It was a hail Mary, but I somehow pressed reset.
A reminder, I suppose. The weather has changed, the air smells like dirt and rain, and it makes me think of happier times. I get caught up in nostalgia. I wonder how, though things have changed, I can tap into a few moments when I was happiest. Maybe find the shadow now, find the reality, the echo, but maybe there's still something there I can hold onto.
But the smells play a game, causing me to forget. Brief happiness and such a spiral afterwards.
I pick my mind apart, trying to find the reasoning behind, but there is none. It felt right so I did it. I felt bad and I wanted to find a way to feel good.
Somehow, I feel good.
Logic wars with emotion but for once emotion has cooled slightly.
It never mattered why, it doesn't matter what he tells himself to excuse it. I can never break into his skull and show him, make him feel, what he put me through.
That is who he is. I am ashamed I loved him. But I did.
I will be the mad love that was cruel to him, to all his tales. It doesn't matter. Those who know me know the truth. Including some of those closest to him. I still wonder, does he know that they wanted to keep me? Maybe I was wrong to let them go, let my depression cloud me. Maybe I should have waited until I felt good again. I would so prefer to stay with the people who want to keep me.
The clouds are parting though it's cold and damp outside, and I see a glimpse of something brighter. I see hope and opportunity. I see my hard work falling into place, so fast I can't even keep up with it, and I wonder why I still lay awake long into the night and pick over what went wrong.
Nothing went wrong. He is wrong. He is a sick individual I cannot cure. He can be her problem. He loves her, that's sure, but when it hurts me, I remember him - door open. So you're coming over.
Love does not mean he will be faithful. I have lost nothing. His love is worth so, so little.
I wonder how long this relief will last. It comes and goes so often. I have mourned and struggled for so long, but I have to be gentle on myself. Love, for me, is different, I think. I must handle things differently than others, I must be gentle on them as well. I cannot put it through my lens.
Gentle is not what I am best at.
I hit the worst this week. The worst came at me, it crushed me, and I realized how little control I have over life. I waited to be swept up and blamed and destroyed.
But I was not. I was protected, and trusted, and treated gently. I was given hugs and drinks and told it's not, not, not, your fault. You did all you could. You did it all right.
I am always doing all I can and yet the worst can still happen.
That is life. I did all I could with him and still the worst happened. That does not mean it was my fault. That does not mean I could have given more.
I am glowing from this protection. I have protected myself for so long, I am not used to running for safety. I am not used to being cared for in this way, and it is changing my perspective.
Life is terrifying and unpredictable. Things happen.
We make mistakes but all we can do is our best.
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Friday, April 13, 2018
4-13
Bird are popping about between the earth and the trees and the sky, uncertain, just yet, if this spring has come to stay.
Somehow I have found myself an unexpected comfort among the days and the nights that have swarmed up against me lately.
I have made peace. It was not, perhaps, the way I might have envisioned it, but I can't deny the comfort of some little peace.
I am not quite happy for him, but I am at the brink. It would have been a waste of so much suffering, for this to fall to nothing. So many lies and so many tears, what for?
In a sense, it has been worth it. Not for me, by any means. My god. But a small portion of my heart is happy for him. On the brink of happy. And that feels good. It feels like the final stages of mourning.
I can't help but want to get a final jab in, but, hey, that's who I am. I never do go easily, do I? I still have untended hurts.
I remember seeing the first man I loved - or thought I loved, at the time - and his wedding photos, the girl he had chosen over me -- during me. It seemed worthwhile. I am never happy to be overlapped, but to be broken for a reason... that, somehow, is okay. I cried a little for him, and they were happy tears. Strange though. For him I am sure I have been long forgotten.
This week, this month, this year, has been such a spiraling upward and downward torment of optimism and hope, success and failure, pain and loneliness.
But it is evening out. The end is in sight. Early in the year, perhaps. Or perhaps it is just a lull. Like the birds, I am not quite ready to commit to this new opportunity. Perhaps it is a false peace.
