Warning: This blog could contain sudden outbursts of anger and colorful language. Not appropriate for children.
You know who you are,
How can you hate someone who is dead that you love so damn much that it makes it so you can't breathe when you think of them, when you see their name? I do though, I hate you.
I have no idea to this day why I chose him over you. I didn't even know I had you. Isn't that stupid? How did I not see. You came up every damn day after work ... and I assumed it was because we were friends. Nothing more. I was so blinded by the hurt I'd been through I couldn't see that what I wanted was at my front door. After all the years I wanted it for.
And then there was her. I felt obligated. Didn't I owe it to her to give him another chance? To try to make a family work? I'd failed one already. I didn't want to do it again. And I chose him. Over you. Obligation overtook my blinded heart and I walked away from you forever. I did that.
But I had wanted you so long. I can remember every look, every touch, every hug. I remember the night of the accident, the night of New Years, the times at Moms, the way you'd hold my kids, the way you looked when you were in treatment, and not once did I love you any less than I do now. I can see every stage of you, from 16 to 30, and remember every breath as if it were this moment.
And it wish it were. My life stopped on July 16. I felt the truck hit me, the way that everything on this earth crashed into me all at once. And I don't want to let go. I don't want to breathe again. I don't want to wake up past this day and feel anymore, because if I move forward, I am moving farther away from you. And I don't want you to be gone.
You were my compass, my rock. My constant. I longed for you as an angel longs for wings. I could breathe because you did. You loved my children as though they were your own, and in a way, they were. I clung to parts of you I could pass on to them. Did you know that every single one of them has an Irish based name? I chose them for a reason, I felt pulled towards them. I would look at you holding them, playing with them, and I felt something I've never felt before or since. My baby bear especially. She was at home there. Just as I was in your company.
When I heard you'd married, I was startled. It was then that I decided I'd never get married again. And here I was, engaged. I sabotaged left and right, and yet I was a fool. I knew we spoke no more, that the chance had forever passed. Its who you were. I felt like Juliet. Every man I've ever been with knew that my heart belonged to you, that my soul was yours, even though you never knew.
The day you left us, I locked away my heart, my soul. They had lost the other half to themselves, and it feels so unsafe to pull them out, unprotected. I hate that I love you and you're not even here anymore to know or to ever love me back. You weren't supposed to leave.
You weren't my spouse, but in a way, you were. You were what kept me going. The first time I drove to Moms after you passed, I cried. I cried so much I pulled over. If you watched over me at all, you know. I saw trucks like yours, bikes like yours. Your face as I pulled in, your arms around me, your smile. I wanted to die along with you. I cried myself to sleep at night, I felt cold ... alone. And I still do.
I locked myself up, stopped going anywhere. Ignored friends, made bad choices. I became reckless and depressed. I tried time and again to force myself out. I am still trying. Its not working.
I feel so broken. I ignore guys, sabotage dates, find ways to make excuses to be too busy to meet anyone, see anyone. I'm scared to death, to be honest. I don't want anyone to replace you. I don't want to love anymore, to feel anymore.I'd rather stay safe, lonely, and let you live every single day with me because no one is competing for your memory.
I hate that you died. I hate that I never had you. I hate that I am not allowed to feel like this because you were married to someone else. I hate that you're not here to dry my tears and be my rock. I feel like if I move on, that you're so much farther away than you are now, and I can't handle that. I don't think I can really live without you.
I don't know what a day farther from you would feel like. What does it look like? How do I breathe? I know that time is going on, even if I cant move on with it. Don't you see? This is why I hate you. I hate that I love you and because I love you I stopped living.
How do you get to the point where you can live again ... and be ok with the person living through you? How do you make it past the day that they died, and not feel like you will collapse when those milestones hit every month? I haven't figured it out.
I'm so angry, so hurt, so sad. I can't stop tears at random moments. I see your handwriting, and my whole world crashes to a stand still. Someone asks about the kids names and I can barely breathe as I try to explain. I see someone with your name, and I hope against hope that somehow they will become you or be just like you. People bump into people that look like you, and I am jealous of them. What I wouldn't give to see your face, to touch you just one more time. To have a chance to tell you.
And yet, about all of this I feel stupid. Silly even. I have no right to these feelings. I have no right for my life to be on hold.
But it is. And I'm not sure when or if it ever will not be. I'm afraid of what lies beyond this moment, this time. Of what getting past this means. Will I forget you? Will I forget what you felt like? What loving you meant? I can't live a life without that, without you.
I fight this war every night, over living or loving you. Living has yet to win. I've convinced myself that as long as I am alive enough to function for my kids, thats all that matters. Everything else in me can be numb.
I've created a world in which I can talk myself out of everything. Out of every risk, every effort. I give up easily and don't try hard enough. I've convinced myself of the tediousness that is dating and learning another person to escape the hurt that I never knew was possible until you. Until you passed, it was still all a game.
I've created the illusion of busy-ness, so I have an excuse, a way out, without giving it to myself. I am no longer me, and I have no idea who I am without you breathing the same air, looking at the same stars, sleeping under the same moon. I am adrift, lost, and without a compass.
I hide away the emotions behind a dam of epic proportions. To let the tsunami loose is to risk ... and I can't allow myself to risk, when I don't even know who I am when you don't exist. If there is a balance, a way to exist and let go, I've not found it yet. Looking for it ... might just be too scary.
