It’s like you exist in the semi-conscious arena, just outside reality, the space on the edge of my fingertips that I try to grasp over and over, in some vain attempt to bring you closer. Every time I think you are within my reach, you slip further away. I know it’s supposed to be this way. You can’t be mine, you aren’t mine and likely you never will be mine. Then why can’t you just go away?

I can’t rid you from my thoughts, the sense that you and I keep walking the same path for some similar reasons. There’s the thick growth around us, but through the branches I keep seeing your face. Sometimes with shocking clarity. You come so close and yet slip back, too far away for me to touch or even see clearly. Why do I love you so? Why do I think I can love you when I’ve been given no reason to feel that way? Is it all in my mind? Why can’t you just go away?

I don’t want this in my mind, but you stick with a vengeance that can’t be released. I try to look past the coincidence of you, the reappearance time and again, in the strangest of ways. What does it mean? Where are you and I headed? Why do I think it matters? Why can’t I stop?

I want to stop, and I don’t want to stop. Sometimes I feel that I need you there in order to keep my reality from crushing me. Loving you, even from so far away, keeps me feeling a spark that sometimes fades from my life. You’re there, imaginatively, to breathe life into me, to be my defibrillator, to keep me alive. I’m sorry to place this on you, and I am glad you don’t know that I make you carry this burden. And I sometimes think it will fade off with a scream if I just can see your face, in person, once more. But then again, I can’t make that promise. To be within your airspace might make it even worse. I know that it would be safe, you’re too decent to be wary of a temptation. And I may be just kidding myself that you share the same feelings.

I wish you would just go away. But I also wish you wouldn’t. Mostly I just wish to see you, and talk to you again. It isn’t much.

Snow? Winter? A new life?

Likely all of the above. Hopefully, with the expectation of promise, the last will be the most anticipated and the least expected.

I need a swift and abrupt turn-around in this life. I need it like oxygen. I feel like I am on a suffocating flight to nowhere, the end of the line not just a road that drops off into an abyss but a headlong slam into a brick wall that ends my life, implicitly and soulfully, if not emotionally forever. I can’t die inside. Not yet.

I pour my love, and the life that I want into my creations, my hands touching the ingredients that leap beneath my fingers and become a different entity, much like I wish myself to be. I work the magic, pray for a perfect outcome and speak the words it evolves to those who wish to listen. I learn what it tells me. I let go of what it doesn’t. Moving from item to item, I try my hand and feel how it plays out in my life. When it’s successful, I rejoice.  I want this for my existence, for my daily bread and my breathing and my heart. My cooking is like my life. I am constantly experimenting but never landing in one spot, on one thing. This is good, but like my food and my recipes, I need to be able to tell my story, to exist within the parameters set by my meals, to learn what it is that it teaches me. I am, in my kitchen and among the printed recipes of my life, constantly learning, evolving and changing.

There are many paths to follow.

And the excitement is to see where they lead me, how I get there and what I find at the end.

“When a huge change both thrills and terrifies you, you can be certain that you are on the right track.”

Within the strips of amethyst that line the morning sky, and the narrow band of fresh snow on the ground lies the reminder that the months ahead are swiftly descending, bringing the cold, snow and darkness. The air breathes the chill of winter. Above me, the cold sky looks breakable and raw like ice.

I don’t mind winter. When snow falls in abundance I take to my cross country skis and pound myself through a daily workout. Last winter it resulted in being able to finally begin losing stubborn pounds that formerly refused to budge. And it’s time alone, among the trees, with the chill and cold all around me. It’s exercise beyond exercise, better than most anything you can put your body through, a complete workout. And it’s me time away, time for myself and time to just be somewhere else and not in the middle of another person’s space and life, something I have really been in short supply of lately.

I don’t selfishly take the time away that I want either, and sometimes find myself highly resentful of this. It isn’t that I am not encouraged, it’s that leaving the home in his hands results in a level of angst and neglect that makes me burn with frustration. I feel like I can’t go anywhere unless meals are planned out and everything is cleaned up because there’s just no manner of forethought put into taking care of those things. Although I will hear the words ‘We will manage’ come out of his mouth, I know what that means. And ‘managing’ in his words, doesn’t really mean much.

