Forbidden thoughts

September 17 2013 2321

            This is the tenth week we have been homeless.  This is the longest I have not been providing since I was sixteen years old.  There were some years I did not work in order to care for my children, but this is the first time being without work was not my choice since I was old enough to work.  Most of my adult life I worked two jobs.

            I am enjoying my time away from nursing.  I love having the ability to write every day, however, I do understand that work is essential.  It seems I am responsible despite my best efforts.  School is the most important personal endeavor for me and my grades slipped drastically this past semester.

            My efforts to survive and follow my dream are as invisible as my existence has always been.  I have several writing endeavors that bring in small amounts of money and I am gaining more and more opportunities, but if I am on my beloved computer I am perceived to be playing or wasting time.  However, I still bring in all the money even if it is not very much.

            Today, I found that several of my books have been water damaged.  Among them is the book holding the first poem I have ever had published, several of my own personal journals, and a book on grammar that I found essential for proofreading.  I have lost so much, but when the kindle could not be replaced I lost my spirit.

            I have a picture I discovered on Facebook quite sometime ago, but I refer to it as the perfect picture of my brain.  It is an old dusty library.  It is the place that I go to hide from this world that has always been so unkind to me.  I, honestly, feel loss without my kindle.  It was my most prized possession and to lose it now is like a double slap in the face by my God.

            I must be following down the wrong road because my life has become a chaotic mess.  I cannot even keep track of the days anymore.  My entire life I have had it together, but now I don’t even care how together I am.  I have lived in a world that has hated me and I still tried to always do the right thing.  I made the sacrifices needed for my children, family, and husband.

            I was the responsible one.  I was the one picking up the slack.  When my husband refused to work, then I worked more to keep us all in the same standard of living.  I gave up on my own personal goals and dreams to raise my children how I believed they deserved to be raised.  Never once have I regretted those decisions.  My children have given me so many priceless memories sometimes I wish I could go back in time and do it again.

            I have no regrets, but my strength wanes.  I no longer have any reason at all to keep going to work for long hours on weekends and holidays.  I no longer feel the need to work extra hours or a second job.  I am done living my life for these societies standards.  I am only interested in me now. 

            I have never put myself first until now.  I have always considered everyone else, over thought all the issues, and went without.  I cannot do it anymore.  The problem with somebody who has nothing to lose is that they have nothing to lose. 

            I rise each morning because my God gives me another day.  I do not ask for it and I no longer care if it comes.  However, because I am blessed with a sunrise I do the best I can with the time given.  I am homeless.  I am jobless.  I have run out of options and I have run out of energy.

            I find myself numb.  I am numb to even the touch that use to excite me.  I am numb to the feelings of others.  I am numb to the political cares of our nation.  I am numb to everything.  I cannot remember the last time I found pleasure in anything I have done, except write.  So, I continue to write.

            Today I discovered that my oldest daughter has been telling horrible lies about me.  It seems as though she has been doing it for quite awhile.  It came to a point today that I can no longer take a relationship with her.  She has refused to let me talk to my granddaughters.  But what hurt the most was when my mother stood by her and kept them from me.

            Taking care of those girls when their mother wasn’t able is a big reason I am homeless now.  But I still have no regrets about that.  I am an adult and although hurt most probably beyond repair they are only small children and will not understand where grandma went.  I most certainly raised her better than this.

            This keyboard does not provide the right letters for me to make the words that explain how I feel right now.  My entire life changed the day she was born.  It was a Sunday when my God gave me the 8lb little girl and trusted me to make her into a woman.  Four times my God blessed me with that honor.

            I stood by her when no body else would.  I continued to help her when the world kept pushing her down.  I did the best I could to love her unconditionally, but I cannot stand by and watch her be ruined by the man The Goat Man calls ‘Jim Jones.’  But it turns out that the little girl my God blessed me with betrayed me.

            I was betrayed, slandered, and hurt by the 8lb baby that stole my heart so many years ago.  I now question any sense in this world.  I now question my God and his intent with me.  Why am I here?  What purpose have I served?  What is the point of anything I have done for the past twenty years?

            I loved one man for two decades and one-day he just left and never looked back.  He rarely called.  He made no effort at all.  He just went away.  Two decades I spent building a life with him.  He and I raised my four children.  We made countless memories, countless dreams, and our entire future that was gone when he walked away and didn’t look back.  What is the point?  Why did my God let me spend my entire adult life dreaming, planning, and building a future I wasn’t allowed to reach?

            In an odd way I know Joe would be proud of me today.  I woke up this morning and I am finally putting myself first.  I have said for years my daughter would be the death of me and she finally was.  Apparently, the behavior modification worked too late for Joe and I (I am so sorry our marriage was collateral damage) But I am selfish today. 

