Deceit

There’s this urge inside me, a deep want to turn back time. Something that would require deceit, something that could upend a life I care about immeasurably. But as I coil this idea around my finger like a lock of hair, I have to wonder, do I actually care about this person immeasurably? Or is that just another elaborate lie I tell myself while I soak in my own selfishness.

The arguments I can spin to convince myself worry me sometimes, how elaborate they get. If I were truly who I claim to be, the idea should never even cross my mind.

But it is so much easier to love what you cannot see, what you cannot hold, what you are not responsible for. A thought free of encumbrance is luring, intoxicating even. It smells like unfettered desire, all pleasure and no weight, whispering of the things I miss. I miss being loved. I miss being fussed over, I miss being held and kissed. I miss the small things: a pointless call, an animated picture dropped into a chat, a joke, a peck out of nowhere. But none of that gives me the right to forge my longing into someone else’s pain. This isn’t self preservation. This is repulsive.

This is why I feel the need to banish myself from everyone, to disappear into books, movies, games, the internet, anything to keep myself occupied. Things that cannot feel. Things that cannot come apart when I act like a self-indulgent, eccentric asshole.

Some days I ache for myself while hating my own guts in the same breath.

Here’s a memory sitting in my mind right now.

One evening, we were lying on the floor. I had a call running on my work laptop, my head resting on a round pillow, listening with my eyes half closed. She came and lay down on the other side of the pillow, legs facing away from me, face turned toward mine. Lips locked onto each other’s lower lip. Early evening, lost in lips, eyes closed, hands moving slow through each other’s hair. A memory that simple, and it still jolts my heart right now. I don’t know if I’m missing her, or just missing the idea of a person who, in that one moment, looked exactly like what love is supposed to look like. When you’re parched, walking through a desert, your mind will deceive you and conjure an oasis out of nothing. That’s exactly what my mind is doing right now.

Dipshit and its deceit.