8-23

I did not take the pill, and predictably, I wake at 2 a.m. They say if you wake at two in the morning it is because spirits are attempting to communicate with you. I’m not sure why the spirits are tormenting me with an obsessive circulation of Jon Bellion lyrics, but who am I to try to divine the motivations of the spirit realm? Personally, I think perhaps I was just very bad in another life, and I will always be punished in small obnoxious ways.

Beneath the rolling lyrics, at least, there are beautiful words. I want to hold onto them but I know they will be gone by morning (they were) so I let them ebb and flow over me, a gentle saline tide. I am simply grateful they are there. For so long my head was empty of anything but you, and that piece of me quieted, overwhelmed. I am happy they are coming back, creeping in like an ice flow, a million pretty thoughts and images, disconnected, glimmering.

They say being highly sensitive is an instinct left over from our animal days. They say anxious people have a stronger survival drive. They say overthinkers like me are smart and protective and act most wisely in an emergency, because in the back of our brains we are still fearful soft creatures looking for escape. They say a lot of things.

He was angry at me once, for knowing him. No, not him, another. Their faces are bleeding into each other, these lovers of mine who are somehow the same man underneath. He asked me how I knew when his mood changed, and he was angry, I think, because he was an actor and a writer and he prided himself on being an actor and a writer and fooling the world (I truly need to stop dating artists). I can’t explain an instinct.

I know because you shifted like a change in the wind. I know because it clings to me, static on a blanket, and it transforms my mood into yours. Is that fair, when someone hijacks your emotions? It’s hard to keep them sorted out sometimes- what is mine, what have you given me? What a frustrating gift, sometimes, to be given someone’s moods against your will.

I have a choice coming. My mind chews and worries it from every angle, checking for danger. Monitoring the escape routes. Fight or flight.

But if the choice comes I know what I will choose. I will choose good. I think perhaps I was very bad in another life. I will be good in this one.

I have slept on floors and erased myself in the morning. I have clutched leather and metal in my hand, preparing a weapon. I have walked barefoot for miles, drenched after a rainstorm. I have done good things and I have done terrible things I will never forget but also do not regret because I am a human and I have a breaking point. Fight or flight. I have done both.

My circumstances do not change me. I tap back into who I am with wires and songs at two in the morning, drinks with friends, morning sun on the water, the dog’s leg propped over my hip as she sleeps. I am already built. These little things are what has always defined me. Not living nowhere, not owning nothing, not the gun he pressed to his head after he told me we had only each other and then he tried to put that bullet through himself and leave me on my own. He told me I had no one but him and then he tried to leave me alone, but I grew and learned that he was lying. I have everyone, and I have myself. I am never alone but they will always try to leave me. He left me on the dock alone, strange men whistled at me quietly. 

I have been tormented by weak men for far too long, this flush of memories at two a.m. I would rather do without. I wrestle my mind back from them--it is mine, I have wrenched it back, they have no ownership here. I am tired of being told who I have and what I feel.

My instincts guide me, and I know my choice.