            I learned so much from Joe and I take his hatred as a compliment.  He knows how I feel about hate.  I loved him with all of my heart and I held on for as long as I could, but it stopped feeling like he held onto me.  “I’m here aren’t I?” wasn’t good enough when I looked around and he was gone.

            I know I am not supposed to still love you, but I do.  I know I am not supposed to miss you, but I do.  But I know you want me happy because I know you will always love me.  I am happy.  The Goat Man has picked up where you left off.  He is still hanging on and he has become more important to me than anyone ever has before.  I am so sorry, but thank you for everything.

            Financially ruined, I miss being able to give my baby girl (the other daughter) the wedding she dreams about.  Currently she stresses over money and settles for what she can afford.  Weddings are something woman dream of.  Weddings are something women do together and weddings are meant to be shared with your mother.  I missed so many important moments in my kid’s life because I was at work and now that I do not have work I miss because of financial ruin.  Why does my God let me miss the things most important to me?

            I have thrown up my hand and left all this chaos to my God and as a reward he takes my daughter and my granddaughters from me.  Why do I keep waking up?

September 18, 0926

            I was awake when Kat left for work at 0630, when The Goat Man’s alarm went off at 0730, and when he got up to pee at 0850.  I have just been laying here thinking.  We have had the house to ourselves now for three hours.  It is silent.  It is lonely.

            My feelings about The Goat Man are the most forbidden of them all.  I just continue to grow numb.  I do not know where it comes from.  I know that yesterday he kissed me for the first time of the day at 1830.  Yes, he called me ‘sweetie’ and ‘baby’.  Yes, he held my hand when we walked and yes, he showed me the same minimal physical contact as always.  I felt loved, but how does he forget to kiss me?

            He came in the house after he read the message I left him on Facebook about not kissing me an hour and a half earlier with that same chip on his shoulder like any affection toward me was an unwanted task and kissed me his usual three kisses.  After the quick forceful kisses that are so hard and abrasive I have to fight my head from going back he glared at me like he wished I was dead and sat down on the other couch.

            The Goat Man has several types of kisses.  That was his obligatory kiss seeded in anger that he had to kiss me at all.  Not getting a kiss hurt less than a kiss he didn’t want to give.  The Goat Man doesn’t think about kissing me, he doesn’t miss kissing me, and rarely bothers to kiss me.  And that sentiment can be paralleled to all intimacy anymore between The Goat Man and I.

            That is a paragraph The Goat Man will ask me not to print or declare that I may never write anything about him again.  He gets angry if I don’t post all good things about him.  He just doesn’t seem to understand I don’t expect all the things about him to be good.  He is still a holder of the Y chromosome.  He is my dream come true.  He is the man I want to spend every single minute with for as far as I can see my minutes.  I know he does what he knows how and I know he loves me.  I also know that in the whole scheme of things he is a man and I am a woman, therefore, there are going to be issues.  He doesn’t need to get mad we all know that each and everyone of us has flaws.  I am not exempt of that and neither is The Goat Man.

            After falling asleep watching TV when I made his bed on the long couch he kissed me with actual feelings other than anger and disgust, mumbled he loved me, and fell back to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.  I have been awake ever since.

            I firmly believe actions speak louder than words.  The Goat Man has been a great guy to most.  He has been a great friend jumping up immediately to help Mike lift something heavy or mow the lawn.  He has been the perfect husband to Kat.  He is fixing everything in her house and cooking the meals.

            But when my blood pressure is 234/130 and I am telling him my arm is numb and that I am having trouble thinking straight he sat next to me on the couch, after he spent a half hour outside smoking his cigarette, and played a game on his phone.  Later when I complained of still feeling bad and feeling as if I meant nothing to him he explained that he was “Done with this shit” and insists that he was there for me.  I could have stroked in the seat next to him and he would have never looked up from the game. (my melodramatic opinion.  This is my disclaimer that I am putting words in The Goat Man’s mouth or telling him how he feels.  We all know The Goat Man is an original with original thoughts and feelings…one reason I love him.)

            He insists I did not tell him, but I know I did.  He simply spends so much time ignoring me that he never heard me.  I am not a priority.  The end of my life doesn’t even get his attention.  I have been trying for a year to get his attention and all I hear is “hold on, wait a minute, let me do this first.”  It is usually said in an irritated tone with a slightly elevated volume.

            We have come to understand each other better in the past ten weeks.  Sometimes he is the most generous sweet man.  He has a giving and helping nature, but I am tired of waiting in line.  I am tired of being his after thought.  I am tired of having to ask for everything I get from him.

            When we met I told him I was high maintenance in the hardest way.  I told him I didn’t care if he had money.  I didn’t care what he looked like and I didn’t want anything material from him.  I simply wanted his time and attention.  I told him it would be the hardest thing he ever gave and he signed up for the job.

