The Shift

Coming back here is like touching a sore tooth but somehow I know it's necessary. It's strange to think all the emotions that flood across this page have been mostly negative but here I am, feeling quite content. I tend to shy away from blogging when I'm happy. I'm afraid it will be boring but my life now is nothing but boring. There is a question about how much to share, because though I don't feel that many read this, the way I'm living my life is in a style that many don't agree with. Many might say I'm having a midlife crisis. Others may say a mental breakdown. I think the correct words are self serving. Those might strike you as sounding negative but if they do then you know nothing about me. For how long have I been living my life for others? Doing things as others see fit? Listening when they said what I wanted was wrong? For how long did I calculate every nuance of every one else's life before making a decision, often putting what I wanted aside for what seemed best for the group.

Now none of that is an issue any more. Now, my situation is such as I do what I'm told and that is the beautiful simplicity of it. Living life like a 1950'a household (for that's as close as I feel comfortable to coming to the truth on here) is not what everyone is cut out for. Hell, I still feel myself chafing against it sometimes. Those of you that really, truly know me however, know that it's something I've craved for a very long time.

Co-dependency is a bitch. From a really young age I was forced into the role of mom and caretaker of my parents. I never got taken care of. I was never anyone's responsibility. I was never a child. I was always mom. A you grow, it begins to feel normal, it's what you crave, what you seek out. When you marry, you find someone to mother, someone to fix. Never realizing it's you who needs fixing. But not by anyone else. Only you can fix yourself.

Then a wife and breadwinner you find you have just filled another mother role. Again. Dammit with the fixing of other people. They don't really want to be fixed. You don't really want to fix them. Everyone is unhappy. The rift grows. Relationships end. You move on, seeking another fixer upper. Always looking for potential.

Until you stop and fix yourself. Once you start to fix yourself all of this becomes clear. The cycle breaks. You want a break.

I wanted a break so bad. He stepped in and he was a fixer upper but something was different. I didn't want to fix him and he didn't expect me to. Instead, he started to take care of me. No...instead, he made ME take care of ME.

See what just happened? My whole life shifted. Like an earthquake that fixes things instead of wrecks them. Just a simple, quiet statement. "You must take care of you."

Your Eyes

For two days I've been trying to decide what you mean to me. It's hardly an easy question considering it's only been two weeks since you swaggered into my life. I can admit I knew right away we would be friends. There was too much history between us for there not to be a complete and instant connection. What a paradox we are, complete strangers but I have been living a near echo of your life. We've been to many the same places, done the same things. And yet, we are so different.

Your intelligence, control and reserve undo me. I'd rather see you fidget and pace nervously than to be alone with you at your most self assured.

You make me feel inadequate. No, scratch that. I make me feel inadequate. You're just being you.

It took me a week, no, I'll admit, it took me the full two weeks to stop feeling lessened by you. I imagined your eyes were closed during sex, perhaps picturing her instead of me and your emotions were so controlled as to almost seem like detachment.

It wasn't until last night that I realized your eyes had never been closed, that you watched me, steadily, from under your heavy lidded gaze.

Your eyes are the color of hunger; lean and cold like a starving predator and you watch me with cold calculation. Then again, it's the strange sickening reversal of feeling you get when you thrust your hands under scalding hot water and it feels cold and gives you chills even as it burns the flesh from your bones.

Your eyes are a live wire; the silver, hot/cold steel of lightning, like the lightning that flickered across your pale lids that night as you pushed into me. I whimpered for you like a dog afraid of the storm and you left me, shaking, curled around your hips for comfort because I knew this, like the storm, would be fleeting.

And when you left last night, our last night, you put Orpheus to shame, leaving me with only the impression of your straight spine as it faded into the pre-dawn gloom. But I never felt the quickening of regret, loss, or suffering. That I would save for another day.

Last night you gave me what none of the others had had the strength or the courage to give me. You gave me the gift of closure. You trusted me not to fall apart at the reality you were most likely never coming back. You and I ate companionably, talked, laughed until my ribs ached, loved passionately, quietly, and slowly.

I took your face in my hands, my index finger pressed into the dimple in your cheek, the scratch of new beard growth on my palms and I kissed you firmly, feeling the push of teeth behind full lips.
And the kiss said "I love you".
And the kiss said "thank you".
And the kiss said "I don't regret a minute we've had together".
And the kiss said "goodbye".

It's important to me that you know I didn't cry as you left. Or later. It's important to me that you know you've given me such a gift of strength and self assurance.