11/10/09
10/27/09
Milestone
This is a difficult night for me. I keep feeling the thoughts creeping up on me and I've been fighting them back as though reality will somehow stay at bay by doing so.
I am turning 30 in less than 2 hours.
Last year, on this day, I felt the heavy weight of the impending year. The burden of attempting to fulfill all I'd hoped by this day. I laid out plots, dreams, hopes, even fears to overcome.
And strangely, life got in the way. This year has been a battle in itself, to stay upright, to float, even to tread water at times.
I look back now, and see changes that are better for me than the plans I created. I lost a job that caused me crazy amounts of stress, took me from my kids, and drained me of every piece that made me who I am. I lost a relationship that was more of an addiction than something healthy. I learned to not compromise because of doing so much of it and feeling the unease it caused.
I discovered how much my family means to me, and I spend more time with my parents than I have ever done since I left home 15 years ago. I am learning to relax, to cuddle, to laugh, and to watch movies.
I've started a job with a company that helps me feel worthwhile and irreplaceable. I'm happy there, and its like a mini-family.
I've become content with being a single mom. I have moments of loneliness, and wish sometimes that I had what my friends and family members have. But in the end, I dont have time for it. I have beautiful girls that count on me, and that I love with all of my heart. There is nothing like their hugs, their kisses, the way they look at me when something makes them happy.
I may not have a huge successful career, make a ton of money, or own my own home, but I have learned about myself and about the real path I want my life to take. And I think its better than any of the plans I had for myself.
And tomorrow, when I wake, I can make new plans ..and take a new step. After all, its just a new beginning.
I am turning 30 in less than 2 hours.
Last year, on this day, I felt the heavy weight of the impending year. The burden of attempting to fulfill all I'd hoped by this day. I laid out plots, dreams, hopes, even fears to overcome.
And strangely, life got in the way. This year has been a battle in itself, to stay upright, to float, even to tread water at times.
I look back now, and see changes that are better for me than the plans I created. I lost a job that caused me crazy amounts of stress, took me from my kids, and drained me of every piece that made me who I am. I lost a relationship that was more of an addiction than something healthy. I learned to not compromise because of doing so much of it and feeling the unease it caused.
I discovered how much my family means to me, and I spend more time with my parents than I have ever done since I left home 15 years ago. I am learning to relax, to cuddle, to laugh, and to watch movies.
I've started a job with a company that helps me feel worthwhile and irreplaceable. I'm happy there, and its like a mini-family.
I've become content with being a single mom. I have moments of loneliness, and wish sometimes that I had what my friends and family members have. But in the end, I dont have time for it. I have beautiful girls that count on me, and that I love with all of my heart. There is nothing like their hugs, their kisses, the way they look at me when something makes them happy.
I may not have a huge successful career, make a ton of money, or own my own home, but I have learned about myself and about the real path I want my life to take. And I think its better than any of the plans I had for myself.
And tomorrow, when I wake, I can make new plans ..and take a new step. After all, its just a new beginning.
10/12/09
Complex
Authors note: Trust me, if this doesn't make sense to you, you're not alone. I reread it, and I'm so filled with conflicting thoughts on this topic right now, I can't make head nor tails. I'm sorry its so topsy turvy, but it also personifies the way that I feel love is right now, just in the way it flows unevenly down thought currents. If you understand it, then leave a comment and explain, because I'd love to be enlightened!
**
There are times when I want to smack some people upside their heads. That, or maybe ask them if I can biopsy their brains to figure out why the hell they think the way they do.
Love seems to create thought patterns that defy all logic or reason. We all have this fairy-tale vision of what love should look like, the sweet, the romance, the butterflies, the cutesy... but what does real love actually look like? When you're in the thick of the mess, the obstinate, impossibleness that really is love, what does it look like to you? What does it look like from the outside?
Take a couple I know. They're in the middle of this thing, or rather if you want to get technical in time frames, the beginning. Complicate matters that she has a kid. Not his kid, but a kid. That he loves like its his kid. As if love itself wasn't complicated enough. And they're young.
They're living a life most 30 year olds live. Jobs, daycare, stress, bills and all in this hard economic times. Add on top of this, neither were ever modeled positive, loving relationships. Enter in resentment, harsh words, name-calling, manipulation, anger... and the reckless emotions of young love. Can you feel the swirl, the way the current rips you around like you're in a whirlpool? Good. Now add some sharks.
This is their love. The sharks constantly threaten the health of us, just as love constantly threatens their individual worth. Love makes you so reliant upon the commitment and emotions of another person in relation to yourself, that it becomes like the life raft to keep you away from those sharks. What happens when that life raft starts to sink?
No one ever INTENDS for it to sink. A sharp word here, something overlooked there. Unspoken expectations. Disappointment, yelling ... a fight over money, over food, over whos turn it is to do the dishes. All of these can slowly deflate the life raft, and love begins to feel not so certain. A little bit unsafe in those already frightening waters.
So many times, love wraps us up in the emotions, even the commitment, that we build ourselves into nothing, or at least very little, without it. We become stuck in the thought of love without ever practicing the art of actually knowing love. Especially when you're young, when your raft starts to go under, even a little ... you can be driven to rash measures. You try to test the depth of their emotions.
What does that test look like, when you're young, in love and your life is sinking? Can it look like ... a couples counseling appointment? Talking about cheating? Walking out the door? Threatening your own life ... ?
