All Is Broken

I don't know what to do right now. The man I loved is dead and all of a sudden, nothing makes sense. I feel disconnected from reality right now. I wish someone would hit the pause button to make it all stop for just one second, but I can't.

I went into work yesterday and one of the dancers asked me how Clyde was doing. I hadn't heard from him since Tuesday when he called to say hi. He told me heard Clyde was dead. I called a couple of his friends to ask what was going on, but it was true: He died of a drug overdose. He was already on the painkillers for his foot.

Since then, I've just been going from on thing to the next. I look around the apartment and remember little things, find little traces of him scattered through my home. The cup from McDonald's he drank from, the ashes from his cigarette, one of his shirts he left at my place. I put it on hoping that maybe this one little thing might bring me closer to him, but no. It can't.

Everything becomes a cruel reminder of him: The couch we cuddled on, the bed we slept in, unrecycled cans of beer I've neglected to turn in. Random memories start floating in, when we first met, when we first kissed, how he told me he would never let anything bad happen to me.

The phone rings and for one sick moment I think it's him, but it's not him. It'll never be him.

I go out to see a movie, hoping that maybe it'll make reality seem a little less real. The walk only brings back more memories. The fountain where we sat, and where he tore up some grass...For a moment I smelled smoke from the kind of cigarettes he bought, and for one second he's back again, he's alive and everything is okay. Then it ends.

The movie distracts me for two hours, but the credits roll and everything goes back to how it was. I walk outside and all of a sudden, everything becomes a potential cause of suicide. The nagging voice in the back of my head that says that wearing his shirt won't bring him back, but there's one thing...One little thing. Like hitting the off switch.

I walk back home and the pain comes crashing in like waves. At first, the pain was just like a blade, so sharp you can hardly feel a thing. It severs you from everything and everyone else, but this is not that kind of pain. This one comes for you, swallows you whole so you can't breathe and just one you think it's too much it recedes. But it comes back again and again and each time it gets that much worse.

I get home and fall asleep on the floor. I can't sleep on the couch, because I remember him holding me and feeling his breath. I can't go into my bed because I remember watching him wake up there, smiling and knowing that everything would be alright. I grab the comforter and some pillows and sleep on the floor in front of the TV wearing nothing but his shirt. I hug a pillow as I fall to sleep, but it doesn't have his warmth.

I close my eyes and all of a sudden the pain becomes magnified. The memories become stronger, the hurt becomes more real and no amount of begging will make it stop. I fall asleep but I don't dream, and when I wake up, everything is fine for five quick seconds. I think of Clyde and wonder what he's doing, and the truth sets in again. Clyde is dead and he'll never come back.

Outside, the sky is cloudy and the sun won't shine, and I sort of hope it never does. My love is dead.