Darkness

It's always been there.
   Tiny,
Yet dark and foreboding.
I knew it wasn't a safe place.
There are no warm and fuzzy feelings to be had in there.
Everything was growing beautifully around it.
There was always this undercurrent of sadness that, if I'm honest about it, I never really minded.
Allowing so much happiness to be cultivated.
So inviting and beautiful.
There was always something lurking in the shadows
               of the hole in the floor.
No matter how happy I was
        or tried to be
No matter how much I danced
        it was always there;
Something to avoid
Sure enough
        One day
It was all too much to bear.
I wanted to know what was in there
Too bold for my own good
One footstep away from it and the air was sucked out of the room
       Warning,  "Don't touch me!"
I didn't care anymore
            Who needs using their better judgement when they can have a comfortable lie?
This darkness isn't all it's chalked up to be
         Comfortable here for way too long
             Trying to claw my way out
Happiness is always a lie
What happens now that I've had both
            and find myself skipping between both worlds?

"Let Me Take A Selfie"

There are loads of people who wag their condescending fingers at those who take selfies and throw them around on the Internet.  But take it from someone who is there more often than not:  there's a heap of blues behind the smile, the cleavage, the duck lips.

Regret, anger, sadness, panic, loathing - they all keep piling up on me;  adding to this paralyzing sense of inadequacy.  On the outside I might look like I'm holding it down.  Believe me, every cell in my body has disintegrated into jello.  Every inch of my soul wants nothing more than to erase time and find myself again.  I've made a goal in life to keep my mind in a place of understanding, rather than judgement.  I also think this is a lot of the reason that I've been feeling the way that I do lately.  Instead of focusing on the fact that I'm doing the right thing and the thing that I know that I should be doing, I hold onto the memory of what I thought I knew to be true.

Lots of selfies are the creation of people wishing they could crawl inside a carefully created self-portrait of themselves.  To live forever in a frozen moment where they appeared to be fine.

Solace comes in strange ways.  Sometimes all it takes is seeing your own picture lit up on a screen to feel OK again, if only for a few seconds.  Sometimes it's the arms of a complete stranger;  anything to feel the familiar burn and tingle of forgetting the world for awhile.

It's entirely possible when you're down and out to numb certain very real pains with anything and everything that feels right in the moment;  and if you can't relate then I'd consider you to have won the emotional lottery.

I don't cringe at the drunk on the street or the selfie taker on social media anymore.  I get it.  More hugs.  Less judgement.  Please.

Little Voice

I find my mind quieted and unable to bring myself to leave.
I fell  as easily as fingertips that trace over my body.
       Teasing.
Bruising my ego with every goose bump and loss of breath.
Leaving me with a longing that I'm not used to.
Don't go.
          Beg me.
                 Please.
Don't brush me off.
            Don't put up a wall.
I promise I'll stop being honest if you would start.
I don't want to stop feeling this way.
I set out to destroy you.
     It was I who am destroyed.
Check.  Mate.
Imploded upon myself.
        Point.  Proven.
A brilliant plan without a plan that backfired.
    You belong to no one.
                  I wasn't supposed to.
Finding that I'm wanting so much that I never knew existed.
           I wasn't supposed to feel.
So much that I can barely breathe just thinking about you.
You weren't supposed to prove me right.
   My heart doesn't belong in my body anymore.  
               Please take it.
We waited so long for each other.
                       And now we're still strangers.

Happy VD

What a cluster this weekend turned out to be.

It started with me finding things to do for both kids and taking Sunday off so that I could have a nice evening like I was hoping for that was canceled by text message.  That's right.  Way to keep it classy.  Point made.  I'm not stupid.  If you tell someone twice that you want to see them and then don't even have the decency to call then that person means nothing to you.  Point.  Taken.  Noted.  I don't have the cheat codes to the games that everyone claims they don't want to play.

Which leads me to the following rant:   I swear I am the last person on the planet that doesn't see dating as a sport.  In no way did I care about the fact that this was Valentine's day weekend.  It has never mean anything more to me than the fact that it's my mother's birthday.  That, and I henceforth dub it "Single's Awareness Day".  Nothing reminds you just how alone you are in the world when everyone around you is confessing their undying love for the asshole they can't stand 364 other days of the year.  I don't think that people should need to use it as an excuse to treat each other any differently than they should already be treating the person that they're in a relationship with any other day.  If I go out of my way to show any sort of kindness to you it's because I have an appreciation for who you are as a whole person in general, not because I want something from you other than your time and mutual respect.  I am not in a relationship and in no way am I delusional enough to believe that after 3 months that I am.  However, I should mean something by now.  And yes, I will admit that I had the slightest moment of homicidal rage when I saw the Facebook post of my thrice married best male friend newly engaged yet again less then a month after the ink on the divorce papers was dry to a woman that he has known for an even less amount of time.  I don't ask for a whole hell of a lot:  call when it's appropriate to do so (like when you're canceling plans or when you said that you will!!!), give me snuggles, touch my butt like it's the best thing in the whole wide world and act like I still exist when I'm not naked in front of you.  End rant.  For now anyways.

I can barely eat because I take two bites and I'm stuffed, three bites and I'm ready to explode.  None of my pants that were tight a month ago fit me so I went shopping at Old Navy and to my surprise I bought a pair of jeans in the next size down from the ones that I was wearing and were loose without trying them on and they fit perfectly.  I've heard of the "divorce diet", but this isn't that.  It's more like the "my body has figured out that over eating to emotionally cope doesn't snap her out of it or work so let's do the opposite as a human experiment on how little food a fat girl can survive on before she loses her shit entirely".  Because you know that dealing with my recent stress by binge drinking and verbal outbursts where I spew a bunch of emotional honesty isn't nearly humiliating enough.

