Feelings linger. I know it isn't logical. I'm not talking about my feelings for Art, those were real. No, I'm okay with mourning a man who was my best friend and love for four years. I wish it were him I think about when loneliness creeps in.
Instead, with winter's chill shadow knocking at my psyche, I think about the man after him. The delusional insane obsession I've had since Art died. "It isn't real," I tell myself. It lasted just a month. It wasn't a deep soul connection, just physical comfort.
Regardless though, my mind returns to the man who taught me so much so fast and who walked out of my life so quickly leaving behind a shattered shell held together by a few stitches of kindness.
I was at my best friend's house, dressed in a short skirt for the man with stormy blue eyes watching me play with my friend's eldest child. The child wacked my face with full heavy key ring. I held back the tears and told him that wasn't how we treat friends.
A few minutes later my friend called me a slut. I smiled and said something to the effect of "I know you are saying this because you care about me, but it is important to separate my behavior from me. I may be dressed immodestly right now but that doesn't make me a slut."
From a few feet away he looked over his jaw clenching. As soon as the door shut behind us the first words out of his mouth were "Why do you let people treat you like that?"
His face was intense. His voice was sharp. I stumbled a little my knees going weak. Did he see me as pathetic or did he care? So far I assumed I was just his charity case of the month.
He kissed me and held me but wasn't that just because I had a body and it was his way of comforting me? He never said he cared. Did he? He couldn't. Confusion swirled around me. What was real?
For him, I felt desperation. Every second we weren't together was agony. He was the only relief from the torment of living when Art was dead. I didn't love him. I couldn't but I needed him more than air to survive. I didn't understand it.
Losing Art destroyed me and in the wreckage, there was only him to hold onto. I wanted to bind myself to him as thoroughly as a surgeon would implant a heart.
Only I knew it wouldn't work. He was someone I would never be able to hold onto. I had to accept it. I was average and ordinary and he was fire and steel. Trying to hold on would just get me burned.
Despite that, I wanted to know him but every personal question I asked, he mocked me for or told me it was none of my business. Mostly it seemed my quest for intimacy annoyed him.
I wasn't nearly as smart or as educated as he was. It was a peculiar thing for me to be with someone whose intellect so far outpaced my own. Normally, I am considered rather advanced intellectually, but with him I was like an infant learning to walk.
This caused me a great deal of anxiety and I began to think through things before speaking. He was quick to correct me when I was wrong. Before then I believed everything everyone told me without questioning it. I had a lot of misinformation in my head. He opened my eyes to it.
He came into my life when it was full of drama and pain. My reaction to all of this was to bow down and apologize to the storm for being in the way.
Too quickly the chaos in my life found its way to his door and he did what I should have done. He shut the door. Barring out both me and the storm tearing me apart.
When he ended things, I went into a tailspin that left me drugged, raped, waking up in a pool of my blood, put on chemo and at one point even declared dead.
After HE left, I started dating Matt. Matt held my hair back while I vomitted from the Viread and Combivir. His kindness opened my heart to love again. He was my first love after Art died. My first hope for a future without my best friend. We talked about marriage but for reasons I won't go into, it didn't work out.
Lost and in pain still mourning Art, I started seeing Mike. Mike loved me with selflessness I've never known anyone was capable of.
Mike became the safe place I wanted to wrap myself in and never leave, but I knew I had to. Leaving Mike was the hardest thing I've ever done, but he was the cast for my broken soul I had to take off.
Then there was David and marriage. Marriage for me was an escape. I jumped out of a plane on a crash course only to realize my parachute was on fire. I resigned myself to my fate, because it seemed the harder I tried, the worse my situation became.
I drifted into fantasy to cope.
Soon reality rushed up at me too large and monstrous to avoid.
Shattered, broken, I started over on a path of audiobooks and for the most part seclusion.
Now, loneliness whispers at the window. Memories surface of a man whose kiss burned away my grief for a time. His touch haunts my skin like a ghost. I should forget. I should let go.
I tried with Frank, with Sam. Each time panic set in and I ruined things.
I think about the possibilities I wanted so much to explore but was too afraid to try. The men I never gave myself a chance with.
I tell myself I just need more time, and then time passes and I'm still not ready.
Then something reminds me of the month after Art died, reminds me of fire and steel and I pull fantasy around me turning it into an armor.
Feelings that aren't real, feelings that were for Art but transferred to a man who I never knew, wrap my heart in a cocoon keeping it trapped in delusions and illusions.
I tell myself I want to love again, but hold a jagged abyss of pain inside so deep down most days I become almost unaware of it. Then it will begin to surface and yawn gaping jaws and I will awaken with a heavy chasm in my chest. On days when I'm feeling particularly brave I will try to set it free, release it, only to discover chains of self-doubt hold it hostage and tears won't come.
What if I'm incapable of loving again? What if I will never be enough for anyone? What if David is right about me? What if there is nothing left inside for anyone to love? And I realize the armor isn't to protect me from outside threats but from the person I am inside. My hope is if I stay in this cocoon of delusion long enough, eventually I'll become a butterfly.
