Assholes

Well, I just called the police on someone for the first time in my life. Dickheads across the street started blasting music at 12:15 on a Sunday night. Mr. All talk and no action is asleep in bed and I'm ready to punch someone. Fuck, he pisses me off. Maybe I should call the cops on myself because I'm five-seconds away from beating the mother fucker.

What the fuck am I doing here? Why the fuck am I living this life with someone I don't even want to be with? I couldn't care less now. Well, I guess I could care less. But I should be caring a hell of a lot more for someone I'm supposed to be sharing my life with. I would just as soon smack him up side the head than kiss him these days.

Now I'm just pissed off. It's a hell of a way to be woken up in the middle of the night when you only have one night of the weekend and you already stayed up later than you should and you have pms and I want to kill someone. Figuratively. Literally.

I literally want to figuratively kill someone right now.

Fuck.

Poet?

I am a child
who wants to run and play
I want to listen to music
and spin and jump and dance
I want someone to take care of me
and hold me when I cry

I am a young lady
who needs to push limits
I want to know everything
but I don't want to learn
I want to shout at the world
and rebel against my keepers

I am a middle aged woman
who fears gray hairs and receding gum-lines
I want to recapture my youth
and live life to the fullest
I want to settle down
and give up

I am elderly and tired
Who cares what I am?
I want to stop the aches
and start again
I want to get to the end
and I want to make every minute last an hour

I am everyone
I am no one
I am confused
I am fed up
I am not the person I am
And I am tired of it.

And the doubt came back the very next day

His surgery is tomorrow. He's kind of freaking out about it and I'm trying to be supportive. But I have been trying to maintain my distance, too. Then I saw this:

and it made me stop and think. 

I know, I know, bullshit horoscope. Trust me, I don't look at it as absolute or prophetic, I look at it as a suggestion to consider because sometimes they make me think of things in a way that I wouldn't otherwise. "A dramatic, life-altering change" might very well be on the way. Does my heart need to be examined? Have I been pushing him away to protect myself?

Let's back up a little and think about this on another level. Because, really? Everything was fine until I posted this and, more importantly, this on my Tumblr. And it was after the break down and phone throwing. It was after the threats to leave and the decision to stay. I sat down and wrote these things about how strong our love is and how much faith I have in us. And an hour or two later, I took them down and deleted every single post that was on my Tumblr. I was acting purely on emotion that day. I barely even knew what I was doing as I took down those posts, one by one. That night I wrote a heartfelt blog-post about my frustration with myself and my world.

That's when the change happened. That was when I started pulling away from him. It caused a few fights and the hurtful words that were said during those fights are what I have been clinging to to justify my behaviour. To justify my feelings. To block my fears and protect myself from him. 

But the confusing part is that we do have problems, I have problems. I've been letting myself go again, mentally and physically. I don't want to live this life of poverty anymore. I want to move forward and I want to grow. I feel that I am being stalled, I feel that I'm giving up too much of the things that are important to me. One by one, I'm letting go of the pieces of the life I've been trying so long to build for myself.

So, this is all just stuff to ponder. I don't have a clear answer right now and, as we all know, if there isn't an absolute yes or a no, nothing changes until one appears. But I'm getting closer. And, if nothing else, I'm able to reach out and comfort him right now during this time of need. It's true: it is possible that he could die tomorrow. It is possible that he has a life-threatening illness and he will die soon. It is possible that everything is fine and he will live for another forty years. Nobody knows what will happen. All we can do is wait.

I found me. Now I wish I'd just get lost again.

I'll be honest with you... I'm over pot. What was such a huge part of my daily life from about 2006 (and my weekly life from 2002) to 2011 means nothing to me anymore. Every time I think about it, I quickly slip into 'yeah, but look where it got me'.

Yes, it fixed me. It helped. I'm a completely different person yet still exactly the same.

It's really him that I'm over. This whole thing. I'm not making rash decisions, I'm not running, I'm not crapping out on this. I'm continuing and moving forward but I'm pretty sure I won't get back there.

I'm looking at things differently now. I'm not high and whimsical. I'm not dreamy and imagining everything I ever wanted will come to me. I'm awake and aware that this is not what I wanted it to be.

It might seem like a quick change from all of my lovey dovey stuff I wrote not so long ago. But it was a slow and gradual change. That culminated with my phone hitting the wall. Along with the shit. And when he swore he wouldn't be here when I came home from work, I was glad. Now I can't let that go.

The things he said about me. The way he throws my very soul back in my face when he is mad at me. Or mad at himself, or mad at the world. I still get it. But I don't understand, he says. He had a very bad childhood. It's very hard for him to trust. It's very hard for him to give in. But me and I know the truth now.

I'm as invisible here as I ever was. I just looked at my reflection in him and thought it was enough. It isn't enough. I don't think it's too much to ask to be acknowledged when I walk through the door. To be touched. To feel as if I matter. Not his desperate attempt to win me, to be heard and seen and to be important. To be understood.

It all comes down to that, I guess. It always has.

To be visible. To be understood.

I know, right?

