all the things left behind

when I get introspective, I get sad. Is that the way it's supposed to be? the greatest changes come from pain. the longest-lasting ones, too. so when I think back, it's to meditate on the things that have hurt me rather than the good that has occurred.
it's the good that makes the pain so much worse. the break ups with shiny and ex-otter would not have been so painful if they hadn't been directly preceded by an intense closeness brought about by death. love does not overcome all obstacles. sometimes love is the obstacle.

it's hard not to think back over this past year and wince. it's hard not to miss shiny. it's hard not to hate him. it fades, sure, but the image remains. the dreams I had for us still haunt me but they're like a quote taken out of context. when I look at the entire picture, at the future I had planned, I can see that it would have just been me dragging him along. and he would have gone with it because it was something to do. and when what I wanted overwhelmed what he was comfortable doing, he would have left, just like he left me after my mom died. I still wonder if it would have been better for me if I'd gone to the hospital alone the second time instead of convincing him to come. I still wonder a lot of things. but these are thoughts better left to rot and die, like others before them.

I have a whole compost heap of dreams that I created with other people, or for other people, of lives that died when we parted. somewhere, I'm living those. somewhere, I'm still with my ex-husband, or buttercup, or shiny, or Pants decided to get his head out of his ass, or I never went vegan and therefore found my dating pool sufficiently enriched, or I stopped dating males completely, or I never left PA or I went to DE instead of RI or my mom never died, or any of a number of divergent paths led somewhere that I, me, this me, did not go. could not go. would not go. somewhere, I'm in CA. somewhere, I'm in Chicago. somewhere, I just stayed. somewhere, I died.

all of these options, always options. and the opportunities left behind decompose when I chose something else.
when I chose someone else.
when I chose somewhere else.

I still feel this barrier between me and the rest of the world. I am still living every life that I could have, and none of them, all at once. until I can let go of all those paths, I can't walk fully on this one.
until my feet can firmly feel where they are, I won't really be anywhere.
somewhere, somewhen, somewho, somehow.

always this has been my dilemma: how to let go of the past and focus on where I am now instead of where I could have been.

feel the fear and embrace it?

scared of becoming dependent. dependent on someone over a thousand miles away? it wouldn't be the first time.
I've never been someone's fetish before. at least, no one that told me. it's a weird kind of compliment, being dissected by specific obsessions. would he still want me if I had different hair? would he still love me if my breasts were removed?
it's strange to think that ten years ago I was disgusted by having breasts. I didn't like for them to be touched, even as recently as five years ago. I felt disconnected from them. I still do, a little. I do not feel wholly female and I don't think I ever will. It wasn't until I was with Von that I felt complete. so it's strange to me that I keep dating men, when it was with a woman that I felt the most comfortable.
I can't help who I'm attracted to, and who I attract. so I just go with it. I try not to discriminate. but I still miss women. and I'm wondering where that will lead me.
Fig wants to work toward monogamy, and I do too. but how can I be monogamous when part of me always longs to be with women? when I'm with one gender, I desire the other. I can never turn it off. I want both.
I am both, to some extent. it's just that the dominance shifts. right now I feel ok being female. I like having breasts, and I like being femininely attractive. but what happens when things shift again? it wasn't that long ago that I was researching breast reduction and even removal. I was seriously considering it, to the point that I'd had discussions with my ex-husband and looked up surgeons. if I'd had the money at the time, or been backed by health insurance, maybe I'd be flat-chested by now.
probably not.
after all, I do like the attention that being curvy brings. when I choose to show it, that is. it's been fun to be an obsession and to fit a fetish. I just don't know if that kind of attraction has the ability to last.
and I am always scared of losing what I have come to cherish.
because it has happened so many times before.

like a gossamer thread

I have dreams where he tells me that he loves me. or where I tell him. usually, in my dream, I am drunk or fucked up when I tell him. when he tells me, it's by text.
I'm not sure why I dream about these things. I don't need to hear it and I don't need to say it.
the more comfortable he gets with me, the more I like him. that's what I know right now.
and I am trying to let go of these barriers that have been erected by my defense mechanisms. it's hard. it's so hard. a few times I've noticed myself start to close and I put my foot in the jamb before the door can shut. it hurts, it always hurts, and it's terrifying, but I am trying.
I am so tired of feeling lonely because I stopped letting people in.
because when I let my guard down, they leave.
I want to believe that there is someone that will stay.
but I have to accept that there may never be.
it's that delicate balance between faith and reality.
it's the blurred line between want and need.

it's the distance between who I was, who I am, and who I will be.

you don't get it

I still see small reminders of my mother. the bumble bees that approached us the last time I was at my sister's; the bumble bee print a fellow classmate made in our intaglio class; the sunflower poster in the break room at work; a face in a crowd; someone's hair; a smile; a way of walking. I wear her shoes and I hope that people comment and I hope that they don't. I told Fig that it was a cruel joke she played, giving me that yodeling pickle when she visited. now I'll have to keep it forever because it was the last thing she ever gave me. I know she wouldn't see it that way. But I can't get rid of it.
I don't like having extraneous things, but I wish I'd at least had the chance to go through her stuff and take some reminders of my childhood with her. It hurts that I haven't been given that opportunity because of the man she chose to marry. but maybe he's a scapegoat. Maybe the real criminal here is my malaise.

