Purpose.

Am I good?

Humans are such flawed creatures, and aren't I human? I work every day to master myself, to become better than who I am and who I have been, but still. I lose my temper. I speak too quickly. I can't keep up with cleaning, I forget things. I let things slide. I hold onto grudges and anger that I wish I could release.

I built myself this life - I am building this life - so I can be good. I want to be happy while making the world a better place. Some small green spot on the scorched landscape. I worry about the things I leave behind when I die, already. I worry about where the earth is going.

I want a cool green life with sun and hay and strong arms.

I am going in the right direction, but it is far away yet. I have to make choices, and to keep some normalcy, I do not always choose right, and I worry, am I good?

I lay awake until 5 a.m. with a dying kitten, my second in a week. Two small bodies in the freezer. No one else will take them, no one will usher them into death. I feel morbid and sick, this urge to do so. To try everything I can because I know otherwise I will be haunted, and, when that fails, I can provide only comfort. They leave their bodies and I can finally sleep.

Does it make me good?

I look around at my life, a liminal life, preparing to bring me from one version of myself to the next, and I know I chose this so I can do good. But am I doing enough? Are the small acts going to carry me through until I can add more and more?

I chose to leave my job, to buy a house, to start anew, because I was tired of not doing enough good in the world. Dorian was gone, I had no one to be responsible for, no way to take pride in someone else's goodness until I could have my own. I was no longer trying to patch up my life so it could join another's without infecting it. And without that drive, it seemed pointless.

So here I sit, and I watch 80's sitcoms on my laptop at low volume all night, holding dying animals, and wondering if that creature feels any comfort in what I do or if I am simply stubbornly keeping its small body alive for my own selfish need. I wonder if the things I have done have been enough, so far. The hospice and the hopeless cases. A tiny chip at the compassion I want to pour into the world (quietly, lightly, in the secret dark where no one can see how fragile I am).

People say, thank you, and they say, you are strong and caring, and I think, but am I? and how can I be more? and still I am so glad that they say so and wish I did not need to be.

One-Sided Soulmate.

I think the soul in me
recognized the one in you
and I don't know why that scared you
but there's only so much I can do
and I wonder if another life
another way will prove
that what I felt was valid in the shifting and the move
so for this life it's just a brushing
and now that soul has come and gone
but there's more lives that are coming
and this one was just a little wrong.
but I'll live my best and hope
that in another life I'll find
to be rewarded with that love that I
could feel within my mind
and the way my body called you
and the way my blood was yours
I think my soul was ready but his wasn't, yet, of course
or perhaps it's just a childish thought
to smooth the pain of being forgot
I knew a Love but it's passed by
I hope I get another try.

Death.

That moment you realize your love for someone is gone.

Gone.

I wish I could say "just like that," but I loved him so hard, so long, so extremely past when I should have.

But it's gone now.

And I feel...

Whole again.

And somehow empty.

There.

When I turn on my phone after two months of silence... and there he is, worried about me. Does he know I've been missing his easy laughter and silly songs, his questions and excitement and the way he eats with his hands, the way he slept beside me, that wild hair all spread on the pillow?

The timing was wrong. But timing changes.

Out the other side

I don't know if it's the weather breaking, or the sleep, or the much-needed time away from the work but I have crawled out of my depressive grey chrysalis and am fucking renewed. I walk with fucking purpose, I take it all in stride and eat it for strength. I am a fucking warrior queen. I handle the world thrown at me, and I handle it masterfully. I fill my hands with the dirt and I own it.

This, I like to wear.

He's gone, and I feel... nothing. It's so infrequently I feel anything. A brief love affair, a trial. A temporary placement in my life. Sweet enough at the time, but now gone... and there's nothing. No loss, no panic, no regret. If anything I feel strong again, not having to wonder or worry. Not being concerned I don't feel enough.

I wonder what he feels about it, but then, a cloud, it passes, and I don't much care. I think about how many I have left in my wake, sweet honey sugar men, good men, men who tried and who cared and who wanted very much to love me, and I feel... nothing.

More than I did before, I suppose.

Before Dorian, I had no sympathy. I did not understand love at all. I did not understand what they felt.

At least, I tell myself, I let them go. I cut them off. I passed them along before the hurt would be too great.

Some lingering regret, maybe, is all that haunts them now. A vague sense of wonder. A tingle of loss.

I may feel nothing, but I am not cruel.

I would never do to another what he did to me.

But the sun is out, and the things he did to me seem far away. I am relieved. Often after the loss of a lover, I sink down. I swirl into emptiness and missing him.

But the days are warm and bright and I am not missing him. It's not an emptiness, it's a wholeness. Not missing him brings me back to myself.

I am buoyed by the days and some sleep and some adult conversation, and I feel supremely strong and capable. My yard expands into a wilderness and I look at all the things in my life I must learn to tackle, and I am not overwhelmed. I set them into pieces in my mind, sections to approach. I will take them on and I will master them. I will and can become the best version of myself.

I do not want to be who I think I am. I want to be better than who I was.

Such stupid wisdom he's always spouted.

I am responsible for my words. I am responsible for myself.

I am responsible for becoming better, and I will own this world and leave the days around me better than I found them.

That is why I am here. Heartbreak, excess, those are nothing to my mission.

I am an infinitely confusing double-edged sword of intensity (didn't you say?) and I am strong enough to wield it. To wield my own confusing and sharp-edged intensity to build a softer world.

Sunny days

On the days when the storms are quiet and the sun is out, I'm surprised by who I miss most. The one who touched, who danced with me, who goofed and laughed, who quizzed and learned. Mexican music plays in the neighborhood, filtering through the windows, and I wonder where he is now, wandering his home town beneath the mountains, and if he wishes things had been different, too.

