list of maybes

I'm looking for something but I don't know what. 

Maybe: adventure, excitement, peace, happiness, smiles, companionship, stability, predictability, freedom, mountains, trees, poetry, completion. 

Conversation with a widow

w.  "Are you married?"

v.  "No, no, I'm not. Not yet."

w.  "Well, when the right one comes along... Just, just love him to death. Pun intended. Just love him. Love him so much."

A Journey to Oklahoma

He said he wanted to see me but then he didn’t show up. Finally he called to say he had something to say. He’s moving west and will be gone by the end of the month. I knew there was a reason he had been maintaining, then creating distance.

Is it profound, or just silly, that ‘our song’ was Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”?

Small town girl, city boy, goin’ anywhere, “living just to find emotion/ hiding, somewhere in the night” “Working hard to get my fill,/ Everybody wants a thrill” “Don’t stop believin’/ Hold on to the feelin’” even the feelings weren’t that real. (But maybe I do now know what it feels like to try???).

I don’t even know how much I care. We would have been terrible for each other in the future. We were okay together in the now. But the now doesn’t last that long. We couldn’t have been more different. But that wasn’t the problem.

Not even from him, or from just anyone, but from the world:

I think all I wanted was the opportunity to prove to myself that I can love, that I can make a relationship work. A relationship would be evidence that I am capable; that I am not totally without. I just want to know that I can love and that I will risk everything for the possibility, because some day, it will be the right guy, and I don’t want fear to stop me.

"Have enough courage to trust love one more time. And always one more time." -- Maya Angelou

(from Stephanie, thank you.)

To think, I’ve done this all before—I spent most all of last year learning that I had loved, and that I had been in love, and that maybe I still was. Perhaps, I thought being with T. could show that I no longer was in love with the other.

Sometimes you cannot think your way out of problems that you created by thinking; this whole ordeal with T. was my way of trying to feel my way out of it.

Maybe I need more practice. Maybe I need a more worthy subject/object.

without hope you might as well be blind

I’m beginning to feel the beginning of the end of what was once a great potential. I’ve been entertaining flirtations with a guy since late December and when we’re together we’re great and when we’re not it is what it is. He doesn’t want to get serious unless he’s drunk in which case he’s proposing. And for a week now he has been without his usual swagger and communicating poorly. All my friends want me to run as far from him as I can because he doesn’t treat me as I deserve.

And I didn’t expect it to hurt so bad. This ending. This burial of a future that I didn’t even know if I wanted. If this is something I wanted, someone I knew I wanted, will I regret not having put more of myself into it? Would he have been worth the risk? I think I know in my heart of hearts that he wasn’t right for me, and that, among other reasons, is why I held back. But he was holding back too. And it is what it is. It was what it was. Past tense now? What worries me is what I think I learned about myself: am I even able to love again? Will I keep making the same mistakes over and over?

learning to beam

My friend posted this the other day: "There are some people in my life that I will never stop loving and sometimes that hurts like hell."  I told him that the only thing I would add to that to make it true for me was this:  “And I’m okay with that.”  It’s a pain I will take.  Because no investment of love is without loss.  

I was at a writing program this past spring and there (my life &) my writing was critiqued by several people who had come to respect and who had learned to love me.  One of the critiques of (my life &) my writing that I found most difficult to swallow had to do with the fact that it seems as though I lack depth because I rarely take a thought, idea, piece, sentence, etc. to the next level.  It seemed from the outside that I refused to be bothered to dig deeper.  Not that the thought was shallow to begin with, but rather I was too comfortable where I started and didn't chose to do the work to get somewhere further. Like I would give up on myself. I’ll never forget this because the observation came so sincerely from someone who I fully respect as a writer, a musician, and a friend. I had known of him before I knew him; I was a fan of his music and my heart had once burned with infatuation for this lyrical poet with a mandolin.  In those seven weeks, I learned to respect and to love the real him.  I was blessed to have been a part of the surroundings and a part of the atmosphere that created his quiet experience. He was unusually silent; I was usually guarded.  But when we spoke to each other, we were brilliant. The night he shared this with me, the fact he felt I was holding back, the moon was bright in a clear, black sky. We were gathered with a few friends around an outdoor campfire pit built into the exterior of a chimney.  We had pulled rickety chairs and rocking chairs from the meeting hall Timahia and circled what we were all staring into: a bed of mesmerizing, dynamic embers, the orange light and warmth of which undulated like the beautiful Lake Sebago that was almost in reach.

He said, he watches me refuse to commit to the greatness of my potential. I stall before I start. I was taken aback and insulted by this.  But now, I know exactly what he meant, because now I watch myself do it too. I may not have overcome that, but what I have learned is this: sometimes, most the times in fact, in the end, the result is worth the struggle. A great conversation or thought or essay or poem is worth all the frustrating attempts at meaning that go into its creation. And that struggle is just part of what we have to do to get there.    

I miss Chris and I miss Steph and I miss having people who love me observe my behaviors and gently critique my life through my writing.  Because I need that in my life. 

I forced this tangent of writing out of myself (out of my heart, not my mind). Because, as I was about to post only the first paragraph (re: no investment of love..), I recognized in myself exactly what Chris was trying to show me. That post would have only hinted cryptically at a complex and defining aspect of who I am today. And if I want to truly acknowledge that significance in my life, I must be willing to explore that complexity in my thought, through my writing, and with my communications with the world.

And I know that is exactly why this blog has been such a disaster. 

Because I’m not saying anything.

Because I am afraid to.

But I’ve got to find ways to overcome my fears. 

just a dream to have something to post

We were having a great time, rekindling our friendships, flirtations included this time.  Maybe my sister was there?  Unrecognizable location.  Kind of like a woodsy video game scene. Sheets hanging to divide rooms, dark, brown and neutral tones, sepia-like lighting all over.  He invited me to stay over, though I don’t think he knew his brother was there, and I don’t think he meant for me to lie in his bed.  Things were going really well, a true relationship starting again, but in the end, he told me that right now only seemed nice because he had taken the blue pill.  And he didn’t take it often because he didn’t like to take the blue pill.  What he meant was that we could only be friends when/if he took the blue pill.  I got the sense it was an anti-depressant. Again I felt totally shafted.  Again.  But it was more of an explanation than I can remember receiving.  Previously, what he mentioned was that he wasn’t in a good place in his life to make friends or have relationships.  

first loves never die

I spent the night with him.  For the first time ever.  Even though I was over the idea of him.  And, when finally--it just didn’t feel like anything important.  It didn't feel like anything.  With no future, and no past; it just was, we just were. Together.  Beside each other.  

Or maybe, the fact that it felt so meaningless confirms that I have in fact moved on and that I was in fact held back by the idea of, but perhaps no longer am.  It confirmed progress, I think.