Muchness and Light

You were the promise at dawn, and I was the morning after.

My head is a little haunted sometimes.

Because I horde the memories, because I keep an extraordinary amount of minutiae in there, and because I'm an intensely emotional girl, there is a constant swirl of emotion in me. In a given moment, I will drive along a certain street or hear a specific song, and it will dredge up a memory—Oh, I talked to Absolem from that parking lot or That song was playing when Bounder and I <did whatever>--and then I will re-evaluate the entire relationship. It may take hours or it may happen in an instant, but every emotion I ever felt about that person will come in waves of good and bad, roiling over each other and crashing against the shores of my heart in quick succession.

Hurricane Sassafras can be an utter bitch sometimes.

But none of those emotions are happening now. I'm not living the event that led to the original emotion. It's just an echo, a ghost.

"Ghosts can't hurt you," Rango has reminded me a hundred times. "They're powerless."

Theoretically, they have the power I allow them to have, though I don't really know how to make them feel less important. Some have just taken time to fade. There are dozens of faceless, nameless shifting shapes that are little more than a murmur in my periphery.

But then there are the others.

My therapist said to me once that our bodies have a memory of their own, that our memories play out on a deep, cellular level because our bodies were physically present for the events that occurred. As she explained it, this is why anniversaries of powerful and vividly-remembered events can bring on the same emotions that were felt originally.

Right now, at this time of year, I am in a cycle of dozens of anniversaries. For whatever reason, the period from mid-April to the beginning of August is peppered with anniversaries like a minefield of memories. They run the gamut from wonderful to confusing to downright heartbreaking—and sometimes all three at once.

My therapist also had me work on sitting with my emotions, on allowing them to fall in and around me and just be, without reacting or overreacting to them, naming them and being aware of what they were and where they came from. But with emotions constantly on this rollercoaster down Memory Lane, it's too easy for me to become stuck in place, sitting, paralyzed in my useless fear.

And I do know that the fear is pointless and counterproductive. In my head, I am fully aware that what I'm feeling is wrapping its cold hand around my heart because I let it. I know that the ghosts are vaporous re-imaginings of what I remember, vacillating around my perspective at the moment that I am reminded of them.

But what is it about the others that I can't quite seem to escape them fully?

Absolem was both witness and accomplice to the inner transformations that were the cause of so much outer revolution. There are days I think of something that I should tell him and then remember that we no longer have that relationship, that I can't just message him and tell him to call me when he gets a chance. While I miss that friendship, I do not miss the emotional craziness that sometimes ensued because of it. I don't miss those tears, but I do sometimes change the route I drive just to avoid passing my own ghost.

Bounder was... Bounder. He was the one who broke my heart and wouldn't give me the closure I asked for. There was an ending—and one that took far longer to play out than we were actually a couple—but it didn't come how I felt like it should've, and it never will. Because he lives close by, I sometimes pass him on the street. It's not a ghost with him so much as a poltergeist, make me nauseated and ill from a sucker punch to the gut.

There are still some songs I just. can't. bear. to hear.

And with DH, it seems like there should be more than with the others, but there's not. In fact, it happens far less often than it used to. Yes, I've had almost three years to put that damage behind me. Yes, I still have to deal with his shit in my basement.

But I can also see the very best of him every single day in our boys. I chose to have two children with him for a reason, and Max and Tricky remind me all the time of how that decision was the best one I ever made. Somehow I've been able to unpack and repack all of that emotional baggage and keep only what mattered, and it's very rare that those memories have the power to upend me.

So I've been a bit on edge for the last few days. I told the Castration Committee that I felt like I was about to crawl out of my own damn skin again. Last night, the first good spring storm came, thunder like the laughter of those specters. I sat on my porch swing, feeling the cold spray of torrential rain on the breeze like phantasmal fingers stroking along my neck. I let the emotions come and swing with me until I thought I would choke on my own breath.

What was I feeling? Why was I feeling it?

I couldn't name it. I couldn't exorcise it.

One of Rango's superpowers is to be able to replace those memories with his own, our own. He is a Ghostslayer Extraordinaire.

"What do you need me to do?" he asked.

"Nothing. Just hold me."

Is it that you miss them? One of them?

No.

Is there something you're not getting that you need?

Not at all.

It wasn't that I was missing anyone else. I hate to compare old loves—each relationship was special for its own reason—but Rango is undeniably so much more than any of the others. There is nothing any of them was or has that he doesn't offer to me willingly and completely.

"Sometimes I just... hurt," I whispered to Rango.

It just hurts.

And there it was. Just hurt. Not grief or anger or longing or sorrow or love. Just hurt that hasn't fully healed. It doesn't feel like it did when the wounds were fresh, but it still aches sometimes when I twist just right or move too quickly in an unexpected direction. Sometimes I just bump the old wound.

And somehow, giving that to Rango makes the hurt fade.

He kisses me and makes me better.

Today, the ghosts are mostly quiet. They're just kind of hanging out and busying themselves with other things, playing quietly off in the distance. I can feel their presence, see them out of the corner of my eye, but I'm doing my best to stay out of their line of sight.

Somewhere between them and me is him, Rango, who will stand guard for as long as I need.

I'm not so scared anymore.

 

Blind faith, heartache, mind games, mistakes, my sweet fireball, my sweet rigmarole, I want it all.

I was watching something insipid on television a few nights ago.  (It's hard to remember which stupid thing I was clearing off the DVR between sessions of homework.)  But I remember watching these characters on a couple of shows, walking through their lives and hoping to fall in love.  They'd meet their currently-ideal love interest in some less-than-ideal situation and visibly fight the thought that just maybe that was the person for them.  They were all looking for magic but refused to admit when they found it. 

I want magic. 

I spent a glorious Saturday evening with Pandy (née Hot Pocket) this past weekend.  After hours of dancing and laughing and eating and a little too much whipped cream, we settled into the quiet while our babies slept down the hall.  Eventually the talk turned yet again to my love life, specifically about what I loved about each of the men who have impacted my life so dramatically.

"What do you want?" she asked.  "Not what qualities you want in a man—what things?  If you could make a wishlist, what would be on it?"

Pandy knows damn well I've written a couple of times about what I want—the affection, the attentiveness, the lack of addiction.  But I know Pandy, and this was her Practical Magic moment of daring me to put my wishlist out there where Fate might get ahold of it and take her chance at offering me exactly what I want.

