Sicker in the Daytime. Safer on the Inside

"Sicker in the Daytime.  Safer on the Inside"

My eyes burn, the heat of something intensifying with every slow and painful shutter. 

It's nighttime and I'm outside. 

Is everyone really sicker in the Daytime? 

Are we all safer humans on the Inside? 

The Daytime when shadows are temporary. The Daytime when nothing hurts.  We are ailing in our own day.  Our own time, our endemic antibiotic daily schedules. 

To be sick, indisposed and so medicated when there are worse things,

Makes us terrifyingly worse than those things.  

Basking the suns rays does not maketh the man.

Sensitivity to the nights darkness does. 

_______

The month is June, the year is 2017 and it has been one of knifelike change.  The air I breathe does not warm my lungs instead it pierces them.  The humidity is gone, the safe sweat of routine is gone.  The clammy calmness I felt for many years prior to this night of June is gone.  Replaced with a startling freeze, the kind that eventually passes the threshold of pain to become numbingly present.  Accepted, a blanket of reality heavy enough to ascertain that you'e alive.  To fight for breath and hold on before the exhale. At this moment I've come to realise it's not the air I'm holding onto but the repossessed carbon dioxide that I don't recognise as my own.  

____

Her name is Satisfied. Picking me up on the side of the road in the night so I can prolong my Daytime. The car is actually warmer than the house. Perhaps it was the few steps I took from the house to the car that reminded me again I am not home.  We're strangers of the worst kind.  You see this when you buy something at a shop, order a meal, avoid a beggar, drive on a busy road and look at lights on in houses you pass.  All within reach but other worldly.  

The choice to stay distant and to stay a simple customer overwhelms me to tears.  She's a single mother of two, Zimbabwean and working two jobs. One of the first things she tells me is that when you are well you keep going.  You push a little harder that day and get as much done as you can because tomorrow is not promised.  She recently lost her sister to TB.  We then get into a conversation that I would have with a best friend.  The Uber trip is through dark, winding and narrow roads.  Turning bright lights on every now and again to navigate the horizon, we're in this together. But she is driving.  My life in her hands. Same hands that make your meal, that full your petrol tank, that give you a receipt.  I want to hold all those hands.  Instead I got her number in the promise I will give her my hands at the salon she works at in the Daytime.  Bright lights are off during the day and we're not in it together most of the time.  I saved the number as Sati, hoping that I don't forget this after I've said goodbye, wished her well and ordered my cocktail 5 minutes later. 

__________ 

It all falls down. Eventually the walls are chipped and you look at your nails broken and bleeding. You've been the one hacking at the wall.  There's dust in your mouth of old promises, loves and losses. Taking one step out of the rubble, that which was caged chaos, you look up. Dust off the remnants and see what you're made of and for.  

Vast and green, made to move better from.  It's the same field that was always on the other side but it's vibrantly different. There is not a particular person to meet you there, only yourself amongst everybody else.  They too have nails broken and bleeding.  The field is life and while it seems safer on the inside of the walls it's a lie.  The safeness is inherently inside the people on the field. 

