13%

This phone is at 13%.  Im too lazy, it’s too dark and the plug is too far away. I stumble out of bed. I reach for glasses, they are on my face before I realize they are yours. My eyes are too week to see through your lenses. Fumbling, I open the bedroom door. The light from the hallway is a striking contrast from the darkness we have been in for hours. You grumble in your sleep and turn around. I close the door and the darkness recedes behind me.

12%. The world is harsher now, as I head downstairs. 3:31 AM.

Everything is still, the sounds of my moving body disrupting this silent time. I turn on the corner lamp, and the living room is dimly lit. I promised myself I would sleep once my phone’s battery died, but I broke that promise.

Plugged in, 15%.

Sometimes I use numbers to try to describe how I am doing. I’ve been a solid 5/10 for the past couple of days. Fives aren’t good, but they aren’t horrible, either. Fives are just existing. I want to be an eight, but it seems unreachable right now.

I spent the past couple of hours being emotionally cold. If I distance myself, I can protect myself.

Don’t touch me because you’re thinking of someone else and I don’t want to have them in your head when I am held.

I am heavy, the sinking feeling began in my stomach, was briefly stilted by lorazepam, and creepily returns later. There is only so much a tiny  pill can do.

I needed to be alone, so I wrapped myself in quiet and refused to be touched. We sat, playing video games, for maybe an hour, maybe more. You said you loved me and I said I loved you back, and that is true. My emphasis was too quick, though. Too easy. As if greeting an acquaintance, not professing something deep that still exists. I know it does. I just didn’t feel like letting it out at all. Not right then. Not when love is so huge  it escapes two people and beckons to the wind.

I needed to research. Knowing all of the things would logically make me accept them, help me understand. I have a hard time turning logic into emotional response. I’m working on that in therapy.

I’ve already read the books, skimmed the websites. YouTube videos played earlier, when I asked to be alone. I sat on the sink in the yellow light, picking at my skin. It was maybe ten minutes, inflamed flesh releasing anxious pores. Better than crying.

I had planned to sleep in that bed, in that other bed. I haven’t slept alone in ages, and never because I wanted to. Tonight I wanted to, and that hurt. I wanted to hold you, but when the phone buzzed and the new lover said goodnight, I didn’t want your body on me and your mind to be on her. I must be logical. I mustn’t let it get to me.

This is all so new. Love is boundless and wild and I know better to expect it to play by the rules I was taught as a child. I want to love, too, beyond this love I have and beg to keep. I dream of silky thighs and soft feminine skin, of lovers who’s curves I have yet to explore. I reminisce about ex lovers and what never was between us, doors long closed creak open. I was always one to fantasize about relationships with multiple people, but that was when I was perpetually single. Now I am perpetually paired, yet these seams are unraveling and forming something new.

So why is it so hard to see you fall? We sit together in silence, but for you it is conversation, flirtation and exhilaration. I am not in the tiny chat box on your phone. I am right next to you, but we aren’t even in the same place. When you look up you see me wandering . You ask if I’m okay. I don’t lie. I am just existing.

You will not read this, love. I wish you would, but this kind of thing is not your style. I am not ashamed to put this out there for a few to see. I am airing my dirty laundry, and I am saying the things that I am afraid to tell you. I try to form the words, but you beat yourself up, hate who you are, a part of your identity. And that isn’t fair. I cannot and will not ask you to change. I just ask that you give me time. I will chip away at my chilly fear, fill the pit in my stomach with someting more substantial than empty words or logical thought. I will learn to see your love, accept it and find my own. I just need time.

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