"I'm not really sure how this hasn't happened to me."

"Do you know what giving up feels like?" the fish asked the cat who stood outside the bowl trying to gauge the depth of the water.
"Quiet," said the cat, "I'm doing math." He lifted an orange paw and carefully touched the top of the water in the bowl.
"It is really an awful feeling," said the fish, diving deeper into his bowl. "I look around and see the world, but am constrained by walls I can not see. I will never escape this fish bowl."
"I think I can help you with that," said the cat, dipping his paw deeper into the water.
"Yours is not the kind of help I need," said the fish, swimming inside a plastic sunken ship at the bottom of the bowl.

"I just discovered they're still doing The Real World on MTv - and it's still super annoying;)"

I woke up with all of the conversations we never had lodged in the back of my throat.  Dreams of times we never spent and the things we will never do haunting my morning, making reality seemed skewed.  It was 1pm before I realized that today we would have celebrated 15 years.  That we would have cracked open the bottle of Chateau Margaux that bought on our 5th anniversary and served it with braised New Zealand lamp chops or tender skirt steak cooked with onions.

There is no option on Facebook to post about the milestones you don't meet. And the bottle of wine was opened years ago.  On our last night together, even though at the time we could not call it that, we sat together in the living room of our home.  Candles in the fireplace, the spring wind coming through the windows, behind us, stacks of boxes that will need to be loaded into the Penske truck tomorrow.  And the wine was young when we opened it, it had needed more time to become the wine it had been created to be.  And wasn't it the same with us?  That time and patience could have fixed so much.

I woke up with all of the things that I have left to say to you on the tip of my tongue.  The summer wind blowing in my window, just as it had 15 years ago. Wondering if you had saved the bottle...

"Boom!"

I woke out of a dream from a nap gone wrong.  Filled with thoughts of a lifetime ago.  Wracked with regret and sadness.  On the table next to me my phone emitted a quiet beep letting me know that someone was reaching out.  My eyes still full of tears I opened the message to find a note from you.  You had been thinking about a time when you and I were an us and were compelled to, at the same time I was dreaming of that very moment, to let me know you had been thinking about it too.  I held my phone, looking down at the keyboard that had automatically opened waiting for me to type my response.  But to respond is to admit to something I can never say out loud.  So I deleted the message.  Your face from the screen. If only I could also delete the memory.

"Sign!"

"Getting ready for a long day of science!!"

Morning greets me with her teeth bared. I awake to find myself still running from the demons in my dreams. Not rested or hopeful.  A to do list waiting for me that can not be accomplished in one day and so, like always, will spill into tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow until it festers and rots like spilled milk.

"I'd rather just make what I'm worth, but this makes a good point:)"

I used to chop garlic with woustoff knives and cook it in stainless steel cookware. I braised New Zealand lamb chops with organic mint and paired free range chicken with fancy Italian wine. I set my table with China and crystal and silver. Candelabras and table runners.

"friday in the sugarhouse"

When we started dating you lived in a ground floor apartment hidden away in Beacon Hill.  It had the right address to sound exclusive but was close enough to the Red Line that you could feel the vibrations when it made it s lumbering journey from the  deep recesses of the city to the bridge that would take it to Cambridge.

You invited me over one night when we were just dating and I made the walk that I would make so many times in the next 6 months 20 years later it is still burned in my mind.  Out my door at 80 Boylston Street, across the Boston Common on the diagonal.  Cross the street where the ducklings from Make Way for Ducklings crossed the street in the famous book.  On Charles Street now.  Dodge the people who are suppose to live here...the ones with money and power, stop and buy a pack of smokes at the Seven Eleven.  Pass the retail stores and the expensive bakery that years later would be my go to breakfast spot.  Turn right at Revere street.  The road turns sharply up, almost reminiscent of the hills in San Francisco. But it is a short block and and soon as you turn left onto West Cedar the road slopes down again, leading you towards the river and the honking cars of Cambridge Street.  At the next block you take another right.  Look for the door that has no marking.

But what I can not remember from that first walk was if I hesitated.  If I had made the walk with Matchbox 20's inaugural album blaring in my ears and then upon arriving had been able to feel the consequences of that heavy iron door.  If I did, it wasn't long.  I still make the walk in my head sometimes.  It is spring and I am young and I know you are waiting.

