Reset

** Just another failed attempt to finish a work in progress...**

I should have known she would come here. Molly’s obsession with gourmet confectionary sweets was unabated by her frantic distaste for crowds. These days you wouldn’t think she could overcome such a large convention of people waiting to devour their fifteen dollar truffles, but when given a chance to see him-to be close to something he may or not have touched-was the ultimate. I watched her from a far, like a mosquito watches a bug zapper; never too close but never too far either. Something about her was fascinating to the core.  It was the way Mol had always been I suppose: her attention to detail-even the most minor offset of how the baker twirled his frosting or laced a drizzle caught her eye and drove her completely mad. Molly once told me that if she ever had her own shop again, you would never find such careless mistakes. In her mind desserts were an escape, they were the chocolate covered vacations no New Yorker ever had the time to actually take.

“I didn’t expect to see you here, why didn’t you tell me you were coming Angie? We could have carpooled.”

“Jake! How have you been? I’m sorry you startled me, I...I guess I didn’t know I was coming until I was already here.” Hearing Jake’s voice was like drinking your first ever glass of whiskey. He was always smooth and followed his reputation for being the guy you could turn to, but it still surprised you every time at the boldness of his flavor.

“Well don’t look so happy to see me, you’re going to cause a scene with that smile.”

“I’m sorry, I really am glad to see you again, how have you been? How is the car coming along-is it really carpool ready-or were you just trying to get my attention?”

“My lips are sealed, you’ll just have to come see it for yourself sometime-oh and the sunlight while you’re at it. When was the last time you went out?” A wide grin grew across his face like wildfire. I recognized it immediately as hurt. Before Molly’s last episode, she and Jake were well on their way to a shotgun wedding type of romance, but now, like most things in her life after the episode, Jake was slipping away-or retreating from a battle he knew he couldn’t win. I know you’re not supposed to let work get this involved, but when you are dealing with other people’s lives sometimes it’s hard not to bury your own.

“Ah, I see how you are. Well maybe if you’re really lucky I’ll swing by that junk yard you call a garage and we can settle this once and for all.

“If I’m lucky, maybe? Hmm...sounds like a challenge.” Jake’s stance changed from recovering addict to man on a mission mode instantly. He stuffed his hands in the front of his blue jeans and leaned back on his right foot, raising an eye brow to show how ridiculous I was for implying that I wouldn’t be over at his house within a minute of him asking me to be. I could always avoid him when I wasn’t trying and he wasn’t around, now looking into his deep brown eyes I knew I couldn’t resist. And then it hit me-where’s Molly?! I spun around and frantically searched the room, thousands of people and hundreds of confectionary booths, but no Molly. My mind raced to the possibilities, what if she got into trouble, what if she wasn’t ready to be this close to her past? What if she had another episode-I had to find her and measure her mood. Molly usually dove in and out of sanity rapidly, for hours she could be ok-just a widowed woman looking to rebuild her life again-the next a memory would trigger and it was like he were  right there in front of her, being burned alive or something.

“Hey! Wait up, where are you going?!” Jake grabbed my arm gently-but still firm and caught my eyes for only a second. Long enough for me to tell that it was Molly or him-long enough for me to tell he would never understand.

            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *         

“You call yourself a chef?! I’ve never seen such a flat mint soufflé in my entire life! I wouldn’t feed this crap to a starving six year old in Malaysia!”

Molly’s shrill and scrutinizing voice called out into the air like a caged bird. I begin to struggle through the crowd-almost knowing by the time I got there it would be too late. She very rarely spoke, but when she did…

“Excuse me? Just who do you think you are-Julia Childs?!”

“Talent like yours doesn’t qualify you to reference Chef Boyardee, much less Childs! Just wait until Corbin gets a load of this! Ha!”

“Corbin who?!”

“Corbin Bennetto, the…”

“NEVER HEARD OF HIM!”

“A trick like you wouldn’t have the honor!”

“Trick?! I’d like to see you, or any other imaginary chefs do better!”

“Honey this auditorium is full of them-look around! I ought to…”

I toss the lady a twenty, hoping it’s enough to dull the spectacle Molly has created. Hoping she wouldn’t drag security into the picture; hoping my boss wouldn’t find out.

“Molly! Come on lets go, it isn’t worth it ok? Let’s go home-“

“You call that place HOME? Go bother someone else-this bitch looks like a great candidate!”

Molly spins around looking at the crowd in disgust and I have a feeling she isn’t going to be let down easy.

“I’m sorry miss, Molly and I were just leaving.”

“Get your freak on a leash!”

I grab for Molly’s frail arm two seconds too late. She’s on this stranger’s throat in a heartbeat-inaudible words foaming from her mouth threw gritted teeth. All I could make out was a distant threat of what Corbin would do. But Corbin was long gone, and Mol was left to face his after death enemies….by choice. 

The Writer Within>?

