Clandestine Confessions

I laid in bed this morning with an intense urge to scream.

Or break something.

Or cry.

It all felt haphazard.

That sensation has been there for about a week – emotions demanding for expression.

It is suffocating.

–

Anxiety has been loud the past few days.

It has been my alarm clock every morning and my lullaby every evening.

Its arrival; anticipated.

Its brutal entrance; a blindside.

Sparking dreams that turn into my demise.

It is a game of Operation within my mind on these mornings.

Trying to seamlessly slip myself back into reality to not trigger the memories into real time.

Painstakingly replacing every thought that was just planted with one of truth and remembrance of my present moment.

Letting the tears fall as my brain works to erase all that I just saw.

–

He was in it.

It has been a while since it has happened.

Partly what made it so jarring. 

Will I ever be okay to see his face again?

–

It was his wedding day.

Nobody knew I was there. I was hiding in a corner of the house silently observing.

Every time I would try to leave discretely something else would distract me.

Fiction collides with reality…

–

I am not going to rehash the dream in its entirety.

But there was a scene where the new bride was sitting at a table with her family.

They asked her how they got here after all they went through.

After she found out about the betrayal.

–

There was always a part of me that wished I was her in this triangle – the one who was ignorantly blissful to even being in one.

I knew all the details of both of his worlds.

And was asked often by him for advice on what he should do.

Always found that to be such a strange request to seek from one of the two options.

–

And contrary to what people would assume, I never told him to pick me.

I had made him a promise long ago to always let him lead. To never undermine him as a man by making his choices for him.

I wanted to empower him.

Help build a leader with integrity and wisdom.

And that I would uphold to the very end – or at least try to.

–

But perhaps that was the downfall.

To never get on my knees begging him to make me his chosen forever.

But what if I did and what if he did?

Is that really how I would want to know I earned my place as a priority in his life?

Pleading to be seen.

Beseeching to be kept.

Desperation determining my fate.

Because then I have to also ask myself, once obtained, would it ever end…?

I always say to fight for love but never fight to be loved.

–

“Follow your heart,” I would always say.

“What if it wants both?”

“Then you are morally bankrupt”….okay, did not say that. But I thought it.

It was in those moments I began to fully comprehend how faulty that advice is.

And have seized saying it since.

–

He wanted the easy way out.

My attempt at character building apparently not making any impact all these years.

I say this next part with tough love from a whole lot of experience…stop trying to save people.

Seriously, stop.

And if you are looking to be saved, stop that too.

I know every excuse you could possibly give me right now for continuing.

I have spoken them all myself.

And I could follow up with every reason why the justifications have no merit.

I have lived them all myself.

And I have yet to see a person not get destroyed in the process.

So please, save yourself.

–

“We had a lot to work through after I found out about her,” she said in the dream. “The hardest part was finding the photos and seeing all she gave of herself to him. I realized how much she must have trusted him to do that. Could I ever give him that?”

–

And there it was.

The part of the dream I have been fighting through an emotional hell from which to come back.

Because it is the very part I have yet to allow myself to heal from.

The one that still haunts me with every touch of my skin, taunts me with every look at my reflection.

The one that still forces me to shield my body from being seen, torments me when I wear certain clothes.

The one that still has me entwined with the habits of self-destruction.

–

For once in my life can this body not be the battleground?

–

To be continued…