I keep secrets. I have to, to protect myself. We all do. No one really knows what is inside of someone's mind, what they are capable of doing. I keep secrets too.
When I was younger I feel in love with a tree: the elephant tree. I loved this tree so much because it looked like an elephant. Elephants already had a very special place in my heart and i loved this tree. When I came home from school sometime in early elementary school the gardeners had cut it down. It was right after I had read the giving tree. I hate those men. I hated myself for not protecting the tree. I hated.
When a former friend of mine went away in October I stayed at his house. I would never tell him but once, when I slept at his place, i brought over my animals; I wanted them to see the place, i had told them so much.
I lied about when Evan asked me to marry him. We were on the floor in my forsaken apartment, doing more than kissing, when he asked me. I remember thinking about the hole i had just made in the door. I remember thinking about the carpet.
There are days when I believe somehow that the secrets will fall away. That somehow I will be able to keep moving, keep walking. I think that I can watch the thoughts float away as leaves down a river and I will find peace, I will find quiet.
When I was in middle school I had a special spot on top of this small mountain that I would climb. It wasn't far from my house and it was a treasured place. We even made Cappy walk up the steep slopes and rocky path, we carried a bowl so we could give him water at the top. It was the first time I saw my birthflower-asters. Years later my former best friend would tell her family and they would dig up the site to build a mansion.
The deciduous tree is a tree that lies to everyone. It plays dead. It makes all the leaves fall to the ground, abandon, alone, frail. It rids itself of everything from the last year, the markers, the habitats, and it rebuilds in the spring.
In the past four months I have had four friends get engaged. None of them are planning on being faithful to their future wives. All intend upon having open marriages. I have watched them all. I knew the last one was coming, i saw it days ago. I could lie and say it was a surprise and a coincidence but I knew, as I always somehow am blessed to. The first one joked that the wedding gifts would help pay off the debt him and his fiance have amassed. The second one has no idea why he is getting married other than that he needs to find a way to hold onto someone as someone else is slipping away. The third is a complete mystery to me based on the limited knowledge I have. The last is the first person I ever met in this new life. A man who told me he hated marriage, thought the idea was misogynistic and antiquated. He said it was something he would never want.
Being honest is too much to ask. I once asked a friend to keep a journal of his thoughts because i wanted so to understand how someone else thought. The mere act of writing the journal altered his thought process however. I want for someone to tell me the truth about what they are feeling, wanting but i know i dont get that.
When I joined this community i was inundated by things I had never experienced and yet, for the most part, i took them as acceptable. I wish I had known then what I know now. I wish that I could find people here who wanted to be here and didn't just run here from the rain. People lie about why they are here. So many are here because it is a group of outsiders and outsiders welcome other outsiders. It's why there are so many loners, so many with low self esteem. It is also why the community has trouble establishing boundaries and saying no. It is easier, more comfortable to simply accept others when that is what you so desperately need. But here, in this faux community, it is just the practice, the policy, to accept. So people flock. Not because this is what they have an interest in but because this is a group that will accept them. Which then means in turn that the new folks will be inundated with the accepted practices of the group and therefor the bad and the good that have become established are passed on to someone new.
When you see the trees in the dead of winter I imagine each of the limbs waiting to break off and snap under the heavy feet of those of walk over the fallen limbs. I see the leaves in the fall and imagine them blown far away, helpless and afraid. Yet, yet they seem so vulnerable, so bare.