I started to think about it in terms of these prior relationships—DH, Absolem, Bounder, Katniss, Rex—that had offered me something good in their way but had still not managed to be good enough.  Like thinking about what you want in your unborn child, I started to pick and choose from those men. 

From DH, I would want the care he could provide.  For all of his flaws, he was an exceptionally good, practical caregiver when I needed it.  Whether stopping at the grocery store while I was busy with a baby boy or carefully doling out medication and clean bandages after surgery, he took really good care of me.  Eventually I learned to care for myself, which was one of the many problems we were never able to resolve, but I would want that active, tangible concern.  (Check for both Bounder and Katniss for doing this, as well, in their own ways and times.)

From Absolem, I would want the clarity of vision.  He could peek readily through my façade and see me.  It was impossible to hide my truths from him, and he never failed to tell me exactly what he saw—even if I didn't like it.  Bounder was just as adept, though he often danced around sharing his thoughts.  I would also want the fearlessness, the adventure for life, that I have only ever found in Absolem.

From Bounder, there is so much.  He set the bar so high in so many ways, though he often let it clatter to the ground—sometimes abrading me with those collapsing expectations.  The depth of emotion, both his own and felt with me.  The strength and vulnerability that were intricately interdependent.  The mischievous, crinkling eyes every time he smiled when I told him I loved him.  The ease with which he could cry with me, for me, in front of me, and how he never, ever withheld my emotions even when they were more than he thought he could bear.  How he would patiently and without recrimination listen as I unleashed my crazy, circuitous head and heart, but how I never had to actually say what I was thinking because he always just knew.  And the kiss that could stop time and turn the seas to dust.  That kiss that may never be topped. 

From Katniss, the chivalry and the romance.  The single red rose the first time we met, and the choice of a perfect book for Christmas.  The stories he would weave for me.  The way he could calm me with a single word, dropped at the exact, magical moment when I needed it most.  The way he would watch me intently while I spoke, and the lullabies he would sing to me over the phone just before I fell asleep. 

From Rex, the largess.  Not just the physical size—though make no mistake that I loved the way his hugeness felt, wrapping me into a dainty package that didn't feel like it would break.  How his hands dwarfed mine.  But there was a largeness of character, of dynamic, that was simultaneously gentle and kind.  The way he could make me laugh at anything and everything, but also how he could shut down my humming brain and quiet my overthinking with a look.  In some ways he did outdo Bounder, and I was thankful to know the bars could be raised even further.  And I have never been so immediately comfortable with a man as I was with him. 

But my wishlist is missing the one trait that each of these men has in common: their ability to make me feel negligible.  The practical, magical one will be there, no matter what.  He will call me every day that he can, even if it's just to tell me he loves me and goodnight after a really long day.  He will text me random thoughts and pictures and be thrilled that I message him regular  love letters, equally romantic and raunchy.  He will lie with me in the floor and the firelight, letting me sing whatever song I feel that night, while he strokes my hair gently and whispers to me that I am beautiful. 

And he will be there in the middle of the night, when I wake cold and scared, afraid of what comes out of my dreams.  He will sleep comfortably, soundly next to me.  He will actively, happily love me, and he will fight Heaven and Hell to be with me.  He will do what no one has ever been willing to do for me before: he will value me, openly and honestly, and remind me every day that I am worth his fight. 

And in return, I will love him like no other.  Every fiber of my being, every moment of soul and joy and heartache, every laugh and every tear, every angry word and every whisper of adulation in the dark.  To fill in every crack, to give him strength to be vulnerable, safety to be dangerous, acceptance to be who he was meant to be.   

Maybe it's foolish to wish these things.  Maybe it's childish or naive to hope that I find what I want most, what I seek as doggedly as I have ever done anything. 

And maybe it's magic. 

Welcome to the inner workings of my mind.

I am not perfect. 

I am smart and able and resourceful and determined.  I am exceedingly analytical, especially when it comes to relationships and my own role in them.  I spend an inordinate amount of time in my own head, breaking down the minutiae of every conversation, every encounter.  What did he mean by that?  Was there really a disjoint between his words and his expression?  What did I do to encourage or discourage him?  Why the hell am I feeling this?

Some days it's incredibly loud inside my head.  I will replay every detail over and over.  (Add obsessive and dogged to that list of qualities.)  Hiding behind every memory there is always a ghost, taunting me with the rattle of its chains and reminding me of every time I have been less than perfect. 

Truthfully (and with a bit of well-earned arrogance), I do most things I attempt very well.  When I set my sights on a specific path, I will follow it to the point of exhaustion, just to see it through.  It's the encounters along the way, the people I stumble across and sometimes joyously or painfully into, who help to shape that journey.  Because I remember the details of almost everything in my life, it's very unlikely that I will ever forget those people. 

I don't want to be forgotten. 

I wrote about this back in the summer, in the midst of the divorce and the midst of Bounder:

Sometimes it feels like competition, but you don't always know the specifics of what you're fighting, or sometimes even that you are.  This is why I try so damn hard to be bigger, better, faster, more.  If I can create something new, something unique, it is unforgettable in its own right.  If I am at the core of those memories, I only have to compete against my own ghosts.  When it comes down to it, there's only me to fuck with my own head, and I relish that hard-fought battle more than any other. 

I did have a conversation recently with Bounder about this.  I talked with him about a specific drama that had injected itself into my world—yet another fragile cat who went totally off the deep end—and how I didn't know how not to attract these fucked up men.  He argued that it's the reciprocity of attraction, that in the same way I always seem to be hunting them, they can smell me on the wind. 

"Because you are the alpha female, the lioness of lionesses.  It's built in somehow, parallel to how you're a badass mom.  Same psycho theory...."

If I care about these men, the souls they are beyond any sort of romantic relationship we have, is it wrong for me to be active in that when they are struggling?  It's right to do what you can to help the people who matter to you—that's how interpersonal relationships work.  And there are a very few whose souls have touched mine so deeply that they could get my attention and help no matter what.  Forever and always and no matter what.  I may have every reason to tell them to fuck off, but I care deeply and cannot bear the thought of not honoring that.

"You do honor it, Steph, just by trying.  You cannot do it yourself.  It will always take two."

"I don't know that I even believe that anymore, that there's another one who can be what everyone else so plainly believes I need.  So what's my option?  Be miserable alone?  If I'm gonna be miserable, I'd rather have it peppered with moments of incredible connection."

Bounder says the key is to not ever be miserable alone, to enjoy and thrive in those moments until the connections are there, intentional or not. 

"Trust," he said. 

"But that means I have to trust myself," I replied. 

