all you really want is to be here with me

Love is foreign anymore. It used to come in sweeps complete with rushes of infallability and tiny rips of inadequacy but now, now it's wandering elsewhere. I don't want it to come home anytime soon, and if it does, I plan on being away and/or deaf to the persistent knocks against every tendon in my heart-swollen body.

I wish I could say with finality: I DON'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE. But I'm afraid of lying because I hear it's a disease; I lied a lot when I was a kid, too young to understand the tangles of my own tongue. My mind lies to me, sometimes, but I can't envision reality because I swear it evades me. Kind of like lost stars on a blinking night sky: they move without wind or reason, and I can't touch them no matter how high I reach. My arms have never been long enough, my chest has never been big enough for my whims of infatuation.

Mostly I remember your skin overlapping my own, your mouth crushing mine, words firing between grasps and whispers of nightmares. You were most loving when you were half asleep. You couldn't think, then, with your brain stuffed with sleep. Words came easily, promises flowed without second thought. I love you, I want you, there is no one but you, I've never loved like this.

On the kitchen floor, with the serrations and seeds surrounding us, we aimed for the perfect photogenic kiss. We always disagreed on the best shot. All I ever wanted to do was broadcast our love.

And now, my dreams have bloomed into making out with Melissa Ferrick, which is completely weird but admittedly not a bad dream to have (two nights in a row, nonetheless). You don't need to trail me in my night visions. You are always there in the daylight, shimmers spread over my radar though I've tried again and again to turn off my signal, to shut down, unplug, abscond.

I've never been good at letting go. Never. When I fall, I fall without limits and boundaries. I don't know how to make myself stop. Maybe, I think, this could be a good thing, someday, when I'm ready and when my heart won't need to seal itself up months, years later to edge into the healing (again). And I know what the fear is. I don't know how to believe that there is someone(s) who will not force me to lock my heart and swallow the key. I don't know how to think that love may not always end up hurting me, and that someone(s) might be worthy of letting in.

So I stumble about with my hands taped to my shoulders, arms crossed, heart blocked. I can't breathe in this collapsing makeshift shelter; I wish I'd learned along the way how to run, how to fly.

inside

i could spin you indecent rhymes, the kind riddled
with haunts and maybes, the kind you don't leave behind
but take with you, carry like a second beat in your heart. i want to know
if i dissolve you. unscripted, uncoded-- tell where it is
that i moved effortlessly into you because every time i shut my eyes
all i see is the glistening movement of realizing
i don't know how to walk away.

all I remember / are these opaque conversations

So much going on in my head. So much that I can't seem to get a good grasp on much of anything. Is this what happens when you, three months later, still love your ex and have twisted dellusions of getting back together in living ever after in Happy Magic Land (& totally doubt the existence of said H.M.L.)? When you're still caught in this fierce whirlwind attraction to someone who is nearly impossible to read; someone you've never had more than the briefest of miscalculated/incidental touches and there was that one time it was just a touch more and I swear my heart hit the ceiling; someone who, in all likelihood, is not of your sexual persuasion? And when you're, again, talking/dabbling with an ex from years ago- the one that made your soul bleed, the one that ruined your trust in women, the one that you always wanted because you knew you couldn't have her?

This is also what happens when you go see Chris Pureka in concert for the third time and subsequently cannot stop listening to her music. I love her, it's true, but when I'm in this frame of mind, 90% of her songs make me choke on my own exhales.

Mostly, I can't stop listening to "Silo Song."

Mostly, I'd simply like to grab hold of my life and gain A) perspective, B) clarity, and C) hope. Oh, and I'd really like to hear from the Conference people. I'm not asking for much, life.

love pull your sore ribs in

I'm choosing to look at yesterday as an enormous blip on the radar. I don't know what she thinks she wants from me-- I also don't want to know.

Why, suddenly, she's lavishing me with sweet nothings and calling just to say hi... and then engaging me in a text-a-thon wherein I invariably over-shared and let my vulnerability blaze through... I'm not sure. I can't even tell if it's manipulation or another moment of her realizing what we lost, etc etc.

I wish I was stronger and therefore cared much, much less about the possibility of her sharing her body with someone(s) else. I also wish I hadn't slipped and brought that up last night.

Maybe it's just the human need to know you are wanted, that people have feelings for you. Because letting go is something I am awful at... and even I feel better knowing she still loves me. But I can't shake the feeling that whatever positive progress we made this past week-- I may have blown it last night by sharing so honestly what I think about and how I try to avoid the things that make me think about those things.

