I Endure

It seems I am prolific, of late.

Especially in the later hours (although THIS hour is not so very late compared to some I have kept), I seem to write for this place. Especially of late, when I am happier, lighter of spirit, than is my wont.

Why is that?

I am in love with Someone, who loves me back. Sweetness, that. This loving has wrapped itself around me, infused me with a sort of happiness I have never known. When I think about Someone (a few hundred times a minute), I smile...and everyone who knows me, who has known me, remarks on how I've changed, how I shine. The dark one shines. Armageddon can't be far behind.

When a friend asked me today, if my feet were touching the ground yet, I laughed...and winced. I told her I was still very much in love (I am...oh yes, I am)...but I don't know how to maintain happy. I've had 31 years of misery...I know how to live in, around, and with that. Happy? Not so much. I don't know how to simply be happy - my mind will constantly manufacture fears, doubts, questions. It wears me down.

Despite that, I endure.

For once, I am choosing to trust in the feeling, to ignore the angry, hurt, spiteful voices in my head. It's a struggle, though, especially late at night when I'm alone. Late at night, when the house is quiet, the boy is sleeping, the phone is charging in it's cradle, and there's no one but a feline or three to talk to...then I begin to wonder...do I really know how to love someone? Do I have a right to try? To ask a person to love such a deeply flawed person...can I do that? I don't know that I am worth it.

It hurts, to doubt...but I endure.

I wondered, one night, if I should stop answering the phone...stop answering the e-mails...fade away. I wondered if Someone would be better off without me distracting him...tugging at him...dividing his attention between me and his life, the life he's living so far away. I don't doubt he'd be hurt, maybe angry...but it would fade with time. I'm not saying I want that...far from it...but if my presence in his world causes uncertainty or difficulty, shouldn't I withdraw? Before we met, he had dreams, plans...what right have I to hope I may become part of that? What right have I to imagine he may change them even a little to include me? I should bow out now, I thought, before this goes too far and one day he realizes he made a mistake. Just the thought hurt enough to bring tears to my eyes - I would be miserable.

I would endure, though.

I wondered if this will last...this feeling, this loving, will it last? What if it's fading and he doesn't want to tell me? What if he's realized what it means, to be woven into this chaotic pattern that is the tapestry of my life? What if he comes to regret...?

Almost beyond bearing...but I'd endure.

That's what I do, I endure. I slog on through the muck and mire, because there's nothing else to be done.

Trouble is - this love thing? There's no muck. No mire. It's beautiful. It's astonishing. It's overwhelming. And it's not something to be endured - it should be celebrated, reveled in.

It hurts, I won't lie - he IS far away, far enough that actually being in the same space at the same time is impossible on any sort of regular basis. He has a job, a life...and, while I am not employed in any traditional sense, I DO have a life, a son that I have to consider. I can't go haring off to...Somewhere...just because I feel as if half my spirit is there. It's frustrating.

But I endure...I tell the doubts, the questions, the fears and frustrations to go away...or natter on, but I won't alter my course. He mentioned how long it would be before we could meet again...and I sighed and admitted I hated to wait so long but if it must be borne...I will endure. At least I have the hope that, at the end of THIS endurance...there is something worth the ache, the pangs, the enduring...

Boundaries

Earlier this evening, when I was hanging about with a friend and our children were tumbling about her house like two Tasmanian Devils on a serious sugar high, I chanced to mention respecting boundaries, respecting the needs of others, sometimes ahead of my own. We had a rather lengthy discourse about this, which led me to some thoughts. I'm sharing them here, because the thought chain started out fine but didn't end well.

Warning - it's long and it rambles.

Let's talk boundaries, shall we?

I know when my friend M is at work, and when she's home, and what time she tries to take a nap because raising two kids is not so easy, even when your husband is freakin' amazing. So...I don't call her until I am fairly sure she's awake and can talk. Sometimes it's hard to wait, especially when I need a friend, but I respect her need for rest, for family time. It's not a huge boundary, but it's there.

