casting

steadily and far without leaving myself much line to reel things back in.
i have so many questions that i will probably never manage to answer.
if unanswered, the questions could swell and ooze. or they could heal and fade.
a fork in the road in her jumbled murmur over my shoulder. look, mommy, a fork in the road. how do we know which way to go?
today, without the answers, the questions have me frantic. she puts so much faith in me to direct her, as if i'm even capable of steering my own ship.
i think of that scene. and a million other scenes... and i wonder if everyone's attempt to stay united is in vain. does everything eventually disappear? do the dynamics just dissolve into emptiness, into nothing? how does anyone ever really love someone?
i mean really. without lying and cheating and forcing themselves. is there such a thing?
my love is a spigot. a few good left turns and i spew, steadily, heavily. but turn it to the right and i am done, off. completely.
or i like to pretend things are that simple.
i don't want to see him tomorrow. i don't want to see them tomorrow. i'd like to erase them utterly and forever from my life. this is not how i expected to feel. not entirely. i did expect to feel deserted, abandoned, left. i did expect their interest to steadily wane. but not so abruptly. and i didn't expect that i would begin to heartily embrace the disinterest. i didn't expect that they would call me and i would not return the calls.
no one who leaves a message lately hears from me. sorry. sort of.
today, oncampus, i was disconnected. today, in bed, i was disconnected. today, all day, i have been disconnected. there's too much in my head. i can't even pretend to give a shit.
she bubbled through the door, prying her eyes apart and talking as quickly as she possibly could to keep herself awake as she tugged at the torn, dingy once-white strap of her discountdesigner bathing suit. she detailed her trip as she bit with no teeth into the center of her apple.
i told her i missed her.
i lied through my intact teeth.
i'm not in a space to miss anyone. i'm busily erecting walls. i'm busily wallowing in my own pity. and i'm tired of sharing with anyone else. it only muddies me a little more. it only exasperates everyone around me.
last night, on the return trip with andre crooning loudly in the car, i wanted desperately to find something louder, wilder, more penetrating. distraction. i wanted to drive off into nothing. i wanted to drink too much and laugh too loudly and dance drunkenly to really bad music. like i used to when she wasn't around. i wanted to pretend that there were no consequences. that having no money doesn't mean anything. that the next week will pass smoothly. that the next year will be liveable and i won't find myself aching or scrambling at the end of it. that i will get into school easily. that he will find a job and we will stay together. that she will not resent me entirely. i just wanted to drink and forget and pretend. instead, i drove madly back home and observed his tolerant semi-interest as he responded over the top of his monitor.
the questions i posed, his responses, his eyes sliding into the back of his head after he'd finally closed his computer and decided to lie down and address me directly only depressed me more. i should have stopped at a bar the way i'd wanted to. i should not have come home to think. and fill my mind with everything that doesn't matter in the end. the rest of me never listens, anyway. i have no psychosomatic synergy. that synapse collapsed long ago.
this morning i told him to. i told him to partly because i wanted to see if he would... but partly because it has been some time and i needed to remind myself how much i'm willing to not take care of me. sad, i guess, that i could never be a porn star. at least there's money in mastering that art of letting yourself down. over and over again.
this is not where i'm supposed to be. this is not how i'm supposed to be.
mark ruffalo onscreen reminds me of him. slow but volatile. slow but oddly profound. deliberate. i haven't seen him in three years next week. when he was here he made her cry and disappointed her repeatedly and blew off her investment so that he could vomit vodka into bushes with his half-retarded friends. i hated him for treating her the way he did. what i didn't realize was that i do the same thing relentlessly every fucking day. i let her down consistently more massively than his fleeting presence (or absence) ever could.
the scene featuring his dilapidated house and his trashy dyejob girlfriend made me cringe. when he wondered if i ever check on him just to see where he is, or if i ever thought about it, i didn't need a pause. i don't wonder about him. generally. until i see the cineamatic corollary to my life. the torn screen door of his world banging shut, denying he was ever involved in the creation of a child. until i see how it looks from the outside. she would be so appalled by him. what part of me ever thought he was fit to be anything other than gutter trash, anything other than what he nastily called him. every single day. i was standing too close to really get a good look, to really scan the scene.
the best time to go is around 7am. but i always show up hours too late. and nothing ever bites. i just cast and cast and cast into emptiness. not right now. let's wait and see. we should stop and think. we need to put space between this and that. let's just wait and wait and wait..........
cast and reel and it's always the same fable, the dull, droning shit about the one that simply wouldn't bite.

