As she sits in the shadows..

There’s the debate still in my mind.. Do I stay or go? I have only one more day to make up my mind, before the diary is gone..

This has been a year of change.. and much of it was not good. I’ve learned a lot of things, quite a few not so good, mostly about myself.

This time of year, well, relief begins to set in. The holidays are the worst.. It is like a pressure cooker in my mind and in my heart, steam building until it’s ready to explode. Although this time.. it did, at E.

He accused me of being like my ex-roommate, of loving misery and striving to keep myself in that frame of mind. Where months ago I railed at my ex-roommate for wallowing in the pit of his own design.

In many ways, I do acknowledge that I do make things extraordinarily difficult for myself. I don’t believe I adore being miserable, but.. I also don’t know how to be happy. It’s like a child with a balloon, afraid the merest breeze will tear it out of their fingers, to fly far beyond where anyone can capture it, with only the knowledge that for a brief moment, there was that chance, before it is gone and never again will they hold the string and feel the dance of motion in their fingertips with this one particular balloon.

Of course, the child can find other balloons, but none will be that particular one, and if it’s one that the child had his or her heart set on.. then the rest will be merely substitutions.

In my life, I have had many people pass through, many that when they were confronted with the true torrent of my emotions, railed at me in a similar fashion.. though I tried to break through the walls of my own devising, I allowed the walls to build after the first onslaught and eventually walked away, the door closed. Never to speak to them again, never knowing what became of them.

I cannot blame others for becoming impatient with me, for I am the first in line to tell myself what a fool I am, how blinded by the past I am, and that I alone am responsible for the life I now live.

However.. I sit here in silence, my two cats sleeping mere feet from me and I hear the fan of the heater to keep my room warm. It’s peaceful, even if it is alone. And my mind is peaceful for this moment in time. It is the last three months of the year and the first month, a quarter of the year, that I am tormented most of all. Now that it is February, I can breathe again.

When speaking to DarkRen, I acknowledged I was not always like this. I used to adore the holidays, craving the magic with them. Wanting to experience the joy, the laughter, and the sharing. I enjoyed shopping and seeing pleasure in others’ faces for gifts. I know though, that much changed when I was with T. His family made holidays difficult, I was the one who shopped for everyone else, trying to keep things festive while T begrudged every second. Preparing a holiday dinner with china a crystal and a meal that would be costly in a restaurant.. while the one I prepared it for sat like a lump on the couch and grumbled the entire time. When he finally sat at the table it was with ill-grace and no words of praise, the things that I had spent hours shopping for, shrugged at, and the cheap offerings those things that I specifically requested not to receive. However, with T, it mattered only that he liked what he gave, not what the recipient would wish. I have never understood that mindset, I doubt I ever shall.

Yearly I would plan surprises for his birthday, trying each year to have his friends around him without him guessing. He adored the attention, he thrived on being center stage, yet he left it to me to come up with what we should do for my own. Only once did he plan to surprise me, and when he did it blew me away. I have to admit that he did plan one birthday that meant very much to me, it wasn’t that he couldn’t if he felt so inclined, it was that he rarely was so.

There are many more stories I could relate, events that certain times of the year trigger in my mind to bring to the surface. And it is as if I am caught in the headlights, gazing in dread at what was, not what is. When I come to the present time and see that it is a room, with my computer, my two cats slumbering and my heater, it reminds me that time slips away so fast, each year passing faster and faster towards the inevitability of age.

Why do I set myself up for failure and to be alone? Why will I not allow myself the leeway to dream or even try? Other than the obvious conclusion that I am a complete and utter coward? I think it is because it is easier to handle ‘what is’ then to disturb the balance and introduce chaos. Though I loathe what my life is, it’s ‘known’, it’s a given. There’s no surprise, good or bad, to shatter the silence. Less chance of grief, less likelihood of pain. Though I should correct that and say, ‘more pain’, because I cause myself quite enough as it is.

And while I know I said I would not write again, here I face my notepad and type words in a blur. Sighing to myself in knowing it is yet another bout of angst. But I’m not crying and I’m not hurting at this time. I am merely searching and questioning myself. And if that is not the purpose of diaries, then I do not know what is.

Will I stay or go? I still do not know. For I see myself still where I was when I first began, no closer to understanding or resolving my life, then when first I began over two years ago. Perhaps this entry is my own way of celebrating the fact that I survived the last four months.. I have a respite now, and can try again to find peacefulness in solitude.

It doesn’t hurt so much when the holidays are past, when there are no expectations or events to dread. From September, until this time of year, the first of February, I seem to badger myself to almost a pulp in my mind. It might be a form of trying to distract myself from what is occurring, I am not sure. But at least for now, things are not so bleak as they were. Yes.. there is relief at this moment, even though still I hide. For now.