Author: sat

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breaking point

I am not happy with N.

I feel like I’m at the point of wanting to take my toys and go home. as much as I like him, it’s not enough to make up for his persistent lack of effort and attention. I need to be more foregrounded than this. maybe what I ask for is a lot. maybe it is more than anyone could deliver and/or maybe it will mean that I’ll spend the majority of my life alone. so be it.

if I am with someone, I want to be with that person– not randomly, casually, occasionally the site of his touching down only to take off again. if that is the pattern, there would need to be a lot more carrier pigeons from the air.

I’m not a priority. I’m not the center, only peripheral, one of several options.

fuck that. I do not want it. I do not, apparently, want free love. if this is his version of building toward something, it doesn’t work for me. I am feeling no building, only eroding– what I felt for him initially is being eaten away by absence and neglect. it’s not something that simply, spontaneously persists with little or no effort or care. it requires attention and reciprocity.

maybe I’m foolish to draw this line in the sand– but I’m not getting what I need– and the frustration and irritation are outweighing the pleasure.

I’m tired of being the one who asks over and over again, and I do not want to do it anymore. I would rather have nothing.

in the clear-headed, sound light of day I can say: it isn’t enough, and it’s making me more unhappy than happy– and it’s time to end it. as much as that will break my heart. I am out on the cliff by myself– and I’m stepping back inside.

—

I have no patience for people who fail to step up.

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simply to feel intensely

yesterday I left my computer at work by accident, and I feel as a result quite peaceful and free at home, here with my journal. it’s all too easy to fill life up with noise and activity– and what suffers is the inner voice, the channel of knowing the self and what’s real. but life is like that– inconsistent and chaotic– some times are lived more actively out in the world, busier, flashing, louder. I’ve had my share of quiet– and it’s something I need to hearken back to when I’m feeling too scattered and diffuse.

N is the biggest event, cause of much of this motion. three weeks. he’s glorious and troubling and addictive, like dark candy– and he has this lightness as well, this sweetness that just gleams out of him so spontaneously and unselfconsciously and generously– I love how dynamic he is– I love it– and he scares me a bit– his manic potential– he is so altogether unharnessed by himself– it’s one of the things I adore about him– particularly after having known other men– males– who were altogether too controlled or comfortable. he is not comfortable.

I am the one in this equation who is all fluff and flannel and horizontal– and I could tear myself up about the fears that this contrast makes arise– lack of sustainability, that this is inherently a brilliant, short-term connection– I don’t feel like that. I feel with him a much deeper recognition– a potential– but there is a cautionary voice that reminds me of how things naturally flow and move where they need to move.

I’m afraid I’m tempermentally a premature mourner, trying, kind of pitifully, to bank myself against future or imagined losses. as if it helped at all. in fact there’s the possibility it damages being entirely available and present in the moment.

there is such a compulsion to hold on in me– it’s quite dire and daunting, and I guess I’m trying to reason with that somewhat. it hasn’t really done me a lot of favors in the past– tendency to hang onto the wrong things, rather. I let a lot pass right out of my ken– friends, places, family, responsibilities– but there’s this deathgrip on the painfully ruptured relationships.

worrying and worrying them– like a sore place on my tongue I press against the edges of my teeth time and time again. and why? until eventually the thrill of pain is gone, sapped by time. why persist with this? mere masochism? somehow that seems too… simplistic, and unmeaningful. I must do it for some reason. is it simply to feel something, anything, intensely? that sounds more right– weighing all the emotional contents of my pockets, sifting them for what is heaviest, sharpest, most startling– and then spending my energy on that. interesting.

actually, I can’t quite see anything I disagree with in this practice– it’s honest and real and poetic.

