Catches and 22’s

I know very well what it feels like to be not important.

Difficult not to feel a little bit disappointed and passed over. ~ A Perfect Circle

Do you know how to draw a perfect circle? Most people don’t.
The trick is you have to hold your hand and the pen steady and move the paper instead.

Then you will see it isn’t the spoon that bends, it is only yourself. ~ The Matrix

I have bent to the breaking point. To my credit even when I snap I still manage.

I am tired of managing.

I am done allowing other people making me feel like I am worthless.
Worth less than the next girl or the one that came before, worth less than work, friends, the opinions of others, anything and everyone under the sun that isn’t me.

What is it about me that makes me so easy to leave alone?

That’s the million dollar question ain’t it?

Thai Fighters kitchen. I was floating around in a red dress. Asking after his roommate, touching, talking, setting out dinner.  He said he blew off box seats at a Lumineers concert to have Indian food and sex with me instead.

I remember being taken aback. Not sure if I heard him right.

Although I always managed to keep him compartmentalized as what he really was my heart soared a little in that moment. God that felt good.

I never saw him after that.

That didn’t feel good at all.

I was sitting, sipping coffee alone this morning thinking about what to write and I’m having a hard time remembering any other actions.

A lot of words.

So many beautiful words, thoughts, ideas, plans even.
5 guys in 4 years have said they’d go to Wonderland with me and ride rollercoasters.
Only Drogo came through, on my birthday no less.
I ought to thank him for that, but I haven’t seen him since either.

So many words.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

But no action.

Tomorrow came and went.

You can water a flower all you want but if it never feels the warmth of the sun it’s going to wither.

I take these little lumps of coal I am handed and hold them so close I turn them to diamonds in my mind.
I think I’m handing out gold stars for basic human kindness.

I don’t know any better.

Giant cooked me a steak dinner with all the trimmings.
The Hulk and Young Un both made the pilgrimage to Milton to see me.
I rewarded them with dinners, sex and then breakfast.

Giant used to insist on picking me up and dropping me off. Football too.

Lumberjack bailed on his friends once to hang out with me, late last July.
Stayed up and out well past his bedtime just to hang out with me twice after that.
I remember really liking how that felt, to be chosen.

I haven’t seen him in 5 weeks.
And as I change my sheets for the 5^th time, my nails done did for the third, the green dress I wanted him to see me in still hanging in my closet with the tags on, new hair that he hasn’t seen. I admit fully, I am losing hope over here.

Sundays are the hardest. Somehow time gets marked harder when I remake the bed he hasn’t been in.

(I got soul but I’m not a soldier)*

When did I get this idea that it was okay to live on scraps.
That martyrdom was an attractive quality.
That I deserve only an iota of what I bring to the table?
That I am meant only to serve and never eat.

I think I know. Childhood. It was easier just to stay quiet and out of the way, but sometimes I couldn’t help it. I have been handed guilt about this, about needing attention and affection. So my safe place is to just pretend I don’t need anything at all. But I really do. And I have no idea how to ask for it.

Something about the squeaky wheel getting the grease. I’d rather atrophy, than make demands.

Sunshine and I were having wine on the porch, on the last warm night of October summer and I said out loud that I have never had a good relationship. I really haven’t.

I think I stayed married so long because the first 100 days were full of him taking and interest in me. Bending time, bending rules, taking time, making time, making me feel like a priority.
Until I wasn’t, but damn that was an addictive feeling and really the only time in memory that that has happened more than one missed concert.

“You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.”

I can’t give ultimatums. It isn’t in my nature. Besides I have tried before and it ended in disappointment. I don’t want a power struggle, I want effort and a relationship.

As in all things I realize I am the common denominator. There is something lacking in me or about me that dictates and allows this behavior to continue time and time again.

I know I build others up because I know what it is like to be torn down.
I know I stay because I know what it feels like to be left.

It’s my turn now.

I am done praying to gods that have selective hearing and getting almost there.

I am tired of catches and 22’s.

What good does it do me to find someone I adore, who accepts me exactly as I am but that I never see.

He only exists in my phone. And I need him in my bed.

I have never had a good relationship before, something that gets built from a solid foundation.
I don’t know if I am being unreasonable or even risking killing something before it has a chance to come up out of the ground.

I have two options.

If you can’t hold on, hold on*

Be important on my own.

Or both.

 

*The Killers
All these things that I’ve done