cacoon

I'm getting in that mood again. I always think there's something wrong with me when I'm like this. This tingling spreads inside of me and the whole world seems to swirl and slip a notch, and float away. I think it is Josh. I think it is what happens when I think of him. I know I am not supposed to have my life connected to him at all, but everything in me revolves around my memories of the way he laughs, the way his hair sticks up when it's not perfect and he's too distracted to care, the way I fit into this perfect pocket next to him in the night.
It makes everything surreal...
I took the SAT's today. I tried to focus on reality, on the calculator beneath me, see-through and laced with electronics, on the people around me, chewing on pencil erasers and glaring at me when I dropped things. It couldn't be real. And neither could Josh.
They told me he's out of the hospital. Is he really out there, somewhere, breathing and wearing socks and pants and sitting on a couch? Is he thinking of me? Why didn't his parents tell me he was out of the hospital? I know that I'm supposed to be letting go of him. But do they assume it happens automatically like that, like somehow I can stop myself from thinking about him several times every day?
Everything clashes like that. I went out to lunch and I ate a lot and I laughed a lot and I tried to connect myself to all that is real, but I got really confused about what's real and what's in my head, what's allowed to exist and what I have got to destroy.
Fuzz creates this little package around all of the objects, the staplers, the keyboard, the wood paneling on the walls, like I couldn't handle the edges without the softness, like the splinters would somehow tear me apart. The stitches on my wrist pull, desperately trying to remind me of the reason for all of this loss.
If I could touch you, I would. I sit here, reading, clutching the phone. When the reality of the world around me becomes redoubtable, I pull myself into a small envelope of confused philosophies and I read until the world in my book and the world of softened edges become so close that the similarities overwhelm the differences with their calming washes of real and unreal light. Yesterday in English class my teacher gave away books, and I collected them like tickets to a place where there is no fear. I stacked them up on my desk in stolid towers and worshipped their indifference. They were the catalyst, the final key to the reaction, carrying me from the lucidity I fought for last week to the daze I sink into now.

I don't know what's real anymore. All I know is that I love him, and it's not the way I thought love would be. I thought love would be this amazing fusion of passion between two people, this never ending fountain of connections too thick to sever with small annoyances. Now, though, love is something animal, something uncontrollable that perforates my defenses and allows the emotion to seep out the cracks. However, even if I could choose to control it I wouldn't, just for the instants that make it real, just for the moments in which life is chaotic yet complete.

My phone just rang, vibrating against my fist, and there was Stevie inviting me to a party. I laughed and said I might be there. Now, however, I think about what it would be like, the boys laughing and joking, boys I don't know or don't like, the girls acting that way they do around boys they think are hot, the glacial surface that melts underneath, warping reality with fakeness, and I just don't think I can handle it. I might get in bed, grab my book, and sink a little farther into this cacoon. As confused and fuzzy it is in here, as striped with guilt and pain and loss, it is warm.