letters to myself

White noise against my pillow

amber glow to meet cold window

blue to black with fairy light

falling into the depth of night

Heart at ease with care

wind beating the air 

sinks the mattress heavy

eyes rested and ready

Day behind the mountain 

not an expectation to count in

wrapped in vanilla blankets

the new morning my sweet canvas

_______________________________

What rhymes with Wednesday

Delicious clear conscience ruby glass of ambrosia, sipping your body on a misty Cape Town Wednesday night is an ease of life's kindness.  You were bought on a whim, like most things I do, but I love you more than that.  See, the reason behind my luck of having you tonight is thanks to a lady whom I'm sure had an unfortunate day.  Either one of her five dogs caused her frustrated state, perhaps it was the combination of all five possibly six dogs in her expensive SUV with the actual park in the other direction and the less inviting parking lot of KwikSpar ahead.  That or the pup on her lap forget to wee before hand and she was not moving her SUV because it's hard to multitask when using triple ply soft tissues to dry oneself.  Especially when those are on reserve for mental breakdowns only.  More likely she had just heard her housekeeper stole her Prada bag.  Either way she was somewhere between stationary and spaced out staring at me when I gestured for her to turn into the parking lot.  Undeniably a clear gesture to remind her she has right of way.  There was no response.  Lingering on uphills is not a first choice so I zoomed my little car into the parking lot.  When a swift and smooth uphill start turns bad... She then came back from space and hooted whilst flailing her arms in the air.  Yes, perhaps she didn't do that simultaneously.  Perhaps it was the poor lap dog that jolted into the hooter.  I'm not sure what actually happened because it was unexpected and offensive.  With a slight veer to the side I let her self righteous SUV pass me, defending myself from her squeals at the same time.  There wasn't anything Kwik and painless about that Spar visit in Vredehoek.  Luckily I did not bump into the lady while roaming the three isles, unfocused with agitation, she had hooted her bad spaced out vibes onto me, the road version of a baton race.  Didn't let it go until I saw you on special.  Wine, you are special. 

rebuilding

So I have managed to learn or at least pay first witness to what happens when you leap off from your own pedestal and then get kicked while you're down. 
What it means to try even harder but still too late. 
There is no going back, there is no retraction of words nor actions and there is not a single feeling left unsaid. It's utterly painful to confess your everything and not get what you hoped would happen in return but it is overwhelmingly lifting to know you did try. 
The more I look at it and understand, the more I see that I cannot control everything. 
Words happen. Actions don't. Love is a choice.  And walking away is a must. 

Where in my mind do I honestly believe if I just said one more thing, or the same thing differently, it would change everything? 
Why have I clung to this notion for years and years? Right now, it's probably the saddest thing I have ever done to myself. 
I am not cupid nor am I a unicorn.  I am not put on this earth to fix you.  And I am certainly not doing any favours to anyone by pretending I am it all and can do it all.  I flat out cannot. 

There are many cringe-worthy moments I wish I could take back, retract from all existence or take to my grave with not another soul knowing. But they are both my downfalls off the pedestal and the steps back up.  
Fuck you for thinking I was on a pedestal in the first place. No one person is to blame, however if you had never said that I wouldn't have fallen so fucking fast and far off the thing.  
Okay that may sound like a lot of resentment... I don't resent you as a person.  I resent my thinking that you would be there to catch my fall after so blatantly saying I needed to get off the pedestal. 
I expected too much.  I put all my eggs in one basket and all that happened was that they became scrambled with my brain as the basket case. 

Where in my mind do I realize that everything is as it should be and I don't have to meddle or specifically change for anyone? It's that little section of my brain that has been shunned to the back.  That section where I used to know and believe I didn't have to trip up or fall off or tell you my deepest darkest secrets in order for you to love me back.  It's that section called self-worth and self-respect.  
You tell people, rather lovers, those kinds of things when you feel safe and secure and loved in a relationship.  I felt none of those things instead I was desperate, felt unworthy and unseen when I told you and that, that is what I resent. 
It was like saying "Here, this is what you wanted? have it and have all of me without having to actually love me". 

A huge part of me regrets it.  Regrets knowing that you know far too much for someone that isn't even my friend, reciprocally. 
A small part of me does not regret it.   
I tried to knock my pedestal in your eyes, because that's what you wanted and I would have done anything... but the view of it, the greater picture is that it didn't and won't ever fucking matter. 
Whether you've judged me, loved me or simply felt indifferent does not matter anymore,
I have hit rock bottom for you.  I have not only leaped from my pedestal but I began to hate myself for ever being on it. I began to think I was not cool enough, not broken enough and not real enough whilst I was still seen as sitting up there.  But the truth is I have always been broken and real and will most likely never be cool and it was not me that was ever wrong or too unattainable, it was you and it was your perceptions and view.  You thought yourself either too cool or so low and you projected that shit onto me. 

Where in mind do I begin to know the difference between truth and love? When I stop doing the saddest thing possible to myself.  It is done now, I have turned myself into a body of desperation and a soul of torment.  While this shit is painful, it is also brutally needed.  It's the glue I'll use to piece together my shattered pedestal.  It's the step I'll build to lift myself up off the floor.  It's the position I'll take knowing I went too low to make you high and I will never do it again.