I Guess It's Been a While

Oh, hey. I guess I've been away for a while, huh? I guess it was a beautiful three months or so followed by you know, a year of being pretty miserable and then a few months of steeling myself to walk away from this notion I'd had of forever. A little older, a little wiser, a little tougher (at least I hope a little tougher.)

Actually, I don't feel tough right now at all. I feel like an abused banana. I don't even like bananas. But that is one improvement. I learned to like me. I'm officially better than an old banana.

I suppose I'd better get some confessing right out of the way first. I haven't been running. I haven't really run in a year and half or so. I kind of put that aside to focus on that stupid forever thing. Now forever is over, so I'll be right back at it to combat the lonely. You can't really be very lonely when you barely have the energy to feed yourself, wash yourself, and crawl into bed at night. I still dream about running. About the way the air smells when you've run until you feel like your lungs are about to explode, about that wild feeling you get when your body fades away into nothing but legs and lungs and your mind is transformed to animal for a little while, about the way a certain song in your ears can light you on fire even at the end of a long run and you finish like you are the Flash. Oh, that  feeling when  you've run until you are baptized in your own sweat and you are clean and pure and whole again. I want that back. The power you have when your body is your own and the air and the sun and the hawks and the squirrels are all part of you and you of them. There is my church. There is my Zen. There is the place where you can't really worry about anything because there's nothing left in you.

So I guess you're wondering what I have been doing for the past two years if it hasn't been burning crazy. Stockpiling it. Carrying someone else's. Fueling the next several years to remember why my body was so good when my heart was only mine. I'll give myself to death for love. I will. Until I'm miserable and empty and lonely and tired. And that's what I did. I rejected my own sense of the world. I gave up myself to be half of something else. I held on even though he was not what I imagined. I traded independence for nothing. I thought that if I showed I was vulnerable it would make us stronger. I cooked and I cleaned and I spent weekends on house projects in a place where I signed a lease six months at a time.

I traded knowledge of my own self-worth for a philanderer who seemed to enjoy telling me that no matter what I did, I would not be enough. The good news is that during all of that, I didn't doubt my worth. I knew then and I know now, my own value. So maybe all of this was really just a test of my will. The man is looking for something that cannot exist. She's not real. And if she is, she's out there looking for someone worthy of her. That man is not.

He spent our entire relationship in denial of his flaws, more than ready to point out anyone else's. I repeatedly allowed him to treat me unkindly and take advantage of me. I let him do that. That's on me. I thought that by choosing to stay and showing I'd be around through thick and thin he'd feel safe and loved and wanted. Give him an inch...

So, anyway, early in we talked about having a family together. He wanted to step into the stepfather role and I wanted a family. But I don't want a family with someone who isn't prepared for all that means. He does not love children. He does no love mine. He's never really been around them. He feels like he's supposed to have children and that's why he wants them. That is the wrong reason.

I won't do this single parent thing again. I mean, the kiddo I have turns twelve in three days. He's almost baked. And with all of our collective issues, we would never last forever. The moment that I fell apart for a minute or got too fat or had to stay out of work for longer than he thought I should, the whole thing would come crashing down. The first time his sleep was ruined for a week straight or he couldn't get work done because the baby was crying, he'd pitch a fit and that would be all there was.

It would be me, with three children (one of them a damned adult). And of course he said he would be responsible and take care of things, but to what end? He'd resent the baby and resent me and I'd resent him and the baby and I still wouldn't get to have a life. It's hard to be a mom. Especially an independent mom. I won't do it. I won't do it with him right now. That's what I said. He won't get better. He doesn't really want to change. My luck I'd go into labor and he'd be so drunk I'd have to call an ambulance and the baby would end up with a Maya name that was mostly clicks and apostrophes and no one would be able to pronounce it but him. And he wouldn't even realize the beautiful combination of trash and pretense that carries.

I suppose it boils down to the simple fact that I don't trust him. I don't trust him because he won't marry me and make this real. I don't trust him because he can't even commit to getting a cat together. He really loves cats too. He does not love children. I don't trust him because he makes me sign a lease every six months and refuses to consider any of this as working toward anything. He doesn't trust me and I've done nothing but throw my whole being into being what he wants. I don't trust him because he has a wandering eye. He has a wandering heart and by all standards, a wandering dick too. I caught him in a lie about another woman. I let him get away with it. I never should have let him get away with it. But I did. That will never change. I don't trust him because he still openly lists himself as "single" on social media, even though that can be easily hidden. He advertises himself as single.

I literally occupy one room and it's a glorified closet. His stupid house is huge and I have about 16 square feet of it.  He keeps for himself an office an an enormous media room. The kid occupies a small bedroom, a spare room where his tv is and a bathroom. He and I share a bathroom and a bedroom and a closet equally. The truth is that I only exist in the kitchen and the attic and my tiny little office closet, with my books and my tiny desk and everything that is me. I bought a turntable. I realized there's nowhere for it to go. There's literally not a spot in the house that I can set up a fucking stereo. His furniture, his tv, his art, his priceless artifacts, his linens, his dishes, his rugs, and his house. I exist in reality only on the periphery. And that makes me feel like I'm invading everywhere I go. I fill in the cracks. Letting me place myself anywhere in the house would be admitting that we are a unit. He'll never see it that way. At least it makes packing very easy.

And he won't give an inch. I've given so much and I haven't gotten an inch. He won't hide his relationship status, he just hides me. He won't go to counseling. He won't see a psychiatrist and wants to self-medicate. I can't fix him. I spent long enough fixing myself. I guess it's proof that he really doesn't want to build a life together. He wants me to bend to his will and let him take me over. He likes the idea of me, strong, smart, independent, capable... but only as a conquest. Only as something to be caged and controlled and tamed. I will not. I will not. He will never prove himself superior to me. He isn't superior. I will not become an ornament to his life. I am far too useful for that. I thought it's what he loved about me. Nope, he just wants to capture Athena.

I guess maybe I'll try this cohabitation thing again in ten years. I've learned my lesson for now. I spent all that time trying to find the other half of myself and I didn't realize that I was quite whole all along. I look forward to so many things.

So, all that said, I'm out on my own again in... fifty days. And I don't feel very strong. I have given up so much to be where I am that I'm not sure about the remaining bits of my... me-ness. I am afraid and I am vulnerable. But I am also fierce. I do not give up. I'll come out of this as everything else: stronger, wiser, tougher, and probably a measure meaner. But maybe also a measure more kind and understanding and good. I think that's what life is really about anyway, huh?