Monday, January 07, 2008

Can you mend a broken heart? I don't think our company makes those.

I remember several years ago during that long stretch that I was alone raising three kids, listening to Dr Dobson on the radio talking about how love works. I though it was very profound when he described it like a flowering plant. He said love needed water and light and nourishment to keep growing. Like any plant, it can take a bit of difficulty - cold spells, drought and even some tough storms. If those things come to close together and there isn't time to recover, the plant starts to die - even if it wants to stay living very very badly.

No one, least of all me, wants to see a litany of the substantial loss we incurred last year. And yet those who ignore their history are bound to repeat it. I'm tired of the same mistakes and am moving closer to accepting that my mom may in fact be correct - that I am too strong willed to be married to someone.

I have tried to keep positive, be supportive, be the strong one - but there is only so long you can go without water - only so long you can hold up those branches without support. Pretty soon you start doing more and more on your own, telling yourself that once again you stink at being a wife. If I were any good at it he would rise to the occasion - at least that is what people have said - be supportive, be kind, cover things until he is able. I inflict the pain on myself in addition to that which is left to me. The days drag on and the work piles up- dishes in need of washing - a carport still stacked with crap - clothes not put away from the wash three weeks ago - and the worse it gets the further away I pull.

There is the inability to do what I do by nature - encourage, forgive, laugh - like my hydrangeas during the drought who kept trying to bloom only to have those beautiful attempts at blue flowers come out pale and brown way too soon. It seems that whatever I do to try to get back to that relationship I thought I had - to get back to where love exist and trust and honesty prevail - well those attmepts seem to just make it worse. I am always apologizing and after so much loss, I cannot be left again. When things don't go well, it is easier to just pull up roots and run.

That is what I am good at - starting over.

So for this moment, I give up. Whatever force in the universe has deemed that I should never love someone who loves me back - who laughs at the cruel joke of breaking my heart once again - well you win. I am so so tired and apparently I am not ever going to be enough and whateveI have tried is futile. So laugh your ass off cruel fate, I will no longer be your victim.
I will be mother to three beautiful children, I will come home, play mother for 6 hours after working the last 10 and I will go to sleep alone - never again feeling the comfort of a man. I will be good to my patients, I will go feed the homeless on Saturday and give my time to the Church on Sunday and hope will not be taken from me.

2 comments:

nora leona said...

Oh sweetie...I'm thinking about you...

Dale said...

Me too.