Lying Next to Me

by Gregg Olsen

It’s hard to be genuinely enthusiastic if you can never have what’s in front of you—when it comes so easily to others.

I wonder now how much of her depression was chemical and how much was caused by me.

We were a sinking ship headed for the bottom of the ocean.

I was the asteroid that hovered just outside his orbit.

When you have something that you carry inside and never talk about, you don’t ever unleash it on a stranger. And since you’ve never talked about it, you don’t know even how to really frame your thoughts. You fear that your words will tumble out in a way that will only make things worse.

It is always easier to sleep at night if the monsters outside your house only knock when you give them cause.

Sometimes hurt so deep gets buried by hope.

It’s hard to unbraid a life with a man that you believe in.

That morning stays in my head like a graphic novel, images telling the story in bold swaths of black and white with smudges of jolting color roaring out of the lines.

Thinking and dreaming of what happened is a far different experience than giving voice to events that haunt you. You cry when you tell someone something. You shake. You get sick. You seek comfort. When you don’t speak about it and just think it, you don’t fall apart.

Trust and stupidity are close friends. Of course, no one really knows that until it’s too late.