ether.

the years went by, time ticking on despite heartbreak and loss. every so often we orbitted into each other's world, touching down for a moment and clouding everything else that was living on. we were like a solar eclipse, interrupting the middle of a sunny afternoon, causing everything to slink into slow motion; all eyes turning towards the sky with faces full of childlike wonder. you could never tell me about who was sharing your bed. you could never stomach whomever was sharing mine. sometimes there is no possible return back to friendship when so much love was let loose between two people. we could lie all we wanted with our this is all in the past language, but we were still written all over each other's skin. it would only take a drink, an accidental brush of skin, or even the simple presence of the moon in the night sky and there we would be; back in each other's arms with our lips parting to lure each other in again.

eventually it hurts too much, eventually too much time goes by, and eventually you learn to let go. the love persists, but the hope finds its way to the local cemetary, barely alive when you bury it, no headstone placed because it hurts far too much to memorialize love's passing. instead you just move on, walk away, put it all back in your soul's shadow. that part of me that died, though, it is the part that i gave up on. it is an eventuality that a heart turns jaded, and that the naive thing i once was turned cold and numb. the word settling became fact, not fiction. and i clasped hands with someone that i knew was so wrong for me, yet so different that it almost seemed right.

i used to lie in bed and count the spaces between his breath, secretly wishing it would stop. it was not a wish for death i was clinging to, but of an ending that we both knew was inevitable. i think all i wanted was for him to turn and face me, tell me that despite all we tried that it was over. it is always so much easier if the other person let's go first when being let go of is what you desperately want. and, i know i once loved him, at least i believed i did. but, it was a survivor's kind of love, fraught with giving up and giving in. i was war-torn and disabled, limping blindly into a passerby's open arms. the part that died, she was off swimming in the pacific ocean, never wanting to see my face again. "you wasted love," my missing piece said to me; "you foolish, stupid girl."

so, one day i went to visit her, my mermaid tailed missing piece. i told her i wanted it back, the ability to love like when i was still hopeless and naive. i begged for the waves to crash against the sand. leaving her beached and shaking, wanting to come home. i cried into my hands, tears falling through parted fingers, becoming yet another part of me lost at sea. and, i stood there and screamed like the child i once was, angry and pleading, demanding to be heard. and she spoke to me then, her voice softer than before, and told me "you already have me. i never left you. one day you will wake up and remember how to love." and one day it hit me, in the shower, in the grocery store cereal aisle, in side of the road phone conversations, in the messy thing that i so often am. i have found my way back to love.