The days were longer, and longer. Lonely, so lonely. I felt manic, the day I think that it happened. I had just cleaned the entire apartment top to bottom. Every nook explored, every cranny web free. After my exhaustive effort it must have been three days on no sleep. I do that a lot I suppose I stay awake for days at a time. I think it’s to torture myself, or maybe it’s to evade the little death that is sleep. That night I was happy, looking forward to a change, maybe the biggest one of my life. After I had cleaned I needed a bath, I needed to wash the past off of me. I remember it well because I poured searing hot water straight on the top of my head and it made me feel okay.

It’s been weeks, maybe months since that night. I had been taking my medicine, but it feels as though I had been dreaming. I can’t remember the last time I left the confines of my apartment. I just sleep and sleep and sleep and then sometimes I wake, like today. Today is really yesterday as I’ve not slept since then. I realized however a few odd things. My pills spilled on the bed, but to many bottles maybe twenty. A crockpot in the kitchen with rotten food. A sink of dishes done but not put away. A knife in the bathroom. These things I don’t remember how they got this way. My fiancé seems to act like they aren’t there, but he can’t miss these things, can he?

I can’t feel him like I used to and it makes my heart hurt. I feel like a ghost in his life, like I’m floating alongside him, and sometimes we touch or we talk. The talking isn’t how it used to be, he isn’t really there but I suppose neither am I. I feel it when we touch, when we kiss, but not in the silences, not in the noise. I lay in the bed more and more while he plays games with friends. It’s like a little bit of me is disappearing everyday, and I don’t notice unless I stay awake, but he doesn’t let me stay awake to long anymore. He gently reminds me to take my medicine, lay my head down, and to breath. breath. breath.

My dog is getting older but it seems so slow, she is skinnier everyday. My cat, my girl I see less of her and she lays in the bathroom on a pair of my dirty pants, she lays there a lot. She used to lay on my hip all day and night, but now I hardly see her. My boy though, rather his boy is always around in the shadows, a clever and cute little black cat getting bigger so fast. They all seem to have flees and the itching drives me mad. I don’t mean crazy I mean mad, sometimes at night when the house is asleep I drag the knife on my skin to stop the itching. I never seem to bleed. Only scratch. My legs look torn.

No matter how I try, I can’t bring myself to clean the crockpot, to put those dishes away, pick up those pants on the bathroom floor. No matter how much I bathe I am never clean. My fiancé says there are no fleas, and if I keep itching it will only get worse.

These little things keep adding up and I’m scared. New neighbors come and go so so so so often. A family. A young couple. A group of partying college kids. The fighting family. The lonely old man. The single mom of three. Right now it’s empty, letters and late notices peeking through cracks, hanging from the knob.

I see these people but I can’t remember the faces, I can’t remember the accents, the colors, the weather. I can’t handle this feeling of fading.

I don’t want to disappear, please wake up