I Try, I Try

M

I still miss him.

I've come to the painstakingly slow realization that the 'him' I miss may not be the man I watch move around me when I enter that cafe. That man is not kind.

When I first met M, I was not in the mindset of dating or even possessing an attraction to men as a whole. In the front of my mind, he was the stereotypical musician working in the service industry, although his talent does allow him to periodically tour. He is intelligent and charming in a non-threatening way, but you know there's something more under that hood. I thought to myself, I've seen this guy before, and I don't even want to be his buddy. We are co-workers and I was good with that. That began to slowly shift after our first employee outing; he gave me a challenge, and I accepted. I went and I danced. The stitched together blanket of misfit toys found themselves laughing. The transition picked up speed when I found out he was experiencing a really low period in his life. I didn't want him to feel alone; he was where I've been. We began to talk about music, sadness, alcoholism and recovery, and the shitty feeling of not knowing what the fuck we were doing in life. I began to look forward to the days we'd meet outside; the cover of an umbrella being our only protection from rain or sun. I wanted to share my day with him. I began to ignore what my intuition was formerly screaming to avoid.

I remember the two days I thought, "Wow. This guy is someone else. I am wrong." The first being the day I came in so fucking sad and exhausted. I was barely hanging on to my sobriety and I was not a functioning adult. I was in survival. He turned on Taylor Swift and had put out the ingredients for my comfort coffee. I felt seen. I felt cared for.

The next being the day I was upset that Taylor Swift may not align with what is ethical. I was worried that I was wrong in continuing to listen to her music. Frankly, I imagine he gave zero fucks but I was upset and so he put in the effort. He reminded me of all the amazing things she had done during her rise to fame. We talked about where she had started from and the things she has had to endure. I felt calmer after talking to him. I felt heard.

I had thought that I was helping him when I first opened up my heart. Instead, I found myself understanding that something else was occurring. I was smiling more. Laughing felt strange and unfamiliar, but with him I floated through the weird. I was living again. He had seemingly helped me.

M seems to carry himself in a quiet confidence. I had respected that about him. He didn't seem to have anything to prove to anyone. If you ask someone who hasn't dated him, he's a great dude. My walls came down in so many ways. The push and pull kept me locked in. We spoke of the futures we envisioned. I shared my weaknesses, my desires, my fears, and my hopes. He always likes to say he isn't good at talking, but the collected hours I've spent listening would beg to differ.

One day it would feel like our future would begin, the next would leave me reeling in my deeply rooted fear of not being enough. We were by all accounts, a tale of two fools. An addict in recovery falling in love with someone who had no plan or actual desire to ever recover from substance abuse. A Womxn with trauma and low self-esteem with a man who used bodies when all else failed.

In the end I remember only feeling invisible, alone, anxious, and voiceless.

I can now live in the what-ifs or the maybes, or I can remind myself of this fact: His treatment of me changed at certain points. How he treated me before he found interest in me, there's truth in there. How he treats me now, could hold an answer.

Whether he is a lost boy or he is right where he plans to stay for the rest of his life, that shouldn't matter anymore. However, I cannot stop the piercing voice in my head that says: he is better than that. 

Whenever I exit from the place of -he deserves friendship, patience, kindness, humor, and safety- I crumble under guilt and shame.

I don't know how many people he has had who truly see him and have loved him through it all. I can't pretend to know much of anything about him anymore. What is clarity? Where was the honesty? What I do know is that I didn't have anyone who believed in me. Now I do, and the impact that has had on my trajectory is immeasurable. I still hope the man I miss is in there... somewhere. I hope he is real.

But that belief is fading as I feel myself moving further and further away from that framed painting which sat on the floor rather than being hung.

Studying Politics

As sad as it is to admit, this is the first time I've never run into the arms of distraction while feeling heartbreak.

Did it almost take me out? Yes. I entered a bar, tracing the line, almost falling back over the edge. I sit here today, still sober. Another man has not profited from my prior destruction, and because I've been pushing through, I have discovered two new eyes sitting within my skull. My ears don't just hear, they grasp the lesson. I believe what I am being shown outside of stories and paintings of possible futures; empty apologies mean nothing. What do I see and hear right now, in front of me? I pay attention and I notice how my body feels.

How often have any of us accepted treatment we've been told is normal and expected? Boys will be boys. How often can a man say something cruel while labeling it a joke? How does our reaction so often become the topic of debate?

I will continue to sit back and listen. How do people believe they can talk to me? Why? How do they talk to other people? Did the way they talk to me change as their likelihood of being fucked decreased/increased? What if they realize that likelihood never existed in the first place? Do they get resentful about a lack of payoff?