I don't give out people's phone numbers or e-mail addresses without their express permission. That's a huge boundary, to me, and one I respect mightily.

I know that my mother doesn't like it when someone messes with the temperature or radio settings in her vehicle, and I don't do it unless I have permission - won't even ask unless I'm desperate. Her vehicle, her boundaries.

My friends know that there is no time I won't answer the phone if they call - any time, day or night, if they need me, I am here for them. If I don't answer right away, it's because I didn't hear the phone ring and I WILL call them back. No boundary, there...cross at will.

I have learned Someone's daily schedule fairly well...enough to know when he's working, when at lunch, when driving home, when napping, when likely writing, gardening, or on the phone with another Friend. I don't call during those times because, however much I may miss him, want to hear his voice, be lonely or hurting...those are boundaries I won't cross. I wait my turn, and that's fine. There's a pattern to his day and he works me into it when he can.

I don't like people touching my computer. On rare occasions, I will permit its use...to special people...but it's unusual. That's one of my boundaries. I can't begin to tell you how it irritates me to find someone has been using my machine without permission, especially when I can see they've been digging through my files. Yes, they're public, no I don't password them - it's my machine, I shouldn't have to do that, and if someone is uncouth enough to root through my files and they find something they don't like, well...too damn bad for them. They chose to cross that line.

Another is that it's not OK to give out my contact information, real name, or any other identifying information to anyone else. Not even my own mother. If I want someone to be able to find me, I will give them that info. If you have it and they want it...YOU contact me and ask me to tell them. I don't like strangers calling, writing, e-mailing me...unless I gave them permission. I am mildly paranoid...work with me here.

This blog is a place for me to dump my heart and mind, to empty them of darkness and evil, to put the things I can't or won't internalize, remain silent about. It's a nasty little sanctuary for my darkest thoughts. For the most part, the people who read this were invited here. I didn't think I'd need to password protect it - it's not linked to my mundane life or other blog in any way, there's nothing to connect it with the rest of my life. I have generally asked, when I've told people about this place, that they not pass it on to anyone. I've made exceptions, when merited. I've requested that it not be linked to me in any way. I have mentioned that there are certain people I don't want reading it unless they happen upon it entirely by accident - mostly because I just don't think they ever will, and if they do? They likely won't recognize my writing here, or themselves should I mention them.

I don't write about physical characteristics or identify people by more than an initial...sometimes not even that (in the case of Someone, whose privacy I certainly won't fracture).

I try to be as untraceable as something slightly more than ordinary care can make me.

I try to write more about my own internal process and less about others. Sometimes I need to vent about how another's actions (or lack thereof) have angered or hurt me, and I will. It's a way to process without hurting anyone else.

Someone (not THE Someone...just someone) didn't respect the boundaries. Some person thought it would be a good idea to post a link and some text from this blog on another blog. It was hurtful and mean...nay...cruel...to do so. I wondered if one of my friends would have done it. Perhaps they meant well. Then I realized...no...I hold my friends in higher esteem than to believe they would anonymously do something that harmful. They would write their own words, sign their own names, would not hide behind MY words or do something to threaten MY well being or the other blogger's. They would respect the boundaries, defined and implied.

Because of that kind soul, I now must make a choice. Their action happened weeks ago, but I'm only getting around to considering my options. I could drop this blog, kill it and create a new one (or not)., but I LIKE this blog, its content, its design, its general spirit. Another blog won't have those things - it will be its own entity.

I could password protect it, make it invitation only. I don't know how useful that would be, and despite my attempts at a modicum of privacy, I don't like the idea of being exclusive. Also, I did want to show people - invited or random searchers - that horrible thoughts don't make a horrible person, and it's OK to make a place to put those thoughts so they don't fester. I wanted a place to be honest, especially when that honesty is dark, depressing, angry...any of the negative emotions.

I could filter what I write, cater to the people I know are reading, start writing fluff and be dishonest...but why bother??

