letter in limbo

caught hard between letting go and hanging on. type-type-typed a letter to shiny but I haven't mailed it yet. it's all stamped and addressed and ready to go. it's in my bag, with my bills and my rent. it's waiting for me to drop it in the slot. I don't know if I'll do it.
it says "I love you and I want you." it accuses and soothes and bounces from here to there. it infers and asks. it wants to know why why why I wasn't enough.
I hate that I even want to know.
It says "because someone else fell in love with me and I couldn't love him back the same way, I understand better what happened with you and me." paraphrased. that this gives me hope in some ways.
other parts of me know that this is pointless. know that nothing will come of it. but I can't help but hope for more than that.
if I send the letter.
in the mean time, I've taken males off my menu.
of course, the past three times I've done that, I've ended up dating men.

ha. ha. ha.

I love you but I've got to leave

had a dream about my mom last night. she was tall, young, slender, and calm. she didn't look like my mom all the time but I knew it was her. we were talking on the phone at first and we were in the country where she raised me. I walked along the road and asked her if she wanted me to play my trombone. she was so patient. finally we caught up to each other and walked to a park where she was going to be having a party for a friend. she needed to weed some gardens and set up some kind of picnic. but when we got to the gazebo she wanted to use, there was a homeless man there sleeping. as we approached, he woke up, farted, belched, and stretched. for some reason we were both very alarmed by him. stepping into the gazebo felt unsafe. In my dream, I knew I was being ridiculous. I knew I was being discriminatory. but this man ... it felt like he was going to hurt us.
so we stood on the edge of safety, there beside each other, and we watched this man and hoped he would leave. my mom was patient, like she rarely was in life. she was content to wait while I fretted.
I don't know why I woke up. it was an unresolved dream. but what dream isn't?
I made my way into the living room where my roommate was playing a spy video game. I pawed at him until he moved back and let me put my head in his lap. I cried, but he must not have noticed because he didn't say anything. I left tears on his shorts. I wanted to tell him about my mom. I wanted to tell him how initially it was so nice to have had this dream of her, to have spent such mundane time with her, to see her in a different light. but then the grief hit me. it took me over. it made me something else.
I couldn't talk to him like I used to, because he started wanting me more than I wanted him.
because he started touching me in a way I wanted to be touched, just not by him. and I remembered how it felt to be wanted. and I remembered how gentle someone can be. and it has felt so good over these lonely months to have someone to soften the pain. but he's leaving.
and he and I aren't right for each other. because I want something more from life that what I have right here. I crave stability and progress. he didn't finish the ninth grade. neither of his parents graduated high school. he is unemployed and the only job he wants is to be a bike messenger. he can't look ahead of himself outside of the immediate. today he asked me if I would be going to south county with him over the summer to hang out with him and his friends and go to the beach and ride bikes. "I'll have school," I said, and he was shocked. "I have school and work. I take classes in the summer." "but you'll still have the weekends, right?"
I feel so critical of him, but at the same time I do love him. I am beginning to understand what happened with shiny. I feel like this is how life works. it keeps giving me impossible shit to deal with, and then shows me the other side of the situation. like dru's death, and then scant years later, my mom's death. so that I would understand.
sometimes it's comforting to think there's a reason for things, but mostly it feels like there can't possibly be some thread that ties this all together. it is maddening to think it's all random, but it's just as maddening to believe it's all connected.
my roommate wanted to have sex with me, and I told him no. he asked why. so I said, " because I think it means more to you than it does to me." and it's not that it's because sex means less to me. it's because it's so clear that he is in love with me and I am not in love with him. I care about him. I love him as a friend. but I absolutely can't see myself being in a serious relationship with him. I told him that I would have been really into him four or five years ago. before I went to college. before I found purpose, basically. when I wasn't looking for forever. "we are on very different paths." and he agreed.
I want. I used to want with greater passion, but I suspect that time has tempered me. The most important thing I've learned over the past few years is how to be alone and be ok with spending time by myself. that's been the hardest thing. that and, of course, all the grieving.
but the understanding that has come to me lately about these different kinds of loves has further cemented in my brain that I shouldn't contact shiny. it would continue to not accomplish anything. and yet I still want to contact him, because I want us to be together. maybe I should just accept that I feel that way instead of trying to shame myself out of it. I still keep my eyes open to potential others, but he is my default desire. he is the one I continue to want, and the one that I hope someday comes around.
I wonder if I'll ever hear from him again.
I wonder if, at the end of everything, any of this will have felt worth all the pain.
lately I feel so much older.
another half-wasted day.

