Sunrise

"You are a fire" he told me and I wasn't sure if it was a compliment or an insult.

The day is born and we are vacant in our bodies. We are so thirsty for adventure that we are too tired to live. We are blinded by our inconsistencies. I wanted to find you here, beneath the sun and the moon as one awakens and another is off to sleep. I wanted to know you and understand your beauty with a clean pair of eyes. But the image is out of focus. And our bodies are too close to do this with a clear head.

There is romance in the rising of the sun. There is a notion that this day has been created exactly for me. For us. There is an idea that all the beauty, all the frailty, all the madness is alive and moving through us and into the sky. The creatures of the earth are awaking and our minds are free with possibilities. I wonder, does he feel that? We keep chasing each other down the road. We keep boomeranging back and forth.

We ride side by side down a two lane highway. I called, and he picked me up, rescued me yet again from a life I can’t help but run back to. I can’t help but go there. Be there. I know it’s not where I should be, and it’s not what I should want. It’s not what he wants for me. He has plans for me, for us. He has our whole lives mapped out and he has made a home for me in it, a place for me to rest my head. I just don’t know if it’s comfortable. It’s comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time.

It’s beautiful, the notion, the idea that maybe he could complete me, but I can’t stay. For whatever reason I can’t make myself stay. I know this is probably better than what I have away from him, this is probably better than the loneliness, but even this still feels lonely.

We drive in silence. Mostly silence, except for the moments when he tells me, “I’m so happy you called.” He says, “I’m so glad you’re coming home.”

I think maybe I should be glad too, but glad is a term I don’t have much experience with. So I nod, mutter “Uh huh,” and I watch the sun lift its light on the day. I watch the trees bow to it. I watch the lines on the road. And I think, because I can’t help but think about what I am leaving. What I am walking away from.

Maybe it isn’t so bad. Maybe I overreacted. I am always doing that, overreacting. I know he thinks that. I know they all think that. I know they talk about me when I am not there and I know that everyone knows that I had to be rescued again. That he had to come find me and save me for the millionth time. Save me from myself they probably think.

But how can you save someone really? How can you rescue them if you don’t really know them. They don’t know me. They think they do, they think I’m predictable.

“Oh, there she goes again,” they say. “Oh some kind of trouble she got herself mixed up in.” I know they think that and I have heard the whispers and the conversations. I guess maybe people think I must be deaf, dumb and blind. That somehow I don’t know that they are sitting and judging me.

He tells me everyone loves me. They all just want what is best for me. But what they deem to be best for me is me living the life they have drawn out for me. Me being obedient and playing the part that they have written for me. People always seem to be writing my history. Writing my mistakes and my future. Explaining away my past. But what if there wasn't an explanation. What if I just own it?

I want to write my own part, to paint my own masterpiece but I don’t know how. I don’t know how so I live. I exist in the realm of the back and forth. I have been allowed to weave in and out of two worlds and so I do. Ever so gracefully. It doesn’t even feel like movement anymore. It just feels like existing. It just feels like breathing.

He wants to talk about what happened back there, I know he does. But I just can’t. I’m too ashamed of the things I did and at the same time I am also ashamed of what I am about to do. And deep down if I force myself to be honest I know that I will leave him again. I know I will leave without an explanation. I will walk away in the middle of the day or the night. I will go to the store. I will never come back. Until I come back again like this. I hate knowing that to be true. So for a moment I try to think of anything but that.

There is so much beauty in the rising sun. In the possibilities of a new day. In the idea that I can truly be saved and rescued and freed from myself. But how can someone save someone else from internal anguish? How can someone really rescue another person? What I have come to know this life as, is a battle between two worlds. Neither of which truly make me happy. But I have to choose one, right? That is how this works.

People tell you, “You can't live in two worlds, you can’t live two lives.” So I just pick one right? Sort of like the lesser of two evils, sort of like destruction and beauty except it isn't that simple. It isn't that easy. Because they both look sort of nice and sort of bad at the same time. But I go back, I always do. Maybe this is my eternal quest or my vicious cycle. Maybe I will never break free.

I look over at him as he watches the road with such care and concern. The same look he gets when he looks at me. I hate that look. It makes me feel guilty. Judged. I know he doesn’t mean for it to. He doesn’t mean to put that on me, and I guess maybe he isn’t. Maybe for the first time I am realizing that he isn’t trying to project anything on to me, he is just loving me. I just never understood why. For so long it felt like he was trying to control me, to shape me to mold me. But maybe it is more than that. Maybe he is just filling in the gaps because I am clueless, utterly clueless.

What do I want? Go ahead ask me. People always ask me that and I never have an answer. Why can’t I answer that? What kind of person does that make me? A person should know what they want right? They should have a plan and a dream and some sort of goal list that they tape on their pantry door, or the bathroom mirror. And you look at it every day, they look at it and they long for it and they build a life toward it. I don’t have that.

Should I have that? I think he has that, for us. He has the dreams and the plans and he has it all mapped out. I will stay and he will care for me and fix me and love me and give me all the things I’ve ever wanted. But I don’t know what I want, so how can he really give me anything?

I’m sick of this dance, but it’s the only one I know. I’m tired of disappointing people. I’m tired of letting everyone down. I’m tired of feeling judged and I’m tired of being stressed out and unhappy all the time. I think there has to be something better than this, but this is all I know and I guess there is comfort in familiarity, right?

The sunrise really is a beautiful thing. A fresh start. A chance for a new beginning. A new life. I just have to figure out what that means.