Because now, of course, she hasn't responded. And I'm not going to reach out.

where i come from, where i'm going

from my old livejournal : 08.30.04
I never realized how disgustingly hard I am on myself until it was recently brought to my attention by upwards of 4 people. I hate it too, and I know it's getting old, hearing me constantly beat myself up/down. I will try to break myself of it. Truth is, I'm pretty sick of hearing myself talk like that. ... Throwing up my hands.. throwing it in. I'm serious this time. I need a major attitude adjustment. I refuse to be so hard on myself, and I don't want to run my mouth anymore. I want to be better, eventually be good.



Five years later, and I think I'm actually harder on myself.

08.26.04
Why do girls like me? I'm a mess! I was talking with the Cynic last night and listening to myself made me want to cringe. And then later, talking to KH, I seriously wanted to slit my wrists right there. I mean, sure, I've done a significant amount of healing (and realizing what all I "went through" over the past year or so), but there are some heavy, ugly things lingering in the background. I want to be good. I really do. And I'm still working on getting there. I guess it's normal to have moments where you realize how much it fucking sucks, and how bad it can still hurt. But I keep plowing ahead because I know it's not all grey matter... there is goodness, clarity. And I do deserve it. I deserve someone who will treat me well and tolerate my sarcasm and dorkiness, maybe even embrace it. I don't need that person to drop out of the sky tomorrow, but I would like her to appear sometime. Maybe soon.



I had a lot of feelings in August 2004. And the parallels- as far as the necessary healing- to where I am now are obscene. Have I really not made any progress in five years? No... no, I definitely did. But then I got dismantled/I stayed and allowed it to happen. And now I get to heal again. Is that what life is? Falling apart and building yourself back up? Ad infinitum?

08.19.04
I realized then that I'm tired of fighting with and against myself. All actions from this point on might seem unusual for me, a bit uncharacteristic if you will, but I'm sick of holding everything down. What do I have to lose?


I can always, always think of something to lose. But if I don't risk anything, I'll never get anywhere. I just don't think that right now, I have anything to risk.

& I just realized (again) that I date fractured women. Women who need fixing, need to be taken care of. I am so fucking sick of this that it makes me want to punch myself [but as I was punched 3 times Friday night by my idiot friend, I'll abstain from the self-violence]. All of the beauty I've given to others: I want it back. I want it given to me- by someone other than myself.

farewell... to the old me

but there's a catch-- i can't bring myself to see
who i am, and i sense that's because
i'm not entirely sure who i am
these days, especially compared to who i've been
for the last almost three years. and i've come into my own
more than ever, but i've been thwarted and suffocated
beneath layers of lust-fed love (lust that was
flotsam on her stripped floorboards: the first to go
overboard when there was no room left to breathe).
i've been misled and tangled. and she said she lost herself
but she never had herself. i did.
and i haven't relocated the lost fragments yet.

but this is all part of the process and there is space to fall
to realign and trip and repose. i am with no one but myself.
no one's rules but my own. no mind to challenge but my own,
no muscles to flex but the ones i've lately neglected. and the thing is:
i don't want anyone else's anything in my everything. i just want
me.

so the search begins for the roots
of who i am. and strength supercedes the will to look back,
a sinewed stretch forward instead. this is what
i have: mind, body, soul.
education: completed and continuing.
career: a job, multiple certificates, summers off, opportunities elsewhere.
family: solid. supportive. inspiring. fucking funny.
friends: waxy but tangible. some closer, some better,
some here just for distraction and entertainment.
car & home. solitude. space to live.
words to craft, words to refine.
my health.
my will and tenacity. my inherant stubborn nature.
my easy smile and (over)active mind.
and i have my own possibility: endless, unmapped, uncharted, infinite.

i basked in beautiful noise last night. i'd marry the former in a
heartbeat... the curved beauty, incredible voice, obvious and endearing
slightly self-deprecating humor. and she carries a slightly surreal
resemblance to the woman who has blindly carried the pulse of my heart
for close to three years.

there are moments, too few for my liking, where i realize that
i am exactly where i am supposed to be. unattached. healing.
deeply introspective (perhaps too much at times).
rolling in intensity. fumbling to rediscover myself.
aware. awake. shaken, stirred, overflowing.
real. selfish. spiked with shards of happiness
mixed with stripes of anger/disbelief/sadness/hurt.
recovering. breathing. inhale, exhale, close your eyes.
unravelling neatly and retying with each step and signal.

i'll get where i need to be. it may not be where i think i should go
but it will be where i'm supposed to be, and when i'm supposed
to be there.
that's all i know.

new

I am still waiting for the realization that it's a new year, and time for me to accept my healing.