Sometimes I Can't Sleep

When I can't sleep the following day is the hardest. Lack of sleep makes me overly emotional. It means that the little things bother me more than they would on a normal basis.

What keeps me up? Sometimes its a memory. The other night it was about the night I finally said I love you back. He told me the first time in Memphis and I knew then that I loved him but I was scared. It seemed too good. Too perfect. It couldn't last.

A month later we broke up for a week and then got back together. It was all so silly.

When he said it again I asked him if he was sure. If he understood what he was saying. He said yes, that he knew. He knew I was the one. I was the one he wanted to be with for the rest of his life. He said it again and I said it back. Finally comfortable with the idea of being in love with him.

He cried.

And the other night that scene just kept replaying my mind. I didn't sleep. I just kept seeing it. Hearing him and wondering what happened. Where we went wrong. When I stopped being the girl he loved so much it made him cry, the girl he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

Sometimes its because I feel like I am sleeping with a ghost. I started sleeping on his side of the bed so that it didn't feel like he was gone and for a while it worked. It just seemed like I was in a different bed but my new normal is sinking in and I can't trick myself anymore.

I can line pillows up all around me in bed but it still isn't him. Pillows don't feel like him. They don't smell like him. I can't make it feel like he is there. That the arms that held me each night while I fell asleep aren't there anymore.

He used to tell me he loved me in the middle of the night. Every night. Right up until the end, at some point, he would wake me up to tell me he loved me.