Dreaming, Wide Awake.

I dreamt last night. I dreamt that I was lying in bed and that there was some nameless, faceless, person lying beside me, and we were asleep next to one another. And then I awoke, and in the instant before I opened my eyes I hoped that the dream was reality, that the loneliness of what I thought was reality was a dream, and that when I looked I’d see somebody there. I lay there for five minutes before I opened my eyes, and when I did, I was alone.

The mornings are only the worst times on the weekends. The real worst times are the weekdays at five o’clock in the afternoon, when I leave from work knowing that in a half an hour, I’m going to have to walk into my apartment and it will be empty. There will be nobody there waiting for me, and nobody coming to see me, and nowhere for me to go to get away from it. So I sit on the couch and eat unhealthy food and pull out my hair while I watch bad television and think about going out to a bar or taking a class so that I can meet new people to change all this, but it’s too hard. New people never last.

It used to be easier than this. People used to tell me that I was special, and different, and any number of other superlative adjectives. They told me that they couldn’t live without me and I sent them all away because I wanted to be left alone. They seem to be living without me just fine now. It makes me wonder.

I ran away from school when things got too hard, and I did it under the guise of attacking the education system. And then I ran away from home when it was too depressing there, and I claimed that it was because I was seeking my independence. There aren’t excuses anymore. If I run away this time, it’s because I’m running away. It’s because I’m too chickenshit to dig myself out of this pit and it’s easier to go someplace where I can pretend to be somebody different and nobody will know any better. But it only takes a year or two before they figure out that I’m pathetic and I’m never going to change. So I’ll stay here. It’s less work.

I can change where I live, and I can change how I act and how I look, but the one thing I’ve never been able to change is how I feel. So I figure, I’ll just stop feeling. That’ll hurt less. Right?