answers the question.

"Is this really what you wanted,
To listen to a song
That makes you feel
Haunted?" -Chris Leo

Happiness. No one's going to drop by with a silver platter and hand it to me. This is not news. And sometimes when I've got a hold of it, someone's going to come by with a hacksaw and start cutting my hands off until I let go. Believe it or not, that's where hope comes in. I'm not sure if I have a whole lot left. That's the long and short of it. Sometimes it costs you. I've been spending it like it's cool money, and inflation's getting me down.

I turned 35 this week. I didn't do anything special, but I was still happy to be alive. Tired, but alive. Days have been better, it's true. Yet, days have been darker.

About darker. I'm terrified of winter.  Last winter turned me on my side. It took until three weeks ago to get upright again, and it took a lot. I let him pull the rug out one more time, except this time the fall wasn't too far, since I was already down. I was exhausted. Hurt and less hopeful. And I came to an end that I've been hoping to dodge with him. The one where my heart's broken, and the potential for everything turning out fine was gone. You can't maintain a relationship that kills you, because then you'd be dead inside and one person holds all of the cards. Awkward isn't the word. But that's the name he's been giving it.

Awkward is when you don't know how to say the right thing nicely, or when you say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or when you don't know how to act when you see your ex so you look at the floor and try to make small talk. That's not how it went down. Even I bought it, but I knew all along I wasn't going to be able to buy it forever.

"Think of it as a bad dream," is not the same as sorry, and it's certainly not awkward. The words are too calculated to amount to that, and wishing someone nightmares isn't my idea of "It's not you, it's me." Seems to me they say, "I've lured you in, and now I'm going to reel you out, hook in your mouth and bleeding." And I said it was for the last time. It was. Yet, I kept hoping we'd turn up awkward and roses.

And yes, that hope is gone. Yet, I'm out of bed in the morning, even though the rain says I can stay under cover. Thankfully, I woke up with a different hope for better things.

Things that I know I can reach without that wobbly, rusty ladder someone placed in front of me to make me think they must be true.