lonely
Can you feel the way the word fills your mouth, how the cadence of it forces the jaw to flap like a fish gasping outside the bowl? Feel the way the "ohhh" rings hollow as a dead winter wind in the eaves and the "lee" keens in mourning?
lonely
lohhhnnleeee
It seems I will forever be the 10 year old hoping to be liked by allowing the other kids to copy her homework. I'm tired. This started when I thought of planning a party the weekend before Christmas, a gift-wrapping party. I thought it would be fun. Then I didn't know who to invite. Then I didn't know who would actually come. It would be nice. I throw a great party... Doug being around only makes it better.
Perhaps it is that I don't feel I have much to offer. I hear my mother's voice coming out of my mouth... "Why don't you stop by I have good coffee/chicken and dumplings/pie/expensive treats/exotic entrees?"
.... granted, I love to share, I love to feed people. But I'm starving for friendship. It seems that folks keep slipping away and I can't even reel them in with a good free dinner. It also seems that I am perpetually closer to my friends than they are to me. Or they've moved away-- I have so many people all over this country that I can't even have a cuppa coffee with.
Some of the people I'd like to see the most, I've never or rarely ever seen -- or they live a long way away and that's how it goes. I miss girlfriends. I miss talking. I miss listening. I miss just stopping by. I miss having someone to shop with, or to notice my new shoes. I miss being silly, I miss being comfortable enough not to judge myself against others. My two closest local friends are both very busy with their own stuff and in one case, I think, doesn't feel nearly as close to me as I do her. She's got other, way cooler friends, and really, what right do I have to determine closeness? It's funny, because I knew her way back, years ago, and remember her very vividly, but she doesn't recall as much. Some part of me even feels like she understands this and feels obligated to keep it up -- like the young kid I was nice to in high school because he had a massive crush on me, I kept him at arms length, never gave him any hope at all, but I wasn't mean to him, even when he was being really annoying, since I knew that a sharp word from me would wound him worse than from someone else.
The bottom line, I just feel so damned pathethic.
The suggestion was made that I find a job and make some new friends through there, maybe that's what I'm missing. Funny, I worked my last job for 8 years with many of the same people and I don't really hear from them. But I was lonely there too -- hell, instead getting to have a crying jag in the comfort of my car, I had to sniffle in the ladies room.
I'm missing some part of the cement and I just can't find it -- I'm so tired of trying, so tired of feeling desperate. Tired of feeling so hollow. Along the way, I lost my thick skin, or maybe I never really had it -- but I'm so sensitive to loss, all this loss around me, this death, this anger, all this loneliness that's not all mine. I just keep soaking it up. I feel people slipping away from me with each day, I'm scared sometimes, to let out how I really feel because I don't want them to leave faster, don't want to ruin whats left. I don't want to hurt anyone. I was just sitting here trying to feel properly angry and I couldn't! I was able to justify everything.
Somehow I've developed this habit -- this clarity, empathy, change of perspective, what have you... it goes something like this: i'm mad at mom, every time i've tried to talk to her about my problems she doesn't listen and the topic changes to being about her but that's what you expect when she doesn't really have anyone to share these things with, it's not selfishness, it's just what's at the surface when the communication opens and it just needs to be gotten though-- the only problem is that it takes an hour and by that time I'm too distracted with her problems to talk about my own and besides her problems are way bigger than mine, which will pass, but if my brothers only talked to her some like a person instead of a figurehead and understood that she's a person, then she would have a lot more "person" to go around and in addition to that how can I expect more of her than I would a friend? if this were my friend, I wouldn't really be mad, I'd just go on to another friend. At least my brother's have that. Except they don't come around much anymore, hell, I hooked David up with a cell phone and paid the bill on it, and now Doug and I both do and I don't even hear from him ever (except for when he called me by accident) but he just lost his job, and he's young and I'm sure he's stressed out, but Daryl, Daryl offered to come over and help with house stuff and even said he would make a wedding gift out of doing some insulation work -- here it is Thanksgiving and still no insulation -- but he did come over and help me move the wood stove a few weeks ago and that was no mean feat so I can't be angry at him, and Devin, Devin went to Daryl with his alcohol problem, which I understand because they're close, but I didn't here anything from Devin until he needed money to pay for his rehab at a private center, so of course I dropped everything to handle that, and communicated with everyone for him and ya know he's been out of contact with me since then even though he's talked to Darly since, and is living in a halfway house, and is getting help, and he didn't even bother to tell Mom or I that he wouldn't be coming home for Thanksgiving dinner b/c he'd be eating with a church group -- but I can't be angry with him because it's Rehab for chrissakes, I'm just glad he got in there.
