Aug 2013
Sometimes I stay up nights waiting for you, just so I can pass the days that follow them asleep and not awake to miss you.
The daytime is always harder, the waking up.
Staying awake into the small hours of the morning, that is somehow a bit numb and detached.
Late at night I can even stand to think about some things that hurt me from behind the glass of my own fatigue, protected from their full effect.
I stay up as late as I can, in times like this.
If I can whittle away the hours and the next day delay my wakefulness,
I do it wholeheartedly.
Waking up is a vile thing.
No, not just because mornings are drowsy and too bright and too quick and I never feel rested if I get up in the AM.
Waking up is terrible in a different way than even that.
It is insidious.
It is the departure from my dreams.
Even the awful ones are better than the waiting.
Going to sleep I adore, truly, because it is an escape from living without the permanence of dying.
But ah, the waking up.
That is what makes me hesitate long hours in the dark depths of the early morning.
I dread waking up.
All the illusions are shattered, good or evil,
And I must taste the bitterness of reality.
Every day it gets a little more sour.
I suspect it's this way for many people. I don't know, though.
I know only that in the first moments of waking up each day, my heart is seized by this wicked, burrowing grief,
And so I begin each of my hours of awareness with the painful sorrow of loss.
That is why I stay in bed so late, most days:
I lay there and before the haze of sleep departs I think, "Oh no, not yet, I can't bear it yet."
And in fear retreat back into my stupor.
I don't know what it is, this feeling.
If I had to put a name on it... I'd say it feels akin to disappointment, regret, and....
Shame, all at once.
It swells up inside me and fills me to my fingertips the moment I decide to leave my bed for the day, sometimes even before.
And the fact that it can fill me everywhere reminds me that that space is usually unoccupied by anything of substance.
The only comfort I've ever found for it was the safety of your arms, and even then only a few rare times when you and I were truly honest with each other and I clung to you like I always want to.
It's like I am only a shade,
Made of glass thin as paper and hollow,
Only in the shape of myself,
Until the moment you wrap your arms around me
And only THEN am I flesh.
And when you aren't around this cold hard seed of panic and bitterness rattles around inside, making an awful high pitched tinkling sound and chipping the brittle walls.
I'll be waiting a long long time for you,
For this feeling of total loneliness that comes upon me each day as I open my eyes to the world to dissipate and anything of any real joy to take its place.
So to make it easier on myself, sometimes I stay up nights,
Waiting for you,
Just so I can pass the days that follow them
Asleep and unaware,
And unconscious,
And unfettered,
And unable, in my innocent ignorance of all the world's harsh, brutal reality,
To miss you.
Until the headache that comes with too much sleep forces sunlight into my mind,
And I must wake up,
And face the day all over again.
Oh, I just loathe waking up.
The daytime is always harder, the waking up.
Staying awake into the small hours of the morning, that is somehow a bit numb and detached.
Late at night I can even stand to think about some things that hurt me from behind the glass of my own fatigue, protected from their full effect.
I stay up as late as I can, in times like this.
If I can whittle away the hours and the next day delay my wakefulness,
I do it wholeheartedly.
Waking up is a vile thing.
No, not just because mornings are drowsy and too bright and too quick and I never feel rested if I get up in the AM.
Waking up is terrible in a different way than even that.
It is insidious.
It is the departure from my dreams.
Even the awful ones are better than the waiting.
Going to sleep I adore, truly, because it is an escape from living without the permanence of dying.
But ah, the waking up.
That is what makes me hesitate long hours in the dark depths of the early morning.
I dread waking up.
All the illusions are shattered, good or evil,
And I must taste the bitterness of reality.
Every day it gets a little more sour.
I suspect it's this way for many people. I don't know, though.
I know only that in the first moments of waking up each day, my heart is seized by this wicked, burrowing grief,
And so I begin each of my hours of awareness with the painful sorrow of loss.
That is why I stay in bed so late, most days:
I lay there and before the haze of sleep departs I think, "Oh no, not yet, I can't bear it yet."
And in fear retreat back into my stupor.
I don't know what it is, this feeling.
If I had to put a name on it... I'd say it feels akin to disappointment, regret, and....
Shame, all at once.
It swells up inside me and fills me to my fingertips the moment I decide to leave my bed for the day, sometimes even before.
And the fact that it can fill me everywhere reminds me that that space is usually unoccupied by anything of substance.
The only comfort I've ever found for it was the safety of your arms, and even then only a few rare times when you and I were truly honest with each other and I clung to you like I always want to.
It's like I am only a shade,
Made of glass thin as paper and hollow,
Only in the shape of myself,
Until the moment you wrap your arms around me
And only THEN am I flesh.
And when you aren't around this cold hard seed of panic and bitterness rattles around inside, making an awful high pitched tinkling sound and chipping the brittle walls.
I'll be waiting a long long time for you,
For this feeling of total loneliness that comes upon me each day as I open my eyes to the world to dissipate and anything of any real joy to take its place.
So to make it easier on myself, sometimes I stay up nights,
Waiting for you,
Just so I can pass the days that follow them
Asleep and unaware,
And unconscious,
And unfettered,
And unable, in my innocent ignorance of all the world's harsh, brutal reality,
To miss you.
Until the headache that comes with too much sleep forces sunlight into my mind,
And I must wake up,
And face the day all over again.
Oh, I just loathe waking up.
