Breathing

It's past six a.m. and I can't sleep because my thoughts won't stop and the tears won't stop and the sobs won't stop, any one of these issues being sufficient to hinder a good nights rest but the combination being especially problematic.

If someone one day were to dissect me, I have the feeling that it would reveal that I'm only an inch deep, and that the rest of the space inhibiting my admittedly narrow body is just a vacuum. It's how I've felt lately. Not tonight.

There are days and nights, when I've been alone for too long, that I can't seem to stop myself from falling back into the deep recesses of my inner void and tapping into the emotional well that I've worked so hard to bury these past few weeks. Once I'm there, there's no stopping the tidal waves of salt water that force themselves in trails down my cheeks.

The thought continuously occurs to me that I should pray for comfort.

I never do.

I'm not speaking to God right now; it's not Him, it's me.

Besides, I need to feel this way. It's my only release from being the inch-deep psychological anomaly that is my persona in the daylight. I allow myself a constant stream of meaningless distractions that sometimes lasts the entire day and following night, sometimes not.
I seek simple amusements to fill my day and my mind, my eyes and my ears. My brain and heart don't get any input. They just don't. As for feelings, I am allowed one single inch of depth. I learn to just ignore the ugliness that I carry around with me wherever I go, no matter how far I walk, how long I drive, who I talk to or how very many distractions I seek out like a heroin addict does, well, heroin.

And if I bleed, I bleed knowing he may care,
but if I sleep, I sleep to dream of him,
but wake without him there.

because I used to have someone that knew me better than I knew myself, and even when we were separated by thousands of miles, at my lowest moments, I could feel that closeness that no distance ever severed. And I could hold the letters he wrote to me and feel his love seep into me through my eyes and through my fingertips. And I was never, really, alone.

And I know that right this very moment I could get in my car, drive for twenty minutes, knock on his door, and he would hold me like nothing has changed, like the beautiful sun I've revolved around all these years hasn't gone and left me spinning alone in this darkness. And for a little while I could convince myself that if two people really love each other, and they're trying their best to do what's right, and they're selflessly trying to serve the other, that they can be together.

But they can't, and I don't know why.

I don't know anything anymore.

He's not really gone, I just can't have him. And now all I have is this vacuum. This void, this well, this ocean, this inch....

But it only hurts when I'm breathing.

My heart only breaks when it's beating.

My dreams only die when I'm dreaming

so I hold my breath

to forget

and it only hurts when I breath.