Distant Love

Sometimes laying down the armor means looking back at the things I wrote and felt back when I was still wearing it, and being honest about what I was trying to protect within myself. Although if I am being truly honest, I may have laid to rest a few pieces of armor but I know I am still wearing plenty of it.

This is me learning to lay the armor down and I know learning to do it will take a lot more time than the few months I have been writing this blog. 

The following poem I wrote in November of 2021.

My distant love
So firm, 

so real.

Content in that feeling
but yearning to feel.

to be there.

or here.

Adventure and passion
Fights and compassion

for a companionship I'll never forget.

Love through your selfishness.

Now I do not entirely remember why this was written. I know the previous version of me was trying to find writing again at the time. Other poems in my notebook around this poem were reflections of my past. Little pieces of the younger me that was trying to break through. 

I spoke a bit about this in "Tremors Of A Past Me" where I was finally beginning to reconnect with myself. The feeling that there was a part of me that became clouded over when I began taking birth control and she was left behind. There were moments where a few poems would spill out of me from time to time maybe about once a year. These would be in clusters. This just happened to be one of them. 

I was not dating anyone the year I wrote this poem. It was, I think, my brain processing past events that I had not quite finished processing. Or perhaps those are things I had avoided processing altogether. It's a funny thing us humans do, we block things out because in a way it's easier than actually dealing with our emotions. 

Now was I reflecting on the selfishness of some guy I used to have a crush on? Maybe the selfishness of a friend that was not being a good friend at a particular moment? I suppose it could also be my own selfishness. The thing about how my brain creates poetry is I do not always understand it myself until it's fully on the page. 

One thing I am wondering about this particular poem is whether it is actually finished or not. Generally I find more understanding in the ones I know are complete. As I read them, even old ones from when I was a teenager, the feeling is fully there when I read the full piece of my poetry. This particular poem feels like it is a fragment. 

The rhythm of this poem is slow and then brisk and slow again. It's as if in the first two lines I am being gentle and slow with myself acknowledging something solid and very real to me. Then the next two lines I am quickly fighting a contradiction of feelings. As I accept what the reality is even though I would also like to feel more than what I was given. 

There is a slowness for me in the next two lines. As if contemplating the past versus the present. 

Oddly enough, I believe for me what lives between there and here is something that happened to my first love that shaped a lot of how I see what love is and my self-worth when it comes to being loved by a partner. I do know this is not something I have taken the time to process. 

My first boyfriend, that relationship, that breakup, and what ultimately happened to him is not even something I have spoken with my therapist about. I found myself thinking about him yesterday as I wrote "A Death at the Doorstep." One of the young men who was lost in that fatal accident a few days ago was around the same age my ex boyfriend was when he left this world. 

I understand that a very large piece of the armor I need to learn to lay down is attached to the part of me that remembers Mike. That still very much loves Mike, as well as resents him. 

This post is about a poem I wrote that I don't fully understand yet.

I do very much feel that this poem, although it seems whole to anyone outside my head, may truly just be a draft of something. It might just be a concept of a larger poem I haven't finished writing yet. It feels in my heart like a fragmented piece of who I used to be just trying to really make me listen. Unfortunately even when I try to listen that doesn't mean I will understand what I am trying to tell myself. 

It may even just be missing one line. That is for a future me to determine whenever the rest spills out of me onto a page when I least expect it. Maybe it is locked behind something else I still need to process.

Again the rhythm of this poem picks up. There is a quickness to the adventures and the fights. A loudness and firmness that is generally known to follow passion through the door. It's like those two lines come in like a lion demanding my attention. A bit of a brutal honesty between the gentle slowness and reflection. 

I can see that a possibility as to why this feels so fragmented to me is there is more than one memory held within this poem. I have had conversations with my therapist before where, when I am frustrated at not understanding something, it feels like I have a few puzzle pieces that seem like they are from different puzzles. What is funny about that is the more I talk to her about some things, I find the puzzle piece that fits between them and it is all the same puzzle. It was just missing a piece that brought things together. 

What I need to do is step back and wait patiently for that remaining puzzle piece. It is something I am learning to do, a small kindness to myself. I am learning to step away rather than chase the frustration of trying to assemble a puzzle with missing pieces. 

