(no subject)
I’m avoiding most social sites today, mostly because I really don’t feel like talking. At moments I don’t feel much like breathing. The thing is, I need to talk. I need to vent, rant, and just get a lot of things out. I have so much I’ve been holding inside for months, things that need to see the light of day…
But the person I so want to talk to cant…. And it’s his birthday today. He would be 29…gods we thought that sounded so old when we were younger.
I usually spend his birthday doing something he would have enjoyed, and almost always I have a conversation with him… But this year, I just don’t know if I have all the words I need.
I have become such a failure. I got married with all the best of intentions, and plans… and I thought that it was the first step in the right direction… And … I don’t know… How did the person I married become this person he is now, the person who refuses to fight for us?
I planned each step for my life when I moved down here, and a lot of them got squashed or forgotten, but I kept moving, and things started falling into place. I was accomplishing what I set out to do, and I was content. I hit a snag, and was unsure, but I went forward feeling that if I gave it my all, it would work out.
And my all wasn’t enough. I was desperately unsure about getting married in the first place, but one thing I tend to do with amazing stubbornness is stick to a course I manage to pick. And I went for this with everything that I had. Except I didn’t do one thing in particular for Patrick…
Promises get broken. I learned that growing up, and it’s a fact of life as far as I am concerned. It’s why I have a basic distinction. If I promise something, it comes with the disclaimer that life throws curveballs. If I give my word… then nothing will keep me from fulfilling that.
I made a vow to Patrick in January of 2009, but I held back from giving my word to him. I was afraid to do it. Something in me said NO… so I didn’t even offer it. Did I curse my relationship by doing this… or did I know something then that I don’t understand now?
When he came home, he was hollow…. Shadowed… But only to me. He took great pains to show the façade to everyone. And when he lost his wedding ring… something in me cracked.
It was like the world had just eclipsed itself. We searched for the damn thing, even going so far as to get metal detectors. And we got replacements, but they weren’t the same. Things got so much worse between us then. The connection we had always had went out to sea with his ring. The Atlantic swallowed it whole.
We didn’t even explode… what we were expired in a silent sigh, unremarked, and incredibly anticlimactic. It’s now all about paperwork, and moving on. And that’s just the positive side.
He didn’t fight for me…
And I can’t live with that. I would and have done anything for him. And he just let it all slide away. And I’m angry, hurt… but I don’t want him back. Even if it was my Patrick, I don’t want him back.
And I need Jonathan so much, to explain to me that this is okay. That I’m not some cruel heartless bitch who’s never going to find happiness because she’s too damn picky. How can I find happiness when all I seem to do is make people miserable?
Jon was the one friend I could stand in front of and I never felt like a failure, never felt like a miserable excuse for a human being. Don’t get me wrong, none of my friends would ever make that judgment, but…. I FEEL like I am that…
It’s his birthday, Jon’s I mean. And I have the most certain thought that he would smack me quite soundly about the head and shoulders for being an idiot.
Thing I hate most…. saying I Don’t Know What Happened. About Jonathan, me and Patrick, and so many other things that have imploded in my life. I am standing at ground zero with no clue what the hell is going on, but I keep getting the chilling feeling that I am doing this to myself.
Am I still just as self-destructive now as I was eleven years ago? Am I still trying to punish myself for something I didn’t even do…?
Have I become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
I wrote this stupid upbeat post for Jon’s birthday, that was supposed to mark a change in my approach, to become better at reconnecting… to try to urge others to reconnect with friends and loved ones… and I read it, and I want to burn it.
Which is difficult because it’s a text file on my computer.
Who the hell do I think I’m fooling?
And to make this all so much worse, and so much more like a soap opera…. I’m in love with my friend. And I have been in love with him for longer then I was married, or hell even knew Patrick. I hid it… because he gets me.
He gets me in the way Jon did, and look where that got Jonathan. I tried everything to keep him as a friend, and keep the barrier. Friends like that are precious, beings to be protected. And let’s be blunt, I am more akin to a natural disaster.
And Fate… you fickle bitch…. I was unable, in a singularly fantastically screw up fashion unable to keep my stupid mouth shut…
And he knows, and to make it all the more petrifying, he’s the same way. We both took absurd amounts of effort to conceal and hide for years what the other meant… Only showing the demented friendship we both thrive on…
And now… I can’t protect him from me.
… and I am unable to walk away….
Jon represents so much to, first and foremost, take nothing for granted… And actually LIVE life, don’t just sit in a box and hope for better things. And all I’ve done for a year is sit in a box with my puppy, and float through this existence that some days I don’t even feel as if I deserve.
And now, Fate again intervenes, and puts in front of me obstacles that force humbling… forcefully necessitating the need to rely on others rather than myself. I dread the lesson that this is to teach me. Because every time I learn a fucking lesson, something else pops out to eviscerate me.
And I can hear his voice, saying that I am the harshest critic ever….
Jonathan, my brother, I know I’m a disappointment. But I hope someday, I might get myself off the ground, and learn to fly. My hope is that you’ve found peace somehow.
That’s the other thing Jon used to tell me….Take care of your wings, because growing them back takes a bloody long time.