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.

I Am an Idiot

I have a near-pathological need to feel special and needed.  I’ve been fighting it consciously since I was 14 years-old.  It keeps rearing it’s head in new and more insidious ways.  It makes me competitive in less than good ways.  It has inspired moments of both reasonably acceptable, motivational, inspirational levels of envy and jealousy but mostly it almost always sets me up to fail both myself and others.

And these failures happen in all sorts of wonderful ways.  It makes me over-solicitous at times, obsequious at others.  It turns people off and away.  Some of these people aren’t worth keeping around likely because lord knows the last thing I need at this point in my life is more people who are put off and alienated by even the most simple act of kindness.  However, it is also a way in which I smother otherwise healthy, lovely people with my need to be needed.

The side of it all that I figured out early was that if by some chance I found someone who needed to need as much as I need to be needed the net result was that I was sucked dry and couldn’t fill anyone needs anymore for anything.  This happened a number of times and I burnt out and into a hollow shell and ditched those “friends” right when they might have needed me most because I had nothing left to offer.  Drained.  Done.

I think this tendency of mine is at its worst when I am personally going through a lot of shit.  I’d always rather be thinking about someone else.  I’d always rather be dealing with someone else’s life, problems, challenges.  It can make me meddling and presumptuous.  Not always, but certainly often enough to make me an idiot who is always getting in the way by wielding my very best intentions.  

I am selfish in my selflessness.  Stupid in my inability to demand more from others so that I may need as well as  be needed.  I do not demand reciprocity and worse than that I pre-empt any need on the part of others TO provide reciprocity by providing them with excuses not to.

“I would really like to hear from you [request for reciprocity] but I know you are really busy at work and that your mother is in town so don’t worry about getting back to me until you have time [defensively providing them with an excuse not to write and myself with a reason for not hearing from them when/if they don't write]“

Like I said:  I am an idiot.  But I don’t have the first fucking clue how to STOP being an idiot except to just stop writing to anyone, stop calling anyone, stop participating and wait for people to find me for a while.

Solitude will be hard at this point in my life but I think my dignity and well-being require it.  And it’s not a test of my friends and their friendship – it’s a walk of fire for myself – to test myself.  To test myself to see if I can handle not being “helpful” and “generous” for a while.  Because right now, all it’s doing is stressing me out and it’s also a large part of what got me into this mess of separation and stress and stress-induced nausea in which I currently live.

I need a change.

I need to change.

I just need to figure out how.

I don’t know how to reconcile these two thoughts:

I need to learn to be more independent.

I am so sick of having to do so much alone.

What do I do with that hey? Both of them are true to a fault. Both of them make me tired and sad and worn just thinking about them.

Clearly, I rely too much on other people for inspiration and drive. Clearly, I spend too much time wishing for people to partner me in my various endeavours. Clearly, I need to learn to be more self-motivated. Clearly, I need to stop using the absence of ‘help’ as an excuse to not even try. Clearly, I need to learn a little more about boot-straps and their like. Clearly, these things are true.

But where does it end?

How much are human beings supposed to do alone? How much are we supposed to do relying only on ourselves? Where does community fit into this equation? Where does love fit? Connection? Collaboration? Any of the many variations of “family”?

And what of the shady regions between these two thoughts?

What of the fact that sometimes the worst place to be is having to do everything yourself without ever getting to be alone? What of people who become so dependent on their independence that they cannot let anyone help them even when they need it?

The truth is that every time I think about the second thought, about how tired I am of doing so much alone, feeling so alone, I cry. Doesn’t matter where I am. Doesn’t matter what I’m doing or who I might be around. If I let myself think about how tired I am, how lonely and tired, I cry.

And that is often one of the reasons I start to think about learning to be more independent. Perhaps, I think, I would not feel so lonely if I were more resourceful? Perhaps, I think, I would not feel so tired if I expected less and did more?

And then I bounce back.

Expect LESS? Expect LESS?

How does anything ever get better if we expect LESS from it? How do any of us get any better if we expect LESS from each other? A lot of the time it takes more than one person to do anything that’s really worth doing and none of those things get done if the only person we expect things from is ourself.

I don’t have any answers. I don’t know how to reconcile these thoughts. I barely know how to cope with them. They hurt me whenever they touch and they touch often.

And I’m so tired.

So tired of never being strong enough.
So tired of doing so much alone.

You Have an Office

It’s downtown. It’s all yours. It’s inside a building with many bathrooms so that you needn’t knock on the door to ours as soon as I’ve sat down and ask “Will you be long?” like somehow it’s your right. (I write that full well knowing that I stood up, zipped up and surrendered the john enough times to pretty much make it you believe it is your right but – honestly – it really fucking isn’t.)

We’re supposed to be separated. Separated with a view to reconciliation still means “separated”. It means you’re not supposed to be around all the time when you are not on duty with the boy. I don’t have an office outside the home but I can assure you that if I did, for this period of “separation” I would use it because it’s the right thing to do. The respectful, honourable thing to do – even if it weren’t comfy or cozy or what I wanted to do.

We’re not supposed to always be around each other.

You’re supposed to use your office.

You’re supposed to give me space.

You’re supposed to be sacrificing things. We both are.

To see what we miss. To see what we learn.

And, frankly, over the last few days, it would seem that nothing at all has changed for you and my life has gotten just a smidge worse.

You still come and go as you please only now you do it with impunity. Now you do it knowing EXACTLY when you are actually responsible for the boy and when you are not. You needn’t offer to help at other times. You pop your head in, make faces at him, play old games with him, make all your jokes and it’s almost like we aren’t separated and you are “just working from home today.” You do this even though I asked you not to. You do this without realizing that all it does is make me want to be with you less. You do all this like you forget we are supposed to be separated and that you have an office.

YOU HAVE AN OFFICE.

And if you’re not going to make my life any better by working from home then I don’t want you at home. I’m sick. The kid is sick. You’re not helping “because it’s not your turn” and you continue to demonstrate no real initiative for being loving and helpful toward me so – honestly – I get it. I do. I always have. You have work to do. So do it.

IN YOUR OFFICE.

If I’m going to wind up doing this gig mostly by myself then I might as well get the practice and I could sure as hell use the space.

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.