Tag Archives: Relationships

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Twelve

With the last embrace long forgotten,

Arms still cradling your silhouette

Tingle with atrophy.

Eyes completely black in concentration

I impose beauty upon you.

Every crack in your skin, every wound…

You absolutely glow with warm red light bled from many men.

So when you lay your hands upon me-

I crackle and my pulse slows- then quickens.

Losing my train of thought,

The palms of your hands sliding down my back feel all at once rough and turn my skin raw.

Your lips are as broken glass and cut deeper as your passion increases.

Utterly devoid of inner strength to contain the delicate beauty draining from your person,

I gaze upon you.

And sink deeper in love.

 

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Of Great Value

You know when you realize how important something is to you right? When you lose it.

You may think you know, you may believe that you understand and respect the importance of a thing but it’s my belief that it’s a failing of human culture to take things for granted until you no longer have that luxury.

I lost my best friend. In fact a lot of spectacularly shitty things have occurred since I wrote anything last. For fear of a negative diatribe that would be splattered all over social media I just restrained myself from venting. I mean hey, a few bitter status updates may have slipped out as I’m only human. But now I write because I lost my best friend.

So like I was saying, I could have gone on for hours before this happened about how I realized how important he was, how special I knew he was, but until today when he was 100% completely gone I had no clue that he possessed such a large piece of my heart. And that I would be so lost without him.

I’ve been through bad relationships, I’ve been through violence, I’ve been through hard work, poverty, and I’m raising kids which is it’s own special kind of hell and heaven mixed together. But I always had a best friend. That person I call at 2am. The person that can look at me and know that something is bothering me. The only one person in the world that can reach into my worst hysterical emotional panic attack and drag me back into my safe happy place. For god’s sake the man built my happy place.

Why did it end? It doesn’t really matter. Not my fault, not his fault. It just had to end and there was nothing I could do to change it.

I once went to a counselor after a very traumatizing break up. He drew a diagram of healthy relationship and unhealthy relationships. He drew two circles and in the first diagram he drew them side by side. He said, “Imagine the circles are you and your partner. This is a relationship where both people are so independent that they don’t need anything from one another, they exist as solitary creatures within a committed union. It requires very little communication, and this is unhealthy.”                                                                             He drew another two circles this time they intersected but almost so completely that they appeared to be one circle. ” This is a relationship were it is so dependant that you can not ascertain where one person ends and the other begins. There is almost no independence and tell me Shauna, what do you get if someone leaves this relationship?” He erased one circle. What remained was the other circle looking like a sliver of a moon. “One person is almost always left as a shell of who they used to be. They aren’t whole any longer and functionality is near impossible. They depended on their partner too much, to the point where they can’t function without them.”

As a person with deep-rooted abandonment issues, that overly dependent style was almost always the way my relationships look near the end. Even my friendships.

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 This is a healthy relationship. Where independence is maintained yet a balance of dependence is also rooted in the union.

 

Ok so you all know where this is leading right? I’m single with two kids and the only person in the entire world I had left is gone. You know the only option for me now right? I have to make friends with someone I really don’t like very much. Someone who is over emotional, clingy, blunt, insecure, a bad decision maker, desperate, a loner…. just an overall mess of a human being…..

Yep, that bitch.

How the hell am I supposed to make friends with someone I’ve lived with for 28 years and still can’t stand to be alone with?? Her only redeeming quality is she is the mother of my children…

SIGH

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Nerve

When I wish, what I wish for is this.

I wish that I could help you.

I wish that you valued my happiness or my life as much as yours.

I wish that I could take away all your anger with a simple word.

I wish that our children were enough to make you see the truth.

I wish you had never endured the things that shaped you this way.

I wish you didn’t see me as you do.

I wish that I was strong enough to walk away or strong enough to endure.

I wish that you loved me enough.

I wish that you were happy.

I wish that I were happy.

I wish that as smart as we are, as loving as we are, as funny, creative, unique and stubborn as we are that we could live a beautiful, wonderful, euphoric life.

I wish that everything wasn’t so hard.

I wish I didn’t have faith.

Because it never pays off.

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It’s Time We Stop Hey What’s That Sound?

It feels much later than it is. It feels late when my eyes start burning. That means I’m overtired.

So I had something on my mind today. I started thinking about it when my husband and I were fighting.

Why is life so hard? And is it hard for everyone?

I can’t pretend to know anyone’s struggles in life, so I’ll just say it’s hard for me. My best friend always tells me that “it doesn’t have to be hard.” “Sometimes you just wake up, go to work, eat and sleep.” ” Make life easier.” Honestly, I could quote him all day because he has given me more pep talks and advice than one person should be given in a lifetime. But I never really understand those things…. how exactly do I do this? Maybe one more quote from him…. “Do something different.”

Ok so tomorrow I want to finally go to a Buddhist Zendo because I really need some focus in my life. And because it’s different. And because it might really help me with my struggles. But “we” decided it is too early. And a fight ensued…. and that’s when I began thinking,

He doesn’t want to fight. I don’t want to fight. Why are we fighting?

I want to get out and do more things, why don’t I? I want to make more money, why don’t I figure out a way to? I want to be healthier, why don’t I eat better, exercise more and take all the medicine I’m supposed to? I want less stress in my life, why don’t I figure out relaxation techniques that work for me?

