I stood outside when the roof gave inIf you blinked this morning, you would have missed the moment where I faltered, losing my drive to keep putting one foot in front of the other when the bullshit surrounding Joel became a little too much and I left his apartment (over my garage) after telling him to just stop packing and then couldn't go back inside, couldn't face the others and so I sank down onto the bottom stair of the front steps and let the rain soak me to the bone.
You called from the wreckage you were lying in
You were out of reach and were out of time
But I took it all and towed that line
You held my hand and pulled me down with you
It sucks to admit that he's right and that I need him here because I don't trust my own emotions and I scare myself to pieces on an hourly basis with the unchecked thoughts that reach out from the sidelines and try to knock me over.
It's not often they miss.
It's not often I admit that I need someone who can do nothing for me on the romantic front. I don't care about these things. Getting better with my healthy responses and behavioral maps that will teach me to fake it without hurting myself or anyone in my path until I'm strong enough to do it without the self-deception? Whatever. His map for my head to help it find its way back from grief was supposed to be a quick trip and yet here it is a lifetime later and I'm still lost and can't find the way. Or rather I'm stubborn and I refuse to do the work, for the work requires peeling my skin off and walking around blisteringly exposed, raw. Even a gust of wind hurts in that condition. So I'm a little chicken. I'm a cop-out. I'm a failure and he didn't do anything wrong recently except attempt to help the rest of them and yours truly make sense of my feelings when they crash into this house like an emotional tsunami, drowning everyone.
No survivors. Nothing unscathed.
I'm going to fail at this too. Keeping him compartmentalized while I veer wildly into the walls pretending I can walk normally. That's what being crazy is like, it's like trying to walk a straight line when you're wired to bounce off the drywall instead. It's like playing sober when you're too drunk to stand. It's like being perfectly capable of bursting into tears in the middle of a dinner party and not only does no one ask you if you're alright but they don't even react as it becomes one more habit blooming in a bouquet of self-destruction.
It's not even unusual anymore to open the door and find the little girl sitting on the steps, soaked through her clothes and unable to move. Surprised? Never. Expected, almost. Inevitable. Wait for it. Watch for it. Plan for it. Bring her in and tell her it's okay, that things will get better. Lie to her little face and she'll not believe you anyway, so that makes it okay. May as well keep him too. Just in case I do need him after all, though for what I can't fathom. I'm not a navigator. I'm not. I'm lost, twenty-four hours a day and nothing looks familiar except their faces. That's it.