It’s Time to Write About You.
Eight weeks and one day passed before I decided this fate. I cried when she told me that. It had been longer than I anticipated.
Thoughts flooded my brain, 2000 fragmented ideas in 30 seconds, and as she talked about technicalities, medication, blah, blah, blah, I saw you, waiting anxiously outside. I couldn’t figure out the expression on your face. Worry? Regret? Maybe you secretly wished you had left.
She asked if I felt safe, and asked six or seven more times. I said I felt alone. I said I felt anxious and was furious that I couldn’t lean on you like I should have been able to. I quietly admitted that I felt I had to be strong for two people, instead of just myself.
“What’s his name?” she asked.
“Marcos”.
She typed.
It felt like 3 years, but it was only an hour later…you sat with me. You tried. But you didn’t exist. Your touch felt like needles scraping across my skin.
I couldn’t believe we were doing this.
I felt relieved. Shy. Sad. I felt like shit.
I remember certain times in my life where I had to hold myself up in adversity, but I never had to do it for two. And fear. It was all over your face - I had never seen you so cowardly. It was disappointing.
I had a dream after that…
It was vivid and odd, and it felt as if I was pulled from reality into another realm. I had been awake with my eyes closed; gently rising in consiousness, feeling the softness of the blankets around me, the give of the bed as Milo and Chance struggled to find the perfect spot, and the slow breathing that signaled they were falling asleep again.
I watched a young boy, the likeness of Leonardo DiCaprio, no more than six or seven, hair disheveled, dirty from head to bare feet, running merrily toward the edge of his backyard. He was meeting a little girl in a crisp yellow dress. His puppy - a miniature little thing, gray but fluffy like cotton - ran, as fast as his baby legs could carry him, toward his friend. After pawing, whining, and barking, tail wagging so fast it was a blur, the little boy angrily pushed him away…
The puppy was hardly phased, merely searching for some reciprocation of love and affection, something it trusted to receive from the tiny human who had once cared for it. Once again, he returned to the boy - pawing desperately at his feet. But once he got too close, the boy’s expression grew cold, stonelike…evil. He turned and kicked the dog’s front legs into a grotesque angle, and its whines were cut short by a blunt object into his skull.
I watched in horror as the young boy skipped out of the yard and disappeared hand-in-hand with the little girl…
The deepest dread, the darkest feeling and the sharpest pains washed over me as I frantically reached out to Milo and Chance, hoping my dream had not crossed into reality, and shed a few tears at the relief I felt as my fingers touched their warm fur. They were alive. I was alive…
But my spirit. It was numb. My heart was pounding but it was silent to the dull buzz in my ear. I knew it had to be you.
I once heard that whatever you do, you should never return to the person who broke you.
Shame, shame on the two of us.
