PoeticaL
cluttering the net since 2001

scars

Saturday, Sept. 25, 2004
Every time I tell someone what I really think, my true and honest opinions I get told that I am bitter etc. Just because I�m divorced does not mean that I am bitter. I have realistic views on love, marriage and children and family. I have been thru all of them. I obviously had good and happy days being someone�s wife. I wouldn�t have been married for 11 years had there not been some good things about that relationship. Now it�s hard to look back and recall good things. However�the love I have now, the way I feel now is a true testament to the fact that love is amazing, love endures, love when it is real and true, it builds bridges across swamplands, it makes the world bigger, better bright�. In the years since my ex and I split apart, I have never been able to look back on those times and remember anything clear or succinct that was happiness except for my son, his birth, his first day of school, the sense of belonging to something bigger, but we were just a mommy and a daddy sitting across the table with that child holding us together. I remember nothing about him, I cannot recall his favorite meal without struggling. I do not stop midsentence because something �him� strikes me. I speak to him weekly and I never feel moved by his voice, his life, his being. He is merely this ghost with no feeling attached. I do not LIKE him. I do not like who he is. I don�t think I�ve ever liked him. I feel disconnected. He�s simply my son�s father and nothing more, nothing less. The biggest thing that he is in my life is the code for more pain than any one human being should cause another. I tread the surface of those things avoiding the depth at all costs, it�s someplace I never want to swim again.

Last night looking at those fine little baby hairs that dance around his belly button I could remember all sorts of happy things. I remember that first night as if I was watching a movie in my mind. I saw all of the things�the way he rubbed his fingers across the backs of my fingernails in a �only him� sort of way. I remembered the way he doesn�t actually comb that curly hair into any sort of hairstyle and yet it makes me love him all the more. I see emotions like pictures, windows open to let the heat of the room�s love escape. I remember images of moments as though they are flashes tied together to create the sun.

I stood there feeling the sandy grit inside my sandals, the cooler florida autumn air rushing thru my cotton shirt. In just a few moments my life with him was a movie in my heart in my mind playing long and hard and against my flesh. The words were tumbling thru my soul like too many clothes in a cheap Laundromat dryer, too tight to escape. Too hot to touch.

I just want to take all those fragments of what was and put them into all of the what is now about myself, forever changed�..and paint new pictures. I want to go rent a house, find new rooms to breath in. I want to watch him hold his plate and eat again. I want to pick up his dirty socks and grin this time around. I want to buy gobs of cheese just because someone will eat it within days. I want to feel the dog claw her way into that space between my lower back and his, I want to watch him mop a floor, drip coffee on the countertops� God�.I want all those little nuances back.

All those pictures scrambling thru every thread that I am, I felt wrapped tight and lost. I couldn�t even and still can�t quite find the right way to express it all to him. To make him understand that I don�t need him, I want him. That I don�t merely love him, but I truly like him and respect him and right now I am so proud of him the pride bursts thru my chest and cracks my ribs with ache. I want to explain that I have fixed so much about myself and learned so much about what I need to do to be able to do the right things. In him, I feel everything, with him I want to move the world and make life simple and easy.

I struggle with what I want. I would give up most everything that is tangible, except for my son to pick up the pieces and glue them back only this time in the right places, tight. I am very well aware that life goes on, that despite it�s wrestling with pain and unimaginable loss that after those losses we gain, we gain new and wonderful things. I myself went thru a terrible divorce and heartbreaking couple of years of marriage and then like a light out of nowhere, a gift not even asked for, he came into my life. Like the air after a thunderstorm, he just was. I was still confused, still lost. I couldn�t fathom that this could be just that easy. I was so used to struggling to try to be loved. How could it be just simply handed to me so easily? He gave me everything he had to give, without my asking or having time to want. I know now and fully understand that love would come again someday. I know that I will be loved in this lifetime. But I want to be loved by him.

I asked if I could do for him, and he stated he was not used to my willingness to help. In that one flash I felt like the worlds biggest failure. How can I manage to have two jobs, to work nonstop, to pay all of these bills, pay off past debts, take care of everything all by myself and yet I couldn�t before see the power of giving all that you are. I have loved with all that I am, I still do that, but I couldn�t open my arms and my life wide without fear of that evil pain that love can bring, I couldn�t do that and here I am with everything to give and I may not get that chance. Can you really have everything to give and is that everything if there�s no one to give any of it to?

If he were to decide I can�t�.I will forever say I messed this one up�I am to blame�I will carry that with me for life, in fact I�ll probably always have this scar somewhere within that I prefer to keep visible because I don�t want to make these mistakes again. With or without him, he will go on inside of me, colorful, beautiful, meaningful just tumbling around like thoughts ..too tight to express.

Love is a part of life, the ebb and flow of who we are is ever changing. We are a product of our gains in life as well as our losses and I realize I am ok, will be ok regardless. I just don�t know if I can live the rest of my life wondering if I myself messed up the one thing that was supposed to be. When I doubt everything else in life, I will never again doubt that love can strike like lightening, burn you to your core with brilliance and then be there even in your absence. There are pictures engraved on my heart that no one else will ever cover up. There are things about me that are better, brighter, bigger because of him. Things I will never be able to repay him for.

If he decides for other things for himself, I will feel cut open raw to the core, but I want to remind myself to wish him well, to pray for his happiness to grieve only for the what might have been rather than for the beauty that was, for that is something I can hold onto inside of myself, no matter what�.where there is love there is never complete loss�

10:55 a.m. ::
prev :: next