More Days Like This

Losing Morpheus was the single most destructive and despairing act in the history of my psychology. It beats out a psychotic episode that unfortunately ran for months, the lingering depression over school and family as a child, my severe and almost terminal back and leg pain that I was prescribed morphine for (and lead to my first serious suicide attempt on August 20, 2008), disappointments at the university level, any other break up with a romantic partner, and even beats out the day-to-day illness of schizoaffective disorder.

It paralyzed me into this endless loop of regret, sadness and, I'm afraid to admit, loneliness. My mourning never really stopped. It has just re-defined me as an individual, every day since.

Being with him--even after years of not seeing each other--still makes me happy, and gives me this natural high I have never felt with anyone else.

If I had any say about it or if he asked me, I would move into his home, and fill up those empty spaces with my love and care--I've never lived with anyone besides various, nameless roommates and my parents. I've never shared a bed with anyone, much less had a ring on my finger.

I'm not one of those people who believes everything works out for a reason--or that there's some good, gentle Hand guiding us through life--or that pain has meaning--because life experience tells me that life, the good and the bad, is much more random and out of our control. We live and we suffer and we're happy for no reason at all.

And when we die, we die.

Relationships end before we have time to recognize such, before our feeble minds can grasp the end--because when we love, we live in partial fantasy--always seeing the mirror, never behind the looking glass.

I almost cried the other night about Morpheus--almost--I haven't cried for years. Nothing seemed worth crying about--except the loss of the love of my life.

"Knowing you as well as I do, your love for [Morpheus] is unique," the LSU Professor commented a few hours ago as we met for coffee.

I now have memories of him, ever vivid and clinging to my elbow, pulling me side to side. I can see his beard, only a few days old, with little flecks of gray near his chin.

I can see his smile.