I think, honestly, perhaps I have just needed socializing. People to talk to, to vent and confess. I feel much less mad these days. I am not a creature who thrives on keeping things inside.
I wish it had gone another way, a softer way. A forgiving way. A way that may have made smooth cobblestone steps toward understanding, but still, it feels right. I can listen to music again. I have been taking myself back this year, and a brief uncertain reaching out has shown me that I will be okay without him. I am sad, that to him I meant so little and to me he was everything, but, as I trudge day to day on this painful hard life, I acknowledge that it is so for many people.
To me, love was special and treasured.
But it is not so for many people.
Somehow I have found myself an unexpected comfort among the days and the nights that have swarmed up against me lately.
I have made peace. It was not, perhaps, the way I might have envisioned it, but I can't deny the comfort of some little peace.
I am not quite happy for him, but I am at the brink. It would have been a waste of so much suffering, for this to fall to nothing. So many lies and so many tears, what for?
In a sense, it has been worth it. Not for me, by any means. My god. But a small portion of my heart is happy for him. On the brink of happy. And that feels good. It feels like the final stages of mourning.
I can't help but want to get a final jab in, but, hey, that's who I am. I never do go easily, do I? I still have untended hurts.
I remember seeing the first man I loved - or thought I loved, at the time - and his wedding photos, the girl he had chosen over me -- during me. It seemed worthwhile. I am never happy to be overlapped, but to be broken for a reason... that, somehow, is okay. I cried a little for him, and they were happy tears. Strange though. For him I am sure I have been long forgotten.
This week, this month, this year, has been such a spiraling upward and downward torment of optimism and hope, success and failure, pain and loneliness.
But it is evening out. The end is in sight. Early in the year, perhaps. Or perhaps it is just a lull. Like the birds, I am not quite ready to commit to this new opportunity. Perhaps it is a false peace.
I think, honestly, perhaps I have just needed socializing. People to talk to, to vent and confess. I feel much less mad these days. I am not a creature who thrives on keeping things inside.
I wish it had gone another way, a softer way. A forgiving way. A way that may have made smooth cobblestone steps toward understanding, but still, it feels right. I can listen to music again. I have been taking myself back this year, and a brief uncertain reaching out has shown me that I will be okay without him. I am sad, that to him I meant so little and to me he was everything, but, as I trudge day to day on this painful hard life, I acknowledge that it is so for many people.
To me, love was special and treasured.
But it is not so for many people.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Uneven Zen
I'm reaching a level of zen, though it's shaky. Things in my life are back in place, calm and cool, and I can handle them again.
I feel my gut clench and I force it to relax.
This is life and I have to face it.
Maybe, I decided, I have to face him too. His happiness. This new life I keep denying he has. A woman he loves and gives, so easily, the things he denied me. Silly photos and trips. He convinced me it was so much to ask, so to see him, with her, providing them, smiling... these small things he told me were too much.
I can't decide how to deal with it. Immersion therapy is perhaps the one option I haven't tried.
Slam myself with images of him happy without me. God, he was so unhappy with me. I'll never understand why he stayed, and why he let me stay. It wore onto me, this unhappiness. I think we both wanted to be happy but so many walls were up. We threw weapons.
What did she do to take the walls down?
I'll never know, and I tell my gut to relax. It's just life. Just keep living.
He loved me, that matters. He loved me wrong but he did. He loves her now, that matters. I want to come to terms with it and let it wash over me and away. I wake every day hurt and alone and I am so so tired of pretending he doesn't love her.
My life is my own, my path has veered sharply, but I am taking it with enthusiasm and bravado I don't quite feel. I need to own my choices. I need to calm my stomach and find a less shaky zen.
I feel my gut clench and I force it to relax.
This is life and I have to face it.
Maybe, I decided, I have to face him too. His happiness. This new life I keep denying he has. A woman he loves and gives, so easily, the things he denied me. Silly photos and trips. He convinced me it was so much to ask, so to see him, with her, providing them, smiling... these small things he told me were too much.
I can't decide how to deal with it. Immersion therapy is perhaps the one option I haven't tried.