He woke me as he got into bed. Scratch my back. Then talking; about work, about this dude from work who got arrested for a murder he committed in 1978, about his little girl, about her mom. Half an hour he talked. And shook my boob. And tried to reconnect.

I told him about my performance review at work. 27 exceeds expectations. Out of how many? Hundreds? 27 exceeds expectations, 22 meets expectations, 4 needs development. What were the four? And as I began to speak he grunted, some dude gave him too many kiwis and they were kicking in. Then he got out of bed and sat as his computer until he was ready to sleep.

Help

Can I vent here for a minute? Yeah, that's never happened before.

But I don't remember what I was going to say. I mean, I remember what I wanted to talk about, but I thought of a really good way to say it and now I can't remember.

I might be a little drunk.

And so fucking full.

And kinda fed up.

Fed up. Over it. Frustrated. Bored. Fucking full and burping up my food.

Fuck.

Whatever. I'm going to bed.

Frust.me

I'm so frustrated right now, I can't even express myself. Lucky how that makes me even more frustrated. I stop to wonder if I've fucked up my meds, if I'm getting enough sleep, if there is something on my mind that is getting me worked up beneath the surface. No, mostly and probably. Doesn't help. Doesn't matter. Doesn't change anything.

The thing that gets me worried is when I start to wonder why I bother. Hoping. Trying. Living. Living. That scares me. Because it was supposed to be the depression. It was supposed to be the shit in my past. It was supposed to be the lack of love, the inability to love myself. But I'm past all that now and it still slips in from time to time.

Will it always be that way? Probably. Life is fucking hard. Life is so fucking hard. Sometimes I allow myself a little fantasy of turning it off. Then I shed a few tears and get back at it.

How many times have I said this? I need to get out. I need to move, to run, to jump, to vent and to let go. It's the bottling that causes the problems. Sure I try to talk about it or write about it but I can't get it out and, even if I could, there's no one in my life who would understand it. There is no one in my life who wants to hear it.

When I'm alone I let myself cry it out but that's not always an option. The fact that I'm here, writing this with tears streaming down my face while Jeff sits on the couch playing video games says a lot. But it's not enough. It's not working. I know what will work. Why can't I just fucking do it? Why can't I just fucking get up?

Get up motherfucker! Get. Up.

That being said - WFT

I don’t mean to infer that I am some kind of tower for strength and security who is without doubts and fears. In fact, I wrote that the only way I can love is completely last night after reading his comment that we had a bad week and later being shown the post someone wrote about having a “major” crush on him.

It’s not that I don’t believe in his feelings for me, because I do. We have a connection and a relationship that gets stronger day by day; even - or perhaps especially - when we have bad days. But it was a reminder that I’m not his only option and I can’t just sit in a corner with my eyes shut and have faith that no one else will come along and charm him off his feet. 

I wrote that post last night because I could feel the green monster knocking, and my historical reaction to that is to get all self-fulfilling-prophecy-ish and run. I don’t want to be hurt anymore than anyone else does. And, considering the amount of hurt I have felt at the demise of relationships in which I barely made an effort, the pain I would experience if we ended is unfathomable. 

I’m not perfect, not even close. I am just a woman who has learned if I love him with anything less than everything I am, I have no one else to blame if things between us didn’t work out. If I love completely, if I give in and let go, no matter what happens I’ll know that I did my best and I will have no regrets. And, if I’m really, really lucky (which I think I am), I will get to share in a love and a life that is exactly what I want and need. 

The only way I can love is completely - WFT

If there is one thing that my age and life experience has taught me, it is that loving someone part way is a waste of time.

Is it possible to truly love and maintain a relationship in the long term if you only let the other person see some of you? And, more importantly, can you ever trust someone to love you completely if they don’t know what ‘completely’ entails?

I have spent the majority of my life loving with reservation. I showed what I thought people wanted to see and kept the rest tucked away until I was alone and safe. I didn’t feel I was good enough, strong enough, enough enough, to allow people to see me without condition. And I spent far too much time needlessly feeling unworthy and alone. 

For the most part, I blamed the short-comings of my relationships on the other person. I thought they were supposed to care enough to strike down the walls I’d built around myself. I wanted them to fight for me, to work for me, to find a way to make me feel that I was worthy. Only then would I let my guard down. Someday.

Someday someone would put forth enough time and effort to win me, I expected. I didn’t realize, though, that I was waiting for them to work for something I kept hidden. I also spent so much time waiting for them to look inside me that I completely missed the fact that I was supposed to be looking inside them, too.  

Things are different now. Now I know I will genuinely try to understand and be understood, even when it’s easier to pack up and run the other way. I will treat him with respect, consideration and kindness, because that is how I expect to be treated. I will allow myself to stumble and falter, and allow him to do the same. I will fall at his feet, I will expose the most vulnerable parts of me, so that he can open up to me too. Only then will we truly see each other. And only then will our love endure.

Now I am all in and loving without reservation. Partially because I have faith that, even if my heart gets shattered, I will survive. Partially because I see in him what I hope he sees in me. And partially because I finally understand that, if I don’t fully offer my heart to another, it will never be whole.