No Love

I don't love you, anymore. I am not sure why I ever did. I carried the torch - heartbroken, smashed, destroyed - for a decade. Pining. And then you appeared after all this time. My heart skipped a beat. I remembered. Oh the glory days... New Orleans, where you beat me so bad I had to quit work. California, where you threw the TV on top of me and knocked me down the stairs. Where you put me in a coma and then tried to drag my unconscious body out of the hospital. All the time that you refused to work because you would have to stop using in order to get a job. The relationships you destroyed. The bones you broke. The heart that no longer beats.

Suddenly from this side of the looking glass, things look quite different. I never realized how strongly heroin affects your eyesight. I never knew cocaine had such a long-term effect on the perception of an otherwise brilliant individual.

Aching so hard to be loved, the writer in me spun a tale far beyond any reality. "Oh no, when he choked me 'til I passed out and I am wearing turtlenecks in July in California, he was just having a spell. It'll be okay."

I'm a Cutter

My sister toyed with the idea of "cutting" at one point, though I think hers was more for the dramatic license of teen angst bullshit and a middle child's look-at-me antics than anything.  My ex went the cutting route on a balcony in California, bathed in the spotlights of a frantic SWAT team in a broken culmination of an unloved life.  I am a different (and worse) kind of cutter - too vain to wear my scars on the outside for all the world to see.  It's hard to rock a poker face when you look like you've been gangbanged by a pack of hungry Exactos.  I do not cut myself.  My cutting is more permanent.  It leaves no marks.  It does not grow back.  I cut people - entirely and completely - off and out of my life.  It's a cut that seldom heals.

Despite my oft perceived Surly Demeanor, I really do have a big heart.  Huge.  And of Gold.  It bleeds for more lost causes than Saint Jude.  It weeps for more stray and lost children than Sally Struthers.  And it often costs me dearly.

But, when It is over.  It's Over.  I. Am. Done.  Deb asked me yesterday what the song I posted meant to me.  Initially, when I put it out there, it was directed with vehement intent at one person - an ex.  But upon listening to it - really listening to its message - I came to realize that it was something else entirely.