Set Fire To The Rain

3 AM Thoughts

Noe had been right.

As if I needed anymore reasons to fall in love with him, makeup sex became one more bullet point on that list.

Yet even after wearing each other out, I still couldn't make myself fall asleep against everything going on in my head.

Just this endless loop of what if's, and what Noe was going through at work, and how it would all go down once we got back to New York.

If they held it against him, I knew Noe would be devastated.

Firefighting meant everything to him, and he meant everything to me.

And the actions of one self-seeking idiot almost took that everything away from us.

All for what?

No justification would ever be enough for me with my husband caught in the middle of this guy's egotistical crusade.

And then I thought...did that make me a hypocrite?

Who was I next to him, when once-upon-a-time-ago, I'd started one fire too many someone should've arrested me for.

Did being a firefighter's wife now really make me any different from the psycho who set that fire?

God...we had to be different.

This idiot set his fires because he was after something.

Money. Street cred. Insurance fraud. Or some socially deviant agenda to stick it to "the man"--and by association with the city--the city's first responders.

There were dozens of reasons for arson that all came down to the endgame of personal gain, by means of intentionally committing a crime and hurting others.

I wasn't that person.

I was impulsive, but I wasn't a murderer.

I set fires because I was sick. I didn't want anything out of it except the thrill of watching a beautiful object smolder, an artsy motif to all the shit going on in my head, and each flutter of ash was one more step toward clarity and release for me.

All I wanted was to stop feeling the way I did sometimes, and sometimes, I couldn't stop once I got started.

But I never wanted to hurt people.

I never put a gun to anyone's head for it.

Still...as much as I liked to think I had changed my old ways after getting married, it wasn't always easy to draw a clear-cut line between pyromania and arson.

I told myself loving Noe was enough. Noe and the happy life we were building together would be my new reason to "stay clean", and so far, I'd kept that vow to myself, going 13 months sober from fire-starting.

But love didn't always save me.

Not from the insomnia, or the random-ass cravings, or those waves of nausea I got when my anxiety built up too much for me to handle, little notch by little notch.

Instead of thinking about normal anniversary stuff, like how much more amazing lovemaking felt a year into our marriage, or how much I was looking forward to our planned canoe lessons tomorrow morning out on the lake, I kept going back to those two lighters in my duffle bag, right at the foot of our bed.

And then once I started thinking about that, I couldn't shut off that obsessive ruminating cycle of starting another fire.

I sighed, turning away from Noe toward the wooden paneled closet.

Sighed again, and turned onto my back, staring up at the wooden paneled ceiling.

Maybe the ceiling wood panels would be a better distraction than the closet ones. Maybe if I counted the little grooves in between each one, it'd be like counting sheep and finally put me to sleep.