A list of sins is not a prayer

Every morning I wake up to the sound of my own weeping and reach for him, certain this has all been a terrible dream.  It's always too early to be up, but then I'd rather not wake up at all.  I call to him with every cell in my body, withered with disease though they may be.  How I am meant to go on in the world I can't understand. 

This morning is gray.  It's appropriate that the nights are getting colder.   Without him my whole world is cold.  People keep trying to comfort me, bring me some solace, but there is none for me.  I am completely adrift in a sea of my own tears.  All day long my mind screams, "relent."

Hypocrisy is something I've never really been able to tolerate in other people, but I realize I am guilty of it now.  I would get so jealous and insecure when I watched him flirt with other guys.  In photographs and in person he would never say no to a little attention, though he denied me any public displays of affection.  I often tried talking to him about the way I felt but he would just tell me I didn't have anything to worry about and that I wasn't being reasonable.  Perhaps not.  In the end, I was the one who broke the faith. 

Actually, we never really had an agreement of monogamy anyway, but I always was.  I never wanted anyone else; even before I met him; even the day I cheated on him.  It was always him.  It still is.  I wish I could make him understand that that one day was a reminder to me of all I valued in him.  The irony is that it pushed me back to him after a huge fight, and it pulled him away from me when I was honest about it. 

If he could just look into my heart he would hold me tight and never let me go.  I'm as sure of that as I am sure of the air that I breathe.  If he could just look into my eyes he would see all of the combined sadness of the world.  There is such misery in it.  I am selfish to even dwell on my own pain when there are so many others whose lives are much worse.

I deserve this disease.  I deserve to die of it.  My blood was putrid and stagnant anyway.  These are the things I tell myself now to try to cajole myself into action, but I fail at that, too.  What action I could take is unknown to me.  There is nothing I can do.  There is only one thing I want to do, and that is to reach for him in the morning, and find him there.  I would curl up next to him, kiss his soft skin, and say, "I had a terrible dream."