"Alright everyone get the ides of March quotes/memes out of your systems"

We didn't need the help of a seer to predict our beginning or our end. There were so many signs in the beginning that led us to believe we should be together.  From those first fated moments in Ithaca, the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaking on TV, wrapped in a hotel quilt staving off the winter air.  It was a trip I wasn't suppose to be on, trading an invitation for a weekend away in the Poconos for this trip instead.  But for every early easy moment, we would be met by an equally hard road block.  The early fights, the fire, the year we didn't speak.  So many times that one or both of us could have turned and chosen a different path. And yet we always chose the hard path.  The fight to find each other, to stay together, even when we knew it was a futile one.  And the sad march to goodbye, through years of memories and moments of hope, that brought us back to the end. To where we started.  The only price we paid, was time and our hearts.

"...and it begins!"

I am jealous of the scars that you can see.  The ones that you can point to and say, this is from our first Valentines day when a thorn from the roses you bought left an inch long scar on the side of my middle finger.  This one was from when the ceramic jewelry box my father gave me when I was eight shattered in my hand, leaving a scar deep enough to need stitches from the top of my right pointer finger all the way to the first knuckle.  The one on my chin from the little dog that bit me on Christmas Eve when I was three.  Jagged and uneven.  The ones that I don't talk about faded and white on the inside of my left wrist.  Even those.  External.  It's the ones that no one can see.  The ones that line the inside of my stomach and my heart. That keep me up at night and take my breath away.  The ones that will never heal.  It is those I want to tell you about.

"I want to say a joke about Ebola, but you probably wouldn't get it."

While working the lab during his masters program Jim was poked through his glove with a needle.  The contents of the syringe did not carry any horrible disease or blood or anything(or so they assured him) that could hurt him.  But he because obsessed.  Focused on illnesses so rare, so localized he could not possible have them.  He made them run tests, tracked symptoms and eventually dropped out of the biology program.  If he was going to die from some undetectable disease he was going to do on his terms.

He grew a beard and let his hair get long.  Went weeks without leaving his small apartment.  His friends, once concerned became distant.  No one wanted to hear about rare and fatal diseases all the time and Jim figured it was better that way...since he was a goner anyway.

"Breathe, Journal, and Treat Yo Self!"

I had Eggs Benedict and you laughed at me because I ate the raw sugar meant for the coffee out of the bowl.  You sipped your Bloody Mary and read through the Boston Globe.  It was a Sunday morning in May and things were about to change.  But as the sunlight fought to enter the darkened dinning room we couldn't see it coming.  Could only see what was right in front of us.  The rich coffee, the flickering candle, the white tablecloth, the breakfast spread before us like a banquet for kings.  We ate in silence.  The rustling paper, the quiet din of waitstaff clearing tables and preparing for the lunch rush.  The morning was ours.  A final calm before the storm.

"Want. So. Hard."

We pulled up to the house.  For sale sign in the yard.  It was an old farm house that sat right up against the road.  But the road was amazing.  Trees that looked like they belonged in the deep south.  Farms all around.  Space and sky.  We were 30 minutes outside of the city, an hour+ commute during rush hour.  But it was quiet.  The realtor showed us through the home.  Built in the 1800's, dirt floor basement, no heat on the second floor, 5 bedrooms.  The barn, ready for animals, the shed, perfect for a workshop.  And the yard behind the house, fields as far as the eye could see with thick trees growing on either side to block out the neighbors.  I wanted to see us there...fixing up the old kitchen, getting barn cats, grilling in the back yard while the children played.  Finishing the basement floor.  Painting the chipping exterior.

But all I saw was work.  We worked 10 hour days so when would we make those changes.  You were not handy and did not need a workshop and we preferred to keep our cats inside with us.  And there were no children.  So all we would have would be bedrooms full of empty future hopes, that even as we stood looking up at the beautiful home we knew would never come to be.

"Mittens are delicious!"

The stone steps are cold beneath me.  I can not remember how long I have been sitting here but the light is gone.  It is suppose to be spring but the season can't seem to show up.  Winter holding on too tight.  Is that what I have been doing?  Holding too tight to what I was sure I was suppose to be and not allowing something new in?  My hands are jammed in my pink coat, headphones on.  Home is the next stop.  But I know what is waiting for me there.  The silence of a life abandoned. The ghosts of movie nights and Survivor finales. Of 7 course meals and pizza deliveries.  I work as late as I can, knowing he will be ducking out early.   Each of us trying to maximize time.  Him with her. And me, anywhere but there.

"Yup... This is so me"

It was two weeks before Christmas and I had come home early from work to get ready for your clients holiday party.  Some hugely festive event held at a fancy hotel where we would get to put our dance lessons and knowledge of wine to the test against those who belonged in that world.  I had laid out my dress and shoes that morning, freshly pressed by the dry cleaner.  It was strapless, black, cinched at the waist and then flared out to right above my knee...perfect for dancing and for standing at attention next to you, perpetual arm candy.

