In Passing

Good people will come and go, and we only ever truly know each other in passing.

I have

I've done a whole lot of walking to find my way back to this very point, and I have much walking left to do if I'm ever to make it to where I initially set out to go.

I'm forgetting how to sleep alone. It's been about a month now since the pain has been gone and I think I could learn to live with out the sick feeling being by myself brings.

Moving On.

"I'm not sad anymore." -The Wonder Years

In the embers of a setting sun, I remembered what once was. It came to me like a vision, or perhaps just a reminder, you must return.

Too Soon But Long Overdue

I'd stopped counting the years since we were all in the same place. Due to fights over money and some side businesses we had divided up into loose knit factions. No one could agree on who owed what or even why anymore. We only knew that we would avoid each other.

Saturday night something changed. I found myself sitting around an oak table at a shitty bar laughing; all of us together again. We drained our glasses and relived our history. We talked about lovers, of conquests and losses, of new plans and old dreams we dared not let die, and it felt like we'd never spent all those years apart.

Some of us aren't here anymore, and I can't help but wonder if we had all stuck together if we could have seen it coming and somehow prevented it. I'm pretty sure they all think it, I'm positive they all feel the same way.

Nonsense!

Some nights I miss her more than others and those are the hardest ones for me to get through. I remember the fever dreams vividly. Waking up to sheets soaked through with sweat in the middle of January. The only thing I wanted then was a familiar voice to tell me I would be alright even though it was that same voice saying goodbye that got me here.

The Old Man And The Me

I sat at the bar with an old man named Bill. We drank that summer afternoon away while the Red Sox game droned on in the background. I'm out of money and ready to head home and sleep it off when a jack and coke appears in front of me. The bartender says this ones from Bill. I raised my glass to my new found friend in thanks. I drank slowly, enjoying the free drink when Bill said, "Hey Kid." Fuck him I think. "What the fuck is the matter with you?".

Normally I dodge this question. But today I am drunk and I can't stop the words from coming out. "Well Bill, I spent eight years of my life convinced that I was in love with someone who loved me back. Turns out she doesn't want anything to do with me and would prefer someone with a slightly thicker wallet."

"You know shes out there right?"

"Who is out where?! What the fuck are you talking about old man."

"Somewhere out there right now there is someone with that same pit in their stomach that you have right now. She is waiting for you to walk into her life and make her forget about everything else. She is laying awake at night wondering where the fuck you are and instead of going out and saving her from it you're sitting in here feeling sorry for yourself drinking your life away."

I stormed out of the bar and into the summer heat. All at once I wanted to kill him and thank him. He's fucking right and I hate him for it. Something was lifted from me in that moment. He's probably dead by now, and I'll never get to thank him.

I woke up trembling from the same dream a handful of times last night. I keep reaching up trying to open a door while someone on the other side is knocking but no matter how hard I try I can't will my body to do it. I'm slowly becoming paralyzed and the harder I struggle to move my body the faster it comes on. Then I snap up wide awake sweating and shaking.

I'd give anything to make this stop.

not a big fan

"I think you sabotage yourself. Things don't work because you don't want them to work. Maybe you're just afraid to be happy."

...I'm not a big fan of people trying to read in to me lately.

Stuck.

I've been having the same recurring dream for some time now where I'm completely paralyzed. I wake up from them and I can't move my body while panic sets in. I will myself to move, fully aware of my surroundings, but my body does not respond.

Then eventually I'm ok. But man does it scare the hell out of me for those few minutes (seconds?) they feel like an eternity.

Words From A Bar Stool

I watch her from the corner of my eye. She is a relic of another time. Alive here in my life for one night. She comes close and whispers "Let it go." But I can't. So I order another whiskey to help shed a few pounds from these shoulders. I'll either learn to balance or be crushed by it. But I just can't seem to put it down.

