Six Months In

I am drenched and dripping in sweat, gasping as I fling myself up from the rumpled, damp sheets, sitting up now with my head on my knees and the room is so quiet, it hums around me and all I hear are my ragged, heaving lungs.  The house was burning down, the stairs were engulfed in flames, I couldn't get out and I was all alone - the fact that all this was a dream settles over me like a heavy blanket that gives no comfort and only feels like a smothering hand, like the walls closing in on my galloping, hummingbird heart.  I lie back down and wriggle closer to his still, sleeping form.  I rest my forehead in between his shoulder blades and listen to him breathe and I love him, and he loves me, but all the love in the world doesn't raise a man who sleeps like the dead just because I had a nightmare.

Three days of the black cloud over my head.  Three days is nothing compared to the months (nay, years) of sickening depression I have endured before, but three days is long enough to remind me of just how god-awful it feels.  To remember what it feels like to rise slowly up out of a half-sleep, look at the wall beside my bed and only have one word come to mind: Fuck.  Because another day has begun. Because looking at myself in the mirror is hateful, because I wish I could shower with my eyes closed so that I wouldn't have to see a single particle of me, because everything feels so pointless, because fuck, this is hard.  And then that night, when I lie in his arms and I tell him how awful this feels and he listens, and I know he cares, because he asks me softly, What can I do?  And I don't know what to tell someone who has never felt this way before.  I don't know how to let someone help me when they cannot tell me, I have been where you are.  I tell him he's already doing it.  He listens.  He holds me close and he cracks quiet jokes until a small smile tugs at the corners of my mouth.  Satisfied, he pushes my hair out of the way and plants a last kiss on my neck before falling promptly to sleep.  I lie awake, counting his breaths, his arm warm around my middle and I think to myself with an ache that threatens to tear me in half, No one ever tells you how to fall in love with someone new.