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.