Slam myself with images of him happy without me. God, he was so unhappy with me. I'll never understand why he stayed, and why he let me stay. It wore onto me, this unhappiness. I think we both wanted to be happy but so many walls were up. We threw weapons.
What did she do to take the walls down?
I'll never know, and I tell my gut to relax. It's just life. Just keep living.
He loved me, that matters. He loved me wrong but he did. He loves her now, that matters. I want to come to terms with it and let it wash over me and away. I wake every day hurt and alone and I am so so tired of pretending he doesn't love her.
My life is my own, my path has veered sharply, but I am taking it with enthusiasm and bravado I don't quite feel. I need to own my choices. I need to calm my stomach and find a less shaky zen.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Confessional Moments
I've listened to Speechless three times, crying and sobbing on the way home, my blood slimmed with alcohol and my victorious attitude somehow entirely deconstructed into misery.
My mind shies away from the current drama. She was right, this slight girl and her brief friendship that, much like my night, imploded in a series of progressively heart-breaking moments. She was right about some things though. Drama surrounds me. Do I create it, unintentionally? If so, how do I quit? I hate it. I hate how it touches me.
Men and their confessional moments, followed so quickly by anger. It's exhausting and I don't welcome it. My walls can't seem to drop at all, without some backlash. I comb through my mind looking for positive examples, for men who have been kind to me, for men or boys who didn't hurt me or strike out, for boys and men I couldn't destroy with a look or a word -- anything healthy. There's very little.
I think of my brother, calling me "honey" in the store, pretending to cozy up beside me as a young, ugly unformed girl -- it was a game, convincing strangers I was his. I think of my father, smiling smugly to himself, informing me in the supermarket that people think I'm his young lover, a half-smile of pride that he could accomplish such a thing.
Sick, sick, sick.
I did not learn until I grew up how sick sick sick my relationships with men have been. I look back at those moment, so many moments where I was not a human, I was not me, I was validation, and I am disgusted beyond comprehension. Cut my thoughts away; I did not need to exist. I was a body, I was a form, a doll used to stroke unhealthy egos.
Even now, it seems, I am not my own entity. I am a measuring stick for self-worth. I am unique, I am strong. To catch me means they are more than they expected, more than they see in the mirror (they knew there was potential hidden).
To fail means I am a bitch.
I think of Dorian, who I wanted to love me, and the walls he and I threw up between each other -- his retreat and my subsequent coldness. Why love when I can't be loved back? Whatever I did to him, whatever strange chemical I put off, it pushed him away, and I responded by retreating. What a glorious painful joke in retrospect, to pull away from the only one I wanted to go all in with.
Although, considering it's been nearly a year now that my heart has been broken, I can't help but be grateful. I don't know how I would have survived. I crank the old stereo up and cry harder, drowning in self pity. I want to lash out so he knows how long I've struggled, I want to exist somehow again to him, even briefly, even if it repulses him, so he can't continue to shunt off his guilt. He broke me entirely and I'm still picking up the pieces. And I'm furious with myself for not being healed.
The rational part of my brain is trying to click on, soothing me, whispering logic and comfort. The rational part of my brain thinks he is sick, and hopes he finds wellness, hopes he is happy. I did love him, after all. Don't we want those we have loved to be happy?
It's a constant war. I am not quite ready yet. Maybe one day. Maybe one day I'll be happy for those who have wronged me, but right now, I feel my largest accomplishment will be neutrality. One day, I will not care. Right now, that feels like enough. To feel nothing, in either direction. A horizon I race toward.
One day I will see him in a store, and maybe I can smile politely. Maybe I'll do nothing, I'll walk away. I won't feel broken, I won't feel lost. I won't wonder why he didn't love me as much as he loves her, when to me he was everything.
These people who are always falling in love, how? How? I want to break into their heads and bodies and understand, because something is different. Like the people who enjoy haunted houses, I can't fully grasp it. How can you enjoy this? How can it pass so quickly? I want to pour us into test tubes and examine the differences under the microscope. I feel like something important eludes me.
