I just need one solid thing to hold on to that’s mine.

One person, more like. One person who can give me support without stripping themselves of vital nutrients. One person to turn to first in confidence, with confidence that they care. One person threaded through the up and the down, the X axis of my roller coaster. I swear the highs would mean more and the lows would be higher if I could just have faith in one person. Rely on them. Not have to do all of this alone.

And I would be that person for them. However they need it to be for them. I want to be that person for someone. I tried. I tried too hard. I always try too hard and that’s part of why he failed but he would have failed anyway. If I hadn’t tried too hard he would have failed sooner. He did fail sooner. A lot. But I just tried harder so neither of us noticed until I stopped trying altogether and left a hole two full personalities wide.

And, I believe in community and I don’t think any one person can be the whole world to another but I really can’t help thinking that even in a community, even in a web of support, you still need to come home to someone who is there for you first, for whom you are there first.

And someone called me a “very self-contained person” the other day. And they were right but the more I think about it, the more I think I’m a self-contained person because no one else has ever wanted to help me keep my edges tidy. I’m a self-contained person because I have to be not because I want to be. I’ve had to do it alone for so long it actually, physically hurts and I don’t want to anymore and if I have to keep doing it alone then I want to be ALONE. I don’t want to give and give anymore without getting and even my kid feels like a drain right now. An exhausting one-way street tethering me to responsibilities I resent and I hate that. I hate myself for feeling that way because I love him so much. But I’m so tired. I’m so tired.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired and I just need one solid thing to hold on to that’s mine.

It’s Been At Least Eight Years

Since I fell in love with a pair of shoes.

I’m not much of a clothes person, really. I appreciate pretty things but there were too many teenage years where I didn’t think pretty things were for people like me and then years of food service where I had to wear uniforms that always wound up smelling like feta cheese, olives and various kinds of mustard… Not to mention the more recent years of stay-at-home motherhood where “nice” clothes are pretty much a waste of time… I’ve just never really gotten into the whole girly clothes scene.

The first pair of shoes I fell in love with were red suede Diesels. I didn’t know the brand name would make people’s eyes light up until well after I bought them. I liked that they were red. I liked that they were suede. A perfect red too. A blue-red. They had a square toe, a broad velcro closer over the instep. They weren’t much more than a glorified running shoe but they were an exquisite glorified running shoe and I used to be set free from my early shift at a deli, take a bus downtown and just go visit them. I would visit them. I would covet them, go see a movie and then go home.

I did this for two months. They weren’t cheap. I finally bought them. I cared for them. I tended to them. I wore them everywhere and with everything. I built a whole new me to wear with them too. I wore different colours and wore my hair differently. I got a step closer to being a “me” I really wanted to be. Just a bit funkier. Just a bit more alive. I loved those shoes. I fell in love with them and loved them and wore them into the ground. I still regret that I never brought them to a shoe repair shop to see if they could be fixed after I wore them out. It took a year to finally let them go even though I couldn’t wear them anymore and I haven’t been in love with a pair of shoes since.

Until today.

The courtship was shorter and the price was smaller. They were new shoes on consignment. A perfect fit and once again they represent a step in a new direction (no pun intended). They are not the shoes for a stay-at-home mother. They are shoes for a woman who thinks pretty things are for people like her. They are two shades of soft green, open-toe, scallopped pattern over the toes – like a stained glass window with my skin as the light shining through – a four inch stacked heel beneath a shapely heel strap and a tiny little ankle strap with a tiny little buckle.

I’m going to wear them first chance I get as soon as Spring comes and the snow disappears. I’ll wear them with jeans and a t-shirt and go out with a friend. I’ll wear them with a dress. I’m not even sure I care if the dress matches the shoes. I’m just going to wear them and see what kind of life I wind up building around them.

But the most powerful image I had as I walked home with them, peeking at them in the bag and grinning every few minutes, was a sexual one. I often have images that come into my mind which are sexual. I have fantasies. But they have never been this vivid before. This clear.

I saw those beautiful shoes at the end of my naked legs wrapped around a man. I have no idea who that man is. I barely recognize myself in the image. I love it though. I love the image. It’s the beginning of something I think.

I could use some beginnings and at least I have the shoes to go with whichever one comes next.

I Am Starving I am Craving…

Hands.
Strong hands.
Fingers spread wide.
Moving under my brea-ts across my rib cage
and down my waist.
Moving up my back and into my hair.

A hand tightening in my hair.

Parted lips.
Strong lips on mine.
On my neck.
On my brea-ts.
On my waist, my back, my arms and

Hips.
A man’s hips.
The feel of hip bones under my hands.
The gesture that takes hands from
hip bones
to a-s
to thigh.
The feel of a man’s hips and thighs against mine.

The promise of it.
The ache and anticipation.

The hungry spaces between kisses.

Hands on the move inside clothes.
Beneath, around, over.

A finger trailed just inside a waistband.

Skin cool.
Skin slick.

Skin that for a moment feels like
it belongs to someone else.

To give myself up and over.

To be lost and found
and lost and found
and lost again.

There Are Three of Me

There is the me that wants my relationship to work. Who wants to be “Mom” to the “Dad and Son” she has built over the last long decade and a bit. She wants to want to be here, in this place. She wants to be a family in whatever way she can make that work. She wants to break through the angry and the bitter. She wants to swallow her pride and hurt. She wants to see “him” again as she saw “him” before and remember why she started all of this in the first place. So, she finds yet “another way of saying it”. So, she doesn’t say the thing she knows will start another fight and she listens instead. She waits for things to get better. She tries not to snap. She tries not to remember all the chances already given and wasted. She tries to forget all the love offered and rejected. She tries and tries and tries.