Every Time

Every time I tell myself it's the last time. Every time I feel like I can't survive it again. 

Eventually though, my relentless heart yearns. Somehow it keeps believing that something good is out there for me, even though time and time again, being hopeful only gets me hurt. And each time it makes it harder to continue to hope. 

People will say kind things, like they believe that a good heart won't go to waste...but I don't. Because I have given everything they could want, they'll say, and still toss me aside, let me go, push me away. I find myself more afraid to keep hoping that my heart – that I could be chosen, than I am of the pain of being unwanted. 

Because it's not about not being good enough or believing I'm unlovable. If I'm honest, it seems entirely random. Coincidental. I don't believe in fate or destiny, or things being meant to be. I think we all just collide. And I'm increasingly unsure, each time, if I can keep trying to collide with someone in hopes that maybe they will choose me. 

Any of You was Me

I cannot see you here –
a poor figment of a guardian.
No more present than magic. Or luck.
If you are here, you are a liar and this is a masquerade.
Prayers placed futile on our lives as wishes on coins in a fountain.

If you were there, it just confirms you watched me drown. 

Again and again.
And so there is no "later" that you can come, that I would find relief.
I'm vexed to think when and how you'd choose to lift a finger 

– it must be heavy, such burden of power.
Why should I awe at you, if whether you're here or not, everything is the same.
What love is love that looks on its object's suffering with indifference, unmoved.

Now I have more faith in myself, than I'd ever had in you
because I was always there,
and any of you 

was me.

home again.

Loving and missing. My heart keeps on longing to reunite with your presence. Panging. For your laughter. Hungry for your gaze. The way that being next to you felt. It's like I haven't been home in a long time. Like I'll never be home again.

All Sorts of Confused

It's coming up on a year and I feel all sorts of confused.  I continue to be in this strange, disorienting limbo.  I openly talk about and make light of all the woes of dating because I don't really want to be doing it.  I know that I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life just because what I thought was the big love of my life actually destroyed me.  But as it turns out, it's incredibly difficult to heal from that destruction.  And it's incredibly terrifying to think of letting anyone try for that with me again.  I can't fathom trusting someone.  I'm in disbelief that anyone will make the memories fade to the background. 

I've always prided myself on knowing how to sift through it all in dating.  Sure, there are awkward moments or things that are hard to say, but I've always been able to tell when someone isn't for me.  Aside from intentional questions and keen observation, usually there's this undeniable sense in my gut.  I can't feel that anymore.  Some men seem kind, smart, funny, are attractive, and have it together, but I feel nothing at all.  I find myself lost in not knowing what to do.  For the first time in my life, I know without a doubt I am scared to be vulnerable.  Not even just scared, I don't want to and I don't feel it.  I'm scared in general.  It's almost like I don't even know how to take dating seriously because I'm just...broken.  I was the most vulnerable I've ever been toward someone and it broke me. 

Yet, I try because I'm lonely and because I think, maybe somehow someday I'll find a way to be open.  Maybe I'll strike luck and someone truly good will find me.  But I don't really believe that.  And I don't know anymore how I'd recognize that.  Even the kindest are capable of changing you with their hurt.  Then I think, maybe I'll just wait for someone to fall for me, then I'll see if I want them too.  Though my integrity would never let me do that!  

My feelings feel the same as they did a year ago and I don't really want to wait for them to change if they haven't in that long.  Yet I don't know if or when my gut will speak to me again.  Maybe it's still in shock, too.  I'm confused, lonely, exhausted, and scared, nearly a year later. 

Sometimes

Sometimes I really wish I could just have a realization that he didn't love me. Sometimes that's the subtext and it fits, but then I rewind the tape further and find myself more confused - if that wasn't love, then what is? And then I find myself scared because I don't know what the fuck love is. I know that I think I still have it for someone who I think didn't have it for me. At best, liked some aspect of my company, but not my heart. Couldn't have liked my heart, or he would've been careful in how he let it down.

Sometimes that all feels very true to me. Then I get scared if I believe it, I won't know how to move forward. I already don't know how to move forward. My heart is frozen in place. Memories playing as a montage, interrupting my thought. I'm constantly asking myself: how did he just let that all go? How did every one of these million little moments just disappear from him while they haunt me? 

Sometimes I get so confused, reconciling the truest moments of him, to the ending; the kindness of the person I knew, with the cruelty of how he treated me after. Which one is true? Because they're incongruent, they can't both be true. I see these little flashes of who I thought I knew as him; the deepest place in him, the core shining through the cracks at the surface. I loved that core. I've truly never loved someone like that. And it was found worthless. Disposable. Meaningless.