a sudden burst of verbosity

I have been struggling over what to say if I were to write to shiny. I could copy/paste some entries from here. or I could just write and say, "I miss you." I have thought about letters I would type, or pictures I would draw, or any number of things. but I haven't done any of it.
the thing that stops me is realizing that I'm not sure what I hope to accomplish by writing to him. it just seems like some kind of stupid melodramatic ploy to talk to him again, and I can't see much good coming out of that. it would just end the same way it did before. we would start to talk again, and I would be simultaneously comforted and tortured, and then we would hang out, and I'd spend the whole time pretending that I didn't want to be with him all the while knowing that he felt nothing for me.
it just seems self-defeating. we haven't talked at all in over two months. why should I break that now?
I think I'm probably just lonely and he was the closest to my ideal person that I've ever met.
I know I'm not as damaged as I used to be.
but I still have so far to go.

I just want everything

There isn't much to say that I haven't already said. yet I feel compelled to write.
each person that I get close to further refines my view of myself and what I need and want. I wish I could create some kind of amalgamation of these people. it would be nice to pick and choose. someone with foresight. someone with goals. someone with morals. someone who chews with their mouth shut. I wish that wasn't as important to me as it is.
someone who is actively interested in self-improvement. someone who can communicate without resorting to passive-aggressiveness. someone that is willing to teach and learn and listen and talk.
someone to comfort me and who will ask to be comforted.
someone where our fights feel productive rather than a peek at our inevitable break-up.
someone that is willing to accept me as I am, but is also willing to help me affect change in my life if I so desire. and lets me do the same for them.
man, woman, transperson ... I don't care.
someone with self-awareness.
someone who can see and who wants me to see and wants me to help them see.
I don't think this exists. I have to tell myself that. but I won't settle, either.
I've done that too many times already.

I lost my words

I miss reciprocated romance.
I miss wanting someone as badly as they want me.
I miss not holding back.
I miss being in love versus just feeling love for someone.
I miss shiny.
I miss not missing shiny.
I guess I want all that fantasy shit, with being happily pursued then whispering secrets in the dark and making myself tired just so I can cram more hours in with the person of my desire. I miss feeling like I'm on an even level with someone. I miss learning from someone's example. I miss feeling accepted, no matter what. and I miss open honesty and trust. I miss trusting someone so very very much.
I am so tired of how things are. this not-relationship with my roommate needs to end. I feel like I'm holding off until he moves out. it's easier that way. It's a logical break. but I can't keep doing things the way I have been. he's getting attached and I'm beginning to go the opposite direction. I'm starting to resent him.
I miss women.
I think about von a lot, and how different my relationship with her was from any of the men I've dated. I think about the other women I've been with, too. they've all been nurturing, and soft, and understanding. they've been patient. all the men I've loved have had similar qualities. ex-husband did. so did ex-otter and, to some extent, shiny. but ex-otter and shiny also had selfish, self-serving qualities that ex-husband and the women lacked.
it's such a different dynamic, being with a woman.
I want things to feel equal.
I want to settle down with someone.
I am so tired of playing around.

so much more than this

I have been heavy with memories, but not in the way I usually am. I miss shiny. Somewhere, in my brain, we are still together. and other parts of my brain are embarrassed by the part that refuses to move on. He had many qualities that I admire and desire, and others that I was willing to overlook. It's so rare that I meet someone that I feel like I can actually accept. but maybe I didn't really accept him. I just accepted what I thought he was.
I don't know why I can't shake this. I want to pull this need out of my brain. I want to poke a hole in my head and yank it out like a magician pulls a scarf from a sleeve. I know this is wrapped up in so much more than just one person, or two people. I know this goes back further than I can see. and I know, and have been told, that I can't be happy with someone until I'm happy with myself. I wonder what it would be like to be truly single and unencumbered by the needs of someone else. it feels like I never last that long. even now, I am in some kind of not-really-pseudo-relationship with my roommate. we aren't together but allow our decisions to be tempered by each other.
I don't want him. I just want to feel someone's arms around me. I want to feel nurtured and loved and wanted. I want and want and want and it gets me nowhere.
I want to stop wanting.
or at least stop wanting people that don't want me.

