my sweetest downfall.

Fourteen months and ten days ago today I concieved the little boy sitting in my lap attempting to suck on my arm. Fourteen months and ten days ago I was careless, I thought I was in love, but in reality I was in love with the idea of love because I always felt like it slipped out of my fingers... and maybe my son would be the solution. Maybe if I kept him instead of putting him up for adoption or some of the otrher harsher suggestions, then I would really get that love I so desperately saught.

Having a baby does not make that childs father love you or want to stay with you. He can still pack up his shit one day and kiss your forehead and say so-long. More than likely he will do it at some point regaurdless of what age or circumstance, because being a parent is a full time job. Being a parent doesn't pay well. It sure as hell is dirty and exhausting, and not all people are cut out for it.

Women are left with no options. We could never just up and leave our children, those precious things that grew from a single sperm into a writhing fetus, sitting on our bladders and keeping us up at night. We brought life into that crying infant, even if every fiber in us wanted to quit we woudl never just walk away.... at least not any reasonable woman of sound mind.

I was devistated when just another fight turned into just another break up, except this one permanent because he finally stopped loving me. I wanted to lay on the floor surrounded by the piles of clothes in the bedroom I used to call ours and melt. I wanted to fade into nothingness, to die. I kept thinking I didnt deserve happiness, that my baby boy crying in the next room would be better off without the "crazy bitch" his father thinks I am.

And then I hung up the phone, walked into the living room, and picked him up. He belched loudly and his crying stopped and he looked at me with these beautiful wide blue eyes, dependant on me and loving me purely because he never knew not to. He is my sweetest downfall. I gave up so much to have him, to raise him now is a constant struggle as I learn how to survive in single-parent-ville. But there is a love there that cant be taken away. That is eternal because we are part of the same life, the same blood. He looks at me and i know I will never feel like I am completely alone again.

He gives me purpose, makes me want to be better and want to be happy. Noah, my fourteen month and ten day miracle, has saved me. In every way a teenage girl can be saved. I love him more every minute, even when he's puking on me and wont stop screaming, I couldn't imagine my world without his love and so I will never give up.

Sayit it vs. Meaning it.

Love is a complex emotion with many differnt ideas and concepts. I love my car, I love that hat, tommy loves jane.... I love you. We say it like any other common word out there, throwing it around without thought or time or care as to what it really means.

Love is the hardest emotion because it doesnt just start or end. It builds gradually, sometimes smoldering in your soul until it explodes in this passion, sometimes it lays dormant then one day you feel it. The hardest party about love is that once you feel it, you will probably always have a piece of you feeling it until the day you die.

Love is affection meets generosity meets happiness and peace. Love is kisses and hand holding and smiles even when that person isn't around and the meere thought of them has presented itself to your brain filling you with emotion. Love is withough lust, yet with it at the same tiem. Love is eternal sunshine, its everything and yet a vast emptiness of longing.

You can say "I love her.." or "I love you..." until your face turns blue, and hell you might actually convince yourself to believe it. But love is not the word. Love is the promise. love is the light and the stars and the wind in the trees. Its freedom and yet an undeniable bond.

When I say it I always mean it and yet, when he says it to me I dont think he was ever entirtely sure he meant it. Maybe he doesnt know what love is yet, maybe he thinks he needs to be in love in order to feel complete.... maybe he never loved me at all and was killing time. Just sayign those words because he knocked up some complete stranger and the guilt and pain of losing his options was wearing into him.

The greatest part is that because I actually loved, I am free. I felt the hurt in my chest and yet something has pulled me through. I think the knowledge that love is never ending. That you have infinite amounts of it to give and although it hurts it is also a blessing.

Ive met this guy who makes my mistakes seem childish. Who lights up my day just by talkign to me, just by asking me how I am and texting me until I fall asleep at night. I can really see something there with him, I can see myself in bed with him watching movies and going out on dates. I can see noah loving him and buying his daughter clothes.... i can really invision it. And THAT is the power of love.

the power to hope for the future.