It was fun, briefly. It was fun with the second one, the one who was kind to me and touched my leg and kissed me in public. I enjoyed falling in love with him until the moment I did, and felt myself become vulnerable. I hid that love and I buried it and I waited to see what happened, and the moment he showed me he may not be careful with it, I gathered it up and I took it away.
I can't go through this again. I can't risk it.
And yet I'm lonely. I have accidentally isolated myself with my home and my career, with my flashing burning drive to succeed and make something of myself, this desperate scramble to fulfill my dreams because I'm not sure what else to do with my time right now.
And in that, I've made no room for anyone new.
Maybe this was another wall, in the end.
I want to put myself out there and love, and be loved back, but I hide in my home and I make excuses and I hunt out a future where I am successful because that, I know, I can never regret.
My mind shies away from the current drama. She was right, this slight girl and her brief friendship that, much like my night, imploded in a series of progressively heart-breaking moments. She was right about some things though. Drama surrounds me. Do I create it, unintentionally? If so, how do I quit? I hate it. I hate how it touches me.
Men and their confessional moments, followed so quickly by anger. It's exhausting and I don't welcome it. My walls can't seem to drop at all, without some backlash. I comb through my mind looking for positive examples, for men who have been kind to me, for men or boys who didn't hurt me or strike out, for boys and men I couldn't destroy with a look or a word -- anything healthy. There's very little.
I think of my brother, calling me "honey" in the store, pretending to cozy up beside me as a young, ugly unformed girl -- it was a game, convincing strangers I was his. I think of my father, smiling smugly to himself, informing me in the supermarket that people think I'm his young lover, a half-smile of pride that he could accomplish such a thing.
Sick, sick, sick.
I did not learn until I grew up how sick sick sick my relationships with men have been. I look back at those moment, so many moments where I was not a human, I was not me, I was validation, and I am disgusted beyond comprehension. Cut my thoughts away; I did not need to exist. I was a body, I was a form, a doll used to stroke unhealthy egos.
Even now, it seems, I am not my own entity. I am a measuring stick for self-worth. I am unique, I am strong. To catch me means they are more than they expected, more than they see in the mirror (they knew there was potential hidden).
To fail means I am a bitch.
I think of Dorian, who I wanted to love me, and the walls he and I threw up between each other -- his retreat and my subsequent coldness. Why love when I can't be loved back? Whatever I did to him, whatever strange chemical I put off, it pushed him away, and I responded by retreating. What a glorious painful joke in retrospect, to pull away from the only one I wanted to go all in with.
Although, considering it's been nearly a year now that my heart has been broken, I can't help but be grateful. I don't know how I would have survived. I crank the old stereo up and cry harder, drowning in self pity. I want to lash out so he knows how long I've struggled, I want to exist somehow again to him, even briefly, even if it repulses him, so he can't continue to shunt off his guilt. He broke me entirely and I'm still picking up the pieces. And I'm furious with myself for not being healed.
The rational part of my brain is trying to click on, soothing me, whispering logic and comfort. The rational part of my brain thinks he is sick, and hopes he finds wellness, hopes he is happy. I did love him, after all. Don't we want those we have loved to be happy?
It's a constant war. I am not quite ready yet. Maybe one day. Maybe one day I'll be happy for those who have wronged me, but right now, I feel my largest accomplishment will be neutrality. One day, I will not care. Right now, that feels like enough. To feel nothing, in either direction. A horizon I race toward.
One day I will see him in a store, and maybe I can smile politely. Maybe I'll do nothing, I'll walk away. I won't feel broken, I won't feel lost. I won't wonder why he didn't love me as much as he loves her, when to me he was everything.
These people who are always falling in love, how? How? I want to break into their heads and bodies and understand, because something is different. Like the people who enjoy haunted houses, I can't fully grasp it. How can you enjoy this? How can it pass so quickly? I want to pour us into test tubes and examine the differences under the microscope. I feel like something important eludes me.
