The first storm of the season

I need the first true storm of the winter season. I crave it. I don't mean the piddly little rains that have been happening, although I'm grateful for those. I mean the first true storm. Lightning, thunder, raging wind. The first fierce storm. I need the sheer release that such a storm will bring me. I need the wild rage of nature around me. All that prevents me from taking off and heading up into the mountains to go where I know that I could find that kind of storm is the fact that it would worry too many people. I fear not even slightly for my own safety, because I know that the storm would soothe something inside of me that's been raging too long.

So I wait. Impatiently, for the first good storm of the season to come down from the mountains, into the valley, and unleash here.

Let the rains fall. Let the winds shriek cacophony around me. Let the heavens flash above and the thunder shake the ground. Let the storm rage, unchecked.

And let my soul be soothed, finally. Let the rage be calmed and let it all go to silence inside of me.

Somehow, someway, there has to be a release from this. And if the best I can get is from the storms, let them come. Let them free me.

I need to be free.

Secret word of the week

Running a little late in the day for this, as I normally post right after midnight, but the secret word of the week is now up. This week's word is "Imzadi".

That's right. Imzadi, for the win. I like the personal connotation that this particular word has, and as I've been having conversations lately that talk about how language changes regularly, I thought this was good.

Thanks to the consensus for the choice of Imzadi.

With a whole heart

On one level, I lived without you, and very well too. I had a good life. Friends and a family and a partner. I had a good life. I did the best I could, with what I had left, once you were gone. I either couldn't, or wouldn't, save myself. But I did the best I could, with what was left of me. And that had to be enough. I had had the all-encompassing blast of love that came with loving one man with everything I had, and it had overpowered me. It was my weakness, and my mistake. Or perhaps the ability to give everything to one man is a strength.

I have never resolved my feelings for you. I had never forgiven, or accepted. I'd simply walled it all off, and forgotten. And I needed to resolve it, with a whole heart, one way or another. Either embrace how I felt, or feel, or let it go, without malice or complication. Either way, I need to resolve those feelings, with a whole heart. Because without that completion, I'll never be free of it. And I'll never be whole. I'll always be vulnerable and broken, as though a piece of me is missing.

You were the one man who ever caused me true emotional pain. Your actions inadvertently dictated how I would live my life and how I would respond to situations for such a very long time that it completely amazes me that I never once put all those associations together into one cohesive form. Never even realized where the starting point was, and assembled the memories to know how it all began.

But you were also the one man who I allowed inside enough to bring pleasure and happiness as well. The one who was allowed to touch me, who I never flinched back from. I never felt the need to hide from you. I trusted you, with everything. Even what I cannot remember, I know I trusted you with. I know it in every touch, every thought, every feeling that passes through me when I look at you. I know it when you pin me down, and I don't feel a need to try and escape. And I know it when I can laugh instead of fear when I'm trapped. Because I know there's no reason to fear.

I know that a misstep can lead to a tumble, and that the fall down a very slippery slope is a long fall indeed. No one knows that better than I do. But I remember well the taste and texture of you. Whatever the risks. Whatever the cost, I needed to *know*. And now I do. There's still heat between us. But wanting you with my body means so very little. Fire is easily lit. Easily extinguished. I don't expect more. But I hope for it. The chance to get to know one another again. The time to get to know each other. We've both changed. Some things stayed the same. Some things changed.

Which leads me to now, today, the foreseeable future. Everything is in a state of flux, and during this time, I need to finally resolve things. My heart is going to need to be whole again, one way or another. It might mean loving you again. It might mean just letting you go, without malice and remembering the good times without the pain. Enjoying what we have, without the pain of what I lost. Being with you makes me feel whole again. It's been a long time since I felt that way, and because of that, it frightens me. And my natural reaction is to block the feelings, because vulnerability is dangerous. I don't think you'll intentionally wound me again. But it's difficult just the same, to simply say whatever it is that I'm feeling, for fear of having it thrown in my face.