And now, as I write this, I realize the kiss didn't mean "goodbye" after all, because you've given me a part of yourself to keep with me. I'll never be able to tap that inner strength without invoking your memory.

As you and I came that last time, together, I begged you to say my name. You hesitated and when you spoke it, your mouth stumbled and paused over the foreign syllables. I realized you'd never spoken it out loud before and I cherished that newborn awkward moment as the first and last time you'd ever hold my name on your tongue.

It was crystalline. It was clear and as light shone through it, it cast rainbows on the walls.

Running Away

After the mess the other morning, with you and her on the phone, I went out into the garden to meditate. I'd been neglecting my spiritual studies and my friend, the one who takes such good care of me, has been pressuring me to spend more time on them. I was so lost without you. I was broken, and angry and lost. I didn't even know what I would say to the Goddess. If I was going to ask her for refuge or favors, what they would be. I told her honestly I didn't know what I wanted, what I needed. I told her I was so lost, just wandering. I pictured a silent woods inside my head.

All at once I felt a great calm descend on me. When I had been on the phone I'd felt numb and that my world was going slowly as yours was moving much too fast, but I didn't feel calm. Out in the garden, with the Goddess, I felt calm. As if my brain were suddenly a much quieter place. and I heard her voice.

She asked "When are you going to stop running away?"
I asked, "Running away from what?"
She replied, "When are you going to stop running away from yourself?"

I am astounded by how often the answer can be right in front of us and yet we may never see it. By then I was exhausted and vowed to return another day to find out what she was talking about.

This afternoon I woke suddenly from a nap know exactly what she was talking about. Instinctively, I knew that I'd been running from fear. While married I had someone to take the fall for all the bad things that happened to us. Whether that was me playing the blame game or if he really was just that bad at making grown up decisions, I'll never know. What I do know is that I don't have a fall guy anymore. Any decision that is made that leads to something unfortunate happening to me or my family is MY FAULT. I don't get to blame or share responsibility anymore. Everything is me. That's pretty damn scary when you think about it. It's like opening your front door and realizing you don't have a yard anymore, that it just falls into empty space like in the sequel to Jumanji.

So I've been running away from having to face that realization. I've been running away from having to begin making those choices. I've been running away from myself.

That doesn't make what I feel for you any less real. I still love you, miss you, will always hope that there is a small chance you can be a part of my life. What it does is it excuses you from the responsibilities that I tried to heap upon you because I was too scared to bear them myself. Taking care of myself, dealing with my health, making sure I took my meds and drank enough water and ate were responsibilities I tried to hand to you. And you took them, willingly. And you helped me with those things, you reminded me when to eat, drink, or even sometimes when to urinate because I was so caught up in the fear I couldn't remember to guide myself. Those activities of daily living were my responsibility. I ran away from myself.

I'm not angry at you for running away from me. Or toward her.
I hope I can get you back at some point in time. Some day or some year or some lifetime.
But I'm done running.

Hollow Little Boxes

I have to admit, I thought you would text me last night. I lay awake late into the dark, silent night waiting for the promising trill of harp. I find it hard to believe that after all you said to me you could just dismiss my as simply as that, regardless of what she wants. I hope you know how much you're hurting me. I hope you know, not because I want you to feel guilty but because I don't want to admit I spent the last four months of my life with a man who can not empathize like that. Who won't.

And yet, as cynical as I try to be I realize that part of me is always straining forward for that second when you'll borrow your friend's phone to text me, tell me you're alright, beg for forgiveness for deserting me like everyone else, tell me you still love me even though it cannot be just now...

And yet all I have is a silence that echoes through my hollow little boxes.

Shattered Little Boxes

This morning my empty inbox rang like a shattered glass bell and I saw that I had finally heard from you. But the message was devastating and my heart sank into the sickness that suddenly filled the stomach which had been as empty as the inbox only a moment before.

"I've just lost my family!!"

And I didn't know if it had been on purpose or from some accident but my first thought was how you'd said if you ever lost your daughter there would be nothing left to live for. It had gouged bloody trails in my heart when you'd said it.

I wasn't enough to live for. I didn't mean enough to you to keep you alive. I shoved aside the selfish thought immediately, scolding myself for taking you too literally, for reading into things that weren't there but then this morning, when those horrifying words were blazoned across my inbox I panicked. The fear shot through me and I demanded back that you answer me. That you tell me what was going on. I called once. I called twice. No answer. I felt sogoddamnedpowerless.

