Clever, Pepper.

love and let it rest….

Sometimes I need to remind myself that it’s okay just to love someone and not love what they do.  I really have become too happy with myself to try to care anymore.  I mean, I care.  I care too much and it makes me want to hate the people that I love but I don’t want to go on hating someone for what I think they’re doing wrong or not doing enough of or not doing right when I can just set it aside and leave it rest.  I can avoid this person like I avoid that person, and carry the pain around everyday under my smiles.  It’s hard to do, but after so many years of having to be stronger than I’d like to be, I guess there’s no reason to be weak now. 

cat’s outta the bag…

I’ve to realize that I’d just rather be friends with the person I married.  He’s a nice person and I like him when we’re friends.  As anything more, I’ve come to write him off completely.  He makes me cringe.  He makes my day full of anger.  He’s not a bad person at all.  He’s an amazing dad to our son, and he’s probably not a half bad husband.  He was a perfect boyfriend, and I suppose I expected him to maintain that status later in our life together.  Life carried on and we just slowly drifted out of whatever love we had for each other.  I think we both fell head over heels for the little dude, but we entirely became oblivious to each other’s wants or needs.  Nowadays, we’re lucky to say “good morning” to each other.  Tonight, he came home from band practice and I found out it was in Frostburg at his brother’s instead of the school where they’d all agreed when they started again.  I don’t know why this bother’s me so much but I guess mainly because he is so accommodating to everyone else or when it comes to things like music, sports, bike riding.  But when it’s me or family, he’s just not.  I know it’s a gripe.  I know I could blink and he’d be gone and I’d rather end it before it gets more sour.  I hate that I feel this way.  Problem is, I won’t leave him.  I won’t do anything.  I won’t leave because of Ryder.  I have been hurt my entire life because of divorce and I made sure my other son wouldn’t have this issue.  I have to just deal with it and live in misery and unhappiness.  My husband is a friend, and he is loved, but I miss that feeling of missing someone, of truly being in love with someone.  I hate it that I will probably never feel this way in my life again.  I hate it with all my heart.  I feel bitter and numb and angry and tired and it makes us argue when we don’t need to.  I refuse to go to counseling to have someone attempt to make me feel different either.  If he can’t do it, I won’t pay someone else to try for us.  I guess I feel doomed and frustrated.

thoughts on 9/11 then and now.

On September 10, 2001, I had been a recluse in my apartment for almost a year.  I could count on my two hands the amount of times I’d been outside.  Once I went out in the middle of the night to feel the end of Summer rain beating down on my face.  I needed to feel alive.  So much of me felt dead.  My job online as a webcam girl left me feeling worthless.  My relationship with my boyfriend was rocky and bitter.  My parents and I rarely talked.  This was the world I lived in and it was a mess.  I could have cleaned it up and sweep it away at any time, but I was lazy perhaps.  Maybe I was tired, maybe I was just too scared to try.  After working all night online, I could have went straight to bed that beautiful, sunny morning.  I had become a vampire in my little world.  Daylight hurt my eyes.  I normally would have avoided the telephone ringing after noticing it was my mother at 8:something-or-other in the morning but something told me not to.  She told me to check the news.  I watched with a blank and sleepy stare.  My mind had to be delirious at the moment.  I spoke with her about how sad it was, the ordinary stuff that people must have been thinking and then the second plane hit… Oh God, what the Hell!      I stayed awake watching the events unfold.  The only friends I had anymore were the friends I’d made online, co-workers basically.  In all of my nakedness, I’d become ashamed of who I was as a person so I didn’t have anyone to turn to but people like me.  I would have been in New York with one of my friends but her boyfriend had changed the date of our visit.  I suppose I never got the chance to thank him for that.  I cried all day.  I cried for all of the lives that were lost, I cried for the survivors, I cried for the city, for the country, I cried and cried and cried for all the reasons the rest of America cried.  Then I cried because I felt sadness that I was given a life to live that I’d forgotten to live, that I had loved ones I’d forgotten to love and that I had myself and I’d forgotten who I was.      After 9/11, I cried many days and nights.  I rarely recall logging in to my job as a webcam girl, instead I spent the next few days searching the online forums hoping I could help people find their loved ones through message boards and photo posts.  I started going outside in the daylight, first on the porch, then in the car for short rides.  My boyfriend was nice about getting me back to reality, but the relationship was never going to change.  We wouldn’t be strong enough to let go for two more years.  I still can’t stand airplanes (my fear was worse before 9/11 honestly.)  I got married to the person I knew could make me feel like I wanted to stand in the rain, dance in the wind and count stars.  That’s who I was before I feel in to a trap and that’s who 9/11 made me realize I needed to be.  I imagine the people that lost their lives that day.  I wonder what kind of drive they had, what they were doing leading up to that morning, and what people remember most about them.  That’s what I take from it.  Everyone can’t be a policeman or firefighter, but you can be someone’s hero.  You just have to live your life right so that if you’re gone tomorrow, there are no regrets. 

18 years seems like a long time.  Certainly long enough to let go or forget… forgive myself if that’s what I need to do to let go of this pain, but there are tiny flecks of time that just make it all come crashing down.  My heart breaks again and I feel lost.  I’m suddenly reminded why I don’t let people really know how much I love them.  I am reminded that they can be gone in a split second.  I feel the numbness that set in the minute the ambulance raced passed me and I knew someone near me was gone.  A simple song brings it all rushing back so fast… I’m just lost.  I shelter my children, I’m easily angered at toys guns when neither have any idea.  Why do I still carry so much blame and heartache over this.  Why does it still hurt so bad and how did I go on.  no one understands why I’m so cold at times.  No one can figure out the distance I put between myself and them.  I know I’ve missed out many times because of the walls I put up.  I can only hope that my own kids know the kind of love and friendship we had together and I can only hope theirs is not taken from them.  I wish this pain on no one….  I miss you.  After 18 years, that has never changed, not for one second.