One More Round

Shame is what gives birth to sin. Five weeks in and that thing around his ankle recording every drop once a half hour, so the decision to trade freedom for a drink was an entirely lucid process. I have been a fool to allow myself to believe that I know that life. I wonder if he thought of me that way; the fool who will always be there, no matter how much shrapnel there is to wade through. I wonder if he was still meeting girls on myspace and sleeping with them, up until the end. I wonder if that's why he made that decision about the drink. If it was a girl at the bottom of the bottle.

I don't know what to do now. I tried closing off my heart to that section of it, and it just ended with a breakdown when the floodgates opened. I tried to let him back in so we could work together through the emotions, and now my heart is broken again. So frustrating, so incredibly frustrating. To wade through the process slowly, and alone. I wish I could make sense of any of it.

Veritas, Aequitas.

Just tired. Probably because I had such high expectations for the weekend, and I hit the first brick wall early into the shift on Friday night. He is a good old boy, and he doesn't even know it. We had conversations about how tough it is the fire service, how hard it can be for a woman, and he really never did much but offer his examples of the meat-headedness he's come up against. There are never any words of advice, but it's ok because I really don't listen to the advice from people who I don't think are as smart as me, anyway. I know that is a very acerbic thing to come right out and say, but it's probably true for most people. And it hit me on Friday, at the station, that he is one of the asshole types that I was always afraid of running into in the fire service.

The realization was a hard one to take, because I had always thought him to be such an ally. Isn't it funny how sometimes, without our realization, we gravitate toward that which we fear? That's why unexplored fear is such a dangerous thing; it has a magnetism to it that, unless you're vigilant about, can be pretty hard to escape.

We were going to an open burn today on the grass fire truck. It was just after a call to Kendal, and I had my gear in my personal vehicle so I ran out to the lot to get it. I came back to the truck and was waiting for him, so I grabbed one of the pamphlets we have about open burn laws in the city. Finally he appeared, but without gear, so we pulled next to his truck in the parking lot and had to wait to go until he loaded everything. The house was only a few down from the firehouse, so the senior firefighter who had been waiting for us in the front station driveway just walked down there and was waiting in the homeowner's driveway.

"What the hell took you so long," he said to both of us as we hopped down. As the jerk who I won't name was gearing up (which I had already done at the station!) he says without dropping a beat, "I was waiting on Emily."

I just kind of looked at him. He grabbed the pamphlet that I had brought, and we all walked to the backyard. I put the fire out while he proudly handed the homeowner the pamphlet and made his bullshit smalltalk with anyone in earshot. As we made the short trek back to the station I said to him, "how were you waiting on me when your gear wasn't even in the truck yet?"

He did his good-old-boy laugh and, quite pleased with himself, said "well I had to blame it on someone!"

I don't get that. It was a harmless enough thing and the senior firefighter wasn't even that concerned that it took us a few minutes longer than it should have to go about forty feet down the road, but it's the principle behind it. Sometimes lately when I look at him I think, I hate your guts. That is a terrible thought to have. I am trying to examine the part of me that is so put-off by him, and adjust my reactions. I don't have to like him, or talk to him, or be around him, but I don't really think it's healthy to hate someone's guts. And I have to add the guts part to it because it becomes so visceral. That is really not healthy.

He backed the truck into its spot in the garage and was blathering on about how you can't take stuff that seriously and let it get to you, and it reminded me of the advice that he used to try to give me about dealing with the assholes in the fire service who won't accept women. And I thought, how ironic. And I looked at him and said, "you're a fucking asshole." And I jumped down from the truck, took my gear off, and went home.

I'm only responding for the rest of the day if we have a structure fire. It gets tiring being around guys so much.

Pictures Of You

My spirit vascillates from feeling utterly shattered to feeling excited at the prospect of really starting anew. I'm trying to be honest with myself and instead of just putting the pain aside and pretending like I can simply harden my heart, I'm going to try to work through it. I don't know what's in store. I'm still no better at making big life decisions than I ever was, but I feel as though I have the clarity and strength now to make the decisions based on what's best for me. Epic.

I haven't gotten past my relationship with Ryan. I guess that's not totally outrageous, considering that we would be celebrating our three year anniversary this June. There is so much awful, painful loneliness down that road. And it all went downhill so stupidly, I can't wrap my brain around it. Every time we would try to start again, it would explode and all the emotions I wasn't dealing with would come back ten times stronger. So much crying and wondering and not knowing, and not dealing with it. All I wanted was to be important to him, to hear him tell me that I was important, to be important enough for us to live a healthy life together. I think it's still what I want. The failure at times is overwhelming. There is a big hole right in my center, gaping valley that sucks the wind down into it, and it whispers to me when I'm vulnerable, "you weren't worth it." I haven't figured out how to face down that valley, how to fill the hole. In my heart, deep within it, I still feel that we were made for each other. I haven't figured out how to tackle that feeling. How to move past.

I tried last night, in my search to understand the recent past, to re-ground myself, to talk to Rob and get his opinion on what passed between us. His claddaugh ring was turned back upside down and his face looked sad, and I couldn't muster up a single emotion. I felt nothing. I felt nothing most of the time that Rob and I poked at what was supposed to be a relationship. That hole in my center wanted so desperately to be received by arms that would hold me and tell me that I did matter. That there was someone out there who really was willing to love me enough to make it work. But it didn't. It wasn't him I was in love with at all, but the idea of being loved. Of being needed and valued. It's a pretty low moment when you come to that realization.

I will try to pick up the pieces. The most powerful tool I have against that hole is myself. I will try, day by day, to be stronger for myself. To be more of an optomist about myself. Somewhere in me there is a piece that truley believes that I'm awesome. Gotta grab onto it.

Through the hill.

