How the be the better person, part 29 November 11, 2009

He died. I died. We all died.
Ring around the rosie. Pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

And down we fell. Past the rabbit’s hole, into a black hole, into utter blackness, into outer space, into a space which I have never recognized because

I was never truly there before.

Like the plague. Like a handshake that gives you the shakes, the mono, the cholera, the everyday normal death.
It went like this:

Hi.
Hi.
I lust you.
I lust you.
No one will ever add up to you.
[Silence]
No one will ever add up to you.
[Years]
Oh, well, hello.
Hello to you too.
[Years]
I love you.
I love you too.
But I really love you.
Well, I really love you too.
[Together]
I love you.
[Silence]
(Acceptance)
[Silence]
I love you.
(Caution)
I love you too.
I love you.
I love you.
[Love]
Where’d you go?
(Silence)
Bipolarland.
Well, I still love you.
(Silence)
I love you?
[Silence]
I…
I love you.
(Um, me, me, me)
I love you, but…
[I can't do this anymore]
I can’t do this anymore.
(Silence)
Hello?
[Silence]
Wait, maybe I can.
[Go fuck yourself]
(But I love you)
[Silence]
(But I gave up so much for you)
[Go fuck yourself]
{Cry, cry, cry}
[Silence]
(Acceptance)

Yeah, so, a gory allegory: I moved on. Eat a shit sandwich and die.

I’m paraphrasing. But that was the gist of it. What I don’t understand is how you say you love someone, and then, suddenly, you don’t.
And I’m finding this to be more and more common.
How DO you love someone, and then suddenly treat them like shit you step around on the street? Like, the past five years never meant anything, like you were just biding your time until you could pull out your knife and stab them in the heart repeatedly.

That’s fun. What a fun hobby. “Hey, I love you. Oh, whoops, no I don’t. Here, I’d like you to die. A rather painful death. And I’m gonna go ahead and instigate it by telling you, showing you, imbedding in you my hopes, my dreams and my love, and then HEY, I’m just going to go ahead and murder you dead. Have fun!”

And they ask why I don’t want to date anyone again.

 

I have a space song. It’s glorious and weepy and all things invading one’s soul. My space song is the one that I sing when I am all alone and I wonder where I am going and what will happen to me. My space song keeps me warm at night and keeps me safe from the devil. My space song is what I count on to keep me alive and keep me safe from harm.

But the sad thing about my space song? It’s me. It’s all I’ve got. In the middle of the night, just me. In the middle of the day, it’s just me. When I’m feeling sad and lonely and desperate and full of regret, all I have is me, and sometimes, it borders on not being enough. I’m hanging on by a thread, but at least I’ve got my at leasts.

At least I’m not self-medicating. That much. At least I haven’t gotten over it by getting truly under something else. At least I tried. And at least I’m still trying to be a good friend. At least I’ve got the self-respect to take care of myself, and keep myself from harm, especially if that harm is from my own hand.

[Like last winter, when you saw the scars that I inflicted on your behalf. And you said you'd never allow that to happen again, and you insisted that I scar you like I scarred me.]

I stopped self-mutilating. Not that I don’t feel like it sometimes, seeing blood on the outside instead of knowing that my heart is bleeding internally, even if it’s not really, it just feels like it. At least I’m not railing drugs, or even drinking until I’m too drunk to even write. Instead, I take the pain and put it into words. And they may hurt, but at least I’m purging, and not in a “I just threw up everything I had for dinner tonight” sort of way. No, my sandwiches are staying deep inside of me, giving me the energy to get up another day and face myself and the life that I want. Without pain and with grace.

He told me so many things, so many beautiful things, and now that he’s gone and become Darth Vadar, I’m not sure what to believe, except myself. Because when I told him beautiful things, I was not lying. And when I did beautiful things, I did them because I wanted to. And when I do beautiful things now, it’s because I’m learning, slowly, slowly, but surely, how to love again, the person that needs to be loved the most:
Myself.

So to you, dear Molly, I give you more wonderful gifts for this birthday: grace and dignity.
And the following prayer:

Our Father in Heaven, hallow be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Here’s the thing. I don’t hate myself anymore. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I think that I’m worth them all, and a lot more. I’m worth the wait. I’m worth the wait.

Jennifer, Veronica (everything, all of the time) October 14, 2009

[Actual passages out of my journal for the past year...I know, ridiculous, right? What would Jennifer do? Take a shot and move along. What would Veronica do? Take him for all that he's worth, and flick him away with a long, dark painted fingernail. But what does Molly do? Dwell...but I'd like to grow my fingernails long and sharp and scratch it all to hell, leaving my mark, not on some asshole's back, but on the entire world. I think Molly has yet to be determined...don't let the labels fool you, dear reader...)

10/12/08: It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Cutting myself is not enough — I want to slice myself wide open. I did what I had to do, and if there was a reason, it was you.

10/14/08: Did you see me walking by? Did it ever make you cry? What is he thinking? Does he miss me? Does he remember? Does he miss loving me? Does he remember that time at Six Arms?

10/15/08: You broke my heart. Please forgive me my trespasses, and I’ll forgive you yours.

10/18/08: You said you’d always love me. I started looking for excuses.

10/29/08: Why depression and why not me? Why sorrow and why not love?

11/1/08: What’s there to write about when the scars on my legs say it all. The pain rose to the surface, even if I was the one who had to help it out.

11/6/08: I love him so much. Alone is the last place I wanted to be.

11/11/08: Oh, it hurts. It still hurts. SO BAD. Why? Why? Why?

