Only the Lonely

It's 2:04, EST February 6, 2015.

I'm hovering on the precipice of exhaustion and wide awake. It's too quiet to sleep...the bed feels too big, too cold. Especially when sleeping alone.

These dark minutes of the early morning are the ones that are the hardest to muck through. It's those dark minutes that seem to stretch into even longer hours, lying in front of me like a dark interstate; much like the ones my husband is staring down at this particular moment - where ever he may be.

The hours bleed into days, the days into weeks and then - like a sip of cold water to a dying man, the darkness breaks and the bed's too small, too warm, the minutes too short.

Those times, too far and few between, are held too tightly, gripped like a handful of scorching sand in the hopes that the tighter you grip it, the more you can hold onto. Only that works in reverse. The harder you fight to hold on, the more precious grains of sand are lost.

During the daylight hours, I am the strong woman. I am the strong wife, and mother, stoically keeping it all together. No one sees that thrashing woman drowning the blue depths of my eyes. No one sees the thin and fragile facade I've woven to keep myself together.

I am stitched together with a string of good intentions and bold faced lies. And like a spider, when the golden sun has set, I carefully deconstruct my web of lies, sitting on the branches of my tree and staring into the black abyss wondering what design I can weave for the following day that will be stronger, more resilient, than the one I just tore apart.

And because that is what is required of me, I will tear through the night, rebuild in the dawn's early hours, and sit and wait as the sun peaks her blond head over the horizon. A new day breaks, the morning's coffee chases away the lingering exhaustion and another day has begun. A smile will slide across my face, my suit of armor carefully adorned, and the seams of my fractured sould fragilely repaired.