She

As he walked out the door, she had that old familiar empty feeling deep down inside. She tried to talk herself out of having all of the crazy feelings, but knew that as far as tonight was concerned, she would fail. So many times over the past few years had she made these same choices with the same result. They say that insanity is completing the same task repeatedly expecting a different result. Then she was definitely insane.

She knew that he didn’t love her; that he couldn’t love her. But she also knew that what she felt for him might be love, or maybe it was just suicide. Either way, it was destructive to her and she could not carry on like this for very much longer.

Over the course of her life she had made many decisions regarding her heart. She had loved and lost and hated and fallen and experienced every facet of every type of intimacy and love. Yet the one thing she could not accomplish was one long-term, real relationship. When anyone would start to get close enough to her that she began to think she could not survive without this person, she would just leave. She would not necessarily physically leave, but emotionally she would be half way across the globe before they even finished telling her that they needed her.

She longed for that kind of love that was all encompassing. She intellectually knew that she was good enough, strong enough, and damn it, people liked her. But her intellect was far more advanced than her emotional state. As a forty-something twenty-eight year old, she was in a fine stable state. But emotionally she was more like a six year old. Always afraid that she would head face down into that downward spiral called love so intensely that she would lose herself in the process, that she was unable to make a commitment to any one person.

Except for that really short person that lived with her. The one she had created while in love with a man, who had taken every single bit of her, crushed it with his bare hands, and then blew the crumbs away as if they were no more important than sands on a forgotten beach. She knew that she sabotaged her future relationships before they even began simply because no one was ever good enough.

The visceral connection that she experienced with so many men was her way of dealing with the pain of not being able to deal with the pain. That biological, chemical attraction that occurs every so often simply because someone is pleasing to the eye, was very frequent in her world. But she often wondered what it would be like to be able to focus all of that energy and attention at one person, one man.

She always worried that she would settle down with someone and then someone better would come along. She didn’t know if this was something that everyone experienced, but knew that she felt as though she was incapable of settling when she knew that the caliber of man out in the world was so high. She didn’t want to hurt people, but was so intent upon not hurting herself that her entire life suffered for it.

The defenses that were built up around her would be impossible to crack. He would have to look at her and see her and want her and need her in order to break through the Ft. Knox that was her heart. He needed to look at her and see her for what she was: a broken little girl that needed to be needed.

She knew not of any men that would be capable of loving her in that fashion. She needed to be with the one that could not survive without her, but that would not try to rein her in. She needed to be with the one that would make her forget that there were other men out there. She didn’t know if it was possible to be with someone forever, but she would like the opportunity to try.

One of the main problems, however, was the fact that she felt that the type of man she was looking for did not exist. At least, he didn’t exist in her world. She knew that the right one was worth waiting for but she also knew she was prone to letting the right one go simply out of fear. The fear of rejection, abandonment, hurt, pain, disappointment, fragility, dependency, denial, insanity, failure, and even of acceptance, drove her to ruin every good thing she may have possibly have had.

Deep down inside she was just a little girl who didn’t know or understand the big bad world outside. And here she was raising this child who thought she was so smart and so perfect and so damn huge, who had no idea just how scared she really was. She knew that her own fears even prohibited her from loving him in the way that he deserved to be loved. But she could not shake the thought that in just a few short years, he too would abandon her and leave her. She was afraid that if she built her entire life around him that she would be just as devastated to see him go, just as she was when the original one went.

Resolving these issues in her life was going to totally suck. She didn’t think she could solve these problems. She didn’t even think she really wanted to try. She didn’t mind being different things to different people, but she knew that being those things could not last forever. When there is nothing below the surface of the porcelain veneer, things could get boring very quickly.

There was the one…the current one. But even he did not love her – he was simply intrigued by her. And as fascinating as intrigue can be, sometimes she needed to be loved. Fully, completely loved. She had lived her life in such a fucked up manner for so long that she didn’t even know if she could be loved. She doubted that there was a man out there who would be willing to look past her rough and ugly edges to see the beautiful, shiny girl that longed to break free from the prison hell she had built her life into.

She wanted to be taken to a safe place, to be protected and treated right. But she didn’t think she could allow herself to become the type of person that could accept being taken care of. Didn’t that just spit in the face of everything she had striven for up to this point?

Everyone around her had these nice, tight, little lives. She was included but not really a part of these lives. She wanted to be a part of something, but was not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to accomplish this.

It was unfortunate that she had enough time to really focus on her shortcomings. Because the fact of the matter is, everyone failed in some fashion. Remember when Gloria accused her of caring more about herself than the people around her? Well, Gloria was right. But wasn’t that what made the world go ‘round? There are so many titillating men out there in the world. So interesting and funny and smart. But they were not available to her. She did not know why they weren’t, but she couldn’t follow through on anything with them. She only sought out the unattainable variety. She knew that was a dead end street, but she seemed not to care. She didn’t quite understand it, but she knew that she was alone in this. After all, love is suicide.