To Put Off the Conscience

My life seems to say to me: remember that time you got your heart broken, oh and that OTHER time, and when you didn't matter to that person enough to have a conversation, or not enough to that person to bother to see you, or that person to pay attention to you?

And it stings. And aches. The place where the wound was gets poked and prodded again, the moment it seems to heal.

And I wish I knew what it was like to be able to put off the conscience and do what I wanted to, even if it hurt others...and yet, there are constant reminders of what that looks like in our world. It is the reason anyone is on the receiving end of something painful, even life-threatening, and I don't want to be the cause of that in someone else's life.

Pain can teach you that you need to harden yourself, or it can teach you not to be hardened toward others; rather to value them. Wounds can cause you to unleash pain on others like a wrath and continue to ache on the inside in a way that oozes outward to infect - or they can cause you to take care not to be a hypocrite with intentional actions and words.

More than anything I find myself prone to indignation that these are the ways we find it acceptable to act and to use the privilege of the time we've been given and one another's company.

That I Love You, I Couldn't Help Myself

I didn't love you just because you were there,
but because I couldn't help myself;
I wanted to spend as many waking moments with you
Learn as much of who you are and what made you that
Hear as much of your thought and as much of your voice
See as much of your eyes meeting mine as possible.
I loved you because I couldn't help myself; You were magnetizing, and I cared about your inner world -- little did I know -- in a way you didn't about mine.
If you would've let me, I would've orbited around you and reflected your wonder back to you.
You didn't,

and I don't know what you wanted, to this day.
I don't know what
I even knew of you -- did I even know you?
Who are you?
That I love you --
And it resounds like a rock
tumbles into an abyss...
that I love you.

Life in the Gray

Lately I'm floating on a sea of so many questions, so much uncertainty. I'm someone who likes to ask, likes to seek, and likes to find. It's been a while since I've found much, but I'm still asking and still seeking. Some of it has been quite painful, I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge the depth of pain that has also been with me through the questions. But I ask. And I seek.

One thing that is not a concrete "answer" but one I'm finding as I ask the questions is that some things in life are just in the gray. There has to be space for wonder and questioning and seeking and growing and stretching and withdrawing. We seem to want so badly to have answers, sorting everything by rule into the black or the white. But I've been finding I cannot live without the questions; I cannot push them away and live as if they do not beckon me to examine them.

Even as I write this, I am sitting a few feet away from a family eating dinner at this same cafe. The couple's young son is questioning everything, and it's like music to my ears. Drink it in young one. Ask the questions and seek to understand.

Because the thing I'm learning is I'm better for seeking to understand rather than just taking things as they come, without wonder. Some answers are harder to come by, and may look more gray than black or white. Learning to live in the discomfort of questions unanswered has made me stronger, increasing my endurance for the gray of life – of which there is so much, if we're honest with ourselves. At first, this state of unknown was taxing, and it's still less comfortable than certainty, but it's helping me become better and stronger, and more empathetic.

And I think that's an option with everything we encounter in life. Not just what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but every pain, every hard place can be something that breaks you down a bit more, or helps you become stronger, and better, even if worn. I'm not to the 'better' yet – though I feel good today – I'm seeing more how there is courage in facing the fear of the unknown and the pain.

by you, I suffer

You...

A beautiful,
dark
figment
of my imagination.

Kanye calls it his beautiful dark twisted fantasy,
but
I don't think
you were my fantasy
cause
even my nightmares
aren't
that dark,
usually I just die
or run and save the world,
not suffer --

by you, I suffer.

Scary Moments, Strength, & Wonder Woman

So if you haven't noticed lately, I'm still a mess. And in the past few days it's felt quite heavy. Maybe it's just going back to work after laying around existing and attempting to tune out physical pain for two weeks. In the heaviness, I've found myself angry; I'm angry that he put me here without remorse. I'm angry that I find myself in pain that's hard to wade through and keep afloat in. I'm angry that I was more committed and it hurts like hell.

I've been struggling a lot, and constantly trying to figure out where I can fit in therapy, can I afford therapy, and where do I find a therapist that I actually like, and can I practice therapy someday when I feel right now like I'm falling apart, and how does one get medicated? Like I'm that kind of mess. I should be working right now, but I just can't get my weary heart to write about insurance.

So just the other day I was thinking about it all. I read a past facebook post about God only knows what (I post all the time). I thought about how I used to be strong. At first this thought bothered me, it's been a recurring thought throughout this...thing, and it made me sad. But then I remembered something else: I was just as vulnerable at my strongest. Feeling weak and broken doesn't mean I'm no longer strong.

I saw Wonder Woman last night, and without giving too much away I'll say: I needed it. You've got this incredibly powerful, strong woman and a part of her strength and her very purpose is to be courageous enough to believe in the good of mankind – and then do something about it. I caught myself feeling empowered watching a super hero movie. She was both fierce and vulnerable. It was brave to believe the things she did, yet she wasn't spared the pain it brought.

And you see, I sort of realized it's hard to be strong when being strong also means being vulnerable. Sometimes, or what can feel like oftentimes, that vulnerability gets you hurt. Loving with your heart wide open can leave you faint and weary. But I came to another conclusion, too...

