Spoiler alert: he dies in the end

I woke with a start. I knew I couldn't go back to sleep. It was 5 a.m., and my heart was pounding because the dreams were so real, because I was at my own funeral, and wasn't it ironic, man? There I was, walking, trying not to get hit by cars when I crossed the road, amazed by all the people who I knew and didn't know who wanted to see me put in the ground.

The truth is, I feel like that most days. Like I died so long ago, left myself in the dirt somewhere. Where? My boyhood home? That night I didn't kiss the girl? The night I kissed the wrong girl? The night she cried in her underwear on the dining room floor and it was so cold? Maybe when I left her behind in that place, when I drove those lonely miles to start a new life? When she told me with the devil in her eyes that she would kill me if I left her?

Every day is another step closer to that day they put me in the ground. Why is it so important that people are there to see it when I'm not even there, when I'm pumped full of chemicals instead of the reddest blood? Why do we fear this day when our whole lives we know it's coming, when every single day we feel it coming closer? I don't fear it, but I don't look for it. I look for those faces in the crowd.

I hear that voice coming to me once again. It's saying what I hate to hear. Once again.

With the roar of a buzzsaw, with the reverberation of thunder, it moves through me and makes me tremble. She's out there. I want her. But I can't have her.

The voice says, "Let her go. Walk away. Haven't you hurt enough? Haven't you searched enough? Haven't you been pushed back enough, been thrust through enough, made to bleed out alone all day and all night enough, been broken enough by the words of a woman?"

But I go back to my book, back to my movie, back to my funeral. I put down the remote, pace my apartment, cry out to anyone who will listen which is usually no one at all, and stand still once again in the pain and momentum of the moment.

It always goes away, and I always feel stronger for having withstood it, like walking home in the rain. But these days, it feels like my clothes are always wet.

I always answer the voice the same way: "I know she can't be mine. I know this isn't healthy. I know you're right and rightly concerned about me. But, this is my funeral. And even when you're dying, even when you're dead, you can go on loving because love is bigger than death, bigger than all of us, bigger than anything. Love is the only perfect thing we have in this world, and I'm going to keep loving her. Even if she isn't at my funeral. Even if she didn't even know I died out there in a stranger's arms, slammed to the pavement, eyes gone blank and I can't feel my legs. Even if she never knew the last thought in my mind was about her when I didn't see that car coming, when I had my eyes fixed on something that wasn't in front of me, when I had my eyes on her."

Sometimes the things most real are the things we cannot have. Sometimes the things that wake us aren't even in our room. Sometimes the lines we speak aren't to those around us. And sometimes the lies we tell ourselves are the only thing keeping us alive.