I was getting out of the shower when you came into the bathroom.

"I bought you something." you said and as I fastened the towel around my body I imagined the necklace or earrings you might have purchased when from behind your back you pull a CVS bag.  I took it from you as though it might have contained an explosive, peering inside.  "It's a straightening iron," you said.  "For your hair.  For tonight."

And so I did.  And in the picture of us our neighbor took as we left our Beacon Hill apartment you can see the black dress, my fake smile and my perfectly straight hair.

"Don't you hate that dream where you're some sort of law enforcement, trying to protect the laundromat from being overrun by criminals? So you caught them and loaded them into the back of a pickup truck, but we're surprised when they jumped out as you went through the McDonald's drive thru?"

My dreams are filled with small moments and inside jokes. And so when I wake before the sun, before the children or the dog.  Before the carefully stocked fire has burned down. I can not remember which life I am living.  How is it possible to long for both?

This morning the snow was falling and the breaking dawn had turned the world a faded blue.  The kind of color new parents would consider for their sons nursery before choosing something more uplifting.  The air was cold on my cheeks and it took longer then it should have for me to realize I was barefoot.  The world was still, exhaling before the day began.  In a moment I will move.  Knowing only that where ever the door I open takes me, somehow it will always be a step backwards.

"Exactly"

I was walking down Bourbon Street, the noise from the bars deafening even at 4pm on a Wednesday and I felt my phone vibrate against my bra.  I was just running to the store for some milk and a pack of Marlborough Reds and the pockets in my jean skirt didn't fit my phone.  I stopped carrying a purse whenever possible months ago to reduce the risk of someone grabbing it and instead taken to tucking credit cards, keys and my phone into my bra.  I was always surprised by just how much fit.

Stepping into the shadow of a doorway to check the text message I discovered it was from you.  You who I had left behind.  You who contacted me whenever you liked, but would never return my calls.  Even when I wanted to ask you for a divorce I had to make an appointment with your secretary.  But here you were again.  Even in the shad sweat gathered on my back.  The August heat as oppressive as the smell of bleach.  "Jim Carroll died.  Was thinking about the last show we saw him perform in."

I held the phone until the screen went blank.

"heading to teach at only 3 degrees and not even 5am, living my dream"

There was a constant flurry in the air as we walked the Cornell Campus.  Why I had thought visiting Ithaca, NY in February was a good idea at the forefronts of my mind.  Noses and cheeks pink.  Gloved hands and hat hair.  It was the beginning of so many things.

Inside an empty bar we sat across from each other.  Taking in the heat and the silence and you quoted from Hemingway's A Clean Well Lighted Place, and I remembered why I came.

"Fairly obsessed with my new rug."

She only dated guys who loved The Big Lebowski.  It wasn't something she looked for or asked about it just sort of happened.  That somewhere around the second or third date they would drop a quote from the movie and she would realize that she was again involved with someone who held up the movie as a guide to life.  Some embraced the Dude... inspired by his simple approach.  His way of making life work for him.  Others saw themselves in Roger.  A man who gave his all to his country and his wife, long after she had left him. Others to Donny or the the Big Lebowski.

She would wonder what was in her that attracted these men.  They had little in common outside of their reverence for the movie.  Dropping quotes or making reference to the rug that "really tied the room together".  One time she had pretended she had not seen the movie and the guy had spent the rest of their dinner describing it scene by scene while they ate steak frites at a French Bistro.

"And we have a new bed time fave!"

The night air had turned cool and Jay stood by the carelessly built fire.  The school year had ended with a whimper and he relished in the last few days of freedom before he faced a long summer of working on his fathers lobster boat.  Years later, long after he had forgotten the details of the smoke filled party he would find his breath catch when The Freshman came on the radio.  He would be reminded just for a moment what had happened that had set the course of his life.  He could track back every bad decision, every wrong turn to that night.

He saw her, as he held his hands over the fire, shirt incorrectly button emerging from the shadows.  She was shaky on her feet and he was pissed because she was suppose to be his.  Not his girlfriend.  He had one of those with beautiful hair and grace.  But his play thing and somehow tonight her attention had turned elsewhere.  He tucked his blond hair behind his ear and watched through the side of his eye as his best friend took advantage of the moment.  Collecting her and holding up.  Leading her away from the party.

The first decision that led him off course, was the one to follow them.