It was fun, briefly. It was fun with the second one, the one who was kind to me and touched my leg and kissed me in public. I enjoyed falling in love with him until the moment I did, and felt myself become vulnerable. I hid that love and I buried it and I waited to see what happened, and the moment he showed me he may not be careful with it, I gathered it up and I took it away.
I can't go through this again. I can't risk it.
And yet I'm lonely. I have accidentally isolated myself with my home and my career, with my flashing burning drive to succeed and make something of myself, this desperate scramble to fulfill my dreams because I'm not sure what else to do with my time right now.
And in that, I've made no room for anyone new.
Maybe this was another wall, in the end.
I want to put myself out there and love, and be loved back, but I hide in my home and I make excuses and I hunt out a future where I am successful because that, I know, I can never regret.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Becoming
It's strange how things are settling.
I think back to the day you left me alone in the orchard. I should have left you then, or the day you chose to do so much without me. I knew then.
I could be so past you by now. I could have skipped an entire lifetime of ruin.
But the dust in the air is finally settling, without her. I knew it would reach this point. I should have left her too. I'm stupid when I love, I suppose.
But I did love her, and that's boring. You didn't, Dorian, so what do I have to offer? How dull and unpoetic to be loved back.
I used to watch her speak and move and wonder sometimes. Why her? She's nothing like me. Was that the point? To fix your errors with someone smoother and sweeter? Why cut the pineapple when you can bite into the peach? Big doe eyes adoring you. I knew we couldn't last. She wanted to cling to loving you, and I wanted to let you go.
You are who you are, though. You're the man who kills spiders, who left me in the orchard, who leaned away from me in photos. Or that's who you are with me. So who were you with her? And her? And who, in the end, does that make you? Are you happy now? Do I ever haunt you in the night?
You didn't want to love me. I'm sorry you did - if I had known how hard it was for you I would have left long ago. Why would I be with someone who doesn't want to love me when I am so in need of love? And so worthy.
But the ripples from your wake are slowly fading, though I drew them out so long. All the things we should have done together that you preferred to do without me, with your brother, with her, instead, I poured all of my resources from the life we could have had and now I have a new life.
And it is calm, and it is what I have always wanted.
It gives me some comfort to know you would have been really happy here, if you had waited, if you had reached out some hand to help me. I hope one day you get a glimpse of this perfection and you are cut through and through knowing I live it without you. Despite you.
I have far to go but the path is straight before me, and I am strong and energized and content and I know I will reach all of my goals. I wanted, once, to share this life with you, but you resented me for it and now I will cling to it selfishly, luxuriating in the peace and adventure of Becoming.
I think back to the day you left me alone in the orchard. I should have left you then, or the day you chose to do so much without me. I knew then.
I could be so past you by now. I could have skipped an entire lifetime of ruin.
But the dust in the air is finally settling, without her. I knew it would reach this point. I should have left her too. I'm stupid when I love, I suppose.
But I did love her, and that's boring. You didn't, Dorian, so what do I have to offer? How dull and unpoetic to be loved back.
I used to watch her speak and move and wonder sometimes. Why her? She's nothing like me. Was that the point? To fix your errors with someone smoother and sweeter? Why cut the pineapple when you can bite into the peach? Big doe eyes adoring you. I knew we couldn't last. She wanted to cling to loving you, and I wanted to let you go.
You are who you are, though. You're the man who kills spiders, who left me in the orchard, who leaned away from me in photos. Or that's who you are with me. So who were you with her? And her? And who, in the end, does that make you? Are you happy now? Do I ever haunt you in the night?
You didn't want to love me. I'm sorry you did - if I had known how hard it was for you I would have left long ago. Why would I be with someone who doesn't want to love me when I am so in need of love? And so worthy.
But the ripples from your wake are slowly fading, though I drew them out so long. All the things we should have done together that you preferred to do without me, with your brother, with her, instead, I poured all of my resources from the life we could have had and now I have a new life.
And it is calm, and it is what I have always wanted.
It gives me some comfort to know you would have been really happy here, if you had waited, if you had reached out some hand to help me. I hope one day you get a glimpse of this perfection and you are cut through and through knowing I live it without you. Despite you.
