vulcan death grip

i had a dream, the other day, that i was getting married but the chapel was empty and my groom seemed so imposing at the end of the aisle for some reason that i couldn't place, so i ripped off the veil and threw the bouquet to the empty pews and bolted through the church while people that hadn't been there a minute ago tore frantically after me, and i remember jumping out the window in the dark and the rain and trying to hide but everyone was after me.

i can't shake it, and i don't know why. i'm losing four pounds a week, though, and i still get to eat what i want when i want to and only one of my friends has bothered talking to me since graduation. i might be getting a job, now that i don't have anything to put my paycheck towards, and i should be happy that i'm free but i still keep thinking about the way he didn't say goodbye; just stared through me and all of a sudden my brand new dress didn't feel pretty and i was infinitely small in the hallways of a place i had never been before, and i remember not wanting cake and just asking my parents to drive me home; the whole way back they told me they were proud and i pretended to find relief in the fact that i would never be coming back again.

i can only recall the two days after in a vague but vivid way that you remember feverish dreams or long-ago memories. i remember my best friend from seventh grade calling me in the middle of the day, and i remember driving around a strange neighborhood in the front seat of a brand new pickup truck and singing at the top of my lungs to songs i hadn't heard since we'd first heard them together in middle school. we sat in the bed of the truck and drank $8 pink wine and laughed and talked about the rest of our lives and watched the sky and didn't have to act like nothing bothered us, when really, everything did.

i haven't had the energy to go to the beach like i should want to, or call up my friends and go wild like i'm expected to do. i've read more books and watched more films in the past two weeks than i have ever done, but i saw him at the mall and he looked at me as if i wasn't half as real as the girl beside him, like maybe i never was real and he only dreamed me up once and decided to keep me around for a while. he really isn't anything to fall in love over or bother falling apart for, but sometimes i still (briefly) entertain the thought of tossing myself promptly out a window. it's not poetic, it's pathetic and sad, like me, turning over in my mind the quiet little things we said that no one ever saw or heard of or knew about and now they never would.

i'd say it would all be buried with me, for the dirt and the worms, but i think i've been a ghost for longer than i've realized.