While He’s Here

Just more horrible news to top off my already funky mood. A friend from work told me today that one of our other coworkers is joining the military because he wants to work as a paramedic in less fortunate countries. He says he wants to do good in the world. He’s just that type of guy, you know, big heart, still believes in the good in people. He wants to make a difference.

I felt like I was going to cry when she told me. With the way the world is today, this news frightens me. I want him to be safe. True, bad can happen anywhere in the world, but he’ll be so far away. My chest hurts thinking about it. I wonder if my heart is breaking.

Maybe I’m what’s wrong with the world, believing that my friend’s presence would do a world more good here, where people like me need people like him. He has an optimism about him that’s contagious and uplifting. I think it’s because he has so much faith in God. Every day when I come in for the morning, he’s sitting down to breakfast and praying. It’s not something you see every day and I admire him for it. In a time where faith isn’t openly spoken about, especially not in the workplace, he stays true to his. I really think my heart is breaking.

A few months ago he and I were talking about my relationship with the Mister and he was saying how lucky he felt the Mister is for having been brought together with the kids and I. He says this is what he wants, to meet a woman who already has children, children he can be a father to. He says he would be happy to meet someone and fall in love and then have kids, the traditional way, but that he doesn’t deny he would be happier to come into a ready made family. I didn’t know what to do with that when he told me. I still don’t.

He and I chit chat in passing, sometimes we end up working together for the day, but not often. I know he enjoys motorcross racing, the adrenaline that comes with it. I know he’s not afraid of hurting himself in the sport. I thought he was crazy when I first learned this about him. I still think he’s crazy.

I feel horrible about not wanting my friend to go to countries that aren’t safe right now. I feel horrible that his words made me cry today. But mostly my chest aches with a tremendous heaviness because in a life with so many who come and go, I’m about to have another one leave and this news couldn’t have come at a worse time.

I still admire him for his bravery and for his big heart, his desire to do good. I’ll pray for him every night until I forget about him. I know that sounds horrible but in reality, he and I are not that close and as time goes on I will have forgotten these feelings I’m feeling right now. But that’s a long ways off, just like his departure, so for now I’ll appreciate his presence and his friendship and mostly I will pray for him.

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Rebirth

I wanted to hear from you today, I could’ve used your words. You would have said some poetic shit about how nothing was meant to last forever, except maybe our words, but even those will be forgotten over time. Don’t think I’m saying your words are shit, it’s only how I talk when I’m feeling like this and too often I censor myself for the little ears and eyes that I don’t think could handle the vulgarity of it. I save those words for my bound pages. I thought about writing in those bound pages today, I almost did, but so far I haven’t tainted them with what I write that I feel is crap. I’ve ripped a few out and will probably rip out many more before I decide the book is useless. What I really want to do is let you destroy me from the inside out, not literally of course, unless it would make you smile, but figuratively, so that I can start the process of being reborn. I feel dirty and disgusting right now, it’s what the building rage does to me, and a total reconstruction of my soul is the only solution. But the process is so damn exhausting and while I crave solitude, I become lonely when I’m in the depths of it. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I needed to talk to you today. I wanted to be reborn.

Existence

Watching the truths of my childhood becoming the truths of my adulthood. Love does not exist, not like it does in the fairytales most grow up on and it’s disappointing. Settling for crude groping and inappropriate comments that make my skin crawl but that I call love, gifts that only money buy because it’s too difficult to try to show any other form of love. I tell myself this is as good as it gets. It’s exhausting succumbing to this life, one that I was tired of from the moment that I could understand it’s irony and cruelty. Yet here I am still, wading through the murkiness of it all. Performing mindless tasks every moment of every day, the only time I’m alive is when I’m pouring my mind, heart and soul out to eyes that cannot comprehend where I’m coming from. I’m all alone in this world, not another like me to help make the days a bit more bearable, a bit brighter, a bit more hopeful. On days like today I am weary and ready to give up. I cannot go another moment in this repetitive existence where there is no relief. I blame it on the lapse in my medication or maybe my paranoia is valid for a change. Maybe it’s always been valid and I’ve wrongly been trying to convince myself that I’m simply crazy instead. How tragic that would be. Searching for someone to share all of the small moments with, those moments that make my heart smile slightly, those moments that break through the darkness inside and I realize I have no one, no one that truly understands at least. Maybe I’ve had a spike in my hormones and it’s putting my brain and emotions off balance or maybe I’m right and I usually only turn a blind eye to these things because the truth is so damn painful sometimes. Until I take my last breath the only thing that matters is writing these words down and hoping that they reach the right person, someone who is like me.

Alive

Some days all I yearn for is a beer. Something tall and dark, something Irish. I daydream about a bar I used to frequent in my early twenties, I was there nearly every night after work in the summers. I’d have a few drinks, half watching what was on the televisions behind the bar until it was well past time to drag myself off home to a life that I should have appreciated but very much didn’t.

I didn’t write much back then, not at all actually. I was too busy working fifty hour weeks and living life. Did I search for love back then? Sure. I’m always searching for love but up until half a decade ago I never found it. I sought adventure and noise, noise that would quiet the one ever present in my own head. It was never really quieted, but many times it was overpowered by the exciting, frivolous life I was living.

