You're not what I thought I saw in you, what I wanted to be, so I cannot love you. I care enough about you to wish I could. Perhaps even to pretend I do. I cannot though because you expect me to act in it and live there and love you truly. I cannot love you, you are not what I wanted you to be.
Unconditional love is finding in me that which is lovable and loving me for it. Not finding my potential and excitedly dreaming of what it can do for you. It's loving me as I am because it's lovable.
I've never found that in anyone. Not in my mother or my father or any of my friends and lovers. I have friends who've learned to enjoy me, to appreciate me, but I've had to keep a careful distance. I don't get invited into their social circles because I'm too disturbing. A freak. I thought a freak could be loved but tonight I'm feeling very unfaithful to that dream.
Nobody in cyberspace can say they love me because not one of you actually knows me. You know what you see in my words and while part of that might be in me, it is not me. Nobody really knows me because when I try to share it all, even the dark evil parts, they turn away in embarassment and change the subject.
I'd be writing this in a diary if I had one but I don't because I find it very unsatisfying to merely write my words out. Talking to myself does that. I need to know someone will read my thoughts. I need to think someone will share them, have experienced my experiences, know some common bond. I am so alone in this world that any connection is a cherished treasure.
I used to imagine as I wrote in the journal I once kept. I'd imagine as I wrote that someone would read those words and be fascinated by them. I know now that will never happen. They aren't that fascinating. Mostly just the whining of a depressed teenager then the dusty accounts of my days. This happened, that happened, I ate this, I ate that. Self centered accounts of ordinary things.
I have done some extraordinary things, but that is ordinary because everyone just about has done some extraordinary things. I am a speck.
A grain of sand with an unusual color but so small that most folks just walk on over it, possibly noticing the strange sparkle for a brief time, but their eyes are for the sea and they pass on by.
Where is the sculptor who will place my bright grain on the top of his sand castle's turret, seeing it's beauty and giving it a special place?
Can it be there is no such? I know old people who've never been loved, who lived all their lives single. I know this can happen to me. How did they reconcile it in their lives? They do not talk about these things, will not discuss love and heart. How does one take one's heart and put it on the shelf without losing the ability to care and live? How do people face the heartbreak of a live lived alone and not just become empty hearted shells peering through the cracks of their shattered hearts?
Who am I? Am I some Old Anais Nin waiting to flower and sit back with yellowed teeth chuckling around my opium pipe to tell the tales of my sins? Am I an old woman in too-bright clothes talking to birds in her backyard and coddling her raspberry bushes?
Am I some crazed lunatic muttering through her thoughts under a bridge?
Am I someone's old grey wife nodding quietly as he rambles about the government's latest scam?
Am I the little old lady fat from macaroni and cheese cashing in her welfare check, her dusty house filled with canaries?
I knew who I was as a young woman because I was creating it but as I've grown my dreams have withered one by one till I find myself hastily weaving new ones over and over only to watch as they too unravel, battered by the rocks of unforseen realities or other people's whims.
I always wanted to be someone's wife, to dedicate myself to pleasing one person, to focus my whole being on their comfort. I created myself for this shadowy someone. I created a rounded character rich with experiences and hobbies and interests. Kept sharpening my brain so he could marvel at my cogitative abilities and never be bored. Stretched painfully to keep my limbs limber and sexy. Carefully watched my weight so my Venus would always be on a halfshell, not carved in rock and dangling from a lesbian's neck. Moisturized every part of me so when he reached he'd always feel soft skin.
I'll be 38 this year. My full figure has sagged and developed slack places and he hasn't arrived. My face is slowly pouching and he won't know the bright beauty it held.
One man after another I've devoted myself to and yet with all I am and all I do, they leave. Over and over they want something else. Yet more.
I can put my goddamn feet behind my head, cook an apple pie, turn raspberries into fruit salad and jam, create culinary masterpieces from leftovers and stale food. I can do tantric and kama sutra sex. I can fix a broken light switch, paint a masterpiece or a garage, grow a garden, build a fence, roof a house, iron pants, keep a clean home, wash clothes so the whites are white, organize so that a meal is ready when he's ready. All that, and still not enough?
I can sing like an angel, recite poetry like I wrote it or even WRITE it. I can analyze Shakespeare, groove to Bach and cut loose to Metallica. I can read masterpieces or calvin and hobbes with equal joy. I can talk to birds and animals. I can build a shelter and keep a fire going on twigs and cook a fish.
I can be and do so much, but it's STILL not enough.
This one wants me to earn a living, that one wants me to be obediant and subservient without ever being a wimp. The next one wants me to enjoy sodomy. Still another wants me to have his babies.
All that I am is not what anyone wants it seems. I feel like my life is a waste. I never wanted anything for myself except to be loved. I could be loved in a cardboard box and I would make it a home. I'd arrange weed flowers in old jars and make a soft bed of leaves and cook pigeons with wild herbs if only I were loved.
Perhaps I've been too choosy. I wanted someone hygenic and fit and sane enough not to be violent.
I know, this whole thing is skewed. I have left out salient points that would explain why this and how come that, but I didn't write it to find answers. I wrote it to get the self pity out of my head because I need to go to bed, not sob into my pillow about poor little me born into a family that gave her everything she needed or wanted except love. Poor little me with her own damn house and a beautiful face and strong healthy body. Poor little me who's needs always get met by Life if she's patient enough and waits till the need arises instead of when it first appears on the horizon.
Maybe it's that I don't need to be loved, just want it.
I DO want it though. I want it very very much. As much as anyone.
I grow so angry when I see people neglecting or abusing their loved ones, wasting the precious gift of loyalty and companionship. Someone who sticks around and tolerates the farts, the clipping of toenails, the flu season. Someone who comes home at night, calls if they're going to be late, gives a shit.
Tomorrow I will wake up and feel the cottony mouth of a night too short and wheeze my way through my morning routine. I'll go out into the blazing sun and swing my hammer and build more on the growing fence and feel good about life and the universe and everything. I'll feel sure again that my plans will come to fruit and daydream about the happy future.
Tonight I will go have another smoke and a cup of camomile tea and try to stop caring about anything.
I'd say it's PMS but it's the middle of my cycle. I'd say it's stress but my life is fairly stable and calm. I'd say it's diet but I'm eating very well with all the summer food. I'd say it's seasonal but this is summer, not winter, and my SAD never hits before frost.
I wish I had some belgian chocolate, about a pound of it. Failing that, a lover :-P Okay, I'd settle for chocolate covered marzipan or just plain THC.