There you go again

An unknowable percentage of me is better equipped for life 150 years ago. Life of a dairy-milking mother of 10 who kept her floors shining, quilts finely pieced, breads risen, children silent and husband fed easily. I hate it and I love it in turn.



An update:

It is more of that black and white thinking.
I remember in an early email exchange with you, before we met, you said you were a person of extremes. I told you that I was too.


I dully repeat like a doll with a voice-string on my ass that I don't know what to do, what is expected of me in love.
Sometimes, when I look at my friends that I care deeply for my eyes burn because I'm sure I'm using them wrong. Wrong eyes,
wrong fingers and blinks. What I mean is that it is a matter of extremes.

Because I grew entirely accustomed to being alone and learning about everything in isolation I feel guilty in love. I try to be perfect in love. Perfectly there and entirely present and eager and exuberant. The opposite of what I have always known.
It is an exquisite failure system. I can't, no one could, meet these standards. So I falter. I can't be entirely present and perfect. And I am unable (unable unable) to advocate for myself and my requirements of aloneness. I forget. I forget willingly and eagerly. Because they make me feel guilty.
I get trapped there, between extremes. My failures pile up and fill me with confusion and anger.
The hardened parts of me yearn to hold onto things that will never change, move or disagree. To strain out all else. To think about the floors instead of your quiet gestures of confusion or pain. That is, as you intimately understand, why I take medication. Because it stops the floor thoughts cold and it is such a relief. A fair trade to lose that, and that hardness. Even when it means enduring a few hours of bleak grief gated by past and recent memories of ugliness and loss.

I won't repeat it anymore, that I don't know what is expected of me. That is the wrong sentence. I do know when I am free of sick thought: I am expected to understand the nuances of people, relationships. To be able to manipulate the pillars of relationship like appendages that do good works. Like, relationships are forged upon the problems overcome and survived and not upon the difficulties avoided. It is what makes Tammy and I so close: our highschool disaster. And Taraleigh and I like sisters: our(my) roadtrip psychosis. And you and I. We faced the aftermath of your illness, the unexpected and unannounced peaks of mine. And not in spite of but because of these things we move ahead. Better. Stronger. Nothing to do with perfection at all.