Saturday, March 9, 2013

You were Mine

I know, I know, its been a long time. But things have been rough the last month? Few months? Year? 20 some years?! Man its been a long streak of ugly luck and negative events and yet they're so close together and so frequent its hard to accept that its really been a long long time.

The past month has been exceptionally devastating. It seems that it has been full of loss and heart ache. 
For me, in this, the loss and heartache are inseparable. In just one month I have lost people in my life. Not just ANY people, but cornerstone you-were-my-rock-in-the-stream people. 

Im not at all new to loss. My first sharp loss was my Ta-Ta, when I was 3 or 4. He was my great grandfather. Not a great man, but none-the-less he was mine and he was funny. He used to offer me his pee pan when I would come see him in his room where he was living out his last few years. I loved him something fierce for my short years and his loss left me with imprints of my parents in funeral clothes, the news, and my reoccurring dreams of him trying to speak to me from the other side of life. 

I overheard the news of my Tia's imminent passing from a corner of the kitchen where no one noticed a 7 or 8 year old me. She was a plump and loving woman. Although she always gave me panties for Christmas, she too was mine and loved me. I ran from the sight of her in her casket, and saw her face on my funeral clothes so sharply I never wore them again.  

A lot of the people who's honest Love I was born in to left my life early on. As soon as I was able to, I moved far away from 'home' and 'family' and began collecting friends to create my chosen family. A group of misfit people whom didnt love me for the sake of sharing DNA but by virtue of choice. 

When I was dragged from the wreck of my PT cruiser back in '07, it wasnt at all family that came to see me. It was friends. Clients from work. People I lived by. I came to realize that these were the people who mattered. That those who out of their own deep concerned helped me when I was broken and not myself were the ones to keep close and love back just as strong. 

I dragged myself out of a miserable wreck of a failed marriage a little over a year ago. I looked around a saw a few great friends with faces full of concern and hands outstretched. I got up, and I fell. Again and again, I fell and I failed to walk well away from the disaster. Each time I collapsed and I looked up, there were less and less faces. Im broken, yet I am trying. Thought that hasnt been enough for others. 

I thought for a while that it was me. Blamed myself for the dissolving ties. But what is true love towards someone if it is not unconditional? Loving someone but stepping away in their darkest, most broken moments because their recovery and their trauma does not fit your schedule and needs... what is that? 

A lot of negativity has been attributed to me because I am an easy target. A woman put through the wringer and easily identified by the marred and scarred look of her. Isnt that the kind of person to easily blame for wrong doings? 

In this past year and some, above all my other trials, I have suffered much loss. Weddings, and concerts, and pitiful other excuses have taken precedence over me. I didnt expect my family to come see me in this new lonely state. But I expected others to. I expected others to love me enough to come hold me at my most frail moment. 

This past year has also changed me much. Yes, Ive learned to value the little things and accept mistakes and forgive others. Ive also learned to put up walls. Ive lost strength and positivity and valor. Ive lost shine. Ive lost little jagged pieces from the corners of my smile and the softness of my heart. Ive lost my 'muchness' that once held the love of some. That attraction and commitment another might feel for me. 

But I expected to be loved, unconditionally and irreplaceably. I expected the world to come apart and burst in to flames before some people in my life could feel that I wasnt enough. Or that my darkness was too heavy for them. Or that there was nothing left. 

This month has left me doubting myself and my worth as well as the dedication and love of anyone close enough to me to know me in truth. It has taken from me faith. 

It has left behind in its wake so many flash memories of the best times I had with them, torn to shreds knowing that each one was false. Empty. Nothing that will be remembered outside my mind, and not a tie they minded cutting. I loved them. They were mine.

Loss is not a new thing to me, in the form of death. Death took away the person but not the love. 

Its another thing all together when the love is gone...but the person still exists.