If This Is Love...

Why am I the only one who can change a nappy, do a dish, do laundry, feed a child, clean the floor?

Why is it that when I don't get something done, it's an affront to humanity, but when others don't follow through it's no big deal?

Why am I the one who gets up with the baby at night and in the morning while he sleeps as late as he likes?

Why is it that it's okay to play music or the TV as loud as desired when I'm sleeping, but the slightest whisper of noise cannot be tolerated when he's at rest, even when he's at rest until the middle of the day?

When I want comfort, touch, sex, it's okay for him to be too tired, too busy, too grumpy, but when the shoe's on the other foot?  It must mean I don't love him any more and want to replace him.

How is it that it's okay for him to go meet other women, to chat and flirt online, to tell others that I am fat and nasty, to post requests for hot, sexy women to come meet him for sex, but I can't even have a conversation with someone I have never met, don't wish to meet, have made it clear I'm not interested in, then I am actively looking to replace him and must not want him any more.

Why is it okay for him to meet these other women, tell me he's NOT going to have sex with them, then have sex and not tell me, but if I don't disclose every detail of every conversation I have with another man, I am lying, cheating, and hiding from him?

Why is it okay for him to pull a blanket off of me while I sleep (sick, no less) so he can fuck his other girlfriend on the ground outside camp, but I can't even smile at another man without wanting to be rid of him?

If I don't talk about the bills I can't pay or they way I'm feeling or what I "need" or remain silent when I don't like something, then I am not treating him like a partner.  When I do dare to speak, I'm told to shut up, told my feelings are invalid, interrupted, silenced, ignored, walked away from, or treated like an imposition.

If I don't answer the phone when he's calling, I am left nasty messages and yelled at, but if he doesn't answer when I call it's just fine?  And why is it that he can call me even when he knows I am in the middle of something (maybe even something important), and if I am not ready to drop everything for his call I'm a bitch and don't care, but if I call him and so much as interrupt a computer game I am treated with impatience and rudeness until I hang up.

Why is it okay for him to hang up on me, but if I do the same rather than endure vituperative rants and abuse I am a bitch?  Why is it okay for him to call at all hours and be angry and bitter if I don't answer right away and immediately ready to help, but I can't call in the middle of the day without being an imposition?

Why is it my fault he stayed up until the wee hours, long after I went to be, and he's sexually frustrated because I am not ready and waiting for him when he finally settles down?

Why is my weariness an affront to him?  But it's okay for him to be too tired...

How am I rejecting him when I reach for him and he turns away?

If I don't ask for help, I do't want him.  If I do ask for help, I'm being a bother.

I try to make sure that at least once a week I take the kids out and give him some quiet time because he needs it.  I do not receive the same consideration.

I try to make sure that he has ample opportunity to go out without me or the kids so he can have some peace and decompress, and that's fine, but on the rare occasions when I ask (because I have to ask, it's not offered) for a few hours for myself, time not related to working or running errands, I may as well be asking for the moon and am creating a huge imposition.

I have to write, clean, eat, and sometimes even sleep holding the toddler to keep her from whining and crying or risk hearing shouts and angry words, but when others are on the computer (playing games, mind you, not exactly saving the world or anything) and she makes noise, it's an irritant and cause for hard words and anger because I can't make her shut up.

If it needs doing, no matter what else I am doing or have done, I am the one who is supposed to do it, even if I'm sick, hurt, tired, or holding the baby.  If I fail to get it done, I don't care about him, don't want him, or am nasty.

Why is it okay for him to be angry with me for days, ignore me, say rude, angry, or mean things, but if I'm not instantly over his anger I am a bitch who is holding a grudge?

Why do I work and work and work, listen and listen and listen, helping him work through his issues, but I can't even finish a sentence when I try to share my thoughts?

Why is it okay for him to interrupt me, cut me off, or silence me, then get angry when I don't speak?  And why is it that, just by asking him to let me finish what I'm saying, I want a silent man, I don't care about him or what he has to say?

Why is there always money for beer, but never enough for tires, or nappies, or to pay bills, or buy toilet paper or medicine for the baby?    How is it there's money for motel rooms to nmeet other women in, but not to buy warm clothes for the children for winter?  And why is it all my burden to carry?

