the hair of the dog that bit you

Nighttime is hard. Every time is hard but nighttime is the worst. You have nothing else to do but think about how handsome he was and little trickles of me wonder if I left too quickly...and then floods of me scream NO! as they gush down my face. I did the right thing and I knew it felt right when I did it. I won't pretend that I am not lonely for the good things. The familiarity...getting to know someone in a romantic "yr mine" candy hearts kind of way is work. Testing limits and seeing what they are all about isn't kid stuff. I'm aching for the jokes, the laughter and the kisses. There is a rain barrel of tears gathering behind these eyes. We had so many special moments and I just don't know where they all go to after the fallout. I imagine a memory mausoleum with tattered, tear-stained moments scribbled on slips of paper. Forgotten seconds after sex, the first time they took your hand, getting lost in a corn maze, hearing them beg you to come back...hearing the door shut after they have walked out and left. Knowing I risk a PTSD meltdown if I set foot in a petting zoo seems so absurd, going to Wendy's on a Sunday night is a sacrilege. So what do you do? You wake up in the middle of the night and start crying for no good fucking reason and then you are tired all the next day and you can't for the life of you remember why. For fifteen years I wondered if I would ever love again and I should know by now that I most certainly will. I guess I made a bad investment...people do that sometimes. I didn't do my research and check the statistics and in this case I had plenty to go by. I got burned by someone I cared for and there is nothing I can do about it now but continue on being myself and saying the wacky shit that I say and just hope that out of all the people I offend in Utah that one of them is a man who thinks it's charming and is exactly what he is after. Someone who enjoys to dote and be doted, someone who can smote and be smoted. Someone that likes being a thirty something in America in 2012 and sees it as a challenge fit for the brave and true. My heart may be crumbled up and drying out but oh how it was shining and wet for him. It will be again...I know that, or I just tell myself that in hopes I will believe it again. I have done more for myself as a person in the last thirty days than I did in the last four years. Maybe it is self-preservation but I think it's because I don't have the weight of his pain, ignorance and pessimism holding me down any longer...except when I get night terrors.