Breaking Up Is Hard to Do; Why Can't the Same Be Said for Breaking Down?

I try my very best to stay positive, to remember that I had a great love, with someone who was a genius at love, that I am still someone who is worth the wait and worth the time, that feeling lonely and lost and liquid with tears is normal, but damnitalltohell I am tired of being alone. I am tired of making every decision, working 70 hours a week, (and that's a normal, not a busy, week), of sitting with pen and paper and writing poems that are wretched instead of wrenching, of never getting enough sleep or time to read or time to spend with the few friends I have left. My grief now is a toddler whining See me! Pick me up! Hold me!, and any step I make to avoid grief, to spend time with myself or someone else at something pleasurable is a step into guilt. I am well aware that, despite what well-wishers tell me, Harvey is gone. I can lie and say he's still part of me, still with me. His memory is with me, but he's not with me. I can lie and say that I am content to remember what we had, but that would be a lie, also. I don't want memories. I want sleep. I can either sleep or go to the grocery. I can either sleep or pay bills. I can either sleep or grade papers. Even when I choose bed, I cannot sleep for worrying about these things. I dream of stamps and envelopes with glassine windows.

So it's Greek yogurt and granola, then money for the mortgage, then 70 papers on Macbeth. All this on 3-1/2 hours of sleep. And Saturday I have to work, and Sunday I have to make up a midterm and write yet another letter to the retirement board about Harvey's insurance and his pension (both of which they're stalling). I just want to sleep for hours and hours, but I can't. I have Raleigh to fuss over and students to fret over and writing that's not getting done and Dan to consider and a Himalayan range of laundry and a cat who's peeing in the umbrella plant.

I just want to be bedbound, in a mound of lavender-scented quilts and high-count Egyptian sheets, with a never-to-be-empty cup of lemon tea with honey and a cat curled in the nook of my knees and my little mouse-with-a-book reading lamp illuminating the pages of Our Mutual Friend And someday I want someone beside me. I'll share the cat and share the tea and share the quilts. I'll like the way his eyes crinkle and his brow furrows when he reads something well written. I'll watch his hands flip the pages as he turns to the box scores in the sports section and tells me how the Cards have choked again. He'll ask me the answer to 17 Down: Five-letter word: single line of type at the top of the page. And I won't hazard a guess. He'll say, 15 Across: Another five-letter word: open mouthed, one of 5 or possibly 7. I'll know vowel, not remember widow.