On Dreams Belonging

This an excerpt from a novella I'm writing titled "On Dreams Belonging"

On Dreams:

What point is there to love if you do not love furiously? 

Love; a little bit?  No. 

Doubt.

There can be none.

I loved Bridgette completely.  There were days when I was mad at her, disappointed at her, and even days when I thought that my life would be better off without her.  But I always without abandon loved her.  I will never love again as I did her.  It is simply not possible, therefore; I do not see the point in trying to love again as I know that any future love will be watered down.  It would be a love veneer; thin faux wood covering the termite trodden true emotion that lay beneath stinking of neglect and damp long time shadows.

Every night when I lay down for sleep I think about this while the harshest of heavy metal music plays.  It has to be loud.  It has to be loud enough that I can’t hear myself cry.  If I don’t hear it it isn’t as bad.  It is enough that I feel the wet stains salt my cheeks and pillow.  It can never be loud enough.  I want the music to play so loud that it screams and tears holes in my body.  That the pressure of the bass and the screech of the bending guitar solos shred the flesh and fuse the music to my bones so that they may bend and break and the marrow can spurt out in guttural vocal avalanches.  The music and I want each other.  Every night we struggle to merge.  We struggle against the other and vie for control in a perverse rhythmic hip grinding orgasm of pain and a singular soon forgotten moment of completeness.

I struggle to force down thoughts of me in love with her.

Then I sleep.  And I lose.

I hate sleeping.  It is nothing but pain for me.  When I sleep I dream of her.  Every night we smile and laugh and make love, and all the pain is gone and all the lies are gone and all the peripheral people are gone and it is us and only us and only us and only us and nothing else matters.

I wake up every morning with a smile and the image of her body naked and quivering under her own smile.

I wake up every morning.

I wish I didn’t.

Waking means losing the dream.  Waking means coming to grips with the s****y waste of my life.  Waking means the promise of another night of dreaming and another morning of realization.  Waking means flesh.  Waking means pain.  Waking means faking smiles and pretending I’m okay and hoping nobody asks me any questions because I have no experiences that do not relate back to her.  Everything I have to say relates back to her.  Everything I enjoy I enjoy because of her, but I don’t want to talk about her.  I don’t want anyone to know that after all this time I still hurt so much.  That I’m not over it.  That I never will be.

I wish my sleep was filled with boogie men and horrible tortures and abuse and all the kinds of ugly that my mind could conjure up, because then waking up would be an improvement and a sanctuary from the fear.  But, no.  Waking is the fear I run from every night for a few hours.   I would be happy if I did not have to wake up; if I could dream forever of holding her again and the quiet promise on her lips that we would be together forever was for my ears only.  For my heart only.  Forever would not be long enough.

         This kind of love I can never have in my heart for somebody else.  I will not deal in half-loves just to have somebody to come home to at night that I can f**k and lie to about my feelings.