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brand new

wow. I’ve been reading back through the last couple of months of the journal, and it stuns me. so much processing I’ve been doing– and so much of it specifically geared toward love, toward wanting to be a whole, sound person on my own (or as close to it as I can manage), but also *partnered*. my wishing, hoping, asking for that has gotten very overt and articulate. and then along comes N. boom boom boom— girders and foundations and otherworld lives slamming firmly into place. part of me is quite superstitious, amazed and unbelieving– it is so remarkably dreamlike, I dread the waking. it is the best, most vivid, heart-echoing dream I never want to wake from. tho I know absolutely in this waking life (well, both places) there is no stasis, no foundation or girders– apart from those we choose to believe are there, to place our faith in and build self and lives around. I know full well that somedays it will doubtless feel entirely un-dreamlike– there will be confilicts and conundrums, pain and worry and difficulty– it may even feel insurmountable to one another… I never want to get there. but if we do, I want us to find our way back out of it. I want to be fully absolutely recognizeable, faith-full, worthy of faith with him– I want the knowing and trusting only to deepen and compound. so, okay, there will doubtless be tests of will, skirmishes, fireworks even– but, please, my love, remain my love– I believe with my whole heart that with this, what we have already, we will be able to weather any storm. am I precipitate or naive in such devotion? well, now– that’s an interesting challenge– how much you trust your heart and how much you attend to the voices around you– X or Y is not fair or “right”– fearing friends’ judgement, that creeping fear of being a patsy… so ultimately that one is about self-confidence. trusting myself enough to belive in the wisdom of my choices and ongoing intelligence of my perceptions– like, if I get into murky waters with my love, I have enough confidence in both myself and him to know we are both resourceful and intelligent and that we have the good of what is between us at heart– that neither of us will get too blinded or cowardly to meet the rough parts with love and compassion. god, I treasure him. he is a treasure of a human being– multifaceted and dynamic and beautiful and flashing-whirling. his motion frightens me a little bit– I am the stodgey one… I so want this to be a good thing and never the bad contrast it could turn into. I’m okay with being a lightning rod, a grounding line, an anchor– as long as I am not too much of a drag. this is the perpetual fear of being depressive. also I am not necessarily particularly constant, as one might expect from this part of the the equation– I am moody and at times overwrought myself. I can be quite gothically melodramatic. I crave some sort of grounding myself– can he be my lightning rod as well?

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need

my landlord really needs to turn on the heat.

I had a series of dreams last night that totally reminded me of what it felt like to be the youngest in that house–extraneous, shut-out, lonely.

I was enough younger than all my siblings that they felt it necessary, felt justified in closing the doors against me, even locking them with latches placed over my head. then again I learned to climb up on chairs. I learned to enter spaces I’d been denied when they were away. and then they were really away, all gone off to boarding school and eventually college.

I learned quickly to strike out on my own, to search farther afield for friends and allies– and I found them– I got good at that, became ressourceful at finding a kind of support in friends and neighbors’ families. what I found there wasn’t always entirely benign, but for the most part it was good.

there did stick–or never get sated– a kind of chasing-after impulse– an excessive hunger or need or desire to be regarded, to be attended to. and I’m afraid of the ferocity of this need. I am afraid, sometimes, that it is bottomless, impossible to satisfy after all these years and… experience. I try to hide this need. and so I keep to myself. I shut myself in and isolate. afraid of how deeply I need and feel denied by other people.

—

I want to find someone who loves the way I smell
and whom I love the smell of.
please.

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what trees become

thisbe is showing me around her house– it must be her house in new york, for her mother lives there, too. it’s full of little triangular nook & cranny rooms with rocking chairs and desks and doors that open to the outside shady spaces under the trees.

I have a hideaway up a kind of petrified tree inside the building right above the most populous room. I have a difficult time swinging myself up to climb the branches, and I wonder how I’ve done it so many times before– is there another way, or am I just getting old? once I’m up there, bits of paper slip down into the notches of the branches and onto the floor below– they are old love letters, and I have to climb back down to rescue them before anyone reads them.

my family is clearing out my parents’ house, and I have to go pick up odds and ends– old clothes and things inherited from our grandmother– mostly old china I don’t even want.

I’m scooping up handfuls of large nails and a crowbar with some dire intent– I don’t even know what it is. I walk toward where I think my car is parked, past some kids and people on the neighborhood street, and then realize that isn’t my car at all and have to circle back. the house is in a severe state of disrepair. there’s a recent snow on the ground, but it must have been raining for days previously because the ground is all soft mud. I’m crossing up the driveway to where the car may be parked at the back when my feet squish down in the morass. at one time the driveway was bricked, but many of the bricks have gone missing, leaving a pool of black mud. I walk farther back, gingerly along the scattered bricks, until I can see there is no car parked back there. then I reach down and fish up a couple of old logs out of the mud and stand them against the fence. they look like gnarled old men, and I realize they are people, sleeping, whom I must awaken through some arcane process. there is writing across their foreheads, and it seems to mean something to me.

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lonely + hope

fear is bottomless and sadness borderless.
what is without pattern frightens me.
in the wilderness there is no understanding,
only solitude and not having adequate language
and confusion and fear in the dark
where there are no articulated boundaries.

—

I’m afraid that I’m unkind and destructive–
but I want to tell you you’re a pain in the ass
and laugh about it and love you all the more.

