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.