Morning Would

We were supposed to be staying 6 feet away but we really wanted to touch each other. His back was sore so I put him between my legs and started rubbing his shoulders. I heard somebody calling a child behind me. Familiar voice and a familiar name. As soon as I realized who it was, a child tackled me to the ground while screaming playful, happy, excited instigations to play back. I love to play, so I turned around and started tickling the tiny human. All three of us were bursting in giggles and joy.

I noticed heavy feet coming up behind me relatively quickly. I turned around and the source of the movement stopped immediately. The baby had two mothers, one of them was my ex-girlfriend and one of them was the girl standing in front of me pointing a gun in my face. They were supposed to have been broken up a long time before we ever started talking but that’s a whole different story. I turned around and I told the little boy to close his eyes and cover his ears. I apologized to my crush for what I was about to do. I turned back around and began to verbally abuse the woman pointing the gun in my face.

“I hate people who hurt children. You’re done exposing this child to all of this physical and emotional violence and manipulation. With you raising him, he’s either going to be an insecure martyr like his other mother, or a violent abusive asshole like you.” Then I knocked her out with one swing of the left to her jaw while I grabbed the gun and made a smart ass comment about how people need to take the safety off if they want run up on me with a gun.

I woke up immediately after. Feeling everything that I felt in the dream. Loss. Rejection. Solitude. Sadness. Embarrassment. Helplessness. Like it’ll never get better. I have these dreams that have pieces of the past in them and they fuck my day up. It’s three in the morning, my heart is racing, it makes me sick to my stomach. I go, destroy my toilet, and try to lay back down. Laying down feels beyond restless. My teeth grind. My feet shake like I’m already running. My mind is up to no good and my body is begging it to let it rest, my brain wants to rest but it can’t anymore. We compromise. I’ll lay here until it is light enough to get up and run. ALone. ALways. I hate waking up ALone. I try to change my thoughts. I’m really never ALone, Simba’s here, snoring, thank the gods.

Embarrassingly enough the thoughts are mostly about her, lots of hers, all leaving, being rude about it, and never coming back. There are lots of people who love me dearly and I feel guilty that I don’t wake up feeling their presence but my subconscious apparently lives in a world of loss. It doesn’t matter. The birds come back every morning. So does the sun, even if no one can see it. Even if a character from the tribe of women who haunt my dreams came back into my waking world, or I was able to wake up already feeling the glass half full, it wouldn’t matter. No one can save you. If it doesn’t bite you in the morning, it’ll find you at night. There are so many hours in the day. Three down, 15 to go.

When I notice myself fantasizing about hurting them or helping them or doing anything related to them I try to stop myself immediately, like flipping a light switch. Send them forgiveness, peace, and abundance, say one of my mantras, and think about some thing else. Fucking exhausting. Admittedly, by the end of the day, if I haven’t gotten into trouble, I’ll reward myself by not stopping the thoughts. “Great restraint Al, you didn’t hurt her in real life, you redirected thoughts about it all day, so now you get to hurt her as much as you’d like…in your imagination without any judgment for enjoying her screams.” But I ALways judge myself for it. The birds are out, the sun is up, I think I’ll jog at city park today. You never know who you might run into.