great green monster grumbling inside me

i've also thought about a lot of the things you said about me last night, and a lot of the things that i said in response to you. i don't think i have a need to know that i've impacted people's lives. i don't know if that stems from the realization that i explained to you that i had when tess approached the jewelry counter at kmart and didn't have a clue who i was. i don't know if it's something that's fed by the fact that the last time i saw chris i screamed in his face about all the horrible stuff he had done that had profoundly impacted my life and lexx's and he shrugged because a)he didn't care that he had impacted us and b)we had not similarly impacted him. i don't know if realizing that i had to stop caring about whether we had impacted chris' world in order to make it through my days and be a reasonable mom for lexx has influenced my investment in the impact i have on others. and i don't know if it's just that the relationships i've had are not the kind of relationships that leave one wondering if the other person ever thinks of him. i don't know if it would be different with you, someone with whom i've shared a lot of loving time. honestly, i'm not keen to find out.
i'm also not really that interested in what people are doing. and it's not just that i'm not fascinated by the potential happenings in the lives of the men with whom i've been romantically involved. i'm not particularly curious about the lives of other people who have floated through my life. my connections to other people, even people who are, or were, some of my closest friends, are extremely loose. i'm probably unhealthy for that. or completely self-absorbed. my bonds don't endure terribly well because i'm such a passive agent, because i don't stay fascinated in the directions people go...because i deal with people like waves. they wash in furiously and fade slowly out only to come rushing back in at unanticipated moments.

written and deleted. i told him i envy the power of her words. i want to intrigue him the way she does. i want to compel him to seek my thoughts every single day. but we have such different relationships. would he create a window into my world if i pushed him from it? would he be compelled to find my thoughts if i weren't busy cramming them down his throat? would he be fascinated with me if we weren't constantly in contact?
bertrand russell i quoted before and i look to again: gradually i learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; i came to center my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledges, individuals for whom i felt affection. he said he thinks i think i'm not the kind of person who deserves to be loved. but i am the kind of person who craves it more than anything in the world. i am also the kind of person who becomes mired in transience. anything can disappear. with almost everyone, i embrace the ebb and flow, their trickling in and out of my consciousness and i in and out of theirs. with him, i cling. his tide is one i don't want to let wash back out. more than that, my tide is one i don't want him to let wash back out. the reality of the dynamics of relationships penetrates me. i know all too well the natural cycle of demise and renewal. i cringe at the thought of observing our demise. either prospectively or retrospectively. i don't want to have to look at the delapidated remains of what was once incredible, which makes me scramble to protect it from the future, from inevitability, from the boredom and stressors that accompany time. he told me he lives every day as if it were his last, that he would want to be able to die happy if he died the next day. i don't know how much i believe this about him because in many ways he's more of a clinger than i am. in many ways, he's so not day-to-day. regarding him, regarding her i am not day-to-day. loving like crazy destroys my brain, my balance.
i would erect walls in a second if he broke my trust. he's right about me shutting people carefully out of my life. he's right. it's deliberate but not. it's an instinctive response, my natural defense. i readily wash my hands, ever since he walked away, because i don't want to ever hurt like that or flail like that again.
if he walked away, i might not manage such a quick and dirty, painless cleansing. which is probably the root of every inch of my panic.
maybe it's time i learned again that it's ok for disappearances to hurt.
but that education might require relaxing the walls i've built around his ten-pound body. and if the dam breaks i have no way of knowing what's on the other side. or how fast and furious it will come. and no one's provided me with a bright orange pfd to strap around myself, no one's in the front promising to help me steer to safety, no one's calling directions back to me, helping me realize that we're a terribly good team. as much as he likes to say that i'm strong, i am such an amazing coward. somewhere, he's got to know that. inside the facade of his trashtalking, big, bold, completely unfragile woman lurks a cowering, glaring, tallying wimp who can't even begin force herself to face the monsters who live inside her own mind.

