Unreal

Please go away please go away please just go the fuck away. It’s too  painful. It's not about you. No. Not you. I just...

I don’t know. Please. Please. I just need to be alone.

The words sit inside me—searing, stifling molten copper. I try to hear him, try to bring the right response from the smoky depths. A shrug, a nod, a single, hollow word—each an echo in the barrenness.

Goddamit! 
I’ve done everything right. All the things I was supposed to do. Years of therapy. Medication. Reams of journaling. Meditation. . Revelations and grief. Restlessness and rage. Over and over and over and over. Pulling myself out, All those times I came so close— 

So close

—and pulled myself from the brink.

Dropping the bag of pills

Steadying the steering wheel

Gripping my phone as if that slender connection to the world could save me

But always, unable to make a call...

“Sorry. What did you say?”

He cuts another a bite of cold, leftover pork chop while swallowing the bite already in his mouth. “I said tomorrow’s that dinner meeting.”

Meeting. Dinner. Work. Not me.

“They’re talking about moving it from that place we always go. It’s getting more and more expensive and the service isn’t that great. So we’re meeting at…”

So close… so many times I've come within a breath of oblivion. And then, somehow, stepped right back into my life. So glad I didn’t go through with it. So glad I managed to survive, once again. So astonished at how close I came—at how that storm can build and grow and take over everything.
           Even now.
           After all the work I’ve done. With all the tools I hold. All the forgiveness I’ve managed. All the letting go and exquisite release. Even now, it can rise up and threaten to swallow me whole. The desperation. The excruciating hopelessness. The cold, dense fog that spreads over everything, drowning perception, blighting reason....

“…so, it’s good the baby’s coming now—”

“Baby?”

For a moment, he sees me.
Really sees me. 
“You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine. I just missed what you said.”

“My partner’s wife is in labor." He watches me for another moment, a bite sitting unchewed in his mouth, his knife poised to make another cut. "I’ve been talking about it for a while.”

“Sorry. I heard you talking about the call schedule, and the person in ICU but I missed the mention of the baby. Isn’t this early?”

He chews. Swallows. Cuts another bite. “Yes. The baby was supposed to come around Christmas, but this is going to make it easier. He’ll take some time off, but at least it won’t screw up the Christmas call schedule.”
The call schedule. That's what's important here. 

“Yeah. That’s good.”

I push a few grains of cold fried rice around with my fork. Force another mouthful. Wash down the salty blandness with tepid water. It’s almost tolerable.

Almost.

I carry the bowl to the sink. Run the rest down the drain. Give my thoughts a sharp slap.

Jesus. He comes home for lunch and all I do is grit my teeth and wish he'd go?
And another.
What the fuck is wrong with me? Jesus-fucking-christ what’s the point? What’s the  fucking point of any of this? Is this good for him? I’m not even here. I’m not real at all. Have I ever been real?

No one sees me... 

No one hears me...

and I hear no one....

He heads back to work.

I cancel the appointment with my therapist. Hold my isolation close. Count the hours until I have to pretend again. I write. Worthless words on a virtual page. Silently, I read them over. Backspace. Rewrite. Insignificant thoughts expressed to no one. I turn them over, immerse myself in their intricate beauty, and then discard them line by line because I know—

I know

—there is something I could be doing—

SHOULD be doing

—but I choose poorly. The wrong thoughts. The wrong words. The wrong actions. Over and over. Line by line. Pointless, useless, worthless, wrong. I stare at the words until I can’t anymore and then head into the orange glow of dwindling daylight. My footprints strike a line across the heavily frosted ground while the white vapor of my breath billows and dissipates. Tiny clouds. Fragile and fleeting, but proof, none-the-less.   I am real. I am here. For this moment, for what it's worth, I exist.