How can anyone claim they care about how their actions impact others but keep on acting like they don't care?  And what right do they have to be upset when I don't believe them any more?

Now the toddler is crying, and I have to stop writing because if I don't silence her, I don't care about his need for rest...but if I ever get to "sleep in", it's just fine for her to cry, whine, make noise, for him to play music or the TV as loud as he likes, and if I ask him to turn it down, or if I close the bedroom door, I'm being a bitch.

What the hell?

I Don't Have Answers

There are so many things I don't understand. So many things I do not know. So many things I cannot do...and in trying, I can but fail.

The Angel is a person of words. She speaks, in earnest, and that is all she has. All I have.

Words won...what? What can words win when there is no faith in them, when they mean nothing, less than nothing, are tossed around like so much chaff to be swept away and forgotten?

Why should I bother speaking, when it has no meaning? I cannot fathom how the two things...words won...they're just meaningless words...how the two things are supposed to coexist. Ether they are, or they are not, real. I have no in between.

What more must I do, what more must I give or give over, before there is faith, trust? Does anyone believe in me? Have they ever? Or has it all been words, words, words, empty, useless, stupid, manipulative, worthless words?

I'm tired of words. I'm tired of wondering what things mean when they clearly don't mean what they're supposed to. I do not have a dictionary, a lexicon, that gives me insight into the warping and twisting that others so clearly comprehend. I speak several languages, but apparently not the right ones because I feel, more and more, that I am lost among strangers who have no care for my confusion, only for their own needs which I can clearly not meet because I do not understand them.

I'm tired of hearing sweet words and wondering where the barbs are hidden. I'm tired of hearing sweet words and wondering when the hard words will follow.

I would like to believe, again, in the one thing that gave me a sense of power, of strength, of ability, of pride...the one thing that I now find failing me completely.

I would like to be done with words, since they're so useless...but as useless as my words are, as useless as I am...they're all I have.

As I cannot be done with them, I suppose I will have to learn how to empty them of meaning, to speak or write empty things and keep myself to myself...excepting here and one other place...so not entirely silent or devoid of content, but only where I live and with people who are more real to me that you few who linger here in the shadows with me, as ephemeral as my own self is to you. You shadows will have the truth of me, then, and the people who should know, well...they won't see and won't miss what they clearly never had or wanted in the first place, if I am to believe their words more than they believe mine.

Do not ever tell me that my words have meaning to you. I cannot afford to believe, to hope, that there's truth somewhere in the lie, not again, not any more, not when I will be constantly waiting to hear that they're worthless, after all.

That Thing You Do

I don't pretend to understand, sir, what it is you do.

I don't mean do as in work, as in polite conversation, what do you do?

I don't mean do as in what you do to thrive, to bring light and lightness of being in to your life.

I don't mean hobbies, pastimes, or how you fix your hair.

I refer to what you do to me.

I mean how you make me want to be...someone...somewhere...else. Better. New.

What is that?

And still I dream of someone who isn't there and wake with an ache that can't filled, calmed, soothed, because you can't caress something with nothing. You can't fill an empty place with dreams, wishes, hope.

Frustrating, sir, frustrating.

Fearful, sir, fearful.

The Angel knows better, she does, than to give way, to stand down, to open, unfold...trust.

The Angel is a fool.

What is that thing you do, sir?

The Ache

I am not sleeping well. Perhaps it is Summer, heat, humidity, sweat, air heavy with promise and green and wet. Perhaps it is the emptiness I notice so keenly just now. Perhaps it's aliens sucking my brain out my ears when I'm not looking.

I spent today surrounded by several thousand people, and I was alone. I played my part, smiled, chatted, engaged...but I was alone. I made it home from where I was, just...although once or twice I may have drifted close to sleep while I drifted into the next lane a wee. This is so much more than physical exhaustion...

Dear Goddess, I am lonely. Why people seem so alien to me, why I feel as though I am incomplete despite my good life, I cannot say. I suspect you know, Goddess, but you aren't telling.

I am open, though, to what answers may come. Open, and empty, and alone.