Guts on the Floor

I was s*t*r*e*t*c*h*e*d s*o t*h*i*n with trying, even when I wasn't doing anything. I feel stretched out of shape still, loose and baggy around my life, like a casement rather than the thing itself.

He was a stabilising influence. I'm not stable, though. Instead I'll reuse my old cork metaphor, where ya pull me down and I pop back up as soon as ya let go.

I felt like I had to be so careful, and I still always failed. And then I hurt him. And it went on. I think I'm less of a good person for letting it go on and on like that. I'm less human for hurting him so consistently for so long.

We never did get along when it was just us, and we also never did get along when I was with someone else. We got along when we were *together*, but we couldn't spend all our time together.

I'm still not sure whether he liked what I am. I know, in the beginning, he said I was very brave. That was when I had fallen in love with him, and he not yet with me. He thought that sort of tumbling rush and wholesale commitment to the emotion was a sign of bravery, which it wasn't. Possibly it's a sign of strength that i can love people who don't love me back, because whatever devastation loving someone has caused it's never actually damaged me, merely made me feel hurt. I believe that it's more likely simply a sign of honesty. Those feelings are *there*, and I'm okay with people knowing. That's all.

I saw Avi last night. He made me dinner and gave me a stern talking to. He told me that somehow this reckless rush through people's lives, where I plunge in and knock a few heads bfore everyone decides it's too hard before retiring with bruises and bloody noses, he told me that's okay. I don't know if I believe it, but it was good to hear. It made me feel human again, and loved, and I remember once again how incredibly blessed I am in the company I keep.

After that I spent the night with Angus, staying up way too late and low-level angsting. That boy makes me feel so young again, and it picks at the corners of my jaded poly been-there done-that scab that I've acquired lately. Sometimes I feel like I'll suddenly find myself back in a field of daisies in Heritage Park in Mission, where Kynnin and I used to hang out when we skipped school (it's *always* a good idea to have a high school full of horny teenagers surrounded by a big wild forest and park). If I soak it like that long enough, the whole thing's gonna come off. There might be fresh pink skin underneath, who knew? It might even be flexible and soft and sensitive to light touches.

Meanwhile my steps are lighter, and I am hit occasionally with deep flashes of uncontrollable pain and crying. Bob continues to love me and to accept with a shrug who I am and what I do. That is so inexpressibly soothing. If you're his friend, be extra nice to him in the next little bit. I'm sort of all over the place, and he has to live with that. This is where one of those poly-sucks things comes in: he doesn't deserve to be confined in a place with me when I'm doing post-breakup self-destruction, nor does booting someone out of a cohabiting relationship for a couple of months while I heal feel at all fair. Bah, logistics!

I feel guilty that I feel so light. Burdens mostly removed, the only remaining ones are weightless. He loved me very deeply. That's not a thing to make light of. I need to stop writing now, I'm just flailing for something.

Greatpoets Strikes

Because words are a kind of beauty close to my heart as well as people are.

What Saves Us

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We are not always right
about what we think will save us.
I thought that dragging the angel down that night
would save me, but I carried the crucifix in my pocket
and rubbed it on my face and lips
nights the rockets roared in.
People die sometimes so near you,
you feel them struggling to cross over,
the deep untangling, of one body from another.
Bruce Wiegl

If I Should Cast Off This Tattered Coat

If I should cast off this tattered coat,
And go free into the mighty sky;
If I should find nothing there
But a vast blue,
Echoless, ignorant ---
What then?
Stephen Crane

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
Stephen Crane

He said he thought I might regret this, someday. He says he thinks I will burn through the store of goodwill people have for me, run out of people as I bruise them and they then leave me. I think he pictures me old and alone. Until last night I took this picture for my own. Thank you, Avi, for giving me my eyes back. We all jostle each other, in here, and there is room for forgiveness.

So Many Words

The conventional image is that of a dam bursting. Have you ever seen a dam burst? Looking down on the fireworks from a high building as the people trickle from the beach down the streets, running in a huge swell along Denman and then Robson streets, that may be more accurate anyway. It's a long swell of words that comes out now.

I hadn't written much in here about people I love, and how much I love them, and how wonderful they are, because I was afraid of it hurting Juggler when he read it. Now I'm not feeling so constrained. I like that.

Today I took my crimson eye in to the doctor, and he said it was normal for my level of emo-ness. No big problem, contacts okay to wear if they don't feel weird. He did a couple of tests, I think to reassure me more than anything. I like having blood in my eye, but I guess that's been enough drama for now. On with life.

I had a real date with Bob tonight-- dinner and a movie (Dirty Dancing, which I'd never watched before. I am in such dance withdrawal from missing karaoke last night. There *will be* dancing at my birthday party, even if all the dance-y people are away at Shambhala). It was super-awesome. It's so important to leave the house, leave the domestic stuff and the cleaning and the habits, and to spend time just sitting, to talk. Not to Talk, just to chat, to go back and forth about how sound works in different venues, which guitar Bob wants to buy next, how awesome my friends are, who gets my baby rats, and how I feel about the recent breakup. It reminds me of the dates Kynnin and I used to have, in Abbotsford, walking down the hill to Ethical Addictions for coffee or a meal by the fire. You know, just out of the house? He also got me to the doctor. I hate doctors.

This is settling into such a comfortable familiarity. We still feel like a good match to me, especially now that I've come down out of the tree I was in earlier this week. I am so glad. I always have the urge to do the scorched earth thing when I'm stressed or unhappy, because it simplifies interpersonal issues so much if you just remove the people, but of course that's just the crazy talking.

I hadn't realised how long it's been since I just relaxed and responded in kind to bits of fun from him. I'm not back there yet, but I will be soon.

I also keep thinking about Angus-- of course. New toy, dimples like the sun coming up, smells like carrots and geraniums. I love the way he's so colourfully and interestingly decorated all over (yes, those are all different links). People are definitely my vice.

To use another terrible metaphor (because what use is a metaphor if neither the writer nor the reader has actually done the thing?) the people in my life are sometimes like a rosary, little fragments of thought or memory polished from handling and slipped one by one through my mind when I need focus, and calm. I cherish these memories so much: Bob standing unsteady-drunk in the door at Sin City when we met, or looking so worried when I was upset the next morning; the morning light spilling in through the tiny octagonal windows in the livingroom on Juggler and I after we'd lain awake all night talking, with Mouse and Kynnin in the bedroom and us on the futon mattress on the floor; CrazyChris' voice, no specific words but that so-emphatic, confident debating tone he uses; Tillie kneeling in front of the fireplace in Burnaby, stacking things inside or the first time I met her at a Christmas party, perched on the edge of a couch wearing a red skirt; Angus years ago on the 20 bus at night, dimples radiant; Avi sitting on the sofa looking determined and worried and older than I've seen him look; Eva slipping down a sidepath towards a bench surrounded by ducks; Trevor on the schoolbus, so long ago, his spikes sticking up past the brown vinyl every morning as I walked down the aisle; my cousin Joe sucking on the edge of his water glass more than a decade ago... it goes on, and on, and on. There are so many precious moments, tiny gestures, and little shared bridges of time that I joy in remembering.

And now I am tired. Goodnight.