Saying What I Need to Say

So I wrote something else that I would like to call eloquent and full of nuance.  It had a sweet metaphor involving me as roadkill and talked about the deep meaning I feel in music from Mindy Smith, Harry Chapin and the Indigo Girls.  But I'm not posting it.  I know, it's killing you not to read this complex and layered piece but you'll just have to make due with this one.  

Here's the thing.  As I was writing it, I really felt every word.  I believed what I was writing.  Then, a couple days later I read it again and didn't feel that way as much anymore.  I was giving too much away...throwing pearls to swine as Jesus would say.

So I'm starting over.

One song I have loved forever is Carly Simon's "You're so Vain."  I absolutely love that she held on to the secret of its inspiration for so many years but made it oh-so clear in the song that if that person was listening they were self-absorbed enough to know it was about them.  It's such a lyrical screw-job that I can't help but love it.

In that spirit...you're so self-absorbed you already know this is about you before I even go on.  Damn.  You smart.

There was a time when I "made your day without even trying" and sharing a small smile with you during the day was enough to make me forget where we are.  And now I expend extraneous amounts of energy pretending that the person I was falling in love with doesn't exist.  Frankly, it's exhausting.

You still sneak your way into my dreams and it makes me feel like my sub-conscience has betrayed me at my most vulnerable because I don't want to think about you.  

I think I have a right to be mad at you for leading me on and I'm certainly mad at myself for believing you and giving you the benefit of the doubt.  But when I try to take apart the layers of what happened, mixed with what I feel and felt at the time it feels a little like those concoctions we used to make in middle school at lunch.  We took a mostly empty milk container and added whatever we could find on the table -- liquid, chunky, condiments, crusts -- anything.  It gets all kind of grey and lumpy but devoid of any individuality.  We can no longer identify the ingredients that we added, it's too jumbled up. I can't dissect it properly so I come to two really scary conclusions:

I regret what we had.

I didn't learn anything from our time together except that I shouldn't trust my instincts.  

Something that's always been important to me is that I don't live life with regrets -- even the really losery guys taught me something about life and myself and what I need in a relationship.  I think it's an important aspect of life to learn from your mistakes and the pain that ensues.  And moving through life not being able to trust my instincts makes me feel panicky and I return to the concoction, desperate to find SOMETHING that makes sense, something I can take away that is positive.  Unfortunately, it's just overwhelming and lumpy and sad and I all I can think about are the wonderful and scandalously delicious things you said to me because when you said them, they made sense, they masqueraded successfully as truth and I'm right back to the beginning.  

Of course I want to know what happened.  What flipped the switch in two days time? I have ideas and they make you melt together in my mind to be exactly like the ones that came before you.  Foolishly, I thought you were different but you aren't.  You weren't.

It sucks to feel this way, to acknowledge the grey, sludgy concoction that is my heart but I am finding ways to heal a little more every day.  

That's all you'll get of me and that said, I hope you find ways to become less of a coward and stop being a poster child for the arrogant and self-centered.  You can start by stop acting like you were straight with me all along and dig deep for some humility and repentance.