Fall is moving along at a brisk clip, then Winter starts to unfold in front of me and our situation feels more terminable than ever. I’m terrified of circumstance beyond what we can control. It’s painful to think of the consequences, the future and the finances. My stomach is in a state of panic most every day and there is no end in sight. I pray for a guardian angel to come over us and take this burden off our backs. I pray for help and peace and trust. I feel like I am being crushed and broken, suffocating underneath this. It has been, singularly, far and away, the worst decision ever made for us. I feel like even earning a paycheck would be only a bandaid on a gaping arterial wound. It won’t stem the loss or slow down the pain and yet it would take the edge off, and still, I can’t find the work I so desperately need. Not only for our bank account, but for my sanity. I need to get away from him, from the incessant proximity.

If I don’t, I fear that we, the two that we have made, will be crushed as well.

This ghost, last seen at age 24 or so but so loved for so many angst and poorly tangled years. He was a love I never even knew I had, and then lost before I even understood it’s intensity. He was an icon in my teenage years; the sexy muscled legs, deepest of blue eyes and a smile that pierced my budding teenage heart. We formed a friendship. We laughed, played, cried and delved into what awakening depths our shallow minds could go, and through it all, we loved each other deeply. And neither one of us had the strength to tell the other.

Then we grew, graduated and moved into young adults. Still, we laughed, played and stayed with each other, just the two among the many bodies of our circle. We were friends, with fire in our eyes. And on one night, we gave in to the desire. It was incredible and intense and so passionate and yet, in the bright sunshine of morning, it was still too much. And neither of us had the strength to tell the other. But we tried to keep going. It couldn’t. We couldn’t. And after a few more years, many miscommunications, listening to lies and fabrications and ignoring what was happening in our own hearts, we parted for what seemed to be the last time.

And now he’s back. He is back. And I know the truth now. He never hated me like I thought. He wasn’t angry at me. He didn’t use me. He loved me. I didn’t believe that he did. And he couldn’t tell me. I’ve struggled for 20 years with questions about why- why he left, why he was angry and why he wouldn’t look at me. He answered them in 10 minutes. He apologized. We apologized and admitted the feelings still remain, albeit with now 7000 miles between us, 20 years and a whole lifetime of change, experience, children, spouses and sentiment.

But he is under my skin. I gaze at the picture he sent, his blue eyes still piercing through my heart, his mouth still long and lean. I look at his hands. I remember how they felt on my young and hungry skin, the way he touched me, a fire leaving ashes. We had one night that remains burned in my memory and how is it, now so many many years later, that I can recall every detail? Every touch, kiss and caress? I can almost smell his skin. Why this vivid memory, so powerful and strong? Why now?

I think of attraction, and of life and how you can be married, happily, and still catch the eye of someone, still be pierced by one look. I don’t want to disappear into a woman who no longer wishes to search for attraction, any more than I want to be a woman who is no longer attractive. I don’t want to think I can let go of being fit, agile and strong just because there’s a ring on my finger, or fall into a chasm where I can’t look at an attractive man anymore. But how do I turn off the memory of one? How do I stop the swirling in my head that the old flame has stirred?

I’m so glad to have reconciled with him, resolved the questions and concerns and gained clarity to an understanding that is long, long overdue. I’m glad to know it wasn’t me, as I thought all these years. I’m glad to hear that the lies fed to me by a ‘friend’ were just that; lies. And that it was no friend, not at the time. I’m happy to have closed off that chapter of my life, and laid waste to the confusion that always surfaced when I thought of him, my ghost. I wish now that he could become real in my eyes, live in person. But that has to wait, and hopefully, time and space will cool the fire that has roared to life inside of me.

I’ve missed you, old friend. I’ve missed you a lot, and for so long. Thank you for coming back to my life, for helping me to understand and to heal. I needed it, my soul needed it. Let’s move on, as the adults, life strengthened that we are, with years of evolving under our belts. Drop the past, the memories and the hurt. I’ve really missed you, old friend.

But I miss my babies, again. I miss the tiny hands reaching for me and the face that needs me. I miss the smiles and kisses and love and the smell of their hair. I miss drawing my babies to my breast to nourish them, their warm cheeks against me, the eager way their mouths find me, to fill them up. I miss them sleeping peacefully in my arms, or fragrant and humid in their beds, the light soft on their faces.

I never even got to know these two, the ones we dreamed about. I knew them in my mind, felt them in my heart, but they never came to us. The dream was dashed and broken, and even after almost six years it’s still so acute and I wish it wasn’t so. But how do you let go of a dream that felt so real and so defined? How do you block out the feeling that you’ve completely missed out on something so miraculous and affirming? I have my one, the son…..the one and only, but he’s well on his way to adulthood and less and less does he need me or turn to me for his life. He’ll always ‘need’ me, but it isn’t the same.