 I threatened in text that if you didn't answer I would call your mother, call the police, anything to keep you from what I pictured you doing. The mistake I pictured you making.
The Forever Mistake.



You called back then and the cold dead voice I thought I would hear wasn't there. Instead, your voice was pitched for panic. You were begging me. Begging me to sacrifice myself. Your voice was the voice of a man so beyond panic that sense was no longer a concept. You knew what you wanted. You perched on the cold edge of losing everything and you knew instantly that you couldn't let that happen.

So you plead for me to throw myself over that edge instead. And my heart cried red tears. And my heart went numb. And the world began to slow.
And I heard her voice and she sounded so young overlaying your ragged cries in the background and the grief you two shared was so fast and so harsh that I gave you over. My life was so still in that moment. So silent and still and alone.

I felt so old and you two seemed so young that when she barked her harsh curse I almost laughed out loud. Almost. But in the end my still sorrow was all I could hear. And it echoed in all those empty boxes, it echoed in my empty heart like the ocean.



Then the line was dead. And my heart was dead. All those words of romantic love pulled from the insides of valentines candy boxes had seemed so real. Your love had seemed so real but now I knew it was just... what... I don't know. I still don't know. Probably won't ever know if what you felt was real or just a reflection of my own love shining back from your eyes.

The numbness stretched on all day. I slept. I ate. I read. I dutifully removed all evidence of you from my life with the leaden grace of a fishing weight in murky waters. But as the sun began to arch from the sky, as the dark came, those empty boxes began to sing and the lead began to melt.

Now my heart aches with all the tenderness of a thousand heartbreaks and I rage at the "it's just as wells" that are cast my way. And the tears flow and flow and flow and choke me. The ache I feel for you stretches across my chest and into my back, down into my hips and along my legs and feet. Across my shoulders and into my neck, my head, my face. My body is a live wire of pain, electric pulses that echo my heart beat.



No anger though. Only the lost empty ache of someone who grieves, who mourns for a loved one who has died. Because that's what you are. She has killed you to me. She has killed the happiness in me. And she had already killed that happiness in you. And she will kill the happiness in herself.

We're all doomed.

Empty Little Boxes

I have people who promised they would never stop loving me telling me now that they just "can't". That it isn't in them right now. Now, when I need the support and reassurance the most, when my self esteem is balanced upon a pin and crumbling. Now, when I'm left to feel most alone. And I'm supposed to feel guilty that I want them to put aside their own problems and give me the love and comfort when I need it. I'm the one who is supposed to feel guilty for having the bad grace to fall to pieces right when they're in the middle of redefining who they are, what they are and are not capable of.

And so I'm left alone. And you're the worst offender. I wait patiently for you to text or email me and I count the empty inboxes like I count the minutes on the clock. My world is hollow again. Empty because no one finds me sexually attractive and the platonic love and support feels like it is merely a matter of form. Another pat on the shoulder. Another discretely passed tissue to wipe the snot and tears that roll down my face as my heart breaks again and again and again.

Because I don't learn my lesson the first time. No, that would be too easy. I continuously go running back to my empty inbox because that is what you've trained me to do. I run back hoping for a note or acknowledgement of my existence just as I did all those years ago waiting for a birthday card or call from my father. All those empty mailboxes and all these empty inboxes and all the time my pussy sits like another empty little box. Waiting for some sign that someone finds me suitable for something other than pity.

You all don't love me enough to nurture me. You don't want me enough to fuck me. You don't even care enough to tell me that you don't care enough. So I sit waiting.

With my empty little boxes filling with tears and sighs and self hate.

And when you come back you wonder why the sex is mean. You wonder why my words are angry. You wonder why I wander away with a blank stare reflecting my tears. It's because I feel unwanted. I feel unworthy of every man who ever touched me and, in your case, even some who haven't yet. I feel as if there is something fundamentally wrong with me that only you men can see and recognize. So I ask you to punish me. I want you to beat whatever that flaw is out of me.

Instead, you disappear.
And again I'm left with my empty little boxes...

Every Scar is Our Song

Just like that it feels as if the storm has passed.
I know it's most likely just an illusion and all the pain will come rushing back without a moment's notice but, for now at least, the thought of you brings me only love and calm. There is a little ache that lives behind my heart but that will likely be there forever. I think it is a long healed scar that aches during emotional storms like an old war injury. It is a tender feeling but one that I can't help poking at occasionally, experimentally, as if to determine the nature or the cause of that long ago injury.

