A Fail to Kiss Is a Fail to Cope

Restless.

Paradoxical.

Juxtaposed.


I want to rediscover my younger self. The passion for dance and art. The trinkets. The unashamed love of horses and you know maybe dolphins and shit. The heady high that comes with staring at pictures of beautiful, bright, photoshopped people wearing beautiful clothes. Music playing constantly. Clipping out my favorite pictures of everything and sticking them to the wall. Doodling on something that no doubt had Lisa Frank on it and at least one decal of a winking cat.

I want to remember that I existed before and I have much more history than I thought I did.  I want to remember that I existed in my entirety before 2012.  I get so focused on trying to live now that I forget sometimes how easy it was to live then.



But, I also want a future of stability, animals, gardening, an office with bookshelves and canvases, a place to put my things where I know they will be safe so I can use them, look at them, touch them, wear them, create them. Where I can cook and bathe and sleep and raise my children. A place where I can be found, reliably.



But

I also want to get into a car and peel away every string that holds me in place like unsticking so many glued on threads from my skin.  Drop every responsibility, be secure in the idea that everything will be safe if I leave it alone, safe and happy and healthy and not let down.

Run, drive, wander.

Experience.

Listen.

Touch and feel and eat and sleep in a different place under a different tree in a different blanket in a different climate over and over until I belong to the earth like I should.  Until the ground and I are family.

With no deadline.

With nothing but love calling me everywhere.



I have somewhere to be.
I don't know where it is yet.
I think, maybe, it's too many places to be in at once.

I know who I want to be.  I know my heart is like dust that floats and spreads and dissolves.

I know the fever is both fear and urge.

I know I'll find peace in little moments as I go.



I need to get to May.
Lift my head out of the water and take a deep, desperate breath.

Until then

I can breathe the little bubbles of the bright moments that get me from second to second, day to day, night to night.



Center.  Margin.
Love.

Won't Be Home - The Old '97s

It was dark as fuck. I could feel the wind whipping against the front of the mustang while I sped down the pitch road, 10 over, 20 over, braking for the next curve, taking the painted lanes as a suggestion.

It was dark as fuck.  I could feel the crisp chill blasting through the open window, icing my cheeks and fingers.  The feeling at the top of a roller coaster track, my face betraying the thrill while we gunned down the pitch road. 30 over. 40 over. Taking the painted lanes as a suggestion in the massive black diesel truck.

It's 2006, and instead of a CR in Bryan, I'm barreling down a farm road in Seguin, my long ponytail tangling around me, my fingers gripping the seat as we pass fences, boars, goats, and ramshackle abandoned structures.  I feel every dip and hole in the road.  I hear the crunch of complaining gravel being hurled and scattered behind us.

I loved hating those days.  I loved it.


Why do I need people to be comfortable around me?

Potentially more importantly, why do I suck at it?

With the best of intentions, I keep things to myself and show the parts of me that will put other people at ease.  Right up until the point that they realize I'm keeping things to myself.  And then they are hurt that I don't share all.

Well.

All hurts you.  All makes you feel like shit.  All makes me a three dimensional and reactive person with feelings and effects and learning curves and it's too much for you to predict.  Wouldn't it be easier if I were simple and comprehensively comprehensible?

All is selfish and presumptuous, putting my needs and emotional responses in the spotlight to be dealt with like they are of some major concern.  But they don't need to be anyone's concern but my own and an extremely select few that I know won't take it personally.  That I can rest easy knowing won't be hurt by them, or at least, will bare it to me if they are so I can repair what I damage.

I love easy.

I am naive.

But I don't trust easy.  I am guarded.  I am tense, jumpy, flighty, and hypervigilant.  You don't have to do anything WRONG for me to act like I've been shot.

Don't take me personally.  I'm carrying a big weight.  I choose how to interact.  I choose how to love.  I have to, because if you have the power to decide how I process or love or behave - I have no control of my brain. And whose hands deserve a brain? A riled up mess of a brain?  Is that even a kindness, to dump that on someone I care about?

--

Your hand on my knee makes me shake.  Your fingers on my neck make me terrified in my gut.  It isn't because of you.  It's because when I feel spotted or out of control or cornered, I tremble.  Involuntarily.  It has nothing to do with you.  I chose all of this.  Out of love. Let me bear it.

--

Step back.

Stop asking what I am to you, and what you are to me.

What I am is an easy conversation, emotionless, not intimate, simple and full of smiles and no deep needs.

What I am is a fast streak of pavement under your tires, taking you where you need to be, and leaving you there to go forward in your life.

What I am is a thing.


What you are is a complete human being who has no business kissing the road.

Secrecy

There's a silence about it.

Don't show weakness.


Sometimes it's pride.  The feeling that you should be just fine, and anything less is a failure.  And you're too proud to fail.

Sometimes it's spite.  A need to keep others who don't deserve a crowbar into your heart at a distance.  So you shut up around them, keep it to yourself.

Sometimes it's protective.  To prevent people who will use your soft spots to work over and manipulate you, or simply, to feature you in their own private show.

Now, too, it's awareness.  Of people who are most alerted to the vulnerable.


I am the vulnerable.


I am keenly alerted to the fact that I have a target on my back.  When I am spoken to, I am analyzing.  How much do you know?  What do I tell you?  How will you use it - and when?  Not now, surely.  But when I drop my guard?  In a few minutes?  Days?  Years?  When does the backdrop change, the scene shift, and when do I find myself a victim again?

I am juxtaposed between refusing to be used and knowing it will happen.


I am stumbling from day to day, and

I am so lost without you


I could have done a great job

as a mom.


Fucking nobody will ever know,

least of all me.

I Have a Letter

I don't know where it is. I don't remember what it says.

I know the sentiment like the back of my hand. It plays on repeat in my mind every day.

I miss you.

I love you.

I will protect you.

I couldn't protect you.

It loops through behind my eyes when people speak to me. When people presume to know me.

It's why I don't let them know me.

Because

I miss her

I love her

I WILL protect her

And in the most defeating way, like that cocky breath you take right before the world makes you completely powerless, I exhale

And she is

Gone

Like the minutes in the car staring at the front door
Like the empty space in my chest at the end of the night
Like the pressure in my throat
Like the heartbroken sigh of deep, unavoidable loss

I carry my baby with me like a physical weight

That weight in my arms, that emptiness, is all I have left of her

I won't let it go

I won't move on

She belongs here at my chest, wrapped up in me, kept safe where I could not keep her alive

Do it

Something the Mindy Project said.  Something about being so used to someone criticizing you, that when they are gone, you fill that hole.  You already push, but now you judge, too.

It's like a drug.  Self punishment.  Skipping happily into risky situations.  Leaving the result up to someone else, to the moment.

Getting close enough to smell it.

Walking the edge of the fence.

Toying with the sharp side.


Maybe this will be an incredible thing.  Maybe I will grow within an atmosphere of watchful awareness and self analysis.

Maybe I've found another of him.  Playing games with me until he finds he one that gets under my skin, because once you're under there, you have control of all my strings.

I'll walk along that edge and see.

I'll ride this out and see how it goes.


Who will I allow to push me?