mouthy

so as part of the auspicious start to 2011 i experienced, i spent the early morning hours of yesterday on "make sure the man doesn't die" duty. this is a new one on me; usually, i'm the one praying for death after a night of overindulgence. but as he worked through it, i dealt with the... aftermath, we'll say. it was right dark in that bathroom, too, and i had my contacts out already. i guess that's why i didn't notice that towel bar there, screwed into the door where it always has been. magnolia's head, meet exposed steel.

no damage, no blood; everything was okay, or so i thought. just a little sore. i sat up with the man anyway, so the whole concussion thing wasn't a concern. but all day yesterday, i felt a little off. my head hurt, which was in no way related to dehydration and lack of sleep (ha ha), and every so often, i'd get these weird little flashes of paranoia. i don't know what the deal was, but i was all off-kilter all day.

once the man regained consciousness, he and i spent, as i mentioned, the whole day in bed. rest does a body good, they say, but my mind was just not where it should've been. i found myself talking, not even really in a coherent way, about anything that shot through my tired, addled brain. it was a monologue of wide-ranging and epic proportions, on everything from the ridiculousness of gary oldman's accent in air force one to the state of the world.

and that's when my mild craziness turned into wildly out-there mouthiness. i decided that this was the perfect time to throw caution to the wind and ask the man a ton of questions that undoubtedly made him uncomfortable. so i did. i opened myself up wide and spoke honestly, without filters or kid gloves. i've trained to be cognizant of all angles, to make the strongest argument possible while acknowledging my cohort's position. but last night, i didn't care. it was no-holds-barred, 100% bleeding-edge "this is what i want."

funny thing, too - i think i got what i wanted out of it. i fell asleep, at LONG last, reassured and happy, comforted by the touch of a hand to my shoulder, a kiss to the sore place on the top of my head, and a whispered, of course. so here's to accidental head injuries, for giving me the courage to spill my guts. and here's to being mouthy, too. every so often, there's no better way to be.

scared

you looked at me with an expression i can't characterize. i don't even know what the name for that emotion would be, or even if it has a name at all. the whole thing only lasted eight hours, four of which were spent sleeping, but the destruction was nearly complete. your eyes still haunt me, shake me to my core. i didn't realize i could have that kind of power over you, demonstrate the risks of opening your heart in such a stark manner as i have tonight. but you let me in, and now you see exactly what that means. you see the fractures i've tried so hard to conceal from you. you see the bottom, clear as day, even in the dark of night. and you're scared.

what do you fear? you tell me, i don't want you to feel this way ever again. i don't want you to ever want to do this again. you ask me what i need, what i want; what can i do? any idea? anything i can do, i will. and most poignantly: you're scaring me. you never confess fear. you're strong, untouchable. you never show me your vulnerabilities... until i push you to the breaking point.

the break nearly came in front of me, your inability to change it, to fix it, to make it better. i can't stand the thought of what this does to you. so i'm going to handle it. i'm going to fix this. i'm going to make this go away. you always tell me to lean on you, to use you to soothe myself when i need to. but when i'm this broken, this bruised and bloodied, the reality of what you invite me to do becomes sharply, harrowingly clear, doesn't it?

you're my strength. you always have been, you always will be. but have i finally seen the limit of how strong you can be?

shattered dreams

i've had a whole lot of fortune slung my way over the past few months. i really appreciate the hell out of what i've been given. not to be too cheesy or sappy, but a lot of my dreams really have come true. it's a damn nice feeling.

which makes it all the harder to know what to say when someone i care about has a dream deferred. it's rough to watch someone struggle to stay even-keeled when something he's worked so hard to get didn't come through for him. we suffered through the preparation together, commiserating, trusting in one another's ability to make this happen for ourselves. i got it. he didn't.

it's a gut punch, especially when i think about his level of qualification compared to mine. he's so much more ready to do what he wants than i am. but here i sit with the credential, and he doesn't have it. there's a lot of time for him to get what he needs; this is a temporary setback. but in the moment, it's just brutal to watch, to contemplate. and the worst part is that i don't think there's anything i can say or do to make him feel any better. so i get to sit by and watch while he goes through this process. my heart hurts for him, but there's nothing i can offer.

all i can do is silently support him, standing by while he picks up the shards of the dreams that have broken and starts the process of rebuilding them. whenever he wants a friend, i'm there. that's all i can do, and by god, i'll offer it.

