Sleep comes slowly
It’s raven wings tattered and smoke stained
Wounds ooze blood
It heralds a dreaming
A remembering
Heart racing
The sound of metal stairs
Pounding down
The floor above red spilled
Congealing as the winter heat saps away viscosity
Mistakes made
Lies heard
Believed
In that building
The unquiet dead
I’m sorry my friends
I should have taken better care of you
We delude ourselves.
We delude ourselves into believing that there is something there when there is no evidence of it. We do this because it’s something we need.
Lately, I’ve been asking the question. Why do I keep falling so deeply into love in these relationships where distance or emotional availability is primarily a problem?
Distance itself makes it hard. Distance means there is no pheromonal interaction. There is no opportunity for oxytocin bonding. Instead, only words, intellect, and small acts are available. And while that may work for a time, it never works long-term.
Put another way, you can’t kiss a video call or make love to a voice. You can only paint the picture and while that can sustain for a time, eventually you need to be in the same room.
I can read more from 5 minutes with someone from body language and tone of voice than I can from a hundred missives.
On the other side, I have intense emotional relationships who, through circumstances or nature are emotionally unavailable to take that next step.
In many ways, those are worse.
Long distance is a dream that I am well aware of the hazards of. But here and still distant?
My heart and mind can’t seem to let go in those instances.
So why do I keep falling for people who can’t or won’t love me. Either because of distance or other factors? Why do I pick people who I can’t have?
Perhaps, I feel like I am unworthy of love, having failed to protect Morgan. Perhaps, if I’m with someone who is a hundred percent in it with me, my imposter syndrome kicks in and I feel like I’m going to fail and let down the person I love and doing so is anathema. And as such it puts such enormous pressure on, that no relationship could withstand it.
I don’t know. That’s where I am in my headspace now. Trying to understand my choices. Because, I can’t change the minds of those I still love but who’ve moved on without me. But I can change my future choices.
This is the 30 or so songs that I listened to before work forced me to remove my headphones. Just thought I’d share. It’s a pretty eclectic mix of things that I like.
Sounds spill out
No words make sense
Jumbled sounds said with a smile
The laugh
The grin
Comrades in arms
Disappear at the end of the day
Long silences filled with memes
With fake people and their fake problems
Mirror reflecting stoic
While a heart aches
That basic human touch
Long departed
Unshed tears war with skipped heartbeats
Sitting in the restaurant that I can’t afford
Anything to stop from hearing
The ticking of the air conditioning
In these too silent spaces
Without you
This song speaks to an internal truth. And some of the lines are especially appropriate.
Shout out to Athena Scalzi for featuring this song.
It was always going to be this
This downward slope
Packed away
Put away
Show the rose
Thorns pricked bloody
Smell enticing
Too cloying
Choke on actions
Drown in sweet words
Cut off
Bound by a promise
Tongue cut out
Mumbling half heard
Pneumatic hammer
Driving out all thought
Echo
Echo
No safety in fear
No safety
Lake bubbles seathe
Heat vents below the surface
I was drowsing between wakefulness and dream. Lying on my bed, I have this image of a woman crawling from the foot of the bed, into my arms. She nestles against me and I pull her close. Still mostly asleep, I lean over and kiss her neck, on her spine. I murmur, “Mine.” Then go back to sleep with her in my arms.
The day ticks away. Scanning documents, looking for connections, waiting for the phone to ring. I was never happy with the waiting. It’s always easier when you aren’t personally invested in the outcome. I know that if I allow it, this will eat away at me. Poison me. I can’t allow myself to descend into the rush of taking. Making no mistake, monstrous as it is, the feeling of self righteous fury made manifest and acted upon, safeguarding my people and my girls, is addictive.
That rush as you pound after your prey, making the target, and standing over this person. The sound of the gun, the silence as their body bleeds out. The light fading. The flight to safety. All floated on a endorphin and adrenalin high.
It’s not until after that you start crashing. Sometimes you are in first stage adrenal failure. Your body gives so much for those moments. And the memories…the chase comes in fragments, the planning sticks with you. But it’s those last minutes that haunt. You run through the catalog of the targets misdeeds, hoping to talk yourself into calm. Hoping that what you did was justified. Sometimes it is. Sometimes, you just can’t convince yourself. And those are the sleepless nights. Holding your girls. Trying to keep yourself from flying apart.
This time there is none of that ambiguity. But their faces will still haunt me. Still look back, glassy eyed, pleading for one more second of life. And I will smile, grim and frightening. Dark fire dancing.
Maybe that makes me a monster.
So be it.
I called this clarity
I called it sanity
It’s a barren empty
A field of endless days
Longing for more
Am I longing to feel
….
Anything
Is this my addiction
To pain
To joy
Or is this what I felt
Without the hope
Of a tomorrow
And now I’m self aware enough
To realize it
Some days other people are an agony
Fidget to get free
But even that’s better than sitting alone
There’s no freedom
My choices have led me here
To this barren earth
This windswept empty
Bereft of everything
Even fear
What’s left when even fear is gone
Joy is a thing of blood and bone
My heart is full of dust and memories
What fool would want a piece of pain
Drink my tears and end with sand
On this shattered plain
Beneath this bowl of sky
I understand how people feel when they say they’d rather be alone.
I understand how they feel when they say they don’t want a relationship.
I understand when they want an uncomplicated life.
It’s easier to be alone than to bend for another.
It’s easier to act in the silence of your own thoughts than to think about how your actions impact others.
It’s easier to be, alone.
The closest approximation is to say that I feel sane. Clear. And I see how this feeling can be construed as better. Because what we tend to remember is the end of the relationship. We remember the pain and uncertainty. We remember that feeling that nothing is right nor will it ever be. We feel that torture and we say, “Never again.”
But….
I remember.
I remember feeling free.
Feeling like each day had greater meaning because I was building something. Something for us.
Feeling like I was growing as a person to fit into this dream.
I remember and I know it’s possible.
The most painful part is that I know it can work and not end in flames and agony.
I have proof.
It took an outside hand to take all.
So, while I enjoy this alone getting to know myself as myself, I know I can’t be like those who are eternally single. I know I’ll take the chance again.
Because, when it works, it is the most beautiful thing I can build. And I’m a better man for it.
Pelgris 