"You should have Fought for Me."

Insane

"You know what Tucker? One of these days you're going to wake up, it'll finally hit you, and only then will you realize... I was worth fighting for." The words echo inside my skull and suddenly I'm jolting up, cloaked in a cold sweat and panting hard into the darkness. I was worth fighting for.
      She was. She was worth fighting for, but I didn't see it. I couldn't see it. I lost her.
    I press my sweaty palms into my tired eyes, trying-failing, to rub away the exhaustion, to rub away her.
   Why hadn't I seen that she was worth fighting for? Why? I was an idiot, such an idiot.
   Flopping back onto my ghastly, damp sheets, I sigh heavily, trying to breath out the clutching ball of regret settling inside my chest. No such luck. I sit up again. The shadowed clock hanging above me in the blackness ticks. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tick, tick... I tune it out. Silence. I lean back, squeezing my eyes shut, welcoming sleep back.
Bb-bum. I peel my eyes open once agin. Bb-bum, bb-bum. My heart thumps deafeningly loud, pulsing in my ears.
I give up, flicking on the lamp beside me on the nightstand, and swinging myself out of bed. It's much to early to start my morning. It can't be five past three am. I begin to pace and her voice once again flits through my mind.
You'll realize, I was worth fighting for... Worth fighting for... Worth fighting for.
    "Leave me alone." I croak into the night. My voice comes out like a broken whisper, more feeble than I intended it to.
I was worth fighting for.
"I SAID LEAVE ME ALONE!" I scream. "GET OUR OF MY HEAD! GET OUT!"
    My neighbors must think I'm crazy, screaming into the night. This must be the fifth time this week I've awoken this early. She won't get out of my head. She's haunting me. She's driving me crazy. Or maybe I'm already crazy, maybe she's not even in my head.
    Before I know what I'm doing, my feet are leading my towards the front door, my hands are shakily grasping for my keys. Click. The door shuts behind me. I stop struggling, allowing my feet to take me where they wish to go. I'm in my car, then I'm on the road. Minutes tick by slowly, fading away into the stars, time. Time, it's always time. Time is selfish. He steals everything. He stole her from me. Or maybe she just left... Or maybe... Maybe I chased her away.
I was worth fighting for.
Suddenly my breaks slam down hard. I'm lurching out of the car. I'm yanking on my own hair, I'm falling... Falling... Falling down onto the shadowed dirt of some abandoned field.

        Am I crazy? Have I been driven mad?
I want to tell myself, no I'm not crazed, I'm just tired, but suddenly I realize I am, I am perfectly insane. She was right all along. I did wake up one day, and I did realize too late that she was with fighting for. I suppose, what I didn't realize was that she was always the one. She was the one since the beginning. She was the once since kindergarten when I threw crayons at her, hoping her pigtails would turn the same shade of pink crayola I snared in her hair. She was the one since fourth grade when I got my gums stuck in my braces and cried for what seemed like hours, not letting anyone touch me until she broke through the crowd like a savior. She was the one since Highschool when we stole my pop's truck and drove all the way out to the lake, just so we could swim in the reflection of a midnight's stars. She was even the one on our first day of college, the day I though I stopped needing her.
    I think about her until time trickles away. I watch the stars dance across the heavens like waves as I remember her tinkling laugh. I ensnare a wilting daisy between my fingers, twisting and loosening it until it pops free from the soil beneath us. I watch as the pastel colors of the sunrise speckles themselves across the greatest canvas in the world, and only when the birds start to twitter out their morning greetings do I realize something, something important.
      I made a mistake. She was worth fighting for after all. I should have fought for her, but I didn't, and there's no going back now. It's over. It is over.
    A liberating laugh rips itself from my chest and tears of exhaustion and joy flow down my face. It is over.  I leap up off the grass, shouting into the heavens, proclaiming my freedom.
     " IT'S OVER! IT'S OVER!" The birds cease their twittering to observe me before tweeting onward, and a relived smile spreads across my face. "It's over," I whisper. "It's, really over." And with that realized,  I head back to my car, I head back into my life, and I decide to live in the present. The past is over, my past is over. It's time for a new start. It's time for the present.