A Lot Going On at the Moment

Rebooting and re-doing without stopping, because who has the time?

pic source: i0.wp.com

I don’t know who, if anyone, is paying attention to what I write here, or if anyone noticed that I removed almost everything I wrote in the last six months.

For as long as I’ve been writing online, I’ve done this same stupid shit.

I start writing on a blog, I make a niche website, I commit to a daily writing practice, and then… I just stop doing it. Then, because I’m embarrassed of my failures, I often delete all evidence of any previous effort.

Sometimes, we delete things because we can feel a certain way one day, but feel something completely different the next.

I’m not erasing those things from MY memory.

Trust me, it all gets stored away in a place where I’ve learned I need to do better at keeping it to myself unless it’s very important.

We’ve just been at this a long time. We’ve been here before, over and over again, and I am tired of all the histrionics and just want to move on with my life.

We all just want to move on with our lives.

I particularly want to just start over - just pretend we are starting our relationship again from the very beginning.

We were together, and then we weren’t.

And when we weren’t, he was something he’d never been before during the entire course of our relationship.

He was a single man.

He was a single man who could have chosen anything, and he still chose me.

But I still can’t let that get to my head.

I wish I could, but I still don’t feel like I can fully relax or trust that he will stay.

The only way I will be convinced is by having patience and giving him time to be faced with choices that would hurt me - and choose to not do what he knows will hurt me.

This relationship, whether we’re together or apart, consumes me either way.

When he’s gone I tell myself I’m strong and fine alone without him, but I’m lying to myself.

I’m always missing him.

I’m always wishing I could pick up my phone and text him every time something happens that I feel is worth telling someone about. He’s the one I want to tell.

Picking up my phone and thinking “I can’t text him anymore,” is considerably more painful than I ever would have expected, but there you have it.

For our whole relationship, he insisted I was his best friend, and I said ‘No, it’s not enough to be my best friend, I have enough friends, I want a lover and a partner,” and I finally get it.

It may have taken five and a half years and fifteen “breakups” but I finally understand.

He’s my best friend, too.

He can be my lover, partner, and best friend.

And it’s not because I need him to be all of those things, or that I expect him to carry the responsibility and the weight of all those roles, it’s because he’s just genuinely the person I want to share my life with.

I don’t just want to share a bed with him, I don’t just want to share bills with him, I want to share everything.

The feelings, the thoughts, the dreams, the complaints, the fears, the joys - everything.

I just want to be able to hold his hand and not be afraid he’ll let it go.

So, I’m working on it.

We’re working on it.

---

Meanwhile, the world burns.

The very moment I read the headline “US Bombs Iran…” we were cresting the bridge over the river where our best submarines are built, tested, and docked.

To our left was the glow of the nuclear submarine factory, and to the right, our Navy base, where hundreds of young men and women were probably shitting their pants knowing that sooner or later, they are going to be the ones deployed to fire the missiles and start the wars.

I thought of 9/11, when my grandmother called from Florida that morning begging me not to cross that bridge to go to work that day, knowing this area is a likely target.

I almost threw up in the car.

Come Monday, I’m back at my desk at the food pantry hearing one horror story after another of how one bout of bad luck brought another person or entire family to ruin.

While I try to comfort the people who come to us hungry, telling them it’s okay, don’t be ashamed, there’s nothing to apologize for, I won’t for a moment judge you…

While I nod and agree it’s disgusting that since it’s summer, it’s okay for shelters to turn people away and not open emergency centers, because if you have a tent, you have shelter…

While I see, day after day, all the different fucked up ways our state and federal governments weaponize poverty and punish the poor, it’s hard to be present and productive with anything else.

I want to be writing poetry, I want to be writing flash fiction, and novels, and articles that are viewed thousands of times with hundreds of people engaging like they used to…

But so much of my energy now is used just to make it through the day without crying in public.

My spoons?

Where are my spoons?

They’re gone. They’re used up.

I need to respawn and replenish like I were a video game avatar, and you know what?

Pretty soon, maybe that’s all any of us will be.

I guess my whole point is, there’s a lot of fucking shit going on at the moment, not just in my life but in the world, and all of it is worth writing about.

I know this. I tell myself this all the time, and then instead of writing about it, I spend all my time consuming other people’s content and wishing I were the one who wrote it.

I want to start over.

I want to begin again.

And I don’t want to have months go by only to feel the need to write another post like this because I didn’t follow through with my intentions in the first place.

I want to have a completely different life, and have it start right here, right now.

BUT! If you’d like help me pay bills, I appreciate every generously donated dollar. Hit the pic below, it will take you to my Ko-fi page: