I don’t know why I’ve started writing in here again... it just felt time. I use to write all the time - I use to put my feelings to pen in paper and walked away feeling clean and cleansed of the things that hurt. I use to put my headphones in and go for long walks. I’d walk until my lung burned and my legs felt they’d give out from under me. But medical issues in the last few years have made that impossible. And I guess I forgot how to clear away the cobwebs through writing. I stopped feeling like the gift people have told me I have my entire life - was over hyped and useless. What good was it having a voice if I had nothing to say? I use to wonder. Who cares about the life and opinions of a nobody from a nobody town? I stopped feeling like I had anything to contribute.
But a lot of that felt like I was just running from the truth. if I didn’t write about what I was feeling and going through than it wasn’t real. I could just pretend that whatever was happening to me, wasn’t happening. And I’m just .. tired. Tired of carrying it all around inside me. Tired of feeling those wounds inside me which never quite heal because I’m not able to accept there was nothing I could of done to prevent them. That what’s happened isn’t my fault. That it’s not my fault that life has kept me stuck on survive.
Tired of trying to be such a good girl all the time. Tired of holding myself and everyone else around me to some impossible standard. Tired of not knowing how to forgive myself .. or tell people the truth.
“ And I’d give up forever to touch you
‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be
And I don’t want to go home right now..”
7:56 PM - 03.07.2020
He use to write poetry about burnt toast. He liked the back of his neck rubbed on long car rides. He fed me ice cream. He brushed my hair. We drank wine together (my first time). He teased me when I’d fall asleep watching movies. He left me love notes. He brought me flowers. He had a key to my apartment. I still remember wearing his old tattered work shirt, and a pair of panties, and him looking up at me like he’d never seen someone so beautiful. He made me feel beautiful. I didn’t have to try with him. We liked the same things. We went on midnight shopping excursions to the grocery store. Everything felt like an adventure. I could never stop kissing him. Orgasms were no longer a myth. We tried new positions. I was late for work because he wouldn’t let me get out of his bed. He was my favorite person.
But it didn’t last. He’d come home from the bar with hickies on his neck. He never knew limits. Instead of 1 beer, it was 15. Instead of just beer, it was beer and pills. I remember him showing up at my house in the middle of the night, and holding his head most of the night while he puked in my toilet. Always so unsure of how he ended up at my house in the first place. He could of killed somebody. He could of been killed.
Turns out he was killing someone, himself.
He told me I was the only person who loved him and he’d die without me. He told me when he was in particular rough shape that he didn’t want to live any more. He’d tell me about the women he met at bars when I wouldn’t take him back. The kind of women that peed in his bed.
I finally had enough. I finally couldn’t take it any more and limped away from that relationship to save myself. I told him I wanted him to get clean. That I couldn’t watch him kill himself any more. That I hoped he’d look me up when he was sober. I begged him to get help. He didn’t listen. Within 6 months he was dead.
That relationship taught me so many painful things about love. It taught me love wasn’t enough. It taught me you can’t love another person enough to save them. It taught me that people who kill themselves because they can’t carry the pain any more only pass that pain burden on to those who survive.
It was shortly after that relationship ended, after i’d moved to a new city, that I discovered Second Life. And later World of Warcraft. I started playing because I was lonely and I missed him. I started playing because i couldn’t leave the house. I started playing because I was drowning in guilt and grief and had nobody in my life who could understood.
4:56 PM - 03.07.2020
Yesterday morning my mom came into my room, and started going off about her ex boyfriend again. He’d sent her tons of text messages in the middle of the night demeaning me, my sister, my grandma, my mom and so on.
Calling him boyfriend, makes it sound like it was a short lived relationship, instead of what it actually was - a relationship she began with him when I was 13, and in a couple of months I’m about to be 39. This man has been a part of my life for the vast majority of my life. He use to get so angry with me that he’d be shaking with anger. He shook with the effort it took to restrain himself from hitting me. To say he and I never got along is putting it mildly.
My mom has this version of events where he was this good guy when she met him, and at some point he changed and became this other person. And maybe that’s true for her. Maybe she really believes that narrative. But to me he was only ever mister good on paper guy. He went to church. He had a job. He had some ambitions for his life. That was the con. He went to church but wasn’t a man of faith. He had a job ... but not for long. Decades of her supporting him ensued. And he had ambitions for his life but never the willpower to do the work required to achieve them.
My mom and i have been through this pattern over and over again for the last 3 years. I’ve loaned her money when she’s begged me to help him. But at a certain point I realized no amount of money was ever going to help this guy. He was never going to get a real job, or get his shit together. He always had one new crisis after another, and it was always someone else’s fault he couldn’t get his shit together.
My mom is the sunshine of my life. She is kind, and loving, and strong. She is smart and charismatic. She walks in a room and people call out her name. She runs into people she knows everywhere. She is the kind of woman whose good looking, but never really thinks she is. She never feels good enough. But she’s always been worthy of so much more than this person she chose for her life mate.
Recently he’s been wanting more money - and she’s held mostly fast. She caved once but has refused to give him any more money cause he didn't’ spend it on what he was suppose to. And I staunchly refuse to give him any of my money. I’ve run out of the ability to be kind to this man whose never been kind to me, and only ever been a burden on my mom. Hell he stole money from my mom when she was battling with cancer and took off on her for almost a year.
He’s often made me wonder about the power of forgiveness. And how much “helping” can at times be harming. My mom is back on her fuck him, I hate him mode. But I wonder how long it will be before she caves. How long before she’s back talking to him, or giving him money, or feeling guilty for the things she has in her life, and feeling like it’s her fault he can’t take care of himself cause she never made him. I worry all the time that his unstable ass will snap one of these days and actually hurt my mom. Or hurt me.
That’s how those true crime stories always go.
You always think you have things under control .. until you don’t.
11:30 am - 03.07.2020
I’ve always struggled with letting others get close to me. This personality trait isn’t entirely my own fault - it comes from years of having the people who were suppose to love and protect me - being the ones to hurt me.
I grew up in an abusive household. My father emotionally and mentally abused me. There was physical abuse too if one considers denial of meals or a fear inside me of him that was so intense I wet the bed until I was almost 12, terrified to get out of bed in the middle of the night, in case I ran into him.
He couldn’t just yell at me for doing something wrong, he would have to come back again and again every few hours to yell at me all over again for the same offense. I developed this habit of shrinking from life.
Of making myself as small as humanly possible to avoid triggering his temper. But no matter what I did. No matter how small I made myself, I couldn’t disappear. I couldn’t be small enough.
He was abused by his father. Molested actually. He hid his pain with drugs and alcohol, and those vices made his conditions worse. I wasn’t his. I was my mom’s from a previous relationship. Forever a reminder of someone who came first. Someone who came before him. I was an easy outlet for his rage and frustrations.
It took me years to realize that it was my mom who kept me in that situation. She was young, had limited financial resources. Years later she apologized for staying as long as she did. But she stayed for my sister and brother. My happiness and security were not as important. She said she thought I was strong, that I would be okay. And I was strong. But I was not okay. She didn’t mean it.
I was afraid of men in general for years. I didn’t have a first kiss until I was 19. I didn’t have my first date until I was 21. I picked the wrong men. Men who didn’t care about me at all. They just wanted the comfort of my body, they weren’t safe investments for my heart. They were reckless, and careless with my heart. They all had addictions and it took me a long time to realize I was dating guys exactly like my dad. Men who were “funny” assholes, and socially took all the attention and oxygen in the room. If they stole all the attention, than I could stay where I was comfortable .. shrunk as small as I could be in the shadows. Trying not to make waves. Not wanting to be seen.
But I wanted these men to see me. I wanted them to see my light. I wanted them to see my hope and my care. I wanted them to see the tiny broken pieces of my heart I held deep within me. And the older I got - the more I failed to find someone who could ever see me, the more I stopped wanting to hide in the shadows … the more I came into my own, and stripped away the fear of my youth. I was still scared. But I was bold. I just drove through the fear and kept going. If I moved fast enough through what terrified me, maybe the devil wouldn’t know I was there.
I started making slightly better choices in men. I found men who were at least kind to me. But they all had one thing in common - they needed me. I nurtured them, and loved them when they couldn’t love themselves. I created my whole life around them. And things would be good for a while - so long as I gave everything .. we could stay afloat.
But if I needed them. If I needed someone who could hold me when I didn’t feel strong enough to stand … I was alone. Eventually things would break apart again. Because I couldn’t be strong enough for both of us.
The last couple of heart breaks I’ve experienced, have made me so afraid to trust. I’ve built my walls up tight around me. I’ve built a life full of people who love and care about me. I’m in a good place in my life. I’m making progress at work. My health is better than it’s been in years, though I still struggle with it. I’m doing better.
I’m stronger than I use to be – and I think it’s time for a change. I’ve finally found someone in my life that doesn’t make me want to run. Even when we’re butting heads … he’s so many things I didn’t even know I wanted.
Time for change indeed. Something to think about.
2:40PM - 03.05.2020
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