While I am sometimes too free and quick with my emotions, there are a very few people in the world who I truly love.  I am fortunate that I have a list at all, but it can be very hard for me to let anyone in.  The list of people I trust is far, far shorter.  I have every historical reason for that, certainly, but the ones who have gained my confidence have been the ones who very strongly encouraged me to see something about myself that I couldn't or wouldn't face, good or bad.  That's part of why they matter to me and always will. 

If I can find people who trust me enough to let me care for them, then I hope for reciprocity.  I hope to see my own worth through their eyes, because I can only see my value, really, when it's shown to me. 

This is why I asked Bounder and DH and sometimes Absolem and others why I wasn't worth their fight.  Every time I think I am, that I have done enough and earned it from them or for them, I get the response that somehow I just wasn't enough—usually while being told I was just too much. 

"Who are you not good enough for?" Bounder asked.  "Certainly not the drunken cats or your ex or any of them and definitely not Daddy.  So who's left?  Who do you pale in comparison to?  You."

"I pale in comparison to those who've come before me, to those ghosts who can garner more attention that I can."

"Not true.  You believe it, clearly, but it's not true."

"Really?  If I never say the words I'm not her again, it will be too soon.  And, yeah, sometimes I'm not good enough for the drunken cats.  I'm not perfect, or even just right.  I get upset when I'm hurt, and I let them down.  I let you down.  I failed you, and so I failed me.  If I'd been a little quieter, a little calmer, more compartmentalized and covert with my heart.., if I'd backed down , been more pliant, less selfish, less open about my needs..., if I'd just seen you coming and been able to plan, then maybe—just maybe—you would've been willing to keep the cracks in the walls that let me and the light in, maybe I would've been good enough for you to accept that love and let yourself love me back."

But I didn't.  I trusted who I was, that persona of Stephanie that I toss at men and the world like a grenade, challenging them to disarm it or die.  I was defiant in all that I presented and felt and lived, and I lost another man that I loved.

Then I found myself alone and crying in the dark on my deck, sobbing because I am not perfect.

When you are a true perfectionist, everything takes on a gravity that most people can't understand.  They can't empathize with how consuming it is to constantly maintain the level of energy required to be not only your best but better than anything or anyone else, how the slightest of mistakes and imperfections can rock you to the core in such a way that it feels like the goddamn universe is collapsing on your head.  When it comes to love, your heart is all too likely to be crushed, sucked into the black hole of itself where not even your own light can escape. 

But to expect perfection in the realm of interpersonal relationships is a fool's quest.  It is absolutely noble to strive for the best, for better than best, but it's dependent not only on my actions but on the reactions of another flawed human.  That give and take is incomparably beautiful.  For me, it can feel deadly. 

One mistake, one minor misstep, and the person I love responds in kind.  The first, tiny ripple of incident creates waves and wake of hurt and ache, and somehow I am sucked down by the undertow, berating myself for having chosen A over B, for not having known ahead of time what would come as a result.  For being human.

No one is harder on me than I am, and I am a formidable opponent.  I am a force of nature.  Nothing wreaks havoc on Glamazon Island quite like Hurricane Sass.  Somehow I am constantly surprised when I ignore the storm warnings, ignore the windblown red flags, and dive into the choppy, churning waters.  It doesn't matter how I move, how perfectly I execute each stroke of arm and leg or each turn of the head as I gasp for breath; a storm like that will eventually exhaust me.

I'll still be berating myself for not being a better swimmer, for not being able to see through the riptide and stay parallel to the shore.  Even as I'm drowning.

 

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The chains that you break to be free, well they tear up the ground when you drag them around.

I'll love you in your dreams, but please don't try to hold me in your arms.

With one breath, with one flow, you will know.

I have ludicrous amounts of coincidence in my life. 

It's far beyond thinking of someone and then they call.  I have quit being surprised when I dream of someone and hear from them the next day, or even when I dream very detailed, seemingly random events that later come true. 

It's really more a matter of synchronicity.  In the 1920s, Swiss psychologist Carl Jung developed the term to explain "the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, whereas they are unlikely to be causally related."  It's meaningful coincidence, though the events do not have to happen simultaneously and there doesn't have to be explanation of their meaning in terms of cause and effect. 

For Jung, synchronicity gave a basis to his concepts of "archetype" and "the collective unconscious".

For me, it means a whole bunch of batshit. 

It happens so often that it's become a fucking joke within the Castration Committee.  But what also regularly happens is that these patterns of synchronistic events precede the most poignant and profound moments in my life.  They are like omens for what's coming, both good and bad.

When my crying jag started last week, it took about two days to run its course.  In addition to all of the stress I've been under, Friday brought a series of events that were both unexpected and unsurprising.  Unrelated to each other, but these two currents in my life that should be skew—meaning they are not parallel and do not intersect—began to curve toward each other and resulted in a momentary traversion. 

That continuum of crisscross marked yet another landmark event in my life, specifically with Bounder—the person with whom I am most synchronous.

Days before it happened, I told Hot Pocket and Growler that something was brewing.  ("Something penis this way comes," I said.)  I could feel it, the shift in energy around me.  I'm very sensitive to such things; Absolem once told me I was like some kind of freaky, voodoo static magnet.  I just feel other people's energies.  With the people I'm closest to, I can do it from a distance.  I just know when something is wrong or happening.

The synchronicity often comes in waves, and inundations of it often herald the approaching crazy.

Right now, and especially tonight, I am swimming in portent. 

I don't know what this will be.  I almost never do.  I just know that it is coming.  It doesn't feel bad, though it does feel colossal.  Based on what happened in the past week and what I know is supposed to happen over the next month, I could take a guess as to what (and whom) in involves, but the details won't be revealed until the actual time.

Part of it is that I am open to the idea.  I am willing to see signs and meaning in the strangest of things.  I do actively look for it in my life, though I try very hard not to see more into something than is actually there.  Sometimes when I call something out and name it for being important, the person on the receiving end of the prognostication will tell me I'm full of shit.  All too often, I get to tell them I told you so.

Four hundred years ago, I would've been burned at the stake. 

I pay attention to these things, because my life has consistently shown me that there's reason for me to do so.  I get these vibes, for lack of a better term, and they almost always happen just before my path shifts dramatically. 

In the past, when it's been this strong, Fate has stepped in and forced me to come face-to-face with my next step, the impact so strong that it leaves me figuratively bruised and shaken.  She's a bitch, for sure, but I know better than to fuck with her.  There's a reason for it, every time, although I don't always see it until it's too late to even beg her to let me turn back. 