blood oath

i had a rough, rough night last night. it came out of nowhere. quite literally, as i lay there in the man's arms, something felt funny. as soon as i could, i got up and... oh, i'll spare you the details. suffice it to say that there was suddenly, with no reason, quite a bit of blood. not ambulance-level, but a lot. i came back to bed, and i told him what had happened.

there are a number of reasons why this could have happened, but there's one in particular that it could be that led us to face a very sobering reality. so we talked. we hashed out the what-ifs, our plans, our fears and our dreams. and the conversation took turns i didn't see, i didn't like and i didn't want. the same is definitely true for him. but we looked at each other and we faced all the struggles, all the fears, head-on. in the end, with his arms wrapped around me tight, i felt every last word he's said to me renew themselves over and over again.

sometimes the things you have to fight for aren't just little. sometimes the struggles are large, frightening, complex. but when you face them down, pledged to each other, and you work it out together, that's when you know what you've got. and i have more than i could ever have imagined.

heavy cloud, no rain

i haven't seen the sun since this weekend. whenever i've been out among the living, it's been heavily gray and dismal outside. that's been nice for the temperature; for those of us who walk everywhere we go, it's a welcome change from hot and humid. however, it's also an accurate reflection of my mood, and the cloud gets heavier as the days go by.

part of my come-to-jesus moment with the man sunday night involved the fact that i don't like to entangle the past with the present. i would much rather concentrate on moving forward. it's irritating to me that i'm as upset as i am over all of this, and it's infuriating that i can't keep a lid on it in his company. he doesn't deserve to have to pick up the pieces from someone else's destruction. but he insisted that i allow myself to feel whatever it is i'm feeling, whether or not he's there.

so i'm feeling it. and it's pretty damned rotten. as happy as i can be in the moment, and there's a lot to be happy about, my general head state is full of anger, sadness and fear. compound that with a double-barreled dose of just horrific circumstances in the lives of people i know, and that's a recipe for not wanting to leave my bed. but i do. i go out into the world and pretend like i'm 100% okay, laughing and joking with my friends. then the night ends, i come in and i close the door. that's when i drop the pretense, open the floodgates and just let it all come out.

relatively speaking, anyway. for the last two years, i've spent so much time acting like nothing was wrong that i think i've forgotten how to express emotion in any real way. i said in the moment that all i wanted to do was develop the ability not to give a damn. i did, but i think i've overachieved. when i admit to myself how upset i am, all i can do is conjure up this generically dull ache. it kills my focus, magnifies any physical pain and knocks me flat on my back. i am unable to do anything more than stare at the computer screen or the TV, taking in whatever is in front of me with no analysis or thought of any kind. i feel, but i can't process.

this kills me. it makes me want to do something - ANYTHING - to work out the pain. i thought i was past this sort of reaction. like every thinking person, i've had my bouts with depression, with serious mental issues. i feel myself creeping towards that place again. over my dead body will i let that happen again. so i'll put on my helmet in the morning, go back out there and show the world how strong i am. and i'll do my damnedest to find a good way to process this. it won't beat me. i won't let it.

clouds eventually blow away.

my apology

[your soundtrack]

"it’s not the way that i intended this; i didn’t realize how much i would miss, but with every parting of our company i hate to think what it has done to me..."

you're never far from my mind, you know, no matter how good i am at keeping you at bay. (you weren't wrong about the arm's-length treatment; it's a very good coping mechanism.) i do not have a single regret about this course of action. it's the best thing for both of us, it's what i want, and it's what i need. but that doesn't mean that it's not sad, way sadder than i ever imagined, to see this day finally arrive. not that you'd know how i feel today if you look at me. i'm really skilled at moving forward when i have to, and this is one of those times. but there's a small frayed place in my soul, torn a little more each time, that belongs to you and will forever.
 

"when cruelty comes with blind indifference, my humanity becomes the best defense. but when you consider the alternative, i really didn't have that much to give..." 

that's the crux of all this where you and i are concerned, i think. i didn't try to be cruel or indifferent to your needs in pursuing mine; i am trying desperately to maintain things as well as i can, but in being true to my humanity, i've inadvertently destroyed yours. sigh. at the end of the day, as it turns out, you were better at being a part of this relationship than i was. i gave you as much as i had to give you. looks like it wasn't what even i thought it would be. i failed at the modest task which was my charge, and that was simply being enough of a selfless person to make room for your flaws. 

