House-sitting

There can’t possibly be anything new to say about any of this.

I don’t want to be around or talk to people at all. They bring with them, unintentionally of course, a soft, fresh layer of guilt that falls gently like snow over everything. I picture it in the halo from a streetlight, moving impossibly slow. And, like snow, it is cold but somehow feels like its burning.

Loved ones are an unwelcome reminder that I am lucky, have nothing really to bitch about, and thus am merely a self-indulgent asshole. At this point I generally remind myself that negative self-talk will only make things worse. Following that, I beat myself up for indulging in negative self-talk when I clearly know better. Then, more guilt. Often, a hopelessness that is oddly welcoming – I am so very tired of hoping that this will lift someday and things like breathing, showering, dishes…will be relatively easy again.  The phrase “holding out hope” is perfect. It sounds very tiring.

Eventually I will turn and look at them, silently forgive them for my resentment, for making me feel more alone by virtue of their mere presence. I’ll lose myself, from time to time, in a bizarrely self-centered form of empathy. What are they doing here? What is going through their heads? Why can’t they see that I make everything worse? How awful this must be for all of them…

It doesn’t matter who. I’ve dodged phone calls and eye contact with everyone from friends to family to the guy at Turkey Hill who calls me “hon” and is always, annoyingly, smiling. I have recently taken to locking the cats out of the room, too, telling them “can’t you see I am incapable of love?”

Yet there Love is, because the exhausting weight of letting others down couldn’t survive without it. If I didn’t care…well then I wouldn’t care. It’s little solace that if we’re close, sometime at some point in our relationship I have told them to run, and for reasons beyond my comprehension they chose to ignore my good advice.

There exists within me, of course, the understanding that this is all bullshit. That I am worthy of love and people choose to have me in their lives with good reason.  It’s a notion I care for like house-sitting, keeping the plants at least alive until such a time that I might find myself able to care for them again.

Buried under all of this is the fear that they will realize I was right all along, and go on their merry way. Part of me would be so happy for them – being so very sick of me myself I couldn’t begrudge them their escape. I imagine the little party I would throw for them in my heart. Confetti and streamers and underpaid wait staff singing a catchy ‘congratulations on your recent emancipation’ tune…the other part, I suppose, would hold a wake.

*sigh* It will lift soon. I am too tired to try chasing it away again; I will just have to wait it out.  Do damage control as best I can. House-sit for Love.