done gone crazy

I'm coming to the realization that I don't always give adequate.... feedback. There's a reason for this. I'm not so good at the open book thing. I'll admit it, I don't like feeling vulnerable. It's scary. More and more I'm finding that people don't know where they stand with me. "What do you think?" is an easy enuff question for me to answer... but I always get tripped up with the "How do you FEEL?" stuff.

What I THINK is usually pretty simple to explain. Cerebral. Definitive. Hell, I can walk you through the process. "Well, first I thought... which led me to wonder.... and THEN I thought.... So yeah... I think... blabbity blah." Easy peezy, shampoo squeezy.

But then... there's the feeeeeeeeling questions. Yeech. How do I FEEL??? Geebus. I dunno. Good? Bad? Can I be a teensy bit more descriptive? No I can't. Cuz ya wanna know why? Most of the time, I don't really know. I mean, I know at the MOMENT. Knee jerk stuff. Instantaneous response. I can express that... sure. But the thing is... after a little time has passed, my brain kicks in and the FEELING turns into THINKING.

The waters get all muddy after that. Logic and rationality somehow override emotion. I can no longer express how I FEEL about anything at that point... It all just turns into what I THINK... or however I've managed to make sense of what I felt.

Ridiculous right? Where's the humanity in this? It's completely fucking robotic. Input data... process... tabulate... compute... output response. Neatly itemized and alphabetized for your convenience. But it's cold. Sterile. Ick. And it drives me crazy to look at myself in those terms. And yet... it still fits.

I never used to be like this. At least I don't think I was. And I wonder now if this isn't just a lovely little by-product of feeling too much pain for too long. I think I needed a way to cope so I began to distance myself from things that were upsetting. I rationalized things that otherwise would have produced such a guttural response that they'd have been unbearable. Eventually, this distancing started to happen more often... until I'd effectively removed myself from all kinds of situations that forced me to FEEL, even those that used to be pleasant.

It's confusing as hell now... when I try to understand why I feel the need to be so guarded, even when I know it should be safe to start to explore something a little deeper than what I'm THINKING at any given moment... somehow I just can't.

Apparently, I am in an emotional prison of my own making. Godammit.
Aren't life's little epiphanies grand?
Fuck.

Lemme just start by saying that I really do love my mom. She has an amazing soul and a huge heart. She’s passionate about school and art and beauty, appreciates all the finer (read: expensive) things in life, but still sees herself as the kind of woman that will go mountain climbing or white water rafting at any given moment, should an invitation actually come her way. She wants to hand out soccer balls to poor kids in Venezuela, teach English to Asian preschoolers and dig up landmines in Croatia. She’s wants to do it all, have it all, BE it all. A real renaissance women…. And I’ll be the first to admit that most people that know her, absolutely love her.

She’s a great person… really she is… and in a lot of ways, I’m completely okay with being similar to her. Of course, she’s not without her flaws. The woman is teeeeeeerrible with money, notorious for over-committing herself (because she CAN’T say no to people) and prone to feelings of inferiority and regret for all that she has yet to achieve in her life. She has dabbled with drugs, never pays her parking tickets and, although she hides it from pretty much everyone, smokes Cameo Extra Mild cigarettes in her basement every evening.

Not that any of that makes her a bad person. She’s just, y’know… flaky. She is kind and fun and she would give you the shirt off her back (not in a sexual way, ahem, this IS my MOTHER we are talking about here), but she’s sorta cut from a different cloth when compared to the rest of the people in my family.

See, my mom has ideas. Not that ideas are a BAD thing… but sometimes she gets so wrapped up in her ideas…the possibilities, the “coulds”, that she loses sight of what’s right in front of her face. She’s never been so great at the “shoulds”.

My case in point (and undoubtedly her greatest regret)… she flaked out and left us when I was a kid. Just up and left her husband and two kids without a backward glance. She went chasing one of her possibilities, even though it meant walking away from her responsibilities. No, she didn’t wander off to do some of the great stuff that she imagined herself doing… she just left. Poof. Gone. 6 years of my life without a mom… and we’re talking my FORMATIVE years here, people. To this day, more than a decade after she’s returned, I still don’t know what happened to her during those years or how she managed to stay away so long. And, maybe because I’m terrified of the answer, I’ve just never bothered to ask.

