I hope he's right

What is it about love that makes the heart so profoundly ecstatic and yet can make you so profoundly sick in heart at the same time?

Another great man has left my life. After 3 months where we spent almost everyday together, where we shared our hopes and dreams, our problems with family dynamics, the harsh hurts we learn as children and cover from the world...and yes made love too many times to count. Well sex mostly for the first couple months. You know..the exciting part about falling in love, getting to be ravenous and flirty and staying up till 5 am each night because the intimacy of perfect nights of soft music playing in the background with the tiny glow of a single candle bathing your beloved in soft golden shadows. You start thinking the world does not exist outside of this place, with this person.

But he had to leave. He told me. Too late, but he told me.
"Going back to Toronto this summer. My contracts up," had seemed like a little bummer of a note only two nights into knowing him and hanging out with him only with a group of friends.
Little did I know I would be falling in love with him...

And of course like a dick I had to pick a fight with him over the phone a week after he left. Testing whether he loved me, or whether he still did. But he saw through it and it actually all ended up blowing in my face instead. A self made landmine. I'm getting pretty good at those.

I went to the community outdoor pool today, and it was one of those perfect days. The ones with the sun so hot it air drys your wet skin, cloudless skies, children shrieking and laughing, the shhhhh sound of the trees in the wind.  I should have been rejoicing; not silently crying hot tears that leaked down into my mouth, and which I did not brush away.

The beauty of it, is I am seeing a pattern. I love so fiercely and openly and devotionally when I love. It's like I want the force of my love to be so strong they have to love me back. But it's thats not real love then. It's my insecurity of not feeling...enough, not being enough, not be worthy of love. That why would anyone love me? I can't even love me....

God it hurts though. You invest yourself into someone and they walk. There is no feeling worse. It's just further proof that all those feelings of worthlessness are true. Why else would he not stay?

I know it's irrational. His work, family, and life is back in Toronto. I was a 3 month blip in yearly plan he had.
But I can't help it. Thinking maybe it should have been like the movies...where he shows up at the door and tells me he's going to stay. Maybe not even that dramatic or cheesy. I'd settle for a "I love you too" text. So much hope and sadness is tied into wishing, almost makes it terrifying to dream for something ever again.

"I do not regret the things I've done, but the things I did not do- " the wise man Rory Cochrane once said. God I hope he's right.

I shouldn't have to hurt this much

I a weird homework assignment today. But considering it's for my shrink, i think it's expected to be weird. And by weird I mean so damn personal and slamming into your heart like a slab of meat weird. On this daily chart I had to write down simple situations, things I encountered over the day, things like "I had a rough day at work after a few impatient customers," or "a good friend left the country today" very objective just simple overview of what happened to me. Then on the bar beside it, I had to write "The depressive thoughts" or the things I felt or associated or attached to these simple situations. Seems simple enough right?
Wrong.
I got a glimpse into my mind in the most violated way.
I saw just how scary it was. In black and white.
A bad day at work changed to- My life is going to be a series of dead end jobs. I will die miserable and bitter. I am worth nothing.
Another friend who I cared about leaving became- I am alone. I am never enough. I am a stepping stone for other people's successes. I don't want this particular life.

Each one she looked, her voice reading them aloud.  So monotone and objective, those dramatic feelings came out like someone reading a bad play. It was like someone reading your diary aloud, in every way it felt humiliating. But more than that. The way she really looked at them, and would tut or say, "Oh Christina...." and her eyes would look at me. Like she was a mother, giving me the space to feel them, not commenting, but her eyes allowing me to hurt.
I cried.
Thickly.
"It doesn't have to be this hard. I mean this-", she held the papers up, -"this is too much pain darling. I mean I'm glad you only wrote down one a day. My god each one is a whole story on its own."

I don't know my next step. She says I have to get over my fears and take some prescriptions. That they can help. Everything inside me screams no, is adverse to drugs and how the pharmaceutical system with all its fucked up antibiotics and side affects killed part of my health in the first place.

But I don't know. Maybe she's right.
I shouldn't have to hurt this much....

Low Lull

I am a graveyard site. That is how I feel these days. Barren and dry and decaying. Where are the fertile valleys of my dreams? Where did they go? I'm so sick of being tired, and doing things because I have to instead of I want to. Is it so wrong or grand for me to long for fearless, happy, maybe doing something I like and still being able to eat something for dinner kind of life? Most of the time the answer is yes, that's too much to ask for. You pay your bills, you're quiet after 11pm so as not wake the neighbours, and you wake in the morning groaning to go to work which barely pays for this place thats not my home. God help me get through this phase. Another low lull, just ride it out. Please don't give up.

