Fiction is the Only Way You're Dealing

There was a diaper sitting on the top of my over-the-toilet shelf.  I saw it every single time I walked into the bathroom.  I finally threw it away, because he'll never be back here to wear it again.

There is a transformer in the glove box of my car that I discovered when I was changing out my insurance card.  I shut it quickly and will forget about it for the next six months, because he'll never ride in my car and play with it again.

While folding my socks yesterday afternoon, I came across a tiny sock.  Not mine, not Aiden's.  Out of frustration I threw it behind the couch, where it is still laying.  It has no mate, not where I live.  I will probably pick it up and throw it away the next time I vacuum.

Little pieces of them are still clinging to the little pieces left of me.  I find them in random places, cozy corners, in the songs I hear on the radio or the photos that I unexpectedly come across in my phone or iPod.  I hear about movies, and they come to mind.

Not just one, not just the other, but ALL of them. 

My heart doesn't just have one hole in it, but three.

I read and I write, and I sit alone in my room some nights and cry.  I disappear, and it still doesn't feel like enough.

I am okay, until suddenly I am not.

I am chasing down all that is good in my life.  I am surrounding myself with people who not only love me back, but don't invalidate the way I feel at any given moment.  That give as much as they get, if not more.  I have endless amounts of cuddles and forehead kisses, and people willing to sit with me so I don't have to do it alone.  

I know I'm not the broken one.  I know that I did everything I could and everything within my power to make this man love me, and it still wasn't enough.  But even though I'm not broken, and even though I'm able to force myself into moving on, into looking back fondly, because so much of it was good, and so little of it was bad; I am still the one with three gaping holes in my heart. 

It's always been so much easier for him to let go of me.

I never meant to let it get away from me.

I have written this blog about a hundred times in my head over the last two weeks.  In some instances, it is the sad, weeping "OMG I can't live without you."  Sometimes it is the pissed off "I HATE YOU!" blog entry.  Occasionally, I find myself being extremely mature and simply channelling Adele and saying "I wish nothing but the best for you."  In all actuality, I am feeling a little bit of all of those combined at any given time.

D and I broke things off two weeks ago yesterday.  I guess I should be honest and say that he broke things off.  In the last two weeks I have cried a lot, slept even less, and there were a couple of nights when I walked around my apartment, not knowing what to do, and feeling completely lost.  My apartment became my sanctuary.  It was just as messy as my brain was, and none of my pieces seemed to fit.  In the last two weeks I have taken a good long look at myself, and realized that even if I wasn't right for him, or any of the men I have thought I was right for in the past, that I am a good person, and I am right for SOMEONE.  It also made me take a step back and realize what I am looking for, more than anything else right now.

Companionship.  I want someone to hang out with.  Don't get me wrong, hanging out with Aiden every night during the week up until 7:30 is fun, and the biggest joy of my life, but I stay up way later than 7:30 most days.  There are hours up hours that are taken up by nothing.  I don't need a lover, even though a lover would be a bonus.  What I want is a best friend.  Even my best of friends have fallen by the side on this.  T goes out of town every weekend to visit her boyfriend, and even when he comes here, he doesn't like me so I don't get to see her then, either.  M works nights, and is busy with school.  My sister lives six hours away.  I want someone to cook dinner with, watch TV with, laugh and cry and tell jokes with.

I was never anyone but myself with D, flaws and all.  But once again, I'm told "it's not you, it's me."  How can you change something if you're not made aware of what there is to fix?

Losing him as my counterpart is only made more difficult by the fact that I fell deeply in love with his children.  I had picked out Christmas presents, and birthday presents.  I had made plans.  Aiden would tell me how he thought of them as his little brothers.  He would bring home writing assignments from school that were written about them.

The last night we spent together, I knew something was off.  Something didn't feel right, but I didn't want to be the overly paranoid girlfriend and say anything about it.  Unknown to him, until now, but I cried myself to sleep that night.  I listened to him get ready for work the next morning, pretending to be asleep.  I rolled over and kissed him goodbye when he was leaving, and I knew something had changed.  Even now, I don't even know what that something was.  I was suddenly not enough.

Someone never saying "I love you" to you is one thing.  To have them say "I don't love you." is so much more heartbreaking than never hearing the words could ever be. 

So here I am, sad and mad and frustrated and coping.  My last three relationships have ended, suddenly, and without my consent.  When did things in any relationships stop being about compromise?  That's what you do when you're with someone, you talk to them, you bounce ideas off of them, you tell them where they stand.  This is something that is endlessly confusing to me, especially because in each of these cases, everything was good until suddenly it wasn't.

I am going about my days.  I am self-medicating with exercise and red beers.  I am trying to read books I've wanted to read, and I am no longer living out of a suit case.  I have since cleaned my apartment and I'm no longer living in a pile of clean or dirty clothes.  The bills are paid, the bellies are full, and we are going to be okay.

I miss my friend, desperately.  I miss sitting on my balcony texting him long before I had ever heard his voice.  I miss telling him stories and having him tell me stories.  I miss him telling me that he thinks I'm beautiful, even though I never believed him.  I hate feeling like I've just become another notch on his headboard, another number he can talk about while drinking with his friends, or when he meets someone new.

I hate that I put so much into this, and now it feels like my relationship had been reduced to a shoebox full of little things. 

Was I ever anything more than that?

She wakes up lonely... (prose)

Depression.   Hard and fast and unrelenting.  Sometimes triggered by one thing or another, or an accumulation of certain things, sometimes there is no one real reason.  Triggers can be any number of things, though are usually self-inflicted self-doubts. 

Friends and loved ones can see it through frayed nerve endings that are exposed in quick tempers and emotional outbursts that are undeserved and at the same time, uncontrolled.

Not an "I want to die" kind of feeling, or even "I wish I could/would/should die".  More of a desire to crawl into a hole for the next twelve days.

Sleep either comes too often too soon, or not at all.  Appetite uncontrollable, or non-existent. 

Secluding.

Trying to find meaning in certain things that may not have a meaning or a reason or a purpose.  Refusing to properly punctuate my sentences forcing them into eye-bleed run-on's simply because that is how my mind is currently working.  Desire to consume vast amounts of chocolate, lay in a tub of ice, sink into sweet oblivion for only a short while. 

I could be writing in metaphors.  I could be speaking the truth.  .

My truths. 

Lack of motivation for anything, but still able to go about the motions, no one really being any wiser.  No one other than those who knew me when, or know me now, well enough to see my fragile splintered self for who I really am.

Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.

Fall asleep empty, wake much the same.  New dawn, sore and bleeding crimson and orange. 

I am not who I define myself as, I know there is so much more.