April 15, 2010 - 12:19 p.m.
This is the first time you've felt this way. She's been feeling this way for a long time.
I know.
It's true.
It's making me feel like vomiting.
The urge to cry is crowding out reason
shouldering its way to the front of my mind, ready to spill, like etched sheep in a flock, over the edge
I haven't been here before.
Tools. I keep thinking of tools. Levers, augres, things that punch holes in my heart, lift up pieces to see what is underneath. What have I been hiding?
Here.
I am a hypocrite. I want to have a clean double standard, where my deeds are white and yours are red, only because you are always somehow inside of the things I do... between the palms I place on another's body, in my mouth when I speak. I can't tease you out of the tangle in my heart. CAN'T TEASE YOU OUT OF THE TANGLE IN MY HEART.
It is making me so unstable. I want to beg for more info, to provide the alternative to the one I am creating and replaying in my mind. I crave detail to use, against myself, as part of the torture - I am exacting.
Against myself.
The danger of a single story.
And I think of the workshop, tonight with Shakil and I think of how vulnerable I have felt. I know will this man, his soft words and ways, I will be fragile and may break, unwillingly. down.
I can't push the feelings away, even as I push your fingers into me. I want to feel feelings that cover over other feelings, rubbing the bruise to forget the sprain.
I don't remember how to get away from this. It has been so long. I am lame. Lame at love, lame at leaving. I want to keep you so tight in my mouth and chest, but I cannot love you right,
not now after all the damage you've done.
You kept me spitted, tethered to a stake in the center of your world. Circling, circling, I learned to rebel within the confines of the words I had and could allow myself to speak. But it was always my tears, let loose, that made you come running. I never wanted to hurt you back as hard as you hurt me. And so, against someone who could not fight as an equal, you always won. But not quite... because I was always planning my escape. pacing.
And now you talk to me, face to face in my closet about how you know that all the fractures in me are yours, the ones you put there ... that still makes me yours, even though I am leaving. I carry the doubt there, aware of my vacillations and so trained in this pattern of circles that I find my way back to you, even from the hands of another.
Jessica, Jessica, Jenn Bax, Rita, Chantelle... maybe... a tattooist named Sarah. I am looking. Like a shark. I cannot sleep or be still because I'm afraid I will die if I stop. I need to fill myself with thoughts, words, text messages and promises of food that will sustain me, while I go through these motions. My gills, moving out of habit, are still so terrified that the hook - lost somewhere too deep for me to see it - will come tearing out, destroying me and making it impossible to see, to breathe.
I watch you share intimate moments, when I know I am losing you, in pieces. You are sharing looks and kisses, wrapping your thoughts around new skin and teeth. It makes me break at the waist. It is a cry for help, to the one who isn't helping. I don't think I even want you for myself. But I don't think I can stand to see you touch her, think about her, share a look across the room. long looking hard. Unless I am angry. Unless I have some anger to make me remember why I am better off without you.
I need some mantra that is not just sad and sweet. where you are forgiven...
You told me no one will ever compare to me. I am the thing you will have to live with having lost.
" You are the girl. You mean more to me than all my other relationships combined. And I fucked it up, because I'm fucked up and I'm a liar, I couldn't let you see that I was hurt, or cared, and I ruined the best thing in my life. I couldn't pull myself together enough to keep you and be what you deserved. I will have to live with that, with losing you. "
Then why am I the one who is so sad.
I am feeling the way you felt when you realized I was no longer yours. I am feeling it... in spite of myself. I don't want to, but can't help it. I almost want you back, just so that it doesn't hurt anymore and so that I don't have to go through the awful process of being okay. I know. I KNOW that these other girls don't hold a candle to us, that they will never shine for you, in your mind, as I did. But having felt so dim, even knowing what I do about you, and us, and what you needed to do to me in order to live with yourself, I am not ready to share that light. I waited so long for it and I still think that without it I might die.
It breaks my heart to think that maybe I am done for good. That you have cracked me, so I won't hold water for anyone ever again. I have emotions I have always had trouble containing. I don't need these flaws on top of my own. I just can't imagine that anyone can love me after this. I am so marked and faded... I don't see what I used to and am terrified that I will, as you said, "fall prey" - an easy target - to someone who will know exactly what to say and do, to make me fall again. unwisely. And so I will harden myself and shut love out and maybe I will not be happy again.
It's so hard to know that you have your circle to return to, when circles are what I'm trying to break. throwing myself up against these shapes, hoping to leave an imprint of myself. I will ebb and flow, recoil and spring back again. I will leave mark upon mark, make new pathways in the snow, on the surface, in my head, heart and creases on my bedsheets. Against the plexi-glass that has always kept me observing, observant and vigilant, over my heart - watching and hoping that I am smart enough to protect myself - my own specimen. There are pieces of me on this slide, under my own microscope. Let me get to the good stuff.
I am trying. Trying. a new cross-section.
Can you see me yet?
