The truth is...
I’ve loved you since I said the words.
And loving you
Loving you means a carving knife
That digs in deep
Cutting at parts of my stubborn psyche
Again and again
To change me into the person you need
Until my hands are sticky
And red fingerprints stain everything.
Loving you meant breaking promises to myself
Meant digging deep into every treasure,
Until that knife scrapped the old box wood.
Yet there was metal there.
Metal you wanted.
So I dug at that too,
Pounded it, cut at it,
Offered it
Hoping it would make you feel
All the things I believed you deserved to feel.
And now I’m barely holding it together.
I knew that I shouldn’t take out
that knife.
But when we met
When I loved you
I was still the corpse of another relationship
Still the walking dead thing
Of other disasters
And parts of me had become twisted up and gnarled
By other hands I invited in.
I thought if I took out my loving knife
And cut, cut, cut
That loving you last
Would help me never love again.
Honestly,
I catch myself thinking, just tell me what you want so I can give it to you.
As if that is how to start a relationship, as if that is the normal way people get to know each other, as if that will make him love me.
I asked a friend once, after he got to know me, what he thought my deep, dirty why was, and he said I seek validation from men because I don’t like myself.
Well. He’s right. I don’t like myself. I just thought that was how most women of a certain age live. They either have heard the feminine mental health gospel about me-time and spa days and embraced self-love and self-acceptance or they actively reject that message as unworkable with their current life and instead accept that there are parts of themselves that they do not like. Parts that are like that one friend that we really should leave behind, but instead we still go out to coffee, occasionally. Later me and my sister are going to talk shit about that person, break out all her flaws while ignore our own, and then pretend-smile next time we see her.
I don’t think that is why I seek validation. Men do telling me I’m sexy and calling me good girl do not give me validation. They give me attention. I love attention, but there is a difference so I don’t think that is why I am submissive, a pleaser, and a lover of co-dependency.
I think it’s daddy issues.
I’m sure it’s daddy-issues. Although to be fair, I have only dated one older man and he wasn’t old enough, nor fatherly enough to be my daddy. If I remember right, I bossed him around quite a bit.
But knowing that my adult relationship issues are related to my childhood relationship with my father doesn’t auto-fix me. There’s no button to push or pill to take and I highly doubt another shadow work journal is going to do the job.
I can go without male validation, I told my friend. I have done so. I can go places by myself. I enjoy the freedom of it actually, a lot. That type of alone-time recharges me. I can be alone. I have done so, in various forms. In spite of being married, I feel like I have navigated many hard things alone, without a man.
But to have purpose, when purpose gives me value, to have a reason to rise and a reason to go to bed, I have discovered I need someone to love, to desire, to serve. Otherwise, I lose myself in this cognitive noise of distraction and wild imagination. Otherwise I lose my way.
I have served the cold man. I have served the warm but poor man. I have served the weak, nice man, who couldn’t say no to another woman, and I have served the self-involved man. I have nothing left. I’ve given pleasure, resources, time and energy. Given too much.
I just want
I just want to be taken care of, now. I want someone to provide for me.
I want to give everything so that I don't have to think about anything.
I'm tired of carrying. I want to be carried.
And I didn't know how much, how badly until the needy ache of it sank into my bones
and cracked them open with its disease.
But I’m not young. I’m not a sweet, house-wife creature. I’m not helpless. I’m not needy in that kind of way, I’m not emotionally dependent. I’m not anyone’s baby girl. I’m heifer in the china shop. I’m the old plow horse who still leans in. I’m the hag next to the grave of the dead horse, still chanting prayers and benedictions to see if I can make it rise.
I am guarded, insecure, manic and impulsive. I am a little bit crazy and a lot recklessly fearless. I don’t just ignore red flags, I wade into the middle of them so I can understand why they are red flags, who they are red flags for and then I collect the prettiest ones and bring them home to decorate my bedroom.
After burning down my life I can only bring me to the table now and I’m so well adapted to making me into what he (you) might want, that I don’t even know what else I offer.
And after this last go around, where I’m not sure there will even be that kind of energy left to bring to the table.
No one is going to want to take care of me. I'm sure of it.
Maybe in a week things will be clear again. I'll stand again. I will be myself again, and ready to carry the world for him again.
Maybe.