Whatever it is this time... okay.  I can rail against it and be a petulant, ungrateful little brat about it, or I can just accept that something crucial is about to happen and conserve my energy for when it actually plays out.  Someone important is going to need those energy stores, and I have the feeling that it's someone very, very important to me. 

It feels like a test, of everything that has come before, of everything I have learned over the last three years.  And I hope I'm up to the challenge.  I hope I have the skills to fight this battle—and maybe even the Vorpal sword one of us will need to slay that Jabberwocky. 

 

NOTE:

Just as I was finishing this piece, getting ready to post it, my phone popped up with a push notification from my Facebook fan page.  Earlier in the evening, I posted asking for suggestions for what to write about for a new blog post.  This is what I see when my phone got my attention:

THAT is how my life works. 

 

I don't want good, and I don't want good enough. I want "can't sleep, can't breathe without your love."

A few months ago, while discussing my ongoing list of things I'd want in a man and/or a relationship, Growler said, "You might have to settle.  You may have to be willing to accept 85% of what you want, if everything else is worth it."

I talked to Absolem about it a couple of weeks later.  "Oh, she's right," he said, complete seriousness on his face.  "You'll probably have to take less than what you want, if you want to be in a relationship.  Though I don't get why you'd want one, when you can have so many."

I reactivated my online dating account this week.  After I reviewed a few dozen potential new matches, the site told me I was too picky and should loosen up as far as my standards were concerned.

Even Queen Frostine urged me to go into my next relationship without such high expectations.  Her point, she stresses, is that I should be able to learn to be happy within the confines of who I'm with, for who they are, rather than constantly comparing them to the past or to my ideal.

"I love living in Chicago," said my well-traveled friend, "but I also really love San Francisco and London.  I could totally live in either of those cities just as easily as I live here."

"Sure, but you'd always miss some things about Chicago," I pointed out. 

And then there's Bounder.  He says he knows he can never be 100% of what I want or need, 100% of the time.  He wants to, has the desire, but not the capacity.

Well who the fuck can?

It's romantic to imagine a man could love me so much that he strived every day to be everything for me, especially one who could see me and reach me and touch me inside and out the way Bounder (and even sometimes Absolem) could.  I'd like to think that DH tried, but right now I'm still too caught up in the aftermath to really see it clearly. 

But romantic or not, it's fucking ludicrous.

No man will ever be able to be 100% of anything for me and certainly not all the time.  That's an unreasonable expectation to place on another individual.  We are beautifully flawed humans, and to demand perfection from someone is asking to be disappointed or worse. 

All I ever expected from the men I loved was that they be there how and when they could, and that they do it fully and openly and honestly.  By the time I really loved them, I knew who and what they were.  I knew their histories and their fears and their double-edged swords.  I knew the potential of their hearts, and I just wanted them to work toward that, both for me and for themselves. 

I never thought that was an unreasonable expectation.  Apparently I was wrong. 

Don't tell me I'm wonderful and deserve more.  Don't tell me you wish you were able to do these things, to be what I deserve, because I am special enough to be worth that.  If I have that value to you, then honor that.  If you love me and I am so deserving, then make the attempt to live up to the potential I see in you, that you say you see in yourself.  When you err—hell, even when you fail—if there's still potential and value, then keep working. 

My heart would not have seen yours if it weren't so very special, nor would it have loved you if you weren't worth my own hard work and effort. 

So it might be nice to imagine that prince among men, who would care for me and fill in the gaps I can never quite seem to fill.  The one who could kiss me like no other and love me no matter how hard the day was.  Who could be there at night when I both need and want him.  Who understands my sense of humor and appreciates my intensity, who loves me not in spite of my batshit but because of it.  The one who could love me for me and not for what I can do for him. 

That is the ideal I have to relinquish.  That's where I have to settle. 

I can find a playmate, a great lover, an outstanding kisser, someone who's sober, and maybe even an Irish guy who is bigger than I am.  But all of that in a man who can really love me for me?  That'll never happen.

I've met a lot of guys this year who were great, cute, and very nice.  But the kiss just wasn't there, for a variety of reasons.  Maybe they were too soft or too messy or too whatever. 

"Can you live with it?" Basket Case asked when I lamented recently about one in particular.

No.

There is so much in a kiss, so much truth of a person in how they move their mouth against yours.  Floppy, wet, forceful?  Too slow or too fast?  Chronic bad breath?  Do they touch your face or bend you into their kiss, rather than meeting you halfway?  Do they ever let you take the lead?  Eyes open or tightly closed?

In my life, the ones who've done it right, right for me, are the ones who've been least able to meet my expectations, even when I've lowered them in compromise.  If they can make me breathless with their kiss, they will eventually knock the breath out of me completely. 

It's not about kissing frogs to find my prince.  He doesn't exist.  And even if he did, I'd be too busy with the frog in the crown, just because his kiss could fool me. 

I lost your honesty. You lost the life in you.

To say that I am nothing like the girl I was three years ago is an understatement.

The transformations that came about, both physical and spiritual, rocked Stephanie to her core.  The weight loss (115 pounds), the surgeries (17.5 hours to remove the excess skin and rebuild this body), the people and experiences, the music, the divorce... all culminated in a ridiculously different woman than I and everyone else saw in the summer of 2010, or in the years prior. 

Okay, so maybe Bounder is right, and the core of who you are as a person never changes.  I'm still the same smart, funny, impatient, resourceful girl I've always been.  It's like a tiny kernel of that is all that remains.  Sometimes it's pulsing from my center like a beacon; sometimes I tuck it away in my pocket for good luck.  But there's very little of that Stephanie still there.

Had I not met Absolem when I did, I don't know that this metamorphosis would've come about it in the same way.  I was stagnant, and it was likely going to take an outside force to shove me into forward motion again.  He was a reanimator of sorts for me, though he has argued that those things were always there, even when I and no one else could see them.  Perhaps it would've happened eventually or in some other profound way, but I'll never know. 

Through all of that time, I had choices to make.  I could move or stand still, stay or go, hide or reveal, be or not be.  Often those choices were scary as hell, but I made them.  My conscious decisions led me to subsequent ones that permanently altered my course, sometimes with a deep ripple effect.  I made mistakes along the way, certainly, but all of those decisions were made with the acceptance that I would rather regret what I did than what I didn't do.