So, for now, I work towards making beautiful wings and eventually, maybe I will break out of the cocoon.
https://ashrienlives.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-date-with-grief-long-time-before.html
Instead, with winter's chill shadow knocking at my psyche, I think about the man after him. The delusional insane obsession I've had since Art died. "It isn't real," I tell myself. It lasted just a month. It wasn't a deep soul connection, just physical comfort.
Regardless though, my mind returns to the man who taught me so much so fast and who walked out of my life so quickly leaving behind a shattered shell held together by a few stitches of kindness.
I was at my best friend's house, dressed in a short skirt for the man with stormy blue eyes watching me play with my friend's eldest child. The child wacked my face with full heavy key ring. I held back the tears and told him that wasn't how we treat friends.
A few minutes later my friend called me a slut. I smiled and said something to the effect of "I know you are saying this because you care about me, but it is important to separate my behavior from me. I may be dressed immodestly right now but that doesn't make me a slut."
From a few feet away he looked over his jaw clenching. As soon as the door shut behind us the first words out of his mouth were "Why do you let people treat you like that?"
His face was intense. His voice was sharp. I stumbled a little my knees going weak. Did he see me as pathetic or did he care? So far I assumed I was just his charity case of the month.
He kissed me and held me but wasn't that just because I had a body and it was his way of comforting me? He never said he cared. Did he? He couldn't. Confusion swirled around me. What was real?
For him, I felt desperation. Every second we weren't together was agony. He was the only relief from the torment of living when Art was dead. I didn't love him. I couldn't but I needed him more than air to survive. I didn't understand it.
Losing Art destroyed me and in the wreckage, there was only him to hold onto. I wanted to bind myself to him as thoroughly as a surgeon would implant a heart.
Only I knew it wouldn't work. He was someone I would never be able to hold onto. I had to accept it. I was average and ordinary and he was fire and steel. Trying to hold on would just get me burned.
Despite that, I wanted to know him but every personal question I asked, he mocked me for or told me it was none of my business. Mostly it seemed my quest for intimacy annoyed him.
I wasn't nearly as smart or as educated as he was. It was a peculiar thing for me to be with someone whose intellect so far outpaced my own. Normally, I am considered rather advanced intellectually, but with him I was like an infant learning to walk.
This caused me a great deal of anxiety and I began to think through things before speaking. He was quick to correct me when I was wrong. Before then I believed everything everyone told me without questioning it. I had a lot of misinformation in my head. He opened my eyes to it.
He came into my life when it was full of drama and pain. My reaction to all of this was to bow down and apologize to the storm for being in the way.
Too quickly the chaos in my life found its way to his door and he did what I should have done. He shut the door. Barring out both me and the storm tearing me apart.
When he ended things, I went into a tailspin that left me drugged, raped, waking up in a pool of my blood, put on chemo and at one point even declared dead.
After HE left, I started dating Matt. Matt held my hair back while I vomitted from the Viread and Combivir. His kindness opened my heart to love again. He was my first love after Art died. My first hope for a future without my best friend. We talked about marriage but for reasons I won't go into, it didn't work out.
Lost and in pain still mourning Art, I started seeing Mike. Mike loved me with selflessness I've never known anyone was capable of.
Mike became the safe place I wanted to wrap myself in and never leave, but I knew I had to. Leaving Mike was the hardest thing I've ever done, but he was the cast for my broken soul I had to take off.
Then there was David and marriage. Marriage for me was an escape. I jumped out of a plane on a crash course only to realize my parachute was on fire. I resigned myself to my fate, because it seemed the harder I tried, the worse my situation became.
I drifted into fantasy to cope.
Soon reality rushed up at me too large and monstrous to avoid.
Shattered, broken, I started over on a path of audiobooks and for the most part seclusion.
Now, loneliness whispers at the window. Memories surface of a man whose kiss burned away my grief for a time. His touch haunts my skin like a ghost. I should forget. I should let go.
I tried with Frank, with Sam. Each time panic set in and I ruined things.
I think about the possibilities I wanted so much to explore but was too afraid to try. The men I never gave myself a chance with.
I tell myself I just need more time, and then time passes and I'm still not ready.
Then something reminds me of the month after Art died, reminds me of fire and steel and I pull fantasy around me turning it into an armor.
Feelings that aren't real, feelings that were for Art but transferred to a man who I never knew, wrap my heart in a cocoon keeping it trapped in delusions and illusions.
I tell myself I want to love again, but hold a jagged abyss of pain inside so deep down most days I become almost unaware of it. Then it will begin to surface and yawn gaping jaws and I will awaken with a heavy chasm in my chest. On days when I'm feeling particularly brave I will try to set it free, release it, only to discover chains of self-doubt hold it hostage and tears won't come.
What if I'm incapable of loving again? What if I will never be enough for anyone? What if David is right about me? What if there is nothing left inside for anyone to love? And I realize the armor isn't to protect me from outside threats but from the person I am inside. My hope is if I stay in this cocoon of delusion long enough, eventually I'll become a butterfly.
So, for now, I work towards making beautiful wings and eventually, maybe I will break out of the cocoon.
If you are curious about how this chapter in my life started:
https://ashrienlives.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-date-with-grief-long-time-before.html
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