Broken Doll

Perusing, I read the text on the page and don’t notice at first the bottom of the card.

Fate says goodbye. Or demands it. Two people reach for each other but the way is blocked. They cannot touch across goodbye.

And I wonder what Fate is trying to tell me, by bringing me to this image now.

I was on stronger footing this morning, but he un-invites me to his party and the rejection cracks the veneer. I had no other plans so I sit at home alone and isolated and loneliness crowds in.

I cry again. The wishes I had carefully boxed up and tucked away tumble out again. I want what I cannot have. I wish for a way that doesn’t exist.

Fate dictates goodbye. It is not my choice. It never is.

Goodbye.

Yes, it was too short.

So why aren’t you angry? Pissed off? Depressed? Why doesn’t it bother you that it was too fucking short?

We — I — deserved a fair shot and this, and didn’t get one. It never happens.

It’s fucking messed up.

I can say I deserve better than this, and I do, but the words are meaningless. Deserving isn’t having.

Go get help. And yes I hear it over and over, but you know I’ve been in and out of therapy with every kind of professional under the sun and it’s never changed a damn thing. My life grinds me down. Happiness is transient and fleeting. I’m miserable and alone most of the time. I don’t dare rely on anyone for fear that they’ll get sick of me and tell me to fuck off, already.

Talking about this shit changes nothing. It burns time and money, and the only shifts that come, come from changes in external circumstance. The things I can’t control.

Go to the doctor. Complain of constant pain with no apparent cause. See how far you get. A bunch of tests and thousands of dollars later, they’ll send you to physical therapy because damned if anyone has any better ideas.

And of course physical therapy is useless against a bug that is slowly killing you.

Social workers, chaplains, psychologists, psychiatrists, drugs, talk therapy. I’ve already tried it, all of it, and I’m still here in the dark places and am never allowed to climb out without being kicked right back into the pit. I don’t even have a specific complaint — just that I’m continually railroaded by my life, and I don’t know why. It’s not even anything I’m doing to myself — I get cancer. I lose the only job I ever loved for being sick. My career is a joke: I get momentum, I get sick. I grind from one miserable job to the next because I can’t find or keep anything better. David leaves, lies, leaves again. I find Morgan, but turns out I can’t have him either.

I don’t fit, anywhere. Too freaky for the norms. Too normal for the freaks. I don’t fit with anyone.

No direction, no goals, no way to plan, how does this translate into an effective plan of action?

Realism isn’t kind, but platitudes are fucking useless. For some people, for me, it just doesn’t help.

I’m stuck in this endless loop.

There must be some way to fix this.

But it’s a binary proposition. There is no middle ground. On or off. Yes or no.

So I give. Or he gives.

And I can’t. And he can’t.

And loop back to the beginning. Cascade through each step. Loop back to the beginning. I’m back in the helpless place. I lost control and everything fell apart. Inside my guts twist and my mind is black.

No relief in tears. Grasping at threads, but broken, all broken.

Those things I was rebuilding are crumbling all over again.

I’m stuck here and I feel like I want it more than he does.

Shattered shattered shattered.

that i spend so much of the past weeks second-guessing how i feel, pulling away, holding back, not allowing myself to feel, to fall.

and now that it’s over, all i want is to have it back.

brain grinds grinds grinds searching for a solution to an unfixable problem. a binary puzzle. on or off. yes or no. no middle ground so who makes the sacrifice?

i can’t. he can’t. and back around to here — an unfixable problem.

the gods mock me. tell me what am i supposed to learn from this? dangle what i want, what i need in front of me just long enough to tempt me to grab for it… then snatch it away. again.

just kidding.

i’m here, i’m alive, but if that’s the purpose why not allow me to intersect with someone who i’m actually allowed to keep?

back here in the dark spaces and why in hell didn’t i just accept fate with grace and walk away from the hospital when i had the chance.

If I ever doubted it before, I doubt no longer.

These triggers raining down on my head are too deep, too intractable, too hard-wired to have come from the mind of an 18-year-old.

I’m regressing again, the little girl cries in response to the voices that tell her she should not, NOT do this. Good girls don’t do this. Good girls sure as hell don’t enjoy it.

The shadows crowd the edges of my mind. I can’t quite see them, can’t quite remember, I just know they are there.

I’m on a hair trigger. Things that have run smoothly for years set me off. Anything and everything. Small things, dumb things, things I’ve never been afraid of.

Full-blown panic attack. I was screaming.

What the hell? Why am I so fragile? Why now? I’m on a knife’s edge and I don’t understand. I knew I’d have to start over but I didn’t know it would be like this. Regression, panic attacks, partial blackouts — almost a decade dead and buried. Why are they back? Why now?

Static churns just under the surface and bleeds out, bleeds out, bleeds out.

This ought to be the fun part — exploration, discovery, delight. Instead it tears at me, frays my edges. I have to get to the other side to get what I want, to get to the fun part.

Fuck, is it even worth it?

The tears remain dry and I’ve been here before too. The release valve has broken. Static crowds in. Shadows crowd in. Pressure builds.

Fighting and fighting and fighting.

Tired. So tired.

Something happened long ago Something that will not let go

god i need to cut it out of me and i can’t without him seeing it later