‘I may think of you softly from time to time. But I’ll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.’
Arthur Miller — The Crucible
I have long prided myself on being this soft, loving, forgiving creature.
These boys who would ghost and then reappear out of thin air.
I never hated them, some I’d kept loving in abesntia.
To love me was to love a graveyard.
But who loved me?
Nobody really.
Being haunted is not the same as being loved.
I know I’m sounding like a broken record here, but this is how I build new habits.
Lather, rinse, repeat until it becomes the truth. Find the patterns and break them.
We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows.
By redefining the morning, we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
— Jack Gilbert “Tear It Down”
so, um …
Football came back.
Did not see that coming.
I’d have put money down against it. If I was a gambling girl.
I suppose I am. Every time I try this dating thing yet one more time I’m indeed gambling for infinite stakes. What if this time I go numb?
I won’t.
The last 4 years, being left often, I’ve attained a lovely Zen state of calm about it and them.
This one?
He is as harmless as he is beautiful, which is to say very. Like a Roman statue come to life walking around my house. Yes, that’s fine. Uh huh.
A portal opened on the 10th of February. I can feel it, see it, touch it, taste it and I can hear it right now in this very moment.
My telephone to god is loud and clear.
As I sat to write these words and this is what came through my speakers after I opened the word document.
Don’t give it a hand, offer it a soul
Honey, make this easy.
Leave it to the land, this is what it knows
Honey, that’s how it sleeps.
Don’t let it in with no intention to keep it
Jesus Christ, don’t be kind to it.
Honey don’t feed it, it will come back.
I know who I am when I’m alone
Something else when I see you
You don’t understand, you should never know
How easy you are to need
Can’t be unlearned
I’ve known the warmth of your doorways
Through the cold, I’ll find my way back to you
Oh please, give me mercy no more.
Don’t you hear me howling babe?
Hozier, It Will Come Back (excerpts)
I’m howling now.
I hear them howling.
I had to make a distinction. For a long time I thought it had to be all or nothing. Forgive all or none. And since forgiveness is something I do for myself, it had to be all, right?
Yes.
Yes it did and yes I do. Even the most grievous of offenses and offenders.
I am still here.
My heart is still full of love to give.
As broken as I have been I keep getting up and trying one more time.
But I don’t have to bestow it on everyone.
Man up or get out. And stay out.
I have never been one to blame others for the ones that came before, and somewhere in there I forgot to actually place blame where it was due. That doesn’t mean holding grudges or hating anyone. It just means exercising caution. It means learning the difference between a war cry and a howl to be let back in the house.
It takes courage to come back and I know it. I admire it. But it takes more bravery to stay.
I want to be fought for, pursued. I want the attention I give out to come back to me.
Consistency. Presence, not presents.
I am a lover not a fighter.
Wolfling treated me like he had never touched me, never lain in bed with me naked, telling secrets. So no, you can’t come in.
The Poet is mentally ill and dangerous. He bit the hand that fed and I had to suck the poison out. Never again.
Giant sent me a cover of an old Kate Bush song wherein he likened me to a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo he buried in the yard.
Gravedigger.
I used to call him Charon, the escorter of souls.
I used to tend to the cemetery in my heart, but I have stopped.
I used to do a lot of things.
Now?
I am the keeper of my own scales, I guard the gates to my own heaven on earth. I weigh their hearts against the truth and see which way they deserve to be devoured, by me or if their souls are heavier than a feather I’ll feed them to Ammit.
I have become Anubis.
I was Cleopatra, I was young and an actress…
And I left the footprints, the mud stained on the carpet
And it hardened like my heart did when you left town
But I must admit it, that I would marry you in an instant
Damn your wife, I’d be your mistress just to have you around
Ya, I was her…late for this, late for that late for the love of my life.
(The Lumineers)
But my life isn’t over, and my love is intact. In fact it has grown exponentially.
The graveyard is no more. In its place is a garden quite like Eden, a lot of nudity and fruit and I am the guardian of it.
One more message from the gods as I was writing this. Something I needed to hear.
Sometimes I have to remember to make out like it never happened and that we were nothing, and I don’t even need your love…so now you’re just somebody that I used to know – Gotye
Some of them really were nothing.
Ain’t that something.