And so I'm still angry. Still upset, and everyone else is somehow exponged.
**
I've speant a total of 3 hours and 15 minutes on the phone with Mom the past two days, hashing and rehashing the particulars of Thanksgiving. I'm not talking about the menu, I'm talking about whether or not it was gonna goddamn happen. It seems like every year this waffling happens, and no one but I get the brunt of it. It's incredibly draining. I'm the one on the phone or in person soothing, discussing, planning, listening to her vent. I'll be the one helping to cook and clean up. So will Doug, who has by the way, washed more dishes at Mom's house in the past six months than any one of my brothers has in the past year.
There's a lot of circular thought from this --whether because Mom never layed down ground rules early on, or because her manner of getting things done can be a bit particular, or because the boys are boys, or because they've given up trying or....well whatever. The bottom line is that every year, consistantly, I feel like I have to play in some way, the role of Holiday Rescue.
If I have to save it at least let me be the one to host it. Christmas last year worked out pretty well at the apartment because there was no precedent. Everyone showed up, dressed nicely, mostly behaved AND I put the little suckers to work when I needed help and whacked a few fingers for picking at the food before it was ready.
They're not bad boys, I love them. I just resent that I am the one that's stuck sucking up all the negativity beforehand so they can have a nice happy time during. Mom is so afraid of driving away any of her sons... I guess she figured I'm staying around. It's like this if I don't save a Sunday dinner, then oh well, there will be others. If I don't save a Holiday it will (and this has been proven) detract something from all future ones.
************* but, it'll be a good holiday, I'll be able to brush this crap away long enough to enjoy it. Maybe this rant isn't exactly absolutely unerringly true, but it's true to me, and it's how I feel.*************
Can you feel the way the word fills your mouth, how the cadence of it forces the jaw to flap like a fish gasping outside the bowl? Feel the way the "ohhh" rings hollow as a dead winter wind in the eaves and the "lee" keens in mourning?
lonely
lohhhnnleeee
It seems I will forever be the 10 year old hoping to be liked by allowing the other kids to copy her homework. I'm tired. This started when I thought of planning a party the weekend before Christmas, a gift-wrapping party. I thought it would be fun. Then I didn't know who to invite. Then I didn't know who would actually come. It would be nice. I throw a great party... Doug being around only makes it better.
Perhaps it is that I don't feel I have much to offer. I hear my mother's voice coming out of my mouth... "Why don't you stop by I have good coffee/chicken and dumplings/pie/expensive treats/exotic entrees?"
.... granted, I love to share, I love to feed people. But I'm starving for friendship. It seems that folks keep slipping away and I can't even reel them in with a good free dinner. It also seems that I am perpetually closer to my friends than they are to me. Or they've moved away-- I have so many people all over this country that I can't even have a cuppa coffee with.