"a tragic victim of my circumstance; never give the devil a second chance. if you do, you know that you can never win - probably best to forget and begin again..."

so here we are. we lost. fitting that all of this comes to an end this week, so many years after we pledged ourselves to each other in the sorrow and confusion of the falling of the towers. we clung to each other in the wake of the madness, when everything permanent was stripped down to its skeletal remains and the harsh reality of the loss we faced collided with our adolescent immortality. funny how that's not really a great way to build a future, isn't it. i dedicated myself to you with passion, intensity and a total lack of thought. that's the real reason we lost. there's nothing to be gained from clinging to scraps. time to box up the memories, the laughs, the ups, the downs and put them in the back of the closet, to be looked through on the occasional rainy day with something approaching warm nostalgia. the bitter will slowly leach out of the sweet. at least, that's my hope. 

consider this a statement of, not conciliation, but sorrow. i didn't want this to be the way things ended. hell, up until recently, i didn't think there would be an end. but here we are. we've reached the conclusion. and for everything i've done, and god knows i've done a lot, i'm sorry. i let you down. there's no way to recover from it, either. all i can do is give you this.

"can’t you see that I am sorry? this has to be my apology, my apology, my apology."

sickness and health

i am one uncomfortable blog proprietor today. let's just say that between the bar exam drama and the life drama, i ignored a little problem until it became a full-blown disaster, and i spent all. damn. morning. hanging out in the urgent care clinic. nice. so after much antibiotic and painkillers, i am now in bed, about to start the sleep i missed out on last night.

haha. last night. see, here i thought i was going to prove to myself that i could be a big girl and stay in. yeah, that didn't happen. i ended up at a friend's place, watching TV until all hours of the night. i felt a little under the weather, but nothing i couldn't handle. we watched "the hangover" again, just some mindless entertainment, and before you know it, oh-ho, it's 3:00 AM and the trains aren't running anymore. oh, damn; he's been drinking, so he can't drive me home. looks like i'm staying out here tonight.

i don't think i need to tell you what happened next. i mean, nothing earth-shattering; he's not my sexual crack cocaine boy (from whom i am abstaining at the moment - another time), so it's not the kind of experience that needs to be recounted in great detail. but it was a nice diversion from the stress of the exam. i dozed off in his bed around 5:00 AM... only to awaken at 10:45 AM in some of the most intense pain it's ever been my misfortune to experience. so i did what every red-blooded american girl would do in this context: hey, friend i just slept with? lend me your car so i can drive to the doctor. it's best to do this when the boy is sleeping, so his defenses are down.

so that was my day: hours in the doctor's office, cursing my own stupidity and trying not to curl up into a little ball and throw a temper fit out of pain. lovely. but it's funny; when i returned the car, he was still asleep. i walked up to his room and woke him, mostly to tell him about my misadventures, and he said, "you shouldn't take the train home. i'll drive you." now that's what friends are for.

in sickness and in health. hmm. maybe that's not just a throwaway line from the marriage vows the churches lay on us. maybe it's more like the governing rule of friendship: stick together, sickness or health, no matter what. that's a nice thought, and he's a nice guy. i'll have to remember that...

torn up

whew, what a freaking dog of a day. i have been running, running, running. and in 3" heels, nonetheless. nine hours of bar review, a networking event and househunting, all on foot. i looked good doing it, if i do say so myself; i was dressed for this networking thing without time to change at all, so i had to be pulled together.

i love these shoes: green, round-toed T-strap heels. fun while still professional; just edgy enough to be interesting. but i sit here writing to you tonight in some pretty serious discomfort. i must've walked 2 miles today, and my feet are paying the price. but you know something? i looked the part. i was dressed to professionally kill and it helped my acumen in class. i was able to navigate the event alone with a smile, chatting up lawyers from the area with no real agenda other than to get noticed. i may have (if there's a just and loving deity in this world) even found myself a really ideal living situation.

and i smiled and i sold it, even though the pain was exquisite. it's a lesson, i guess - struggle, grace under fire, etc. also, maybe bring some better commuting shoes. but even though my feet are just torn up right now, my heart is surprisingly light. i lived. there's something to that.

butchers

[can't find the sound for you; this is a song by the amazing band slobberbone. track's called, conveniently enough, "butchers."]

"now she's had seven years of happiness with a boy she's always claimed to have adored, and there's fewer who've been truer but as of late she finds herself a little bored..."

growing up means growing apart. there's no getting around it. there are people with whom i spent every freaking second of my life at age six who, if we met today, would have no common ground with me whatsoever. not that there would be hostility, mind you; far from it. it'd probably be one of those nice, little heartwarming things that happens every once in awhile. you come home and say, "hey, you'll never guess who i ran into today." well, you say that if you've got someone to come home to. and there's the twist; what happens when that person from whom you're growing apart is the person to whom you come home?

