Fallen Love

Lately, I have been having trouble remembering my dreams, which is not characteristic of me at all. I wake up every morning with a sense that everything is going wrong. My evenings are peppered with stress-dreams, from a basic inability to leave work for the day, to experiencing more loss.

This morning, my eyes popped open an hour before my alarm was set to sound. I visited the ladies room – there are no men in my apartment – actually, even if there were, I would make him/them call it the ladies room – I digress…

I woke up at 5:00, visited the lavatory, crawled back into bed and succumbed to yet, another grief-induced tear-fest, the kind that typically leaves me feeling completely deflated and defeated. I finally fell asleep about twenty minutes later and when I awoke at 6:00, I felt better.

Moving forward comes easy to me. Letting go does not. I have proven that a person can move forward while still hanging on. So far, I have not been able to free myself from the thought that Chris should still be here. We should still be meeting after work and enjoying conversation over a tall beer at the Pourhouse. Café China should never have gone out of business. That was our place. It’s gone now, replaced with what I may always believe to be a sub-par sandwich shop. I suppose I ought to go there and try to enjoy a sandwich with one of my friends. Doing so may help me clear the cobwebs covering the windows that have become haunted within the confines of my memory. Chris and I dined within those windows many times, but that was before Café China closed its doors, becoming yet another ghost in my heart.

Los Angeles is another ghost. I have friends there whom I would enjoy visiting, but so far I have not been able to set foot in that city since Chris died. I always thought we would talk to each other about how we missed Boston and about our experiences in LA. There’s nobody for me to talk to about any of that, now. Chris and I were the only two people who knew our experience there. That era is a part of me that feels forever censored. Nobody would ever know what I mean as well as Chris would have.

I’ll go back there when I can go back there without crying, and when visiting all of the old haunts like our apartment, Plummer Park, that movie theater in Silver Lake, Studio City and Century City are choices for me, and not compulsions that leave my heart feeling hollow. How can I drive on Sunset Boulevard from Hollywood all the way to Pacific Palisades without feeling like our return to Boston, Chris’ illness and his death were all part of a horrible dream? For all my hatred for the city of angels, I would welcome the chance to wake up there and realize my nightmare was just that.

I can still see and feel him so clearly. The only difference now is that I can’t communicate with him. I can’t call him. I can’t smile at him or give my love to him. My love radiates outward, reaching out to him but stops at the veil and falls to the floor.