Slow Recovery

Through monochrome eyes I stare at my perfectly made bed from across the dimly lit room. The sheets - pulled taut and tucked in tightly - are deathly still, but my unwise musical palette paints the blank canvas with strokes of life and color.

The flashbacks - triggered by anything ranging from a phrase, item of clothing, street corner, lyric, smirk or beer - unsettle me the most. I leave my current reality to relive a moment in its bittersweet entirety, and when I return I find myself disoriented and disappointed. It is the combination of those two loathsome feelings that propel the sledge hammer towards my hollowed-out heart - fantasy about what my life right now would have been if -

Which isn't at all fair to the phenomenal people still in my life today, who did not leave me and I believe never will. I see a handful of them on a weekly (or so) basis, but for others it has been months, even years. In the spirit of my "Fragments" post from earlier in the week, here are somethings that spark spells of reminiscing:

Disney's Aladdin , the 1992 BMW occasionally parked on 3rd and 17th (sadly it's gray, not green), Yatzi, the score from Grease (especially 'Summer Nights'), item no.88 on any menu, knitting stores (there are a surprising number in New York), fingerless gloves (bonus if they are striped, too), Karate (I still have your brown belt), heavy metal band t-shirts, the smell of cashew nuts, the pink Dunhill packs, Swiss Army knives, Kanye West (because you couldn't stop raving about his new album in December), badly assembled tents (oh, those aborted outdoor sleepovers), Irish pubs (that will never live up to Flanagan's), and Oxford commas (which originated from your university press).