Sandpaper

I can’t focus. I can’t keep my thoughts on one item at a time. Not work, not blogs, not even this. I’ve bitten the inside of my mouth so that it’s raw, my mouth curled so that I can reach the fleshy parts of the inside of my cheek with my teeth. It’s not attractive, and not particularly comfortable either, but it’s what I do when I’m nervous.

I don’t know if it’s my cold, or my impending period, my nature, or something really deep inside of me that I haven’t quite acknowledged yet, but I keep fighting with Billy. Last weekend, this weekend, last night; for a couple who never fights, there’s been a terrifying increase in the frequency of our quarrels.

Couples fight. I know they do. All the time. People scream at each other, throw things, hurl nasty names like cannonballs. But that’s not what we do. We have “discussions” in which neither of us raises our voice. We try to out-synonym, out-think, out-smart, out-debate one another. And we’re both so stubborn that our fights – or discussions – rarely get us anywhere besides on opposite sides of the bed, back to back, and unfulfilled. I won’t bend, neither will he. And so we get locked in a stalemate that eventually settles into the backs of our minds with the aid of sleep, the fight all but forgotten in a day or so.

But I freak out. Over everything. And right now, the morning after a fight, his silence is ringing in my ears. Something feels very wrong, and I don’t like it. My body is heavy with dread, my throat thick with worry. And for no reason. I hope.

If I could reach him now, I would. If I could find him, talk to him, I’d do it. But I can’t, and it makes every second that creeps by feel like sandpaper against my skin. Before I know it, I’ll be raw, like the inside of my cheeks; chewed up and spat out by my own psyche, my own over-active imagination, my own fear, my own insecurity that one fight will be the one to push him away for good.