all my tears

For weeks, I'd wake up from these vivid dreams, heart pounding, then wake up without any way to know if it had really happened. I was alone. I couldn't call. I'd calm myself and go back to sleep. In the morning I was never rested, but my head was clear. I'd forget about it for a while before I'd realize--of course it was a dream. But it kept happening, with a dizzying regularity. I knew it was only a matter of time before I started losing touch, started believing it.

Meanwhile everything crumbled and mostly my friends left me to my steady decline--as I usually said I'd prefer it. As far as my roommates were concerned, so long as I was paying rent and didn't destroy anything they weren't complaining. I was tired beyond imagining, lived in broken fragments of time. My smile came too quickly and faded even faster. I spent conversations staring into the middle distance, fidgeting nervously.

I had one friend that tried to help. I'd talk to her late at night, online, mostly rambling. She listened, mostly. Sometimes she'd offer some advice or consolation, something simple and elegant. She probably thought nothing of it--I wasn't exactly responsive--but she'd provided me an anchor.

Then our schedules changed and we stopped speaking as much and I was better and I never found the right way to tell her she'd helped. It's possible I never will.