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.

You Wouldn’t Think It Would Make a Difference

So little is missing. So little has really changed. It’s really just a handful fewer words here. A few less smiles there. There weren’t really any hugs before. There weren’t any kisses. There was almost no conversation and any laughs were shared on one subject only: our child.

And then we started a “trial separation in view to reconciliation”. We’re still in the same house. Only now the chasm between us has its edges clearly defined, sharpened. Now I do not feel obligated to say “Play well! Have fun!” when he leaves to play hockey. I needn’t say “Have a good day.” I don’t tell him how my work is going and wait for responses and interest – even feigned interest – that never comes. There will be no hugs. There will be no kisses. There remain a few laughs on the one subject we still share: our child.

I never wanted to live my life alone. I require solitude. I require space and time to myself but I have NEVER wanted to live my life alone. More than anything my entire life has been about finding someone with whom I could lovingly, thoughtfully, reciprocally share my life. Only I made dumb choices. Choices born of insecurity and fear as much as anything else and so I was, basically, living my life alone. I really was.

And now.
So little has changed.
So little is missing.
You wouldn’t think it would make a difference.

But it does.

An Expression of Self-Pity

I would watch hockey for someone who really loved me.
(I hate watching hockey)
I would try eating green curry again
(Green curry makes me feel like I’ve been burned alive
and then covered in liquid nitrogen)
I would dance naked.
I would be a better housekeeper.
I would fly across a continent and into another country.
(Oh, wait, I did that and it turned out
he didn’t really love me)
I would be my best self, my most loving
and generous self
for someone who really loved me.
I would move halfway around the world leaving
everything and everyone I know
for someone who really loved me.
(Oh, wait, I already did that and it turned out he
doesn’t know how to love me)

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.

*sigh*

That is all.

All These Kisses

Are killing me. TV is full of them right now because it’s into the end of the first half of the season – heading into Christmas bullshit and then into sweeps so romance is a buddin’ on all these TV shows. Girls do it. Boys do it. Even lovely little vampires do it. I wanna’ do it. I want to fall in love.

And I’m not supposed to want that. I’m in a relationship. I have a child. I’m supposed to be in love and I’m supposed to get kissed and I’m supposed to give kisses and I’m not supposed to watch these shows with all these kisses and pine and yearn and hit rewind to torture myself again…

I tell ya’… Mostly I’m tired of pretending that this is the way it’s supposed to be. This kiss-less mess of whatever. I’m tired of telling myself that it wouldn’t matter who I was with – that they are all the same jackass after a while. The same crippled and crippling man in different skins with different voices. I’m tired of believing that I couldn’t do better, that even if I deserve better there isn’t better to be had. I’m tired of pining for the kisses that never come and thinking that somehow it’s my fault.

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.