I have lived my whole life never catcalling anyone. But today I thought I’d give it a shot.
I saw a person coming out of the library and I shouted “Hey, smart person! I bet you’ve read a bunch of great books and have interesting ideas!”
The guys at the office said that I did it wrong but I don’t know.
I got his number and we’re seeing each other this Saturday.
(this is a joke, I would never catcall anyone, its disrespectful. But if I did do it, I imagine this is how I would do it.)
I didn’t used to be this person. This person who has this anxiety everytime someone I love even the littlest bit draws away from me. Rationally, they have valid logical and emotional reasons. I understand them and accept them. But it still leaves me with this crushing sense of failure and fear. This thought that I could have said something or did something and that would have made the difference. The thought that I held something back or said too much and that’s why it was so easy(in my mind) for them to walk away. I keep trying and failing and trying and failing. And even when it’s not over, just in a holding pattern, there is this crushed heart feeling. This immense weight and pain that just goes on and on. It gets better. It goes away. Usually just in time for another relationship to start.
The pain is mostly my fault. I fall in love so easily. I see some shining beautiful piece of personality and I fall a little bit. Like holding on to a rope and slipping a bit down it. Scary and exhilarating. And we start the dance and I fall deeper and deeper until, when it ends, I am so deep in, I cannot see the night sky.
There is a cavalcade of people who love my words and all I want is for someone to love me.
This isn’t a poem. It’s a battle cry. I am my words. My words are who I am. I don’t write poetry about things. I write about what I feel and who I am. I shout it out, hoping for the right people to hear me. To know that I am here and I am real and I am waiting. Trying to figure things out but no where near perfection. Looking for connection and that moment when we are all revealed and nothing is hidden. I hate hiding. If something is coming for me, let it come.
Tell me the truth and never stop telling me. I need it all. Connection is the experiences we share. Not just the words we speak at each other. Conversations are give and take, yes and no, not just me shouting into the darkness.
Everything will be fine. I’ll see something that makes me uncertain and my brain will start working through all of the possibilities. None of these will be good possibilities. It will range from painful to total destruction. Because my brain can’t let something go. It has to grind it over and over until the original information is unrecognizable from what it was originally.
Then I will take this broken, unrecognizable information and use it as the basis for scenarios and it all comes down to being like the abominable snowman with bugs bunny. And that doesn’t work, I know it doesn’t work, but my brain just won’t shut up.
So I see a grain of sand or a pebble and it becomes a monstrosity. Real problems I can work through. Shit my brain invents is much harder.
I had a nightmare
It was a dream I’d had before, in some variation. I was walking in my parents backyard. I was talking to some people who I had the impression that they were family. We were trying to get to the house because the house was safe. Safe from what, I didn’t know. We were running away but before we did that we had tried to fight. As ninjas this time for some reason. We failed time and again until the only option left was to run. So we ran and we had made it to outside parents house. But it’s in a place where I have always had the feeling it was hungry. When I was young, the nightmare was that animals or bugs carpeted the ground and every time I tried to cross it I’d almost get devoured. This time there was a thing in the shape of a man standing by a tree that had no business being there. We were resting and it was searching for a way in, almost like it was trapped. Eventually it pushes its way into the world/area we were at. Part of that was I taunted it for some reason. I don’t remember why but it invaded and turned into a raving ravenous creature. It cut through us and the only thing left was to run. We were almost home but it was too far, and everyone but me fell. All alone I make the door and slam it shut. The turn the bolt but it fails to strike home and I get the sense that this is where I died previous times. But I am lucid dreaming at this point and I slam the bolt home. The thing is screaming and raving outside, talking about what bits it wants to eat. But I control the dream and I cage it in light. Again I get the impression that this had failed on prior occasions, but this time the cage is strong enough. This time the being is destroyed. I sever it’s ties to the yard and make the area inhospitable to creatures of its kind. Then I wake up
When does a week feel like an eternity? I honestly thought it had been at least two weeks, but I checked the calendar and just one. I’m floored. It feels like so much longer. Like years, like decades. I miss you every day. Sometimes every hour. I miss the sure knowledge that I’d dreamwalk to you and we’d sleep together in our dreams and both our days would be better for it. I miss you telling me that you woke refreshed and happy and I felt like I was apart of that because I’d felt you in my arms. Though usually you got hot and pushed me away and I would say “you can hold me if you want to”. So we’d switch places and sleep the rest of the night.