wants in a river that you can't stop flowing

I don't feel as confused as I think I should.
I keep having dreams about people that have left me.
I keep kissing my roommate.
I keep composing letters in my head that I want to send shiny, or emails I want to send buttercup. but I don't. I can't write them or type them or see the words in front of me. I think of perfect, simple things to say and then I do not say them.
I don't want to be rejected again.
and when it comes down to it, if they wanted to hear from me ... well .. they would call. or write. or initiate some kind of contact. right?
I want to scream out to everyone: I AM DIFFERENT NOW. but maybe I'm not. I could still be the selfish, self-centered dramatic person that I've always been. or maybe I've never really been that bad. or maybe it's a combination of many things.
I still am envious of people who can be stable and consistently do things. I am envious of those who for whom life is steady. I am not one of those people. I have never been. I will never be, no matter how badly I want that.
there are deep cracks that run through me and separate the "want" from the "is." I guess that's common. but I actively feel them, and I don't think that's something everyone can do.
I hate hate hate that people don't make sense.
I hate hate hate that most don't even try.
and I hate hate hate how, despite it all, I am still desperately in love with shiny.
and I still want to hear from buttercup so badly.
I still miss them so much.
but some people never come back.
I wish that I could turn off this desire.
I want to make peace with my past.
I want to be silent.
but the past never shuts up.

it's a wish that can't be granted

There are times when I feel empty, but not the way I used to. I don't feel incomplete. I've gotten used to being single. I feel empty the way an air bubble in a sticker is empty. There is nothing in it, but it still remains solid.
like the tattoo on the back of my neck. the circle that is broken but remains whole.
I used to like telling people what my tattoos meant. now I feel silly, probably because I've had some of them for over ten years now. the meaning hasn't changed, and I still believe in them strongly, but they've become more deeply personal than before. My first tattoo, the one that depicts a connection of mind-body-spirit, wisdom through change, and eternity; I always feel silly trying to explain it. Maybe because it feels trite but to me it has so many old things wrapped up in it. my suicide attempt, my decision to stop cutting, all the feelings surrounding those events, and my desire to do what that girl told me the night I spent at LAX -- "be whole."
That has resonated with me over the past 11 years. Be whole.
I don't know if I'll ever get there. I am trying. I have been trying for a long time, and I'm not convinced it's a journey that has an end. Maybe that's what I mean by empty. There is a layer of me with nothing in it. Like a scar that feels the pressure but not the pain. There is that dead part of me, where I place the things that I cannot deal with. My mom's death, all the loss of people I love and have loved, the way I've had to redefine myself throughout my struggle with medication. I hate dependence. I hate addiction. but aren't I addicted to prozac? Haven't I been addicted to other things?
All my addictions have been prescribed and carefully regulated.
I don't like who I am without them.
I want to feel like me without medical intervention.
I want to be stable without help.

or at least terribly unlikely

still think about you. think about him. still think about him. still.
oh, seven months, right? he broke up with me almost seven months ago. it's been almost a year since our first date. our first date. that wonderful date. dressed as zombies, valentine's day, wandering around and shivering in the cold. I held his hands and asked if he believed in energy. in a person's energy. I tried to help him feel it but he couldn't. maybe I should have guessed then that he was empty, but I had high hopes. I thought I could help him understand.
I thought there was more there than there really was.
his smile. beguiled.
I took a chance even trying.
and I kept taking chances.
but the thing about trying is that sometimes you fail.
I have been through this over and over. I have done this before. but never to this extent. never like this. but I guess no two people are the same so no two relationships can be the same.
I remember going crazy over people before. I didn't go crazy over shiny. I just got sad, so sad, and it won't go away.
I miss the summer.
pivotal. that's what that time was.
pivotal.

it seems ridiculous to me that someone I was with for such a short period of time should have such an impact. it seems ridiculous to me that I should count him among those that I have truly loved.
it seems ridiculous that I still hope I'll hear from him and that he'll want to try again.
more than ridiculous.

possibly insane.