down time

i am smart and attractive and funny and kind and i shouldn't have to convince someone to like me. i've already become a resignation; already, "down time" is away from me.

how depressing. there you go, self-esteem, eat that up!

S. was right; he does resemble D. in some ways. and i am still the same in that i am too weak to make it stop before i'm broken. oh the creativity of men: they can all break me in a new, exciting way!

how dare you?

i am no plaything.


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December 27, 2006. i know a few things about a few things. and maybe that is why i can believe that the only reason i know i love is because i feel it simply, so strongly that i could split; and so there we are, my lips on your shoulder and your fingertips holding my heart together, and I will leave and you will go the other direction but we will both think in late evening of twisted fingers in a room that has never been blue.

"don't be a bore," she said lightly, and laughed carelessly. "your self-righteousness has no foothold here." he knew that she phrased all her pleasures as demands when her heart trembled and doubted, and they both knew she'd only seem even more pathetic. she could never pull off an appealing "fuck-it-all" attitude. she'd demonstrated too many times her need for approval and acceptance; he wasn't the only to have seen the criss-crossed scars, and he hated her for accepting pity as a last resort for approval.

January 3, 2007. i've an optimist's sense of humour and a pessimist's expectations. you won't have to kill me too many times before i die; one of these days, i'll bleed enough disappointment to drown in it.

in my dream

in my dream, i woke up in my bed to the sound of a lock scratching. you know that chilling heat that spreads through your body at the moment of fear? my toes tingled with it. in a moment of bravery i wouldn't associate with myself during waking hours, i got out of bed, unlocked my bedroom door, and walked into the dark kitchen. to my right, the exterior door, both locks undone, hung open to a dark and apparently empty stairwell. the door to the spare bedroom was open; the opening was covered by a floor-length red curtain, blowing slightly in a breeze whose source i didn't know.

"is someone there?" i could hear the anguish in my own voice, an almost strangled combination of fear and resignation. i didn't recognize him when he walked out from behind the curtain, but he was definitely male, and young. i don't think he said anything. the gun he raised from his side looked almost old-fashioned, small, and in the weird half-dark i almost thought it looked like there was brass on it.

i winced and closed my eyes when he held it up to my forehead. he shot anyway.

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there may have been moments that i've felt lonelier, but when i awoke from that it made me wonder if i've ever felt more hopeless.

the wrath of achilles

in much the same way, wrath is starting to control my life, again. it's almost always there, now, eating away at whatever i have left that approximates a soul. i had thought that this time things would be different; that, for once, someone would go out of their way to make me happy. but i'm coming to the realization that most men in relationships are more complacent than dogs; as long as they're comfortable, they'll put in minimum effort to keep the status quo. all my friends disliked d. for the same reason; maybe i'm drawn to men that will tell me they love to keep me maintaining a relationship. sure, they're grateful. but the motivation for reciprocity, it seems, is totally one-sided when it comes to men and me.

how depressing. i had thought maybe, just maybe, i would have proven wrong this deep-seated fear that i'll grow old to be bitter and lonely; but life has treated me too well in every other aspect. in this one, apparently, i can't win. wrath will end it all.

words not worthy

every day, this battle is fought, and by evening it will seem that practicality and affection, stability and complacency have vanquished my discontent; yet every evening, before my eyes close, the battle will have been lost to anguish, exasperation, even anger, and a distance growing wider and wider with every bickering phone call, barbed comment by vicious jab. there's something reckless and exhilarating about it, contributing to this sort of careless arrogance that is either developing or just rising more and more conspicuously to the surface of my day-to-day.

but going to bed full of self-righteous anger and pity, feeling i'm in a place he could never understand, always leads to a morning waking up feeling... broken. like i'm losing a battle with myself, that even though i want the days' decisions to dominate my attitude - practicality and affection, stability and complacency - i am starting to love hopelessly, watching self-destruction take over and somehow paralyzed to stop it.

for the first time, there are no other competitors for my heart causing this ruinous behavior; even if there are potentials, they are much too distant to even comprehend. to what possible good end am i directing this destruction? and even when i admit to myself, to anyone really, other than him, i find it so very very difficult to apologize, and doing so makes me resentful and immediately picking at something that, like all before, doesn't really matter.

i remember words and caresses and those moments of awe that just don't seem to happen this time around. and i wonder how i can ever move beyond them to enjoy the practicality, the affection, the stability and reach that complacency. maybe it isjust loneliness.

god, i hope so. i hate feeling like i have something to prove.

i love these hands

"That afternoon, however, she couldn’t help thinking about what Martha had said, and as Harley moved back and forth in the dim space of the bell tower she noticed how beautiful his hands were: fine, almost delicate, not large and heavy, like other men’s hands, but strong nevertheless, like a pianist’s or a dancer’s. Of course, as soon as the notion entered her mind she did everything she could to extinguish it, because she didn’t want to think about him in that way. Yet she kept coming back to him: to his dark eyes, to the way he carried himself, and, time and again, before she could stop herself, to the beauty of his hands. Hands she wanted to feel on her skin, light and slow and graceful; not heavy, never heavy, but gentle the way a bird is when it alights on a branch or a stone, resting for a moment but never entirely settled, always light, always about to take off." -John Burnside, "The Bell Ringer"