I'm not sure I'll ever know. I did realize today that my actions with you were very likely REactions instead. Pre-programmed into my subconscious by The Other One just as guilt is programmed by The First One. I'll call what happened "The Petulant Backlash".

I try so hard not to let my expectations dictate my actions with you or with the children. Never the less, I often find myself critiquing your behavior. Not in comparison to The Other One. Never in comparison to him, hut sometimes in comparison to an ideal I have built or what society has taught me of The Perfect Man. I hold you up to this ideal never once thinking that I don't even like these ideals and the one I truly love is you because you DON'T align with these ideals. Ideals like fake chivalry, misogyny, or narcissism. Your flaws are what draws me to you, are what make you attractive to me. And I don't just say that in a self placating way or in an attempt to blow smoke up your ass. I say it because it's true.

I love you because you haven't done the right thing, because you do have a weakness for me that supersedes what society deems is honorable. I love you because you are willing to break the rules to please me, you are willing to make yourself truly uncomfortable to make me happy. I love you because you honest feel that you are not worthy of me. These are the things that, in any other man, I would see and weak and annoying. In you, I see them as shining examples of how much you love me.

I love you because I am encouraged to be a better person, a more loveable person for you.

So, I am terrified that this thing we have created won't work out. That the fairy tale will be just as hokey and fake as all the other romantic horse crap we've been fed. But I'm calm now and, for whatever reason, I'm willing to wait to see what you decide.

But I know the storm will rise again. And I can't always promise that I will be strong enough to weather it.

"I Can't Quit You Babe I Think I'm Gonna Put You Down For a Awhile"

It gets harder when its quiet.
Like at night or on the weekends.
I strive so hard to live like those pithy little memes on Facebook. You know, the ones that say the only person you need to be happy is you. That you can't truly love another person until you love yourself. I post them by the dozen on my page, wanting my belief and the sheer number of them to be enough to make it true. But, in the end, I only wind up resenting them as being unreasonable and unrealistic. I love you so much that it physically hurts to know that we may never be together.

I thought I was having a heart attack last night. No joke, the pain radiated down my left arm and my jaw ached. My chest felt so tight but I could still feel that hollow echoing thud. I thought how great it would be to have a heart attack and die out there. No car, in the middle of the night with the girls sound asleep. I could die and not have to spend another minute living without you. You know suicide just isn't my style. Suffering slowly and loudly. That's my style. But now, a heart attack, that would end it all without having to worry about suicide or suffering. My chest felt like it was cracking open. I was sobbing so loudly I couldn't understand why the girls didn't hear me. It hurt worse than reading a Twilight fan fiction.

I was fucking living one.

Dying would have been too convenient. Heart attack would have been too tidy. I woke this morning with that same wet pain in my chest. Its been so easy to fake happy today. After the girls peeled me out of bed this morning, forced me to face the world, it was easy to pretend that everything was just fine.

I texted you. I messaged you. Of course I did. I can't help myself. I love you and I always will. Nothing will ever stop that. But I kept it casual. I asked if we could be friends. Asked if I could be there for you as just a monotonous little nobody.
I'm like the fat girl on the diet that gets a job at the bakery just so she can at least smell the fucking doughnuts. Except, she's never happy with just a little sniff, is she? No she'll eventually take a crumb or two and when that isn't enough she'll find herself in the corner of the dark stock room with powered sugar on her chest and drool on her chin, shoveling jelly filleds into her maw.

Edward tells Bella that she is his "own personal brand of heroin". That's how I feel about you. I'm filled with a vague sense of longing for you until the sun goes down or I have to go too long before talking to you again and then I start to show signs of withdrawal. Even now, sitting in the quiet, I can feel my body crave you in ways I shouldn't crave a man I've never held, kissed or fucked. And yet, here I huddle, shoving jelly filleds into my maw.

I fucking hate Stephanie Meyer for getting it so right. I hate her for understanding the simplest bond between two adults is a sheer need that defies logic or understanding. It defies explanation. But you're sick. You're so exhausted and so stressed out and I know that while I'm not a gigantic factor in those two things, I am one of the factors that you... WE actually have some control over while the other factors are more like acts of God with wills of their own.