Some of the people I'd like to see the most, I've never or rarely ever seen -- or they live a long way away and that's how it goes. I miss girlfriends. I miss talking. I miss listening. I miss just stopping by. I miss having someone to shop with, or to notice my new shoes. I miss being silly, I miss being comfortable enough not to judge myself against others. My two closest local friends are both very busy with their own stuff and in one case, I think, doesn't feel nearly as close to me as I do her. She's got other, way cooler friends, and really, what right do I have to determine closeness? It's funny, because I knew her way back, years ago, and remember her very vividly, but she doesn't recall as much. Some part of me even feels like she understands this and feels obligated to keep it up -- like the young kid I was nice to in high school because he had a massive crush on me, I kept him at arms length, never gave him any hope at all, but I wasn't mean to him, even when he was being really annoying, since I knew that a sharp word from me would wound him worse than from someone else.
The bottom line, I just feel so damned pathethic.
The suggestion was made that I find a job and make some new friends through there, maybe that's what I'm missing. Funny, I worked my last job for 8 years with many of the same people and I don't really hear from them. But I was lonely there too -- hell, instead getting to have a crying jag in the comfort of my car, I had to sniffle in the ladies room.
I'm missing some part of the cement and I just can't find it -- I'm so tired of trying, so tired of feeling desperate. Tired of feeling so hollow. Along the way, I lost my thick skin, or maybe I never really had it -- but I'm so sensitive to loss, all this loss around me, this death, this anger, all this loneliness that's not all mine. I just keep soaking it up. I feel people slipping away from me with each day, I'm scared sometimes, to let out how I really feel because I don't want them to leave faster, don't want to ruin whats left. I don't want to hurt anyone. I was just sitting here trying to feel properly angry and I couldn't! I was able to justify everything.
Somehow I've developed this habit -- this clarity, empathy, change of perspective, what have you... it goes something like this: i'm mad at mom, every time i've tried to talk to her about my problems she doesn't listen and the topic changes to being about her but that's what you expect when she doesn't really have anyone to share these things with, it's not selfishness, it's just what's at the surface when the communication opens and it just needs to be gotten though-- the only problem is that it takes an hour and by that time I'm too distracted with her problems to talk about my own and besides her problems are way bigger than mine, which will pass, but if my brothers only talked to her some like a person instead of a figurehead and understood that she's a person, then she would have a lot more "person" to go around and in addition to that how can I expect more of her than I would a friend? if this were my friend, I wouldn't really be mad, I'd just go on to another friend. At least my brother's have that. Except they don't come around much anymore, hell, I hooked David up with a cell phone and paid the bill on it, and now Doug and I both do and I don't even hear from him ever (except for when he called me by accident) but he just lost his job, and he's young and I'm sure he's stressed out, but Daryl, Daryl offered to come over and help with house stuff and even said he would make a wedding gift out of doing some insulation work -- here it is Thanksgiving and still no insulation -- but he did come over and help me move the wood stove a few weeks ago and that was no mean feat so I can't be angry at him, and Devin, Devin went to Daryl with his alcohol problem, which I understand because they're close, but I didn't here anything from Devin until he needed money to pay for his rehab at a private center, so of course I dropped everything to handle that, and communicated with everyone for him and ya know he's been out of contact with me since then even though he's talked to Darly since, and is living in a halfway house, and is getting help, and he didn't even bother to tell Mom or I that he wouldn't be coming home for Thanksgiving dinner b/c he'd be eating with a church group -- but I can't be angry with him because it's Rehab for chrissakes, I'm just glad he got in there.
And so I'm still angry. Still upset, and everyone else is somehow exponged.
**
I've speant a total of 3 hours and 15 minutes on the phone with Mom the past two days, hashing and rehashing the particulars of Thanksgiving. I'm not talking about the menu, I'm talking about whether or not it was gonna goddamn happen. It seems like every year this waffling happens, and no one but I get the brunt of it. It's incredibly draining. I'm the one on the phone or in person soothing, discussing, planning, listening to her vent. I'll be the one helping to cook and clean up. So will Doug, who has by the way, washed more dishes at Mom's house in the past six months than any one of my brothers has in the past year.