I could just soldier on, trusting that the person to whom I was linked will keep his word and not read here any more...although he HAS, since saying he wouldn't...and that makes it awkward, knowing that he's still exposing himself to the things I don't want him to have to see.

Still...I prefer to keep up with this blog, keep my dumping ground as it is.

I don't know who crossed the line, or why. I'm not angry with them...with you...for doing it. I'm hurt that you would be so careless of me, of the other party, of common courtesy. I wonder why you didn't first ask if I would mind, or if you acted knowing I wouldn't like it. Perhaps you thought I needed help, that you were doing me a favor.

Whatever the reason...I'm asking nicely...don't do it again. I haven't traced your IP (easily done) or made anything more than a minor effort to suss you out. I am choosing to believe that your action was on of misguided good intentions...that perhaps you acted out of love or concern for my well being. Please don't cross that line again.

Respect the boundaries, people - I don't think it's too much to ask...

I Don't Go

This was rattling around my head, wouldn't let me sleep. I figured I'd plant it in the Lament and let it grow here instead of in my cerebellum.
~~~~~

I don't go where I'm not wanted.
Once upon a time, maybe
Maybe I would
Sneak in
Past the guardians at the gate
Sit in a quiet corner
Wait
Hope
Maybe this time
They'll want...
Me

I don't go where I'm not wanted
Not any more
Not today
It just isn't worth it
Was never worth it
To sit in a quiet corner
Wait
Hope
Maybe this time
They'll want...
Me

I don't go where I'm not wanted
Not even when
I'd very much like to
Not even when
I think it would be good
To sit in a quiet corner
Wait
Hope
Maybe this time
They'll want...
Me

I don't go where I'm not wanted
Sometimes...I don't go anywhere at all.

Mixed Messages

"I love you... just wanted you to know...I'll always love you...I said I was going to tell you that so you wouldn't forget... to remind you...until you tell me to stop..."

Ten minutes later, he's out the door, heading for his girlfriend's place. Oh, wait...she's not a girlfriend, just a girl who's a friend...whose bed he sleeps in...but they're not having sex...even though he asked me to buy him some condoms...

Umm...

THAT'S not a mixed message, is it?

For the record...I don't mind that he has a girlfriend. When we were still married, I TOLD him to find a girlfriend, that it was fine with me - he could even bring her home if she would do chores. I wouldn't have minded if he had sex with another woman, or man, as long as he was honest and up front about it.

I DO mind that he made me feel like shit for asking if he could watch the boy Wednesday night because he mumbled something about having plans...after he had clearly told me a few minutes before that he would be home all week.

Again...not like that's a mixed message or anything.

I mind that he said he would watch the boy tomorrow so I could run some errands for someone else, a few hours out of the day, that's all, of being a parent...and now he says I should call him when I'm headed out (ostensibly with Bird in tow) if I haven't heard from him before then.

Not mixed, at all.

Is it too much to ask that someone honor their word? If you tell me you'll be here...then bloody be here! If you say you're going to call...then bloody call!! Don't leave me hanging here, dangling in the wind, wondering what the Hell happened...

I know I'm no lady...but still...you should never keep a lady waiting...even if she DOES mean less to you than the computer, the TV, or whatever has you so frikkin' distracted you don't hear your own words, let alone her...and of you're going to be that way, can you really wonder if she thinks maybe you don't love her, after all?? Not like she's getting mixed messages...

Solas

I've been listening to this band's album The Edge of Silence for a few years, now...and I love their sound. I thought this song appropriate, considering my rather less than chipper mood, of late. I like to turn it up, sing along, and (as long as no one's watching) dance to it. Yeah, we all know I'm an odd one. Cheers, y'all!

Not Asleep

Sigh.

I thought if I wrote about the eclipse and some of my thinking afterwards, I could maybe go to bed, get some sleep.

Want to make the gods laugh? Tell them your plans.

No sleep. Not yet.

A hot shower didn't help. That voice was nagging me. About saying "fuck", and being lonely, and how it's my own damn fault.

Hey, voice? Guess what? It isn't. Not entirely.

You see, I would have been lonely anyway. I was lonely when I still thought my husband and me had a chance. I was lonely because he was more interested in the computer than his wife. More interested in the television. More interested in the stereo, the iPod, the cell phone, the video games, the latest gadget or gizmo.

I was lonely back when I went to bed alone more nights than not (despite my best efforts), and cried myself to sleep I hurt so much inside. I was lonely when I had to squeeze a pillow tight because it and the cats were the only sympathetic things in the room. I was lonely when I would have given anything for my husband to touch me, just touch me, instead of sitting at the computer surfing the net for one more political post, one more opinion, one more...I don't know what...

I was lonely when I would (rarely) get sick, and hope for some sympathy but instead received a litany of why he was sicker, why he hurt more...and never, not once, did he just hold me, offer comfort.

At least this sense of loneliness and loss has more to do with distance and the foreignness of loving someone and feeling loved in return than with being in a house with someone who says they love you but doesn't notice your sorrow and pain...doesn't or won't.

Yeah, I'm lonely tonight...the kind of lonely that cuts deep and bleeds freely...but it's a bearable loneliness. It's one that can be remedied, that can be soothed by hope. And I would have been as alone with T in the house as ever I am when he's gone.

So shut up, stupid voice. Quit keeping me awake with doubt, hurt, fear, and recrimination - I know I'm doing the right thing.

Know how I know? Because I made this choice before I was graced with loving Someone. I was determined to end this marriage before I ever hoped and then knew Someone had feelings for me. I believed that I would end up alone with my son, walking my path on my own for the rest of my days, and I made my peace with that. No one wanted me before...I know how to live with that. I could live with it again...and even better than before, because now I know what folly it is to try and pretend that believing someone wants me is enough...and I won't be that cruel ever again. If I'd known then I was being cruel...well...things would have taken a different course. I'm not evil, stupid voice.

Sad, yes. Pathetic, probably. Miserable, often. Evil, never.

So yes, stupid voice, I am lonely and frightened by the prospect of being alone - but it won't make a difference.

Lonely can be gotten through, stupid voice, despite what you want me to believe. So piss off and let me sleep...please...

Eclipsed

Yes, part of this is posted elsewhere...but it took a turn, one that didn't belong in that other place. It belongs here, with the other dark things.
~~~~~
I was outside just now, enjoying the coolth (yes, that is too a word) and the waves of night song washing over me.