I am really frustrating myself! I write "good" drafts of short stories aka things I set out to be "book quality" but that I lose interest in too quickly. I have about thirty mini stories, that are all interesting until about fifteen pages in and I save it on my laptop--reread it about a hundred times and then finally move onto another. I don't know what holds me back or why I just lose interest. I either start to get too dramatic, too detail oriented, or I drag a concept out too far! Have you ever read The Clan of the Cave bear? Well the author is a great aunt of mine. Yeah, does that tell you ANYTHING? She spent an entire chapter describing tools! But then again the series was very popular...they even made a movie. In fact a friend of mine is named after the character Ayla. To be honest I've never met my great aunt...she was a recluse I think--too involved in her career perhaps? I don't really know, no one in my family talks about her. Anyhow, long story short I never finished her books either. I guess I read like I write?

Crazy, Among Other Things--A Short Story

**Warning: It gets a little 'ranty' and obsessive...I went a bit crazy with my metaphors, semicolons and other punctuation but this has been sitting on my laptop for years and I figured it was time to let it out...even if you hate it. **

“Why is it that every time someone finds happiness it is short lived”, says the optimist in me through a bitter and sarcastic tone. Is the human race destined to live on a constant struggle for more? I met an elderly woman who had lived a full life and seemed quite content in her cozy cottage style home.

She laughed to herself and maintained a magnificent garden in both size and sheer beauty.

Both her children and grandchildren visited her often. She drank organic green tea. All of us neighborhood kids loved her like a spare grandma. She would bake us treats after school and send us home with all kinds of interesting stories from when she was a child herself.

One day her daughter found her nicely tucked into bed, froth dried to her slightly ajar mouth, and a somewhat abandoned pill bottle lying near her open fist.

She had killed herself at the ripe and rather vivacious age of sixty four.

Why?

I searched around in my mind for the signs-those obvious little clues we always tend to miss until the damage is irreparable. She must have been lonely, maybe missed her deceased husband… or something. But then I began to ponder a different ending to her existence. Maybe she wasn’t lonely, maybe she was truly satisfied with life where she stood.

I guess she may very well have been lonely or in grievance for the man she’d loved so dearly…or something.

Or that little, lurking something. What if she were at peace?

How strange the idea of killing oneself in a state of pure bliss void of conflict. If I were in pure bliss would I too kill myself? Maybe, and why? Because what does tomorrow bring? What tragedy will follow upon one more sunrise and set? What is waiting to destroy bliss? Life is a constant strand of fulfillment and disappointment, with little in between. I guess we will never know the true story behind why my neighbor ended her life abruptly, but I figure anytime is as good as now to contemplate death. Now, while lying next to him.

I suppose no time is really appropriate or inappropriate. Today I am that girl waiting on the edge of her seat for death to come. I pray for death. My perspective is proving itself irrelevant by the ever-changing view it presents. I want to die. I do not fear death.

I do believe that I fear the surprise of how my death will come. I fear the pain and sorrow my death will incur on other. I don’t view the loss of my time on this earth based on how many wondrous events I experience. If I see the day when cancer is cured, and when the idea of war is a hollow nightmare from humanities’ past, so be it. I am living in the reality that someday, somehow, at the hands of some force, I will eventually die.

Drink up!

When I die I will either rot in a box several feet underground surrounded by a cement casing, be recycled into a new entity based on my karma points, or stand at a very fancy gate awaiting my next transition to either heaven, hell or purgatory; that is depending of course on what belief system you have adopted as your own. Atheists, Christians, Buddhists, and Wiccans, you all die; happy, sad, relinquished, bald, hairy, skinny, fat or vegan. The righteous and the demon worshipers and all those stuck in between religion and what is right and what is entertaining. I will see you all in the morgue. Not literally of course. I am not a mortician, amongst other careers. I am in love however, as painful as it is becoming.

*     *     *

Love is the greatest attribute I have to offer.

This four letter word, feeling, state of being and action can either kill a person or resurrect them. Maybe I am no longer a person because my love has both awakened me and deadened me all the same. I have never felt such an odd array of agonizing and powerful emotions. I have never been doomed with the task of digesting such a hard to come by feeling.

My passive mind lets them, these emotions, wonder around my skull like loose marble shaped magnets. They roll into each other only to be shocked away in an instants time. My emotions, like magnetic marbles, cannot mesh or complement each other. How to spend my time with this static burden? I remain focused on him for now. I feel the contours of his back. Yes, right now I trace each scar on his angular plane, like a misbehaving child with mindless fingers. The space between us is the meeting point where want, need, and decay collide. My touch jolts him like a skittish antelope to a creeping lioness. He has never opened up before; I can feel the pain and disappointment from his lifetime leading up to this moment; a moment on his warm flesh. I breed care and concern via my fingertips. I want to make it all better, because I acknowledge everyone with a pulse needs touch in some form. My touch, even coupled with its alarming tendencies, will not cease. My touch is constant in his heart, mind, and body because I love him.

I am the first to do so and I am real. He needs the love, I have decided this through the sheer anxiety my previous absence created within him. But he gives no love in return to quench my thirst. And although every action of his is plagued with a sincere tone, he pays no mind to my advances for the same entertained destiny. He is like a spider moving quickly and with fluid motions to wrap and torment each piece of myself that is caught in his web of detachment.

