all at once

i kept

all the sweet things in a file. girls do that i think. all the sweet nothings that might have meant something if i had any patience. i'm slipping. not down, just out. i'm slipping too fast and too far from anything recognizable, and it's the same damn problem i keep running into, but they're not really problems, they're just things that don't have solutions yet. the thing is, i keep slipping too far away and it's like i can't recognize the things i have and what they are anymore because

because

the measuring rod by which i kept track of what lovely and love were

have changed

or shifted

or been taken down.

after things got bad at home, i haven't been able to figure out anything anymore.

patience

is the one thing i will never be able to keep much of, and with that i am certain i will never be able to keep anyone close. i keep everyone at bay. that's the worst of it all; i keep everyone at bay and with that it seems to be my most gracious company. i can count in my head the handful who have stuck through, one of whom is living with me, another few scattered around the state.

i think

i think i fear anyone getting too close again

because

i still can't get over how much i lost myself the last time and i don't want that to happen

(again

again

again)...

...

"you need too much attention" he said. they could kill if they were anything but words.

"that's too easy" i thought, and i thought more about how i need someone who can put up a better fight. attention is easy to give and easy for me to live without (the sullen bay being my most giving of company). calling it attention would be too easy, and maybe i just gave up with it being a simple name for something so much bigger.

the webs we weave ourselves can either bind us else...

"it's not attention i need" i thought. i didn't have the energy to argue so i let it go. sometimes that's all the beauty we can find: the letting go. the truth was that i didn't know what any of it looked like anymore. i didn't know how to say "everything you've told me i've heard before and had my heart broken worse", and i didn't know how to tell him "everything you've done for me i've had done before" because the truth cuts deeper than anyone wants to talk about. he could have told me every day for a hundred years i was something, but i'm lots of things to lots of different people, maybe seven hundred years worth of different things to different people. i didn't need attention, i needed to know why this was any different from anything else. i'd been told too many times before that someone's wanted to keep me forever, so much so that forever means nothing.

everything's been stripped of meaning.

i needed definition.

that's something i lost a long time ago, and have been stumbling in and out of relationships (boyfriends, family, friendships and otherwise) trying to figure out. "it's great that i'm special, but why am i special to you." i was awful. maybe i still am. i don't need attention. i don't need structure. maybe i just need someone who knows what the hell they're doing.

i guess i just need someone willing to fight me for me.