Now, keep in mind, she’s not mentally ill or anything. There is nothing wrong with her in a clinical sense. She has just always been in search of something. Seeking out something, some UNKNOWN, magical thing, that will finally be the answer to whatever it is she’s looking for. She’s always had the sense that something in her life is missing. In spite of all she’s tried, she’s never, EVER found out what it is.

This scares the shit outta me because no matter how I try to fight it... no matter what I do....

I feel it too.

The thoughts won't stop. Your presence fills my mind. I ache with need. I close my eyes.

I imagine the sound of your voice, deep and low, breathing hard at my ear. Whispers. Moans. Growls.

I imagine how you taste... the sweet saltiness of your skin. My tongue sliding slowly along your chest.

I imagine the smell of your skin as I nuzzle your shoulder. Your scent. The lingering of your cologne on my clothes.

I imagine feeling you over me... under me... inside me. Pressing me into the mattress. The counter. The wall. The floor.

I imagine your fingers as they dig furrows in the sheets. Gathering bunches of soft cotton in clenched fists.

I imagine your warm naked skin next to me. Tracing each other with our fingertips. Hearts speeding up... slowing down. Breathing synchronized.

Please baby. Your hands on me. Your lips, your tongue, your teeth. The sexy smile that turns up one corner of your mouth just so. Your eyes on me. That look. I feel it at my core.

Can you feel me? Soft and smooth. Hot and wet.

You possess me. Do with me what you will.

Please baby. Take me. Lick me. Tease me. Taste me. Satisfy me.

I'm yours. You're mine.

If only in my imagination.

I don't care.

I'm gonna fuck you blind.

Ever start to question if you really are the person you thought you were? I mean, I've always kinda pictured myself as the kind of person that acts a certain way… y'know, a GOOD person. I mean, shit, I never would have considered myself an angel by any stretch of the imagination (nevermind the halo) but it was easy enough to think of myself as decent.

Reasonably kind.

Well behaved...enough anyway.

Imperfect, sure.

Flawed…fine.

But ultimately not a BAD person.

So yeah… I'm plugging away through life with a perception of myself as THIS PERSON. No saint… but a sinner of only mild to moderate proportions. And then one day I wake up and I have to ask myself "What the hell happened to me???. When did I turn into THIS?"

Apparently, and to my immense surprise, it turns out that AM the kind of person that is capable of shitty things. Bad things. Selfish things. My lifelong assessment of myself as "decent" is clearly in need of revision at this point. I mean, sure, not EVERYTHING I do is awful or sinister. I still throw in my two cents for the charity of choice knockin at my door to sell me overpriced chocolate bars. I call my grandma at least once a week and listen to stories about yarn sales and Betty Ann's grandchildren. I have even been known to rake the neighbour's leaves, just outta the goodness of my burgeoning heart. Yes people. I'm capable of staggering acts of humanitarianism.

So yeah...I can see that I'm not consistently horrible. I haven't dismembered any clergy or dabbled in cannibalism. Fuck, I can even honestly say I can't recall ever being INTENTIONALLY cruel in anyway… But does that make me a GOOD person? I'm thinkin not.

Even though I don't suppose I'd qualify for VIP membership on the axis of evil... the truth is, whatever my good intentions, it turns out that I'm STILL a shit. Nope. I can no longer claim to be wholly good and decent. No matter how I try to spin it, the description just doesn't fit anymore.

Now, this creates quite a conundrum for me. It leaves me feeling fragmented… in disarray. Pieces that no longer fit together in the jigsaw puzzle (ahem… genius level analogy) that is me. How do I reconcile these pieces of the puzzle that just DON'T FIT without completely re-configuring my identity?

Do I try to toss out the pieces that don't match with who I thought I was, even though there will be some unmistakable and substantial gaps left in their absence? Or do I need to reconceptualize, redefine... fuck... just start from SCRATCH to allow for these aberrations, knowing that the end product looks nowhere near as GOOD as it once was?

I have to ask myself which is better... a complete me, flawed bits and all... or the GOOD me, colour coordinated, carefully manufactured and yet, in spite of all efforts to conceal the truth, ultimately all full of fuckin holes for anyone that looks close enough to see....