All of these things done are subconsciously, because as much pain as he inflicts, his heart is completely void of the desire to do so.

I breathe him in.

I take in his used air as he exhales.

I deny my body the fresh oxygen it craves.

But never too close if you can imagine, I don’t dare let our lips touch.

That would be too much for him, or maybe not enough for me.

He keeps leaving me with an insatiable hunger to extract more physicality from his practically motionless body. I think he knows me well enough to know I can’t really handle it either.

However the small crease on his smile where the corner of his mouth pulls upward is almost tantalizing. Maybe that is the wrong word. Tantalizing? Is it is calling me forward?

Is it as if the universe revolves around that single speck of a grin!

I am in love, I love him and I am real.

He needs the love as I mentioned before, but not me necessarily.

I tried for quite some time to just love him without being in love with him. I found in that quest of self deception, the only gained emotion recovered was my sickening loneliness, for fear of losing him all together. God I crave his affection so very much!

“Return the favor!” I silently scream to myself.

I want to thrash my legs and arms around. If he is in my possession why can’t I keep him?! Time is up wandering mind. His eyelids just fluttered open and then closed again. He is focusing on me now. My brilliant wounded soldier needs me to reel my untrained mind back in for his use until he sleeps once more. I can’t ponder our existence with his eyes open because then he will extract my thoughts like a child’s diary left open on the table. I find that as good a liar as I can be, my conscience mind hadn’t the desire to hide anything from him, but it is resistant to share any thoughts willingly. My love isn’t a confessional but a quandary. 

What would he think of them, my thoughts? What does he think of me now, lying next to him? Every minute awake with him brings up a new, unanswerable question. I count these minutes and compile what seems to be a landslide of confusion. All only left to my speculation and the random speculation of a few close friends; neither party seeming to know much about him at times- or my obsession.

*     *     *

I guess I won’t be killing myself anytime soon because my own bliss is a distant, fraudulent myth; much unlike the speculations of my jolly dead neighbor.

What a joke I have become. Andrew has turned me to a battery, a weak battery, on a steady and rapid drain, that needs to be constantly recharged by the electric feeling he gives me.

Why do I compare my weak heart to a battery and my confused mind to a magnetic marble? Such simple and plain terms, and yet they are all I have. Who knows when my hope will return? When any broken hearted soul will regain hopefulness. How selfish my Andrew is.

“Stop examining me.”

“You know you like it.”

“I know but it only kills you.”

“What can I do, suicide is sweet with you in mind.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

All is said with a blink and a sigh, no actual words are spoken. Our silent conversation buzzes around me so loudly. It’s aggravating, the echo of my looming and somewhat self inflicted demise and the fear it strikes within me as a match against the concrete.

Silence is too noisy in our place. Our car. Our park. Our secret, public places. Now his smirk gravitates towards my dark blue eyes and captivates all awareness. Why? I will ask once more…this time aloud.

“Why can’t I keep you?”

No answer. I decided tonight that I have the answer within my grasps, but my unsteady mind cannot wrap itself around the conclusion I can draw. Maybe I don’t want to hear the truth, now is all so pointless I suppose--Just an amusement factor for the both of us to savor. We have until eleven o’clock to amuse one another and then time’s up. I can picture her now, my mother is probably sitting on the front steps with her wineglass in hand, hoping I haven’t lost my virginity. Hoping I make curfew. Good Joke.

*     *     *

Poor me, poor him…that is what this week of school has taught me. Life is so difficult sometimes! “What does now matter when you are living in the past he created for you”, I solemnly question myself. I know the answer; it is because in one instant this optimist of eighteen years became a pessimist.

A pessimistic optimist! I hope he pulls me out of it soon, that‘s as much hope as I can muster. Him or some other beautifully intriguing boy, so indecisive I know, but spectacular to a ‘t’.

Because before eleven o’clock on Tuesday night of some week two months ago, nothing was different than it is right now. We spent every spare second together, before class, between class, during class, lunch, after school, before bed. We flirted and laughed and the world seemed to be ours! We went to all of the dances and talked on the phone tirelessly. We inched closer and closer until so inseparable I couldn’t tell which was mine or his. We ate what the other ate and watched what the other watched and we classically fell in love.

Only two words brought that shattering down, it kept us frozen in time to repeat all of the above mentioned, but now with a sickening twist. Two words bringing a long time fact to my immediate attention were spoken, through the deep voice I so long for. Those two words changed my whole perspective for the first time in my life. I had lived with the same, unchanging perspective, seen through the same pair of blinded eyes, for as long as I had remembered. Before eleven o’clock on Tuesday night of some week last month I was happy.

I loved him. I needed him. Just like now. Just the same.

Here it is. Andrew whispered to me in unrecognizable pain and sorrowful regret that he was and has been and is currently and will be in the future……gay.

“I’m gay…”

Or so he says. Then he grinned. Just marinate in that please.

Because I love him.

