“Good King of Cats, only one of your nine lives”

What I hear is “I don’t trust myself”.

Let me put this down here so that you can hear me. So it can never be deleted. Established 2013.

What I want from you is friendship. I want the kind of friendship that develops over years. Where trust is given but also earned. Where we know so much about each other that it is comfortable & safe. Where we can spend hours together doing activities & our partners can trust us. I want to be able to talk about anything & everything. I want to be able to talk about politics without one of us getting angry & I want to be able to talk about sex without it becoming about you & me. It is not about you & me. It is about the bond.

It does not matter to me that I am attracted to you. I am attracted to lots of people. I would argue that no one is friends with anyone they are not, on some level, attracted to. It is simple biology. Desire is natural. What happens in our heads is entirely ours & no one can judge that. Dreams are not actions.

You said you find this situation unusual. That I would be honest with Corsmor about how I feel. The proposition that you & I can be close without having to have a sexual relationship, you find new & unusual. Well perhaps it is by today’s standards. Today’s standards of unachievable romantic-movie versions of love, friendship & marriage. To me marriage is about constantly learning from each other because you can be completely honest without fear of recrimination or embarrassment. It’s about accepting the other person & vowing to help them become someone more than they are. I see friendship the exact same way. Real friendship. It’s like a marriage & both are hard work. Sure, most of the time they flow along nicely in a routine but you have to keep a constant vigil on that. It stops being easy if no one cares & no one puts in effort.

So here I am, married, which I always wanted to be but never thought I would be. Me. Married. & Corsmor – married? Do you know how many times I have had to field the question,
“How did you get him to marry you?”
It is somewhat insulting & shows how little they know him. I didn’t ‘get him’ to do anything. We fell in love. We spent many years developing a connection & friendship before we ever became a couple & before ever having sex but we had been committed to each other from day one. We both knew we would spend forever together & we’d go to the ends of the earth to make that happen. And we did. That’s the difference.

You & I both have partners who love us & who we love back. They are significantly awesome people. They are the number one’s. They are what makes both of us special. She comes first & so does he. I respect her & I respect what you have together.

I am committed to my friendship with you in the same way I am committed to my marriage. I am committed to learning about you. To being there when you need me & annoying you when you don’t. It’s not logical in my head. It’s just a bond that we seem to have. A bond that I would like to see become something more than friendship, something like best friends, or brother & sisters. But in reality, it probably has a league of its own.

If this is something that you want – if it’s a desire you share or you see this potential in me, then please, keep talking. If not, just say goodbye & let this end. Go back to how you were before we talked. & be happy. Because I can’t do this if you are scared. I can’t do this if you’re unhappy. & I won’t do this if every day we’re faced with fear. Trust yourself. Trust me. If we don’t have that, then there’s nothing here.

Lights Out

I can say I tried but the lights are on & no one’s home. It’s not the same, your voice has changed & it’s like talking to someone who doesn’t know me at all. Sterilized. Only myself to blame, when you do what I did then the shades tend to come down.

Sunburn

There is so much I would like to say but no chance of knowing where to begin so I feel that until I do know that I should not. I do not even know how to tell you that much.

What happened did not just come out of nowhere. I felt trapped & coaxed into a corner; into subjects & actions & a darkness where I had not wanted to go. Then you described yourself as a vampire & I knew I was looking down into my grave. Then you said I was not special & I knew that I had been buried.

You said the most important thing in a friendship is trust. Then you told me you trust no one because everybody has their price. How can something be important to you that you, yourself, are not willing to give?

This plays over in my head. I re-read everything in my mind. I play it back in my voice, in your voice, from different angles, upside down. Nothing. This is all still a mess to me & I do not know how to come back from here.

In the very beginning I told you that I always disappoint people. That I always fuck things up. That it was, this time, important to me that did not happen.

Well here we are & here I have done just that. I am left with a silence caused by my own words & my own darkness leaking out into yours.

I wish there was a light that would fix this. I wish I could switch it on & the page would fill with a glow that erased the hurt & confusion. I wish we could talk. Even if you are a vampire. After all it wouldn’t have to be sunlight & if I were real careful, maybe neither of us would get burned.

A Sweet Pair

There are those days that all we want to hear is “I Know” & “it’s Okay”. Those days always come at the worst times. When there is no one around that wants to placate to our feelings. Those days burgeon into times where we cannot get anything right. We chase that sense of happiness that we had days previous but they have absconded. They have betrayed us for the lost boy we see in the mirror.

But I know; it is okay. I know because there is an identical identity hiding just behind the mirror. She will step out if only you would stop looking at your own reflection & see the truth of the both of us looking back at you.

 

I Know ~~ Fiona Apple
 
So be it, I’m your crowbar
If that’s what I am so far
Until you get out of this mess
And I will pretend
That I don’t know of your sins
Until you are ready to confess
But all the time, all the time
I’ll know, I’ll know
And you can use my skin
To bury your secrets in
And I will settle you down
And at my own suggestion,
I will ask no questions
While I do my thing in the background
But all the time, all the time
I’ll know, I’ll know
I can’t help you out, while she’s still around
So for the time being, I’m being patient
And amidst this bitterness
If you’ll consider this-even if it don’t make sense
All the time-give it time
And when the crowd becomes your burden
And you’ve early closed your curtains,
I’ll wait by the backstage door
While you try to find the lines to speak your mind
And pry it open, hoping for an encore
And if it gets too late, for me to wait
For you to find you love me, and tell me so
It’s ok, don’t need to say it

You Don’t Know Me At All

So you think you know me from little things I have said or because you’ve known me for what you deem to be ‘long enough’. I will tell you now, it will NEVER be long enough…

I wanna ask you –
Do you ever sit and wonder,
It’s so strange
That we could be together for
So long, & never know, never care
What goes on in the other one’s head?
 
Things I’ve felt but I’ve never said
You said things that I never said
So I’ll say something that I should have said long ago:
 
You don’t know me
You don’t know me at all
You don’t know me
You don’t know me at all
 
You could have just propped me up
On the table like a mannequin
Or a cardboard stand-up & paint me
Any face that you wanted me
To be seen.
We’re damned by the existential moment where
We saw the couple in the coma &
It was we were the cliche,
But we carried on anyway.
 
So, sure, I could just close my eyes.
Yeah, sure, trace and memorize,
But can you go back once you know
 
You don’t know me
You don’t know me at all
You don’t know me
You don’t know me at all
 
If I’m the person that you think I am
Clueless chump you seem to think I am
So easily led astray,
An errant dog who occasionally escapes and needs a shorter leash, then
Why the fuck would you want me back?
 
Maybe it’s because
You don’t know me at all
~~ Lyrics by Ben Folds