How to stop

I don't know how I'm going to stop falling for you. I think I'm fine, loving you in my way, keeping my emotional distance to stay where we are. Then you walk down the stairs in your costume and my heart falls to the floor. Its not anything risqué, and you wear it every year. In the years past I admired it through a fog of self doubt and self sabotage.

This is the first year it feels like I saw you without all that in the way, and you were bewitching. I could feel my heart skip a beat. I could not stop myself from complimenting you like a Love sick fool. I managed to stop after a while but I know it was too late. So how do I do it, how do I stop falling.

Thankful

We had a talk today and it opened my eyes and helped me to feel more ready for some things. I'm not chasing a friendship with you. Im sitting squarely at roommates and thats ok. The holiday is hard for us, the whole family dynamic has changed rapidly. We said out loud that we are going to rely on each other to get through the holidays, and that took a weight off my mind. 

Then we sat together, and just sat. I didn't feel any tension and it sounds like you didn't either. It was calm and quiet. It felt like this is possible. Being around each other without any hopes or expectations, any fears or doubts. Just two people walking together toward the same goal.

Im thankful for that, and I am thankful for you.

Where we are

 I have to separate myself from this, but I'm not sure how. Every time we spend time together I am so happy because it feels like how I wanted it to be all these years. The fog is gone, the voice that lied to me only a murmur. I can just be with you. I can be in the moment and feel your presence and your light.

So how do I give that up now that I finally have it. I have to, of course. It sends my heart soaring forward to a place where we are friends. When I rub your back or scratch that itch, I think this is helping build a bridge, that we are building a bond to friendship. Then you remind me with brutal efficiency that this is not the case. We are NOT friends. We are roommates, and not to the "get along" kind. We are co livers.

It crushes me every time. You are firmly in the roommate phase and I keep trying to step forward, and I have to stop. I have to just be a roommate. But what about all the things that make me happy, that bring me joy. Do I have to lose them again. Spending time with you, putting lotion on your legs, hearing the gentle sigh when I find the itch or that sore spot with my thumb.

How can that be ok? How can I separate my joy from this drive to be friends. I don't want to be sad all the time, and alone. I've been there and it was a well so deep I almost drowned. So how do I grow if I'm forced back in that hole. 

Dresses

 So many dresses. I went through them to find one we have been looking for. I pulled out each one, made it ready to be worn with the sleeves right or turned right side out, then I held it up, imagined you in it, then set it aside.

I told you often I love you in dresses, and now I wonder if that's why you stopped wearing them. Why would you dress up for someone you do not feel comfortable with. I know how strong willed you are, and how little my opinion matters, but maybe it tipped a scale I wasn't aware of.

I have watched you dress and undress, change and try on so many clothes over the years. In this tiny little world I've been living in it is a time I have often treasured. I have to expand my world, and those moments are coming to an end.

I hope that there will come a time when you wear dresses again. 

I do still love you

I had to say it. But only once. I won't say it again. I do still love you. The look you gave was all that needed to be said. It looked like exasperation, and annoyance, and anger all wrapped in one quick glare. I do still love you, and my love for you has only grown. Now that I can see clearly, now that I'm actively fighting my bad thoughts, I see all the reasons why I loved you before and all the things you do now. So I still love you, that's not going to change. I know that might hurt to hear, which is why I won't say it again, but I had to let you know. 

I still love you. I whisper it each night before I fall asleep, and it screams in my head when I look at your face. 

Apologies

 I am so very sorry. Moment by moment, minute by minute, hour by hour, and day by day I say it a thousand times in my head and out loud. I say it on my walks, and while I work, and when I sit by myself. I know it doesn't change anything, but I have to say it. When I stop it begins to fill me up like a cup in a waterfall. I do not think the apologies will ever end, because I do not know how I could ever be sorry enough for all that I put you through. Every time we talk I find more bad I've done, more pain I've caused, and more reasons to apologize. 

At first I thought there might be a day when I could show you I have changed enough that you might begin to forgive me, to heal the wounds I've opened, and maybe one day I might even be able to forgive myself for my actions and inactions and blindness to it all. But now I cannot see that day. It feels like lifetimes will have to pass before those wounds might start to heal. 

If that is so, then I hope that I will find you in the next life and the next, and show my better self every time, and give my apologies in every life, until a day comes when we meet and all your wounds have turned to scars, and all the scars have faded away, and the me you meet is a person you can forgive, even if by then the why is long forgotten. I hope somewhere deep in my soul, when that forgiveness comes I will be able to receive it, and slowly stitch up the wounds I've created in myself. 

As I go, what I hope

I know it's a journey. It's not a straight line. There will be setbacks and turn arounds. I know that what I've gone through is only the beginning, and only a tiny fraction of what I've put you through over the years. 

You've been through all this already, you have run the marathon and made it to the finish line. You are off on a new journey now. I have just left the starting line and I know this will be a long road.

Knowing all that, I can still say this. I will love you forever. I will always see your beauty. You are the light that will cast a shadow on any relationships I may have in the future. The lens by which I will compare all things.

I know you will never believe me when I say it, but I hope one day when the person you trust, the person you feel safe with, tells you you are beautiful, you can finally see it.

Pull

You draw people. You have a magnetism that pulls people to you. It is incredibly strong. I have seen it for years. I've felt it always. This need to be near you, ever closer to you. Others feel it too.

Now that we are where we are, it is maddening. I put things between us (tables, counters, chairs) because I feel the tug in my chest. My head swivels back to you again and again. Every time, without fail, I end up next to you. So close I could place a hand on your lower back or plant a kiss on your forehead. I try to pull away, to push against the draw. It is like wading in wet cement. It takes everything in me to keep that bit of distance, to not reach out. 