When it came to time to proactively incorporate other people into my new journey, I was shocked to find how often people will recoil from the challenge.  They become so bogged down in fear of change, even in the name of progress, that they preferred to stay stagnant in their trepidation.  Sometimes they would encourage me to undo the things that I'd done, or even to pretend they'd never happened at all, in order to make them more comfortable in my life or in their own. 

Fuck that.

I fully accept and truly believe that everyone must come to their own changes, to their own transformations, each in their own way and time.  Just because I can point to the things I've done and overcome, that doesn't mean that I can expect anyone else to follow my path and do those same things.  I don't and can't laud my progress over anyone else and demand that they do the same, especially not according to my proscribed schedule. 

What I can get irate about is the ones who refuse to take up the challenge at all, who allow their fear to determine their course, especially when they know their life isn't working.  Not even that it's not what they want it to be—though that's certainly reason enough to make those changes—but that their lives are just dead, broken beyond certain repair.  I know from very personal experience how that is a dangerous and saddening place to be.  But to allow your fear to rule your choices and your life is, in my opinion, the exact opposite of what life is supposed to be about. 

I don't think that everyone should upend their entire world and begin again.  That could be equally as damaging in the end.  But if there are things that aren't working, and especially when they haven't worked in a very long time, it's on you to really examine not only what they are but why they are, and to determine how is best to make the necessary alterations.  Otherwise you're stuck ad infinitum in trying to learn the simple lessons that somehow you haven't yet been able to grasp. 

But when you have the tools and the support, when you are given the unique gifts of opportunity and resource—especially when you're granted both at the same time!—it is ludicrous to me that anyone would choose to ignore those blessings and turn away from the challenge, simply because they are afraid of the hurt that could come with trying. 

It's okay to be afraid; it's not okay to be a coward. 

Ultimately, I have no respect for that course of life.  I have lost respect for people about whom I cared very much, who have chosen not to live their life and to stay trapped in their anguish.  It's like they're choosing Purgatory over Heaven or even Hell, and I just can't understand it. 

My life is a cautionary tale in a lot of ways, I know that.  Sometimes I've been more careless with myself than anyone else could ever be with Stephanie.  I have often been heartbreakingly careless with others, even sometimes to the point of negligence or malice, and I will do what I can healthily to rectify that for as long as it takes.  But only until the amend is made and then I'm moving the fuck on.

While my opinion may or may not matter to you, if you are reading this, it's for a reason.  Desperately trying not to sound arrogant, my words have been brought into your life as a result of fate or Fate, and there just might be something here for you to remember.  And if you need help, if I can be of some resource, feel free to reach out to me and make yourself known.  If I can point you toward your own catalyst for transformation, I'm happy to try.  Someone really remarkable did it for me, and I know sometimes we just need that little push to head us in the right direction. 

So anytime somebody needs you, don't let them down, although it grieves you.

"Let's be friends."

Those are the most ludicrous words after a break-up. 

It's not that I think men and women can't be friends.  I have lots of male friends, running the gamut from casual to intimate.  (Poor Hammer knows waaaay more than he'd probably like to know.)  While I do tend to gravitate toward women for those very close friendships, there are and have been a few exceptions over the years. 

Even within the bounds of Stephanie-Dude friendships, sometimes the lines have become blurred by deep emotional or spiritual connection.  Sometimes by both.  If there's also a sexual attraction, the relationship can become complicated rather quickly.  Sometimes I've been able to pull back from that and maintain the platonic relationship.  Sometimes not.)

Usually what happens, though, is that I go through this experience with whatever man, and the relationship is damaged by sex and love and what has most often felt like compromise that was unevenly anchored to my side.  Hot Pocket would toss in the words "unevenly yoked" right here.  Moonshine might suggest something about unbalanced equations.  My therapist would kindly and gently advise me to determine what I'm willing to accept to maintain a healthy relationship and where I can confidently draw my lines—with the mindful acceptance that I must defend those boundaries if push comes to shove. 

Bounder and I went back and forth for days that turned into weeks about how and where our relationship was going.  He says he's not an alcoholic; I still question it openly and to his face.  Almost regardless of that, there's still the issue of my caring about him.  He is special to me.  Tierney says it best, to Alex, during one of their last conversations in Persona Non Grata:

"Look, I don't love a lot of people.  I don't like a lot of people, and all these people in my life have really hurt me over the years.  I have reasons to be wary of letting people in.  When I do, and especially when I choose to let them in far enough to love them, they're special.  You are a very rare breed of human being that I both like and love, and not just because I have to.  That's why I get so mad about it all.  That's why it feels so unfair.  I don't want that to have been a waste of my energy."

Part of the issue for me is this idea of being compartmentalized, of feeling like I'm being shoved and cajoled into a box that keeps me away from the other person.  Yes, it is something men tend to do more than women; it seems to be an innate coping mechanism for them.  Again, Alex and Tierney discuss this early on in their relationship:

[Alex Wheeler]  "That's how I am; if someone makes me mad or bothers me too much, I'll just ignore them—won't answer their calls or texts or emails.  I'll just stop."

"Are you that way with everything?  Do you just ignore what you don't like?"

He thought about it for a moment.  "Yeah.  I compartmentalize everything.  I have to, in some ways, being on the road all the time.  It helps keep me sane.  I'm really good at keeping everything in its own neat, little box, where I can deal with it or not, as I choose.  I'm probably too good at it."

"I think that's a guy thing," I commented.  He nodded in agreement.  "I think it's much harder for women to take their feelings out of the equation.  Men are much better at tucking their feelings out of the way."

When a relationship is ending for whatever reason, what do you do after you've been through an intense period of time with this person whom you both like and love (on whatever level), with whom you've shared deep intimacies, and without whom you feel a little lost? 

While I still occasionally have very platonic contact with Absolem, he was always an exception to the rule—though that was no real surprise given the nature of our relationship.  I know damn well that I will always have that tie to him, that weird connection that brought him in and out of my life as a catalyst to upend me and bring about my own transformation.  I owe him so much, and I owe him nothing.  But I know that even if I weren't to hear from him for twenty years, he would know within moments of making contact exactly how and where I was in my head and my heart and my soul.  We are, in so many ways, two sides of the same coin. 

I made the break, privately and publicly, from Bounder, but he didn't disappear.  It was confusing.  It started with the careful arguing and the constant discussing of what this relationship had meant and was supposed to mean and how impactful it was for each of us and why, along with where and when what went wrong—like an emotional debriefing with the only other person who could truly understand it because they'd lived it with me.  The inner circle was great about listening and advising and letting me cry when I needed to do so, but ultimately the answers and solutions would only come from me and from Bounder. 

