Sometimes, I feel that my indecision and worry leaks into everything around me.
It runs down the walls of this room. It envelops our shelving and drips down onto the floor in a sickly patter like rain, it fills dog bowls and causes growls and whale-eyed looks.
It fills cereal bowls and teary eyes. No matter how I clutch your hand, it only worsens. I have infected what could have been good.
These days I am sick, you see. You know that. You know me too well. I can't hide a thing. I wish I could.
I had a dream last night that I was caught in an explosion. A pickup truck collided with a box truck. It all exploded. I got out okay — I'm not even sure what I was doing there, but I had an awful burn on my arm. It spanned from my wrist up to my shoulder. A blistering mess of red and disgusting burn pockets of fluid. It was repulsive. Grotesque.
Sometimes my head feels like that. Like maybe, inside, it's a repulsive monster of those fluid pockets and twists and turns of electrical muscle that writhe and buzz. When was it last still? Why can't I just stop?
You tell me you worry for me. I know you do. Yet each time you utter the words, I am filled with the sound of lectures long ago. Angry parents and the confiscated items I begged and sobbed and wailed to be returned. I hear anger. I hear being in trouble. I don't know how to be worried about. To me, worry is only a word holding hands with punishment. Perhaps in only short time, you will leave. Perhaps you will yell at me. Perhaps you'll ignore me. You will give up like so many have. What's the worth, after all, in a partner that cannot uphold their mood for more than four measly seconds?
Sometimes I still feel his hands on me. I feel the indecision I held as a child about whether or not it was normal. I feel the cluelessness, and the reluctance to utter a breath of its validity to anyone. The despair when the mistake of its truth came out. Did it really happen? Did I remember it wrong? Why can't I remember my childhood? I can't remember.
But I do remember pieces.
I spare the details, but the flashes I do remember are vivid. My stomach squirms. It was not the same victimization that so many are subject to. It could have been much worse.
And maybe it was, if I could just remember.
How long did it go on for?
I want to love you. I want to support you and tell you it's going to be okay. I want to. I hope I can. I hope I will. I should. I have to.
