Why is it always at night when I feel most melancholy?

Someone once told me that we only write in journals when we are unhappy, and perhaps that's true.

I've been writing in this journal for eleven years, come July. Eleven years.

What does that say about me?

~

In the still darkness I feel the ghosts of memories lurking, just beyond the spill of light from my monitor.

It keep the monitor dim, purposefully, perhaps so I can see them.

Old lovers, dead relationships, distant friends, shades of myself now no longer pertinent.

~

A friend referenced a website in a conversation, sent me the link, so I went to it.

I started to browse. It was a collection of interesting intimate, sexual photographs of loving couples.

Enthralled, I wandered through the site, seeing echoes of myself in so many orgasmic faces.

Here and there I saved a photo, what ever I thought might be interesting to paint. I keep a file always, filled with stolen pictures for painting references.

Then...there. The curve of a skull, hair shaved close, the curve of a chocolate brown back pressed between upraised pearly white thighs.

I had to look away. It looked too much like G.

Onward I stumbled, flipping through photo after photo, but still, echoes of his body kept appearing, like a blaze of light searing the backs of my eyeballs.

Each one I checked for the telltale scar on his thigh, and each one was inconclusive.

I did not save any of the photos that looked like him.

~

There.

He's online, right this minute.

I will not talk to him. I will not talk to him.

I never do.

I know I ought to delete the contact. I deleted him everywhere else.

I'm also lying a little bit.

In January, when he texted 'Where r you?', when he was coming to apologize...I saved that text.

I know.

Terrible.

Nobody knows but you and me.

I have told nobody.

It lurks in my inbox, a dusty reminder of why I am angry at him. And even more so, it is like the candy bar I keep on top of the fridge to remind myself that I don't need to eat it to be happy.

~

Scott. There's Scott still.

Sweet Scott.

When the sun is up, Scott is on my mind.

When the sun is down, G is on my mind.

~

Something is going on in my head.

I am not happy anymore.

It is not heartbreak that is getting me down, but something deeper.

I don't know if I can explain it.

I'm restless, angry, staring at the horizon.

Trapped in some ways by my own neurosis, but trying to break free at the same time.

It's like being stapled to the floor by exercise bands, struggling to get free and continually getting pulled back again.

I am filled with the questions that plague all humans.

Who am I?

Where am I?

What the FUCK am I doing?

I need to go to bed.

~

Rob Dougan's 'There's Only Me' slips into my ears, like a lover's hand into my hair, and pulls with a bittersweet pain.

My eyes burn, from lack of sleep perhaps.

My stomach hurts from the combination of painkillers I took today.

Finally, though, finally I swallow one that works and the hot lead that fills my belly dissipates, at least for the moment.

~

You know why I should never be a writer?

Because I'm a melodramatic git.

.

Rosie.

Before&After