I drank mostly. In groups, in pairs, alone. I drank alone more often than not, mostly because my appetite and tolerance for alcohol far surpassed that of anyone else I knew. I oftentimes outdrank even most of my male friends, which I think impressed and disgusted them at the same time. Drinking was the only way I could escape from life. The only way I could be free. The only way I could be happy. Drinking silenced the insecurity, the irrational fears, the anxiety, the depression. Well, it silenced the depression for awhile and then it hit me full-force once I was done.

Some days I would dabble in other substances. Those are the days when I would write. I would think of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter, the Mad Queen, the White Rabbit. I would think of that magical world I had loved since I was a child and wish I could be there. I would chase substances and try to get as intoxicated as I could in order to just catch a glimpse. Never did I find it in my waking moments, but my dreams were always colorful. Now I wish I would’ve written more of those dreams down. It seems such a waste to have kept them to myself all of those years.

I can’t remember the last time I had a colorful dream. I can’t remember the last time I dreamt at all. The medication prevents me from remembering them. I can’t say this is a bad thing, I have more nightmares than dreams anyhow, but just for once I would love to remember one in detail. Something I could write about. Something I could share with you. I just can’t.

The pain has been unbearable the past couple of days, sparks of it that leave me convulsing. I’m not one for doctors so I suffer in silence. Yesterday as I was picking up last minute items for my daughter’s birthday, the pain nearly had me on me knees, right there in the electronics department. Sharp, stabbing pains and I convinced myself this was it, this was how it was going to end- in an aisle of a store, on my knees, only a few hours short of an early birthday party for my oldest daughter. The pain passed but revisited me early this morning. I’ll make it to a doctor eventually.

I want to write something that moves you to tears, that has you reflecting on your own life, that has you wondering more about mine. I want to fill you with words that have you pulling out your drawing pencils and sketch pads, bringing my words to life- magical places pencilled down for me to escape to when it all becomes too much, and it often becomes too much. I want to write something that inspires you to respond, inspires you to create, inspires you to remember. I want to write something to fill the space that drinking left, I want to write something that makes me feel alive.

 

Revisited

I once wrote a story, over 50,000 words and then deleted and destroyed it after a year. It was the most painful thing I had ever written because even though it was fiction, it was based on truth. The words I had written made me relive the past and I think this is when the nightmares started. The past is so painful and it’s hard to learn from it when you’re still trying to run from it. I’ve worked so hard to put the past behind me and the medication had helped a great deal. I’ve long since stopped going to therapy and no longer have anyone to share my pain with, except for You. I can’t remember the last time I had a nightmare, the last time I caught myself looking over my shoulder, the last time I had a panic attack, but today, the thoughts were too much and I don’t even know what started it. My mind tumbled and fumbled over itself, around and around and the anger overwhelmed me. I could feel the paranoia creeping in at the edges of my mind and your face was all that I saw, all that I could focus on. Your face is like that of an angel, although I’m sure you would disagree and maybe even laugh, but your face, it is heavenly. Everything about you sets me free, everything about you is all that I need to keep me grounded while still experiencing the beauty in the clouds. You know my truths and yet you’re still here, you keep coming back even though I can’t understand why. There’s nothing about me that’s particularly interesting, there’s nothing about me that’s particularly unique, yet here you come, once again, setting my soul on fire. Everything about you is all I’ve ever wanted, at least, the parts of you that you’ve let me see. Everything about you is perfect and I’ll never understand why you keep coming back when all I have to offer is Me.

Beautiful Words

Sometimes it’s hard being the only one who always has the words, even when I cannot find them. It’s hard to sit in silence when the silence should be filled. I turn to my pages and fill them with words- words that have otherwise been ignored in my life, words that I cannot say out loud, words that I cannot empty my head of. I know you know what I mean. These words cannot be wasted on just anyone when they are so precious to us and so we wait for the right moment or maybe the moment when we cannot think of these words anymore and then we let them spill forward. But not in a reckless, haphazard way. No we find a beautiful way to say the most ugly things because sometimes making those ugly things beautiful any way we can is the only way we can endure them. We are birds of a feather. Most times you understand what I am trying to say and sometimes I understand what you meant and this is when we come together to remind ourselves that we are not alone.

Sunrise

Searching to find beauty in times that can be so dark, finding joy wherever I can get it. I used to hate taking pictures, especially pictures of myself because I used to feel as though I were being fake somehow, deceiving, only showing parts of my life that were filled with light and happiness instead of all of the moments in between in which I struggled and hurt and felt as though a part of me were dying a little bit. I told myself no one cared about those moments, that no one wanted to see and hear about these moments when everywhere in the world there are far too many moments like these already. But these moments of darkness are just as important as my moments of light. They are a part of what has made me Me. They are what have taken part in shaping me, molding me into who I am and so I only find it fair to share those moments as well. Something beautiful can be born out of something ugly and while at the time it can seem this will never happen, sometimes the sun rises on the horizon even when I think it has been snuffed out.