Nostaglia

I'm reading a book series I loved, but didn't understand, as a young girl with silly hopes and dreams, who thought she'd be a celebrated author by now, who thought she would be world-traveled and live in nights full of champagne and flirtations.

I read the words as an adult. Quiet. Tired. Stressed. I've chosen a different life than I would have expected. I saw more glamour in my days. Sparkle and glow. Instead I sigh a lot. I nag. I come home to my humble life and I clean. And yet, I am rather happy.

The words the author chooses are beautiful and rich. The characters exotic and unique. The main character, she falls in love with something ugly, who cannot love her back, and yet she goes to war for him.

I cry and cry, silently in my humble mattress on the floor of the loft in the home I bought for only myself, and I understand her now. I did not understand her as a young person, full of so many ideas and sure, sure beyond anything, that once I felt love, it would be reflected back equally.

She loves his dark soul, she saves it, she tolerates his dalliances and his love for others. She, in the ends, walks away.

I weep and drink wine and the words resonate around me in a way they never have.

Another potential love affair dies as quickly as it began, and I feel nothing.

How distressing. To be so numb. To see a fight and to walk away.

The battles I fought for love are long behind me. And stupid of me to fight them. One-sided battles.

I wasn't sure I was ready, and he gave me the words I needed to know. No. I will not fight for this. I will not go through this again.

I am happiest on my own, during those moments I forget how my heart was broken. When I read stories of handsome men who are cold inside and I don't think of him. When I remember I am strong and I will go to war - not for love (wasted), but for good. I am tired every day because I am fighting to make the world better.

Is that not better than love? Is that not a different kind of love, than the one that broke me down into nothing but anxious questing pieces?

I rest now, because there is not enough good in the world, and to me, it is everything to bring it blazing back. He says it is a double-edged sword, my intensity... I burn hot until I am embers.

But then I will burn again, because this world is mine to protect - for the dark souls, for the gold ones, for me and the things I love, and I will not be extinguished by frivolous disappointments.

There will come soft rains

It's pouring pouring, I can't see through the windshield but I don't feel anxious. I think I've used up my anxiety for the next few weeks. It's time to reboot. I drive on, thoughtless, numb, enjoying the smell and the hard thrumming on my window. 

Tears roll down but they're the usual tears, and I'm too tired to pay them any mind. I can't think the big life thoughts today. I can't contemplate love and loss. I loved, I lost. Jesus. It's over. 

New beginnings, new doorways, and here I sit crying in the car. Do I miss being treated like I don't matter?

I don't miss how he treated me; I miss how much I loved him. Despite how he treated me. Isn't that the rub?

I miss being insanely stupidly in love. I never thought it would happen to me. I wish it hadn't.

She asks me about the new one, asks me how I feel, senses me out, and I don't have much to say. I can't feel much for someone else when I'm still caught up on the one that broke me. I'm working on it, though. I tell her like she's my therapist, like I'm sending her a slip to get back to work, like I'm sitting in a meeting after a disastrous business choice. I am working on it. I understand the things I did and felt were not good for me, and I am working on being better. Every day I try to improve.

Every day I just strive to be better. Better than who I was, better than who I expected to be. It falls into place and I become this strange good person who is working hard and building successes, and it doesn't quite feel right, so I just cry at night and try harder. 

It's been a long time now. A long time. I want to be over it. I want to embrace the new things that warm me up - shoulders in the dark, hands in mine, breathing in my ear. 

Jesus. I am afraid. I am caught up and broken still, I've lost sight of who I am. I think I've found me again, and then something changes - the storm rolls in, the radio plays a song, and everything crumbles. 

Jesus. Can I please stop being this broken-hearted girl. 

The swearing becomes a prayer, the longer I say it, the more I mean it. 

The Garden

i wonder if Eve knew
of Lilith before
when she stood
in the lush warm garden
and was tempted.

i wonder if she thought
of Lilith's pale skin
beneath Adam's body,
if the lithe belly of the serpent
creamy in the sunlight
struck a chord.

i wonder if her cage of ribs
ached a little
as she took the fruit and
i wonder if it was the first time
anyone other than Adam
had given her
anything.

i wonder if the air smelled like dirt
the day she decided
to bring him down with her.

and if maybe
hours earlier
she found a strand of black hair
tangled into the grass
on that morning
that someone
other than her man and maker
offered her a choice.

Little touches

My body is sensitive so it will take some time, but some normalcy is coming back into my bones and I feel like myself again. This is hard work and long hours and I wonder if I will be able to manage it, building this life. My faith in myself wanes the more tired I become. I need some rest, and to spend some time beneath open sky.

It is easier to leave the bad memories behind me as new, better ones build over top, and I think maybe I understand why he replaced me so quickly, with someone simpler. A year of feeling gutted, I am starting to forget to be unhappy. He stays near, I never have to chase him. Little touches keep me grounded. Respectful tone and words even when we don't agree--what a concept! Maybe I'm not crazy and angry after all. When someone speaks to me kindly and listens, I do not seem to act like a monster. It still does bother me every day, the monster he made me, but that's just what it was, wasn't it? He tapped into the worst and extorted it. That is not me.

I can listen to the songs I loved that reminded me of him again and soon I will hear only the music. I can and will go to places he took me, and wash his residue away.

I want to be a clean slate, though perhaps that's asking too much. But I do want to be clean, be able to head into the new without dragging with me fear and doubt. I want to hear his words and believe them because he has given me no reason not to. I want to be fully myself again before I let anyone share in me.

I will. I almost am.

Spring rains and breezes are clearing old stale scents and memories from my home and I keep the windows open.