10-12

I can't sleep again. I'm becoming that inhuman person who is always tired but can never rest, the ones people worry about. People are worrying about me lately. I don't know how to say I'm just soul-sick and a few good nights asleep would help, a few days of nothingness would cure me.

I take four pills and hope for the best, quietly wondering, in that distant it-won't-really-but-what-if that constantly lives in my brain, if they'll kill me. I wonder what they'd say on finding my body.

A youngish insomniac with a foul mouth was found dead this morning, lying in a pool of her own dark roots and multi-colored hair. A preliminary search of her computer found an excessive amount of half-finished novels, photos of her pets, and an uncompleted brewery tour itinerary. Her employer called her "quiet," in fact too quiet, perhaps even anti-social, as he stressed the importance of networking. Her close friends and acquaintances say she was frequently in an exhaustion haze and canceled plans often. One lone sex toy and an unused condom were found close to the scene. No foul play is suspected.

The pills do the trick and I sleep (I do not die - or perhaps this is my purgatory, continuing on to go into work in the mornings, continuing to write with uninspired determination, continuing to find a mixture of neutrality and annoyance and contentment with my existence). I can't wake myself up however, and I find Dorian in my mind.

I think he's been lurking again because it's her turn to hurt. You left your mess for us to clean up, Dorian. She has picked me up and sorted through my trash, and though I still cringe and my stomach clenches because she makes it real, it's her chance to come to me. I have to fight my instinct to plug my ears and wish it all away, because I am a creature of fairness. It's her turn to heal and I have to try harder to help even if it makes me feel sick and dizzy. How selfish you are, walking away from the melted fractured messes you make of good women. How lucky that good women want to reach out and help others. You choose only the highest quality of hearts to break.

You're there in my dream and your friends are speaking for you. Forgive him. He's sorry.

They don't know what all you've done, and I scream it at them, in high notes, but it's a dream so my voice is strong and does not break and I do not cry, but I tell them what you did, and they're horrified (they deserved to know the truth). But they say, look at him, look how sorry he is.

I know it's a dream because you are sorry. I've never seen you sorry before. It's always been my fault to you. My madness, my anger, my unjustified discontentment, you've pushed them away from you and handed the burden back to me. But in my dream your face is red and anguished and there are tears on your cheeks. I thought I was forgetting your face, but my memory has the details down, and I'm disgusted that I've missed that face.

You're sorry and so I let you follow me, I let you kiss me like you mean it, and because it's a dream, I forgive you and we can start over.

But because it's my mind, and the truth is buried in there, it becomes real again. You hide things from me, you pull away. You kiss me to make me forget that something is wrong. You blame me. I dream of cutting hot peppers that burn my hands while you sit at my grandmother's kitchen table, twitchy and angry, and tell me I just need to trust you, while your lies are strewn all over my grandmother's linoleum floor and spill out of your phone and your mouth and your eyes and my fingers are on fire.

In my dream I leave and come back again, leave and come back again, and I'm reliving the living nightmare of how you broke me slowly but surely.

I wake lonely and cold and drugged.

There are white teeth and warm smiles waiting for me. There are patient hands and gentle words. Arms that want to wrap around me, but give me my space, because you destroyed me, and I need to be fair. To myself, to love.

I swim in and out of the medicated state, desperate to wake up, determined to leave your face behind me in the unconscious where it will lie forgotten until the next night I'm unlucky enough to be haunted and wounded all over again.