After traveling far to the land of springs, rolling hills, foggy early morning roads, and legends of the Ozarks, I cannot seem to rest. My mind is awake thinking of the pain that comes with withholding. We do not know what our bodies may miss until they have to go without. My body has been sick with want and yet must go without to be well. This hunger that sits in the very pit of me became unbearable, and I had to taste one bite of the solid and substantial. I savored every taste I could hold within my mouth…like the slow unwrapping of a gift. I must not let myself have too much or I will be ill again…

This week after the end of the quarter has been trying. Although I’ve had small victories academically and otherwise, I find some doors I thought open to be slightly closed upon condition. I’m hoping and praying for the best, all hangs in a tight balance of time and chance. This hunger hasn’t helped me to be any less nervous. The nights are not the best. I’ve found my nightmares to be littered with memory…far away memory.

This night long road has made me reminiscent. I find myself mid sentence, mid spread of mayo on a sandwich I cannot have, mid brush of my hair, remembering what it was like to lose, and I hope this, me, is enough. But I see it sometimes, the loss I felt, the way things that seemed to go so right could go terribly wrong…and I fear it. I fear you, coming out of the past in haunting me and living again in someone else only to leave with the excuse of you not being enough.

He must never feel that way. I don’t mind swallowing my words for a later time, being happy when he needs me to, or making the perfect sandwich…if only it will make him smile.

In the early morning haze I told my story, the one I told myself I would never tell again. As we crossed state lines I confessed that it was my fault, that I had been stupid, selfish, ungrateful, and undeserving. That I had punished myself since then, that all the abusing, twisted, manipulating, cheating that I had endured was secretly because I didn’t think I deserved any better than that, that maybe if I hurt enough one day I would be deserving enough of more than that, maybe. I am not sure entirely that I deserved it now, but I am grateful for the honesty, the fresh perspective…the heart that thinks it doesn’t deserve to hold mine, but it does, he does, maybe even better than this but I try, with every sandwich and meal I try.

Nobody is perfect, we are all very flawed, but we must find our passion in order to be happy. I told him this, I see he is looking for something, he thinks I don’t know, but I see it all. In this I cannot help him, and it hurts…

Tomorrow is another day, another day closer to home.