I like to understand things and I really hate not knowing. It's like I am outside of the loop inside my own head. It is raw frustration, where I have the urge to try and forcefully locate this missing puzzle piece. The thing about being kind to myself is I cannot tear myself into pieces trying to find the piece of the puzzle. This would just make a bigger mess I will eventually have to clean up. 

I am still learning to leave the puzzle on the table for a while. To trust that the missing puzzle piece will turn up at the right time. It will surface when I am ready to find it and sometimes I need to accept that I am not quite ready to part with the particular piece of armor that it hides behind. 

Why does selfishness not end the love? Why do I love through your selfishness? Why should I love through my own selfishness? 

That answer hides behind my beliefs on love. Behind what love means to me. I do know the answer, but that answer belongs in a different post. That answer belongs with the boy whose death shaped my understanding of what love truly is. 

A Death at the Doorstep

 

It's not a title that screams optimism.

The past two weeks of my life have had a grey cloud lingering around them.

Last week during my out of town work I got a call that my sister in law lost her father. It was hard having to tell my brother that I was too far away to be there. Normally I would step up, call into work that I needed emergency time off and take on any task they needed me to take. My flight schedule and the distance between us couldn't allow me to do that.

My mother made the drive and got their dogs while I sat feeling useless in another city. A one hour and forty minute flight away, a flight that wouldn't leave for another three days. 

I cried that night because I wouldn't allow myself to cry in a room of forty coworkers learning the new system at work. I made it through the day pushing my emotions to the side, I made it to my hotel and I cried. 

I missed my dad that day, loudly. I miss him every day, but that day it was loud. I knew my brother was probably reliving the loss we just experienced a couple years ago. I couldn't not be there to share that load. 

Yesterday and today again I miss my dad loudly. 

As I was in my home office space yesterday I heard something that made my heart sink. It sounded like a bomb or the side of a mountain dropping and crashing to the ground. It made me stop and step outside my house. I stood on the deck unsure looking towards my mothers house making sure that it was normal.

It was normal, however she too stepped out and was looking towards me wondering what we had both heard. I pointed to the highway outside our property. It was that way I was pretty sure.

Just off near the end of our driveway was a catastrophic collision between two pickup trucks. Two young men lost their lives yesterday. Men who I did not know personally but were weaved into my life through those that I love. At my doorstep was more loss more pain for those that I care about. 

Death dancing in our lives. I know it won't leave, it is here to stay. It will get less loud eventually but there will be moments where the loudness returns. We have not experienced exactly the same scenario in our loss, but we have experienced loss. If these moments make me miss my dad loudly it's because they share something with me. 

Writing this, I can feel it hitting the same nerve as all the others. The place that grief touches isn't smooth anymore. It's sharp now. Jagged edged. Though if I am honest, I am not sure I remember when it was ever smooth.

I recently posted a prose piece called Nevermore. I know I have a knack for finding the exact spot where it hurts the most and pressing on it. 

The loss of my father changed me in ways I didn't deserve. I already struggled with my self worth and the idea that I may never be good enough for someone to want to marry some day.  Add to that the aisle is a long walk for a girl with no father. That line is brutal, I know, but it is now my reality. Another piece that part of me weighs my worth on. 

Another reason part of me finds that I will never be good enough.  

Here's the thing though. I write like the ghost is already haunting the aisle, but I am still here. Not there. I'm still breathing through it , even if it feels like drowning.

My mother and I as different as we are share a need to just do something in the harder times. We knew early on who had passed away just outside our property. We may have even known before our friends and family found out that they lost a loved one. 

Traffic was already stretching in both directions, and we knew those people were going to be waiting for a long time. We were only on one side so we just did what we could.

Water and coffee put out at the end of our driveway for those that needed it. 

A place to safely leave a vehicle for those that could walk to the other side and get picked up. 

Freshly made raisin cookies that we carried down the line of waiting vehicles.

It wasn't much.

It was something.

A small act of kindness, a quiet thank you for waiting. Two young men in our community have been lost too soon and people we love are hurting. 

I miss my dad so loudly right now. 

I am standing in the middle of the wreckage of a timeline I didn't get to choose, trying to build a bridge out of whatever scraps it left me.

This one is heavy.

But it is honest.

So I will keep bleeding onto the page if putting it here keeps me from bleeding out everywhere else.