Anguish

     Daylight enters the room, igniting the dust motes into an air-swept ballet. I watch them from where I sit, a balled-up shell of a human being, rolled into the corner. Memories of dust-mote dreams from my past bring back the thought of waking to them streaming on the golden shaft of a rising sun in the dawn-hours of my mornings. The window of my room faces west and the curtains were home-made heavy, but not wide enough to be pulled all the way closed. I remember moon-motes as well, from when I was a very young child, confined to my crib, and how the luminous glow rained silvery into my window one night. I remember things, but not in any particular order. Random randomness.

     I sit and stare, observing them move slowly in the air as one would watch fish swimming languidly in a tank. Their unhurried choreography is relaxing, mindless and utterly without meaning. It is something for me to latch onto in my current state of hurt. I observe and want to write it down, the description of their rhythm beating slowly into my mind. I think for a moment just how ridiculous it is for a human to make such an observation. That is where the pain stabs back in. There, where reality again intrudes on my peaceful thoughts!

     My mouth opens in a distended grimace as I want to scream, hugging myself tighter, letting the pain wash over me again and again, feelings of helplessness permeating me, overwhelming me. I want to sob hopelessly, but my tear-ducts are now dry. There is nothing and no one to touch. There are no feelings of tenderness to share. There exists only me. I hug myself closer, feeling the hurt from my grip and wondering how I could have gone from such extremes so quickly. Just a few short months ago, I was on top, exulting in my joy, just as I now wallow in my despair.

     I want to stand tall. I want so much to love myself again, to be proud of what I am. Instead, All I can dwell upon is the wasted emotions of the last two-and-one-half years, tossed out into the scuppers like the refuse from an 18th century boarder. Oh, how could I let so much of what is me, so much of what affirmed me to me, be tied to another? How could I possibly let someone else become the meaning behind my life? What a fool I have been! What a sap!

     I rock in my balled-up state, staring open-eyed but now seeing nothing but the blackness of my thoughts engulfing me. My fingernails dig painfully into the skin of my forearm in a sharp counterpoint to the soft blankness I have at my core. The vessel that is me, that is my id, slowly evaporates, leaving a vast, bleak nothingness in its wake. I sit, alone. The voices of my friends and family echo in the vacuous hole of my inner thoughts, their well-wishes falling deafly onto my ears like wooden nickels down a piss-hole well.

     I have been here before. It is familiar territory, this pain, this well-wallowed pity. I roll in it, letting its filth cling to me and luxuriating in it. I have wallowed here before until I have become angry at my own stench, disgusted with my own loss of contact and have emerged, cleaner and stronger than before, but that was years ago and I am old now. I should have known from experience what was happening to me, but I was blind-sided by the suddenness of her affections. I should have known they would be withdrawn just as quickly. I should have known.

     I will get up. I will stand again. I will love me again. And I will be colder again. Harder.

     I shall not fall again.

     (Liar!)