Unhappiness in a Bottle

The beginning is always the hardest part of anything to write, for me anyway. I always have trouble getting where I’m going, but I always know where I want to end up, so I’m gonna start there. I’m sick and tired of being unhappy. I want to reach that place where everything is going to be okay again. I thought I was there. I thought that I was finally on track, but I’m so far away that I can’t even see the train heading straight for me. I don’t know if I’m crazy, or just horrendously unlucky. I keep getting dealt the hard hand, or maybe I redeal until I get it, I’m not sure. Maybe I want to end up here. In this place where things aren’t okay anymore. Sometimes I really wonder. It’s a draw, I guess. I can either be in this place, willing and able to write every care, fear, and sadness that I can convey, or I can be on the other side of the spectrum. I can be happy, or so close that it doesn’t matter if I’m really there, and I miss my ability to convey how I feel. When I’m in this place I can get it all down on paper, one way or another, but when I’m not it’s just there, and no matter how long I try I can’t show the world how it feels. Because happiness is not something you can write about. You can’t write about being content, whole, in love. Because there aren’t words for that. There are similes, but none quite compare. None will ever come close. So ya, maybe I like the darkness. Maybe I stray to it every time my life starts to get boring. Maybe that’s my disease. What’s my cure?
Some say love can cure you of anything. I was one of those people. I thought that love could move mountains. I was wrong. There are boundaries in even love. There are limits, things that just cannot happen. And that realization really hurt. It hurt knowing that even if you are drowning in love, sometimes it can’t save you. I’m not sure how to even explain what’s going through my head right now. I’m thinking about this too much, that’s what he’d say. He’d say that things will eventually be okay if I just give him his space and his time. What he doesn’t know is that my entire world has been tipped upside down and turned inside out. I don’t know how to function in this backwards place. I don’t know how to be in love anymore, because the way I thought love is isn’t in any way close to the way it really is.
I thought love would save me. I thought that once I fell in love all those holes and all those pains would eventually go away. I thought I’d be whole again with the man of my dreams by my side, but suddenly I’m not enough. He needs his time to enjoy himself away from me, to grow away from me. But what happens when we grow up separately for so long, will we eventually turn into people that aren’t in love anymore? Will we one day look into the other’s eyes and not see the fire, or spark that was there for so long before? I’m just afraid that he’s gonna grow up one day and realize how great he is. He’s gonna realize that he’s an amazing guy, and he’s gonna see that I’m not such an amazing girl. I’m really fucked up. We both know that. And maybe after revealing my whole fucked up self by taking him to the graveyard to meet my dad, he sees that the hole is too deep. He can’t fill it, so he doesn’t want to try anymore.
That’s ridiculous probably. Ridiculous to think that I scared him away after all the times we’ve talked about my father and all the ways that it’s influenced my life. But I wanted him to meet him. That sounds crazy, but I needed to take him there. I needed him to see the final remnants of the man that took the happiness out of my eyes when he left this world. I needed him to see the physical proof of why and how much I was fucked up all those years ago. And I think I scared him a little. He wasn’t ready to be that kind of strong for me. Holding me at night when I have nightmares is one thing, but holding me as I’m sobbing next to my father’s grave is another. I think I thought too much of our relationship.
I wanted it to be perfect, complete, and all-consuming. Because that’s what he is to me. He’s my rock, my best friend, my boyfriend, my true love, my… everything. He’s the one I go to when I’m feeling frustrated, annoyed, alone, hurt, stressed, or even inexplicably happy. He is enough for me. He makes me comfortable. For the first time I can be myself. I can say every stupid blonde thing in front of him and not feel stupid for one second. I can bumble around and get confused when we’re having sex, I can laugh too. I can write in front of him and let him read it. I can do ANYTHING and everything in his presence, I’m that comfortable, but he’s not. And that hurts no matter how normal it is. Why am I suddenly not enough, or really… too much?
I’m thinking about this too much, but lately I feel like I need to hang on really tight. Like I’m gonna lose him at any second. I don’t know why. I’m not psychic or even pretending to think that I am, but for some odd reason I feel like one of these days I’m gonna wake up and he’s not gonna be there, and that scares the shit out of me. I’m not sure what I would do. I can’t lose him. Not now. Not ever.
I wanna grow old with him and have kids, grandkids and eventually great-grandkids. I want to laugh together when we can’t shower ourselves anymore. I want to cook him dinner before he gets home from work every night. I want to live with him in the perfect brick house we always talk about. 3 kids. I want girls, he wants boys, but that’ll work itself out. I want to get a puppy. I want to get a fish, and a cat, and a frog. I want to decorate the house together, and help out with all our chores. I want to walk down the aisle with him waiting, hot as hell in his tuxedo to say I do. I want to write an amazing wedding speech, but chicken out and only read it to him when we’re alone. I want to slow dance with him to our song, if we ever have one. But what if he gets stolen from me? It’s almost as if he’s slowly distancing himself so that when he’s gone for good it’s not such a surprise. I don’t want to lose him, I can’t.
I want him to hold me right now as I start to cry. I want him to walk through that door and tell me that everything is alright and that he’s never going to leave and that I’m exactly the girl that he wants, and will always want. I want him to kiss me softly and show me that he’s not just saying that to silence my tears. I need all that. I need it to be like it used to be, him and me, and no one else. But it’s not. It’s all these other people, and not a single one matters to me but him. I wish he’d wake up and realize that I’m the only one he needs too. But am I? Will I always be?
It’s paralyzing to have to wonder if you’re enough. To wonder if it’ll always be me in his dreams, or if one day there just might be another. He’s the only one I’ll ever yearn for. He’s the only one I’ll ever truly love.
I know sometimes he doubts that fact, thinks that TJ got there first. He never did. I didn’t love TJ. I fell in love with the idea of him more than anything. I wanted to love him, but it was an odd sort of love. The kind that you know is doomed from the beginning. I always had to second guess myself with him, still even today I have to second guess our friendship. He was never enough for me. David’s a different story. He has been since day one. He wanted me, he loved me, and he wasn’t afraid to show it. He put me first, and maybe that’s selfish to want that, but it felt great to be cared for. It feels great. I’m in love, and it hurts a lot of the time recently but I’m still in love. I’d do anything for his kiss, his touch, his smell even. That screams first love, so nothing before this matters, nothing. Even with TJ around, it doesn’t show me what I’m missing out on, it shows me what I wasted my time on. I wasted four years being wrapped up in this kid that’s still as fucked up today as he was then. He’s going nowhere. I needed to wait those four years though, in order for david to come around. I needed to be unattached and wanting when he was ready to knock on my door.
That’s the funny thing about love and timing. It’s always perfect. So maybe I just need to wait. Wait for the moment when everything turns out just the way I wanted it to. It won’t be today, or even tomorrow, but maybe the next day. It still hurts though. I miss him holding me, and hearing his breathing as I go to sleep. I miss having him there when I wake up. Maybe he does too. Maybe it’ll all be okay.
I love you David Jon-Michael Worrell. Don’t ever question that.
Love battered and broken, but still somehow standing,
Jenny