Why don’t I make my life easier?

I have no fucking clue.

Could it be that sometimes we don’t place enough value on ourselves? Perhaps I don’t think I’m worth the extra effort. Because I know that if I’m at work, I’ll kill myself so that the business does well. At home I’ll bend over backwards so that my kids are happy. The things I don’t work for are things I don’t feel are important. Maybe I’m not important in my own life.

How the hell does that even happen? And are there other people out there that have the same issue?

So… alright. Psycho analysis complete. Now what? Then I begin thinking about something else. I really feel like it’s true.

Love helps everything and everyone. I’m going to put more love out there than I ever have. Help more people. Give away kindness. Teeter on exhaustion until happiness fills the people around me. Strangers even. How does this help me you ask?

Well, I don’t know that it will. I do know if you put out positivity, you often receive it in return. I know that the mood of people around you, alter yours. And I know that sometimes when you stop thinking about your problems, the answer will come.

And if all else fails, at least I put a little love out into the world.

 

 

 

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You’ve Lost Weight Since I’ve Seen You Last

Regained a good friend today.

Technically if we’re going by my account of things, we never stopped being friends. If you go by his version it may be different I’m not sure. In the course of our, what? Four-five year friendship we have fallen apart from each other a few times. Once because he loved me too much, once because I loved him too much and a few times because we didn’t like the people the other surrounded himself or herself with.

But. We always came back to our friendship. It was very deep and in my opinion it couldn’t be broken. The problem now is that I’m very on edge about it, fearing we may drift in opposite directions again. I’m nervous to invest even with my previous investment still sitting in no man’s land.

This led me to thinking though. If you experience the same thing from a relationship (friendship or otherwise) over and over again…. do you guard yourself without realizing it? Do you hold back in fear of the same bad patterns repeating themselves once again? Can you trust?

I figure most of the time you try, but to some extent subconsciously, you can’t help but to guard yourself.

 Caring for and loving people is a tricky business. Especially with friends. There are just so many other people influencing every moment you relate. Different opinions. Different experiences. It’s a wonder you can find anyone in this world you can single out and call them your true friend.

Myself, I’ve been hurt by friends and others more times than I could count. Frankly, if I had guarded myself more I would have saved myself a lot of heartache. But it also wouldn’t have been authentic. You can accuse me of many things, heck go ahead call me crazy if you’d like but you can’t say I’m not real. And if you’re my friend and I love you, no matter what you and I have been through or how many tears and sleepless nights you may have caused me….. I don’t change how I feel. That subconscious guarded wall may or may not be there but that isn’t something I can control, hopefully it doesn’t change things too severely.

So leap of faith again. I’m going to sleep now, hopefully in the morning I haven’t lost any friends or gained any enemies. I put love out there in the hope that it’s mostly what I’ll get back.

 

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Dear Battle Worn Friend,

The last story I wrote on here is actually about a real person.

One day I will write about him in reality with no metaphors.

My dear friend.

He moved away and in with a woman with whom I do not get along.

And like most of my good male friends, we can’t be friends anymore.

Women hate their men to have women friends. As if it’s just asking for them to be cheated on or something.

I’m not completely faultless. I care about him so much and we know each other so well that when I could tell it wasn’t right for him… I told him AND her to stop it. I may have gotten angry and called her names…. ahem. But he told me he didn’t really love her and that he just didn’t want to be alone. So what am I supposed to do? Let my dear friend move across the country to be with someone he doesn’t even love without a fight?

Yep. That is exactly what I should have done. I’m older and wiser now and I realize that part of being a good friend is allowing your friends to make their own decisions, right or wrong. And being their friend through all of it.

So with whatever happened, we don’t talk anymore. I miss him like crazy. We talked about everything. He made me laugh like no one else has ever been able to. He always called me his babe and even after I met my husband he said that was his name for me so he had to keep calling me that. Even after he met his girlfriend. He tried to stop once but he would always say, “….. babe I mean Shauna. Bye babe, I mean Shauna….” He is honestly a very one of a kind person. I won’t go into it. It’s a long blog entry for another day.

My point was, that story was about him, so I wrote to his girlfriend (I have no way to contact him anymore) and I asked if we could all be friends. I told her how much I missed him and that I just wanted him back as my friend. He’s injured badly from being at war in Afghanistan and I know he could use a good friend as much as I could right now…..

I wonder what she’ll say back…..

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Seven

He inhaled with a sharp wheeze,

Flames licked upon the back of his neck – he shakes his head.

He eyes began to film over and he no longer saw her.

She phased, contorted, became less than she was, had a hold of more than she did.

He used her tears as ammunition, her pauses as admissions of guilt she was unaware hung on her shoulders.

He danced her off her spinning platform and she found herself continually spinning.

Shotgun, oxygen depleted he saw her and couldn’t for all the length of his arms steady the frenzy which was pooling around her

Everything bigger than them knew what would crumble and what would not.

Yet could only watch each synapse come alive and die out, and not utter a word.

He was left with confusion brushing past him. Racing in a direction not knowing if he was running to or from.

She was left clinging to the hard concrete road – hoping that when she opened her eyes, the world would be still,

once again.