"Everything happens for a reason"... huh.

I can't explain this feeling. Its like the universe and god and all the people around me have finally alligned in a way that has shown me that there is a power greater than just mu will that is propolling me along my path. I was so sad, so hurt that he would cheat on me, say he loved me and just leave me and his son to fend for ourselves. But then I realized, this was the universe at its best.

Everythign happens for a reason is so easy to say, so easy to tell otehrs you believe in it. But nothing like yesterday or today has shown me just how true that saying is in life. The timing can be wrong, but meaningful. You can mess up with some guy and get a beautiful gift of a wonderful son out of it like I did, and then reconnect with an old friend and discover that maybe you were meant to be with him all along. That that experience was life making you stronger, in my case, life giving me what I needed to grow up and see the beauty in the world: Noah.

And yeah, just like freshman year of highschool I got cheated on and my heart broken and I moped around thinking it was all my fault and whatever would I do without him. Just like being fourteen again. But I am not fourteen. And I see now that the cosmic divinity of all this torment was to show me that there are good guys out there who have wanted to be with me for me, not for the sex or what they could get out of me, buut because in their eyes I am remarkable. Because in their eyes I am a potential path to happiness....

I always asked myself with the father of my child "why is love so hard? Is it meant ot be this way?" and then I realized, love is not supposed to be endless fights. It isnt supposed to be being so afriad to be without that person that you'd rather be miserable with them than lose them. But this is for the sake of both of our happiness. And I see that so clearly now.

Everythign happens for a reason. Everything. Even the bad.

Being Cheated.

It's been a while. Like I don't know where to start, I'm hesitating with my trembling fingers while I attempt to sort out the words I think I want to type down about all of this. A whole year that passed by, coming with its ups and downs and making me see that there was life after hurt, and that that life could be wonderful. Almost surreal. Like in my life I could deserve any actual, substantial happiness.

Just once I thought, instead of that glimpse into the "could-be-yours", I was going to reach out and grasp it tightly in my hands. I know I am not perfect. I know I did things that I regret because I am a human, I am a woman, and my thoughts are governed by my emotions. What I thought may have been best for a minute was not actually best in the long run... or what I thought was actually real was just a cheap illusion of happiness. Again.

I didn't know you very well in the beginning... there was something about you that intrigues me. I thought there was more to you than the surface of messy brown hair and dark brown eyes. More than the scars on your arm or the mask you put up to hide the reasons you made those scars. I wanted to be inside that jumble of human soul, I wanted, for the first time in a long time, to be human enough to be in love. And you were it. I knew it. That kiss and those butterflies and that reckless abandon in which I allowed myself to drown.

How could it happen, a chance meeting with a stranger, would throw me into this path of young mother and heartbroken lover. Two weeks, that was it, and you were hooked on me. It was like we had been together years in those days, and I was so afraid. I couldn't let another man in, I couldn't feel the ripping in my chest that I feel now as I write this... not again. I ended it. And yet some cosmic force kept us twined together... like it knew that there was something of yours inside my belly long before either of us did...

An accident and a blessing, a stomach growing every day... much like the love and the hard times and the worry and the anxiety. And more than anything the beautiful chaos. I got to know things about you... your family and your past, how Emily Allen broke your heart for three years and you carved her initials in your arm. The way you turn subtitles on movies and are so self conscious of your curly hair.

We became family, pregnant and grump and dysfunctional family but we had a routine. I would get scared or hurt, and I would dump you. And eventually, be it two hours or a couple of days, I was begging for you to come back because I missed everything about you, even your obnoxious honesty. And then, as Christmas rounded the corner and our families had come to know each of us and accept us... you pulled out that ring.

That one I had said I liked so much from Fred Myer, that you had secretly been saving up for so that you could get down on one knee in the middle of the night, me pregnant and in your t-shirt sitting on a bar stool in our bathroom wondering what you were so nervous about, and propose marriage. Ask me to be yours forever. Profess that you loved me truly and honestly...

