I didn't write yesterday. I spent it in a stupor after I looked at the calendar and realized, oh, yeah that was six years ago today that I walked down to the church late one night to ask Jake to stop working and come home and sleep already and he told me he was done.
Jake was never a person to put down roots past the windy cliff where he grew from a boy into a man. He lived with few possessions and traveled on whims that would have left most people clinging to civilization. He spent months in places like Nepal and India and Brazil. He stood high above every cloud, a blonde viking with a need to find God in tangible form and once he even said he found God in me but I'm almost sure now it was less of a revelation and more of a wishful thought.
Sam came to me last night and took the brandy away and said I really should read those remaining letters now, he made copies of everything, scanning them into the computer so that I could easily read them on the iPad or whatever but I've never opened them. They just sit.
Sam put his arms around me and kissed the top of my head and told me I am doing great.
He lies so easily. I think God gives him that power.
I told him it wasn't comforting so he shifted gears and told me to come watch television with him and we went and curled up on the couch like cats and we never turned on the television at all. He surfed emails on his phone without answering any and I fell asleep in his warm arm the moment my feet left the floor.
When I woke up this morning I was still there and so was he only someone had tucked a blanket around us. When I woke up I couldn't catch a full breath because the weight on me is so heavy. I hate Halloween. I hate that his birthday is right there and that we could have grown old together but we won't now because he took that, he took everything with him and it all smashed to bits on the pavement along with him. He took future memories and plans and my love for him and he broke it without asking.
He took Himself too. Capitalized because nothing says The Lord quite like a large nonexistent entity you pray to, worship and feel all around you all the time. God has a name and His name is Jake and He has forsaken me but I still believe in Him. Sam laughs and shakes his head and feels helpless and quiet and resigned.
Ben couldn't take the bend in my life right on this week each year that has permanently changed everything, preventing the past from colliding with the present, keeping the future just out of reach. I can't reconcile anything past 2007 so instead I retreat to happier times when I was young and knew nothing but hunger pangs and starry eyes, when I first learned that falling in love makes your body feel the same swoop of your internal organs flying out of place and your heart hitting your ribcage at a hundred miles an hour that you get when you take a ride at an amusement park and then later when you swing high above a crowd on a trapeze.
And then later still when the fear comes crashing in and everything is ripped away, including your confidence in a net below, and you are left cold, afraid of everything and stubborn as all fuck because life isn't a show after all. You can't pick your props, plan your acts or take just one more ride so you better enjoy it while it lasts. Revel in those lights, scream when your heart makes the leap and love for everything you're worth because you might turn out to be fool's gold and won't that be a goddamned surprise.