Time...time to heal. Time to talk. Time to regroup. Time to resolve with a whole heart.

Double standards

There are a lot of double standards in the world, and I feel like soap-boxing about one of them today, per a conversation I was having a little while ago. It's a pet peeve of mine, because of my body type. I'm fat. I'd try to sugar coat it, but there it is. It isn't that I'm ugly, because I'm not. I'm actually reasonably attractive, all things considered. But I'm not thin. I'm not the societally acceptable "hot" woman. And those women can get away with an awful lot of bullshit that women with my body type cannot with regard to how they behave when they go out to attract a man.

Your standardized hot woman can behave in the most ludicrous of ways when on the prowl. They can and do appear in public wearing clothes that scream "take it all baby". And that actually isn't even my peeve. My biggest complaint is the behavior. The basest of promiscuity. Beyond the basic flirting, they will juggle several men sexually, with no regard for anything, and because of their looks, most men can and do overlook the fact that they're playing the field in bed with several. It's just a given that women who look a certain way are given leeway that women like me aren't granted.

If I were to be sleeping with two men simultaneously, I'd be a slut. Whether or not I was not in a relationship with either of them, I'd be labelled, and neither would want to commit to me. I'd be a dirty little secret, because a: it's difficult for women of my body type to land nice guys in the first place, and b: since I'd given it up, why bother with the likes of me now?

But if you swap out the same situation with a thin, attractive woman, those same two men would most likely be quite willing to commit to that thin woman. They wouldn't *care* that she'd been juggling two men. It would be accepted and irrelevant.

And that seems terribly unfair to me. There would be no nasty names applied. No labels. She'd still be desirable and I'd be insulted, and yet the circumstances would be the same.

Too tired to fight

Tired of fighting. Tired of asking you to be here. Tired of asking you to stay. Tired of crying. Tired of not sleeping. Tired of feeling too much. Tired of not feeling enough.

Tired of being me.

Uneventful

Mostly. I want to say that things are uneventful, and for the most part they are. My back and hip are fairly fucked up at the moment, because I was stubborn and didn't want to wait for someone to help me dismantle my bed so I could remove some of the excessively heavy memory foam from it. So I did it myself, and wounded myself in the process. But it got done, and I feel accomplished for it. Wounded, but accomplished.

I have gone back into non-sleep-mode again, because my brain is on overload and I can't make it shut down enough to rest, and it's making me insane. So instead of sleeping, I keep cleaning. Which is good on the one hand, since with people moving out and moving in simultaneously, the entire apartment is trashed. But on the other hand, I'm exhausted.

I'm actually several steps above exhausted most of the time. Every time I start to catch a nap, I end up jolting awake. Every now and then I drop completely and stay knocked out for several hours, but that's pretty rare. I wish I could figure out a sure-fire way to sleep for an entire night's worth of sleep. I suspect it would be good for me. Alas, I seem to be the screwed on that.

We divided up the DVD collection a couple of days ago, and the TV series discs this afternoon. It went pretty smoothly, all things considered, when you figure the sheer amount of films we had. I ended up with a binder of movies, a binder of TV series shows, and a binder that has music CDs and miscellaneous computer stuff in it.

I'll be babysitting all day tomorrow, because my roommate's daughter doesn't have school, I gather it's some sort of teacher inservice day, and the way daycare works is that you have to sign her up for it like a month in advance, and she was supposed to have a sitter lined up...except she dumped her boyfriend, and he was the sitter. Oops. No biggie, except that I'm trying to figure out what to do with the munchkin for the day tomorrow. Probably going to be a disney movie-fest for the win. Easiest that way.

heart knives...

Her callous unconcern twists a knife in your heart
And you bleed
You fall
And my heart breaks
And I try to catch you
I attempt to patch the pieces
Repairing what I can
Soothing what I cannot
Waiting and watching
You heart is safer here...