            All of the misunderstandings and the let downs are par for the course.  The Goat Man is a very stubborn bull-headed man so, it is expected there will be conflict and disagreement.  The Goat Man has a self entitlement to always being right and he does not deal well when his thoughts are challenged so, it is expected that their will be a lot of places where we agree to disagree.  The only thing that has been crystal clear in this relationship is that our perceptions are completely different.  I maintain that the Y chromosome skews his perception and he maintains that my perception differs because I am crazy. (Which is probably more true than false.)

            I watch him sleep and he looks so beautiful to me.  I have been listening to him talk with joy about his past twenty years and all the thrill seeking, drugs and alcohol, and all of his sleepless nights.  I have heard a lot about his job and I have been there so many mornings after a night he didn’t even know who I was.  I have laid next to him sleep so angry with him the energy denied me sleep. I have woke up many mornings safely in his arms. (My favorite place to be.)

            He sleeps a lot more than I do.  I watch him sleep often.  I listen to him snore.  He sleeps a lot and he is always saying how he doesn’t understand why he is so tired.  But his mother tells me as a kid he always slept a lot.  She says he always needed fifteen hours a day and never woke up well.

            I have the true Goat Man.  I do not have him on drugs and alcohol.  He does no drugs at all and I can count on my fingers the number of times in the past year he has been drunk.  It has been months since he has been vulnerable to alcohol.  I have been told his lack of drinking is our lack of money and I do carry that concern in the back of my mind, but he has had the money to drink and the opportunity to drink and turned it away more than once.

            I do not have the young kid from high school and I do not have the thrill seeker looking for the next rush.  I have the man that all of those things created.  He is older than he wants to be.  He is more broken and battered than he thought he would ever be.  And he is finally being who he truly is.  I am the lucky one who gets to hold the true Goat Man.  I am the one that he loves.

            The problem with my love for him is that it comes with want, desire, and lust.  His love for me does not come with any of those things.  I make the majority of advances toward him on an intimate level.  He will argue that is not true, but when I stopped making so many advances we stopped being intimate.  He never picked up where I left off.  He simply leads life, with the lack of intimacy with me, unnoticed.

            I have initiated the only sex we have had in the past three weeks.  The majority of the kisses come from me either because I give them or because I complain that he didn’t. He will forget to give me a morning kiss, like he did just now, but he never forgets his morning cigarette and he never forgets to take his phone with him outside.  The phone that holds his friends and his games is never forgotten.

            If I say anything about his phone or get irritated when I have to seek him out and he is with his phone I am controlling him and he is “sick of this shit.”  The other night he sat next to me, but not with his arm around me, watching TV and talking to another woman on his Facebook.  He thinks because she is only his friend and knows that we live together it is okay.  He thinks that talking to the woman is the problem.

            Countless times I have tried to explain to him that as long as I always come second or third or fourth I will have a problem.  I am not the silent type.  If I have a problem then you are most likely going to know about it.  I do not control him.  I do not want to control him.  I simply want him to choose me.

            I get hurt and vocal when he does not choose me.  The only fights I have ever had with him have been over him making me feel unimportant.  I speak up and he gets angry.  When he is angry there is no saving your heart from severe pain.  Anymore I spend all of my time either fighting to keep quiet or fighting to not react to his constant hurt and rejection.  I know he only does what he knows how to do and he has no clue what it does to me.  But the more I try to explain it the farther he pulls away from me, so I now stay quiet.

            (The Goat Man will insist that I am to blame for things as well and be upset that I did not mention them here.  I tell him all the time it is my job to bitch about him and his job to bitch about me.  I, of course, have my faults and have contributed.  The Goat Man acts like if I say one bad thing the entire relationship is crap and I think he is the best thing to ever happen to me and I have great memories.  I would never call us crap.  Every guy I meet is going to have a Y chromosome and if nothing else The Goat Man is a man…his best quality.  He is a real man.)

            The same song plays in my head all the time.  Doug Stone ‘Why didn’t I think of that.’  In my fantasy he will think this way when I am gone.  I know the reality is that even after I am gone he won’t know he did anything wrong.  He will tell you he is the first to admit when he is wrong, but he holds no accountability for the things that cause me to slowly fall out of love with him.

            I have been telling him, but he doesn’t listen.  He tells me he is going to leave because he is tired of hearing that I am thinking about leaving.  But never once does he find me important enough to fight for.  “Hold on, just a minute, let me do this first” I’m sure right after that keeping me is on the agenda.

            The Goat Man is everything I ever wanted in a man, but my God even takes him away from me.  I don’t understand why he made me wait so long and then only give me a glimpse.  I don’t understand what I have done to anger my God.  I don’t understand what is wrong with me.  I have spent my life doing what society expected of me.  I have always tried to do the right thing.  Now I am left with nothing but my faith.  Where are you now, God?  There is nothing of me left here…