Because I am the first to do so.

Because I am real.

Because I am committed.

Because I am terrified.

Because I am hopeless.

Because I am pregnant.

Because I am disappointed, like he guessed I would be.

Because I am in love and not by choice but by mere mistake.

Because I won’t ever regret loving him, but at some point I will have to let him be a loved friend and nothing more.

I spent the last few days crying and screaming and cussing and kicking cans.

I beat the shit out of a microwave on an old county road.

Yet, I still feel the same love, disappointment, terrification, commitment and reality I did that night two months ago. I am no longer full of the excitement I used to explore each evening after leaving him. I spent the last week relearning how to do many things.

How to breath.

How to be a good friend.

How to let others be better friends.

How to hold the ones that inflict searing pain into your life.

How to wake up for an alarm clock when your days feel pointless and you can’t stop wishing for the joy that last week brought.

My love is so selfish.

He doesn’t understand the extent to which I love him. He made a fool of me by letting me live a lie for the past few months. He isn’t a bad person. He is a wonderful person. I want to thank him for making me stronger and more perceptive. I have a really great number of gay friends, so no, that isn’t the problem at all; I figure that’s the only reason he told me, however. Or even the desperation and false joy found just beneath my immediate expression was killing him so he felt he had to break the truth to me. Maybe he wanted nothing more for our love to be true. To be what society wanted, the majority-the straight boy. Maybe he wanted a chance to have children, and a house, and guy friends..I really don’t know what his motivation was.

He thought I could handle it-underestimating my love for him.

I don’t mind gay, but not him! You can’t have him! He is mine but I guess I can’t have him either. I swear it’s a sick notion, but one of a flawless nature. He couldn’t truly give himself to me if he wanted to and maybe sometimes he does.

The only idea egging on my insufferable affection is that I doubt he could honestly give himself to anyone else either. Not with a guarded heart for his sexual tendencies. And most days I’ve found that he does want to give himself to me or someone. That need to feel love and be totally accepted my one single being. To being forgiven of all flaws and unsightly habits. To walk on a firm path and not one of egg shells. I too feel this need. To have and to hold.

This need that eats a perpetual hole in me and leaks venom into my heart at a faster rate than I can possible pump it out. I have no antidote. I am slowly drowning but the pace is very minuscule. My muscles tightening and contorting from the poison. How much longer do I have doctor? One month. He gave me one month to decide what to do about his two word news.

*     *     *

We spoke once of marriage, twice of marriage. Spend the rest of my life being the women he could lean on. His family would never know his secret, his friends would never know.

I would know. He would know.

Would our child know? Nope, I couldn’t live a lie. I said ‘no‘. He too said no too after thinking it through, a wavering ‘no‘. Did my ‘no’ seem wavering too? Was my ‘no’ wavering?!

I say ‘no’ aloud when I awaken each morning or afternoon or evening while coming out of this nightmare that I have realized is just me recounting my life experiences; A never halting nightmare. I wipe the tears away from my cheeks now and then, though I don’t dare let him see them, these tears of mine--to taste their shame.

Only once, because he hates the idea of my displeasure enough that I don’t need to show him for it all to be real. I hate making him upset and my tears are knifes to him some days, and silent, rolling jokes on others.

I hate a lot of things, being a joke is one. I like to contemplate this life of mine with the demeanor of an abused and abandoned dog. Fearful and scared but just wanting a nurturing effect in the end. I am not a therapist either, among other careers, but something is off about his demeanor. Would someone give my heart a new home, for I am being evicted from the one  in which I currently reside.

My home and safe house of course being his soul, an old soul like mine. Slightly bruised, but more lovely than a freshly ripened pear. Have we become somewhat sweeter that way, through our sugary brown bruises?

*     *     *

How can I love someone so different from the person I want him to be? He is certainly not Mr. Perfect or Mr. Right, in fact I do not envy most of his qualities.

The total moral disregard for the lives of other living creatures. The almost ravenous hunger for destruction. The anger and self hatred built within his deep amber eyes; that optimistic pessimist.

So aggravating and unnerving, he reminds me how fragile the human mind can be without the added influence of love. Between his abusive runaway closet lesbian mother and his drug addicted work-a-holic father he doesn’t have a clue what love is or isn’t. So instead he likes to play mind games, forgetting what it feels like to be the butt of a joke. Why do I love him?

No, I do love him, and won’t ever regret that. Why am I still in love with him? Teenage hormones, I don’t know?! Hope he will change? God that’s awful I should accept him for who he is! I know that my love for him isn’t purely based on the affair my eyes have created with his dark skinned, slender figure.

His jet black hair.

His rough and yet shapely hands.

His angular collar bone.

His menacing expression.

His soft, curving lips.

The puzzling mystery he provokes.

No, I know that there is more.

That all knowing smirk and whole hearted laugh maybe?

That complete acceptance of all things me.

That willingness to enjoy adrenaline inducing activities.

We held hands once, or twice.

I don’t know if it was to comfort me or to test his boundaries. Our boundaries. My boundaries.