There's a lot of circular thought from this --whether because Mom never layed down ground rules early on, or because her manner of getting things done can be a bit particular, or because the boys are boys, or because they've given up trying or....well whatever. The bottom line is that every year, consistantly, I feel like I have to play in some way, the role of Holiday Rescue.
If I have to save it at least let me be the one to host it. Christmas last year worked out pretty well at the apartment because there was no precedent. Everyone showed up, dressed nicely, mostly behaved AND I put the little suckers to work when I needed help and whacked a few fingers for picking at the food before it was ready.
They're not bad boys, I love them. I just resent that I am the one that's stuck sucking up all the negativity beforehand so they can have a nice happy time during. Mom is so afraid of driving away any of her sons... I guess she figured I'm staying around. It's like this if I don't save a Sunday dinner, then oh well, there will be others. If I don't save a Holiday it will (and this has been proven) detract something from all future ones.
************* but, it'll be a good holiday, I'll be able to brush this crap away long enough to enjoy it. Maybe this rant isn't exactly absolutely unerringly true, but it's true to me, and it's how I feel.*************
posted by Laura | 5:54 PM
14 Comments:
Laura, I think you just nailed my own life down. Jeez woman. I can't tell you how many times I've wished that we lived closer together. You'd be so much fun to hang out with, and we have so much in common. I know that's no help when were a good couple of thousand miles apart, but I'd share a cuppa coffee with you anytime.
We really need to find away to get together. I envy you in a lot of ways. You've got this supercool outlook on everything. You're a go-getter where I'm the type to just sit and watch the world pass me by. I often wish I was more like you.
And I get the lonely thing. Totally get it. I only have one real friend in this world, and we've sort of drifted. It's not that we can't still call on each other at any hour of the day or night. It's just, well, I guess motherhood has changed me from the barfly, going out kind of person to more of the domestic type. We still love each other, it's just... different.
And yes, the family thing... I totally relate.
Anyway, just a note to tell you that, if I lived closer, I'd be at your party, good food or not.
Oh Laura... I know I shouldn't say "I wish you lived closer," 'cause that just rubs in the point, but seriously... So many parts of this post rang true for me too. I am not as "needy" as I once was, but I still am and always will be. And by needy, I don't mean I am the girl who needs to be told she looks good and needs to be the center of attention... I need to do for others. I need to go overboard. I need to be the friend who will be there for someone without fail, though most of them would not do the same for me. I need to exhaust myself, I need to give away all of me until there's nothing left. I have no advice on how to not be that way, except that your circle of friends will distill itself until you have a few gems and they will be all you need.
Regarding being the holiday savior, I can sympathize with that as well. My mother refers to me jokingly (but also with an undeniable note of truth) as "the good daughter" or "the good child." My brother and sister are wonderful and I love them dearly, but they are totally unreliable and don't give her the time she deserves. Granted, sometimes she takes way more than she deserves, but I figure she is my mother and I owe her that much. We have always had this relationship, since I was a little girl; the has always told me I was her best friend. Having a middle-aged woman lay her troubles on you at the age of eight is a large burden to bear... But I still do it.
I also know about being out of work. For me, I was almost embarassed to admit that was happier when I had somewhere I was supposed to be - happier answering to the man. Lol. It was odd to come to that realization when I thought being out of work would be a dream come true.
If there's one cheesy (yet wise) thing I can tell you, it is actually something my mom says: "You will find your way." You are a smart, loving, loyal person. You will find your way.
You know something..things are different now. They are. You're not anyone's daughter and sister in the same way; you have a good man and you should, if you haven't already, tell him these things or let him read that post. It's not about being anyone's this or that, it's about you setting the parameters for your new life. You can do that, and I refuse to give you sympathy..not because I wouldn't but because you can do this and do it your way..your NEW way. Share the burdens with Doug, make "couple" decisions here. He's the kind of person you can do that with and I can't see him grudging you the time, Laura. Shed the old skin: it fitted one person and now you're a half of two.
