But I’m allergic to Crest toothpaste.

There is that cruel joke of living your day in control and then going to bed and feeling haunted by the images you see. It’s not rest, it’s not relaxing, it’s a collection of stories. Some are true, some are not, but usually it’s a precious mixture of the two and your brain gives up trying to remember what really happened.

And there it is: Perception.

My mind works in such a simple way, I don’t understand how those do not understand me. Today, browsing through Tinder, I gasped. I audibly gasped. And in that gasp, my brain saw a face so clear it hurt to see. So deep inside that memory that the weight of love in the air was palpable and warm and a too-sweet taste of joy on the back of my tongue.

He looks like you. Swiped right. My days are filled with tiny experiences so complex it’s numbing.

I consider myself fortunate for having my choice of muses, all of them being a different form of you. My life has brought me into the charismatic lives of men with shadows still beside me, and for a moment or a lifetime, each was so powerful. I have to consider myself lucky, it’s my silver lining.

A different you has been in my dreams with increasing ferocity that makes me side-eye all parties involved. Am I somehow watching the ending unfurl as it’s ending? Am I creating connections that aren’t there so as to bring a sort of resignation? Were these emotional wounds far deeper than I had assumed? The latter, most definitely.

I’m always telling people to allow themselves to grieve and feel, yet here I am desperately wanting to choke it off — it’s not what happened that is so awful, it’s the domino effect it has had within me.

I too often see the scene of morning light and toothbrushes. You switched the head of the toothbrush to mine — because you had decided I got a fancy toothbrush head from the beginning — and you smiled at me as I frowned while brushing my teeth, not even caring that I was naked. Aw, someone’s a little sad this morning… you cooed at me. I kept brushing my teeth and watched you walk out.

Yes, I was sad and overwhelmed and just wanted to stand still for a moment and catch my breath. Breathe. Just keep breathing until you no longer have to try to breathe.