11./18/08: I want to forget him. But I can’t. Because forgetting him is forgetting me.

12/3/08: I loved him, and he broke my heart. All the hurtful, painful fucks aren’t going to fix this heartache. A thousand other fucks won’t erase the memory.

12/10/08: Trying without luck to forget the damage inflicted on me…and trying to ignore the damage I inflicted. But trying hardest of all to walk that line.

12/14/08: It’s your birthday. I miss you. I might still love you. Is there hope for us?

12/18/08: This hurts SO MUCH. Do you know how much this hurts, God? It hurts SO much.

12/26/08: Saw “Benjamin Button” today. And thought, he would like this movie. I hope he gets to see it.

12/28/08: Why didn’t it work? It needed to work. Why didn’t it work? I hate this. I hate this. It’s all a mess. But maybe it’s a mess I can fix.

12/29/08: I’m healing, and it’s hard. But healing takes time. Learning takes time.

1/2/09: I still love him. And I know he still loves me, or he wouldn’t try.

1/5/09: Unfinished. An unfinished life. An unfinished love. He called our love not unrequited, but unresolved. I said unresolved is the wrong word. Unfinished. And we paused. And his voice cracked.

1/6/09: Be here with me, keep me warm, keep me sane, love me as I love me, but more, differently. Keep me safe, and let me keep you safe.

1/9/09: Love is the most important part of life. Because why bother living without love? I don’t know what will happen. I don’t have the answers. But I have love and I have hope and I have honesty.

1/20/09: I love him tremendously, but I cannot lose myself again.

2/2/09: My beautiful boy is back. Molly, Dave loves you. So DON’T fuck up.

2/10/09: I love him. And I’m not scared at all. I trust him. I can give myself to him

3/12/09: Everything all of the time. How I hate you, Thom Yorke. How I hate you.

3/15/09: I miss you. I feel your absence like a phantom limb. Almost four years. Thank God I still have you.

6/3/09: My God. It’s been this long since I’ve written, spurred on by melancholia and the first random song on my sad  bastard shuffle: The Engine Driver. How apropos. His depression, even the slightest bit of it, affects me tremendously.

8/16/09: Here I am, expecting just a little bit too much from the wounded…difficult not to feel a little bit disappointed, passed over…but I look right on through, see you naked and oblivious. You don’t. See. Me. This song makes me come and cry. Eyes of a fallen angel, and a tragedy…oh well, oh well.

8/17/09: I feel so alone. How could you love me this way? I’m so fucking sick of dating a lie.

9/11/09: There are so many things to say to you. Namely, I still love you. I sleep in your shirt, using your pillows, wiping my tears over everything. Who do you love? If I were lucky, it’d be me. If I were the better person, I’d leave you alone. But I’m small and selfish and miss you and want all of your time.

9/23/09: Something is wrong. My head is splitting wide open. Is it some sort of existential crisis? (A work of art…a work of art…)

9/25/09: Keep me safe — even if you’re not here anymore. Because I wake up scared, wondering where I am, wanting to be safe.

10/5/09: Everything reminds me of him. Even this. Especially this.

10/6/09: Why would I want him if all he does, if all he remembers of me, all he thinks of me is that I’m trite and immature?

10/7/09: Neither one of us is either thing the other accused us of. We’re both heartbroken and petty.

10/13/09: I miss him. Every single day. I paid the price, I certainly did. I never held you in real life.

These are all passages from my “diary,” the very personal thing that I write the worst of the worst in, from a year ago, when he first began tearing my heart into pieces. You will read these items, and think, Molly, you did it to yourself, you did, and that’s what really hurts.
Sure, I’m a very stupid girl. I don’t, however, believe that I am either “trite” or “immature.” Immature people don’t overdraw their own checking accounts to send the love of their lives money so that he can eat. Trite people don’t actually post their own diaries for the world to read. I am many things, but “trite” and “immature” are not words to describe me.

In fact, even when I don’t feel like loaning things out, I do. Because why do I need money, movies, music, books and so forth, when my friends ask to borrow them? I would give any one of my friends the shirt off my back, I would give them my last four dollars, I would offer up, at the very least, my sofa to sleep on, and I would offer to make them dinner. Even the people that have screwed me over? I take them back, into my loving arms, and forgive them, and apologize for the trespasses I made against them.

But I still suck at a lot of things. Like, expressing my feelings in a cohesive way. Or having the patience to wait for someone to heal. Or having the knowledge to know that they’re not going to heal in my arms. I could’ve sacrificed myself, willingly, waiting for him to find stability. But I did once before. This time, I tried a different tactic. And the heartbreak exploded in my face. At least I know one thing for sure. No one will ever, EVER, love him like I did.
But I am worth loving. And I WILL find someone who knows that, and treats me appropriately. And maybe I won’t have to scratch at the walls, trying to figure out how to deal with someone whose wounds weep more than I ever thought mine could.

Think what you will of me. But I am sitting here, my journal sprawled on my bed, as I type in passages from the depths of my soul. I have been called a lot of things, but I am nothing if not honest and open, and willing to expose myself.

Because I know I’m not the only one. I’m probably not the only one who has ever loved you to the point of destruction, or maybe I am. But no one will ever love you as much as I loved you. I truly believe that in my heart. No one will ever love you as much as I loved you.

But maybe, my dear readers, you’ve felt the same way. Well, as you can see, in the past year, I’ve repeated patterns and ended up worse off than before. Read my story. Heed its lessons. Promise me that my heartbreak has not been in vain. Don’t follow my example. Do better than me. Teach me how to live. Just, whatever you do, don’t live like this.