Love should never have to be tested, we hear. The stories we read as kids, the movies we sit through. Love is just always known. Or is it? If you're standing in the midst of love... doesn't it feel sometimes as though its going to find a way to disappear? Don't lie and say no, you're solid in your love. Even the best marriages have their moments of worry. What if you said something the wrong way, pushed a little too hard?
You may be sitting here reading this, and you may wonder what I'm getting at (ha ha, as if I really know!). This young couple I'm talking about, they're undergoing a test of their love. And they've tested, threatening in ways that no one should ever have to test (theres that word again). And not because they don't love eachother. They do. Not because they're young. I challenge that its because those of us who know what love is don't take the responsibility to teach those younger than us HOW to love. Its not just a parents job. Anyone can model this, anyone can show someone else how to love, and how even to fight lovingly. We can impart to anyone the things we know. And we don't.
We instead sit idly by and we watch. We see them begin the patterns that are destructive to them, and we know they're destructive. But its not our place, so we say nothing until its too late. Until they're stuck so far into the rut they're in, its inevitable. We give them ways to scurry out of it, to run and escape instead of handing them resources to build it back up. What would you do, when you're faced with someone you love, whom you've watched get to this point of love themselves?
Watching this couple, I have had to consider what I think love is and the way real life allows it to manifest.
We are told: love should be easy. Love should just happen. Love should be romantic and sweet. Love shouldn't say harsh words. Love shouldn't get angry. Love shouldn't have to be tested.
That's not true in the slightest. Love is never ever easy. Love is full of differences, and unknowns and perspectives and people. Love is full of emotion, raw and hungry and lonely. Love is more than hard work. Love takes commitment and passion and fire and intensity. Love is exhausting, trying, it gets pissed off ... sometimes it even gets pissed on. And love definitely requires tests. Its too fragile not to. But love is also beautiful. Its the complexities, the hope and the chaos of it that makes it worthwhile.
Why doesn't anyone tell anyone this? Is the truth not the sugar coated pretty picture we're so desperately hoping for? We read books, watch movies of "love" and we're mesmerized. We want that. We get mad when the love we have isn't what we want, what we've been told we should have. When it isn't just the right way. We even tell our friends to get out of things that aren't quite so perfect, just because they're unhappy for a moment. We turn our heads from those who cheat because their partner couldn't "give them what they needed".
What about being true human beings, true friends and giving others what they need? The skills to love authentically, the support to do so, and resources to try to keep love intact? Then maybe the tests can be healthy, and won't leave someones life in jeopardy because of the turbulent emotions that surround it.
How can we tell someone that that isn't what love is, if that's the love their living? If love looks like that to them, who are we to say otherwise? It may not be our love, our perspective, but it doesn't make it any less real, and it doesn't make it any less deserving of respect. And isn't love - in any of its forms, faces, and colors - worth fighting for?
I would hope that by understanding the perspectives of love, I can at least better help that couple learn to test their love in a way that doesn't test their life.
Sadly, I know this feeling happens far too often, for too many. Not even just the young ones, but those who are my age, and those who are older. It is the nature of what love does to us. Real love robs the sense of sensibility, it robs us of sound judgement, and we just do. Because honestly ... we should.
This couple is lucky enough to have people around them who care, who share and who listen and want them to succeed. I worry though, for those who don't.
The next time a friend comes to you with a story of how wrong their love is making them feel, try to understand how it was love to them to begin with ... and then give them a tool to find that love again. Don't be so quick to feed them the shoulds ... and try to find out the does.
Life is messy ... and love is chaos. But at least it doesn't do it alone.
**
There are times when I want to smack some people upside their heads. That, or maybe ask them if I can biopsy their brains to figure out why the hell they think the way they do.
Love seems to create thought patterns that defy all logic or reason. We all have this fairy-tale vision of what love should look like, the sweet, the romance, the butterflies, the cutesy... but what does real love actually look like? When you're in the thick of the mess, the obstinate, impossibleness that really is love, what does it look like to you? What does it look like from the outside?
Take a couple I know. They're in the middle of this thing, or rather if you want to get technical in time frames, the beginning. Complicate matters that she has a kid. Not his kid, but a kid. That he loves like its his kid. As if love itself wasn't complicated enough. And they're young.
They're living a life most 30 year olds live. Jobs, daycare, stress, bills and all in this hard economic times. Add on top of this, neither were ever modeled positive, loving relationships. Enter in resentment, harsh words, name-calling, manipulation, anger... and the reckless emotions of young love. Can you feel the swirl, the way the current rips you around like you're in a whirlpool? Good. Now add some sharks.
This is their love. The sharks constantly threaten the health of us, just as love constantly threatens their individual worth. Love makes you so reliant upon the commitment and emotions of another person in relation to yourself, that it becomes like the life raft to keep you away from those sharks. What happens when that life raft starts to sink?
No one ever INTENDS for it to sink. A sharp word here, something overlooked there. Unspoken expectations. Disappointment, yelling ... a fight over money, over food, over whos turn it is to do the dishes. All of these can slowly deflate the life raft, and love begins to feel not so certain. A little bit unsafe in those already frightening waters.
So many times, love wraps us up in the emotions, even the commitment, that we build ourselves into nothing, or at least very little, without it. We become stuck in the thought of love without ever practicing the art of actually knowing love. Especially when you're young, when your raft starts to go under, even a little ... you can be driven to rash measures. You try to test the depth of their emotions.