But what is honesty anyways? I mean, I expect you felt it in that moment, and thought you wanted it for us, to raise Noah together in that white picket fence life we never had as kids... but where was the effort? Noah was born and it was like he took everything I loved in you and drained you of everything you used to be.

Instead of that brilliant, stimulating man I waited on every night and loved to be seen with, you were a shell. Living a lie. I dont know why. I dont know if it was me or if it was something else, the pressure of being a full time parent or the expectations or the face that I got so caught up in being a mother I neglected your needs and forgot that I was supposed to be the one you could lean on... But you stopped.

Stopped coming home, stopped saying that you loved me out loud. Pretty soon you werent even there. You were gone even when you were laying next to me in bed. I felt alone, like all the love we built was drained and we were just playing house... badly. All I wanted was to dump you like i did in the beginning so we could both realise how badly we actually needed and wanted to be together... that was how it always used to go. I thought I would tell you to go, and you would, and then I would call you crying and you would come running back and we would be perfect, we would fix our problems and get married in august... be a halmark family. But that was not how it went this time.

This time you met her. This time you really took the break as the end, as a release from the bonds of adult life and the girl you thought you maybe loved once upon a time and then impregnated. Oops. And she has set you free. She makes it so you dont have to think about me. So you can be yourself again and not have to buy or change diapers. So you can party or smoke or just sit at ease without having any wieght on your shoulders. I am not her.

I want to be happy for you. But I'm not. I want to say its for the best but all I can think about is how everything I ever did I did because I didnt know what else to do, I just wanted you and me... to be okay. I tried in the only fashion I knew how, scarred and running around aimlessly trying to avoid the reality of how serious our situation was. I wasn't ready either. I put that on you. But when I needed you, you went running into her brown eyes. That mystery girl who you love more than you have ever loved. Already. After three weeks.

Being cheated is like being stabbed with a hot knife then nursed back to health only to be stabbed again. It burns and rips apart all fabric of your soul, shreds your heart and leaves that breathless, throbbing sensation. You can't breath, all you can do is think about the pain... a million regrets and what-if's poolign up in your brain making you think that you will never feel happiness again. Never feel normal, only feeling the jealousy of the one you loved jumping right into another relationship and loving your openly more than he loved you... The fear that you were never good enough... the anxiety of winding up alone because even the father of your child cheated you out of the family he always claimed he wanted... cheated on you as easy as he told you he wanted to get back together just to sleep with you...

Being cheated is like burning alive. I just have to let it burn until I feel nothing, again, and hope that there is some shred left in me to be strong enough to clean up your mess one last time and grow stronger there by.

Sunflowers.

My sister and I are very close. Although she is half of my age, she seems just as street smart and sassy as an 18 year old. Sometimes I'm amazed by the childish innocence she has, jealous of it almost. She is so sweet and simple. Everything in her mind has a solution, and when I am struggling with a problem she will tell me the solution without all of the social norms we all grow to accept.

I feel that I have done right by my sister(s and brother) in her life, and I suppose I feel this way because I did everything I could to teach her and love her her entire life. But my biggest regret is something I never had power to change. My beautiful baby girl met a boy I was dating, and loved him because I did. Then, after playing in the playground with him and drawing him pictures, I realized she had developed her own relationship with him that had nothing to do with me.

She loved him like a big brother, a love that was separate of my love for him. I thought it was beautiful... until I saw that our relationship as a couple was failing and the poor nine year old (at this point eight) was trapped in something socially uncomfortable and painful. As we broke up, and I cried and wallowed, my sister did too.

She asked every day where he was. And I had to explain to her why he wouldn't be coming around anymore. She didn't understand why he and I couldn't be friends, because, after all, we had been in love. Her innocent thinking provided the simple solution "call him and say sorry" but there was nothing I could say or do to convince her that it didn't matter what I said.

