My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

I’m trying to decide if I want to write something rather than just post this video of Aimee Mann singing 4th of July.

I really hate today, and every year this song seems more true. Last year was good though, I was in the hospital, but it was really good. I just want to go back there, because I was with Monica, and she was there, really there. I had to get a sinus CT scan, she’s walking next to me, I couldn’t keep from looking at her. She’s like an angel, I get lost looking at her, it’s like the rest of the world just fades away. The world fades and being sick fades, and I love her so much it scares me. It’s like, how can I feel so much for one person? It’s overwhelming, it scares me because I know she could go away, there’s nothing worse than her going away. I mean, I was in the hospital, I was sick from antibiotics, my sinuses hurt, my eye was swollen shut, everything hurt, and yet I was so completely, breathlessly, unthinkably happy. I was in some shitty hospital room, but in my head, and in my heart, I was at home.

This is so hard to write. When I write I’m completely in the moment, I’m back in that place like I’m there right now. I could write that evening so vividly.

We’re alone in the room after the CT scan, the sun’s setting over the bay, beautiful shades of orange are shining into the room through one large window. Monica, more beautiful than that sunset. I want to kiss her so badly, our first kiss as an “us.” We’d been together, yet not, since the day we met, but that 4th of July we really are together. After years, we’re together. All I want to do is kiss her, the room filling with shadow as that fiery orange sun sinks into the bay. She’s so gorgeous and I know I look like shit after days in the hospital. I say, “Dear, I have a really odd question, I’m probably the only fellow who has ever, and will ever ask you this sort of question. I’m really oddly very nervous even writing this, because it is such a bizarre question, and…” She says, “Michael Phillips, you make me crazy. Just tell me!” I say, “I know my face is probably really icky, just, I really want to kiss you… Could you maybe get a hot cloth and make me less not pretty so I can kiss you? I just, I really want to kiss you. Can I kiss you?” She goes to the sink, runs some warm water over a cloth, runs the warm cloth over my face a little, gently brushes my cracked lips. She says softly, “You’re fine.” She leans in, around all my hoses and tubes and wires, leans in and kisses me, softly, slowly, our lips brushing, then embracing deeply before letting go. It felt like magic, I felt so alive. I knew even more that I honestly wanted to spend my forever with her.

Writing that hurts so fucking much, she’s so far away now.

I just want to go back, but I can’t. I want to go home, but I can’t. She doesn’t want me, doesn’t get lost in me the way I get lost in her.

I don’t know how to feel okay, She’s left before, I’ve been with someone else, but it’s not right, I just hurt that person. Part of me is always with Monica, even when I’ve tried to tell myself otherwise. It just doesn’t work.

So that’s today’s memory lane, with all the pathos and pain. Another chapter in a book where the chapters are endless and they’re always the same, a verse, and a verse, and refrain…