What I've learned is that a recovery program does not make someone a better human being. When a person wants to be your friend their behavior does not jump around all over the place, there is consistency at the core of their existence.

When someone wants to be your friend, they do not expect you to be their mother, maid, therapist, sexualized fantasy, and muse; who they'll most certainly replace once they are bored or find a better supply. Those who are not your friend definitely hate boundaries.

I've said it before and I'll say it again now: I have dated and held connections with those who have wanted to have a hold of me, not be with me.

And because of my time reflecting, through spirals and falls into the dark, I see more clearly now why I would have seen that as "being enough". My parents did not see me as enough. They never taught me what healthy love was. They did not love each other; they were dependent on one-another. They existed in a dysfunctional system and that system caused devastation to their children.

Keith was demanding and needy, he controlled everyone he could. He used his childhood to gain sympathy and to achieve the largest benefit of doubt. I was told he wasn't abusive. His anger and displeasure were the fault of everyone else. My mother sucks the air out of the room. There is no space for anyone else to exist. She needs to be the one cared for, protected, and carried. She stole my voice to protect her abuser, and the abuser of her children. I became who I became, a Womxn I no longer need to be.

I hope to be someone different. I've never known better, but that doesn't mean I can't be and do better.

I deserve better.

I'm going to start by healing whatever broken part of me still cries over a dude who doesn't know my birthday or how old I am, even though we spent my 34th birthday together.

It has been a long week.

from the attic

I watch them from the window
Dark figures never know how to properly end
Always leave a signature as they depart
Caution to the wind

His shadows were invited
Up to the view
Permission to strike up pleasure
An ever-present nonchalant attitude

I gave him my safe place
He wanted to own the whole cafe
I gave him my heart
He wanted to toy with my brain

He's a dirty dime in a plastic bucket
A wavering no pump chump, with nice hair
I count the change out
My copper renaissance love affair

Ask myself to breathe in then out
Beg myself to move
I stand amongst my fellows in a musty basement room
Admit my weaknesses and pain

Shoulder the shame I was given at three
Growl out the anger from when I was first seen
Tear apart my rib cage in the name of eve
He and they cannot have me

**NEED TO EDIT** 

to remember

He talked of putting down the bottle, whiskey near his arm
I believed in him then
Around the cafe; a cloud of smoke to the side of his charm
He wore that same hoodie
One syllable behind my closed mind
An open mirror to welcome the sound
He could never avoid the need for long


(TWO SEPARATE OR MAKE MORE COHESIVE?)

An evening to meet his friends
Then some backlash to his backout
Under a neon moon, a charismatic force felt smackdown
The same night I'd see him switch out
Had to jumpstart his car
His reflection left town
Reconciliation isn't one with the crowd

I tried to exit through the alley, shadows to my side
His whispered promises clasped my mind
I thought we'd be just fine
Afterall, he had said I was alright
We were a December to remember
...... (NEEDS MORE HERE)
He is a year I can only hope to forget

**NEED TO ADD/EDIT**

Emotional Irrationality

What is the truth?
There are no rules for thee
Those all seem to belong here, with me
Now holding heavy resentment for the word clarity
Late night musings bring up something, but I won't retreat

I muster laughter
at the expense of irony
Take it back
Take it back
Take me back to before that passenger seat

Do you know where I've been?
Did you listen at all to our shared dreams?
Eliciting a response from a barstool
Featuring the written words of a melodramatic dead-fool
I'm not the beast you've driven me to see

I've never been one to go down on my knees
Gifted me quiet desperation, not defeat
Do you know what I've found?
Did you see who we could be?
Everything's now familiar terrain 

There are ones who impact everyone they meet
A heavy burden and responsibility
Without heart and soul
Plausible deniability
Even while sitting in the driver's seat

Do you fear what I see?
Can you taste what I breathe?
There are those who choose
to avoid accountability
They break through doors and smash our walls
Leave us a mess, rinse and repeat

**NEED TO EDIT**

Hole in The Ground

I watch your name slide
further and further down
I keep my promise
I won't make a sound
I build conversations that will never be read
Like I miss you even now
Even now that I know my true pal
Or why your world blurs
Why words are used to burn
You steer that deranged ship
I beat in the sense of it,
with each and every rip
We were never meant to fit

You're a wild card with a hot rod
I am a body in someone else's bed
I build conversations that will never be said
I thought I'd never spill
Our secret love affair
I'd see things from your point-of-view
Anonymity
Respectfully
You're a lost guy, simple nod, a quiet fret
So go find your solace
Time in a church well spent
Build conversations, while spoon fed
You're in hindsight, no longer a threat

Two worlds collided
Needed a drink,
just to pretend you can think
I am who I need
and what I strive to be
I build conversations to reconnect
Can't pretend to know
Why through a tragic rage
This cycle always finds me
Terror of proximity
To come upon another blank page
Admission for one
No entrance fee

You sipped your tea until I walked down the street
A liquid substitute for who you pretended you could be

**NEED TO EDIT**

Exhaustive Time Out

I have been struggling with who I am and the things I have done to others. I can say, "Well, it was the alcohol and the drugs."

