again? really??

Sara Bareilles ‘Between the Lines’

“I’m only here to finish planning the wedding”. Seriously, did he just slip in a covert way to mention he’s getting married without telling me? Well, I guess I’m happy for him, but to her I say this: don’t get a potentially terminal illness and expect him to stay by your side. He’ll be gone in an instant, fucking some girl at a college in Ohio and blaming his sudden change of plans to stay by your side and wallow in true passionate love forever.

Fuck you. Whether you’re getting married or not. This is the third (previous) guy of mine to go off and live happily ever after with a girl by the same name. Call me, well, female, but it seems like more than a coincidence to me.

And what about me? I’m neglecting a sweet guy who’s madly in love with me. What would I do without him, I don’t know. It does not, however, keep me from being bitter about my circumstances. No one can have it all, but I wanted the strong guy, the one who fixes my broken stuff. I wanted the tough guy, the one who takes tough love and gives it back, likes to get dirty, and doesn’t hesitate. Instead, I am the one hesitating. I am the one left (always) and left to wonder where this is going. No, not in the normal girl needy-ness, just the general questions, and the really important ones.

I have been told how committed he is at least ten thousand times, but how is it again? It may be the best romantic intention he can fathom, and genuine at that, but still… I cannot help but think he will not be there to catch me. When I needed help for a few days before I got paid, he was there. He was there bitching about money and frustration, and not taking time to budget things out for himself. I felt weak and guilty, not grateful. I did not feel dependent, I felt depended on, even when I needed help most. When it really matters, will he rise above the racket of a co-op attack on the tele or poor decisions and a lack of motivation to step up beside me? Or will I have to keep stopping to let him catch up?

How much more can I slow my pace? I have, honestly. I know relationships are give and take. I’ve calmed down and taken my days one at a time with some mindfulness. I’ve compromised my type A personality to accommodate his lack of over-neurosis, and know he will not be just like me. We are two different people and while that is what makes us great together, what made us fall in love, I have to ask, are we too different?

Am I asking too much? Will he just not be responsible and I should take him exactly as he is? I have, and again, I love him for who he is. Then again, how exactly does he take me? If we both follow that rule, there is a big space between us.

lights, camera, action

“I cried, never gonna hold the hand of another guy…”

I stand, heart in hand. I know what it is, this package. I sit and tear it open with a long buried fervor. It is the videotape I knew it would be. My most precious memories are recorded on it’s silky black tape. I want to see it, but I can’t bring myself to.

I cave and head to Mother’s, who sweeps the dust off her vcr and leaves the room for me. I push the tape in and it begins to whir away in the machine. Static first, and then all the things I loved bathe my face in their light and movements. There I am too, laughing, smiling, looking so alive. I am happy here, and I am happy where I am right now, but something still conflicts.

The tape shows us, dancing on the porch, lying in the grass picking daisies, washing his bike, waving goodbye as he ships out. It was a new place in my life where nothing else mattered and all my worries and complications melted away in his arms. I stared so far up at him as I did watching that tape, and remembered a childhood, an adolescence, and a few moments of adulthood.

I watched him get down on one knee from thousands of miles away and ask me to marry him. I watched my tears of joy as I accepted.

Then the tone changed and I watch myself crying, composing myself and crying again. I watch the casket lower into the ground, and watched Sgt. Patrick kneel and hand me the flag. I watch static again, and the tape is over. My emotions are mixed.

Don’t be jealous, darling I pleaded. He isn’t here anymore. I remember the sensitivity, hairs raised and annoyance in my boyfriend’s voice–as I tried to justify myself?–as I tried to soothe him in knowing I could never go back to those sweet videotape times.

I see his point in that the rest of my life has been overshadowed by the time with my first love. The difference is I never left him and he never truly left me. Cory should have come home and we would have married June 23rd, 2004. I will never have that, but I have those memories that make me whole. They also leave me tarnished, no longer a virgin to an all-consuming love. It will never go away, and if I could have I would have gone with him and left the rest of my loves and opportunities and proposals behind.

As it stands, I cannot. I am in love again, and it is very different this time. I am insecure, neurotic, cold. I am not comforted, and I do not look up through an enveloping grasp of strong arms. My love now is a question mark, a passive answer, wholly agreeable. I don’t feel like I used to, some six years ago, trusting and relying on being caught when I fall and protected when the worst of life happens. Instead, I stand and protect him, comfort him with my own strong grasp, and build trust that I will be there to step up through the worst. Trouble though, that I am still a girl and not the man I want, and not the person I must be for someone else.

My ring, it was beautiful once, but it does not sparkle on my hand anymore. Will it ever? No. It is covered in dirt and tears.