What does that test look like, when you're young, in love and your life is sinking? Can it look like ... a couples counseling appointment? Talking about cheating? Walking out the door? Threatening your own life ... ?
Love should never have to be tested, we hear. The stories we read as kids, the movies we sit through. Love is just always known. Or is it? If you're standing in the midst of love... doesn't it feel sometimes as though its going to find a way to disappear? Don't lie and say no, you're solid in your love. Even the best marriages have their moments of worry. What if you said something the wrong way, pushed a little too hard?
You may be sitting here reading this, and you may wonder what I'm getting at (ha ha, as if I really know!). This young couple I'm talking about, they're undergoing a test of their love. And they've tested, threatening in ways that no one should ever have to test (theres that word again). And not because they don't love eachother. They do. Not because they're young. I challenge that its because those of us who know what love is don't take the responsibility to teach those younger than us HOW to love. Its not just a parents job. Anyone can model this, anyone can show someone else how to love, and how even to fight lovingly. We can impart to anyone the things we know. And we don't.
We instead sit idly by and we watch. We see them begin the patterns that are destructive to them, and we know they're destructive. But its not our place, so we say nothing until its too late. Until they're stuck so far into the rut they're in, its inevitable. We give them ways to scurry out of it, to run and escape instead of handing them resources to build it back up. What would you do, when you're faced with someone you love, whom you've watched get to this point of love themselves?
Watching this couple, I have had to consider what I think love is and the way real life allows it to manifest.
We are told: love should be easy. Love should just happen. Love should be romantic and sweet. Love shouldn't say harsh words. Love shouldn't get angry. Love shouldn't have to be tested.
That's not true in the slightest. Love is never ever easy. Love is full of differences, and unknowns and perspectives and people. Love is full of emotion, raw and hungry and lonely. Love is more than hard work. Love takes commitment and passion and fire and intensity. Love is exhausting, trying, it gets pissed off ... sometimes it even gets pissed on. And love definitely requires tests. Its too fragile not to. But love is also beautiful. Its the complexities, the hope and the chaos of it that makes it worthwhile.
Why doesn't anyone tell anyone this? Is the truth not the sugar coated pretty picture we're so desperately hoping for? We read books, watch movies of "love" and we're mesmerized. We want that. We get mad when the love we have isn't what we want, what we've been told we should have. When it isn't just the right way. We even tell our friends to get out of things that aren't quite so perfect, just because they're unhappy for a moment. We turn our heads from those who cheat because their partner couldn't "give them what they needed".
What about being true human beings, true friends and giving others what they need? The skills to love authentically, the support to do so, and resources to try to keep love intact? Then maybe the tests can be healthy, and won't leave someones life in jeopardy because of the turbulent emotions that surround it.
How can we tell someone that that isn't what love is, if that's the love their living? If love looks like that to them, who are we to say otherwise? It may not be our love, our perspective, but it doesn't make it any less real, and it doesn't make it any less deserving of respect. And isn't love - in any of its forms, faces, and colors - worth fighting for?
I would hope that by understanding the perspectives of love, I can at least better help that couple learn to test their love in a way that doesn't test their life.
Sadly, I know this feeling happens far too often, for too many. Not even just the young ones, but those who are my age, and those who are older. It is the nature of what love does to us. Real love robs the sense of sensibility, it robs us of sound judgement, and we just do. Because honestly ... we should.
This couple is lucky enough to have people around them who care, who share and who listen and want them to succeed. I worry though, for those who don't.
The next time a friend comes to you with a story of how wrong their love is making them feel, try to understand how it was love to them to begin with ... and then give them a tool to find that love again. Don't be so quick to feed them the shoulds ... and try to find out the does.
Life is messy ... and love is chaos. But at least it doesn't do it alone.
10/11/09
Subconcious
There comes a time in your life when you realize everything - and I mean everything - you’ve ever experienced will at some point parallel someone else life … and that they’ll need your guidance to navigate the waters. For some of us, that’s easy. A simple pep talk, a few harsh words. And then there are some of us who don’t like the sound of reality so much that we’ve learned the art of not listening, because we’ve learned to tune out any of the voices outside our own.
Let this be a voice instead, that is inside. Words you read, become your own. You have to think them, and therefore own them in a sense. I hope and pray that this ownership comes to whom its due.
The subconscious mind is a subtle thing. Don’t laugh now at such an obvious statement. Its not always that obvious - because sometimes we can make an assumption about our perception of our subconscious mind. We RATIONALIZE that which we want to be truth. Sadly, rationalization isn’t the same as intention, and nor does it equal truth.
I want to tell you a story. You can determine for yourself if its true.
**
Years ago, there was a girl. She had everything you’d assume one could want. A house, beautiful kids, a husband that loved her dearly. She also had a heart and soul that raged like a wild stallion stuffed inside a horse trailer with far too many companions.
As one does when there is a part that’s unsettled, she tried to hold it in. Of course, that wasn’t possible. Holding in such a fury and storm is like trying to capture the power of a hurricane to use as your own personal vacuum cleaner. The pain of it starts to strangle you and that soul inside begins to die slowly. And we all fight death. And its about how we choose to fight death that determines whether or not we actually live.
She stood in the middle of everything she had, and wistfully dreamed of what could be, and what could have been. She thought about those in her past, and those who were potential. She talked to her friends about her thoughts - her single, free friends. Not once did she mention this to someone at church, not once to anyone who was married. She wanted only the ones who knew the taste of freedom and could convince her that it was best to be the ones to whom she spoke.
If you asked her though, she wanted to stay in her marriage, stay with her children, stay with her life - just with a little bit of fun time on the side. Oh, the subconscious.
In the end, we all get what we set out to find. Even if it is different from what we thought we sought. After all, who would want to give up that wonderful life? Even if it was boring, drab, routine and totally making her crazy.
As it turned out, those fun single friends did convince her. They showed her how much fun they had. They helped her overlook the obvious fact that she had children and they didn’t. They made everything seem easy, they spoke with authority on things to which they were ignorant and naïve. And she believed them… because she wanted to.
Before she knew it, she was making excuses. Girls night out, night over at a girlfriends house, oh, just going out to sing a song, be home soon. Oh, it’s a weekend birthday party at so and so’s house, I’ll be home before you know it. 8pm returns became 12. 12s became 2. 2 o’clock returns started to seep into the next day after work.
Until one day, she came home to nothing but a lamp on the floor. And nothing else. Her children, they were gone. Her husband was gone. All that he had left her was her clothes, and a single, solitary lamp. She had gotten what she wanted - freedom to run like the wild stallion that she felt she was. She crumpled to the floor unable to move. She had lost everything she actually wanted and instead now held before her the emptiness that freedom meant.
**
There is more to this story, but what happens next is unimportant. Its insignificant compared to the lack of decision, to the lack of direction she allowed herself to have. I know someone who is flirting with this fate, and she is flirting fast. She doesn’t even believe that she is, just as this girl above didn’t.
But this girl above, she pushed for it. We all can see where she would have driven her husband to take the family from her - she was destructive to everything a family needed most. Sometimes our pushing comes a little lighter. Hidden things here, secrets there, putting our own wants and needs in front of our spouses or families. These little things, well, they’re not so little, not in a marriage.
I hope that this message finds its way home, and that there can be another way found … change that stallion to a bird - give her wings. Let her fly a little, but teach her how to fly safely, how to harness that wild untamed power and need into something that doesn’t flirt with disaster. Because if disaster flirts back, its too late.
Let this be a voice instead, that is inside. Words you read, become your own. You have to think them, and therefore own them in a sense. I hope and pray that this ownership comes to whom its due.
The subconscious mind is a subtle thing. Don’t laugh now at such an obvious statement. Its not always that obvious - because sometimes we can make an assumption about our perception of our subconscious mind. We RATIONALIZE that which we want to be truth. Sadly, rationalization isn’t the same as intention, and nor does it equal truth.
I want to tell you a story. You can determine for yourself if its true.
**
Years ago, there was a girl. She had everything you’d assume one could want. A house, beautiful kids, a husband that loved her dearly. She also had a heart and soul that raged like a wild stallion stuffed inside a horse trailer with far too many companions.
As one does when there is a part that’s unsettled, she tried to hold it in. Of course, that wasn’t possible. Holding in such a fury and storm is like trying to capture the power of a hurricane to use as your own personal vacuum cleaner. The pain of it starts to strangle you and that soul inside begins to die slowly. And we all fight death. And its about how we choose to fight death that determines whether or not we actually live.
She stood in the middle of everything she had, and wistfully dreamed of what could be, and what could have been. She thought about those in her past, and those who were potential. She talked to her friends about her thoughts - her single, free friends. Not once did she mention this to someone at church, not once to anyone who was married. She wanted only the ones who knew the taste of freedom and could convince her that it was best to be the ones to whom she spoke.
If you asked her though, she wanted to stay in her marriage, stay with her children, stay with her life - just with a little bit of fun time on the side. Oh, the subconscious.
In the end, we all get what we set out to find. Even if it is different from what we thought we sought. After all, who would want to give up that wonderful life? Even if it was boring, drab, routine and totally making her crazy.
As it turned out, those fun single friends did convince her. They showed her how much fun they had. They helped her overlook the obvious fact that she had children and they didn’t. They made everything seem easy, they spoke with authority on things to which they were ignorant and naïve. And she believed them… because she wanted to.
Before she knew it, she was making excuses. Girls night out, night over at a girlfriends house, oh, just going out to sing a song, be home soon. Oh, it’s a weekend birthday party at so and so’s house, I’ll be home before you know it. 8pm returns became 12. 12s became 2. 2 o’clock returns started to seep into the next day after work.
Until one day, she came home to nothing but a lamp on the floor. And nothing else. Her children, they were gone. Her husband was gone. All that he had left her was her clothes, and a single, solitary lamp. She had gotten what she wanted - freedom to run like the wild stallion that she felt she was. She crumpled to the floor unable to move. She had lost everything she actually wanted and instead now held before her the emptiness that freedom meant.
**
There is more to this story, but what happens next is unimportant. Its insignificant compared to the lack of decision, to the lack of direction she allowed herself to have. I know someone who is flirting with this fate, and she is flirting fast. She doesn’t even believe that she is, just as this girl above didn’t.
But this girl above, she pushed for it. We all can see where she would have driven her husband to take the family from her - she was destructive to everything a family needed most. Sometimes our pushing comes a little lighter. Hidden things here, secrets there, putting our own wants and needs in front of our spouses or families. These little things, well, they’re not so little, not in a marriage.