No wonder my depression morphed:  The very best thing I thought one could offer to another in this life, didn't actually matter. And I didn't know it, I thought it was all that truly mattered, to love and be loved deeply. It's terrifying that I thought I was loved and thought the love I gave was significant, but neither seem true anymore. As time passes and I'm still trapped in the mystery, the cognitive dissonance is too strong – I can't believe that it was ever real. It feels like it was a dream I had. 

Now I hold myself in without even trying. I keep me from being touched. I have no desire to be open. It feels as though I might disintegrate, if I ever dare to love again and still only lose; if I let myself be seen to my depths, only to be unwanted. The pain of that is still so heavy, I find myself amazed I've survived it this long. 

Far From Through

It dawned on me, this isn't going away. I've never loved someone that way. And like the drop on your stomach on a rollercoaster or driving down a steep hill, it hit me: I might always feel this. I don't doubt that I can love again, if that's where my life and path leads. But I have this anchored feeling; grounded in me heavy and settled, like gravity of a thing - that this love will persist in me. It brought me to tears writing that, because the missing is so heavy, too, and I don't want to feel it. The weight of carrying a care that is severed and knowing it will be my companion for a long time, maybe even indefinitely. It's another facet of grief. 

I realized recently I'm in another wave of grief. I didn't really feel it for a while, at least not often, and my life went on fairly normally. Perhaps I even distracted myself from it. But you can never do that for long with grief and longing. They make themselves known; demand your attention when you've turned away from or lost sight of them. They remind you that they are far from through here. 

Though I've never done *this* before, I do remember feeling like I'd never not feel it. I've loved someone in a romantic relationship before, but this was different, deeper. This was past the infatuation, to the part where you've examined it and you choose it. I knew this was what I wanted, because it was like the way that coming home feels or the way you know your own name. It's a strange and confusing feeling to reconcile now with the fact that he's not in my life. To find yourself in a mix of certainty and want for something that no longer exists. Yet the knowing presses on as if bent on torturing me, while my grief attempts to chip away at it. As it turns out, when you know and you choose like that, it's an arduous process to break down. 

While I know I end up sounding mellow dramatic, I try to explain that this wasn't like any old breakup. This is removing from me the fragments of it all. This is coming apart from a whole lived and envisioned life that was based on a togetherness that isn't anymore. For some reason others can be quick to dismiss its significance, but I'm still here, one half of the togetherness, living with still open wounds it left on me.

There is a gaping hole in my life that I'm forced to become familiar with. In spite of my loneliness, as I succumb to it, I'm finding right now I need to be single. I'm finding my heart needs indefinite time to sort through how such certainty became such uncertainty, calling my intuition into question. I don't know if I know how to choose someone. I don't know if I know how to receive love or what it even actually is. I don't know if I know how to love someone else. I don't know how my heart will heal from this ... but I know it's far from through. 

What Dating Has Taught Me About Myself

People always talk about how you learn so much about yourself through dating.  I guess I never realized until now that they're right, but in reality how it is so harmful.  See, the men I've dated have taught me that I'm wonderful, "enchanting", amazing, kind, intelligent, sexy, - but not worth it.  "It" being effort, communication, honesty, time, respect, self-reflection, being heard, buying a drink, leaving a prime parking spot...you name it.  I'm great – but not worthy.

Don't get me wrong, as I've had to tell my therapist many times, I don't believe this at all – but they all seem to.  So I keep getting my hopes up and dashed, whether a shallow or deep encounter.  Each and every time, I can think back and find somewhere he didn't want to put the work in.  Now, I'm not demanding backflips through crazy hoops, or asking for anything unreasonable, by any means.  In fact I think I'm asking for what I deserve, as a human being offering my time and heart.  Somehow I haven't met a man that is willing to put in the effort where it's needed.

It's exhausting and discouraging. I know I don't deserve to be treated this way, but I find myself questioning if there's anyone out there who will treat me as though all the things they think are attractive about me, actually make me deserving of their effort.  That anyone will treat me as if once found, I'm someone unquestioningly worth effort to keep around.  I find myself taking what I can get, until I am frustrated that I have to tolerate these things – because even confronting is too much. 

Dating has taught me that I'm both too much and not worth it.  Can you blame me if I feel completely closed off to admiration always intermixed with rejection?