Sorry In Advance

Please listen to this song as you read this entry. You guys aren't going to like it. I'm sorry.


In the so beautiful it would make anyone sad guest bedroom of the Hall household, Sadie is fast asleep and dreaming. She has played the scenes of their break-up so many times in her head like a movie, each time a little different. When she is awake, in those brief moments that she can remember the dream before it fades into oblivion, she reasons that she will re-play the dream again and again until she gets the outcome that she wants. But then she forgets it, goes on with her day, but still haunted by those visions that plague her in the night.

This time, her dream blends into reality in a way that she isn’t sure where her dream ends and real life begins. But that’s the way that Sadie likes it.

Sadie thinks that she hears her door open quietly, and feet padding across the hardwood floor. Even since they had broken up, Sadie has never strayed over to his side of the bed; she feels weight on that side again, and everything feels more right, somehow. She feels his breath on her shoulder, and a hand that winds itself in hers.

“There are so many things that I wanted to say to him,” he says.

“I know,” she hears herself say in comfort.

“Of course he died before I could. That’s exactly like him.”

“It was.” Sadie turns to face him, and cups his face in her hands.

“I hate him.”

“Hate is a strong word.”

“I mean it.”

“I don’t think that you do.”

“He never did anything for us. He abandoned us in life, and he abandoned us in death.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Sadie says as she runs her hands through his hair. He closes his eyes, remembering the feeling. His mind is swirling, but it’s better that way because when it’s still the pain catches up. He is tired of this pain. He wants it to get bored and go away.

Sadie doesn’t know that anything will ever be okay ever again. But that’s what being someone else’s strength is, isn’t it? As she thinks this to herself, she starts to feel weaker and weaker. If she ever had any resolve at all, it has faded away. She knows that she will give over every part of herself to him, to build him back up again. It’s just what you do.

The distance between them is closing. She can almost taste the salt of his angry tears; the tears that he would forget by the next morning, the same tears that would stay burned in Sadie’s memory until the day that she died. This is like a dream, and in that dream she can hear the lock turning until she hears that sharp noise that tells her that the lock has been broken. He had always been closed, but now he is open; as open as a field of wild grass, as open as a dam with water rushing through to the expanse. Sadie is a falling leaf that lands on the surface, and is swept up by the tide. They are open together.

The distance is so small that now when they kiss, no one could ever know when it began or how. The pain is passing between them now, diffusing through until it is dull but still at the surface. Sadie readily accepts it as if it were her own, but let’s be clear; she isn’t a saint, she isn’t selfless, and she isn’t being so nice. She makes sure that he can feel some of the hurt that he inflected on her, while they were apart—but even more when they were together.

Sadie is overwhelmed by the feeling of having everything that she wants and everything that she hates, all at the same time. He couldn’t have felt the presence of her tears, since his were the first to fall. She cries because it is finally happening. She cries for his pain, and the burden that she is shouldering because she doesn’t know what else to do with it. But most of all, she cries for the strength that she had cultivated, and she cries as she watches it as it is washed away as if it had never existed at all.

He pushes his body into hers, pushing away all of the doubt that had built up in her heart, weighing it down. Her body remembers his, oh yes it does. Her body welcomes him like an old friend, without realizing that he is not a friend at all. If her body knew even one millionth of what her heart knew, it would have built up a wall with spikes and fire. But she gives in to him, just like she always did, and as it is starting to feel like, just like she always will.

They both drift off to sleep again, with their hearts a little lighter. They are dreaming again, but what they dream of is never the same.

“I love you,” Sadie thinks that she hears him say. But in a moment of lucidity, she realizes that this final part was all a dream.

“And I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss.
So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it.
But me I'm not a gamble, you can count on me to split.
The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist".