Ghosts

Jb and I had the fight, the one that inevitably ends with, "I'm the one who supports your ass." The one that makes you feel small and guilty for what you are. Because you are capricious and mercurial, you are always wrong. Pile guilt upon guilt until you feel useless and dumb. And still you don't know who you are, or what you've become.

But you do know this: you are dependent on the kindness and beneficence of those around you. You are captive to good intentions, "love," the kind that brings resentment and distance, and finances. You are well and truly stuck, both feet in concrete, and you are sinking fast. You vaguely think of alternatives. Can you ever go home? Halfway houses. These are your choices, at 33, after you've had a marriage, a house, a job, luxuries. How much further can you fall? Not much. And maybe that's why suicide becomes such an option. There is so little to fear when you're so far down you don't know how or when you'll ever get back up. You fear being dependent and controlled--because you have no control of your own. You can't be someone's baby girl, their sweet, submissive "wife," even if you're only their girlfriend. People expect and they take, even when you're hollow. You can get blood from a stone, and they prove it.

I'm more and more aware of the ghosts from my past marriage. Aware that, though he neglected me, he never once yelled at me, never once said anything out of anger. The neglect was there. I felt small, unwanted, but I never felt judged. Though he seemed to have no use for me, he always wanted nothing but my happiness, and let me pursue it as well as I could. I had carved out a niche for myself: writing classes, friends, co-workers who were like family, the coffeehouse circuit and music. I did things. I was ... something. Here, I don't know who I am. I have no friends, no family, no co-workers who ever were as fine as those at my last library job. No surrogate mother who had me over, made me drinks, let me sit on her porch, and talked to me about life and love and shooting stars and words.

In my relationships, I have always tried to be what my partner wanted, as if, in doing so, they might love me more. It never works. You would think I'd know better by now. And I've tried being this for Jb, taking on his likes, his wants, not following my own. Unaware, anymore, of what my own likes and dislikes are. And so I stand in this maelstrom of someone else's life, twisting in the wind, pieces of myself drawn away in tatters. So when the accusations spark, the betrayal is all the more painful, deep. I've subverted so much of myself in an attempt to keep someone that I don't know what I feel, what I want. I am stumbling.