into the traces left at the bottom of the cup.
In and out in and out
My days blend into a far too still and predictable line.
The movement sways so little that I question if
there is a difference between days at all.
Remembering old loves...
some with such disdain
or regret
or surprise
or sorrow.
It is not the ones I was most heartbroken to let go that sting the most in the brooding that comes on dark winter nights.
Nights where the sunlight has just said fuck you, I'm out.
She leaves now at a shocking hour, staying only as long as she absolutely must to keep up opinions and convince us that she still remains a part of it all.
perhaps I am taking my cues from her.
But on these days when the darkness has been given an early chance to creep in,
as I sit and think about chances that have come and gone,
ones I have pretended to try to tie my heart to,
it isn't the ones that broke my heart that linger longest in these shadowy spots.
Instead, I am more often consumed with the ones that I could have sworn were lovely things,
in the afterthought.
Looking back, I have had it good a few times.
These are the ones that pushed me away the fastest and hardest and most desperately.
It's funny. This odd creature that I am.
Have always been.
Will probably always be.
Sure, I've grown, evolved. It's survival of the fittest, baby.
Survival of the toughest, the calculating, the ones that can turn on and shut off certain things within that will cause them to physically survive.
Evolution in this respect seems to have very little to do with the emotions.
Maybe I'm going about surviving in all the wrong ways.
Maybe I've got it all wrong.
Maybe the thought of figuring it out is too scary though to make the necessary changes.
It's that time of year when the whole world falls in love....
we are promised the exciting possibility of a whole new year - Oh, how a new life might be started! Oh, the changes I will make! The love I will find! The world I will transform!
And then, every year, we are not awoken with a slap in the face or a splash of water to shock our system.
No. This is what we need to happen.
It seems that I sleep each January first morning a little later, stretching my muscles slowly as I fight that unwelcome pull to open my eyes. I awake with no new purposes, no new insight, no actual gumption to make all those exciting changes that, somehow, as I lay in bed on the dawn of the new year, seem suddenly less appealing and far more daunting.
And silently, unadmitting, and shamefully, I choose to close my eyes again, thus giving myself permission for the rest of the year to continue to make all the same mistakes and live the same little life.
This year, I hope I have the commitment to get out of bed. I have lain to long in this comfortable section of my life - where I am warm and unbothered.
I need that splash of water to shock me out of bed.
Maybe this year, I should stop trying to be a lot like love and be a little more like living.