Too Small for my Spirit

I don't know why I can't sleep nights.
And I do.
Every day my spirit it curtailed by the "duties" of this world, I die a little bit more.
It's a slow death. Every slow workday, where I end up coming home after the sun has already gone down, it's a still birth to my dreams. It becomes harder and harder to feel like satisfaction is possible in this life. That is is only a luxery for the rich, or smart, or beautiful, which God decided I wasn't worthy of. Instead I am this feeler which feels everyday more and more like a curse. A self timed ticking bomb in which I will self destruct and I have to watch the mind numbing process of watching the glorious trailers of other peoples lives while fantasizing from a dark room in the late hours of the night. I know I shouldn't complain, there are those without roofs over their heads, or food in the bellies, or the luxery to even worry about their futures because they need to survive the present. But sometimes...I don't know. I feel cursed. A sadness which is has wrapped around my heart so deeply, it now has roots, and grows stronger with each proof of dissapointments which come in forms of friendships or relationships or just my personalship of titanic emotions.
I don't think anyone really knows me. And after so many days of asking others how they're doing, you begin to shrivel inside. A plant with no sun, I have been in a long, long, winter.
I'm tired of being false. I am with so many. I lie so easy it becomes habit. After a lifetime of trying to preserve the image of self sufficiency from such a young age...it becomes sort of necessary to not relax into the reality of complete dissaster. It's not even disaster. It's the mundaness of it all. I work, sleep occasionally, and then do it all over again. Mostly I think about if dying is really the easiest solution. It is selfish and cowardly, but sometime I hear a song, or a see an old picture, or read something so heart breaking, and it makes me feel like this body is too small for the size of my spirit. I want to be ripped open and let free. And this 9-5 bullshit allows no room for freedom in any way.

Little Bit Less of that Loneliness

When I got the text from him, which basically said "me and your best friend have been really digging eachother for awhile and think we have something. We've been together for awhile and now we'd like to make it official. Thanks."
This coming from a guy who I'd slept in his arms and talked into the night less than a month before.
I don't know what I felt first. Anger sure as fuck. But something I can't quite identify. Dissapointment?
I like to believe that people are generally good, that they are all looking for love and acceptance just as I do, so how bad can they be?
Me and this guy both came from same backgrounds too. With serious troubled health, mental ups and downs, and well this "persona" we both talked about. They one we tried on and suited up each time we got in a crowd or even just with others. A clown costume. The loud, funny, jokester, the very brash and outgoing prankster that no one could imagine could actually be very shy. Very lonely.
We talked about this at 4am after a dance party where the rest of the group were sprawled in drunken disarray around his apartment from the corner of curtains in the living room, the bathtub (yes I'm serious) and in the hallway to the kitchen. Everyone there. But we were alone. The door closed. A world within a world. We shut off the world and let our own take over. Curled into his shoulder with his arms around me I felt safe. Trusting, and trusted. He was opening up to me like a dying man. Telling me how hard it was to be crippled literally at such a young age from his broken knees and how it kept him from a lot of things he loved. He was being so blatantly honest and true, speaking from a place of innocence and fragility. Things that men aren't allowed to show with their "bros" round. And I sympathized. Or more empathized. I may have not had broken bones, but if you've read me blog you know I've collected enough health issues to be just as crippled.
Either way I guess what I'm saying is I felt like we had both seen each other. Both acknowledged each other in a way no one else could. It felt sacred.

Days later in another 2 hours funny banter over facebook chat where we send eachother funny youtube clips, traded all our best song numbers (which was hard since we overlapped alot) and made plans for the next weekend, it came up. I knew it was kind inevitable. He asked me out.

And I don't know why but I knew I had to say no. But I was straight up about it. I told him, not because I didn't think he was awesome, or cute as hell, but I had to decline. I wasn't nor am I healthy enough to handle my own life, let alone take on someone else's needs. I didn't want to try because if I fucked it up I'd fuck up one of the best things in my life (or so I thought). And because I was so rawly honest about it, so vulnerable about my shortcomings, he understood. He said he understood and that it was okay. And so I believed him.