"she tells him she still loves him and has only good thoughts of him, and the times they've had and hopes that it'll help him understand..."

oh, lord. this is the part that people just don't face, i think. this is what sets the brave and heartless apart from the kind and spineless. how do you admit to someone who, really, isn't such a bad person that you've outgrown something you swore up and down you'd stick with forever? y'know, you'd fight for through thick, thin, etc. sigh. it's not like this sort of thing is uncommon. maybe it's an outmoded way of thinking at all. hell, it happened to the gores, and they were all story-book-ish and whatnot. and they were rich and privileged on top of it. oh, who knows. there's only one outcome ahead: ripping, tearing, blood, tears, tragedy.

"when she runs her knife straight through him, it's the only way to do them; she's the winner of the game but she'll never get the bloodstains off her hands..."

so i'll do it, i'll cop to my evolutions, my growth, my change, and my frustrations. i'll cop to it all. and i'll probably get what i want. yay. but what the hell do i win? i don't win anything, except the space to suffer the consequences of what i've done. youthful mistakes so heavily compounded with the trappings of adulthood. god, there should be some kind of psychological test requirements to do what we did. but there's only so much "why?" you can ask. if you can avoid making a flowery, emotional speech when you break the news, the boy will respect you for your frankness, if nada surf is to be believed. heh. i don't think it works that way when you're as grown as i am.

"in the end, they all fall just the same but she'll never get the bloodstains off her hands..."

the end of a life is never pretty. there's nothing attractive, nice, or fun about this. there's just the slowly rising feeling of some amalgamation of dread, terror, relief, sorrow, and something black and heavy mixed together in the depths of my heart. people do this stuff every day and i know that. i am not special for the havoc i'm about to wreak. far from it. but that doesn't change the permanent alteration i'm about to undergo. (and i really, at this point, only have business worrying about myself; worrying about him is just condescending.) the why, the how - none of it matters anymore. i just have to carry the fact that i'm a butcher, a murderer of dreams and possibilities, and that the flowers i carried down the aisle that long-ago day have long since died. he'll hurt. there's no doubt. but i'll be changed forever. you carry your victims with you wherever you go. i will be no different.

"he'll have some temporary pain, but she will never get the bloodstains off her hands."

do what you have to do

[soundtrack]

"every moment marked with apparitions of your soul; i'm ever swiftly moving, trying to escape this desire..."
here we are again, separated by so much and so little all at once. you have no idea how much you consume my mind, how badly i want to own you, body, mind and soul, forever. you'll grant me a little of you, that's true. you spend time with me, you'll go places with me, hang out and laugh, and when it's convenient for you, you'll climb into my bed and do your level best to get as much out of me for as little of you as you can get away with. not that i don't very much enjoy that; quite the contrary. what you give me feels wonderful in the moment. you make me feel in the moment like the center of your universe. but, really, that's not true. and my god, this is starting to hurt. these walls you build around yourself may as well be a million miles high as far as i'm concerned, but you tell people how close we are like it's nothing to you. how true can that statement be?

"deep within i'm shaken by the violence of existing for only you..."
you've brokered these deals with everyone in your life, and the more i look at it, the more it makes no goddamn sense to me. we all get bits of you, some of us more than others, but you place heavy conditions on all of this. sometimes it wears on us to have to dance for you, my dear. sometimes, we get sick of humoring you. it's true. it would be nice to have more than a not-quite-as-equal-as-mutual admiration society with you. but that's what it is. and strangely enough, it's addicting to be under someone's sway like this. i must be the biggest goddamn masochist on the planet when it comes to you. how can you get in my head so much? i just can't stop. you're, honestly, not that good to me sometimes. and yet, here i sit, wishing like nothing else that you were here, holding me, even at arm's length.

"and i have the sense to recognize that i don't know how to let you go..."
i have devoted so much of my heart, my mind and my soul to trying like hell to convince you to give me a chance. when i broke your will and got into your bed - silly me, i thought that would be enough to get me into your heart. but that won't happen. not now, not ever. and i'm hurt beyond belief at this. i can't tell you, as if i ever would, how deeply this cuts me. you know how to do it; you've cut me before by accident. but this is pain i can't even express. i would walk to the ends of the goddamn earth for you, a thousand times over. i still will, and i will forever. as hurt and angry as this makes me, it doesn't change anything about that. i am so hopelessly devoted to you, in every sense of the word "hopeless." every sense but one, that is; i can't make myself believe that it's a totally lost cause. it is, mind you; i just can't make myself believe it. i still hold the germ of hope in my heart that someday, somehow, i can get you to be mine.

see, i care about you, my dear, a lot more than you know. and that makes us both pretty stupid.