God keep you.

it’s getting chilly in Manhattan

I’m sitting here and it’s stuffy, I’m stuffy, but I’m happy. I can’t wait for all the newness in my life, everything unfolding messily but sweetly. All I want is my ring, my flat, and my skyline………

reflection on Wales

You promised to rage across those vast expanses and as you did I cried out and raised up what you would never know to be yours. It was the last time I ever went home, the last time I felt the wind through my hair, and the last time I stood without barriers, watching the waves crash below in a foaming frenzy. I returned to bury you, but never truly left. My own bravery and follies laid in the clouded sky and the rocky hills I skipped and tumbled across long before you learned my name. Ever since, I have been aware of my heart beating, slowly crawling toward death myself, yet unaware of where I will go, where you have gone, and if I will ever see you–body or soul–again. I am burdened and haunted by the endless chill of remembering the warmth of your skin against my fingertips. I am not angry, I am alone. Longing for familiar ground, I realize that in returning to all the places we loved I will find they are now simply places I love, and that I do not miss the rain or fog, I miss your voice, panting and shrouded in the heavy weather. There are no longer tangible emotions, no wetness of tears, no visible grief, but know if it even possible, that all that was, was real, and though I hesitate to revisit where we were once us, I remain hopeless until I am laid to rest there also and may regain purpose in pining for you beyond this life.

I prefer multiple choice

Margot and The Nuclear So and So’s ‘A Light On A Hill’

What the fuck is going on? Don’t ask me. We all live through hate and war, peace-loving activists with their celebrity agendas, fame and fortune. We live through ridiculous circumstances–a rat race to never-ending happiness, a land of milk and honey where we all pop our pills and live a simple life filled with all the complex amenities we can’t live without, and all in one big haze. Who wants the glass half empty? It doesn’t matter as long as there’s enough to swallow our pharmaceutical  cure-alls.

Why don’t I have the answers, why don’t I know? Well, it’s this love-hate relationship with myself. More hate than love. It’s because I’m choking down a cure-all of my own. Ten dollars a month gets me even keeled and calm enough not to gasp for air and turn my boyfriend down at bedtime because I can’t breathe. The thing is, it’s killing my sex drive. Not entirely of course, but lets just say I have to go around robinhood’s barn to you know, get there. It’s more one or the other, and trust me, it’s a tough choice choosing to breathe.

Now what?

I’m irritated, stripped of curiosity, tired, lovely yet undesirable. My allergies are flaring up with the humidity and heat wave. My head hurts, my eyes are dry, I hate my job. It always seems hot in my apartment and it’s distracting enough to keep me from thinking too much about the things I need, the things in these four walls left to be desired. I am my house.

Modest Mouse ‘Little Motel’

What about love? Heart asks ‘don’t you want someone to care about you?’ and I shrug. I feel I am painfully ambivalent sometimes and it kills me I can’t always muster a smile for the one who does love me. He stares at me, crinkled brown, cocked head, and says nothing. I can feel the acid rising in his stomach, hear his silent questions, and I have no answers. I wish I did. It’s a phase I want to say. I go through it from time to time and I need to feel like less of a failure, I need a rude awakening to get me out of it. Be patient I want to say. Be less like me….and you don’t deserve me. I mean that in the way that he is better than me, loves people, loves me completely, loves time together and not apart. I mean that I am mean. Not directly (mostly) but just not the sun that shines out his ass…I guess. Where does that leave me? Who knows. No, really, someone has to have the answers, and I would like them to fill me in. What is wrong? I love, I feel, but I hesitate, worry what will happen if it doesn’t all work out.

My own drive and motivation start to slump, ’cause why not? I’ll jump on the wagon with the others and ride off into the silver-screen sunset, so long as I don’t forget my prescription.

I’m not that weak

Barenaked Ladies ‘Call And Answer’

I can’t sleep. I’m happy, right? Got a new haircut, on vacation at home, secure, money in my checking…

I’m happy right? There isn’t enough space in my bed so I move to the living room. It’s stuffy but I’m too attached to the computer to turn a fan on. I’m startled by the beer bottles shifting in the garbage. I kill a bug flying around the light, and I turn the light off. My eyes hurt but it feels better. I’m alone. I hate my job. It’s killing me to save up money for all the responsible things, and I beat myself over all my unnecessary purchases. I’m afraid I’ll never finish school. I can’t breathe. Fuck. FUCK. Everything important to me ends up being shoved down someone’s throat and gets lost. I feel like I’m turning into a huge bitch. I have to stop myself from being mean for the smallest reasons, or no reason at all. All the things I should do make me want to run away.

I want to outgrow all this.

swallow

Just Jack ‘Spectacular Failures’

I’ve lost fifteen pounds in just over a year. What does that mean? I ask. I am comfortable in my relationship, I should be getting fatter, not thinner. I wasn’t fat to begin with, but I look down at my frame, one hundred and nine pounds of unsatisfactory goods. The circles under my eyes crinkle as I struggle to gasp in. I’m staring at the pills and bills for them and it’s just worrying me. I am happy. There’s something though, holding me back but I wish it away with a gulp of water, washing it down for all the reasons I have to leave the house. To the doctors, to work, to the grocer’s. It’s all I do, and I swipe that fucking plastic card, for what? To smile, and nod (gasp), and wonder what the hell I’m doing. I snap, I feel guilty.

