Shadows Upon The Wall

It's interesting on how the mind will play tricks on you, imagining things that you thought were there but never really were.  That is how I feel with her right now.  It's not necessarily fair to bring her into this like this, but there is not a better way of describing it.  I am reminded of how things were when I was suffering from insomnia.  The days and nights of restless activity, striving to accomplish something that I knew all too well would never occur, but still attempting to do anything in my power to get it done.  Day 1 is just that, an ambivalent sense of impending doom, realizing that you have no control over what is about to happen, but you ride with it, hoping for the best.  Day 2 comes and it isn't any better.  The sweats start in, the mind races like having been on a weekend bender that has just completed.  But there still is hope.  Day 3 arrives and the shadow people make their appearance, attacking your peripheral fields of vision and vanishing as soon as you cast a side-long stare in that direction.  Hope is still present.  Day 4 comes and there is no difference between you and something that would resemble a paranoid schizophrenic zombie, seeing things you know for a fact aren't there but your mind is convincing you otherwise and your body is so abysmally weak that moving your head to try and stare down the shadow people is on par with a body builder's workout.  Day 5, and you fall down a flight of stairs into something vaguely resembling a coma, where modern science would probably be hard-pressed to locate any brain activity.  Days 6, 7, and 8 are the recovery period, spent laying in bed and cherishing the few moments of sleep that you will have before the cyclical act of insomnia begins to rear its ugly head once again.

It is all to easy to attribute this to love, infatuation, “I'm in like with you” to what has been happening.  A cuddle on a bench on many a cold night, regaling each other with stories past, jovial and dejected, bracing against the wind off the harbor.  A gentle stroke of a hand upon a knee, another hand helping it along.  Arm curled along the back of the bench and daintily grasping her shoulder.  The smell and feel of being nestled in her hair, the perfume debilitating.  All the while smoke lingering for an instant in the air, watching it curl off the ends of the cigarettes and escaping into nothingness.  Or me laying upon my bed, her cross-legged on the floor, reclining against the framework.  Alcohol works its magic.  A caress of a solitary finger along the nape of her neck, traveling up slowly to around the lobe of her ear, returning with as much deliberateness and patience.  Holding hands washed amid the light of the television, neither focused on the screen.  The side-long glimpses towards one another, thinking that the other isn't looking but knowing full well that they are.

Those are the good days though.  The bad ones where we don't talk, or I cannot form a single postulate in my mind to save my life, stunned into silence when staring into her eyes.  Yes, I am fully aware of how cliche that sounds, but it has happened on more than one occasion.  Or saying the most stupid thing imaginable just for the sake of talking to her and reaping the repercussions afterward from her blinding wit.  Being blown off at her door for some unknown reason, no explanation and handed a curt goodbye, left feeling exceptionally awkward as I return, shuffling my feet and watching the ground slowly pass.  Every day lately seems like an adventure.  I never know what to expect anymore besides after 5 minutes of physically being with her, I freeze up.  Those awkward silences seem to multiply and I'm just left there, stupid and dumbfounded, while the other loses interest.  Leaving them doomed to repeat the same mistakes that I cause in every relationship I have ever been in which inevitably leaves me cold and alone once again, recoiling from loneliness and wishing for someone to take me in to commit the same atrocities all over.  I am a glutton for punishment.