Our relationship could stop or move forward in myriad ways.  We could take the leap of faith and delve into this and see what happened.  We could agree to part ways for some period of time and plan to meet back up, if the time was right.  We could date slowly for a while and move along at a more reasonable pace, ignoring everything that had pushed us together in the first place.  Or we could just say our goodbyes and be done. 

Eventually it was plain that we were tired, dancing wide, serpentining lines around this place and time that wasn't yet right for us.  No matter how drawn we were and are to each other, here and now wasn't going be ours.  Not like this.  And the seeming pressure of divine intervention felt yet again like Fate had played a cruel trick, taunting me with, "Oh?  You want this?  Too damn bad!  You can't have it!"

So, again, I told him no, that I can't do this, that I can't watch him from some nebulous place of distant care and be flirty witness to his life.  I am worth more than that; at least on this we agree.  I told him to find me if and when he was ready to accept the whole of my affections and to reciprocate healthily in kind.  I wished him well. 

"You haven't given me a chance to tell you what I want out of this right now," he patiently stated when he called. 

Well, I've given you plenty of opportunity.  It's not my fault you've refused to take it when it was offered.

"So what is that you want?" I asked, feeling a little defiant underneath it all. 

"I want you to be you, and I want to be your friend.  I want to still see you and talk to you and blahblahblah."

"So you still want me in your life and want to maintain that connection with me?  But you can't commit emotionally, no matter how badly you say you want to be able to?  And maybe you want to have sex with me, if it feels like the right thing to do?"

"Yes."

What the fuck?

The truth is I don't want him gone from my life.  He is sweet and funny and smart.  He knows me incredibly well and has seen through my facade of bravado from the moment we met.  Even though he is often willing to grant me the freedom to maintain that glittery face, he also doesn't hesitate to call bullshit on it and on me.  He's one of very few people (especially men) who call tell me no.  I want a healthy relationship with him.  I care deeply for him, and he has impacted me in ways very few men, or people in general, have been able to do.  But I also don't want to spiral back into the dark place of striving for attention, of flustering for a fleeting moment of care and affection. 

I don't want to be told no just because he has the power to do so; sometimes I get to be right. 

And as Tierney sums up later:

Alex had kept me in a box, but within those confines I could expose myself totally, free to explore the ever-expanding boundaries of my soul without fear of judgment.  If he couldn't handle what he saw, all he had to do was close the box.  It was how he handled his own soul. 

To ask this of me, to negotiate platonic friendship with the possibility of an eventual more, is unquestionably an effort to compartmentalize me and our relationship.   I understand that the fragility of this cat is undercut by recent and deep trauma, that he could very well crack at any time.  It's a defense mechanism, undoubtedly, and he has every right and reason to seek that comfort in his world in the hopes that he can heal from what came before me. 

I have every right and reason to say no. 

I'm not going back in the box.

Having lived the life that brought me to this version of Stephanie, I am very wary and sensitive to that kind of one-sided consideration.  I was left on my own for years, emotionally, and tend to gravitate toward people (again, especially men) who are selective in their attentions.  Whether their reasons are emotional or logistical in nature serves only to explain the behavior; there are reasons but no excuses.

Because of my sensitivity to feeling dismissed or ignored, I will never not respond to the boxers.  I cannot ignore their calls to attention.  I know precisely how that hurts and loathe the feeling so much that I would never wish it on anyone I care about. 

I will always be his friend, but right now I don't know that I can be just his friend.  I want and am ready to be special to someone else (though I am not actively seeking anyone to fill that role), and we both thought at first that he was ready for that, as well—that we were both ready to be special to each other.  But intention and fruition don't always fall in line with each other; no matter how much it looked like this was supposed to be here and now, that's simply not how it's working, even though I question his direct role in that creating and maintaining that obstacle.

The thought that I could go through this with him, that yet again I could meet someone who could alter my own path so dramatically, and that he won't be at the end of this leg of the journey with me is simply terrifying.  Right now, while I care about him so deeply and want him to be healthy and content in himself, the risk of seeing him fall for someone else when he's finally ready to crack his own facade for another person... it's just too much.  Maybe it's not me, and it is him, as he's said so roundabout, but it's still me that faces the greatest possibility of being hurt again.  To keep me in his web of care means that I will feel the vibrations of secondary movement.  It could be him shifting slowly toward me, or it could be him scurrying in another direction.  Either way, it leaves me stuck and slowed by his gossamer threads, grappling at my feet.

But to turn away from him leaves my friend in need. 

I don't know where this is going any more now than I did when it started.  The good part is that it has given me an opportunity to understand and accept that, no matter how much influence I may or may not be able to exert on a force, sometimes the situation simply isn't mine to control. 

So for a little while longer, he and I are in this weird, nebulous state of... what?  Friends?  Not friends?  Not lovers?  I don't know, and I'm honestly tired of not thinking and thinking and overthinking.  I will do what I do, be who I am, and whatever comes from that is what will be.  While I won't attempt to unduly influence the outcome of this situation, I'm also not sitting passively by, waiting for Bounder to take me out of the shiny box and play with me. 

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Brother, let your heart be wounded and give no mercy to your fear.

I can't stand myself. I'm being held up by invisible men.

You may think at first I'm mad as a hatter....

It started a year or two ago, the Nicknaming of the Inner Circle. 

I received a message from a friend, Amanda, who relayed the tale of a dream she'd had the night before, in which I was some kind of superheroine, fighting some crazy criminal villain while wearing a witchy purple dress and kickass black boots.  She was my sidekick. 

"We need names," I said.

As I thought about it all day, I kept going back to something she'd been calling me for days: sassy. 

"Sassafras," I decided. 

But Sass needed a last name.  Something Irish.  Something poignant. 

One of the songs I constantly go back to—even though one friend (Pickle) will ridicule me ad infinitum for this—is "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes.  It's tied to my childhood and my later youth and even my adulthood.  I have a Bucket List goal to get different, incredibly varied musicians to record an album that's nothing but covers of that song.  Adam Taylor and Wesley Cook have both agreed, in principle.  I'd love to get Les Claypool, Greg Dulli, and maybe In This Moment to record it, too.  I'd even happily donate all the proceeds to charity, though I have no idea what charity would want money from a song about two people trying to cheat on their spouses.  (Again, I argue, it's not about adultery; it's about serendipity!)

The bar where the two meet to plan their escape is O'Malley's.  Perfect.