One week! Feels impossible that so little time has passed. And really, I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to watch you go. I accept it because I have no choice but it is never a decision I would make on my own.
I thought it would be easier though. I was very wrong.
I don’t see myself as less, except on alternating Wednesdays or when I haven’t gotten enough sleep and my brain won’t stop telling me that this is all my fault. I am mostly aware that people love me and that I am a person worthy of love, except at 2 AM and the clock keeps ticking by and I’m sitting alone without someone who wants to hold me. I know that I laugh and make jokes that people find funny but I’m at my most cutting edge of laughter when I’m in such pain that there is no other outlet. Other than shouting and crying, and that’s frowned upon while sitting at my desk at work. I know I’m alright most of the time but sometimes I’m not.
And creeping along, I find myself filled with the need to get out, get out, get out. Just a flick of the blade and a few minutes till it’s over or jump from the roof, the fall will be interesting, or get a gun and go out to the desert to watch the sunrise one last time.
It’s not because I don’t love this world, because I do. I love the stirring of the trees in the wind. I love rain falling. I love watching people be unselfconciously themselves when they think no one is watching.
But I’m also that broken thing, this bag full of glass and I think it would be easier to not be here.
I need that connection of someone who wants me. Maybe just to hear my voice or to read my words on the screen. To look forward to hearing from them. To need that connection to be one step closer to happy.
They say love yourself before you can love others. I do. I know myself and see my self, it’s just that I feel unwanted and unloved most of the time and that feeling makes it hard to step out the door. And when I’m with someone, it all seems possible and the world is brighter and the work of living seems less like work.
And then it, somehow, is over or ended or put into some kind of holding pattern. It’s not that I need to be in a relationship, it’s just that I don’t feel worth love most days and I’m keenly aware of how I feel. When I’m with someone, I at least know that they like me, and if they do, maybe I’m worth love.
It’s not logical and I know that. I know that people love me. But I sometimes feel so alone and I can’t be the person who is constantly reaching out for reassurance. I don’t want to be that person who is the burden on their lives.
Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs is a hard read.
*spoiler alert*
I’d forgotten the rape in Iron Kissed. I think I blocked it out. I fills me up with rage. Makes me want to find whoever would do this and remove them from the world. I know it’s a novel, but I also know it happens. And that, often, the victim feels like it is their fault. That our so called justice system makes them out to be complicit in their own attack. It fills me with cold rage. I understand Adam’s reaction and the frustration at not being able to do anything to help his love. He was too late. And now that he’s here he doesn’t know how to make it better. Everything he is, every contact, every skill cannot make it better. And you can’t kill someone twice.
Our world is broken that this occurs in it. Doubly so that those who commit these atrocities are allowed to walk free. To keep breathing.
What missed opportunity did I fail at when I failed to introduce myself? Or did you have a reasonable expectation of privacy and I should not intrude on your night out. Do I blame myself for awkward cowardice? Or was I being considerate by not inserting myself. Or perhaps I thought but, you are not the Goddess of my Heart and I am no where near a headspace to do you justice? Or maybe, in my overthinking I missed all opportunity. And though you smelled amazing perhaps just enjoy the Neil Gaiman talk sitting in row L seat 7 and accept that it’s far too late now.
To exert control over others through direct control is the weakest form of dominance. One should strive to display the virtues you hold as dear. Exert from the self outward. Support, demonstrate, uplift, correct only when doing so is beneficial to the one being corrected. Be honest with yourself as to your desires. But always with control moving forward. My joy is not in controlling others. It is from that control aiding them in their path. Allowing them the structure to become more. It is easy to take obedience. Harder to be a person worthy of it. And that is where the beauty is. You move and they follow, not because you have imposed your will, but because they have chosen to do so.
Pelgris 