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.