Rattling cages

I can't snap out of this. It's the Doctor again, he's making me -

It's the way he smells. And his dorky laugh. How he's so polite and unassuming. He rattles me. He. Rattles. Me. I wouldn't be so rattled if he were staying. If he were a legitimate possibility, I would want nothing to do with him. But because I can't have him, because I can't keep his smell and laugh or even his drinking habits, I want him. I want him. I am absolutely obsessed with the idea of him, with the what if, with the it-coulda-been-nice,-a-functional-relationship. I could prove that I can function inside of a relationship. A monogamous one. With secrets and hand holding and looks and the future and having a person. That one person to come home to. So this is what he's done to me today, shocked me. Put me in my place. Don't get used to this, because you know what? Tomorrow it will be the same, the same empty space in the same empty bed and the same -

Absence. It's the sudden absence I notice, it's his absence from my bed tonight. It's as if he's been there all along, and tonight he's out of town. We're in a fight. He's sleeping on the couch. But truly, truly, this loneliness, it feels gaping. It feels like it's swallowing me. Just come back to bed.