I didn't edit this. Sorry grammar nazis.
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I came to this morning standing in front of the mirror staring into it, with my hands to either side of the sink bracing me, until my face only becomes a series of shapes and colors. I'm so pale now that I don't even know if what I'm looking at is me or my ghost. For many months now I feel like the pages have been turning so fast that I haven't even hade the chance to read them. Life as I know it is slipping away and I am getting older. Barrelling head first into my future without having even the vagues understanding of my past. My memories all seem to have been dubbed over and subjected to a strobe light. I remember flickers of evenings and fragments of conversations. As I heave fruitlessly into the basin in front of me I think that maybe this time I should get serious about giving up my whiskey but that is only a fleeting thought and for today that reality is far more terrifying than continuing down into this cave. I stagger back into my room and sit at my desk clearing the empty flasks of Jack, various nips, beer bottles and food wrappers from the space in front of me. The room begins to spin in front of me and I collapse with all of the gravity of what I've become into my hands and sleep.

The lights flick on and shes there, laughing and smiling and then it is dark. The words "We can't keep doing this" repeat over and over again in the darkness. A flash of light takes me to a beach at sunset with her head in my lap. We're all alone with the ocean stretching out to the horizon touching the sky. A fog horn sounds and there is darkness again.

Not Just Yet....

I'll be devoting a little more time to writing now. I'll be heading back to school this fall and I'll have more time on my hands.

No words.

Sometimes the words just don't come to me.

My Mind

I wouldn't say I lost my mind. I'm quite sure I know where it is. The question now is would it be worth it to go back and pick it up?

New, Unedited. Incredibly sappy.

I noticed her walk into the bar from my seat in front of the tap. She came entered to jazz tune on the juke box with a wailing trumpet that sounded her arrival in her big heals a low slung shirt and a short skirt. Her blonde hair and figure hadn;t changed much since high school. I remembered the first time she tried to kiss me as I reluctantly pulled back. Retreating for fear of doing something wrong. She froze in place when my glance caught hers. Almost instantly she was at my side and in my ear with that sickening tone they all seem to take with me these days. "I heard what happened, I'm so sorry." We spent the afternoon catching up, it had been nearly six years since I went away. To me she still seemed so young, so naive, so vulnerable to my charms. I wanted her like I had wanted no one in the last three years. When the bar closed she took me with her out to the beach across the street. As she shed her heals and produced a bottle of wine I wondered how I never fell in love with her. We walked out the jetty and sat passing the bottle between us in silence until she broke the barrier.

"I used to see the way you looked at her. The way you lit up when she walked in the room. It was one of the things that made me want you. I was always so fucking jealous of her." She takes another long pull from the bottle of wine and passes it back. Unknowlingly her words have stirred something inside of me and the burning of the liquor in my stomach is replaced by that empty feeling again. I've got a hard enough time dealing with my own feelings and she went and complicated it all with words when I'd have been content just to have her company for the evening. But now, it isn't fair to drag her into my world when I barely have the strength to walk away from something that ended three years ago.

I stand to leave and shes on top of me, arms around my mid section. Unprepared my guard falls and the only way I can react is to throw my arms around her and pull her close. The smell of her perfume in my nose is overwhelming. For mere seconds I completely forget about the demons nesting in my chest and hold her as if she is the last woman on this earth. I know that she is mine and I know that with my works I can make her mine and I know that in my current state I could forget about her tomorrow and this would all mean nothing to me. I want so badly to use her for this night, like I have with so many other so many times before yet I can't bring myself to it. I pull back from her grasp apologize and walk all the way home where a bottle of jack is waiting for me.

I have a vague memory of sitting in front of the computer and banging way at the keys while I pull from my bottle when I wake up fully clothed in my chair. I hear a single peal of a church bell ringing in the distance, as I come to I realize it is my door bell.

When I open the door she is standing there, mascara smudged, sandy feet, short skirt and low slung shit from the night before. Before I can speak her arms are around me again and she speaks between sobs, "I'm sorry. I let you go once so many years ago. I want to see your eyes light up again and I want it to be for me this time. I know you're all kinds of fucked up but I really don't care about that. I want to help you." This time there is no pulling back for me. There is something lifted

2-2-11

"I want to see your eyes light up again....but I think its too late for that now."