sick :(

I am sick for the first time. I mean, really sick. My head is aching, my back is throbbing. I have the chills and sweats and I'm sitting here crying, somewhat afraid. I need cranberry juice or I'll just get worse. Last night I must have gone to the bathroom a hundred times because I felt it approaching so I tried to flush my Kidney with water, but a part of me suspects it may have been caused by my water. I have been drinking more and more water lately and now I'm doubled over. Tears are in my eyes with each spasm of pain. I'm wishing it would stop. In a way, I'm wishing I could simply die from this. That giving up a kidney out of love for my closest kinsman will be my end. I wish I could just fall asleep and not wake up. The pain is so great and it's not just physical.

I was talking to a friend through text last night. Two Am and he's at work, preparing for the next Ruck and I told him that it's not missing my ex. It's the loneliness, it's the stillness, it's the knowing that if I were to scream, no one would come running. He knew exactly what I meant, as I knew he would. He and I are alike in that dark part of ourselves. The part we save from most around us. He gets to see it because I see the same in him. And he's shown me his darkness, probably more of it than anyone else. Including one of my dearest and oldest friends who has served 3 tours already in Iraq and was known by a Genocidal Leaders name during school. The reality is: anyone could be here, anyone at all, and it would stop that emptiness from filling me up, it would stop that stillness from making me fear that I'm deaf, it would stop the memories of every single moment I felt loved from becoming a ghost to haunt me. Other nights, I don't care. I like watching my own stuff, doing whatever, it's nice in a way. But some nights, some nights I would simply die for wanting of being in someone's arms. And I told my friend that last night. He sent me a message back: "You just described how in the perfect words how I feel most nights." Sadly, misery does appreciate company. And unlike Love, distance doesn't matter to Misery. The thought made me feel less alone, which finally enabled me to close my eyes and sleep.

You know what's really funny though? Of all the guys I think about, there's only two that come to mind and haunt me most, ghosts from so many years ago. Texas and Jersey. Of all the boyfriends I've ever had, it's those two I miss the most. Jersey and I were so young, and looking back I do miss that innocense I didn't believe I had until it was completely gone, thrown into a woodchipper and all evidence disposed of. I was though, once. In the only way it mattered when innocent love became a real first love. Jersey was the best boyfriend a girl could have asked to be her first. For a year of dating, he would drive an hour up to see me, hang out and drive an hour home. Two months in, he nervously fumbled with "I'd like to formally ask you to be my girlfriend..." and I blushed and said yes. Ten months in we went to his father's wedding and when we came home, we made love for the first time, not simply for us, but also my first time. It was the perfect first love, we never argued, never fought, never did anything but love eachother. He still loves me and I still love him. In that way a sixteen year old girl will always love her first love. In the way that we spent one perfect year with each other before he released me to live my life in Europe. He broke up with me so I could experience life, he didn't want to hold me back. And life happened, we both regret it in a way now, but the hands of time only go one way.

Texas came about six months after Jersey. He was in the Army, he thought he was all that and a bag of donuts, and we argued... all the time. But in the way that our arguements were stupid and only fueled us. We both had changed from the people we'd once been, we were haunted by our lives, what we'd seen daily. His probably far worse than my own, but a kindred spirit nonetheless. We had an incredibly intense relationship. There was love, passion, heat. It didn't hold the gentleness that Jersey and I had been together. This was more adult, more fierce, more wild and crazy. We travelled together, we laughed and drank and partied together, we worked at the same place, we got a dog together. He was my second love, and really the last love that I can call a real love at all. It's almost funny to me, how Texas and I are so close after all these years, how he tells me that no one knows him better than I do, how I'm his biggest regret out of life. I am ashamed to say that these words just cement my own thoughts, that there was real love there, that real love never dies. It just transforms into unbreakable, unchanging love. The love I bare for Jersey and Texas isn't the same love we shared together. It's different, instead of the same innocent love Jersey and I shared, instead of the Passionate fire that Texas and I burned, it's peaceful love, reserved love, the knowing that of everyone in the entire world, I can call them at any moment and know they would not only answer but soften at my tears. I know that no matter what woman comes into their lives, no matter what man comes into mine, there will always be that bond there, something that many have tried to break, both on my side and thiers and it won't. I'm so grateful for something that only time and experiences shared could ever make as strong as it is.

And yet today, tears are in my eyes, not because of anyone but how my ex was during this. He would get me cranberry juice and if it got to bad, made sure I went to the doctors. But today, today I'll just lay in bed, and hope my friend has the time to bring me some. I hope the kids behave, they seem to be. It's like they know when I just really can't take it and behave much better than they normally do.

Today I'm just sick. Feverish and in pain. God help me endure today.