Chin up, kiddo :) I'll write to you in the morning.
Sometimes I feel like you're the busy one and I really have nothing to give. I think about stopping by at least once a week when we are up that way... but I think you are probably going to your Moms or have something going on. I am ashamed to show up on your doorstep hungry and stressed thrusting an active infant into your arms. I want to give but only seem to be able to take... and I miss you. Just you and me going out somewhere... free(-ish). But I think you have so many other friends way cooler than me, more refined, more educated more with-it and mature. You always offer something when you ask us to come by, so I don't want to invite when there is nothing nice to put on the table or almost nothing at all.
-----
I started playing the mommy to my Mom when I was 8ish and she is unable to listen to me or even ask about me most of the time. She has the same lateness problem or never shows at all.
-----
About the holiday thing. Have it at your place (if you want). Invite who you want to be there. Those who don't show miss out (I know you feel you miss out too). And as Lady of the house...
you elect and assign little tasks as it goes along. "Here, put those on the table." "You, with the long face, grab those chairs over there." "Mom, rinse this out for me." ah well... maybe you get the idea.
It is time to start your own traditions and root yourself where you are transplanted. You aren't so far from the old roots. I am too tired to even tell if it makes sence.
My entire college life was spent ruminating on the above passage of this post syllable for syllable. Problem is, I can still relate. "Sharing homework so the other kids will like you." Them leaving going away. Abandonment issues. Maybe not for you, hon, but for me, BIGTIME. So if you wanna laugh out loud just look at my life. Living in the last unable to let go, ashamed, used, betrayed hoodwinked, coerced, read any of my poems since March of 2004 over at MTC? Hey, ya life ain't that bad now come to think of it, izzit? See, I knew I could do ~SOME~ good ~SOME~ where! Hugs, peace and ~ML to you and yours and Happy Thanksgiving, Laura.
You know I read this post yesterday sometime, and I've been thinking about it ever since. Today, the baby was asleep and no one else was home and I was doing laundry, tossing underwear into the dryer... and I thinking about this post and how much deeper it is than even what you've written.
Sometimes I think that emotions are so complex, so entangled with other emotions and experiences that words simply can't do them justice.
I love you
ML~
~E
Okay. I have an idea. Have a cup of coffee at 10:37 tommorow morning & I'll have one too then we'll almost be having a cup together.
I understand the lonely thing. I have never wanted to have a good friend close more than I do now, but that's an hour long, tear filled rant on my part.
We should be out in February & we'll have to plan to do something while I'm out there. (I know, it's 2 1/2 months away but it's something)
Who'd have thought it..loofahs and bees..
http://www.beesfordevelopment.org/info/info/flora/the-loofah.shtml
guys --
thank you all so much, some times it takes a loud chorus of voices outside my head to drown out the nasty ones inside, (except those telling me to run out side in a bonnet, apron, and wrestling singlet, whilst singing the smurf song --they ARE pretty loud) I appreciate all the feedback from all of you (even new visitors). I hope I can be there for you all too.
love,
~L
and sair -- bees are essential, I think. you've gotta listen to the bees. Actually that website was really informative, I think I wandered across it at one point, but was so focused on finding a resource for purchasing seeds that I skimmed it and moved on....
Just think..you can label your jars 'Laura's Loofah honey'..could be a real selling point. I'll do your artwork for you :D
heh, just like me, coarse and sweet?
It would be quite exotic, though, it would be hard to convince the bees that they wanted to hang out on the loofah vines instead of the mulberry trees...
You could offer to exfoliate their little feet :)
ok e i skimmed your entry
cos actually
you were depressing the snot out of me
and once the snot comes
you know it's cold season
but i did catch one thing i could respond to and it's
hey babe
all's not well but the wheel still turns
limbo's a bitch
but we're not dead yet
i do think of you
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