Best to be the Changing Water

It's times like these I wonder if I'll ever be alright again. I know the pain has got to go away sometime, and it's usually not this bad. Someday all I'll have is a scar on my heart in the shape of her name, but right now it's still a tender injury, fighting infection.

Even in my dreams she's nothing but a fantasy, a memory twisting into my heart to make it bleed again. A twisted, beautiful memory, sharp and sweet, with the bitterest aftertaste.

I miss her like the sun and rain and wind. Her warmth, when she was true to her heart, when she smiled shyly and I knew beyond a doubt that I adored her, wanted nothing more than to make her happy. Even when she cried and screamed she was beautiful. I don't know where we got so lost.

I got so jaded, and so overwhelmed.

How can one be so jaded and so naive at the same time? To believe so strongly in everyone else, and yet never in my own self.

I still remember how it felt to wake up curled around her, protective and warm. Did I touch her cheek and smile, and tell her without words how I felt? I can't remember. It's all a blur, the words that stand out are rare in the muddle, the actions even more so.

I dreamed that I was imagining her there. Dreamed I was pretending I could hold her tight again. How twisted is that? How broken.

Apparently the combination of large amounts of time left to my own devices, and recent time regularly spent keeping up with flawless_mask (because I want to, because I like to read when she writes, because I want to see more, know more about her. Now that she's writing, I think she's the only other person whose journal I'm actually reading with any regularity..) has left me wanting to write in my own journal.

It's interesting to realize that you're living your dreams, even more so to recognize that you're living someone else's. Not to the fullest extent, but then my dreams aren't fully realized yet either.

I'm sitting here, feeling both a sense of contentment, and a slowly growing sense of boredom and uselessness. I could be doing something. But this isn't my place, and I don't know exactly what I would do. I washed nearly all the dishes yesterday, did a quick vacuuming of whatever floor was available, and the couch to clear it of excess cat fur.

I have no tea.

This post is much more run-of-the-mind than even I usually do, I suppose.

So, anyways. I'm sitting here in James' apartment, having decided to spend my three days off from work here. What will I learn, living here more? I always find myself learning more about people when I start staying longer with them.

I found myself slipping, yesterday. I think I'm fine again this morning, *pauses as one of the cats murrs and demands her attention* ...though I'm feeling more tired and groggy than yesterday. I'm starting to wonder what will become of me come summertime, how I will be. Summer's been an especially tough time for me over the last few years.

He's so accommodating, he's so loving, I'm certain any issues there are can be worked out with nothing more than some conversation and time. I feel as though I'm living someone else's life.

Secretly, I wonder if, without my mother being who she is, I wouldn't have been in exactly the same situation as Zee. Fewer siblings, and I the eldest rather than the youngest. But nonetheless.

I wonder if that terrifying disorder could have been my own. I see traces of things in my own behaviour, catch myself wondering. When they're not always voluntary, when I have to fight so very hard to keep them under control sometimes.

Mayhaps, just a twist in my own thinking, but there it is. The potential. I wonder if the opposite could be true as well.

I only wish there was more that I could do for her, more that I could say to help. The best thing I can do is simply to be there, and to truly be there when she needs me most, difficult as that can sometimes be.

I can't imagine life without her now that I know her.

Okay, I can. But I don't really want to. She's one of those people in my life that makes me happy. One of the people that I want to have around for the rest of my life, and those are few and far between.

It's tough to type with a cat in your lap, especially a large one.

It's nice to know I'm accepted by the cats, now. They stayed in bed with me when James took his bath yesterday, both curled up on my chest, one beneath the covers and one above. Spike mostly doesn't hiss and spit and bite at me, now. When he does, it's generally because I've picked him up and thoroughly disgruntled him, and I laugh and put him down. He purrs for me, even when James isn't around; they both do.

Sassy mews for my attention, comes running over to get petted, and when I pick her up into my lap she cuddles, purrs, settles. After sticking her back claws into my legs a few times, of course, in the course of her getting comfortable.

I'm thinking I will go and get dressed, see about going down to the exercise room and playing around with the equipment for a little while, going for a walk. Doing something that isn't being cooped up inside, comfortable and cat-filled though that may be.