When her and I were driving and I got lost, she would say "Call Uriah and ask for directions," and I would start crying. She wrote him notes and asked me to give them to him for months, asked me to have him call her, asked for emails. I never gave him her letters, I didn't want to cause him more pain than needed, and he never emailed or called. Although she didn't understand it, she let it go as I began to shut it out and move on the best I could.

Last weekend, since my ex and I had been texting some, I bought my little sister a present of tickets to his concert. I drove her downtown, I watched them put the wristband on her, and watched her nearly shake with the anticipation of seeing him after nearly ten months of nothingness from him. I was feeling sick, dreading almost the behavior I knew I would have once I saw him. No looking, no talking, no emotion. Or else every text, every attempt at communication and "fixing" myself were down the drain.

When she saw him she sprinted across the room and hugged his middle, screaming "RIIIAAAAH" as she did so, and I smiled. Was it bad that I brought her? was it harmful? But she was so happy. She stood by him, occasionally running to me and dancing waiting for him to take the stage. When it was his turn she ran to him and said good luck and then found a spot in the very front. I took a seat on a stool to the back. She danced and looked up in awe, excitement flowing over all her little features.

Until, that is, she turned around and saw the look on my face as the second song he started singing rang around the room. It was "my" song. The one he wrote for me, but it was still his. He wrote it, so I don't know why I was so astonished at hearing it. She bit her lip and ran to me, patting my hand and saying "Don't cry hail." I didn't even know I looked like I was about to cry.

I smiled and looked up to see him looking at me as he sang. Of course, it all went through my head in one blurry i-want-to-run-away kind of motion, but I smiled every time my sister looked at me. I didn't say a word until she was done hugging him and saying her goodbyes, no doubt telling him to call her sometime.

I wish him and I were like nine year olds, and making up already so we can go back to playdates on the jungle gym and coloring book pictures. But I know better, and unfortunately I know there is no sheilding my sister from knowing the same, harsh truth one day.

Second Chances

This is a poem I wrote while sitting in The Flying M coffee house downtown, boise. It has something to do with everything I keep locked up in my head... and I wish there was more I could do to make it vocal rather than typing it here. But this is a release, so enjoy...


There he was walking out the door
Out of my life
Out of my mind with the anger and loss I just let him go
on his way and on and on I replay
What happened and how it could have been done
Better, will I be better soon?

I'm asking that metaphysical god for some kind of answer
to the questions posed as prayers
to the thoughts I think I want to think less about today
For a solution to the pain
for a pain that goes without him and is unrelated to the past
Will it ever really end
or is every end a second chance?

When I sit here on this faded out sectional I can split it up
and think about one little thing at one little time
letting him absorb into my pores, letting him fall back out of good graces
losing him without any of that so called grace myself
he did say I was a bad ex, the worst of them all because I actually
gave a damn,
gave him my best,
gave it all up when he left
and now nothing is enough for me, wishing I could say nothing is enough
for either of us but no, he did the walking so....

No, I'm not going to admit to anything
I'll say I dont want to talk and you'll believe me and go on with that fake idea that
I'm so fucking happy, because I've been playing my part
like a good girl, like the one I used to be before he completed
me, the me that is dead and gone
clinging to the coffee mug I will throw into the dish bin in moments
leaving her just like they all do
in this second rate fogged over memory
the places mean nothing without him, and so I go to try to keep them
trying to keep him

So I stopped playing games with god
I let him win and take it all
waiting on my happy ending
waiting on the waiter to ask me if I need something else with his eyes from across
the endless expanses of a nearly closed cofee house
this is the end,
another end
but endings are second chances...

at least until we end our lives

Love is Friendship on Fire...

If love is supposed to be a friendship set on fire, then why is it so much harder to have a frienship after being in love? Is it because we're all soggy and covered in the water we used to put out our fire, and secretly we just want to go home and dry off instead of standing there getting water droplets on the floor?