I hope that this message finds its way home, and that there can be another way found … change that stallion to a bird - give her wings. Let her fly a little, but teach her how to fly safely, how to harness that wild untamed power and need into something that doesn’t flirt with disaster. Because if disaster flirts back, its too late.
10/10/09
Loss Blog Pt. 2
I am sure this part will go through many edits before I hit publish. This one will either be the easiest or the hardest part to write - there will be no gray area. This is the loss that has changed my entire world, has opened my eyes to myself, to the perceptions I had, and to what little I know of myself and life. Though it wasn't the 2nd loss for me, it feels right to place it between the two, as the second continues far past the culmination of this loss, and this loss began in the midst of the first.
In July of this year, I lost my anchor. I didn't realize how much of a compass this life was to mine. The ways that fate had intertwined and yet starcrossed for so long. I took for granted that which I expected to always be there, to constantly exist. Never did I realize the magnitude of someone to whom I'd barely spoken a word in 3 years... devastating earthquake which would erupt for the months that followed, the nights marked in sweat-soaked dreams, the evenings drowned in tears, the sight of familiar things that brought on a torrent of tears. The way someone whom I had never truly been able to love - how it had made me never want to love again.
Never had I experienced a death such as this before. In moments, I could see every memory flood. The way he'd hug me, the way he'd lift the kids up and swing them around, the look in his eyes when he spoke. The way he'd come up and visit every day after work, relieving me for moments of the baby, cuddling and cooing with her, staying as late as he could before heading home ... to think of my blindness, to see what could have been... but I chose instead, to become the second choice.
How to feel like you've lost your life partner, when you were never partners to begin with? In the pain of it all, it makes no sense to me, and yet here I sit and feel it anyways. I feel ridiculous, my life halted over a man that was no more than a mere friend.
Mere is hardly the word. Who was there to pull me out of the truck when the bed jammed the door in that awful accident? Who sat with me in the hospital when I felt alone? Who danced with me that New Years Eve when everyone else stood away from me, silent. Who called me time and again after no contact, and found me even when I was impossible to find? I remember his truck, his motorcycle, the look of him on it. The smile on his face as he'd get out of the truck and saw my face. The way he laughed, his touch. Even his handwriting, I can't bear to think of rubbing away - I remember the day he wrote it.
I know, I sound the picture of insanity.
How to explain to a world, that someone who was never yours, was your everything? Only, I never told him.
What difference did it make? When I chose otherwise (without knowing, or else, I'd have chosen) ... he walked away and did too. He married someone else.
In April, my mom told me of his last birthday party. They knew he wouldn't make it to next April, if he even made it 6 more months. I went, he barely spoke to me, and I left devastated. I wished I hadn't gone.
I remember July 16. I was getting ready for work, and my phone jingled. A text from my mom, two words. "Bad news". Out of all of the things it could have been... I knew. I hit the floor from the weight and tried to gather myself. I called her instantly, and she hesitated over the words. I asked. Yes, she said, and the tears ran like rain. All I wanted then was for someone in this crashing world to hold me upright, keep me steady. And I was alone.
As soon as the nanny arrived, I ran to my moms work, hoping to search her eyes for truth ... and finding the sickening truth there. He was gone.
I searched all day for peace within myself, and I found none. I no longer wanted any of this existence without his breath in the same air as mine, his heart beating in the same moment, his life LIVING at the same moment. The impact of him wholly hit me, and yet I had to work through the day, acting as though nothing of consequence had occurred... I was a numb, hollow shell by then... I had learned long ago how to paste a smile on top of tears.
I tried to reach out, flailing as though drowning, and I suppose I was. I didn't understand. How did I FEEL so much? Where was this pain coming from? This wasn't my pain to feel, for he wasn't mine to feel pain for. How stupid was I, to have loved this love and lost it and feel as though I'd lost someone I'd spent my lifetime with?
Still, even now, I have to fight the urge to completely make myself solitary. At this point, love feels lost to me forever. In part because of this loss, I never want to even try to love again. This has shown me death in all its certainty, and I can't risk love again. Because of this, I talk to few, I entertain nothing, and I feel little.
Its because of this, also, that I have found in myself the ways I have so often hurt others, used them for subconcious gains. Ways I showed affection to those that I did not feel it for, and ways that I manipulated situation to satiate some thirst for importance, some need to be needed. I didn't understand fully the difference between need and want. And it was within want that I thought I'd descovered being needed. How wrong I was.
This series of loss - for it has been a series - a familiar dance over time of missed opportunities, ill-timed fates, the ultimate loss itself stretching near a decade in its painful long coming... has taught me to be content with what I have and who I am alone. And to not miss a moment with those closest and dearest. That means to me, that all of my time, my love, my life, belongs in the children given to me - as we never know when time is near. And that means I don't have time for matters of the heart. Besides, my love died with him.
In July of this year, I lost my anchor. I didn't realize how much of a compass this life was to mine. The ways that fate had intertwined and yet starcrossed for so long. I took for granted that which I expected to always be there, to constantly exist. Never did I realize the magnitude of someone to whom I'd barely spoken a word in 3 years... devastating earthquake which would erupt for the months that followed, the nights marked in sweat-soaked dreams, the evenings drowned in tears, the sight of familiar things that brought on a torrent of tears. The way someone whom I had never truly been able to love - how it had made me never want to love again.