So now Sassafras O'Malley needed a sidekick. 

I wracked my brain but could think of nothing.  She became Mandypants for lack of a better option.  And it stuck for a long while.  Recently after posting about a surgical procedure in which she was effectively microwaving her lady parts, I deemed her Hot Pocket.  And it suits her beautifully.

So Sassafras O'Malley and Mandypants (now Hot Pocket) were the first two of the nicknamed.  That list has grown and grown and grown since this began.  It seems silly, yes, but these nicknames are like our true names.  These are the second names, the names that are particular, peculiar, and more dignified, to help us keep our tails perpendicular.

Growler – who is sweet like a little kitten but will turn beastly in a moment if you cross her

Hammer – the Hammer of Honesty who can tell the truth like no one else

Moonshine – blue and bright and glowing, can always make you a little drunk with her beauty

Queen Frostine – the coolest chick you'll ever meet

Cookie – never a Tagalong and never a Thin Mint, but sweet and crunchy nonetheless

Lady Hammer – a strange female reflection of the truths of Hammer, totally unexpected

Glee – gregarious and ebullient, she knows the words to any and every song

Roadkill – who will step out in front of a moving car, admonishing you that they'll stop

Cupid37 – who dressed up as Cupid (and sometimes worse) in public and appears in chapter 37

Pickle – because he's always drunk, but also because he's both sweet and sour but not a baby gherkin

Irish Coffee/Not Boy – the Irish-descended guy I like to drink coffee with, who's not my boyfriend

Absolem – the questioning caterpillar to my Alice, who can unhinge me by asking me who I am

DH – Dear Husband, as assigned in the infertility forums 14 years ago, soon possibly DX or DXH or DB

Minizon - daughter of Hot Pocket, my Glamazon-in-training

There are a couple of others, but I don't know if they know the origins of their internal nicknames, so I'm opting to keep them in the vault.  For now.

Sometimes we have learned of our super powers.  Some are still a secret. 

Sassafras O'Malley, who can utterly mesmerize you with her potty mouth, has a special disco ball ring that dazzles stupid people into submission, specifically to keep them from copulating when her muchness leaks into the water supply.  It's a tool to lower the chances of stupid people breeding.  (She also has sparkly boots.) 

Growler has the ability to create snow angels anywhere, out of thin air.  She can mesmerize animals instantly and cause them to do her bidding. 

Hot Pocket has the Broccoli Bomb.  When she unleashes it, it makes everyone around her snort broccoli up the back of their noses.  Painfully funny. 

The list is likely to go on and on as time progresses.  I haven't named all of these people.  In fact, maybe only half of them.  Hammer has had a hand in the naming, as has Hot Pocket.  But these names are so appropriate for each and every one of these friends.  It's like they just whispered themselves to us in an inexplicable moment of truth.  Mostly when we were sober. 

They're my incomparable cast and crew. 

And these are the names that will never belong to another (fragile) cat.  They are ours and ours alone. 

But somewhere, deep down, each of also has a third name, the one that no other human can ever discover.  Our deep inscrutable singular names that only we know and only we call ourselves, respectively.  I know mine, but I'm not sharing.  Only one other person knows it, and that's only because he knew it before I did.  That's Absolem.  And I know he's not telling. 

 

I had on my headphones along with those eyes that you get when your circumstance is movie size.

People come into our lives for all kinds of reasons.  Sometimes they're just passers-by, on their way from one point to another, whose path just happens to cross with ours.  Other times, they're milestones and markers on our journey from Point A to Point Me, an interesting landmark that catches our attention and makes us pause for a moment to examine our surroundings a little closer.  And other times, well, there's a purpose to their entrance into our lives; we are supposed to stumble upon each other and learn some lesson, to find some new meaning in ourselves because of something one of us has to teach the other. 

These aren't necessarily the people who will surround us for the rest of our lives.  That's a very lofty ideal, to find our souls' mates and have them with us ad infinitum.  So often, though, that becomes ad nauseum, and the time comes when the separation has to be made, when those people have to be culled from our lives.  That can be a painful process for one or both sides, but it is sometimes unavoidable if we are to move healthily forward along our path. 

I strive to find the purpose in virtually everything I do.  Experience is often mundane, and there's little hidden purpose in the activities that often fill our days.  Breakfast and transportation and sleeping all serve a very defined and insignificant-though-necessary intent.  It's when people cross my path that I am most intrigued, my overdeveloped curiosity piqued. 

I got home about a week ago from Glittery Girl Week.  This was my first stretch of alone time since the divorce began.  I flew to Chicago to see Tiff for a couple of days, then on to Birmingham to hang with Hot Pocket (née Mandypants) and Growler, plus a few other glittering beauties and glamazons-in-training.  Planes, trains, and automobiles—plus buses and a lot of cathartic walking—took me to new restaurants and bars and clubs and shows.  I took Tierney on a tour of Chicago, where so much of her action begins.  I got my first tattoo.  I watched Persona Non Grata sell at Quimby's in Wicker Park, where so much of Tierney's action begins.  Where so much of my own life began in 2010.

 

"Junkture is what you do. Wonder Woman is who you are." - Tiff

 

It was, perhaps, the craziest five days of my life.  (If you know me, or if you've read Persona Non Grata, you will understand why that's such a huge declaration.)  And I loved every second of it.

Sitting on Tiff's sofa on Friday afternoon, she looked at me and said, "I've never seen you so confident in your life, Steph.  Really.  Ever."

She's right.  I am.  That's why I didn't shy away from the 70-year-old woman in a full-length mink coat who told me my purple-on-blond was beautiful.  I graciously thanked every man who stopped me to tell me how beautiful I was—really feeling the sentiment for maybe the first time in my life.  And when Paul, the 40-something guy I met outside my hotel in Wrigleyville held me up for ten minutes to tell me how and why I was special and beautiful to him, a total stranger, I was happy to give him the coat-open, full-frontal hug that he requested upon the parting of our ways. 

With all of these new people skittering about me, I am watchful for the ones who may mean something.  There was Fragile, a beautiful, young poet from Denver whom I met while boarding my flight from Chicago-Midway to Birmingham.  Her life was so different than mine, but there was an immediate connection and reflection of so many of my own hard-fought lessons in this amazing young woman.  When I gave her a Junkture guitar pick from my purse, she smiled and said, "I've started to affirm the things I'm going to do, not the things I want to do.  I just affirmed that I am going to learn to play the guitar.  This is my first guitar pick ever, and I'm going to use it to learn to play."