I thoroughly enjoyed that small pleasure, probably as much as he enjoys a complimentary strawberry candy from the tellers at our local bank. Holding hands isn’t hurtful to me and I don’t try to expose more of a deeper hidden meaning from the small action that what it is: human touch. Closeness and vulnerability exposed so warmly, comforting to say the least.

Andrew being my friend and I missed that. I haven’t felt that vulnerability, warmth or closeness without cover, in quite a long while. Holding his hand, cupping my fingers around his, was a favorable activity I didn’t find I’d been missing in my existence until the moment he offered me his hand and I wanted to tell him thank you. I know that he wouldn’t understand the honest appreciation and his response would be shriveling his exposed limb back into the dark crevice of his pockets once again. I know he couldn’t accept my love for what it was worth.

What comforts does he hide in those deep blue jean pockets?

*     *     *

How do I keep everyone happy?!

Is this even a possibility?

My lack of possession over him creates an impulse to be near him and protect him and to entertain him and to absolve him of all things naturally wrong that pulls too much time from all others that I love.

My family seems content with him overall, his is content with my presence. His family is even crossing over the borderline of content to blessing mode. Oh, if only it were real!

In previous relationships, a families blessing was so meaningful and poignant. Now, as we looked to each other, blessings were wasted on our pretend relationship. I wonder if this is all just because he knocked me up—or maybe these people are just glad I’m slightly normal…or at least outwardly.

My friends are somewhat understanding, though they know nothing of his “tendencies”. They must figure we had a bad breakup and want to work things out for the baby.

How to balance the life I led previously, and then in most instances, the life I lead with the knowledge I acquired that daunting Tuesday some time ago?

I know how, very fucking carefully. A delicate balance my life is becoming. Andrew, my family, my friends, myself, my hormones.

My blessing.

My delicacy.

*     *     *

Delicate: easily damaged; frail

He has infringed upon my hearts ability to be strong.

I know two things for sure.

One, I am not suicidal.

Two, somewhere in me there is strength.

Strength my father mustn't possess.

Congratulations seed.

It is Father’s day and my distaste for your worldly existence is brimming. I will pretend that this day is a celebration of fathers generally; will he or she have to do the same? My mother’s fiancé is a father of sorts. Not mine but I will celebrate him. I can celebrate a church father even.

Thank you Catholic sermon (I am not Catholic) Andrew is however…or was.

Now he is evolving towards Atheist belief systems. Fine by me, the Lord will still work through him somehow, whether he likes it or not.

Oh God that twists me in every way, my child will never think of Andrew the way I think of my disgusting father! I hope…? Will he even be in this picture? So much we need to talk about but every time I think I have the courage, my heart jumps in front of my heal and we end up silently combing each other’s expressions and awkwardly moving to better times.

The notion of dialing my biological, sperm donating, self righteous, gambling, pig of a father is repulsive, disgusting, and painfully pierces every inch of my body like a splice needle.

The very thought of zesting his mediocre life with the brilliance of my love, affection, or gratitude is alarming. There isn't a cell or nerve ending in my body that says otherwise.

One lovely thing has come from this hatred of my father. My took this corm of stored grains of shredded love and respect I have saved up from his failed attempt to change, and transformed it into fuel for contemplation and a sense of relief and pleasure towards my dear mother; whom I rarely get along with but still adore with great pride. But she secretly hates me I think because I've put her through far too much in my short life. She clearly wanted to be a full time grandma…in like ten years.

*     *     *

Last night made me want to wrap my arms, to their full extent, around Andrew.

He was so generous and so thoughtful. So thoughtful!

By the tricks he usually plays I feel as if he and gifted me more than a free movie, but also the gift of compassion and care. He brought everything in twos’! Two fruit roll-ups, two pb&j’s, two soda pops…such a grand friend I have acquired!

I want to hug the living shit out of him! I want to make all things harmful to him disappear! I want to cradle him as an infant and poor over him like a sweet rain! This joy probably comes from the udder lack of thoughtfulness he has shown me since that Tuesday now so many months ago. I am overwhelmed with affection for him, even though some days I feel I barely know him.

Salvage my last ounce of awareness, sweet and mighty heaven above! Save me from the wreckage of my great crash! Stop me from hitting the hard pavement reality has in store. Whenever I recognize how much I care for him, my body begins drifting above the earth, as if I were awaiting my crash from the burning plane I’ve been pushed from!

That odd and insecure moment just before fate catches up to you, the calm before the storm.

This point where time is a mere illusion and the flashback starts. To what extent are people willing to stretch to reach what they want or need? How much of oneself is allowed to erode before you lose what element was there that made you who you were in the first place?

Don’t build your life around a single idea or person. Those who tell me this line know nothing of true sacrifice or love, or they know more than I am willing to admit or will ever feel in my own lifetime, I can’t tell anymore.

If saying it is easier than the actuality of performing the task, then why do we say it at all?

To make it feel real? Maybe that’s why I am so inquisitive. I need to know how far I am willing to stretch and erode myself to fall out of love. I currently lack the ability to say aloud that I have a problem. To be just friends. That I need to stop this. That I need help.