I fucked up before by trying to quit you cold turkey. I was selfish and wrong by trying to leave your life. I know now that I can't ever leave your life any more than I could pull out my veins and arteries and use them for a jump rope. But I can try to be your friend and try to eliminate some of the stress that comes with being what we are. I can try to support you instead of being just one more thing that knocks your feet out from under your. I can be the one thing in your life that comes to you with no expectations on your time, energy or love. At least that's what I hope.

And later...
Later on if you feel better and you want something more. I'll be there then too. If that's what you want. Because I can't convince myself that loving you is bad for my heart.
That sooner or later heart attacks really do happen.
And that they're really just as messy as any other kind of hurt.

Fuck You Very Much

I've been waiting very patiently for the past six months. Standing very calmly while you all jostle for your positions on top of me. You fight for the choicest spot to inject your viscous wrath and bicker and fight over who has the right to harvest the most tender bits of me. My husband was the most patient. Nineteen years of laying in wait upon my back like a monkey I just can't quit. He slowly ransomed his favorite parts; my naivete, my optimism, my trust. He plastered up the holes with a crumbling concoction of cynicism, bitterness, and vulnerability. Then came my mother, slashing with nails of guilt and self doubt. Gnashing with teeth of fire and jealousy. She replaced her stolen bits with, "My you've gained a bit of weight, haven't you?"

My son took my power, my ability to rule the home and mete out punishment and replaced it with jeers and rolls of eyes. He knew my grasping fingers had become, at that point, merely an illusion I showed the world. My sharp tongue was wet ash. Next, my brother took whatever familial ties I had left and, licked his lips and tasting tender tears gave me back only half truths. I choked on his fear of me.

Now you fall in line, harvesting heart like so many wasted minutes waiting for you to call, like counting so many empty inboxes. I know you can't help but hate me just as you love what I represent, the freedom to love as you would without all of your own beloveds stealing juicy bits from your own trembling form. You don't have the strength left to love me and hold yourself together, a sad fatherly form of duct tape and medical gauze.

And all the rest of you offer only empty platitudes, so afraid that my fear, my anger, my sorrow is contagious, stretching from me to you like so much warm, discarded bubblegum.

There's nothing left for you to claim from me. I am become an empty shell of cardboard and outdated dreams. You have created a golum of your greed and fear and tears and now I stumble from one of you to another, clumsily grasping for acceptance. Nails raking for support. Teeth gnawing for unconditional love.

Harvesting the juiciest little bits of you to feed my empty soul.

Leaps and Bounds

I'd forgotten how good it feels to be here.

I just reread my last post and it was chilling to realize that Mom passed only two weeks after that on Father's Day. It was painless and she passed in her sleep, or more specifically, a kind of coma. Mike was sick again and thus unable to go but dad and I sat by her bed for a long while. We talked about letting go and I suggested she hung on because he hadn't yet given her the assurance she needed. He resisted at first. We both cried a great deal. Finally, he went to her bedside. He's become so stiff in his old age that it was painful to watch him stoop toward her ear. But then he did it. He told her that if she needed to go he would be alright. He gave her permission to die. Then he went home and I went to the hotel. She died at 5am that morning. Both a blessing and a curse.

So much of my life had been absorbed in her struggle that I'm not sure I knew what to do with myself. We prepared her funeral. It was a good turnout. That's what they always say, don't they? As if the population of your funeral had anything to do with how you lived your life. She was a loving, caring, devoted person in health. She was alone in sickness. I understand that acutely now. People didn't avoid her because she was a burden or because her frequent bouts with dementia made her unlikeable. It was because her illness forced them to face their own mortality and there is nothing people like more than blinding themselves to negative or unpleasant aspects of life. My friend TJ calls it unnecessary problems. My own illness has brought a similar reaction from some but not all of my acquaintances.

I remember thinking that the Paster knew nothing about her as he read the scripture he'd chosen for her and that I, a veteran pagan, could have chosen more apt scripture for her.

That's been just about two years now. We spread her ashes under her beloved Mulberry tree. I think of her often, dream of her frequently. When I first became ill I was struck by seizures. After an extremely forceful one I couldn't remember that she had passed. It must have been terrible for Mike to have to tell me again. I know it was awful enough living it twice. People often comment about how they still feel the presence of their loved ones either as a spirit or a running dialogue in their minds. I'm happy to say I feel none of that. I feel that she is truly at rest. The girls spray her perfume every once in awhile and on those occasions the pain becomes sharper but there was never a feeling of leaving things undone or unsaid and for that I am grateful.

I miss you, Mom. Everyday you are in my heart just as you always were. Your memory guides me even though your spirit us at rest.