The anger overwhelmed him. He didn’t even know why he was angry. She told him she just wanted to be friends. She even said she wanted the friendship to grow and that she loved him. What did that even mean? He was inside out. The idea of her with anyone else made him crazy. The idea of him without her made him crazy. But he knew he had to let her go. He didn’t even know why it made him crazy. He intellectualized the situation over and over again in his mind and he fully understood the situation. Often he would be fine. He would put it out of his mind as if it weren’t even there and not think of it and he felt normal… great even. Then something would happen and he would imagine her making love to someone else, or even kissing someone else. His cool was gone. His sense was gone. He would go outside his own self and lose himself entirely in madness.

What was this? Why couldn’t he control these emotions? Who was this woman? I mean, was this love? Was it obsession? Most importantly … is there a cure? Funny enough, he now understood the film ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’. She was in his blood. And he was in hers. He wanted the pain to stop, but that was like trying to fix a ghost limb … it was completely intangible.

Could he trust her that she felt the same way? She said she did. He was so mad, he didn’t trust her. He calmly said his goodnights and he ran. Out the door and down the street. He ran ten, fifteen miles. He just didn’t want or need to stop.

Back to his house, sweaty and endorphin filled, he wandered down to the basement. Half in a daze, he searched for his new towels and t-shirt. He heard a kah-thunk. Wiping the sweat from his face, he looked over his shoulder and saw his old drum kit from high school.

The drum set called to him from the corner. Forget her, it said. Let her go. If you play me, I will make you famous… you will travel the world and you will meet many women and you will see that she is nothing.

Mesmerized by this, he took the towel to his face as he removed the dust cover and sat in the hazy light of the basement enveloped by the kit. His drum sticks lay on the snare just where he left them probably a half a decade ago.

Tat tat… bbbbrrrrrrummm tat tat tat…. he went. It felt so good. His muscled remembered what to do. He was so tired, however, he could barely see straight. He returned the sticks to the snare promising to return in the morning.

The sun came up. It is now 20 years later. He traveled country after country, city after city. He became rich and famous as one of the single most greatest drummers in the world. He poured every single unexplainable emotion into his kit, which was now a very large kit, and gave that to the world. He still thought of her every day, and even though the kit promised him there would be others, which there were, there was no one. He was thankful for the pain which finally was subsiding after so very long.

​There was a knock on the door. It was her. Finally, the calm he wanted and waited for. He drew the dust cover over his kit and never played it again…. until…. his little boy asked him, ‘Daddy.. what’s that?” half a decade later.

The journey and awakening is always unfolding. It is sometimes lonely, sometimes sad and sometimes fortunate. We are fortunate to be able to daydream, to be able to share moments of joy and pleasure and love.  This man tapped into something deeper, something she hid from herself.

This part of her was wild and quite uncivilized with fiery eyes. Fiery from her anger. But what was most complicated was the tenderness and subtlety about her. It was always as if she felt there were eggshells all around her that she had to walk gingerly upon.  Only then to occasionally satisfy the need to smash a few as a reminder she was still living.

She was afraid, full of fear actually, although no one seemed to know it. Her heart knew too much so she dreamt. She would dream of him: her gentle man. He would wrap his weight around her in warmth. She imagined herself turning to face him and watch her own hands as they would drift up around the nape of his neck and around his ears and onto his face and then he would kiss her.

Now she could be calm. Now her heart felt no pain. Her civility could return with grace. This warmth could carry her through a few barren winters.

She removed his garments in her mind’s eye and felt hers slip down her curves one by one onto the floor. She felt his hand in hers and they would move as one to a nesting place in the bedroom and the lights dimmed. She slept. The night was filled with green tea latte marshmallow kisses and cinnamon cream love and she saw through him. Whereas once he could smile as he killed, he was now distracted, softened somehow. He became like a surgeon who could now feel in his skin the pain and in his mind the fears of his patients. Something had opened him. He was seeking … something … was it the love? The acceptance? The forgiveness for his sometimes crude ways of going about things? He was just a man, after all. Once just a boy.

He walked over to the mirror and looked at a new self. He was a different self than the one he knew just a month ago. The month was over, as his contract was based on just a month, the dog barked, the alarm rang… she awoke. And he in his bed too found himself sitting upright strangely awakened. She hit snooze then contemplated her dream. She reveled in the thought of his love and her body softened as she remembered his touch.

He, now awake and up and dressing, gazed into the mirror. He was different: refreshed, confident, loved, strong…. He considered he might even be a little happy and at peace.

He knew he would have to return. He knew he would have to keep her somehow. What she was, really, was someone who wanted to be loved wholly and forever. And what he was, really, was a man who wanted to be out in the wilderness with her. He thought at times it would be impossible to make it work. What could they do?

​She daydreamed of him. So far away, but always with her.