Turn down the bed. Lay your suffering down on the mattress and tuck it in for tonight. Tuck me in and sing to me. I need you to say the right thing tonight. I need to hear your care. Your arms are what I'm fighting with, but I don't want to be like this. Know this – and tell me to stop. Tell me you won't allow it. I'm a glass of spilled milk and I've been sitting out all night. I'm sour and achey and I need a place to lie down.
I'm sorry. Shit. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know the monster that I am when I pick up the phone. You only hold out your hands, you only try and try, and I don't understand why you aren't better. It's not fair and I'm so sorry because how can I expect this from you when anyone could see that half the time I’m just a human fire – no, this is not a good thing. A quarter of the time I'm loose stitching and the final quarter I'm all-cylinders-firing mania. How do you deal with me? How do you love me without blood. Without tears. Oh. It's not without tears – or blood. Right. I’m sorry again.
Misery loves company and I'll sit here all day in your sadness because it's different than my own.
I wish I could keep my mouth shut. I wish I would remind myself that you don't owe me your ears, that my expectation is just mean, that I blame the blood in my head for making me cruel sometimes. You’ve tried to tell me this before and I don’t blame you. I try so hard to be appropriately defensive, but not so much that it looks like I actually think you might have a point.
I do, by the way, think you are right sometimes.
I just want to wrestle the words from my throat so badly in those moments that I end up with a handful of my vocal chords and silence. I'm always hiding under clothing racks from my younger self – the round ones in department stores with sweaters like the ones I always steal from you. I hide from my current self at times too. I don’t know if I can ask this of you, but please don’t ever stop looking for me. I promise I’m working on this. I promise that one day you won’t find me feet up in the last fitting room on the left.
Know that I appreciate your patience and your ears and I love your heart so much that I modelled my own after it. Know that I have the passion I do because of you. I have his stubbornness, there’s no denying this, but I use it for my determination to pursue love rather than logic. And he loves you, so I hope he can appreciate this, even if he can't understand it. You taught me to stand with that notion.
My burdens shouldn’t weigh on your tired eyes. There’s no sense in the both of us trying to carry this. I worry about you too, you know. Have you slept lately? Please, I love you, get some sleep. You want to know how I’m doing, but I need to hear anything other than my own voice tonight. Please don’t worry so much. I will be better in the morning.