That would be a lie, and it is uncomfortable to sit with the realization that it is who I am capable of being sober or not. I am me and I am bits and pieces of those who have harmed me. I've gathered my own toxicity along the way.

When I was a little girl, I would put myself in time out when I felt I had done something wrong. I'd be way ahead of the adults in my life, maybe as means of survival or avoidance of the wrath that would surely rain down on me. I'd head to my time out chair, my bedroom, or the closet. I'd punish myself.

Is that what I'm doing now? Have I put myself in time out for being with monsters and being a monster myself? When can I come out?

Most days I don't want to return to society, but then I have these moments of heavy loneliness. My therapist has been trying to teach me about intuition and trusting myself, while also stating that I have a negative outlook on others. Who is left to trust when those who were supposed to protect you instead harmed you? Where can I turn when those I have loved and been completely devoted to, have manipulated that love and devotion?

That struggle has entered into my recovery. There is a correlation between substance abuse and Narcissism/Sociopathic tendencies. There are manipulators, users, and predators in the room. They've replaced alcohol and drugs with people. They appreciate the hierarchy (which we are gaslit about the existence of). They find a usefulness in a system put in place by white men for white men. It is in the language of everything we are supposed to read and devote ourselves too. For obvious reasons, I withhold that devotion. I've been there before, many times.

I wish there were a different way to find healing within recovery. A way that doesn't involve placing myself back in the very cage that causes harm.

As I come closer to reaching one year without alcohol, I can honestly say coming back from my relapse has been hard the entire way. I wish I had never picked up that drink in June of 2022. This time around I am unwinding myself from programming that began the moment I took my first cry in this world. It has involved a lot of pain, anger, frustration, and sitting in the discomfort -no matter what-.

So yes, I suppose I am in a self-enforced time out, because not only do I not trust others, but I also do not trust myself.

Get Out of Me

I signed the invisible contract of his
In small writing it read that my hair was too wild.
He hated it frizzy.
Flannels were meant for donation and not for wearing.
I wasn't in the world to make friends.
I wasn't funny anyway.
My laugh must be quiet or not at all.
I give people headaches.
My taste in music must not be shared.
I sing the same 5 songs, oh come what may?
My writing wasn't real so that must be halted immediately.
I swallowed my words until they exploded within me.
I was to be grateful he chose me.
I couldn't show I questioned him choosing me.
I wasn't like the other ones.
Was I pretty enough, or just enough mystery?
I would look forward to saying yes.
No must mean yes.
My voice became silence with no remedy.
I must give up my happy thoughts;
Turn them all into a future enemy.
I can't feel energy.
I can't move freely.
Repeat the cycle unquestioningly,
Tell my therapist it is me who is not thinking clearly.
Choking meant love,
bruising meant joking and loyalty.
I could be part of the family, but not be the family.
I was an odd duck in a room full of heavy dishonesty.
The monster was allowed to devour me.
I must say thank you and sit on the couch.
Accepting my crazy identity.

Tory Talbot Hall

We were sitting outside of your mom's back door drinking beer. You had somehow convinced me that you'd finally accepted we would "just be friends" so I came over to hang out. It had been a bit since I had pulled away. I remember laughing and joking, and me asking you where your other friends were. You had said you'd be having some friends over, yet I was still the only one there.

You texted some people and they started showing up not very long after. Were they ever actually coming? When did they leave? How did you get me into your room? A room you normally shared with your little brother.

I'm still confused about what I drank and how I ended up so completely lost on time and location of my body. Was it the beer? How many did I have? I don't remember having that many. Did you convince me to take a shot? Or was that another night? How did you get me into your room? Your little brother was at your dad's house that night.

How long did it take for you to undo my pants and start touching me? Was it before or after you began touching yourself? How long had you been touching me before I woke up? Did you expect that? Did you think I'd find the strength to stand then stumble my way down your hall?

The note on my car, when I was home. The roses on my car, when I was at work. Did you watch me? Plotting until you could make me yours.

Why were you so worried about me waking your mom up? Would she have been so easily able to explain this away if she had seen me? Does she still explain you away?

You tried to cry. Were you aiming to confuse me further? Making me think you cared about me, and that I had it all wrong? You were the victim after all; things with me were different and you just wished I could see that. Why can't the girls you love ever see that? Those things you would say about her too. Did you rape her? How many times have you done this since?