Never had I experienced a death such as this before. In moments, I could see every memory flood. The way he'd hug me, the way he'd lift the kids up and swing them around, the look in his eyes when he spoke. The way he'd come up and visit every day after work, relieving me for moments of the baby, cuddling and cooing with her, staying as late as he could before heading home ... to think of my blindness, to see what could have been... but I chose instead, to become the second choice.
How to feel like you've lost your life partner, when you were never partners to begin with? In the pain of it all, it makes no sense to me, and yet here I sit and feel it anyways. I feel ridiculous, my life halted over a man that was no more than a mere friend.
Mere is hardly the word. Who was there to pull me out of the truck when the bed jammed the door in that awful accident? Who sat with me in the hospital when I felt alone? Who danced with me that New Years Eve when everyone else stood away from me, silent. Who called me time and again after no contact, and found me even when I was impossible to find? I remember his truck, his motorcycle, the look of him on it. The smile on his face as he'd get out of the truck and saw my face. The way he laughed, his touch. Even his handwriting, I can't bear to think of rubbing away - I remember the day he wrote it.
I know, I sound the picture of insanity.
How to explain to a world, that someone who was never yours, was your everything? Only, I never told him.
What difference did it make? When I chose otherwise (without knowing, or else, I'd have chosen) ... he walked away and did too. He married someone else.
In April, my mom told me of his last birthday party. They knew he wouldn't make it to next April, if he even made it 6 more months. I went, he barely spoke to me, and I left devastated. I wished I hadn't gone.
I remember July 16. I was getting ready for work, and my phone jingled. A text from my mom, two words. "Bad news". Out of all of the things it could have been... I knew. I hit the floor from the weight and tried to gather myself. I called her instantly, and she hesitated over the words. I asked. Yes, she said, and the tears ran like rain. All I wanted then was for someone in this crashing world to hold me upright, keep me steady. And I was alone.
As soon as the nanny arrived, I ran to my moms work, hoping to search her eyes for truth ... and finding the sickening truth there. He was gone.
I searched all day for peace within myself, and I found none. I no longer wanted any of this existence without his breath in the same air as mine, his heart beating in the same moment, his life LIVING at the same moment. The impact of him wholly hit me, and yet I had to work through the day, acting as though nothing of consequence had occurred... I was a numb, hollow shell by then... I had learned long ago how to paste a smile on top of tears.
I tried to reach out, flailing as though drowning, and I suppose I was. I didn't understand. How did I FEEL so much? Where was this pain coming from? This wasn't my pain to feel, for he wasn't mine to feel pain for. How stupid was I, to have loved this love and lost it and feel as though I'd lost someone I'd spent my lifetime with?
Still, even now, I have to fight the urge to completely make myself solitary. At this point, love feels lost to me forever. In part because of this loss, I never want to even try to love again. This has shown me death in all its certainty, and I can't risk love again. Because of this, I talk to few, I entertain nothing, and I feel little.
Its because of this, also, that I have found in myself the ways I have so often hurt others, used them for subconcious gains. Ways I showed affection to those that I did not feel it for, and ways that I manipulated situation to satiate some thirst for importance, some need to be needed. I didn't understand fully the difference between need and want. And it was within want that I thought I'd descovered being needed. How wrong I was.
This series of loss - for it has been a series - a familiar dance over time of missed opportunities, ill-timed fates, the ultimate loss itself stretching near a decade in its painful long coming... has taught me to be content with what I have and who I am alone. And to not miss a moment with those closest and dearest. That means to me, that all of my time, my love, my life, belongs in the children given to me - as we never know when time is near. And that means I don't have time for matters of the heart. Besides, my love died with him.
Loss Blog Pt. 1
So this will be a loss blog. I don’t know if it will cover a series of blogs, but it will be long, I can promise that. Within this year, I have lost much. I won’t use names, but I will use truth, and I will use emotion, which is my own perception of truth as I try to walk through this healing process and deal with the broken edges and fight lines along the way.
I won’t apologize for the way this will ramble, the disjointed nature and shape that it will take. I already know this, I already am familiar with the curves it has, the juts and the ravines. You aren’t yet, but you will be. It may be familiar to you as well, or it may be as foreign as a distant land. Either way, this is real. This is my life.
I cannot say when it began. It feels like its just been. This year has torn me to shreds and created scars so deep that even the superficial makeup of a smile I try to wear to hide them every day is beginning to crack. And in all of this, it centers around the loss of people who made me me, who I identified solidity with, and who shook that solidity to the very core. Its forced me to see me, and often, I don’t like what I see, and I feel crushed to the point of being unsure of where to start again. This is a journey, the journey of a loss.
When I met him, I felt like we would be forever. I know when it changed, and I will never understand how. I did what I could, but I think in it all, I was not her. I was not the chaos to which he was accustomed. I was a different kind of chaos. I will never believe she stole him, I never had him to begin with. As apart as they were, when she threatened to leave, I was a mere fleeting memory of someone to whom love had once been professed. I was the secondary prize when she decided that she wanted and deserved more - and so I believed this of myself when he returned to me. I never again trusted a movement, a word, an emotion or an intention. I suppose, it was me that pushed too hard. I think I will probably use that sentence a few times in the course of this journey.
