ne(one)piphany

It’s four nights later, and I’ve run out of distractions. It’s just me and my computer here in bed (ah, wireless networking); I’m exhausted, but I can’t sleep. It doesn’t help that some idiot down the street has decided that he doesn’t need to wait until tomorrow to start setting off the arsenal.

Long distance relationships are just awful. Hello, one night, two nights, airport, good-bye, see you in a month and a half. After that, week upon week spent trying to forget, or maybe to remember; whether playing scrabble late into the night, or clutching some piece of well-worn cloth as I sleep, hoping to conjure her presence. I’ve gotten pretty good at distracting myself. I lose myself in my friends, or in late-night websurfing, or by forcing myself to stay awake in front of the television into the late hours of the night. It’s easy to let someone else think for me.

I’m too tired for that now. That deep, cool ache of the bone that normally creeps into my body at the crack of dawn is already here; lack of sleep and too much activity have seen to that. And so I’m here under the covers trying to imagine that I don’t have to deal with this until August.

There are moments that sustain me. Her face, half-obscured behind a jumble of bodies but instantly recognizable, as she emerges from the jetway. Her breath on my cheek. The quiet moments of introspection, when she thinks I’m not looking at her.

But tonight, it’s cold, and I’m tired, and I can’t fall asleep. Tomorrow, Vancouver, which in theory should be nice and distracting. From here, though, it seems like a hundred years away.