Somewhere in the world, people were watching as shadows played Hob with their day. Earth, Moon, and Sun bowed to their partners, bowed to their corners, began the dance of the Eclipse. Here, it was, it is, dark. Night is well fallen, well beyond evening and into darker time. Somewhere, though, it is day, if obscured.

I made a wish. Why not? New moon, eclipse, why not?

I wish that every man, woman, and child who lives in fear of another blow, in fear of abuse, neglect, or abandonment, knows peace.

I wish that every man, woman, and child who lives with hunger, homelessness, uncertainty, want, or need, knows peace.

I wish that every man, woman, and child who is waiting for the next gun, the next bomb, the next invasion or act of violence, knows peace.

Peace. I wish for peace.

It's my wish...I'll spend it how I like. Wishes aren't supposed to be realistic - they are supposed to reach beyond the bounds of reality and into that place called Hope, that soft place in the human Heart, the human Soul, where the last of Pandora's gifts shelters, waiting for us to notice her.

I wished, and I talked to a friend and watched the clouds disintegrating, dissolving into inky night and shining stars, one of them (the clouds, I mean) looking for all the world like a great, beautiful swan drifting serenely across the firmament, neck arched, staring down at my insignificance as it moved on...moved on...until there were stars and stars and stars above me and I could have fallen upward to swim among them, myself.

