Not Looking

Is there anyone out there who isn't ooking for their someone else?

I came to the conclusion at the close of my last relationship that the whole soul-mates thing isn't necessarily a myth, but true love is something much rarer than our media would have us believe, and furthermore, it isn't for everyone.

During my time with Chase, I learned how to love, and to be honest, I loved how it made me feel, how it softened my rough edges and made me feel safe and able to feel, possibly for the first time since I became a real adult, after having three children and my youthful surety and optimism crushed to a more realistic world-view. It was, however, a whole lot of work, and I think it only lasted as long as it did because of the distance between us physically made it more of an intellectual exercise. I do believe that people can make themselves fall in love, and can maintain that, even over a lifetime, but it is a phenomenal amount of work.

I suppose it is a measure of my emotional laziness that I am not willing to commit that energy to anyone else. (I'm barely willing to commit the energy it takes to type this to myself...) My sister would say it's fear, Chase would likely concur. I don't necessarily disagree, but it is my life and my heart, and I'm a little tired of eHarmony and Match.com insisting I need someone else's love to be complete.

I have been admired, I have had men and women both crush on me, and I've had infatuations of my own. But love, genuine, die-for-you true love? Nope, not once, not ever. And I don'r believe I have the capacity for it, to be honest. I can dream, and I can write it, but it's a fantasy, and as I have spent more time alone or in platonic company, it sinks in that for me, it's not even that pleasant of a fantasy.

I rather like being on my own. It's nice to have contact with other people, but there's no one whose voice I like the sound o as much as my own. That sounds egotistical, and maybe it is, but there it is. It is, at the root, honest.

And in Dreams

I am haunted by exes and their smiles; their kisses that felt wrong even then. Having never known love, I am through wanting to find it, and yet every predatory and passive hunter I know sees a signal I'm not sending. I am adrift in complacence and wish more to be left alone than to be bothered pleasing others. If I am pleased in and of myself, that is enough. How to get that through to the rest of the world seems to be an issue.

It is a few days before another New Year, and there is nothing new to celebrate. the western world remains swathed in gluttony and the artificial demand for more useless things, and in order to even hang on, by the thin slivers of my nails, I am forced to feed that, to push for more hunger for *my* useless things... buy me, buy ME! As if I can do anything better than anyone else, or there weren't already a glut on the market of what little I have to offer.

Only in dreams, only in the manic state just before sleep rings, only there do I have something unique and weighty, some dramatic truth veiled in stories, and the stories are only whispered to me, through me. I have yet to put them down, offer them up some meager sacrifice of mind and eye to whatever reader might see them. I hesitate, here. I always pull back from that brink, and hold my stories inside, safe, but also trapped.