In Retaliation

I love to read…I haven’t had much time for it lately, but usually I devour books.  I love art, galleries, museums, crazy yards along the roadside.  I love music, I live in a house where new wonderful music is almost a competition, every morning something new and beautiful is wafting out of the speakers.  I hate critics, it bothers me that anyone would assume to know what was going through an artists mind as they were creating.  It bothers me that they even want to figure it out, what is wrong with taking it for what it means to you?

I saw a picture this morning, that made me curious about the UK.  I avoid the news lately, I only know what is going on because Rhett tells me snippets, while I am washing dishes and he is drinking his morning coffee.  Anyway, I digress…the photo isntantly made me think “What the hell is going in England?”  It’s Sunday I have a little bit of time, so I looked up the riots.  It seems as if everything might be calming down, and now the experts are swooping in, trying to explain everything.  Why haven’t they figured out that the human condition is in a constant flux?  We are never going to figure out why people do things.  I can’t even figure out why I do half the things I do, how am I going to be arrogant enough to tell the people in the middle of the riots why they did it.  The BBC came up with the top ten reasons for the riots.  Most of them seem absolutely ridiculous.  Of course they have experts to corroborate their theories.  It is all very annoying and makes me remember why I don’t read the news.

The Competing Arguments For The Riots In London

photo via iZnoGoodGood

the little death, supposedly that is what the French call an orgasm… a good description on many levels. That is not what this post is about.

I have little deaths of huge parts of myself. I am currently working on my second one. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to rework myself into something I can love again. I guess I didn’t want to the first time it happened either. The first seemed easier because I gave up a huge part of who I thought I was, and things I desperately loved about myself, to become everything for someone else. I had to become something new and unknown and scary, but I had to for her; she was my reward.

Now I have to for me, it’s not just a difference or something new, it’s a failing, something I can’t do anymore. Something that other people look upon with pride, an essential part of the way the people I love live their lives, I cannot share. I have to be different, all the while thinking no less of myself. I have to accept myself as a lovely person despite the fact that I suck. All of this is difficult and I want to do it quietly and thoroughly. I want to do this with dignity, for no one but me. I want to say goodbye slowly and gracefully, a warm holding of the hand and a solid acceptance of the unknown. “Hey honey, thank you, we had some good times and I really appreciate you being there for me, but you can go now, you’ve held on as long as I needed you to.”

My only reward is a different me, a me that I am not entirely comfortable with.