The sadness I chose

I know the feeling I woke up with this morning, It is the same feeling that took hold of my throat and fogged my brain for so many mornings of past lives.

It is the feeling that exhausts me even when I have slept 10 hours and makes getting out of bed a children’s game of peekaboo. When I move my covers from my face in the early hours of the morning that I grew to love so much this feeling has been there, waiting for me to look it in the eye.

It’s an old friend but a scary one. Like that guy who would never let me stay the night but each time he called I would answer and go to him and the next morning I would wake with the shame I chose.

I want to take the place where this feeling grew and blame it on others. It is the fault of that guy who called on me during all hours of the day that reached into my stomach and gave my small fire of sadness the kindling it needed to consume.

I want to say it is evrbod elses fault but I know that's not true.

It was me who answered the phone and got in my car at 2 am. It was me who knocked on his door and waited for him to answer. It was me who let myself out after he had fallen asleep because I knew he liked to sleep alone.

And I guess that’s what made it scary, I familiarized myself with this feeling of sadness so much that I now can describe it like it's an old friend. I know how its hands felt covering mine on a steering wheel as a drove to a place my self-respect told me not to go. I know what it feels like to wake tangled in covers with this feeling but I invite it into my bed anyway for a game of peekaboo.

That feeling was good enough for a 20-year-old version of myself. It was good enough that I let it deep down into my existence and I worry that it still lives there in a place I invited it into, like a disease that is waiting to break its dormancy after 2,000 years.

Some mornings I feel like I am waiting. Like the first tickle of sadness is in my throat will give way to a disease that will fill my lungs and take my life from me, but not in a death way, in a choosing way, in a my life was meant for living way, in a scary way.