Then Saturday night after work I had a half of a beer with dinner and thought it would be OK to start my new medication that said in several places "Do not drink alcohol in any amount with this".  Usually it just means that it would intensify the effects or make you nauseous, I figured it couldn't hurt anything.  Sure enough, within 30 minutes of taking it I was itching from head to toe and broken out in weird hive-like rash in several places and my tongue swelled up.  I called the on call provider for my practice who told me to take enough benedryl to knock out a horse (aka the adult dose which causes me to fall asleep standing up minutes after ingesting).  She also instructed me not to consume any alcohol in the next 48 hours or this kind of reaction could happen again and I could die this time.  Here I am, home alone in a snow storm, terrified and having one of those "Well, this is it.  This is how I'm going to go" moments.  I spent most of the evening curled up in bed wishing for death.

Got a 2:30am wake up from my sister asking me to rescue my mother from herself again.  To which I promptly refused because there's only so many times one can do that before you're just following them around with a safety net without taking their scissors away.

Woke up feeling like I had consumed an entire keg while jazzercizing.  Thought it was a good idea to go to the slots with my Nana and aunts.  It was fun, but I couldn't drink and in my family it's customary to be drunk before noon on any given family outing.  The food at the buffet was acceptable but not worth the money I spent on it.  I did get some pretty good quotes though:

"Your father couldn't have been the milk man, he was my brother!"  Said by Nana after aunt #3 said that she never fit in and that her father was the milk man.

"You can't ram them no matter how stupid they're driving.  It'll be considered a hate crime because their car is black!"  Again, said by aunt #3 to aunt #1 while following an extremly ignorant driver who clearly didn't know how to drive in Maine in the winter.  Which then opened up the can of worms about how everyone is butthurt about everything nowadays and how unfortunate people are who don't have a family like mine who considers sarcasm to be the language of love.

By the time I got home I needed a nap, which of course I didn't get.  So there I was, itchy, tired from fighting off death, emotional from being blown off and feeling like a human being and it pissed me off me off because I don't like feeling like I'm a human being.

Word to the wise:  when I tell you how I really feel about something, don't ask me if I've been drinking.  It's just not smart.  Especially if you did something epically stupid and I'm calling you on it.

Cupid was clearly not beaten nearly enough as a child.

Logical Nonsense

"But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable."
-Tolstoy

Oh for the love of logic!!!!  Have you ever met someone whose entire being has you feeling like you're about to burst into flames?  Because you totally should.

I think that I've come to the conclusion that drunk me and sober me are one in the same.  No more excuses.  I've learned over the past month to stop, look and listen - much like we did when we were kids learning to cross the street - to what my instinct is telling me.  I think I'm finally on the right path to figuring my shit out.  Not really, but I can at least see which direction I want my path headed in rather than staring at the deep dark forest of the dating world and being scared shitless.  Taking an action even though it might end up being the death of you, I've decided, is a million times more worth it than playing it safe just because of all the crap another certain person put you through trying to destroy you.

And no friends, this is not a Disney film (Train Wreck version, maybe?).  Mr. Invader of WhatTheFuck-Landia is not Prince Charming, despite what happens in my brain when I think of him.
**Insert image of gif from last post**  I am not a princess or a Disney character of any kind.  Over several conversations with friends who insist that being up front from the moment I knew how I felt was the best policy I bit the bullet and sort of/kind of told him what was happening in my brain.  I really felt a strong need to make sure he understood that I don't feel things, but somehow there's an exception here.  It's freaking me out.  I'm pretty sure I lost all ability to breath and blacked out for a second when he said something super sweet after I was done blurting out my nonsense.

You know what my inner cynic is saying about this last paragraph?  That I was drunk and thought it was a good idea to spill the beans because then I could use it as an excuse later to say that I didn't really mean it and that Mr. IOWTFL said incredibly adorable thing to feed his ego and that he doesn't really care about me at all.  That he's just some douche bag soul crusher who makes women fall in love with him just to prove he can and to get his dick wet.

And then you know what I did to shut the stupid bitch up?  I sent him a text stating that I remembered said dumbass things from last night and that I regret nothing.  Take that.  And you know what?  I don't care if he did say it to feed his ego.  Maybe he is a douche bag soul crusher.  I'm done hiding.  My feelings, my thoughts, my wants, my fantasies.  All of it.  I'm done.  And it's okay that he might not feel the same way.  For a change I have proof that I am able to feel something and to be even more honest, it's wonderful.  Lately things have been pretty dark in my world and if I have a little, even the tiniest glimmer of hope that it's just temporary, and the slightest chance that maybe, just maybe, I am actually not a dark-hearted troll like I feel like I might be most of the time, you're damn right I'm going to grasp it as hard as I can until I can't anymore.  It actually feels kind of nice to accept the fact that I don't have control over this.

So much over the past several months has happened that I had no control over and it has sent me into a tailspin of panic attacks and flare ups and what I recognize now as really bad choices (kept behind the scenes and on a need to know basis - and no, it's not drugs.  Anyone who who knows me well enough can do the math or has already been my shoulder to cry on or ear to bend).  After the most recent dramatic episode that *hopefully* will be over soon, I don't want to know what happens next so I'm planning on paving the way as much as I can and drive out the negative energy.  A little "Exorcising the demons, both inner and Universal", if you will.  Surrounding myself with people that I find to be of value to me rather than focusing on the past and riding the PTSD roller coaster.  Letting people in is something that I'm not the best at but I think I've been doing a good job of at least knowing what I need enough to express it and get it in the healthiest way possible.