It is incredibly easy to forget how…..incestuous your hometown can be. No, not incestuous as in brothers and sisters getting REALLY close, but holy crap everyone knows everything about everyone and FML what the hell!?
So, this last few years have been…..rough. No, really. A few high points include divorce, financial ruin, unemployment, cancer, family deaths, beloved pet deaths, depression…..and horrifyingly I could keep going but I won’t. Because the more I dwell the less I live and things are slowly, creepingly, getting better.
I let so few people in anymore. For those of you who only knew me before the great Caribbean migration you might be rather blown away – compared to the annoyingly chipper hopeful pain in the ass I used to be 90% of the time…I’m now more 90% wary and braced for the next horror and the last 10% of the performance-based chipper I have left in me I save for work.
So I’m tired. And not the I’ll take a nap and be all rested up then kind of tired, but godsdamned soul-weary.
But I’m frakking trying! Dammit.
Anyway, there is no real purpose to this rant of nothing, other than me trying to figure out why one single word used to describe me yesterday felt more like a slap to face using a poison ivy embedded glove….initially shocking followed by some itchy festering annoyance. (Yeah, I know….awesome analogy! *grin*) I really think I cracked why it annoyed the shit out of me last night to be referred to as needy (yep, still feels like a cheese grater on the soul-bone to type it) because while I used to consider myself needy (raaaaaasp!), I am so afraid to allow just anyone close to me anymore I just consider myself….broken. So, if I choose to spend time with someone….and let them get close to me? That is a rather big rather scary deal for me. A large part of me is always waiting for the pain. Not the kinky-fun-pain, but the heart wrenching soul damaging kind of pain. I have learned to accept this pain with grace, whether for good or for ill and I just sort of drift away from whoever or whatever caused it.
There are some cultures that, instead of throwing away something broken, they repair it using a precious metal and celebrate its journey through their world. So, being partial to silver I prefer to think of these broken bits of myself as shiny silver examples of ain’t dead yet, still frakking trying here.
Dammit.