It's kind of awkward. I know I've only been in love once, at least I assume it was love because it was the only time I felt the way I did, and there I was sitting on the sofa looking at him drinking coffee with the muscles in my face becoming numb from the forced smile I have pasted on my lips. We don't have anything to say, and I feel like everytime I make a jump to speak it has something to do with our relationship in some way, and he can't look at me, and I want to scream. WHAT HAPPENED!? Yet, in some sick way, my heart is racing a million miles an hour at the fact that he even showed up and is attempting to put in the effort to be my friend.

Friends are good. I keep assuring myself his being there is great, because now I can gain closure and he can be in this little tiny spot in my life even just for a two hour coffee meeting with friends. That's better than the six months of ignoring each other unless it was to bicker or beg. I texted him, thinking he wouldn't respond because he never does, and yet he says he'll join me for coffee. I spend the next twenty minutes having turret like symptoms as I crane my head around to look out the weindow in five second intervals.

I'm waiting to see him, because I know that I will recognise him a mile away. At least, I think I will. He couldnt have changed that much, right? My friends around me are laughing in that forced awkward kind of way because they worry for my sanity as I bounce up and down and try to determine the right way to place my hands so I look casual. Ah, the intricate nature of a dead relationship! I see him, like I knew I would, wearing his flannel and ripped jeans. He walks in a bouncy, almost feminine way and I can't help but to let out a huge sigh and look wide-eyed at the girl next to me.

He's texting, which I know to either be a defense mechanism or destraction. Maybe he was regretting this, maybe he was afraid, I can't really say. I look away the closer he comes, and pretend to occupy myself with my own phone. He walks in and does this grimace type face, walks straight to the counter and orders. I wonder what he was thinking.

When he comes to sit, he forces himself between two people, one being a stranger and the other our old mutual friend, instead of taking the huge empty space next to me. Like I have the plague or something, but that's fine because I can look at him and hear him and that's better than I've had in the last six months so I honestly don't care where he chose to sit. I'm reminding myself to be cool, because it's not that I intended to trick him into coming as some ex-girlfriend drama or anything but god he's beautiful. I distract myself by saying one quick 'hi' to him and then turning away to carry on a very thin and polite conversation with my other friends.

He doesn't say a word, like he's just waiting for this mistake to end so he can go back to his life. But eventually he warms up, he starts to make jokes and make fun and have conversations. But not with me. He can't even look at me. At some point everyone except him and I are gone and I smile at him and he kind of forces a smile and looks at a spot above my shoulder. Why he can't look at me, I don't know. We all have our defenses. But I talk, in an almost too happy way, about the things he might care about or might not.

I tell him about my sister, she loved him so much that I think it was a bad idea to bring her up because he looked like I had stuck a fork in his arm. I never thought about it from his point of view, but he has to be hurting too. Maybe he functions better, but there was a huge part for me to play in his life just as much as there was for him in mine. We broke each other, to a degree, but I wasn't thinking. When he's around, I felt alive. And not alive because I was fueled by sadness but happy, and anxious, feeling this adrenaline rush because he was there in front of me.

He couldn't once look at me, our eyes only met once or twice by accident and we both looked away. For me it was painful, I know the color of his eyes too well to want to look into them. For him I think it was just awkward. He leaned over and whispered to my friend and showed him a picture of his new girlfriend, thinking I didn't hear so I pretended not to, and it actually didn't hurt. I was glad for him, happy he was happy. That was always the intention for me. I guess seeing him, thinking about being friends at some point, made whatever very visible changes I saw in him seem okay.

People change, as I keep saying, and we both have changed. But when a song came over the radio that was playing in the cafe and I got excited and said "This is my song!" and he smiled sincerely and half whispered "I know!" and hummed along while I sang the words, I realized that what happened is always going to be engraved in our memories. The bits and pieces of each other (like my song or his eye color) will stay with us until god-only knows when, and that makes it real. That makes me feel less crazy. It helped me so much, helped me feel human. And even though I don't believe we will ever be together the way we were in my Once-Upon-A-Time, I am content to say we are working on a reconciliation and friendship.

A friendship that I hope will one day dry itself off from the water used to put out the flames, and blossom into something that is good for both of us.