I think about our lives and how it would be so different if they had come along. I see how manic he can be about the nieces and nephews, how he jumps to please them and make them happy, often at a complete disregard for anyone else, how he seems to have to bend over backwards for them as if one little slip and they won’t even look at him again. Would he have been this way to his own children? Would he feel like he was a failure if he couldn’t give them everything? You can’t’ it’s impossible- they need to fail, they need to slip and fall and hurt themselves and wear band-aids and bruises and sometimes casts because life throws everyone around, no matter what age they are, but he would try to make it perfect and he would fail. He would fail and it would be ugly; he can’t accept failure, can’t accept disappointing someone, can’t tell anyone ‘No’ but at the same time he can’t make a concrete decision either. There are times that I see him be so irrational with G that I find myself feeling grateful that we didn’t have children of our own. And then I think ‘What kind of person thinks that?’

The family, his family….I sometimes simply think that if anything happened to him that they would just fade away. I have no blood tie to them. There are no blood children between him and I, so my tie to the family would likely be severed if that was how it happened, if he went first, maybe quick and unexpected. I’m just ‘his wife’; I’m not ‘the mother of his children’ and there would be no need. I think it’s irrational, for sure, but there are times that it just seems that way to me, and so I pull away. It’s not intentional.

But I miss those babies a lot, especially lately.

But I’m also angry and frustrated and fed up. That feeds the restless spirit like oxygen to flames. I’m tired of the unspoken expectations, the passiveness, the lack of comprehension. I’m tired of being expected to answer all the questions. I’m tired of ALL the expectations, of being told ‘You’ll take care of it, right?’ of releasing himself from responsibility, the acquiesce. Am I always enslaved to remind him of the need for space when I’m frustrated? I don’t WANT your hand on my back!! I stepped out of the house for a reason, and it wasn’t so you will follow me! Back off!!!

Why do I need to do this? Are the parts of me, that make ‘Me’ into me….he doesn’t keep them close. He drops them like a rotten egg. I say something, anything…like I’ve said to him dozens of times before and he looks at me blankly, no understanding. This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. And I am sick to my stomach over the repetition.

Am I falling apart? Am I suffocating under the ennui of my barren life? There isn’t enough to occupy the days and the boredom drives into my skin like molten steel. Our finances are a huge strain and I can’t find work to take the pressure off. The damn renters have become sloofers. We blew a tire on a car we’ve had barely three weeks. I’m being sucked under by this insidious garbage of my day to day life. This isn’t the crushing depression from my 20′s. I know it’s not that. This is the day to day pressure of a life I didn’t order, one that hasn’t been what I had hoped. I try to be patient, to feel that there can be faith during these trying times but I’m not feeling the burden lifted. I so want out of this hole. I want a good job, a place to be productive and busy, to be earning some money to take the pressure off of him to provide, so maybe he doesn’t have to work 12-14 hours a day just so we don’t sink in the whirlpool. But we don’t sink; even when it seems like we’re about to go under, the money comes from somewhere so I know that there is something happening that I can’t see. I need to be more positive, show more faith, make the words from my lips less about the crap that flutters around me and more about what I hope to be accomplishing, but it’s proven to be a lot more difficult than I ever imagined.

Until then, just back off, would you?

You are away on your own, I am now empty yet I don’t long to be where you are.

I do.

But I don’t also. I don’t know which urge is stronger.

Maybe the emptiness I feel is the yearning for something that will never come to fruition in my life. Or someone. How can I feel happiness, joy and love alongside emptiness and longing? The great mysteries of life. Why do so many wish for the permanency of marital companionship? I want to scream to them that the loneliest I’ve ever felt is sitting by my spouse’s side. The most empty I have ever been has occurred in the years since I’ve placed a ring on my left hand, took that vow and never looked back. Now I look within.

Yet so many yearn for it, for the love they feel eludes them. What about what eludes us inside our covenant circle? Inside our woven web? I see why the state of marriage has reached into that darkness, the one that consumes and strangles. I see why many walk away from the same repeated arguments and scorn. It’s hurtful to feel like you move forward only so far, dropping back again, repeat and repeat. And repeat. It’s a hollow cadence of a life you weren’t quite expecting. And yet, here you are. The lethargy of truth drags my feet down, wants to pull me under. I have to fight against it all the time.