I do not know if this pull will last forever. Its been going on for decades and has only grown in strength. My only hope is that your repulsion of me will keep creating the space I need to keep away.

Maybe one day in the far future, with enough distance and time, I will no longer feel the pull.

That damn cat

 I don't know where I would be right now if not for that damned cat and feeding time. 

I was so lost, so overwhelmed. Crying and screaming and dying into a silly bed my kid made. My heart was shattering and shattering. I couldn't breathe, couldn't lift my head from the pillows. I couldn't anything. I couldn't be. So much pain I caused was just piling on top of me, pushing my head down harder. 

I felt like giving up. Just screaming all the air out and not letting any back in.

But the cat needed to be fed. She jumped on the bed and cried at me. Moved around the bed and cried again. I would lift my hand and she would dart toward the door, only to come back and cry again. I turned my head from the pillow and said "ok, I'm going." She didn't accept that and kept crying till I was up and moving. 

I got her food, and made the bed. I cleaned the litter box. I made my morning calls. I'm going to cut the lawn. I do not know about tomorrow, but I know I'll be feeding that damn cat at least.

calming the noise

There was a noise. It wasn't words, it wasn't anything I could articulate but it was just getting louder and louder and I knew I needed calm or comfort. Something to still the sound in my body. My first thought immediately was holding your hand in the bed. But I'm not stupid I knew that was too intimate, too much. So as it got louder and louder I thought laying in bed together would be enough for me and settle the sound to something manageable at least. but I know that was rude of me to ask. I should not rely on you. You do not need to be in the middle of this. You said you were done with our relationship and I need to respect that. I'm afraid I will have to keep coming to you to talk until I find a therapist. I have nothing else. That makes me feel worse because I am the source of so much of your pain and so much of your anxiety.

wish I knew

There's so much I wish I knew. The signs were there but nobody taught them to me. When you walled yourself off in blankets I told myself it was for comfort, even though it felt like rejection to me. An attempt to force space between us. It was that, but so you'd feel safe.

When you first started covering your face with me around I thought you were being coy and cute. Then I said you were worried about bad breathe. Eventually I realized too late you were hiding from me. Another form of protection.

How many other signs did I ignore or explain away. How many chances did I have to catch myself. I wish I knew.

I wish I knew all the little ways your body screamed for safety that I ignored or dismissed.

dead thing

 I don't know why I was trying to heal something that you already declared dead. I wasn't trying to put things back to the way they were, I only wanted to take away some of the pain and save whatever I could. But there is nothing to save. There's no need to work through resentment if there is no relationship to feel it in. There's no reason to build connections if they lead to nothing. 

I wanted to salvage as much as I could in hopes that it would help us get to a place of understanding, and maybe one day friendship. I was just putting band-aids on a dead bird, knowing it will never fly but pretending there is a chance it may hop.

I'm still trying to work through the pain I cause and the damage I've done. It's still there for me and I still have to accept it all and grow from it. That does not mean I have to keep dragging you into it though. If it is dead, then it needs to be buried and mourned, and then we have to move on. 

Little Voice

There is a little voice deep down, next to where I cage my demons. It is so quiet and soft that it sounds like wind through the leaves. I cannot understand the words, but I know what it is saying.

It is hope.

Hope that this is not the end. Hope that there's still time. Hope that I can become thw man she always wanted me to be, and that she will still be around to see it. 

We will come together again, new people in a new love that is stronger because of the broken bits and the work to repair them.

It is an impossible hope, a butterfly hoping to visit the moon before it passes. 

I have other hopes, real hopes, attainable goals. To be a better father, better partner. To know myself and heal myself. To become part of the community and make friends.

These are my focus, but that breeze still blows from the very bottom of my soul. I cannot kill it. I cannot pluck that butterflies wings, because it is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and I cannot yet bear to watch it die.

Morning beauty to rival the sunrise

She had that wild hair this morning and a pink tank top. She has these little flashes of genuine smile that makes my heart skip a beat whenever I see it. I love the way she moves about the room, the way she does her makeup, and the way she looks at herself in the mirror. Very meticulous and refined as she looks at herself, but I see this wild hair, pink tank top, beautiful smile. It makes my heart ache.

Punishment and Grace

I deserve the relationship we have now. Not just because I ruined our marriage years ago. Your writings showed that clearly. It's because of all the years you were screaming to try and reach me even through the pain, and all the years I was so cruel to you.

I hate that I put you through so much pain, that moving on was the only option you had left, and that it took you telling me that to finally cut through the fog.

The relationship we have now is not punishing me. Knowing that I hurt the one I care about most in this world, and that I did for so long and so cruelly, that is my punishment.

Still being in your life is grace. It is the sliver of light in the dark hole I've put myself.

new routine

I just want to lay in the bed... and drown. But I can't, because I made the bed after I fed the cat. I guess I'll just keep up with the routine that I created for myself. I can do this.

failing

 I try and stumble, try and then fall. she deserves so much more than I can offer. I try to meet her needs but my brain won't let me. I make choices and they are the wrong ones, but they sound so logical when my brain says them. I want to do better, to be better. The pills aren't helping. maybe they mellow me, but then I am indifferent and uncaring. my memory worsens. I feel myself more and more pulling at strings trying to reach the thought I had or the instruction I was given. therapy feels pointless. I cannot remember what it is a should talk about. 

She's going to leave me, and she has every right to. I only hope that when she finds someone new, they bring her coffee every morning, and they are unable to look away when she gets ready like I am.  They will love her the way I do, but also more because they can give her what she needs.