Its been near a year now since he walked away, without looking back. He has moved on, and I cannot. I miss his smile, his laugh, his touch. No one understood why I loved him, but I did. I saw what we had once had, who he had once been, the way he had once loved me. I could feel it every now and again, when we could reconnect on a walk, or in a simple note, or a surprise lunch date. But I also saw myself as invisible. Not in his mind if I wasn’t there … and I felt the weight of that cloak as though it were real. I wanted him to see me all the time, and I pushed to far in finding it from others, lingering over admiration and respect I was given at work… the way people paid attention. I fell too fast and too deep into the pool of attention, and suddenly, abruptly - though really, there was no other option for him - my world uprooted in a night. Inevitable, yes.
Even more the loss of him to me, I feel the loss of him to them. I hate to hear the tears at night as they cry in their beds, the whimpers of “Daddy” in their sleep. The questions as the oldest one ages, doesn’t he love me, why isn’t he here, I miss him, I want to go to his house. I don’t know what to say, so I just hold, and wipe the tears off their soft cheeks. And I cry too. I offer to her to call, and she shouts back at me, he won’t answer. I don’t know what to answer to that - because she is right, he rarely does. And he never calls. She doesn’t understand, she knows she is lovable. I want to call and tell him - to make him show her… but I can’t, and I know that. I have her call anyway - hoping against hope that he will answer, he doesn‘t - and her voice is a mouse-whisper as she leaves her tear-filled fearful message. I try not to think it, but she knows as well as I do that it won’t be returned. And the little one, she knows not. She doesn’t remember life with him here at all … I’m her entire world. I feel for what she doesn’t know.
There are so many questions unanswered. And the way he fought when he got home, as though we had a chance, I feel as though he was biding time, knowing my weakness for him, until he found a replacement. It hurt so much when he started dating again, the way he plastered the proud announcement over his pages online, and I could imagine the way he looked at her. Then he wrote to me about how he asked her out, and it hit me that he had done and said things that in 4 years I had never come close to hearing or seeing …. I was not enough, to earn or have these things to him.
I can’t write any more on him for now, the thoughts are jumbled and angry and confused and bittersweet.
I won’t apologize for the way this will ramble, the disjointed nature and shape that it will take. I already know this, I already am familiar with the curves it has, the juts and the ravines. You aren’t yet, but you will be. It may be familiar to you as well, or it may be as foreign as a distant land. Either way, this is real. This is my life.
I cannot say when it began. It feels like its just been. This year has torn me to shreds and created scars so deep that even the superficial makeup of a smile I try to wear to hide them every day is beginning to crack. And in all of this, it centers around the loss of people who made me me, who I identified solidity with, and who shook that solidity to the very core. Its forced me to see me, and often, I don’t like what I see, and I feel crushed to the point of being unsure of where to start again. This is a journey, the journey of a loss.
When I met him, I felt like we would be forever. I know when it changed, and I will never understand how. I did what I could, but I think in it all, I was not her. I was not the chaos to which he was accustomed. I was a different kind of chaos. I will never believe she stole him, I never had him to begin with. As apart as they were, when she threatened to leave, I was a mere fleeting memory of someone to whom love had once been professed. I was the secondary prize when she decided that she wanted and deserved more - and so I believed this of myself when he returned to me. I never again trusted a movement, a word, an emotion or an intention. I suppose, it was me that pushed too hard. I think I will probably use that sentence a few times in the course of this journey.
Its been near a year now since he walked away, without looking back. He has moved on, and I cannot. I miss his smile, his laugh, his touch. No one understood why I loved him, but I did. I saw what we had once had, who he had once been, the way he had once loved me. I could feel it every now and again, when we could reconnect on a walk, or in a simple note, or a surprise lunch date. But I also saw myself as invisible. Not in his mind if I wasn’t there … and I felt the weight of that cloak as though it were real. I wanted him to see me all the time, and I pushed to far in finding it from others, lingering over admiration and respect I was given at work… the way people paid attention. I fell too fast and too deep into the pool of attention, and suddenly, abruptly - though really, there was no other option for him - my world uprooted in a night. Inevitable, yes.
Even more the loss of him to me, I feel the loss of him to them. I hate to hear the tears at night as they cry in their beds, the whimpers of “Daddy” in their sleep. The questions as the oldest one ages, doesn’t he love me, why isn’t he here, I miss him, I want to go to his house. I don’t know what to say, so I just hold, and wipe the tears off their soft cheeks. And I cry too. I offer to her to call, and she shouts back at me, he won’t answer. I don’t know what to answer to that - because she is right, he rarely does. And he never calls. She doesn’t understand, she knows she is lovable. I want to call and tell him - to make him show her… but I can’t, and I know that. I have her call anyway - hoping against hope that he will answer, he doesn‘t - and her voice is a mouse-whisper as she leaves her tear-filled fearful message. I try not to think it, but she knows as well as I do that it won’t be returned. And the little one, she knows not. She doesn’t remember life with him here at all … I’m her entire world. I feel for what she doesn’t know.
There are so many questions unanswered. And the way he fought when he got home, as though we had a chance, I feel as though he was biding time, knowing my weakness for him, until he found a replacement. It hurt so much when he started dating again, the way he plastered the proud announcement over his pages online, and I could imagine the way he looked at her. Then he wrote to me about how he asked her out, and it hit me that he had done and said things that in 4 years I had never come close to hearing or seeing …. I was not enough, to earn or have these things to him.
I can’t write any more on him for now, the thoughts are jumbled and angry and confused and bittersweet.
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