—

I want him to come to see me
and be alight
and stay alight
even through the darkness.
why am I ashamed to write it?:
I want him to help me,
for real,
help me to be happy.

—

I want to be with someone who can be
practical updside-down and vice-versa.

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the process of freeing

my throat is full of jagged, splintery pieces of metal– I keep coughing, hacking and pulling out shreds of steel wool and thick pins, bits like watch parts– it’s all jammed up in the middle of my esophagus, and I have coughed it up painfully, raising it only slightly but enough so I can reach in with my fingers to pull the pieces out. it’s terribly uncomfortable, ghastly to feel the sharp, metallic scraping, but also exquisite relief to have each piece out. sometimes, if I’m lucky, several pieces come away at once. each bit frees my throat by degrees.

I’m peeling an excess layer off of the inside of my mouth. it cuts very close to the new skin underneath, so is nearly excruciating– but, again, a relief to be free of the blockage, to be clear and vivid once more.

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child

the 7- or 8-year-old child on the airplane is screaming– blood-curdling, lung-rattling shrieks– and then words tumbling out, falling over one another– I wanna die I wanna diiiiieeee– I want to kill myself I wanna kill myself with a knife!— shhhh shhhh, murmur murmur from the mother– mommy I don’t wanna fly– it’s scary– mother, it’s sc-sc-scary— murmur murmur– then again a panicked crescendo– I wanna die I wanna die I wa— finally muffled crying as if he’s been braced against his mother’s chest. the flight attendants check in periodically. the captain comes back. all this while we’re still at the gate, unmoving. the voice breaks your heart, its stumbley consonants, phlegmy heaves. the scream at first is that of a toddler– but then: the words. to live like this. poor, poor child.

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inside and out, upstairs and down

there’s a panel we’re each given or set before which has seven categories, buttons or flaps, each with a little representational icon, used for testing our character and priorities. as you address each category, it sets up a little scenario and then records how you respond to it. I know one of them involves money, but I forget the rest.

I’ve gone back to boarding school for another year, and I somehow overhear something about my not being special, being unremarkable in some way, and I am absolutely livid. I go to my room to unpack, innately taking solace in my living space, and learn that, as an art student, I’ve been given a second room– as a studio or creative space, tho the layout is identical to a typical dorm room. for a moment I consider the dilemma of somehow fitting out and splitting my stuff and self between these two rooms, and in the end simply move into the creative space with a kind of “so there. just let them try to tell me I can’t do this” attitude. the more I take possession of the space, the happier I am.

my friends live upstairs in flats on floors above me, and I live down below, by myself. there’s a sense of outsiderness and former friendships broken or bent. they’re building slides up there down to the ground and painting them with smooth blue and black paint. it’s a big engineering project having to do with somebody’s injury or disability. I learn that one of the guys up there is unhappy, having a hard time– broken up or family bereavement or the like– I go to see him, want to put my arms around him, to pull my strong heart out of my chest and put it in his as a backup– but I can tell right away that, tho he is a friend, he doesn’t care like I do, like I always have for him– and I give him a squeeze and go away again by myself.

my sister and I are in my parents’ basement, in the former luggage room, checking the big shadowy equipment. our parents have updated things in recent years, but the equipment still looks ancient, dark and shadowy and bulky. we’re fussing with the hot water, trying to get it upstairs for bathing, and I decide to just bathe right there in a trim slingback chair device that seems designed expressly for the purpose.

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transition throes

I feel perfectly dreadful– at wits’ end with having no employment, structure, income, daily rationale– inside my head it all spins into an old vortex of fear and self-recrimination and insecurity and low self-esteem– I have an inkling of what I want to do with my days in exchange for a paycheck– but I’m terribly resistent about refining the definition– as if I’m terrified of getting stuck in something I never really bargained on– as if I couldn’t leave at any time I want. afraid of ending up somewhere I don’t want to be, I’m afraid to even begin shaping myself toward a self-determined goal– I make all kinds of declarations inside myself about the staying power I don’t possess and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. I need to remember the gift of process and tiny baby steps, that I need to be kind to myself above all and coach myself along the difficult road toward doing something I cannot right now do. I feel so lonely and scared here, stripped of the resources that bolstered me. I often wish lately that I’d never moved to this horrible, lonely, airless, pointless place. I know I’ll come through the other side eventually, but I wonder how long the bad part is going to go on for. I keep fluffing myself up and saying, hang in there, girlie— but I also know that I’m not doing all I could to further myself along this path– there’s no map or script, and I worry that I’m letting myself meander into the dark of the deep woods. it’s really hard when you can’t see your way clear.