| Current mood: |  hopeful |
| Current music: | Mai ; Loudermilk |
I run so hard at absent pace to cover up this bitter taste of waste
I don't remember how long ago that night was. I remember it as clear as if it happened yesterday, the feel of body against mine, his breath on my shoulder, I can remember the feel of my stomach churning and tears burning my eyes. I can remember the sear of pain cutting through my heart, I can remember the immense fear, I can remember the disturbing shock that this, this man, who was doing this, who was violating me and betraying me in a way I never thought anyone ever could, was actually my husband.
I can remember. But I can't tell you how long ago it happened. But I can tell you that it's felt like forever. That I've been so distanced from him. So repulsed by his actions, so terrified of his capabilities, so amazingly disgusted at him for what he did to me.
We separated for a few weeks, I returned back to my home in Boca, and I shut myself off from the world. Away from my band, away from my family, away from everyone. I could barely stand to look at myself in the mirror, why would anyone else want to look at me? I detached myself from everything real. It kept me numb, and then, numb was all I wanted to feel. No more pain, no more anger, no more disbelief, no more betrayal. Just a comfortable numbness that left me not really living through the day, but rather just existing.
When the numbing effect started to wear off, I'd write. I look back on those songs some days, and they chill me. How dark they are. Angry. I look back on them and I wonder who I was then. What side of me had decided to show itself for the first time. Frankly, I'm disgusted with myself for writing songs like those.
Sometimes they took the pain away, sometimes I'd just go numb again, but more often than not, they just ended up as words on a piece of paper, as meaningless and uninteresting as I'd recently turned into. Writing is a theraputic process for me. Only it seemed to work in reverse this time. Instead of relieving me, it only made things worse. I can remember one day being so angry after writing that I nearly threw my guitar into the wall. But an absurd thought came to me then, as they most often do in times when we think humor is far, far away, and I realized that if I did so, the guitar would more than likely break, and I'd have to go get another one. Well, no way in hell was I about to leave the confines of my little 2-bedroom square.
I would lay awake most nights, most usually on my couch, and stare blankly up at the ceiling. If I closed my eyes, I'd feel it again, too harsh, too real, to ignore. So I'd just stare up into the dark, as ugly as the inside of my mind.
Jeff came back sometime later, when I was in a state that nobody would really find endearing. I'd begun to spiral through some sort of severe depression apparently, and I looked it. I hadn't showered or shaved in three days, I certainly don't recall ever finding the need to eat. All I wanted was sleep. Blackness. Dark. Away from it all. But I couldn't sleep. If I tried, it'd come back, and I'd lay awake for hours, trembling, crying, begging for it to go away.
He took care of me that day, showered me, dressed me in fresh clothes and put me to bed. I vaguely remember a conversation, but what it consisted of, I can't recall. I was so tired. I was killing myself, I could feel it. Little by little, my body was breaking down. He held me, and somehow, I slept. Perhaps I just finally gave in to the exhaustion, perhaps it was because I was in his arms, and that told me that I had something to hang on for.
Slowly, things began to work themselves out with us. I remembered to smile again, and the dark fog in my mind began to lift. My memory of those days doesn't serve me very well, undoubtedly because of that same fog that pervaded through me, but a part of me believes it's simply because I'm tired of remembering the struggles.
Recently, I've been able to get closer to him in the physical sense. There was a time following that night that the mere thought of anything remotely sexual relating to Jeff made me nauseous. But with each kiss, each little touch, it seemed to get easier. In the back of my mind, there always existed to me the very real, the very frightening, possibility that any minute, I could end up in the same position as that night, feeling how I did all over again.
Somewhere in the middle of this, life got in the way and threw some swerves in the road. Between Tina's passing, the twins, and...well, a subject we won't even get into....it's been tough to let our concentration lie where it needs to be most. On us. On making us work again. On remembering what it was that we had before and finding it again.
Tonight, though...tonight...I think we made a pretty good stride in the right direction. I've been fighting this for a while, I've been too afraid to give in, I've been too afraid of him to let myself believe that it was only once. That it was a fluke, that it was something that truly would never happen again.
I was petrified again tonight. It felt so alien, to be touched in the ways he touched me, to be kissed in the ways he kissed me. He felt alien to me. I was giving in, my walls were breaking, because alien as it were, it was Jeff. And somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I knew that. This was Jeff, this was my husband, this was the man I loved; the man I'd swore my life to.
He didn't know that, though, that I was coming to this realization. All he felt was me trembling around him, all he saw was me trying so desperately not to cry. And just like that, he was curled up with his back to me, trembling and crying just as I was. Something about the site made me angry. I was the one who'd been hurt, dammit. But something else came to me. A new confidence. A new belief. A new affirmation that this time, this time it would be like it had been. Like that first time he ever made love to me. Gentle. Slow. And with this epiphany, with this sudden desire, lust...I asked him. And when he refused, I demanded.
I needed to know that Jeff again. I needed to remember that Jeff. And I did. I found him again, in his kiss, in his touch, in his hold. I found the vulnerable beauty that had entrapped me so easily before, that had drowned me so quickly. I found him.
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