you used to look back at me, now you don't look back at all

When you loved me, I was able to ignore all the other shit in my life because I knew that, eventually, I would get to see you again. but it wasn’t a mutual feeling. To me, you were an escape. To you, I was a cage. and every weekend I would trap you and disrupt you and take you away from your weight-lifting, book-reading, and biking. Every weekend you patiently waited for the week to return, so you could be alone again.
When you left me, it just shattered the rest of my life a little more solidly. It took the loss of my mom and gave it a mirror. I got lost in all the reflections of grief. I couldn’t focus on what I was seeing. but I couldn’t stop looking. you kept coming in and out of my life whenever I reached out for you, but you only stayed long enough for me to ask you to come back. Then you left again.
It’s been six months since the last time we talked. That’s longer than we were even together. It’s been ten months since you told me you wouldn’t be coming to my mom’s memorial service with me, because you felt like we should break up. you told me that you didn’t feel giddy or excited about me. I was devastated. you wrote me an email. I called you.
I don’t want to settle for someone else. I don’t know how to stop wanting you. Your communication sucked and the way you handled emotion sucked and the way you stopped loving me the way I needed you to sucked. It sucked. The whole damn situation sucked. but you are forever tied up in my mother’s death and that makes it so much harder to let go of you. you were the last person that I loved that she met and I still want you back. I wrote you a letter to say that, but you never replied. So I haven’t tried again.
because silence is an answer, and if you wanted anything to do with me, I would have heard from you.
but I liked the way you did things, and that’s what I miss about you. I miss the way you would laugh when I’d get excited about something. I miss your steady gaze and closed-mouth smile. I miss your lips. I miss kissing you, you were so good at it, you were the best. I miss your light touch and how you’d stroke the spider web on my arm. I miss your freckles and the way they draped across your chest like a cascading necklace, or like constellations. like galaxies. I miss your intelligence and love of math and science. I miss our bike rides, and watching your hips as you pedaled; watching you move your foot in the toe-cage. I miss you so much, and it gnaws my chest like hunger. it eats at me and there is nothing I can do about it but move on. and I’m trying. I’m trying. but sometimes I get stuck.
every time I meet someone new, I have to go through this. I have to slowly deconstruct the memories of the previous people I have loved. I have to justify why I am where I am. I have to trace a path from there to here, so I can feel like I am making a good decision. I have to let you go. I know this. I have known this. and I have made progress. but every so often I have to bleed you out again. I have to attach the leech and let it suck out the stagnant blood that is you before it poisons the rest of me. and someone else always ends up hurt in this process.
try to keep it quiet. there is no one else like you. try to keep it down. these memories serve no purpose. try to let it go. you are gone.
you are gone, and I don’t need you, and no matter how much I miss you, it doesn’t change a thing.

happy mother's day.
I got much of my crying out of the way on thursday.
so I guess that's something.

this was one of two days a year my mom could count on hearing from me. the other one was her birthday. I am certain that there were times in my life where I didn't call her on these days. I wasn't always a very good daughter. that's ok, though, because she wasn't always the best mom. but, as mom goes, she was at least attentive and made time for me.
at some point I withdrew from much of my family and stopped hearing from them. I frequently felt bad about myself for being a college drop-out. I felt like an inconvenience for being vegan. I didn't feel like I could be open or straight-forward with my family, so I avoided them instead.
after dru died, I got closer to my mom.
after my mom died, I got closer to my sister.

with each loss, we find some kind of gain. sure, there's balance. but that doesn't add up to a mother.

remember the reminder: things can get better. things can get worse.

I can't remember how he put it, just that he said I had the ability to make anyone cry with my words. I don't know how true that is, but I know that the rawness of the explanation of my emotion can still make me cry, even three years later. maybe even ten years later.
there are times when I read myself and I am overwhelmed by the sadness I express, and the confusion, and how straight-forwardly lost I am. those questions that I asked, those questions that I lived, they never got answered. I just moved onto new ones. time came and took away the old ones. they weren't answered. they were buried.
I don't feel as intensely as I used to. and I don't want to. I am so much more cautious, even though I try to push that away. A part of me has been lost through grief and I don't think it can be recovered. I'm not sure if I'd even want to. All it ever did was get me in trouble. All it did was leave me crying in a shower. but it's part of what I was, and that is enough to mourn its loss.
there are times when it feels like much of my adult life has revolved around sadness. it is a safe place to be because you can only go up. optimism is terrifying because a fall is not just possible, it's inevitable. but wallowing in sadness is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. the longer you let yourself stay there, the more likely it is that you will never leave.

the horrible thing is that it's hardest to see how depression keeps you down when you're stuck firmly within it, and that is the time when you most badly need to know.

I am always sad. I will probably always be sad. but it isn't the only thing that I feel. I have felt intense love and happiness and desire. I have been proud and excited and screamingly joyous. to think that I will ever live a depression-free life is naive, and there will be times when it completely engulfs me, but that doesn't have to be daily.
there are a lot of people that have left me that I have spent a lot of time missing. lately I've realized, though, that I don't like those people very much. maybe it's the sour grapes phenomenon, or maybe they're just not worth it.

I could use words to make them cry. but I think you have to care about someone in order for the tears to come.
and if any of those people cared about me, they would still be around.

an interlude

I like
hearing him
breathe.

I like the sharp intake of breath, I like the unconscious movement. I like watching men masturbate or have sex because they don't act concerned about how they look. you can tell when it's forced. you can tell when it's just for appearance.
in my dreams, I'm with women. they're all softness and posture. they want to please. in my fantasies, I'm a man, taking what I want, acting on instinct. I know reality doesn't match these stereotypes, and I'm fine with that. it's not how I would really want things. but in my head, there are no lost erections or strange sensations. so I can pare things down to their simple components and pretend that sex is easy.