Two-Face

Hide inside this flimsy shell

       in the dark I know so well

Listen as the laughter starts 

      despite the smell of broken hearts

Close my eyes and count to three,

      open and hope I’ll never see

Pain and loss and fear abound 

      bouncing off the laughter sound. 

In my corner bleak and dim 

      trying not to think of him

Meet his eyes, they pierce my soul 

      as I strain to keep control

Might be smiling, I’m not sure,

      lost in striving to endure

My body smiles on and I fit in;

      my soul fights what it can’t win

In this place of broken dreams 

      nothing’s ever as it seems

For the First Time

    I am not sure.
   
    For the first time in a longish time I am uncertain and confused about what to do, which direction to turn.

    I kind of thought that something would work out, which now it appears it may not.
 
    I kind of thought school would go smoothly and I'd accomplish my career goals easily,. now it appears that may be harder than I imagined.

    My major is up in the air, my finances are stable currently but are also up in the air. My plans are far from definite. My options are thin in tech direction yet attainable, and numerous in USC direction but possibly financially out of my reach.

    But, one thing I have noticed.

    I never think anymore that I can't do something because of the time it would take. School for years no longer scares me. My age no longer scares me. The thought of not being ready for my next phase of life by the time my current awesome boss retires no longer scares me. I finally feel invincible in a way I never have. I may be single and stay single for the rest of my life, but the thought of being in school for years and years working for a difficult degree that I may not complete until I'm in my mid-forties doesn't seem like a waste of energy to me. Because after all, mid-forties?? I could have 40 more years after that, I could have 55 more years if I live as long as my Mother's side of the family does. Being a Psychologist at age 45?? What could beat that feeling....

    For the first time ever......I feel like I can do anything I want to do.

Personal Space

   You leaned in close to me, brushing lint that only you can see from the curve of my dark eyelashes.

   I can see the opaqueness of your eyes, feel the warmth of your breath as you concentrate on your gentleness for a change. The smoky scent of your breath doesn't make me wince as it would have once upon a time, instead it brings up into my heart a memory of us together, when our ragged breaths were the only things that were between us. I lose myself in the glass of your light colored eyes, and you accomplish your task and look into mine.

   For a moment we are locked in each others gaze, everything else forgotten, everything that made us no longer an us a thing of mist and shadows. I can feel the heat radiating off of your body, you are so close to me. Closer than you have been for months.

   I notice that you have lost weight, I notice that you are shorter than I remembered, I notice that you have more gray hairs and less hair in general, I notice that I can tell exactly how long you've been without shaving from the length of your whiskers, I notice that you're wearing a shirt I bought you a long time ago, and I notice that you are not drawing away from me.

  Finally you speak, and it is barely even the hint of a whisper, "You can't tell me that you don't still love me....".

   I give the only answer I can, the only words I can force from my worn out heart. "I never even tried to tell you that, all I ever said was that we were not right for each other."

   I break the gaze of memories and turn to walk away, and I can literally feel your dejection behind me, you'd reacted to a spark, as I had, and that spark was gone, a dead ember that for a moment tried to revive, but was squelched by the waters of common sense and experience.

   My entire soul aches, mourning the loss of something I never even had, but was the spawn of hope. There are no words, there are no feelings, there is no balm for this kind of wound. There is only wisdom, and time, and tears, and more hope. I could wish with every ounce of my soul for things to have been different, but they are not, because we are who we are. And we are not for each other. I continue to mourn, I continue to wish, I continue to love, but I refuse to continue to try, when I know where the road leads, and that place is not where I want to be.

Attitude

   I read on a poster today, (incidentally the poster is in the patient bathroom of my job, where I rarely have ever been, but I am drinking more and more water on this quest for health and beauty that I'm on so I found myself in there releasing said water), and the poster said, in part, "life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it."

   That sentence is burned in my mind right now, because it fits so well with all that I've been going through lately. It has been a rough week personally, and even I have been impressed with how I have handled it. Personal relationship upheavals, from multiple directions as some relationships that are all over including the shouting still insist on heaving out the occasional death rattle, and some aren't what they seem, and some are just plain confusing.

   I attempt to make sense of the madness that is now my life, and as long as I find something every day to make me smile, I manage to stay very happy. This isn't what I would have thought possible. Sometimes it's as if I can feel the particles that make up my life swarming around my ears, an unstoppable commotion that's more a tornado than a downward spiral. Everything isn't going "down the drain" as it were, but it's just always in chaos around my head, taking my breath away.

   But every day, I smile, I laugh, I tell jokes to make everybody else laugh and smile and be comfortable wherever they may find themselves. And I am not putting on an act, I am sincerely happy. Then I have a flash of something that has been circling my head, one of the causes of tumult in my life, and I have a flash of concern, or sadness, or a feeling of being overwhelmed, but this too passes, and the smiles come back in full force, and the life continues and it's a good life worth living.