A weekend or so later, somehow the sleeping arrangements after another group dance night, I was again in his arms. And I had to ask, whether from a place of pride, or just need to know since I still adored him, I asked whether he was really "okay" that I said no. That I had to say no.
"I get it. I do. I was bummed for a few days. But I'm fine now."
And I snuggled deeper into his neck and squeezed him, showing him that if I could love him I would.
I don't know now. I might have been falling in love. Or maybe I just adored another sensitive soul. Or maybe I just really longed for the recognition we both found in each other. Who knows at this point.

Anyways, from that point on, things just well...deteriorated. We went from talking everyday to me trying to make conversation via text. He'd text back at his leisure of course. Usually a one liner which would frustrate the fuck out of me. On movie nights I noticed he's sit away from me, or find someone else to lounge on. One particular night it was particularly obvious things were not good. I was a bit high and on edge and he was horizontal across my good friend Patricia. And I hadn't seen patty for awhile, and I wanted to cuddle with her. Or maybe him. I dunno even. But I tried to get in the middle and he just played zombie. Heavy limbed and playing dead I tried to pry him off to Patty's amusement, giggling while I tried to squeeze me teensy self in between this lug. I did manage, but his entire weight, back and all was pressing into my midriff as I cuddled with Patty. Eventually I gave in, "All right, all right you win," I said jokingly and roughly pulled myself out of the mess of limbs.

I went across to the other couch where the guys were sitting, and although it was only about a foot away from him, it may as well have been a 1000 yards. I felt myself being sucked by a tide, and a black hole was forming in between us now.

Even with friends over, we'd bicker. And it wasn't unnoticed. It was embarrassing hearing him tell me off.
"God I don't want to talk about it!"
 he said when I kept pestering him about what was happening with this dream job that he was forming with his friends. I heard through the vine that it had gotten pulled and that there were "issues" within the group. This info gathered all from everyone but him. I wanted to know so badly after I heard. Felt like something this important, then as a friend I should know. I had to. If I didn't then the void really was real and I was really only becoming an acquaintance.  I was losing him and I clung like hell. I did the hellish mistake of being a woman and I pestered him about it. And off course he told me off.
Even in front of his friends and roommate. Like I was some fucking animal, something he could tell to go piss outside cause he wasn't in the mood to "walk me through the details".
So I got back the only way I knew how. I straight up said I wouldn't be crashing with him that night. S'not like we were a couple, but saying I was going to be crashing with Patrick was odd enough to make a statement. Over months of sleepovers I had never crossed that 2 food gap of carpet to sleep in that other room.

Me and Patrick were on good terms. Friends, playful. But strictly platonic. So it wasn't weird when I stayed with him that night. We settled down, having a smoke, a tickle war, maybe a few extra lion cub wrestle matches because I loved hearing him giggle like a school boy. I've always been pleased when I can make a big guy curl and titter like a litte lamb. Mostly it was just a nice burn off steam and it was hella fun, but it didn't mean I didn't hoot and jaunt extra loud or make Pat laugh extra hard, making sure the fun was heard through the walls. Yes bitch move. I know.

Anyways the move was pointless, the slice had no sting, because in reality, he was already making moves with Patricia weeks before. Of course I knew nothing. So the next morning I apologized. Like a fucking chump. A ignorant, albeit partly guilty, but still yearning for the good old days chump. I was genuinely trying to get my friend back and I had no idea how.

"I think I really have something with Patty. I know you told her you have fears about changing the group dynamics, but I think the group's going to change no matter what."

That was the first time he'd texted me longer than a one liner, and it was to tell me he fell for someone else.

I think I cried for about four days, had kind of vicious emailing between him, and exhausting confusing and heart slamming like a piece of meat phone calls with Patricia for 3 straight days. Owing to her kind nature, she did say she cared for me, didn't realize how much I liked him, said she'd back out if it meant losing me. But it was all half hearted and empty promises. They were already and had already been together. Maybe not sex (as far as I know), but together enough to know they spent some nights together. Her in his arms. In my crook. She would have already learned the smell of his skin, the stubble on his cheek, the heat in the wind of his breath.
Knowing that I was just a replaceable piece in a world I felt I constructed with him, felt like the worst feeling I could ever feel. I felt like nothing, absolute nothing.
But the part that devastates me the most, is I felt like I knew these people. Especially him. Felt like I was understood and we understood each other. Like we had something between all of us. A invisible rubber band that held us together and kept anyone who wished to harm us away. Like we could never be the ones on the other side.
I guess I wanted so much to trust.

