Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER

Your silence is my answer. I’m just another one of your fools.
I went from bad to good and back again.
It would be so much easier if you hated me. I almost wish you did.
Hostility fills each three week void.
I should be the one having a nervous breakdown,
I shouldn’t be the one causing yours.
I’m trying beyond my means to keep it together.

I became what I thought you wanted me to be.
Or maybe I became what I thought you were
or what I wanted you to be.
I’ve always wanted your approval, that’s no secret.
I would do what I had to without question, but that was a long time ago.
You don’t want people to change for you. But they do.
And you surrender yourself as well so no one will leave.
Forget all that. No more disappointment.
I want your acceptance for who I’ve become.
And I want you to love me for it.

I feel like everything I say hurts you.
Is this why I didn’t speak before?
I used to be able to make you happy without trying.
Now I can’t and I’m trying as hard as I know how.
Would you still want me without our past?
Isn’t that what usually drives people apart?
I have to get used to things that aren’t constants.
I want to help carry the burden I helped create.
You’re hiding, being the outsider to an impossible situation,
keeping your distance from this uncontrollable mistake.

And the weird dreams begin.
I wake up and I love you even more. I want to call in sick.
I want to continue the dream because at least there
you are always beside me.
I keep going back knowing there’s a look that should be mine.

Lonely Believer

It took me a week to write this. I notice now I almost have too much to say and it takes me longer to sort through it and make my thoughts coherent. I started with three pages and ended up with the one below.

LONELY BELIEVER

I don’t know why I ask so many questions
when you never answer any of them.
Once again I find myself giving it to you,
giving up myself for you.

You wrote through the pain before.
On your own. So you’ve told me
you forgave me. I never did.
Do you know what a decade of being
the lonely believer can do to a person?
If I’m the only one who believes is it still the truth?
I need the time to get where you are,
to get over the cocky confidence confronting me.
I’m on my way to knowing I’m a fool to have ever believed
things would have some black & white movie ending.
So I’m doing this, working through my emotions
and sharing every word so you can be happy,
so you can have what I want.
But if you’re not satisfied then what am I doing this for?
Is my needing what you need?
You’re a part of me I’ll never have.
Maybe I just want it back.
I’ll go back to myself, the self you ask for
if you’re so sure that’s what you want.
I was foolish to think you’d never leave that adolescence.
Somehow you were expecting the same of me.
I’ve become my own worst enemy by letting myself go on.
I eat alone. I drink alone. I write alone.
Once again you get what you want from me.
And you wonder why I walked away,
and now why I’m still always chasing.
What is it you want to hear me say?
Because I keep saying the wrong thing.
I should probably be ashamed of all my trying.
You see right through me, don’t you?

You want to be better than I was,
endure more pain than I would.
Are you letting me help you thinking it will help me?
Before you understood me without a word.
Now I’m saying everything and you still can’t understand.
I think you’ve kept a piece of me all these years.
And you have, I see my copies of Into The Wild
and the letters of Sylvia Plath on your bookcase,
tangible things left behind as visual reminders.
They must have left you unfulfilled.

I’m drawn in by the gravity of you,
asking for something I thought you already gave me,
something I should have already offered you.
Maybe I was better off not knowing.
But I have to go on believing something.
I just haven’t figured out what.

Preemptive Dreams

I was thinking about our last encounter and then read The Myth Of You And Me by Leah Stewart. It inspired me to write this.


PREEMPTIVE DREAMS

I see myself reflected in your tears.
I don’t like what I see, how you currently see me.
It’s like you don’t even trust me with myself.
Why do I feel like you don’t even want to understand me now?

The life I’ve grown into without you
has left me with only one true dream from the past.
Have I idealized it all too much here on my own?
What I have now keeps me grounded, stops me from dreaming
those silly dreams, kicks me in the head and slaps me across the face.

Life happened and I settled
into a happiness that wasn’t what I dreamed of ten years ago.
Life happened and you needed
your dreams to get you through. I understand why you’re still dreaming.

I’ve been to the edge of self-destruction.
I wasn’t sure I’d make it back.
But I did, somehow found the strength within myself.
So why do I now feel like you feel like I need your salvation
from a life that saved me more than destroyed me?
I don’t think you realize my sacrifice.

You were the one who taught me to dream.
Now you’re telling me I have to be practical.
But my practicality is what repulses you, what crushes your dreams.
Could I be any more confused?

I remember you wishing you could marry me or put me in your pocket,
things you said when you thought I was sleeping.
Maybe I slept through it all and what I think happened
was never more than some fantastic dream.

We’ll never be right back there.

It’s not the guilt that won’t let me go.
It’s you. It’s me. It’s what you told me was necessary.
Now you want to leave. Or have you already?
What good have I ever been for you? It all makes sense.
I look for you to understand as we sink into this common pain.

You’ve already written one story.
How would you tell this one?

You remain the one person I want to convince
even though you’re the one person who shouldn’t need convincing.
You want me to prove something to you
that I just don’t want to, something I shouldn’t have to.
And I won’t. If you can’t trust that this is what I want
then you never really knew me.
What I continued to love about you is still here.
If your reasons for loving me are gone,
then there is no reason.

