World Upside Down?

My life is a mess… an absolute fucking mess. I’m not sure what I trust or what is safe.  The people I would have given my life to protect have walked away.  I’m crying and so confused about my next step. 

But to build onto my life I need to believe my life is worth something.  Right now my life feels like a series of voids, excuses, exceptions, losses, and pains.  Before hell broke loose I was strong.

In January of this year, I felt so sure of myself, so sure of my future.  How I planned to build, where I wanted it to go.  So much of that is gone.  I feel like I just got to the beach and I’m starting a new sand castle a bit too close to the water and every dome I begin to shape washes away into a slurry of water and sand. 

Thank god for the last 15 years of therapy! Developing coping skills I didn’t even know existed.  If it weren’t for all those professionals listening to my story, guiding me to find myself, guiding me to find my own strength… I don’t think I could be here.

I want to believe in something.  I want to know that my future starts ‘here’.  I want to know that the footing is safe and I can work on moving forward from here.  My few points of security at this time are:

My mother – she has always been strong for me when I needed her most.  She helps re-align my heart and head to get me moving in a positive direction.

My little person – although she wasn’t born from me, she is the light of my life.  I make so many choices based upon the needs of this little person.  Her smile, her laugh, her little hands, her caring soul guide me back to a purpose I can be comfortable with.

My self – it has taken me a long time to see myself as my own strength, but over the last year I have worked so hard to trust this person.  To rely on her to carry me through the good and the bad.  She is so caring and kind.  She’d protect me from anything… if only learned to trust her and allow her to be my safety. 

Very little outside of these three factors are sure and secure or close enough to provide the stability I need.  Why do I seek the arms of a loved one?  Why do I seek some nameless, faceless person to tell me I’m okay?  Why do I need him to tell me I am enough … that I’m good enough … that I’m worthy enough.

I don’t believe that nameless faceless person exists.  I don’t want to keep looking because all things about love feel like a lie.  My other half doesn’t exist.  So why allow my world to turn upside down while looking for something that does not exist?

Give It Up?

Once again, the life I knew has turned 180 degrees.  Everything I thought I knew means nothing.  Every drop of effort milked from my pores… Every tear I cried… Every prayer to the unknown… Every second chance given blindly… Every ounce of unconditional love given…

Was all for naught. It’s all boiled down to this day in this life of loneliness.

The emptiness has ground meaningless activities to pure torture.  Everywhere I go, everything I see is a shitty reminder of wasted… everything.

So I seek a way, a path around the pain… an alternative to feeling every impurity in the road. It comes in the form of attention. 

I’m navigating my way around this, in every effort not to succumb to the addict I was. It would seem I am swirling in water I do not recognize with a strong under-current.  Every attempt I make to be more than the sum of my mistakes, takes me closer to a jagged rock peeking out of the water.

Everyone wants a piece.  Just a taste.  Just a token.  Like a prize at the fair.  Everyone wants to win.  Just once.  No matter how trivial and useless the prize is.  No matter the fact that it will be trash in a week… they fight to call it theirs … they fight to say they won … they fight to embrace and smother it.

I feel like I’m that prize – or at least that one little part of me is.  Desperately seeking to avoid the rocks, each moment of strength is followed by a moment of powerful defeat.  This is followed by my weakness. 

Do I just give up and be what they want me to be?  What I’ve always been?  The one thing I can do that makes them happy – for just one moment?  At this point, I want to give it up. Maybe if I do it can all end.  All the pretending. All the stories.  All the lies. …they can all end and I can be me again. I wish it worked like that. I wish I could give enough that they would be done with me.  Done taking.  Done smothering. Done lying. Done pretending …I matter.

But they won’t ever be done, will they?  This is just one in a line of contestants waiting to play the game, isn’t it? How does one even know anymore?  How could I claim to know anything at this point?  Everything I knew is gone.

Stay or Go...

It’s been a long six years with this man I love. There have been ins and outs and ups and downs. I fell deeply, madly in love with him so fast, so easy, even after every broken heart. But then he goes void.

We act out a relationship – primarily in that we sleep in the same bed or eat the same things for dinner, but rarely much more than that when he is void.

We go places he walks ahead. I need his help and he can’t find the moment to help. We sit to watch a tv program and he plays on his PC, or puts head phones on and watches a different show. I walk out of the room he sees no difference. I make him dinner including all his dietary preferences but he shows no appreciation. I try to tell him of my pain and he relates it back to something I’ve done similar, thus nulling my right to feel the pain. I make mistakes and I apologize. I get angry and yell but come back to say I’m sorry.

Over and over and over and over…

Each time I start to walk away and meet someone new his emotions stir and he is relit to the life we share.

I break the new person’s heart and trust to go back to what I know I’ve loved all along – the man that loves me just as much and is emotionally available enough to show me.

I hate myself for this. Hurting one, two, three, four … people. For what?

The fourth time… I fell profoundly, wildly in love with a woman. I only thought I wanted to play around and decide if it was even possible to love a woman. We clicked instantly. We understood each other. The attraction was so intense and so deep. I’m told this is normal between two females... that the connection is stronger than anything that could ever be felt between a man and a woman. I do not know if this is true. No two people love or feel the same so how could any one person could truly define the capabilities of love throughout an entire species.

But he came back for me… as he always does. And I found myself stretched and stuck all at once. Beyond myself with how to choose between these two beautifully flawed individuals who were willing to give me so much love – because, of course, he was available then.

I chose him.

I broke her but I couldn’t let go of her. I offered to let go to let her move on and find happiness. She was as awe-struck as I was. We didn’t want to let go.

I broke him by loving her while being with him.

Again and again it came down to the wire for a year – he would mark a spot in the sand and say choose. Again and again I chose him.

Her heart and mine broke down and the love was more and more strained by reality, life, and circumstances.

I chose him again.

She moved on… he went void.

I hurt. I tried to rebuild. I tried to forgive. I apologized with all of the sincerity and love in my heart. And we bobbed gently down the river in the same direction occasionally bumping off one another. Existing in this empty shell of friendship, with physical proximity, and the rare sighting of hope. For a year I felt alone and empty but I continued with the assumption of us.

He’s broken.

My indiscretion is unforgivable.

My error was loving too much. My error was forgiving. My error was in wanting my partner present.

I forgave and forgave and forgave… and now I must move forward.

My insides are beyond weak. I’m lost in myself. I want to move on but I’m scared to hurt another… scared to hurt myself... scared to trust... scared to be let down again… scared to live.

I will go. But I am scared. I’m so fragile I feel a butterfly’s breath could break me.

I need you now more than ever.

Hold my hand?