The Fog

There’s a fog surrounding my head.

Sometimes it expands, but it never seems to get much farther than my chest to cover my heart. At least when it does, it numbs that painful beating that feels as if it will burst through my ribcage and kill me. Even when it’s at its thickest, though… I can still find myself aroused or giving in to temptation. I can do this because the fog never moves. It’s always surrounding my head, and only sometimes my heart as well. It never covers that part of me that can respond to pleasure. I wish it would.

Sometimes I wonder if other people can sense this fog. It’s not visible, I know, but it’s potent, and sometimes I honestly feel that even though it can’t sink, it can expand sideways to envelope those nearby. It can take someone who’s having a wonderful day, and make it as though they just saw their puppy get hit by a bus. It sucks the life out of them much as it does for me. But they can walk away from it. They can move on with their lives, wondering who that strange woman was at the bus stop, and how that was such a weird mood swing.

I can’t walk away.

Sometimes the fog dims and I can start to see through it. I can look at people and remember what I initially liked about them. They were almost buoyant with life. They made everything interesting. They were utterly fantastic in bed.

Then something happens. Again. In a long string of ‘again’s. And that fog becomes nearly black. I can still see wisps of what once was. I can even wish it were still like that. But when that black surrounds me once more, most of what flashes before my eyes is the petty bitterness that surrounds my heart. I see argument after argument. I see disagreements leading to shouting matches and slammed doors or hung up phones. I see disapproval in their eyes, and I just can’t make myself understand why.

Today the fog is strange. It’s not numbing my senses so much as provoking them. Today I told them I loved them, but I didn’t like them. I asked them why we stay near each other when we continue to make each other miserable. We’re never together anymore because we make each other miserable. So why continue?

They understood, but they didn’t want to understand.

I wish I could wrap my fog around them. Then maybe it could numb their hearts too. Perhaps they have a fog of their own.

There’s a thought. Perhaps we all have fogs. Maybe their fog and mine creates more of a cloud. Maybe a thundercloud. Maybe it creates lightning. Maybe it creates thunder. Maybe it creates rain.

But then the fog remains.

I can’t walk away from this fog.

But I can walk away from the storm.