c'est la vie

"if i said in part
i lied in whole
there are things that can never mend
the hurt that burns inside my mind
and you ask me to fall into
arms that cannot hold
with words that are meant to heal the wounds
of another's wounded soul
and there are messages left
inside my door that cannot see the light
the bird caged longing to be free
a dream that will never take flight
and i have to believe that He meant it for me
that He chose this path knowing what it would mean
that i'm standing here alone it seems
but not alone, no, not alone.
and so i'm holding back the tears building
from what has been brewing in my mind
the truth you'll never find
because these rules we bind ourselves to
and even when our tongues come unglued
they hold us to the oath we shared
before we knew we'd ever care
and i'm falling apart alone, in the dark
but it's not alone, i'm not alone.
i've fallen into the silent spaces
that i led you, hoping you would catch
the red thread that ran through the blue
without me trying to bleed out what was dying
and without me ever saying-
what i didn't know was lying.
because you're asking me to lean into
a hole that goes down farther than
the hurt that feels it might not mend
and never ends when it adds on further misery
the questioning that can't release
the fear that one day this will cease
and you'll be gone,
never knowing what i would've done to keep you here.
but our hearts hold dear to the rules we drew
before we ever knew where it might one day lead us to
and then leave us there
where we weren't aware of what we left behind.
and now the truth is blind and numb
to the lies i told when i wasn't speaking at all.
and the fear i might fall into you
when all the while you were never there at all
were you?"

someday, hopefully a very long time from now, i will die. and some well intentioned person will turn on my computer, and stumble upon hundreds of little poems (if you could call them that) that i have written over the years. i don't have hundreds yet, but there are many. at the rate i'm going, there will be LOTS. what can i say? writing makes me feel better. and for a person who can never think of what she wants to say in the moment she needs to say it- it is crucial. when verbal communication fails you, and you're left with tormenting thoughts rattling in your head- the only cure for it, is writing really sad lines that sometimes rhyme, sometimes have meter- and if they manage to succeed at one, they fail at the other :) but it's my coping mechanism, and when i'm dead and the world sees them...or at least my family and some poor unfortunate friends, i'll be long gone without the potential of embarrassment.
it's the one comforting thought that keeps me from deleting the most pitiful and pathetic ravings that occasionally manage to make it into word documents.
i'm sharing this one though. i'm sharing it now, so that i have my opportunity to explain. authors and amateurs are constantly being interpreted (and i can't help but think the public must sometimes do it poorly). this 'poem' (again using the term loosely) was not written in bitterness. i think the most beautiful part of life is the bad situations that you can't help but happen upon, circumstances that reveal themselves in such a way that there is only one course of action. times when your best intention is the worst error, and you find yourself looking back, wishing you could change it, thinking you'd give anything to go back, all the while knowing, it was outside your control. i think helplessness is the most triumphant feeling at these times. at least when i'm helpless, i can surrender to fate and say 'i'm out my depth'
i have no desire now, to change what i cannot fix. what is the point of repeating something when you know it can only go one way? i don't need to describe the specific situation for you- odds are, you know it already all too well. you've been there before. maybe maturity gives us the courage to look forward when our past is painful. to somehow manage to include people in our lives who have hurt us deeply. knowing that on the other side of every rotten situation, there stands another helpless person who is a victim of time and circumstance. i do not attempt to blanket pardon every emotional criminal- their victims are countless. but at some point we are ALL a victim, and each of us a criminal. who can accuse? who can judge?
i think there are people who choose to hurt, or at least put their own interest ahead of another. for them the crime is more extensive, even more severe. but in the situation that led me to write what i did at the moment when i felt it, there was no one to blame, but everyone involved, and no one wished ill. everyone lost in that situation, i'm just the one who wrote about it.
i think the most emotional healthy thing i could say at this point, is that i don't wish it were different now. that i'm sitting here content with how it is- because that is how it cannot help but be. but for some reason, some helpless, pointless reason, there remains the nagging wish- that i could fix it still.
'hope is the thing with feathers' that makes us bash our heads against walls.
what will be will be. and we let it go, because there's nothing we could say. someday, years from now when i'm dead, there will be loads of word documents to prove this is true. until then :) we move on.