GOING FOREWORD

It's a new day, in a new year and I know I must go foreword, but how does one go foreword with all of the baggage they must carry from their past.

Each morning I will get up and be me as everyone knows me. I will smile and laugh and do all of the things that I am suppose to do, but they don't see, what only I can see.

I walk into the new year one step at a time while directly behind me, follows all of my ghosts of years gone by.
All of the memories, those haunting memories, the ones that seem to linger in you longer than any others. The ones you can not forget no matter how much you want to.
The hurt, the anger, the tears, the fears, the prayers and finally the funeral.
The funeral that lingers on indelibly glued to the inner side of my pupils for me to view over and over again, when I'm most vulernable, when I least expect it, when I most want to forget it.

I no longer sleep well. I have had insomnia for almost fifteen years now. That is how long it has been.
I doze on the couch during the evening because I walk the floor in the middle of the night when the others fall asleep, that is when I am up. In the middle of the night that is when it is the most difficult.

On those occasions when I do go to my bed I lay may head upon my pillow and as I roll onto my side I think of how it was those many years ago. That cold pillow, that once was a warm arm that pulled me close to a warm person who slept with his arms wrapped around me every night all night for years.
It's almost like he is here. I can smell him, to this day. His sent, indelibly stamped into my mind forever. I loved to lay my face upon his chest and breath him into me body and sole, that fresh clean soothing smell all his own.
I pull the covers over me and the warmth of the blankets comfort me and I move my hand back and forth over one side of an empty bed and I am consumed in memories, then I roll back over onto my back .
I snuggle under the warm blankets and fold my arms over each other and put each hand on the opposite upper arm and hold on and pretend that he is holding me and the memories flood my mind, with hot wet tears rolling down the sides of my face I pray for sleep so that I may dream-- dream sweet dreams where there are no tears.

Tomorrow and every day of this year I will get up and play the game of going foreword. But at night, I will go back in time, back to live my fantasies, -- fantasies that once were reality,
and I remember those famous words, 'To sleep, perchance to dream', and suddenly I know their meaning.

Good night my sweet --- I'll see you in my dreams.