Is my genuine need for something more human greater than my need to do what is right by my own heart? What do most people decide? The holy say heart, the honest say “I vote for human touch!”. All dirt roads lead to Pullman and all trains of thought lead to love. Or sex, as a new, unfortunate cultural trend. That’s the thing about loneliness; it consumes your being, making your will power frail and your self-preservation skills mute.

Like I said before…love is my greatest attribute. Greatness is the ability to hold power, strength, wisdom, need and compassion for all the minute feelings in between.

Love holds power over people.

Love holds strength to retain that power under pressure.

Love is wise for teaching lessons and tricking your mind. Oh serotonin!

Love is compassionate for providing strength, power, wisdom, and need altogether.

I hate that I cannot focus on anything but my love for him, and all others.

I hate the power love has over me.

I hate the strength love holds versus my own pathetic attempts to fight my love away.

I hate the wisdom love attains by my every failing attempts to trump love.

I hate the need I have to be in love and to be loved.

My bliss is a far off dream based on my battle, I cannot be found victorious while fighting my greatest attribute.

This all of course could be the affect of being a teenager.

My affection is so potent, so important.

In a peculiar way I am just holding off on my defeat, giving every ounce I have to spare and shredding some off the tongues of others for stalling purposes. Pawning my most cherished jewels and starving for spare change. A beggar and slave to my love. I Am Disgusting.

He was right to find me desperate, however not in the way he saw fit.

I am not desperate to attain him, but the love I know we could have.

We could be so perfect. Our little family.

A magnificent and courteous love unmovable or changed from the opinions and judgments of those lonely bastards surrounding our temple of greatness!

Disgusting!

*     *     *

I sat on the same bench I had a few weeks ago when I had an epiphany.

I was recalling the beauty of winter; the crisp air cleansing my lungs of the sticky heat summer had infused; the powdered landscape shimmering in the dim lit hills of my home town. For me it always seemed that the along with the dirt, grime and pollution, pain, sorrow and grievances were also covered and washed away whenever snow fell on the long winter nights of Washington. A few weeks ago I was sitting on this very same plastic bench contemplating my love and self inflicted demise.

Hang in there! The epiphany I had had was that people are willing at some instances, to overstretch and give too much of themselves in order to maintain happiness. I had realized that I was wrongfully jogging just ahead of my imminent peril, living in a false sense of happiness, just to delay the period of pure and highly saturated discomfort that dealing with the reality that he is and was gay would cause me. I knew all along that this emotion I was running from, instead of dealing with, would eventually catch up with me! But for some reason I could not find the courage to stop, let this fact rise to my mind, and feel the discomfort; to savor the burden and discomfort in order to readjust, and eventually attain true happiness. That epiphany sent me in a rage. Human survival mode! Do whatever you have to, to stay alive! Lie to myself?

Now I realized that over time I had dealt with the problem and with the help of my love, astonishingly I was ok. I was happy. I still have a burning desire for someone to be in love with me and the desire to be in love. But I was no longer willing to overstretch myself to find it.

Love makes activities more entertaining.

Love makes sweets, sweeter.

Love makes every smell and laugh and idea magnified into an unreal pleasure. I guess I could settle for moderate. Not satisfactory, but not terribly discomforting. I love him. He loves me.

My family loves me.

My friends love me.

My animals love me.

My creator loves me.

And most importantly, I love myself.

Finally I can yell at the top of my lungs, “I am single, and he is just a friend!”

I don’t need him just as he didn't need me.

I want him forever but not in a way I find disconcerting.

Magnificent!

Hopefully, someday soon, I will find the right, beautifully intriguing boy.

Single mom addicted to a gay guy? Yeah I’m super appetizing!

*     *     *

Stage: Exploration.

Now I feel much like a child.

Exploring him, he exploring me.

I don’t always mean physically.

We barely touch in fact.

When we do its magic.

Family remedy.

Every pore and compartment of his essence.

I have no meaningful way to express my nature towards him, nor his nature towards me.

That is all I have to say about that—I can’t let my Mother’s snooping meet a reward.

*     *     *

His voice created a dull, mind numbing pain in my mind.

I think I am still in love with some parts of him.

His voice.

The way he pronounces certain, sharp words.

Letters M, R, N, T, S and H.

His gait even, perhaps.

That little affair my eyes had with him, mentioned earlier, is still holding on for dear life like one of the flies trapped in his molding oatmeal bowl.

He sets this bowl in the corner of his room, an exiled container of waste, destroying all life within. He ignores this stench like I have ignored my bittersweet feelings towards him.

Eventually he will cleanse his room and I will eventually let my involuntary tears cease from spilling and rolling down my solemn cheek bones.

I could feel something much like a shutter of nerve endings like deadly, off limit thoughts twisting and distorting my vision in response to these very tiny droplets of salty liquid.

I will be fine.

A mantra, I have decided, of mine.

I will be fine.

.iwillbefine.

