Saying no

Who am I to say no to you cooking me breakfast in the morning
Asking me to sit and relax in your living room while you bring me a cup of coffee
To cuddle up in front of your fireplace.

Who am I to say no, when you tell me you miss me
and ask me to not say it just in return
When you tell me that you think of me
Who am I to not melt
When you paint pictures of the future
Of me and you holding hands
in different parts of the world.

Who am I to say no
When you offer me
Adventures abound

How do I say no,
When you tell me you will check on me
After I am sick
When all you want is to hold me close so that we can plan our getaway together
even when my face is swollen

How do I say no
To this insanity within us
When we both acknowledge how crazy this is
and how crazy we are
but at least recognizing that some things know no rules, no time

Some things just come as they do,
And lets just take it one day at a time

So how do I say no to you?

I am ready

I am covered in skin
No one gets to come in
Pull me out from inside
I am folded and unfolded and unfolding
I am colorblind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am fine
(Counting Crows - colorblind)

***

Its hard to express my feelings right now. I really felt like through a series of events, and requests, and just plain God playing God, the pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place. I met a man, in the most unlikely of events, in the most unlikely of places. I broke all my rules and let my instincts take charge.

He is kind, and nice, a gentleman and funny. But he isnt perfect, and neither am I. We are both older, wiser, and not delusional. There is no bullshit, no lies. No pretending to like something just because the other person likes it too. No pretending that this means any more than what it is. No setting up high expectations that the other person is 'The one' just to watch it burn up in flames when the other person cant live up to it.

The honesty is truly refreshing to me. To truly be yourself even in the presence of another person you would like to melt and mold into. For the first time for me, I hang back. I let my quirkiness and my personality hold on. I resist. I keep Me.

And so, even in us being ourselves we find similarities, we are both an open book. I figure, I am leaving, there is nothing at stake, nothing to lose and maybe he feels the same way too. So we jump. Head first, holding hands, into this great big adventure. Spontaneous, between the both of us, we book a trip together. Our first vacation, 2 days after we first met.

But there are so many things that come back at me. Remembering an ex love who never really wanted to go anywhere with me, that every trip we took together felt like I was the one driving it, pushing it. Here is a man who wants to hold me tight to sleep, and wake up next to me. There, was a man whom I used to watch from across the bed, who refused to hold me to sleep, and eventually refused to hold me at all. And it killed me, slowly, unknowingly, it slowly splintered my heart.

These are the scars that I rub over with my fingers. I remember the battle Ive been through

And so. This man holds me no promise of the future. He is not my forever after. But he is the first step. He is the man who holds my hand and guides me across the river. He is a reminder that even for me, relationships are not always as fucked up or as doomed as they come across.

He reminds me of possibilities. Just sheer hope, and possibilities.

And its a nice warm feeling in me. To know, that I am ready now. I am ready, I am fine.

The woman in the mirror

Almost a year ago, something shifted in me. Or maybe, unknown the shift started much earlier, two years ago when I was persuaded to try to make a change every weekend, to try something different to break the mundane circuit of my life.

The planets must have realigned almost a year ago, because so many things have changed then. Externally, physically, my long cascading black hair was chopped off, lobbed off, lower than a bob. My body though never having been actually what you would clasify as fat was slowly chiselled into shape by hours of working out and running. God knows what I was running from, or running towards.

Inside, I think the shift was a much longer gradual journey. Shifting countries, shifting jobs, shifting perspectives... slowly, they are all starting to make sense. I do not want to be the cliche of a woman who has to move somewhere else to 'find' herself, but I think in the bigger scheme of things...

I couldnt start healing, because I didnt realize how much I was still hurting.

The numb of heartbreak goes far beyond what I can remember. I have done the dance before, had my heart broken, shattered, only to figure out some way or other to piece the pieces together again.

The pain of being stuck in limbo, of an insane limbo of your own making is harder to recover from.

Ive spent this year trying to figure out the things that make me mad, the things that make me angry, the things that make me depressed and annoyed. And though I cannot name them all, I cannot source them all, I can at least acknowledge when certain thoughts gear me towards negativity. I identify when things piss me the fuck off.

And I try as much as possible to walk away, to circle around the pit in the floor. I dont want to hear of things that will make me mad. I stick my fingers in my ear and sing la-la-la-la-la. Juvenile I know, but until I really know how to deal with it exactly, keeping triggers at an arms length helps.

Finding beauty in everything helps too. Never have I felt my mind and my heart so open to possibilities. Never have I felt as close to 'zen-ness' as I do now. And hopefully this is a skill that will only get better with time.

I looked in the mirror the other day, and realized that I recognized that face again. Without realizing, my hair has long outgrown its bobby cut and is starting to graze my shoulder. Tucked behind my shoulder blades I see again the girl I used to be. I remember staring at this image so many times back home in my apartment back when different emotional bombs would explode around me. Sometimes the same face looking back with tears streaking down her cheeks. I recognize her, and recognize that she has gotten older, and perhaps I may say, a little wiser. She is calmer now, and when she smiles there is true happiness there but mixed with the melancholic sadness that can never be fully erased away.

There are things and pains and miseries that you carry for life. But perhaps it is just the way you carry it that makes a difference.

I see her, see her clearly now and she looks back at me with clear eyes too. I am ready now, time to go home now. I know inside me, this new chapter I am about to embark on will lead me to the end story I had always been looking for. Without realizing it, the stars and planets aligned to push me on this path home

Karma

I realized long ago how couples start their relationship is also likely to be how it ends. How he or she may move on to another. A relationship that starts because a man had cheated on his partner, only to end up with the girl he cheated on may likely end that relationship by cheating with someone else. A pattern begets a pattern. Or in this case, he is likely to know exactly what it felt like the first time, to understand what it feels like, and to be able to acclimitize to the emotional journey that came around the first time. Maybe the first time, it did eat at him, built on his guilt. But when he cheats on you, he knows what you knew, he knows how the new girls feels, how he is expected to feel. He can circumvent them all, justify them all.

Something that started without respect ends with a long drawn out hiss, not a pop.

The best relationships Ive had (and I use this term lightly now since I knew at the point we broke up Ive probably wanted to KILL THEM) were the ones that started mutually respectful. The ones where we were friends who talked to each other long into the night before we started having long nights together. They were the ones where there was no pretense, no lies, no hiding. Just being yourself, single, sharing your views, honesty, laughter.

But I guess sometimes, when you dont remember how a relationship started, you can just look at how it ends and trace that demon all the way to its head to see the similarities. Relationships that end under clouds of disrespect and deceit, probably started that way as well. No matter how you try to read a different picture.

I am not perfect, nor have I ever claimed to be. I have made so many mistakes in relationships past that I know what to avoid now in relationships future. Respect, honor. I am no longer anybody's doormat. I will be heard, I will be listened to, my opinions will matter (though of course I do not expect them to always be taken on). I will matter.

The biggest promise I made to myself is to always and immediately leave if a man ever physically abuses me. Then the list got longer to include a man who will cheat on me (I'm sorry, I do not believe a cheater ever changes, Ive had far too many experiences to prove otherwise), and I guess now I am adding a third. By looking back at how relationships end and begins, there is no forgiveness for a disrespectful offing. We are no longer in high school. Have the courage to tell me to my face.

But hey, Im pretty sure karma will come and get you too. It sure as hell did got me.