"i know i can't be with you. i do what i have to do."

fight

the things we fight for in life can be strange sometimes. the things we refuse to fight for, on the other hand, are way more illustrative. in prizefighting, there comes a time in certain fights when they throw in the towel, ceding the conquest to the opponent out of sheer self-preservation. there's a lot about the end of a relationship that's the same as that. when the end comes, you look around at the wreckage that your life has become, and you stand up and say, "enough." you're not supposed to have to fight that hard at love. sure, you need to work at some of it, but there's supposed to be at least some refuge somewhere for you in that love. when all you're doing is desperately grasping at threads, trying like all hell to weave something together that was never meant to hang that way in the first place, it's time to throw in the towel.

this is usually the time when someone would say, "nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight." okay. true. nothing worth having is free of conflict. but there's a tipping point past which sustaining something makes so little sense that it's harmful to keep it up. when you get there, and believe me, it happens to all of us at least once in our lives, you have to have the self-preservation instinct to give up the fight. walk away alive. it's the greatest gift you can give yourself.

lucky you

[your soundtrack]

"and every time you're driving home, way outside your safety zone, wherever you will ever be, you're never getting rid of me."
scars are funny things. most of the time, once the wound has healed and faded down to nothing but a pale shadow of itself, you don't even notice that there's anything left. but every so often, in passing, you notice that the skin that used to be so taut, so smooth, is now thick and irregular. the lines twist over your body, letting you know in no uncertain terms that you. are. changed. you'll never be the whole person you were before; those days are gone forever. it doesn't matter how long ago it happened, but when you notice that scar, you're instantly confronted with the trauma of whatever mauled you. even if the sting of the memory is infinitesimally brief, the sting still jolts you. not all scars are created equal, but all remind you of something you'd just as soon never dwell on again.

"you own me. there's nothing you can do; you own me."
the injured is forever tied to the injurer when the injury leaves a scar. no matter what you do, there's always a connection. when the scar is on the soul, the heart, or the mind, the tethers pull you together even harder. the shared experience of giving and receiving psychic pain creates an iron-clad union between the aggrieved and the menacing. even if you carry on the rest of your days without acknowledging it, there will be one day, when you least expect it, when the sorrow whipsaws through you, leaving you breathless, if only for a second.

"you could've made a safer bet, but what you break is what you get."
breaking someone's heart is never a simple task. there are repercussions far beyond the actual confrontation. maybe you pay for the act in the moment, or maybe you pay later. there's guilt, pain, shame, anger, and the inevitable feeling that you will never, ever be free of that person again, no matter how goddamn much you try. everyone you love, even in passing, gets bonded onto your heart in one way or another. breaking that bond isn't as simple as slicing something off and walking away. pieces rip. the honeybee's stinger is left in the victim's wound. the venom hits its target. the honeybee is torn in half. that's what breaking a heart is. you're left with a piece missing, and no matter how great the relief you may feel, there's the gaping maw left by the part of you that's no longer there.

"you wake up in the bed you make; i think you made a big mistake."
the silent - or not-so-silent - accusation of the lover scorned. it howls at you, nips at your heels at all times. you were right to end it. you are right to be gone. but that doesn't stop the doubts, the hurt, the memory of the wounded eyes staring at you in disbelief. shared love equals shared pain. breaking up is hard to do? heh. don't insult my intelligence. breaking up is murder. plain and simple. once you pull the shrapnel out of your body, shake off the shock of the explosion and collect the scattered debris of your life, you still carry the scars. it doesn't matter who pulls the pin. no one walks away a winner. that's why we stay in bad situations, we linger on with the weight of dead love settling harder onto our chests. the dull pain we know is far better than the unspeakable agony we can see around the corner. when you finally say "enough," when you move past the apathy and act, your reward is the endless connection to your failed past. there are no winners here. there can't be. all there can be is the slamming of a door, the tearing of a fabric, and the slow, throbbing trek towards... well, towards whatever lies ahead. you're changed, now and forever. take the change and move on.

"there's nothing you can do. you own me. you own me. lucky you."