I gave her the copy of Persona Non Grata that had traveled with me through Chicago. 

Tierney headed out for Glittery Girl Week.

Tierney going through security at Hartsfield.

Tierney with the Blues Brothers at Midway.

Tierney and Tessa having breakfast at Whole Foods.

Tierney dancing with Mr. Stolichnaya.

Tierney at the Double Door.

Tierney looking for Liz Phair at Reckless Records.

Maybe I am meant to come into someone else's life to teach them something as well. 

There are others who've crossed my path recently, and I'm delighted to realize this stage in my life is about practicing the skills I've learned over the last two years, of bringing those lessons to fruition and proving to no one but myself that the metamorphosis really was what was supposed to happen, that there was a reason I breathed life back into Stephanie, that I met (and left) Absolem, and that my marriage came to its unavoidable and sad end.  While I still have things to learn, I can sense with some of these new acquaintances what those things are—in one specific instance, it is trust in another person in the most intimate of ways— and I am realizing with each encounter that I have something to offer them.

Maybe it's a different kind of trust.  Maybe it's learning how to allay their own fears in the face of certain criticism and lurid judgment.  Maybe it's how to open their mouths and say what they want from me or someone else or their lives.  Maybe it's even how to embrace the truth of their selves and to integrate those truths fully into their daily toil.  And maybe it's something I will never know. 

As I was circled by crows this morning—an omen of being mindfully true to yourself and your opinions, of walking your own talk—I realized that it's safe for me to impactful on someone else, that I can do it in ways that are healthy both to me and to them, without having to resort to the shame of keeping or being a secret.  It is refreshing. 

And I'm sure the learning will be reciprocal.  I can hardly wait to discover what new thing is waiting for me. 

There was that smell in the air of an old place that hadn't seen much daylight in years.

A couple of days ago, I blogged about the things I don't want to take with me into 2013.   I've thinking about this a lot today as I'm packing away the Christmas decorations and cleaning out some miscellaneous stuff from the house.  There was something I left off that list.

I don't want secrets. 

Mine or anyone else's. 

When I was writing Persona Non Grata, converting from the non-fiction Point A to Point Me to the substantially fictionalized story—and I can promise you that two years didn't all play out as depicted in that book—Absolem suggested I title the work Secret Keeper, or something similar.

"That's what you've been, Steph.  You've kept everyone else's secrets, plus your own.  That's who you are."

But secrets just suck.  They can seem alluring, shared or created in intimate moments.  They can seem seductive in their intimacy.  When someone else gives you their deepest, darkest secrets, it can feel like there's a certain level of trust they have with you, like you're the only person who knows them well enough or is strong enough to help them carry this burden. 

When you are the secret, though, that's perhaps the most double-edged of the covert swords.  You're special enough to be hidden away, to be a covert truth to be shielded from prying eyes.  But at the heart of that bond, at the heart of all secrets, is someone's shame.

There are things you keep to yourself or between you and a select number of people.  The privilege of intimacy is sacred and beautiful.  Surprises are wondrous moments sprung unexpectedly with utter delight. 

But secrets are the things that hurt, whether yourself or other people.  Secrets are the things that can only be whispered in the dark, because they are damaging to someone.  Maybe several someones.  To ask another person to keep a secret is to request that they carry the burden of your own shame—whether at your action or inaction or reaction. 

In the process of cleaning out the house since DH unceremoniously left, I have been blindsided by twenty years' worth of secrets.  Things were squirreled away that should've been brought to my attention.  I hid my own shameful truths from him.  Sometimes we hid them from ourselves, which meant we couldn't help but hide them from the other.  And I always find the evidence of those hidden truths in the most unexpected places, at the most inopportune times.  It never fails to knock the breath out of me and to make me cry. 

Had I known the truth of these things in the appropriate time, I probably wouldn't have felt so hurt about their specifics.  But now, when they're coming to light sometimes twenty years later and only through accidental discovery, I am cut more deeply by the surreptitious nature of non-disclosure.  I am appalled in specific and in general that somehow I wasn't worth the truth.  I only know now because things have gone so horribly wrong, and I am stumbling upon the facts of things no one else has had the fortitude or the guts or the fucking balls to face.  I am left to deal with them on my own and to clean up the mess of revelation like so much clutter in the basement. 

It's all right there, along with the mud-caked yard shoes he left by the back door. 

What it's made me believe more than ever—looking at his secrets, the ones I kept from him, the ones I kept for other people, and most especially the ones I became—is that secrets devalue a relationship.  They are detrimental to esteem and the trust that is at the core of any kind of love.  They make that relationship worth less than the shame of the secret.

To him and to so many others, I have been worth less than their shame. 

I also know that I have been on the other side of that.  I have damaged trust and love and honesty, in general and in specific, by keeping my own secrets.  One damage doesn't negate the other, though; there's no tit-for-tat in that kind of emotional warfare.  It just creates a mounting pile of broken promises and broken hearts that block everyone's path forward. 

But maybe that's the hardest part of all of this, the trying to see around the damage and toward the future.  It's hard not to get caught up in the vulnerable moments when all I want to do is cave into the crying and the heartache and the blame and hope to Hell that he feels it, too.  Someone told me that eventually he will realize what he's lost, that he will eventually feel the hurt and pain that I'm feeling now.  Whether or not that's even likely is moot—it simply won't matter.  The damage is done, and I hope I will have moved past it by that time, if it ever comes.  There would be no vindication in knowing there are more tears and screaming and sorrow later.  If I'm not worth the grieving and the sorrow now, just like I wasn't worth it six months and a year and two years ago, why will it matter if he feels it then?  In his world, I will never be worth more than the secrets he fought so hard to keep from me, and that definitely makes me feel like I never, ever had a fighting chance at the life I was told we were building.

I have worked hard to feel my own inherent value, to feel not worthless to the world and to myself.  But it's reeling to feel like the person who supposedly loved you the most in the world maybe never saw the value in you at all. 

I don't know what I was worth to DH.  I don't know if he even knows.  I will likely never know, because he will likely never face me to have that conversation.  That's a secret he'll keep to himself, despite both me and himself, perpetuating the cycle of damage that's gone on for so damn long now. 

So, to all of the unavailable men who may cross my path going forward, offering me their addictions and secrets that will passive-aggressively stall my own journey, stay the fuck out of my way.  Take your damage and your destruction elsewhere.  I don't want it.  I have enough of my own tears and burdens to carry, and I just don't have the strength to carry yours, too.