Anyways. Now I'm blabbering. I guess my point is, I feel like a recovering shotgun patient every time I reach out to trust, and it turns out sour. I spend the first while is shock, absolute mind numbing can't even feel anything or feel like eating shock. Then the pain, the overwhelming pain of the anesthia wears off and it floods my heart like an fucking heart attack. Months of this, crying, listening to sad music, eating again (at least) but this time in ferocious scary way. Binge eating like maybe enough of this will fill the fucking gaping ass hole which is now me. Then I slowly recover. But I don't. It's one of those soft to touch wounds. And its so damn visible every time I walk outside I purposely walk farther away from people so they wont brush up against the swollen parts. And even if they do come close enough, I pull down the sleeve. I'm fine. I'm fine. My answer for everything.

I never really recover from those hurts. And the worst part is I blame only myself.  Because even after this and all the others, with each bullet to the chest, I still unfalteringly, stupidly, but with a loving innocence miss and love them. The ones who the riffles. Because even for one night, in the quiet of the stars and the hum of mingled breaths, two people can feel a bit less of that loneliness.

Pull me in

It has become unbearably hard to even pretend to be happy for others. I haven't spoken to my sister Melody in over 6 months, just because even the thought of talking her makes me feel like crying. I can't help it. With a beautiful baby boy, a good partner, a home in the country, and a fulfilling job, its like she won the lottery and I'm out on the streets and I have to pretend like congratulating her is the "right" thing. I know its petty and useless to compare or even to covet what is not yours, and I know she must have her struggles (beyond cellulite and not having enough cash which is universal I can't think of much else), but that is what I do. I struggle on a daily basis to even shut up the thoughts in my mind which tell me it would be better if I killed myself. I feel like a plague. a sickness to everyone around me. I'm always sick and they cant help me. I cant help me. So I just continue feeling sad, feeling jealous, feeling like I'm wasting space for someone who really deserves and wants to be here. Dear god, this depression is full blown now. It was a small manageable thing  before, but now its like a rapid dog, attacking anyone and anything. Even myself. Or whats left of it at this point. I am scared. For the future. For my life. For my decisions which don't seem to really be mine. I have been watching my life like a doomed drowning person at sea. Being pulled strongly farther out into the current, farther from the shore where I see myself walking along the sand. It's me, but it's not me. I scream for help and the girl on the shore looks in my direction, squinting like she heard something, and I scream louder. But she just shrugs like nothings there, and keeps walking. I have to watch my life being literally sucked away from me. I'm lost. And I don't know how to make it back to shore. Please if you hear me, up there, out there, pull me in. Pull me back in.

2015.
This is it tina. This is you life. No more put downs or unbelievable expectations. But you do have to pull yourself together. No harshness my love. I want this for you. Only goodness and strength. That is what you deserve, but remember nothing good ever is easy, you have to work at it. Small steps my love, small steps in this life.
Start reading more delightful things
Practice some yoga
Learn a few songs on the guitar (or at least play around on it)
Write. Write. Write. Even if it sucks like Arjuna told me, its not the idea, it's the commitment. Thats what drives you. And the hardest part is having the inspiration when you have none. But if you push past that, when you do get inspiration you can go back and change it. She was talking about writing novels, but I was also thinking she was more talking about life.
And for got sakes tina, pray. Connect to God. To your core. Whatever what you want to call it. Find the rootness in who you are. Nothing else matters. I want to be able to say with confidence in this year, "At the center of life's storms I stand serene." my emotions are in conflict with my identity Apparently. That pretty much sums me up. But that is an outline of what I can work on. Be less hard on yourself, but learn to distance yourself from emotions. Let them go. Don't hold onto sadness like it's the only consistent friend. You deserve better than wallowing. You are better than wallowing. You have greatness within you. And its worth staying alive to burn that fire up, to burn that blaze until the wee hours of the morning, that nothing can put it out.
And it's okay to speak to yourself as a self help person. If thats what it takes to get out of this rut, then you fucking speak to yourself in self help talk :) And its okay to feel love again. Feel safe to love. But be smart about it. Attract and adore the right people tina. Learnt to do that.
Love you love you Love you