My Vice: The Solitary Soldier

On the shuttle back to my apartment I suddenly remembered the dream I had last night. Such a strange dream, as dreams usually are, and here I am left grasping at the wisps of whats left of it, at what once felt so real, and so genuine, that I think part of me still believes in it and still yearns for it, despite the fact that it was never real to begin with. I suppose its dreams themselves that present to each of us some transient aspect of mind that appears as sincere and sensible as everyday life, proof that truth and reality exist only within the contents of our skulls, that belief, and confidence in its certainty, are simply the products with which we create the boundaries of our consciousness. The reality we inhabit spans no further than the space between our ears, no?

I dreamt I was the recent caretaker to a young man who had been a soldier in Iraq, and who had returned home after his tank ran over an IED that took his left forearm. He suffered from burns and was missing a finger on his right hand, and most of a second. He was married to a woman that could not handle his injuries, psychological trauma, and the work load she had to endure for his care, and was abusive and negligent. She was repulsed by him, and refused to touch him or show him any affection. In the face of his depression and feelings of uselessness, the man retreated into his home and became reclusive, a monster and a burden he felt did not deserve to exist.

I became his caretaker, and then, his only friend. He was funny, a strangely beautiful thing,  distressed and broken. We fell in love, I with him, then him with me, a desperate, urgent attraction from deep within me that I cannot explain. We would waste time together while his wife was at work, making love behind the drab curtains of the bedroom that hid us from the light of day and contained the stuffy, mussed smell of sickness, of madness. Laying wasted in the sheets, threads of honest emotion stirring into the air, and now, settling back into the carpet. It was volatile, it was beautiful. Heart-wrenchingly so. Guilty, and perfect, and painful. I do not understand my need to love a damaged thing, but I wake up to the day and feel it, the ever present ache that is the only love I've ever known, and the only love I've known how to give. It's born of desperation, born of anguish, the wilting flower petals, the sinking ship, it's the paramount clasp of two hands over an angry ocean, when one slowly starts to slip...