everything changes

everything has changed.
so much for the worse.
i loathe the mirror and only partly because i can't stand what hovers therein. mostly, i loathe the mirror for the superficiality it instills in me. because i hate that i care whether he should be aesthetically drawn to me. because i hate that deepdown i'm the kind of person who cares whether she's a six or a twelve.
everything has changed. everything is different. suddenly, i'm in sixth grade, getting tits and ass, completely self-conscious of every creeping inch of my altered skin. it shouldn't be like puberty---things are fundamentally the same. but the underground morphing still swallows me.
glandular. the way i feel is glandular. but that doesn't make it any better. like horseface saying that paxil and prozac are great because they take away the personal cupability and shame that have hovered around diseases. but does that make it any better? in the moment?
everything has changed. and it leaves me so repulsively needy. so desperate. and overwhelmed. and eager to foldup and disappear.

halfhearted catholic guilt

i am absolutely tormented. i lie awake and repeat and repeat and repeat, a caricature of some incredible cineamatic psycho. i remove myself as far as possible from him. i don't want him to sense me shaking and feel there's something he could or should do about it. i can't even have a telephone conversation. i can't focus. my mind is everywhere.
and nowhere.
i can't lasso it for the life of me.
i don't know what i expected from them...not to find me such a buzzing, bumping, bumbling peripheral annoyance, i suppose.
i don't know what i expected from him...to want things as badly and desperately and achingly as i do, i suppose. to not put things off, shrug things off with such remarkably unaffected ease.
i don't know what i expected from me...to bounce back unfazed immediately, fantastically as only wonderwoman herself could do.
i don't know what i expected from her...to not be human. to not want him for her own.
which makes an enormous hypocrite of me.
his semi-interest in my wallowing weepiness throws handfuls of sand in my mouth, leaving my teeth gritty, my throat parched and irritatingly itchy. his snores are a million times more illustrative than the hand he halfheartedly places on my back.
the same hand that works his halfhearted fondle as he pretends to include me in his intimate world...as he pretends it has anything to do with me...but he always says he loves me when he ends.
i can't sleep, can't sleep, can't sleep. blood crusts my thighs and come crusts my stomach. i can't wrap my head around simultaneously craving him so painfully and urgently needing to roll over and spit shards in his face. just because he doesn't have a problem waiting.
just because he makes it seem like none of it matters.
just because i don't like feeling so unhinged, and his aloofness only exacerbates my crazy.
here's when he calls me while i look at paper after paper asking me to prove to their panel that i'm worthy and he bothers to think of me all the way across the ocean and wants to reach out to be helpful to me and i can't even focus on his words. i can't focus on her words when she tells me about her day. i can't focus on his words when he tells me about whatever he just finished reading. i'm living too much inside my head. but i'm petrified to crawl out of it because i'm afraid of what insidious specimen i might find trailing. i'm afraid to have my ugly, clinging, craven, neediness exposed. i'm afraid to admit to the universe that looking at him lying on the rumpled bedclothes in his birth center baby t-shirt and diaper and stroking his long, thin foot between my fingers and not being able to stop kissing his head and telling him that i was done taking care of him and that his parents were going to take him home was utterly fucking wrenching. because i don't want to admit to myself that there is anything about that tongue-sucking baby that penetrates me so completely that i feel utterly helpless before his helplessness, that i awake in consuming tears because i've dreamt his large body slipping from me, falling, dying. which is not about fear, as she suggested this morning. it's about loss. it's about grief. it's almost as if he's dead to me. and there's no way to spit that out without a cloud of psychosis.
there's no way to make sense of my lying awake at 1:30, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30 listening to him snore and staring at the ceiling, wishing more than ever that i were back in october thinking more exactly about the different ponds i planned to dive into and the things that each of them would bring. a new life. a wilted one. a new body. an angry one. a new bond. a divided one. and heaps and heaps of something somewhat like guilt swallowing me from every angle.