From the Vault – 15 Years Later

Hell and highwater, win and lose, pass and fail, high and low. And as I read my musings of years past its apparent that for all the change, it’s still the same. The players have different faces, the game takes place on new ground, but it’s still the same.

I muse now that I finally understand what has driven me all these years, and what has kept me aground. I am alone. I thought way back when that I understood loneliness. Perhaps I did, but it hasn’t been until now as I enter a new chapter of my life, that I can truly admit that I am alone, and have been for the last ten years.

It’s now that I ache daily for the unconditional love, support and friendship that my mother gave. I may have been lonely when she was here, but I was never alone.

Since she has passed I have never encountered anyone capable of unconditional love. There isn’t a soul who can look me in the eye and know without words something isn’t right. Let alone anyone who might want to do something about it.

I’m treated as though a shiny trinket, not a person of intelligence, emotion and beauty. And should I dull, or become less amusing then I’m simply forgotten. Should I raise my hand and ask for help or support, dare I point out that I’m a person, I’m simply overlooked. Property never asks for anything, or loses it’s appeal. And when I’m seen as anything other than property, when I stand up and say no, I’m alone.

For ten years of my life I mistook being owned for being wanted and loved. I was a possession, something to be owned and envied from afar. Like any possession, used and abused, tossed aside when it was convenient and pulled out of storage and dusted off when I was needed. All with the expectation that’s what I wanted and that I was too stupid to know or want better.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. ~Ralph Ellison

The fact that I accepted this for ten years is not a fact I’m proud of. In actuality I have very little to be proud of these days. It’s a hard pill to swallow to think that my mother would not be proud of me right now. And it only serves to remind me how truly alone I am. For even if she had a moment of doubt and pain it was okay. You’d pick up and try again tomorrow with her standing strong behind you.

Thanks to my mother I know and understand unconditional love, and I will never settle for anything less when the time comes to open my heart again. I’m learning to accept and stand strong alone, and lord knows I would much prefer it to being treated like a possession.

Being alone means walking the forest in search of a tree. It means standing in a crowded room with a silent smile on your face, screaming inside. It’s opening your mouth to breath and there is no air. It’s being so exhausted you can’t move, but never being able to tire the mind. Waking up in a panic to realize that there’s nothing you can do.

It’s searching desperately for someone who cares, and then pushing them away because they don’t understand they’re playing with fire. It never shuts down, or takes a day off. Being alone never sleeps, and yet it’s still better than being controlled by someone else.

I’m at an impasse right now. Each day as I grow more comfortable in my own skin, more confident in my own skills and abilities and my career, I feel more of a burden and nuisance than anything else. I have no sanctuary, no safe place to hide, and no one left to grab onto when I feel myself start to drift from shore. There is no one who wants to share in my life. My family doesn’t think of me and reach out. My friends tell me “you should have been there”, but forget to call. When I try I don’t even receive the courtesy of a response, even to decline the offer. Property does not need an answer apparently.

I still defer to the holy trinity for guidance. Head, heart and gut, for all things. Currently I’m left with a head that sees this, a heart that’s told that and a gut that cannot reconcile the two. It hurts. No more, no less. I have high hopes to reconcile the three, but know that it’s not likely to happen, which saddens me. The imbalance has me paralyzed. If I take a single misstep I could fall, and there is no one to pick me up. I’ve picked myself up a number of times over the years, but each time is a little harder. The force holding me down greater than the last, the desire to just accept and stay down a little stronger. Yet somehow, someway each time I pick myself up, dust myself off and say “Thank you for the lesson”.

This post is from the vault, originally written in 2014, looking back fifteen years into the writings of my youth and all that happened in between.