Skip to main content

going home again

i sat in your bathroom and cried today. i fed your cats. used to be our cats. now yours. i fed them. and they were happy to see me. they remember me. i remember them. we said hello.

and i looked around at what used to be our home. and my heart just sank. because we wanted so much. we were so young and hopeful and clear when we started out. at least we wanted to believe we could be. i wanted to build a life with you. i tried. we tried. we tried really hard. we tried until it got hard, and then we tried some more. and then it got harder and it got harder.

i wanted to raise up the beauty in your heart and hold it up for the sun to shine on. i wanted to put mine in your strong hands and let it rest there, in between beats. i still want to hold your head on my shoulder and let you be weary. when i think of you, i want to take your weariness away. because i care for you. because that is what we do.

but i needed more. i needed strength. i needed rest. i needed more. i needed words. i needed compassion. i needed the lack of things and people unraveling around me. i needed not to feel helpless and lost and angry and confused and resentful.

i see your life imploding on you now. i see your world falling into despair and decay ... everything around you just sort of falling apart, as though you've given up ... and for a minute, as i have, i felt guilty. and then i realized that it isn't for me anymore. this taking care of you. this fixing it. i got so tired.

i looked around, and i saw all the things we tried to be, and hoped we would and could be ... they have just sort of washed away and crumbled to bits ... or gotten clouded and covered in dust and ash and mineral build up and cat hair.

so ... i wiped my eyes, and patted the cats on the head (except the neurotic one, who was hiding under the bed), and locked the door and left to come home.

m

Comments

Anonymous said…
It is so very hard to walk away, but even harder still to walk away from yourself. You've come home to yourself, M. Much love to you.
10:56 am
mayim said…
thank you, z. really. thank you.

m
7:32 pm
Murph said…
I've never been very good at the whole relationship thing, so I'll just say that if you were here I'd give you a big hug, blow a rasberry on your forehead, and offer you some vodka and cold pizza.
11:18 pm
mayim said…
thanks murph! that sounds comforting in its ... way. ;-)

m
7:23 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

May your children's children have painful bunions!

So I was sitting with my tired feet being gurgled in the bubbling jets of a cheap vietnamese manicure shop pedicure chair when I look over to see some preppie chick giving the pedicure girl a hard time. She was apparently unhappy with the level of exfoliation her stupid tootsies had recieved. Fine. Well, first of all, you are paying for what is the equivalent of a happy meal in the scheme of the grand pedicure menu, bitch, so what do you want? But beyond that ... Her tone was so disdainful and contemptuous, and the pedicure gal handled it so graciously ... Just looking at her sitting there at the feet of this ho-bag, massaging her callouses with the pumice stone one more time, trying to get it right, to make the girl happy, I was SHAKING in anger by the time the whole scene played out and the check was practically THROWN at the poor woman. SHAKING. I mean, okay - you're unhappy with the services you received. You complain. Acceptable. Fine. But for fuck's sake you can speak to ...
8 comments
Read more

here i go again

it seems as though i tend to take up writing again, when i do, in spring.  i don't know that i have any particular reading of this observation, it's just something i noticed.  maybe something about renewal and starting fresh, starting over? i am sitting in my living room and the windows are open and it's a bit chilly but the fresh air feels good.  i have a blanket on my legs and i am sitting cross-legged on a chair.  it's funny to think about writing this blog from this place, this here-now, when i have written it in other places before.  when i think about this blog, it's as though i give it a particular time-space all its own, but i also associate it strongly with the apartment where i lived when it all began.  which feels (and i guess sort of is) a lifetime ago.  i feel like a completely different person, this almost-ten-years-in-the-future me.  back to that catch-up conundrum.  how to explain how different i am now, and all that's happe...
4 comments
Read more

You Tremble at the Edge of Gone

The first time I saw D was my first day back at school the first semester of my sophomore year in college. When I opened the door (after my last two roommates, dreading who or what I might find when I entered), I saw her squinting at me from against the radiator at the far wall of the tiny rectangle that was our dorm room, smoking a Marlboro Light 100. I'll never forget the brand she smoked. They fit her. They were slender and inconspicuous, the box long and cream and white and somehow common but sophisticated. I don't know what it was, and I'm trying to remember it now - it frustrates me that I can't - that told me in an instant that we were kindred spirits. She was beautiful, slender, native american. She had almond eyes and high cheekbones and long brown hair ... we shared a sort of eclectically funky style. She was fond of loosely woven brown sweaters and a sort of rust colored lipstick that brought out her eyes, hair, skin ... she wore too much makeup to cover old ...
6 comments
Read more