mcompton

“Nothing is fine and everything hurts.”

I’m not sure were I got the phrase, but it echos through my mind every time I wake up, especially from naps. I wish I knew it’s origins - when it first entered my head as a concise series of words and not just a feeling. Maybe it’s just the inverse of “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt” - Kurt Vonnegut.

I know I’m going to have a rough night when it echos continuously through my mind. And for some reason tonight, everything is running through me making my stomach flip. I think I got too used to calling my mom and talking for 2-3 hrs on a regular, almost daily basis. Sometimes about actual things bothering me and sometimes just about anything. She’d always dance around asking how I was doing so as to not bring it up if I wasn’t thinking about it, but ultimately asking.

“I’ve never kissed a girl with braces”

“I feel so close to you right now”

“It was perfect wasn’t it?”

“and that’s the way it will stay”

“How’s it feel to be kissed again?”

… as if I didn’t have a hard enough time forgetting words and phrases said to me. Now some of the most painful are etched into my mind with the other years of words I can’t let go. (something I’ve always prayed I’d grow out of.)

Italy. That’s the other thing that radiates through me. Italy. And I don’t know when the return is. I don’t know who all is there. I don’t know what they are doing. And I’m not supposed to care. Awesome. That’s just awesome.

Surreal.

I worked 15 hrs Friday, 15 hrs yesterday on minimal sleep, spend the whole day today on the move and have event taken sleeping pills and yet it’s 4 am and I’m awake with my heart pounding and tears streaming down my cheeks. And I haven’t cried over you in what feels like so long after crying every day. I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d moved past that part.

Today at dinner I thought “Wow, I thought this weekend would be stressful with you in Kansas City and yet it’s been the best weekend ever. I’m ok.” Then I got home and was all alone to do laundry and just sat down in the middle of my kitchen and didn’t want to move. I wanted you to see the concert and Traditions Night. To see what I’ve really accomplished since being here.

Because that’s what yesterday was. On every level it was full spectrum of what I’ve accomplished here. The Hawks Nest, the students I’ve seen grow, the trust, the ability to sit on a curb and chat with David … the 9/11 meeting where I’m suddenly planning an event for a Representative, the City Manager and a Vice Chancellor …. And you don’t even know that any of it is happening or care. And all I want is to show you what I’ve grown into.

And today’s excitement - the puppy shopping, the clothes shopping, buying stuff for my apt … it was all so very very long over due with how much I’ve been cutting back and it was so thrilling. And yet it was all at the expense of no longer being able to have the dream for which I was working so intently.

I bounce between believing you’ve heard a lot of thoughts in your mind that aren’t actually true that have built you to this place and between thinking you’ve changed beyond words. I keep wondering if you told your mom and your family what has happened. If they even know. If I emailed your mom and told her my side of the past 3 months … or the past 6 years …. what she’d say. But I keep hearing the voice of reason say that she’d just tell you to follow your heart where ever you want to go and not to worry. But I keep thinking there’s something you didn’t know. you didn’t realize. that had we just talked this through halfway through your trip we’d be in a different place.

That picture of you looking at her is going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I can’t believe the things you’ve said to me and the way you’ve handled yourself with this. I just don’t believe I’m actually talking to you. Were you like this when I visited and I didn’t see it? Did I actually just see what I wanted to? One of those awesome things I will never really know. I do so well with those.

I’m so haunted by memories of us. I dream over and over about being in one of those memories and you just suddenly leaving me. Night after night it’s almost the same. And every time I wake up (even from naps) my heart is pounding and I’m sweating.

Saying out loud all the reasons I shouldn’t have loved you in the first place don’t make it any easier. It’s fucking simply not fair to love someone so deeply that you just shouldn’t. I keep equating it to being an addict. It’s not fair that human nature lets us fall so completely into something that can kill us.

I just want so badly to ask what the hell you thought I was thinking. How you thought I would react. Why you didn’t figure out how much I was pleading with the world to hurry up and bring you home. How much I was waiting for the second you would call me again. I just want so badly for you to really truely be able to be on my side of the view.

So … do I call you and hear you or do I try to walk away as hard as I can? Because I’m not sure I can actually put one foot in front of the other with my back to you.