Must Do Better!!

The last year and a half were rough. I hit a really low point and the people I thought I could depend on taught me some hard lessons on top of the low. I have my steady handful and plan to keep them, they also, ironically, knew me before all this. It's the afters. I had to come to terms with a lot of things that shook me and made me want to re-evaluate how I relate to people. My loyalties were tested and found to be one-sided as I realized that there were people in my life that I considered priceless while they considered me optional or after thought. It messed me up more than I thought. Like abandonment issues weren't enough here's a nice big ass dose of trust issues, oh and here are some more ghosts to go with the others. So I took to the road as much as I could. Never in town long enough to be lied to, taken for granted or worse, a joke.

So I don't trust my judgement these days or maybe it's my heart I don't trust. As a result I am watching my life go by from the relative safety of the edge not even daring to jump in to the pool. I met someone a several months ago and after a few dates I caught myself running through the various scenarios, the hierarchy of friendship,  the lying about unnecessary shyt, the making up unnecessary excuses, the promises made just to be broken and what I might do to the next person who hurts my kid. That date ended badly. Not rudely, I'm rarely rude, just me disconnecting from the grid and making sure "Welcome" is not tattooed on my forehead.

I have recently been tempted and am standing in the shallow end of the pool. Just ankle action. I want to believe she won't hurt me, but I can't trust it completely. Not yet. She will have to come to me, that makes me nervous because, well, what if she doesn't?

I remember saying, years ago in response to someone who asked when I would settle down again, maybe in my 50's! Well, 50 is approaching and maybe uttering the words so long ago, manifested them at the time I defined when I put into the world. Or not. Until then I am on the move, busy getting my ankles wet from time to time.

I started this blog as a recovery journal when I had my partial hysterectomy in 2005 (I was having many moments back then). Since then it has been a repository for rants, heart to hearts, poems and can you believe this shyt stories. I stay busy to keep the loneliness at bay and I have very few folk to use as soundboards that haven't rendered me out of sight out of mind. So, I think I will use this space more in the future to recover and get through some of the lonely along with the occasional rant, heart to heart, poems and can you believe this shyt stories.
You know, like usual.

I am going to start a new blog for National Poetry Month. I'll try to remember how to link it to this one, or watch a You Tube video to figure it out.

This weekend all my kids will be home so I'm gonna love on them extra to stock pile the hugs, Zion's gonna hate that, but deal he will. My actor has auditions and this mommy knows, my baby is going to kick much artistic ass. She is just like her mother in that department.

SS

Things Hoped For

There have been a few times in my life where I had that person I could without a doubt call my best friend. That person I knew I could count on no matter what. Knowing we would drop everything to make sure that the other never had to face difficulty, loss, heartbreak or any other thing we had to face alone if we didn't want to face them alone.

The last best friend I had is still on the planet but we barely speak these days. Correction, we haven't really had a conversation in years. And every once in a while (every day), I have the phantom pains of missing something that was once there. There was a trust broken and I guess believing she just left me hanging out there alone because of another's insecurity stings more now because I have all of this time to think these days. It wasn't that I felt I was more important or even as important but at the very least worth some consideration. Best friends for ten years and then one day, just like that, it's gone.

Twenty years later, I have friends. I have even found people I know, or believe could be a best friend. I have close friends, dear friends, like minded friends,and friends I'd drop everything to be there for. But no one that I feel like would be there for me come hell or high water, just because they wanted to, not because they felt obligated to. I know the reason I don't have that is mostly me. There is an ache in me that hurts everyday and the idea of another potential ache from losing someone I loved and still love results in panic attacks. The trust broken has me fearful of trusting not to be broken again.

We were not lovers we were just friends. The loss of a lover hurts a lot too, don't get me wrong, but nothing hurts like losing a friend. So I treat my friends carefully. I don't want to be too needy even though I need. I don't ask for their time and pretend not to be hurt when left out of things.

I do realize that pretending that my best friend leaving me behind, while I saw her every day, didn't hurt for ten years was the biggest lie I ever told myself. And that not opening myself up to be hurt by the people I love perpetuates that lie. So now I have all of this truth, and no one to really tell. Working out how to fix this and hoping it won't take twenty years.

The Flaw

“When unrequited love is the most expensive thing on the menu, sometimes you settle for the daily special.”
― Miranda Kenneally


A piece of a tooth broke loose today. I am reminded that at the moment I have no real health insurance and while distressing, the tooth doesn't have any real pain associated with the loss of the piece. I attribute the ache in my jaw with clenching my teeth and worrying at what is left. I was not meant to have a mouth full of perfect teeth. Maybe if in my youth I'd have taken better care, maybe if with my first pregnancy I had realized how completely the baby takes everything it needs first, maybe if I had stayed in a relationship built in failure, but rot with health benefits maybe then I would have been blessed with pearly whites that flash against the dark of the not so perfect life I would have been privy to. Pretty teeth, but a very awful existence. Not for me. Not for my children.

This is not the first broken tooth I have ever had and I am fairly sure it won't be the last, and teeth are not the only broken things that have laced my life. As humans we all have the luxury of being flawed. Some will attempt to fix those visible flaws, give the appearance of perfection or physical flawless but it's a kind of band-aid. If looked at in the right light the flaw can still be seen. Some flaws are acquired like debt. Like memory. Like regret. My teeth are flawed but it's my heart I worry about.

Is it possible that denying myself love when it was first presented has doomed me to never have it? I don't want to believe that but there are days when the notion slaps at me and well, it gets my attention. I do not believe that I am in love now, but the idea that I could one day be intrigues and terrifies. I am not so much terrified of being in love but I am truly terrified of being rejected. So my usual tactic is to cleverly, I think I'm being cleaver, run from it. Not in a fast paced, heavy breathing kind of way but more a pretend I don't feel and am not bothered, or hurt but responses or lack of response to any expression of interest or affections I offer. A flaw. This has never worked in the past and I don't disillusion myself by thinking it will happen for the twentieth time, it won't, I know this, but still. I am human and to deny that wanting would create yet another flaw and I am all flawed up right now. No need to keep piling them on when I have a stockpile already.


My son, who struggles with my sexuality, has lately taken to asking me if I am happy several times a day when we are together. So my veneer has cracked and I am no longer capable of keeping the lonely out of my eyes. Another flaw. Seems I'm chock full of them these days. I know it is unrealistic to think that the children I have raised will not pick up on my moods, I mean I raised them to feel, not a flaw. The lonely can be taken care of. And who knows in the pursuit of chasing away lonely I might run into a heart that wants to run into my heart. Maybe, maybe not. I haven't tried because I think I know what I want. But I don't have a great track record of getting what I want so maybe the additional flaw is that I really have no idea what I want. So I will assuage my lonely with the soft skin of another who wants nothing from me, which seems appropriate since I don't seem to know what I want for myself.

This feeling of inadequate, I don't consider a flaw. I am human, and humans all over the globe have felt this feeling. I do worry that I'll get stuck here and lose pieces of my heart but unlike the broken tooth, more breaking of my already flawed and broken heart will be pain I can't ignore and no amount of healthcare can fix that. especially since I don't have any healthcare right now.