Is it possible to miss someone you’ve never met?
How can you ache for someone’s touch if you can’t even visualize their hands…?
I have a case of skin hunger so intense that the concept of touch seems to have taken on it’s own scent, it’s own taste.
My own need terrifies me, how badly I want someone to adore me, to think I’m wonderful, to actually care about me in the tiny ways that count- to wonder what I’m doing, whether I’ve eaten that day, to hear songs and want to share them with me because you think I may just understand them the way you do.
My mind, and the sucking black hole of need that influences and stains every close relationship I have now in the after; my fractured mind and that consuming need will take any little thing and run with it.
I want to weep for myself, watching myself cling to every tiny interaction, watching my mind weave it into a thousand possibilities. I feel pathetic, and it’s quite possible that I smell of it patheticism too… it’s an unattractive scent that people can’t identify, but it effects them the same way pheromones do, only to push them away from it’s source rather than draw them toward it.
Biological self-protection.
The best parts of my days right now happen over crackly connections to somewhere half a world away. I spend hours I didn’t know I could find lost in the best type of conversation– where you plan topics to speak about, and three hours later are still trying to find a finishing point where the conversation winds up naturally.
I’m not even sure what I’m doing here, playing with fire all over again… but how far can you fall when the grounds just an illusion, it’s not even real? I take bits of happy, piecemeal, as they come, and I can’t bear to push them away. Happy- simple laughing, sparkling happy– is scarce and fleeting. That much I know now, for sure.
And there are so few people that I know that I am myself with… where I let pieces hang out and trail, where I’m not as together and OK as I pretend to be.
A soft place to fall, perhaps…but it’s half a world away. A voice through a data connection that makes me feel at home.
I’ll take what I get, when I can get it.
And there’s things I need to tell him, still… that underwear with a split in the knee and rosary beads are kind of the same thing, really; that John Safran had a fatwa put on a man, and that man’s wife died young, from cancer, just a few years later; that I totally busted him, and he was fibbing when he said he didn’t have a thing for Britney Spears.
Unimportant, insignificant blips on life; facts that mean nothing at all. The very kind of things I want someone to be jumping from their skin to tell me- relationships are, if nothing else, sharing the insignificances of life.
And he knows she heard his name, his voice, his laugh; her whole life, in her dreams.
I thought, for a little while, that the concept of love being tragic was a made up one, something gothic and romantic and not quite real.
More and more, I think I was wrong. Love is as tragic as life itself.
And I think that’s all.
And although she knows the ground below is only a figment of her imagination- it can’t hurt if it’s not real to begin with- that vulnerable five year old girl in my head still trips and falls. She skins her knee and her pride is hurt and she stares at the person who happens to be closest to her and sobs “You hurt me! How dare you?!”… when it was her own two feet she tripped over to begin with.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
-xxx-
Good heavens, this post. I felt it, Lori, is best how I can describe it. It's like I was feeling this with you. Unbelievable.
Yes, I have loved and missed people I've never met, quite a few times. The love I had for them was so deep. And it came at such a cost.
Best wishes to you Lori.
This was worth another read. It reveals so little, yet says so much Lori.
My arms are outstretched to catch you, just in case.
Hugs xx
Been there, done that.
When things were tough between me and Doug, I started talking to someone who I thought was a friend, from church, and we fell deeply for each other. I fell in love with his words. He was always there, and his words always comforted me. We were like a couple of teenagers. One night, we typed out the entire Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail movie because we were stupid like that! *lol*
Things began to get deeper, and we took it to texting. He came by and brought me gifts once a week. He knew I loved peanut butter fudge.
Long story short, I fell asleep during a text messaging session, and Doug found out and questioned me. He wasn't angry with me as he was with the other guy and himself because he realized that he wasn't and hadn't been there for me for six months. He felt like the guy should have known better than to sweep in when I was vulnerable, posing as a friend, from church even, and taking advantage of me. I tried to tell Doug that I knew what I was doing also and took responsibility for my actions.
Lori, a guy who really loves and adores you will come along. Don't settle for Mr. Right Now. Wait for Mr. Right. Believe me, it's worth it.
Ordinary people, it's ok. We're not watching anyway
Once again, the way you show your heart humbles me. Beautiful words.
UncleChilliMan (Brad) Hugs & love Lori
So many HUGS! I feel you are looking so hard outside yourself for peace that you're forgetting that it's within you already. Don't forget to being peaceful inside yourself will bring to you exactly who you need when you need them.
"I want to weep for myself, watching myself cling to every tiny interaction, watching my mind weave it into a thousand possibilities" – an absolutely beautifully written post.
I went to Sweden as an exchange student in 1999. I'm still here… We weren't meant to fall in love, I mean, we really weren't meant to fall in love. I never thought I would be able to fall in love with someone whom I would have to explain who Pat the Rat was or that Puberty Blues was a film, not a state of mind. But it turns out that the only reference points we needed were ourselves and a big fat whopping belief in ourselves.
Accidentally Kelly Street, where friends and strangers sometimes meet!
Love that song…..thanks for the earworm!
Im in love with a man who will never be mine, and hes in love with me. Ill never his. He is so close and yet so far. His voice his laugh his lame jokes make me smile, and he will never be mine. So many people would be hurt, and even with a love like we have I'm not willing to take the chance, and nor is he.
Beautifully written as always … And yes I am a gen x-er to whom the frente reference makes perfect sense
Loved loved loved Stephen King's most recent book too, after not being able to get into his last book, MY Stephen is back
Xx
Cass
I fell in love with someone half a world away.
I'm in Los Angeles. He lives an hour outside Melbourne.
We met. I fell harder.
I stayed for months instead of weeks. But my own life, my life here in LA, was insisting that I must return.
We still talk. We still love. We still say things like, "Someday…"
And maybe someday never comes. But someone, somewhere, loved me once. Still loves me. His voice still helps me sleep through the night.
And a piece of him will always be a part of me.