Midnight Musings

It’s always the worst at night. During the daylight hours, I can go through the motions and pretend that everything is fine. I can laugh, smile and make merry.
But at night - when the sun is down and I’m all alone with my thoughts….that’s when the walls start closing in.
Everywhere I look, every place I go, I see ghosts of us. I remember a song we loved, a meal we cooked or a movie we watched. The present fades into the dark and the past runs into the spotlight of my mind’s eye.
I think about the years, days and minutes we spent together. I think of every laugh we shared, the little games we played and the dreams we dreamed together. I remember the days when the sun seemed brighter and the world was filled with colour. And every time these memories intrude, it takes everything I have to stop myself from breaking down.
I think of all the harsh words we threw at each other. I think of all the bad things we did to each other, all the lies and all the deceptions. I try to hate you for what you did to me, for what you did to us. But I only end up hating myself more for all that I did to you and all that I allowed to happen to you. And I wonder if I gave up too soon, if I didn’t fight enough to keep us alive, if I wasn’t strong enough to make us last.
I tell myself that I am only in love with the memory of you, with the memory of us. And most of the time, I can fool myself into believing it.
But all it takes is one phone call from you to send my careful constructs crashing down. Just one of those “hello-how-are-you” kind of calls that we make day after day to all and sundry is enough to bring me hurtling to the realization that I am still very much in love with You. Not any sepia memory, but the sound of your voice and the thought of your face.
I’ve tried to lose myself in so many ways. Chemical relief does only so much before reality creeps in. Celluloid escapism vanishes when I exit darkened cinema halls. Willing arms and warm embraces of fair ladies do little to thaw the cold I feel inside. Nothing works. I wonder if anything ever will.
I sometimes wonder why I can’t get over you. I remind myself that you’re no looker, that you aren’t the brightest bulb in the box and that you aren’t the most fascinating of conversationalists. I try to remember how my eyes glaze over when you begin to drone on about your pet peeves. But yet for all that, I can’t stop feeling that while you are not perfect, you were still perfect for me.
It’s been a year and a half and I still miss you. I still remember the exact timbre of your voice, every contour of your body and that special scent of your skin. I remember how you used to feel when you would sleep snuggled in my arms and how you used to hate waking up in the mornings.
Friends keep telling me it gets better as time goes by, that the pain will eventually recede and disappear. At first, they said it would take a few months. Then they said it would take about a year. Then, it became a year and some months.
It’s been more than that now and they tell me it will probably take another year or so.
I wonder if it will ever go away.