Fiction

She didn't look back at all, while I stood there watching her drive away. I should have been crying. The light misting in the air seemed to mirror this intent, this inability to let the downpour unfold. Her tailllights winked out of existence as she turned the corner, out of sight, out of my world, out of my life.

This time last week she blew me a kiss when she drove away.

This time last month she wasn't driving away.

This time last year the world made perfect sense, and the future seemed distant, but plausible.

But now, I was standing in my driveway, watching as the last piece of my life that had made any sense stopped making sense. Everything looked trivial now-insubstantial, inconsequential, as if the veneer that had been there for so long finally had melted off.

Days later, I'm wondering why I can't even feel anger. It fits, and everyone tells me it would be perfectly acceptable. Some of them even feel anger on my behalf. The few things I managed to let slip about what happened fuel their rage, but to me these things only add to my confusion.

There was no substantial change. The universe just keeps on ticking away. It feels like someone died. Nobody makes eye contact, they just shuffle around, refusing to look at the elephant in the room. Not that my behavior has ever encouraged them to help me tackle it.

It's called internalizing.

I don't know how to let things out, to let things go.

When I see something I don't understand, my natural instinct is to solve it, to figure it out. But this time there is no answer. There is no solution. There is nothing out there that can fix this, make this right. I'm looking at a chunk of non-Euclidean geometry planted right in the middle of my soul.

I've done the math, checked my steps, worked it through every way I can, and it doesn't add up.

How can you do everything right and still fail? Well, boys and girls,look no farther. The answer is right here, in this terrible figure.

It's the only time in my life I've wanted to feel angry, but all I feel is hollow.

---

Months later and the wind is absolutely roaring. I have three superpowers, and they'll never save the universe: I always know the exact distance between my shoulder and your nose, I can tell immediately upon meeting a person whether or not they like armadillos, and when I really need it to, I can make the weather reflect my mood.

Beat that, spy girl.

The In-Between

There is day, there is night. Then there is the In-Between. Dusk, dawn, twilight, call It what you will, It doesn't care. Awake? Asleep? It's still there. It does things. There is a reason that we dreamers, we smidge0ns of time on the face of this earth are held in such sway by It: It has power.

Sunsets hold dinners, first kisses, long goodbyes, they herald an ending, with significance. Sunrise, the other side, dawning of a new day, a new era, a new life, magic fills the air with potential for that yet undone.

These are the In-Between, and if you don't believe they have power... well, you're wrong.

I'm stuck, the transition does not go smoothly. Caught in that emotive moment between things coming and going, that power grasps my thoughts, and wrangles from them any semblance of my calm, controlled state.

Please, don't read this. I don't want you to. I don't want to write this. It's an unhealthy exercise in therapeutic self-flagellation.

Sunrise:

Over the horizon, the strands of sunlight wick away the last beads of night, discordant, searing it into vapor. I don't think about it. I keep a pile of Things In Disarray covering my bed. It hides the thoughts from me of why it is so large, so empty. Keep the emptiness filled, even with cotton and papers. It will still ache, but the contractions are more manageable.
Agenda:
Productivity- minimally achieved, potential for growth.
     goal: Increase incrementally, overcome barriers.
     progress: working, succeeding. albeit slowly.
Inter-Personal Relations- unsuccessful. 1 of 3 all but gone. not good. 2 of 3 my impatience got the better of me. I'm sorry. Don't hate me for this. Second chances are early and unwarranted, but hoped for. 3 of 3 a conundrum. There but not there. No ability to perceive how to proceed.
     goal: achieve self-reliance and emotional stability without crutch of emotional dependence under the guise of self-fulfillment.
     progress: near standstill
(I love you, I hate what you do to me. I like you, but I was impatient. I love you, but the world frames it incorrectly. I hate the situation. Arrogance, or a holdout.)
Self-Improvement- slow going. Directionally accurate.
    goal: stop it. stop it. stop it. control it. return to that place. master it. fix it.
    progress: haltingly slow, but velocity is improving. stop confusing emotional setbacks for physical excuses.

The transference of this In-Between goes by almost entirely unnoticed. It mocks up the framework of improvement. of potential. It does the Apollonian task of preparation for the rest of the day.

Daylight:

Covered, head to toe with distractions. Money, bills, effort, career, people, conversation. Conversation. Con...ver...sa... hell. I can stare, nod at the appropriate times. I've internalized so much for so long that when I find people I can enjoy talking to, I'm completely incapable of vocalizing my thoughts efficiently, let alone restrict my thoughts properly to stay in line with a conversation.

My wires are crossed, but the company suits me well enough to keep the train derailed, to keep things at bay. For more on this subject, see previous scrawlings.

Sunset:

This... is where it happens. Yellow, fading to orange, injected with a bruised purple, until finally, the blue-black of night dominates everything in the sky.

Soon, everything is engulfed in shadows, and grows quiet. The world goes to sleep. The few remaining souls who tread this shadow world consist of the bedraggled world-weary fallen saviors, the soul-less wanderers, and on occasion, the small subset of life that consume my waking thoughts.

And here I sit, unable to make the transition successfully. The second In-Between of the day catches in my mind, and I can no longer move forward. This sunset, this approaching night takes over, and I'm caught not only believing that day is gone, but that night will never come. Respite, relaxation, comfort and companionship-the ability to go on without a dark and fitful thought pasting itself into my every idea-these are gone.

Night:

I'm no longer a part of this stream of consciousness. It eludes me. It has been a long time since I haven't feared it, and yet somehow it becomes the hollow I inhabit. The silence only serves to remind me how much of the clamor and noise of the day I fail to participate in. It's not a dream I want, it's not what I would choose, but it's all I have left.

The moments where I could undress, let down my clothes, lay down my body, and unburden my mind of the thoughts that had fished into my net. These are what I want. This is what was taken from me. This was what I had looked forward too every day.

This is what you took from me.

This is why I'm stuck. It's the final process on the assembly line. And now all the cargo is smashing together at the end, unable to be packaged up. It crashes, falls to the floor, smashes, breaks, splinters.

I only just now have found a way to shut the line down, but the mess will take so long to clean up. You've left so much shrapnel here, and for so long I was content to leave it where it was, in the hopes you would come back to mend it. Now I've come to the realization that the only one who can mend these wounds is myself, and that solace in the hands of a replacement will only end up leaving ghosted thoughts and broken spirits.

Solitude, self-invoked, it does not seem appealing. I can think of a thousand other ways I'd rather see thi s through, but I can't think of one that will actually work.

One brick, one step, one mile, one bit of debris, one at a time, and I may eventually be able to set foot in the night again without fear. One at a time, one at an unbelievably long amount of time.