The Roof Is On Fire

"They got marvin to show up, he just had no idea how to work anything or what he should do -- I will make sure to schedule all fires from now on with you."

A single text from my all time favorite LT (I have the words "the great" after his name in my cell phone) and suddenly it all doesn't seem quite so bleak. There is something in there that I am most of the time ridiculously proud of. And I keep it like a secret. My weaknesses have always been much more verbal than my strengths. And sometimes in life, you need a little help to get moving again. The thing I find most sacred about my life is that, for me, the help will always be there.

Myocardium.

A tin box in my heart, and it gets hot in there. Should have known better than to open it and all the memories that come rushing out fly past at a speed far too fast to catch. Couldn't cram them back inside fast enough. A dark night. Hold onto a step once taken.

There was something so childlike, so ephemeral to all of it. Overtones of a graceful decay, like tending to a garden that you know won't bloom again next spring. The soil is clay or the roots are rotten and there you stand, rake in hand, knowing that you will look back on that picture of yourself and think yourself a fool.

I think the problem that I have with moving on is that there's no good reason it shouldn't have worked. I will never fully understand the grip that alcohol has on your life. There is no good reason that it shouldn't have worked. I toiled and labored and I made those same vows, and you will never understand how I protected them, held them up overhead, tried to keep them safe from the mud and the muck. Our garden was watered with the tears of so many nights of feeling all alone, the nights of crying myself to sleep, the nights of inadequacy and above all of not understanding. It is not exaggeration when I say that it took six months to just stop the constant recording in my head that told me I was worthless. And tonight I realized that the record has not yet broken. Warriors have to take off their armor sometimes. I wasn't prepared to look at the places in my soul that are still broken. Somehow those moments don't wait for the times that you're prepared for them. I would have walked with you to the ends of the earth. Somehow an $8 bottle of vodka was a better companion to you than I ever was. It is hard to come to that realization and to not feel utterly worthless. Cheap grain alcohol over a life so full of promise. Winter came and that little garden was far too fragile to recover. A flower pokes through now and then and brings my existence to ruin. There is nothing to do but prepare new mortar. How many times?

At dinner tonight Anne and I sat near an older couple who had a small child with them, no older than four. "Sometimes in life, people get stuck," I overheard the father saying to his boy. "And in those moments, you sometimes need help to get moving again."

I shouldn't have read the blog about Fremont. It has been a long time since I cried that hard. Did you go there after my shift scraped you off of the bar floor? Did you pick up the pieces of your broken soul and make love to her after I had my favorite Lieutenant tell me that no one would know because of HIPAA and because he told them to keep it close? After I had to repair the damage and you didn't call to apologize, but to explain that someone must have put something in your drink? Was she prettier happier smarter than me? Why wasn't I WORTH IT?!

I want to be able to look back on what we had and see a logical reason for the end. I want the conditions of change to be something far more unattainable than just an end to the drinking and a (even part-time!) job. You could have met those demands in one day. But instead the days turned into months and the months turned into a year and there is no way I can understand how I wasn't worth even that. No more drinking. The ability to take care of yourself. We are not talking about Everest. Or maybe, we are....?

Sometimes when dealing with my latent sense of inadequacy, I think simply to myself that I am a firefighter. It is a nice band-aid that gives me enough confidence to breath a bit and really think through the issue. I wasn't enough for you. I couldn't hold court with the other matters of consequence in your life. But I am enough for myself. And that, for now, is enough.

Go very quietly, very gently. All is for the very best for you. It was out of the depths that David cried unto Me, and I heard his voice.

Every Last Embrace.

If I could tell you in a poem the way my feelings on everything have shaped themselves, it would be a song gently wafting along some march 17th, a slight brogue to it, thin and wispy like the new spring air. The lyrics would sound like crying, but the melody wouldn't. There is another place, an alternate reality that exists in my mind, and in that reality I'm by the church, waiting. You appear and there is nothing to fear, and nothing to hide. And sometimes I wish with everything that I have that it were so. But it's not. And what do you do with that, the pain and loneliness and desire of the reality you're left with? You put one foot in front of the other, and you keep going. Nothing for it but that.

We might as well lie down, love
Lie down and close our eyes
We might as well go walking
In the country of the blind
The long grass is grown
And all the birds flown
To their homes away in the blue
And nothing's left the same
The whole world is changed
Since you and I were true

And how can a story be ended
When it didn't hardly begin?
How can my glass be so empty
When it's filled up to the brim?
And it wasn't always so
It didn't always go
We had something better to do
And it didn't always rain
Every single day
When you and I were true

In a country where we are headed, love
There is nothing but rocks and stones
No friendly plant or animal
No angel to guide you home
Until some day you'll find
In the country of the blind
Some wonder just like you
And the singing of a bird
That nobody has heard
Since you and I were true

We might as well lie down, love
Lie down and close our eyes
We might as well go walking
In the country of the blind
The long grass is grown
And all the birds flown
To their homes away in the blue
And nothing's left the same
The whole world is changed
Since you and I were true

Praetorian,

The winter cold clings to my soul and makes me think of all the things that might have been, but aren't. I have been seeing the two of us sitting on the driftwood log at Vermilion's public beach, the sun streaming into our faces and the feeling that things might be able to turn around. We sat on my truck's tailgate waiting for the pizza to be done and the air I breathed in was laced with infinite possibility. And now the sun is gone and the snow blankets the world in a quiet desperation that seems most apparent at night, when it's just the occasional orange glow from warm and sleepy windows punctuating the darkness.

Nothing has changed. Absolutely nothing. That's the thing to remember. You are still the same person in your core that you once were, and so is he. No sadness, and no regret. Today the sun is out and the snow has begun to melt. I will run today, until I find clarity. I think it is right around the corner.