I have been getting closer to colin lately and it dawned on me the high price that i have had to pay for that closeness. I started to realize that i was in no way a part of his life. He is taking his partners on at rip, he is leaving every weekend with them to do something. When he sees me we talk, or go to dinner, or do things. All of which are great but i know nothing about him. i was seeing other people at one point but as soon as i get close to one person it all fades away. I have no desire to go out and be intimate, close with half dozen people. I trust myself, my secrets with one person and i expect the same. to see colin so hopelessly falling around two people that aim to stay at best friendly with him, it confuses me. but then, i know that him and i are not meant to be anything so what's the trouble? i tried that logic for a month. it didn't work for me. i dont want to have a relationship with colin, i dont need to be the pretty girl he stares at in the morning and cuddles with every night. i didnt need to be the girl for whom he set aside time each night to talk on the phone. i didnt need that. a part of me still doesnt. but more of me does. the closer i get to him, the more i allow him to see me, the more i try to trust him, the more i need to feel safe and the fact that he wants me to house sit while he takes a vacation with the girls he loves? i think it's what triggered all this. normally i would just at such a chance but after everything with eduardo...
there's nothing for me in this city anymore. it took me till yesterday to say it out loud. i dont truly have friends here anymore. i dont have a ton of stability. there isnt a job i adore that is holding me. its not like thers a school i plan to go to here. i certainly dont have roots. and. frankly. i am tired of the bs of this city. the amount of bs that comes out of the people with whom i associate? terrifying. theres nothing i want here any longer. theres no one to hold me. theres nothing left here for me. i seek things that this city cant offer. least not to me.
i want to know someone. fully. i want to understand who they are.
the tree died. expertly planted and cared for by professionals and it died. my grandmother found seeds somehow for a palm tree and dropped them in the ground. they were planted less than half a foot from each other. ten years later and they grow strong.
i used to tell secrets to the wind and beg for them to be delivered. we would spend each summer in California and i would sneak out of the house at night and climb down to the ocean and beg for it to take me away. to be claimed. to be swept back to something that mattered.
i told colin to leave me alone. i didnt want to be that other person any longer. tonight i was loosing it, i was a wreck and i asked if i could see him, if i could go to his place and stay the night. i needed someone to stay with me and i had already lied once tonight. colin said he was busy, had work to finish. i hadnt ever asked him for help before.
my scars never went away from last time. i cut the hell out of myself. my arms, stomach, back, legs, i just kept cutting. even my neck. i didnt want to ever stop. i wanted to suffer. to atone. to stop thinking. to find quiet. i thought they would be gone by now. i guess somehow we all give away clues about who we are. clues about our secrets. even our friend the deciduous trees still forms rings to show her years, still grows taller.
if i cut tonight. if i opt to lose control. to give in. does anything change? i go to sleep drunk and alone and locked on a floating block of ice watching the world carried away in a slow current. but im still here. and im still the same.
when the last one told me he was getting married he waited for my congratulations. i never gave it. i wanted to. a part of me anyway. i want to celebrate marriage but instead. instead when i said goodbye and he asked why i was leaving him, why i was turning my back on the one thing he did that i would approve of, instead of congratulations i said:
"tell me it means something to you. tell me th most important thing on earth to me isnt a joke to you. tell me you didnt lie to me about marriage all those times. tell me it will effect your life. till me it will mean something to you. tell me that the only thing on earth that matters to me isnt being wasted on you. tell me."
that was six drinks ago. but i will always mean it.
i remember when i came here and everyone was so accepting of my waiting till marriage to have sex. no one minded at all. and yet all of them passed judgement on my not being poly. i finally had someone tell me why. it was because everyone thought i was saying i disapproved of their lives and their view of relationships. well now we're even. marriage is the most sacred thing on earth to me and i am furious that this is the only thing left that i want on earth and instead it is being handed out to people who couldnt care less.
i thought i was better yet here i am. wine in one hand knife in the other.
i wont let colin near me. eduardo has chosen his path and it doesnt include any friends.
but me and the tree. we want the same thing. we want a ring. we want to survive another winter. we want to come back in the sprring. we want it to be ok.
but that tree. with its beautiful green leaves and wonderful flowers, with every passing day, with every shortened hour of sunlight it knows, it knows its leaves grow weak and frail, it knows they lose their life line, their color, their chance. with every cold wind, and every long night the tree and i know that fall will come again and that sometimes, sometimes it isn't a lie, sometimes we do die, sometimes we don't come back. and sometimes, sometimes, its ok.
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