I thought about wishing for something I dearly wanted...something for myself...but...I didn't. Couldn't. Can't bear to think the wish will be denied. Can't bear to think that wishing for what I want...might mean someone else loses their dream, their hope, changes the course they want their life to take to satisfy my selfishness. Better not to wish at all than to cause harm to another...any other. I won't. I can do without...I've proven that. It's doing with that's the unknown, the mystery, the fearful thing. But fuck, I'm lonely. I feel like a cup that was, for the briefest time, filled...and now knows exactly how empty it can be.

The call ended too soon...but then, forever isn't long enough to hear that dear voice. I stayed for a few minutes with the night wrapped around me, a security blanket for the soul. I thought about the ground on which I am figuratively walking, how uncertain it is...how uncertain the future seems, just now. Like walking through a swamp, never knowing which step will fall on solid ground, which will land me up to my ass in muck. I felt lost, and awfully alone.

I wept, a little...gave in to what's been there for weeks, that lonely longing, the hurt that seems ever present, despite the love and kindness of others, of Someone...

I think I need a better cry, a real one, a snot-faced, body-shaking, gut-wrenching release, before the sun can shine fully on my spirit again. I need to give the shadows their due before they will move on. Only I can't seem to let go enough...and so I'm eclipsed by my own need, want, hope, fear, great shining shades mantling about me...obscuring the light I so crave...

Thought Prism

The day started with promise - the boy slept late, and so I slept late, a boon to a mother who was awake through the wee hours. We snuggled for brief while, his sweet head resting on my shoulder, his eyes inches from mine.

Once up, I made the bed - it's nice, having a made bed, and I didn't know I'd missed it until I started the habit again. I started some laundry, emptied the dishwasher and loaded it again, did a little cooking, went on with my day.

A good start.

The last few hours, though...I don't know.

I feel...distracted. Tugged this way and that. Fractured. I can't focus.

I tried writing a bit. No dice - the pieces of fiction I've been juggling for a long while now are slippery, words falling from my grasp and shattering on the keyboard. The non-fiction is just as elusive, nothing coming out right, all tangled up and out of order.

I have been pacing up and down the hall, up and down the stairs, into my room and out again. Folding and stowing laundry was automatic, a minor distraction from my distraction. I called a friend - no answer, no distraction there. Called another...ditto. Wrote some blog posts. Deleted them. Wrote some poetry. Deleted it.

As an aside - you know I think it's truly awful when I delete it, as I tend to save even the failures as object lessons.

I keep looking at blogs I've already read, hoping for something new to look at, something new to hold my attention, help pass the time. It's the weekend...slim pickin's in Blogopolis.

I am restless, but don't want to go anywhere. I start household chores and leave them half done as I gaze out the window at...nothing.

I am impatient. I snapped at the boy for acting like a boy. I apologized...then snapped again a few minutes later.

I dozed a little in the chair, only to start awake after a few moments. I thought I felt something, soft as a moth's wing, brush my temple, my forehead, my lips. Nothing was there. Just my imagination.

I stared at some dust motes dancing through a beam of sunlight, and rather than enchanted I felt...almost frantic.

I am worried. That's it. Worried. I don't know why, or about what...but it broke open and washed over me a few hours ago and now I can't shake it.

My minutes are hours, fractured by a prism into tiny segments...I am waiting for my scattered thoughts to coalesce...with no idea where it came from, all I can do is ride it out and hope that it's not connected to someone I love, that some unnamed catastrophe had struck family or friends and I know before being told.

I would very much like for it to pass...

The Sweetest Ache

Six days.

Even with doubt coloring a few hours, even with fear and uncertainty making an undercurrent here, there, coloring a few moments before subsiding, it was six incredible days of...what? What did we do, really, that was so remarkable?

Ah.

We met.

We loved.

We gave and received, freely, of ourselves.

That is remarkable. Each moment was an honest moment, without secrets, without lies, without shame.

Even the quiet minutes when I was writing while he spoke on the phone, when he tapped away at the computer while I read or stretched or simply watched him until he turned, saw me, and smiled, even these simple things were rich and deep.