“I will be fine.”

“I WILL BE FINE.”

“I WILL BE FINE!!!”

Well, I will be.

*     *     *

I go over this again and again.

Fuck love.

Fuck it!

I want it.

WHY?!!!

Why do we play these games?

He is a tease.

I hate it.

He knows I want him.

I STILL want him?

I can be fine for a while and then have a sudden burst of hell.

His hot breath tickling my throat, his teeth awning for my flesh, his lips barely grazing my cheek bones.

His unruly palms grasping my wrists, pulling them above my head.

His chest rising and falling just atop my rising chest.

Our hearts pounding.

No friction actually occurs, unless you count in my now, obvious stomach.

Is this a test? Did I pass or fail?

I just think that if I could find a human of the male species to love me I would move on and out of this undying craze for love!

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck a duck, screw a kangaroo, finger bang an orangutan, yes you can do it too!

You know why?

I think of my ideal guy and single out those qualities.

Both physical and emotional.

He has them all.

But he is gay.

Fuck!

What do I do?

What do I do?

What do I do?!

Ah!!!!!!!

I am silently screaming again!

I wish I could tell someone!

Anyone!

I hate living this lie.

1/3 of the population thinks we are in love.

Another 1/3 thinks we are just friends.

The right 1/3 knows neither of us knows what we are doing.

Honestly.

Honestly how does anyone cope with a taboo situation?

I can’t listen to any music that relates, I can’t find a single book that relates, I can’t find a single friend that I have confided in that knows how to just listen to me bitch about it round the clock.

All I have is this damn laptop.

Excuse my language but FUCK!

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Please help me find someone.

I need human touch.

Someone sexy to pull the hair out of my eyes and check in with me every day.

Someone who needs and wants me just as bad as I do.

Someone lonely too.

SENSITIVITY!

I know that they are out there somewhere!

Help!

But he checks in with me.

He wipes my hair away in a swift motion.

Don’t tease me.

please

*     *     *

Move on.

Move up.

Move forward.

At least that’s what my pastor puts up on the screen every Sunday.

I really need to keep up my relationship with Christ.

I think he holds the remedy to my headache.

The soothing hero that invades my daily nightmare.

All I have to do is call on his love and glorious power to guide my heart and mind over the speed bumps in this road we call life.

“Tell me where you are, and I’ll find you. Tell me what it takes to see this through. Tell me what it takes to get to you, and I’ll be there waiting. Tell me where you go when you’re alone.”

I wish I could locate my heart with my head.

My mind knows what is best for me normally but my heart cannot be located!

It is running a mockery of me!

If I could just get my emotions in check, maybe God could heal my sorrows.

I want bliss!

Everyone that thinks Andrew is truly mine spites me with the potency of this planets deadliest venom.

Not purposefully of course.

No they are so happy for me, some even jealous.

“You two are so cute together!”

Jealous and congratulatory of the façade I too wish were real and mine.

So very real.

*     *     *

I find no more comfort now that all flirting with him has ended.

How I do wish our act was truth.

Gay boy.

Grrr.

I thought I was better than this. He makes me feel ugly and worthless, as if any other girl could change him. I drag my feet as if through thick, cool molasses; so sweet and difficult. I wanted to drive my car straight to the moon tonight.

Solidarity.

Peace.

Quiet.

Just single, little me--alone for all to forget. Don’t envy me, no not tonight. I don’t feel any progress from that Tuesday so long ago. I have been through a literal emotional roller coaster.

I am fine, I am not fine.

Euphoric.

Disappointed.

Anguished.

Depressed.

Pick me, pick me!

A dandelion.

Blow off my wishes into the dust below. Squeeze the milky sap from my stem onto your fingertips.  Close your eyes. Drop my used, limp figure to the earth so I can sulk under the sun and eventually replenish the ground with my dead nutrients.

Eh.

How pathetic I know what ‘eh’ feels like.

Good nights are a thing of the past so I prefer to say goodbye.

*     *     *

Perfect he invited me to a family barbeque.

Meeting the family is such an amazing moment in a relationship. Too bad my relationship is façade as I‘ve mentioned several times now. More like a masquerade than a summer gathering if you ask my opinion.

Which mask to wear?

Which giggle to bear?

Which lie to slither from my throat?

I change my tone towards him like a teenage girl changes clothes before a date with destiny.

Minute one: casual.

Minute two: loving.

Minute three: flirty.

Minute four: friendly.

Minute five: sarcastic.

Loop de loop.

Meanwhile his family stares at my growing tummy like a bad purchase—like I’m credit card debt or something. Well no turning back now.

Salvage old memories of simpler times. I’d rather be reprimanded like a child than deal with this reality. This adult reality.

*     *     *

Whether it is a condition, craving, or a remarkable desire, my attempts and advances towards life have become quit gluttonous by design.

Depressed?

God I hope not. I’m really sick of saying sorry. “I can tell you are going to be so gay tonight Brittany.” (low chuckle)

I have to block out thoughts of you so I don’t lose my mind. But they crawl. Crawling thoughts of your angelic, disapproving expression. I am going to make you compliment yourself Andrew.