I have far to go but the path is straight before me, and I am strong and energized and content and I know I will reach all of my goals. I wanted, once, to share this life with you, but you resented me for it and now I will cling to it selfishly, luxuriating in the peace and adventure of Becoming.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Thursday, November 2, 2017
11-2
One two three.
Times are changing. Seasons turn turn turn.
The wheel came up. The hanged man. I look down at the cards and they're telling me if I slow down, wait, things could be different, but I don't want to give my past a chance to catch me. I don't want to get sucked back into that vortex, and I know I would. I would get crushed on that wheel over and over, and I'm tired of being the butterfly.
I'm the bee. I'm the bat. I'm the hawk. I'm the sky and the ground and the atmosphere and the water and the fucking trees.
I am not a delicate dainty thing to be found crushed with shimmering scale-dust around me.
I am not a doe-eyed unguided pretty thing to kick.
I am not a red-lipped distant thing to pour lies onto.
I am autonomous.
I am tired of telling you what I am not.
If you reached out a hand, I might hesitate, but I'm strong again. My molten walls are in place and hardening around me.
It's a hard lesson to learn who doesn't deserve them. He knocks quietly, chips gently, fingernails. I don't know how to drop them for such a quiet and reasonable request, not yet.
How unfair.
I wonder if he'll keep trying. It's an accidental test. I move away, I gather myself, and I try to reach out. I let my mind settle. I find myself in silence and re-evaluate. I reach back out. I pull back.
What a trial, to find me, to those who want to find me and are worthwhile. But if they're worthwhile, they'll make that effort. Isn't that how it works?
The ones who will stay are worth it. They'll see enough to stay. I'll try hard enough.
What will change when I'm gone? My life is swirling in upheaval, excitement, new opportunities, new spaces. Will he reach through the distance? Distance is my killer. I can't love someone distantly. Not anymore. I need warm arms and warm eyes to curl into.
Will it matter when my life is lain out before me, the way I want it? I have wanted this for so long, everything else pales in comparison. Warm arms seem tepid. Constraining.
I'm bursting forward to my future, the one I've wanted, the one I've dreamed of and fought for tooth and nail.
Arms may hold me back.
Times are changing. Seasons turn turn turn.
The wheel came up. The hanged man. I look down at the cards and they're telling me if I slow down, wait, things could be different, but I don't want to give my past a chance to catch me. I don't want to get sucked back into that vortex, and I know I would. I would get crushed on that wheel over and over, and I'm tired of being the butterfly.
I'm the bee. I'm the bat. I'm the hawk. I'm the sky and the ground and the atmosphere and the water and the fucking trees.
I am not a delicate dainty thing to be found crushed with shimmering scale-dust around me.
I am not a doe-eyed unguided pretty thing to kick.
I am not a red-lipped distant thing to pour lies onto.
I am autonomous.
I am tired of telling you what I am not.
If you reached out a hand, I might hesitate, but I'm strong again. My molten walls are in place and hardening around me.
It's a hard lesson to learn who doesn't deserve them. He knocks quietly, chips gently, fingernails. I don't know how to drop them for such a quiet and reasonable request, not yet.
How unfair.
I wonder if he'll keep trying. It's an accidental test. I move away, I gather myself, and I try to reach out. I let my mind settle. I find myself in silence and re-evaluate. I reach back out. I pull back.
What a trial, to find me, to those who want to find me and are worthwhile. But if they're worthwhile, they'll make that effort. Isn't that how it works?
The ones who will stay are worth it. They'll see enough to stay. I'll try hard enough.
What will change when I'm gone? My life is swirling in upheaval, excitement, new opportunities, new spaces. Will he reach through the distance? Distance is my killer. I can't love someone distantly. Not anymore. I need warm arms and warm eyes to curl into.
Will it matter when my life is lain out before me, the way I want it? I have wanted this for so long, everything else pales in comparison. Warm arms seem tepid. Constraining.
I'm bursting forward to my future, the one I've wanted, the one I've dreamed of and fought for tooth and nail.
Arms may hold me back.
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