Leaving may have been the most difficult thing I've done in a long while. I missed my son, of course...what mother wouldn't?..and wanted to come home to him, but I missed, too, Someone, even before leaving him behind to journey home.

Someone whose touch quieted the voice in my head, so angry, so derogatory, so bitter. Someone whose laugh lifted...lifts...my heart and sets it soaring. Someone with beautiful, tender, smiling, intense eyes and gentle, loving hands that caress so sweetly they make me shiver.

I have often told my son that there is an invisible line from his heart to mine, one that will never break, one that connects us no matter where we are or what we are doing. I tell him that I am always loving him.

I feel much the same about Someone. Driving away yesterday morning, leaving him behind, was painful. I ached. I felt a soreness in my heart where he is so newly rooted as the connection between us began to stretch.

Mile after mile, I felt it pulling me back, back to where I'd been, even as I was drawn forward, home to my son.

I wondered...if I kept driving, would this new connection accommodate? Or would it, so new and fragile, so tenuous, snap?

It's there, yet. It thrums. I feel him, Someone, there, rooting deeper, establishing himself, creating his space. My home isn't quite home, any more...it's missing something...Someone...

It is the sweetest ache, this absence, this presence, this want, this need...this Love...

Wearying Dreams

Two wakings, this morning, both hard to bear - not for the waking, but for what came before...the dreaming.


The first, early, when I would have happily slept on, wrapped in Someone's arms, warm...feeling as though I fit there. Sweetness...but troubled, nonetheless, by dreams.


Dreams in which I sought...something. Wandered lost, alone, bereft, aching from the internal cold that poured from me in waves of frost and fog. I was looking for warmth, I think, though it be from a candle's flame, but all was gray, bleak...empty...and that light, that heat, was always just out of reach, hinted at on the horizon but never close enough to see, to touch, to believe real.


At some point The world changed, and I was surrounded by whispers that fell onto my skin like an acid mist, droplets burning chill through my skin, down to my core. It won't last. You have gone too far. Unwise. Unwanted. Used up. Tossed away. Fool.


I wanted to drown out the voices...the voice...my voice...but I could not. It echoed even as I woke and watched Someone prepare for his day, for the part he will spend away from me and this little room we've made into the greater part of our world for these few short, precious days we have together. Room. Cave. Den. Haven. At least, for me...insidious voice, telling me it's an interlude for Him...poking at the softest places in my heart, because she knows so well where and how to hurt me, and she is driven to do so whenever she can. She is cruel. I am cruel.


I watched him move about, smiled, drifted, watched more. When he lay beside me again, I touched his face, his hair, his arm, trying to teach his texture to my fingertips...loving, yes...but also, in part, trying to make them remember so when he's gone (the voice says he will be gone, he is ephemeral...insidious voice) I will still have him there...in the nerves and sinew of my own hands, that love touching him so softly, so tenderly. I watched him smile, eyes closed, face relaxed, looked and looked and could not get my fill, could not take him in enough to reach the place the dreams still roiled, burn them away and replace them with...something.


Once he was gone, I slept again, fitful, alone, lonely. I wrapped my arms around the pillow he's only just been using, breathed deep, scented him, dozed a little deeper. This time, I dreamed we made love...sweet...slow...tender...and woke before we finished, before he drew in his breath and stilled, lost in that collection of moments that are climax, face set in a rictus of bliss...


When I woke the second time, not long after I had slept, I again felt the emptiness...and wondered, aloud, what is wrong. Why would it make me sad, to dream such beauty? The voice, ever faithful, answered...because pleasure is fleeting, and you don't deserve a full measure...of yours or anyone else's. Evil voice...telling the truth just often enough to make it impossible to ignore...planting that small seed that grows so quickly into a forest of doubt, fear, loss, where I wander lost, alone, bereft, aching from the internal cold that pours from me in waves of frost and fog, without even the dream of a candle's small, dear flame to warm me...