Category: Relationships

Dear Dad

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Been walking on a tightrope, juggling high hopes and reality
Just trying not to mess up, tryna keep my head up, fighting gravity
I can’t outrun growing up, I still feel like a kid


Quick to judge the ones we love
Sometimes I forget


It’s your first time on Earth too
And I hope that you know that I don’t blame you
It’s just pain that you were passing down
I’m older, and I see it now
It’s your first time on Earth too

Back then, I didn’t get that you gave me the best that you knew how to do
You were far from done growing up when you had a kid


Quick to judge the ones we love
Sometimes I forget


It’s your first time on Earth too
And I hope that you know that I don’t blame you
It’s just pain that you were passing down
I’m older, and I see it now
It’s your first time on Earth too

68

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On the 24th, she turned 68 and it came and went quietly. Every year comes with the question– will this one be the last? It’s been about 10 years now since it became so absolutely apparent that something was wrong, and for women diagnosed with dementia around the age of 60, the average lifespan is an additional 8.9 years.

I so often wonder what she would think if she could see me today. I have no real good reason for it given our past and the damage done but that doesn’t matter. I will always wonder what she would think. It comes up most on the typical days– her birthday and Mother’s Day. On Mother’s Day I do have a new focus on how does my son see me? It’s a nice shift but that old question is still burried somewhere underneath.

For years, everyone told me I looked like her and for some time, I hated it. I now embrace it and share it with others. I do carry her in some small way with me, always. In that way, she is still here and always will be.

“I am tied by truth like an anchor
Anchored to a bottomless sea
I am floating freely in the heavens
Held in by your heart’s gravity

All because of love
All because of love
Even though sometimes you don’t know who I am

I am you, everything you do
Anything you say, you want me to be
You and me are charms on a chain
Linked eternally in what we can’t undo
And I am you”

Never forget.

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Elephants don’t forget.. or mostly they don’t. It can be a bit of an exaggeration. I have always been highly interested in the concept of how much they likely remember though and the connections they maintain throughout their lives. Elephants can live for many years during which they follow a matriarch. They are far more likely to follow a 50 year old matriarch over a 30 year old one. They prefer to follow one who is experienced and wise. 

Last night,  I could barely sleep at all. I must have tossed and turned the entire night and when I finally did fall asleep, I woke up early and laid in bed next to him for hours. The whole house was so silent and all I could think about was the burn of a new tattoo on the back of my neck. Something had stirred within me all night.. and my past– my journey– was burned on the back of my neck. I can’t explain it. Through my relationship with him over the past two years, I have had to really stop and confront my demons and it has been so painful at times. Sometimes I even feel ugly for my insecurities or unlovable. For awhile, I struggled with having them at all. I wanted to be perfect, the way I am sure that he thought I was when we first started dating. But I am not perfect and I shouldn’t try to be.. and he loves me anyway. I am learning that too. 

And for all of the times that I feel ugly for the anxiety inside as I work through all of the baggage that I’d hidden in a closet somewhere instead of dropping off on the side of the road as I should have, this tattoo is a beautiful picture of that struggle. It’s a reminder.. my reminder.. of all that I have come from and all that I have to look forward to. My experiences only make me stonger.

“Forget what hurt you but never forget what it taught you.” 

All I can do.

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                                                    tho3sojnnz

568 days…1 year, 6 months and 19 days. And I have loved you for every one of them. And it scares me sometimes. I have waited for you my whole life- emotionally, physically, spiritually. How do I make you sure? How do I make you see? How do I contend with a history that was never mine? I can’t. All I can do is love you more.

 

What I know

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I woke up last night and you weren’t next to me. So I began to search for you.. the office, the spare room, upstairs. I couldn’t find you and in my half asleep state, I had this thought that you were gone for good. To where? I didn’t know.  But I thought you were gone. I hurried downstairs thinking I’d look in the garage next, maybe your car would be gone. I would worry, I would text, you would ask that I please leave you alone. We’d argued, I’d cried, and you were angry. This was it. I had it all figured out… and then I saw you, coming from the basement. You were downstairs doing laundry.

And that’s what I know. That has been my reality.  Sometimes you lay your head down on an unfamiliar pillow in some unfamiliar hotel room in a random city of a random state and you wake up and you’re suddenly alone because you’re only connection to family tiptoed out the door while you were sleeping. In the anger and the ice cold of the moment I see it, happening all over again. It’s the fear that runs through my head..As your downstairs separating darks from lights.

Outside the box.

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Twenty seven… I was twenty seven years old and still I had never opened my heart to someone who might break it. I had never even opened my hand to allow in some else’s much less something breakable. Who does that? Mostly those who get hurt and sometimes those who get lucky. At twenty seven, I am independent, I am strong, and I don’t believe in love. Love is fleeting. Love almost certainly goes away in time. I don’t need fleeting. I don’t need love.

And then enters a man who takes everything that I know and turns it upside down. He talks to me; I don’t look at his face. He texts me; I (intentionally) wait an hour to reply. He tells me he’s taking my wall down; I don’t believe him. I have a whole lifetime of research to refer to. He’ll be gone in twenty minutes. No worries here.

But he just keeps coming back, again and again. He doesn’t stopping looking at me, he doesn’t stop texting and he doesn’t go away. Who is this person? More importantly– why the fuck me?

It took so long for me to realize what kind of box I’d placed myself in. I’d spent a good deal of time in my late teens/ early twenties telling myself just how strong I was, and how brave. Look at me! I don’t need a single soul to get by. I have come back from the bottom, taken nothing and made it something amazing. Yes– and yet, here I was in the crappy little box I’d placed myself in and marked in big black letters: DAMAGED. Powerful and strong for me and those who needed me. Too damaged for those who wanted me. I was selling myself and the possibilities so short and mostly due to a fear of failure. I didn’t want to try and then fail so I just didn’t try at all. But not this time. Not with this one.

It’s over nine months later and I’ve not only let him through my wall but so deeply into my life. We laugh, argue, cry (that one’s all me), we kiss and we make up and I’ve only recently stopped looking for him to walk out the door and out of my life. It’s a process. It’s not easy. It never could be. But he makes easier. And that’s all I’ve ever needed.