Just Jack ‘Eye To Eye’

I flash back to the last time I used that song, and it worries me more. Breathe in, breathe out. More worry. I stare at the ring on my right hand and smile, play with the back ’cause it’s a little loose still. I am happy. I assert this but I wonder why we’re fed all these fairytales about how planets align and everything falls into place when you find what you need. I don’t see that happening for heroin addicts, and I don’t see any happy endings. Have I ever been the exception to the rule? I don’t worry anymore, I just hope so.

you could hear a pin drop

Just Jack ‘Lost’

Should I feel guilty, wallowing in my solitude here? I’m relishing it, more correctly. My sister lives one floor below me, and invited me down for a delicious lunch. She said she they were about to sit down for the meal and she thought of me alone in my apartment. It touched me. As thick-skinned as I may come off, abrasive and worn (worn-out), I need people too. However, right now, at this very instant, I love being able to sit here, rocking back and forth in my chair, face illuminated by the screen, and having a view of each empty room.

I think everyone should experience it, and not just for an enjoyable block of time alone. It’s about being able to pull yourself up by your own boot straps and stand alone. Even if the ones you love are close by with ready hands to catch you may you fall, you can say you’ve done something incredible for yourself. For the first time since infancy, you have roamed about and tended to yourself by yourself.

It’s the quiet I think. It’s the lack of interaction. When I first moved in, the only noise inside these four walls were the television, and thrice-a-week sex sounds. If I’m not ready for the next step of relationship chores, it is no reflection. I just love being able to hear a pin drop.

And I was never an exemplary student of adequate social interaction. In other words, I’d prefer to stay behind most times if you’d ask me. I can’t drink anymore which drastically reduces my patience and limits in a different environment…more on that later. For now, the clicking of the keys echoes in here and it’s getting too loud.

virgin pages

Mouthwash ‘Kate Nash’

So I’m watching this television show, a difference from my normal SATC addiction, but it still comes back around to slap me in the face. Should I take the easy way out, or should I do what I really want to? Can I do both?

Can I raise an eventual family and hold a full time job, and write?

Should I ditch everything for my passion?

I know these rambling pieces are mediocre and juvenile, flawed in every way and possibly quite boring, but I remember a time when I didn’t want to give up and my reader was in tears, or gave me a standing ovation at the end of the chapter. I miss it, and I wonder what judgement everyone else will cast. Will it still be total shit like it is to me, or noteworthy?

I’m back in Kensington and Chelsea and I’m reading the last paragraph and I see someone shoulder through the crowd. He looks like a familiar face, perhaps one I have seen in the mirror or in my own brother’s face. In fact, he is my Father. His eyes well up, and he starts the crowd off with his own applause. I know immediately who he is and nothing else matters, though I did gain more material from the time I knew him. It’s been almost ten years.

a weighted question?

Evans Blue ‘Q (The Best One Of Our Lives)

‘Would you ever come back?’ It was the hardest question I could come up with, but it held true. I could never ask it now, even when a wanton thought of life alone and content passes through, fleeting and foolish.

I wake up this morning and look at time. Suddenly, I flash back and it is the exact day, the exact time two years ago. I wake, but not in my own bed, and sneak out to a sofa that isn’t mine, enjoy the early morning sun rays splitting through a window in someone else’s house. I start to cry. How many times I’ve wanted the upper hand and end up on the bottom of the shit pile. I could never ask such a weighted question, no one would ever agree to it. If I left it would be difficult to beat them to it. And look where I am now I think…I pick up the cd he bought me and I spin it around on my finger. Everything on it pertains to me somehow, in a heavy sort of way. I don’t want to leave, but I can’t stay.

If I had left then I could have come out triumphant. It’s not about winning or losing we’re told as children, but we’ve all watched our parents, our friends, our neighbours pushing and shoving their way to the top. I stayed down, but I stayed humble.

I reminisce now listening to the same album and I honestly don’t feel anything at all. I don’t feel like a winner or a loser. I am slowly letting go to the feeling of failure, and getting back to the place I should have been in the beginning, and all along since: indifference. There is always going to be another obstacle, I only struggled to climb over this particular one a bit longer.

The feeling hardly lingers now, but listening to the lyrics, I wonder if I might make the same mistake again, but in a modified capacity. We always say always and forever, but how often does that turn out? How many people, like my own parents, love each other, but something just separates them from a life of unity and endless happiness. Do we hold people we love too highly? The danger of putting someone on a pedestal and raising them up is not the realization they are not what they seem. Perhaps they are so, but what do you do when your arms get tired?

‘You can sew your lips shut with your heartstrings cause god knows you don’t need them to hold yourself together. But don’t look down because I don’t know if falling is fatal from this height I know I should have never held you up this high’

It has nothing to do with love, with devotion, it’s only another fleeting thought. What if your perfect world comes crashing down? Will you make it out alive or will you wallow and dramatize your predicament? Love is powerful, but do we give it too much credit, or not enough? How much are we responsible for events due to our own actions, or is it really from the power of love? And if so, where is that power when you think you need it most to harness and win someone over? Love is omnipotent then, like a deity and we can do nothing to stop it.

I roll over in real-time and smile. Power or not, I feel something right when I need it. I do not retreat to my own sofa and cry for what I will never have. I sigh and wrap my arm around him instead.