Tonight I saw a friend of mine going through it. She wearily asked, "How can it be like this when I've done all I can?" Her sentiments resonated with me, not just from my recent relationship debacle, but from life. Then I found myself saying something to her that, in my own haze of struggle, I needed to hear:

You're strong! Don't let a scary moment make you forget it.

I have been stuck in a real pain that I'm still not fully sure how to dismantle and I certainly haven't had luck wishing away, but I can choose strength. It's hard, and it doesn't feel good, or secure sometimes, but I can draw on my strength. It isn't gone, I can call it up and find it again.

Just yesterday I told myself I can and will be strong again...but by this morning at my desk I forgot. As I said just a bit ago, I decided I don't want to let the scary moments make me forget my strength anymore.

What We Do When We Avoid Pain

My life has felt like a mess. My worldview is teetering on edge because I can't make sense out of so many painful things happening over and over. Being teased with good things, only to have them ripped away cruelly. I've felt like a broken record because I know I've talked about it so much, but I also feel like I've hardly been listened to. It's why I write about it.

A minute to at most a few minutes into talking through any one painful part of my life and how stuck I feel, I'm usually offered a solution. As if the thing that's been on cycle through my mind for weeks and months can suddenly make sense to someone who listened to me talk about it for a minute – suddenly they have an answer. Usually it's that "everything will be fine", or it'll turn around. I believed that, for a while. Then it felt like things were turning around, until they weren't anymore. Until something else bad happened, followed by something else; until I lost the job I loved when I was house shopping, until I got my heartbroken yet again, and then after having my hope naively reignited, having it crushed again. Stuck in places of pain like being in a boat with a hole, bailing water out as it comes in.

I'm still sad a lot. I'm still looking for sense and meaning a lot. And the thing is I just want that to be heard and held, not fixed because I have the utmost doubt that just chinning up will fix this. For so long I felt not like myself, so long that it now feels like the new normal. At the same time, I still feel like I have to argue to have the pain in my life recognized and not brushed over.

I know: people don't know what to say to pain and often they just say something. I'm getting used to that, learning to have grace for it. But I also wish there was a greater effort to learn to think before speaking to a person in pain. I catch myself doing it, too, all the time. If there's one valuable thing this time in my life has taught me, it's to take pause before responding to a person in pain. My whole life I was that positive, look-at-the-bright-side person, so I still do it too, but I'm striving and learning to allow people to be in their reality.

See, being the one who sits and really listens, believing for something better without voicing it – that is a link to the hope outside the reality that the darkness hides. Sometimes life can be so painful, it makes it incredibly difficult to hope; it becomes scary, not just like how hope is often a risk but a thing that is truly hard to do. When we avoid another's pain by assuming they can take hold of hope, we leave them in that darkness to fend for themselves.

In these months that have stretched on farther than I'd ever imagined they would, the best words I've heard over and over again came from my best friend: "That must be so hard." They didn't make the pain disappear, they soothed simply by being with me in the reality that this is so hard.

What I Learned About Love

I can't tell you how many times I've thought to myself how pathetic I must be in the last two months. Pathetic! Constant ups and downs of missing someone who won't even acknowledge me, who didn't even value me enough to dignify me with a face-to-face conversation about the end of our relationship. I've missed that guy so much and it has felt pathetic. Why do I miss him? I have trouble letting go.

Even amongst feelings of anger and half-joking comments to my friends about how I'd like to key his car, I missed him. A lot. For weeks I've woken up with him as the first thought in my head, several of those times starting my day with a cry because this is what it is and there's not a damn thing I can do. I cared for someone and I miss him, and that hurts.

It's a familiar process, even though it's a different relationship than my last. The other one only just stopped hurting, it seems, but otherwise still feels fresh so I can't help but note similarities in processing another chance at love lost. See I thought after my first relationship I'd never feel excited or passionate about another man. I'm a loyal person, so I thought no one else would make me feel that way, could be that comfortable and easy. I thought I'd always feel like he was missing from my life. And for a long several months it did. But even after the dust fully settled, and I'd even moved on and been hurt by another, I realized I still love him. I'm not pining, I have no desire to pursue anything, but I still care.

I noticed it a time or two over the last year, and figured it was just that not enough time had passed. Especially before having another relationship, I thought I just hadn't fully found a way to move on. While that's partially true, the attachment was real and the separation painful, felt unnatural. And that's where I came to realize something: I was wrong when I thought I'd never feel a strong connection and love again, as if I thought I'd spent what I had to give. I wouldn't recommend trying to love someone romantically more than once (I hope, if anyone else, it's only one more) because it wears on the heart, but it can be done.

Just in this past week I started to feel normal again, not like I'd forever wake up each morning and cry, prying myself out of bed. The strange thing is that even while starting to feel normal and not broken, I still miss him. I still pray for him (nearly the only prayer I can muster, lately). I still just want to sit on his couch and listen to music and talk – and that thought still makes me tear up. Even though I'm starting to heal, still...

What I learned is that love isn't meant to be a passing thing, which is why ending a relationship that had it is so very painful. The love continues to persist in you without its object. Hence grief commonly becomes a companion. Painfully it doesn't displace love. But neither did loving once already inhibit me from it again. The beautiful, hopeful thing is that it's not all used up; I have not run out of love. Same in romantic relationships as with friendships long gone, the love leftover doesn't keep us from finding that there's more to be had and more to be given.

And the stuff that remains, it's okay.