The Longest Day

I started to realize that I ask a lot of questions in my poetry, I guess mostly because to me they're a kind of ongoing dialogue with her. Except I never get answers. With "Warning Messages" and this poem here, I consciously didn't ask questions. I decided I just needed to make a statement.
This poem was written after our last encounter. It just so happened to be June 21st, the first day of summer and the longest day of the year. It sure did feel like that. Things started out pleasant enough, but after she posed the question, "What are we going to do about us?" the alcohol-fueled conversation made a wrong turn.


THE LONGEST DAY

I can’t write anymore.
It’s always how I feel.
I don’t care anymore.
It’s so insignificant.
You pat me on the head
and I finally see how it is you feel.
That raging bitterness in your eyes
leaves an emptiness.
I thought you forgave me.
I’m left broken.
I replenish my headache
trying to ignore the hollowness left
by what we’ve said.
I can be reckless with my words
but tonight I just listen.
After all you’ve been through
you deserve to be selfish.
Time didn’t stop for either of us.
Patience seems the only answer.
I’m waving the white flag
hoping for some sympathy
before you beat on me again
for all my wrong choices
and choices that weren’t mine.
I’m slipping away
from the sudden surprise.
I can’t even be a comfort to you now.
I never have to look behind me,
the angry echoes face me head on.
I bear the blame.
I reach in my pocket to count my change
hoping it’s enough to buy me
one more day.

Warning Messages

Shortly after the Memorial Day incident, she and I had a rather heated e-mail exchange. We both get so passionate about things that we don't necessarily say things we regret, but perhaps the way we say them is more hurtful, confusing or misinterpreted by the other. In the end, she suggested a break. It was the closest thing I think she could do to walking away from me while still leaving the door of possibility open that we might work something out. To deal with the pain of this suggestion, the few friends I had confided in started calling us "Ross & Rachel." But I was still pissed. It was almost as if she was shocked by the words I had said. How could she not see this coming? How could she be surprised that I was still in love with her? How could she not wait for me? But I guess that's my fault because I walked away from her before. But why did she stop believing? How could she ever get over it when I don't think I ever will? I can't do anything to right what I did before and correct how she may have felt about me over the last ten years. That feeling of powerlessness leaves me in a constant state of frustration, and sometimes it comes out in the cruel words I say to her. It took a good friend to kick me in the head and make me realize that despite what seemed like rejection she still wants me in her life and she's done things for me and made me feel things no one else has or ever will. And so this poem.


WARNING MESSAGES

I never want to be left alone with my thoughts.
That’s when I get myself into trouble.
I need an anchor to keep me from sinking.
I was so happy.
Or I was content in these calm waters.
Now you’ve made me consider that my life is incomplete,
that I may never really find happiness among the raging rapids.
I’m forced to wade through pleasant moments to avoid the undertow
with effortless emptiness in between the timid tides.

You make this old world new.
I rediscover it, things, me for the first time.
You’re still the best thing to ever wash into my life.
Now you’ve done it to me twice on two different shores.
Don’t regret what you’ve done.
You’ve given me renewed life.
There’s nothing to forget
and this time I’ll remember every single little thing.
The challenge is me.
I don’t feed off the twisted destruction left by a hurricane.
I feed off your radiant brilliance that never leaves.
Even when it’s shining in another direction
as I walk out the door for what I’ll never know is the last time.

I’ve taken the emptiness and made it numbing nothingness.
I’m verging on the unstable.
I’ve built up my expectations
only to destroy what I’ve created with artificial terror.
I’m waiting for a decaf refill and I’m still shaking
like a bowl full of jelly.
The uneasiness used to make me comfortable.
Now I find it baiting.
And I’m still ready to face it.
I’ve grown into this impatient bull waiting to strike.
I refuse to let my anger show but I know it’s obvious.
The threat of losing you shames me.
I flip and you flop, I’m topsy and you’re turvy.
I can’t breathe directly.
My energy is exhausted trying to turn back the rotation of the earth
to where we last left and hold us there in that one dangerous moment.

I shift into reverse for some perspective.
I’m waiting here for what’s right, not righting what’s already here.
I’ll be here until the hurting stops
or until somebody stops me hurting.

Cash by Johnny Cash

I recently finished reading Cash by Johnny Cash. I enjoyed reading his story in his own words. I'd recommend this story to anyone looking for hope. Or even just a good story. In part 3, Cash talks about a time when he went to Nickajack Cave on the Tennessee River near Chattanooga. He was going to crawl into the cave and wait for death because he felt as if he had wasted his life and he was exhausted. But in that cave he started thinking about things, what he had done, why he was there. He considered God and his destiny and realized that his own death was not his decision to make. He questioned, "How could I escape the death I'd willed?" Something gave him the strength. He felt his way through the darkness until he felt the wind and knew that was his way out. He writes, "When I walked out, June was there with a basket of food and drink, and my mother." I'm in awe of how he survived all he did, but in reading his story the answer seems clear: June. She was his soul mate and made a promise to him early on that she would do whatever she could to help him get clean and stay there. Knowing that she did in spite of what he was going through is beyond anything I could ever imagine one human being doing for another. And yet I find myself wanting just that.

Do Not Look At Me

I found this poem in high school. I don't remember where, but I've always liked it. On a few rare occasions I myself have been fortunate enough to see the look of love in someone else's eyes. I wonder if anyone has ever taken the time to see it in mine.

Do Not Look At Me

Do not look at me, for they will see
That we are looking at one another,
And they will see in your eyes
That we love one another.
Let us not look at one another,
For when they are not looking at us,
We shall look at one another.

-Anonymous