Even when it seems as pointless as making faces to yourself in the mirror. Come back and shine just like you used to. Make it how it used to be when friendship came as easily as a giggle in the back of Ursula’s classroom.

“…and then she whispered, how can you do this to me…?”

I am watching you destroy me, but am helpless to stop you. Helpless to end my suffering. Expecting sympathy.

“…and then she whispered, how can you do this to me…?” She being me. You being him. How is hardly a question.

*     *     *

You are…a…..?

Puzzle!

Never shifting.

Honest.

A million pieces. I tire of trying to piece you together over time. I take random breaks, but I always come back to fill the need of solving you. An endless, constant and grading puzzle. Over time I get bold and use the key provided. See the end result?

Begging for help in my misery, but the picture on the box that I kept you in, is not as magnificent or brilliant as the effort sacrificed, or at least on first glace.

But perhaps after the effort is strained, the panoramic view changes and you find a deeper beauty within the structure. All the effort creates a pride that is appealing in a visual way. So with that in mind…that distant prize I ache for….with no knowledge of a worthwhile ending, I etch on for days.

Piecing you together. I can’t put you back in the box now that I have begun to unravel the end result. Too tempting. And such a waste of time past.

Besides, what would I do?

Leave you in your box on my shelf, waiting for a rainy day? Leave you in your box on the side of the road for some other human to deal with…? No, instead I spend every spare moment working on you. Try as I might…I have yet to piece you together young “Romeo“. But the puzzle you are is not impossible.

I will figure you out.

Someday.

*     *     *

My hand is on your stomach now and we’re trying so hard not to fall asleep, when I realize with a sharp intake of breath that…I am so yours.

My hand is on…your…hip bone. You trace my shaking fingers down further under your belt line and then pulled them away too suddenly.

Ah!

The numbing feeling is dulling the pain as I remind myself how unwanted I am. That I need to sober up but decide to become drunk with voluminous pain instead.

I never knew you till you left me diseased, darling Andrew.

At least not really-- I envy those you envy. I walk along the path with you into your endeavors.

Never enough is it.

Unchanged.

Somewhere, far away from here, far away Andrew.
More than anything now I want to show you how fascinating kissing is how our lips would meet like fancy champagne glasses to a toast.

Be my adventure Peter Pan man. Go ahead. Taste my throat. Claim what is yours. Tickle my flesh with your scruffy chin. You hold a tune down in my heart, like a song, a forbidden and glorious, ominous song.

We may be some sort of crazy, but I swear on everything I have I want this. I won’t humor you and pretend I want you to stop this time.

But I won’t readily beg you for your physical absolution.

My hand is on your…I'm reaching farther down than I ever have before,
I am curing you from your enemy.

From your chest, throat, stomach.

From your feet, legs and finger tips.

From the back of your neck and your clenched, serious jaw muscle.

Rubbing away the pain and hurt.

I don’t have to coach you on how to manipulate my body.

Go ahead.

I can’t feel my heart anymore anyways. Mission: Possible.

*     *     *

Just don’t think of him when you do it!

Just don’t think of him.

Just don’t think of him!

Please.

God, oh god, please!!!

Tears spill onto my cheeks.

Spill from the depths of my luminous eyes.

Drying salt to my nude flesh.

Just love me.

I am weak.

I am so weak.

I am just so weak and willing to please you.

I promise not to hurt you, kill you, leave you, tease you or look at anyone else ever again.

I promise to give you anything, hold you forever and commit my whole heart, mind, body and soul to you forever.

Just don’t think of him when you do it!

Just don’t think of him.

Just don’t think of him!

Just don’t.

Please don’t think of your online boyfriend while you are fucking me.

*     *     *

Crying myself into slumber again tonight.

I  am.

Crying for the utter brilliance life holds.

Crying for the brilliance being ripped from some aspects.

Crying for the disdain one can feel for loneliness.

Crying for the beauty a beat brings.

Life is comical.

A contradiction to say the least of it all.

I feel as though I am expected to strive gratefully through pain for happiness, or better yet, just to attain contentment that may never come.

Never come or be stripped away again, just to crawl back to contentment.

She is due to come tomorrow, like it or not.

I can’t ignore this anymore.

*     *     *

“I know how much you like me.”

No way.

No way!

Who told him?

Well duh.

Of course he knows…I tell him every day.

I show him every hour.

I mean it every second

He can’t even begin to ponder the depths in which my soul gravitates above his soul.

But thanks for shamelessly recognizing it.

Thanks so terribly much for deducing my love to that all-knowing statement.  

I have decided I am just going to roll with the punches.

Hands tied behind my back.

Fighting back is worthless.

Waste of motion.

I’m so weak I need to save my energy for when this battle kills me.

Kills me dead.

                                                                        ******

6lbs. 7oz. Gorgeous.

You saved me, my dear sweet baby.

Daddy might not know the depths of my love, but I promise you will.

I am not a wife among other things, but I am a mother.