Yet I love, fiercely. I treasure him. I ache for him, his touch, his hands wanting me, loving me; his kiss consuming me in a passionate fury. After all this time I still feel crazed with longing for him and it surprises me, humbles me. I thought it would die off, become routine and moot. I thought I would lose interest or desire but I still want him more than I don’t. In the darkness he is the love of my life. He takes my body to his own and treasures me deeply. All else slips away within the circle of his embrace.

The harsh light of day is wholly different and barren. Reality. Painful. Truth.

How easy it is to run to the darkness again and again, to hide and escape and pretend. How many just want it to strangle us, to become the excuse instead of standing against it to fight, to bare the light of reality and accept the inevitable? We change. Life changes. We grow, or not. We evolve and re-shape and mold and twist in the wind.

We must stay upright and strong, like a sapling in the hurricane. Unable to stop the force of nature, we must simply withstand the storm and come out the other side to rebuild, or shape or start fresh with what’s left.

]]> http://katewrites.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/worth-a-thousand-or-so-words/feed/ 0 Kate empty http://katewrites.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/almost-eight/ http://katewrites.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/almost-eight/#comments Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:47:59 +0000 Kate http://katewrites.wordpress.com/?p=109 ]]>

I never once thought I would be in this position, happily married for one, but with a yearning for something other than what presents itself in my life.

I think it’s become so obvious to me in the last year what drives people apart, the line that evolves and darkens between two people that inevitably splits between. I can see it, and I’ve touched it, wondering how hard the edges have to be before you cease to attempt crossing over it and laying your heart on the line once more. It’s harsh light; unfiltered and pouring down over me, glaring the inconsistencies and discrepancies in my eyes and blinding me. I hate it with everything that I am.

I spent one beautiful summer day living out a decision to bind my life to another, and for the most part I live a dream where love, passion and tenderness exist peacefully, moreso than I ever anticipated. My only issue is the ugly reality of living with another person. What wasn’t apparent then is now only too obvious, and the changes that have been made as we age and grow are now forcing me into a corner and berating me into a choice of fight or acceptance. I vowed everything on that day and it keeps me above the water, willing to fight against this current, for what stands out now, in the big picture, is piddly. And I know it’s piddly, but it’s real to me and it scratches against my skin like thorns. I either fight and risk trapping myself further in these painful truths, or I sit back, complacent, and live with the thorns. I hate that it matters, but it matters.

My love once filled the space between my outstretched arms and spilled over; a bubbling waterfall of something glorious that had always eluded my life. I couldn’t imagine how I’d gotten so lucky. But there have been countless and horrid emotional axes that chip away at it, dousing the flame and closing the gap. My arms aren’t so wide any longer, and spaces in my heart that once seemed so full and endless have become more sheltered and protected. I’m more cautious about him, and wary of the next ill-timed shot, the next laugh at my expense. I hate that he’s wounded me with such a careless flick of his tongue, and that even once I expressed my intense need for him to stop, he could not and did not. Only when I promised him without a doubt that his words were slowly killing me, that I was dying inside and my heart was shutting down to him did he see how serious I was. It bends me in two that it had to take such a threat to make him see how much he was hurting me.

I’m consumed by thoughts of another, a man so far out of my reach. I can’t stop the endless parade of his face, the touch of his hands and feel of his lips on me. I imagine the scent of his skin, his body on mine. His passion. I can feel it all. And I live on the thin edge of a dime, a sense of what I see in his eyes from so long ago that he feels the same, yet knows me to be out of his grasp and unavailable. To him I am, and to me he is. With the sliver of connection we have, I may never know.

When I took my vow, I took it seriously. I am not a cheater, although I have cheated in my mind and heart already. I am a master at rationalizing, and can twist it into the easiest strand to hold and employ but I would never step outside the boundaries of the us, no matter how gaping wide the hole is that has been blown in to our reality. I do love him and he brings to me a love that I once never imagined I would know, a family that I treasure and a life that we have created together. He is in me, through me and with me, as I am with him.

I wish for peace and trust in this, that the real part of why I am with him will become more solid and grounding. I need it badly.

Like a wind that comes up in the night caressing your face while you sleep, love will fill your eyes with the sight of a world you can’t hope to keep. Dreaming on after that moment’s gone, the light in your lover’s eyes disappears with the light of the dawn. But the morning brings strength to your restless wings, and some other lover sings to the sun’s bright corona.

I know all about these things…….