Learning to Walk

It's hard, after coming from a history where disappointment mounted disappointment, to be hopeful for the future.
It's hard, because experience has taught that time and time again, the good things are temporary. To take anything for granted is to lose it, and to put faith in anything is to watch it fail.

It's frustrating to try and get up after that. To take baby steps, it's never fast enough. "Sometimes, you have to just be happy, and throw yourself onto other people," they say. They're fools.

I don't know if I could do it again. I don't know if I could let someone get so close that they would know me, my insecurities, and my secrets. I've grown harder over the years, but just the sheer callousness of those who came before still smarts. I can't help but think what would happen if I armed someone with knowledge about me. What kind of damage they could do.

There are times when I wish I could say "just fuck 'em, who needs them?" and be done with it. But I know, despite my strength, I'm not whole. Not yet. No one is, in their own right. That wanting feeling can be slaked, it can be delayed, it can be filled for a while, but it will never disappear completely. It always comes back.

I thought about that, lying in somebody else's bed. I lied there thinking to myself that I had everything that should complete the formula. And yet, I was still restless and malcontent. I had the right parts, but they didn't fit. She wasn't the right one, despite her constant chiming that we would live forever and ever happily ever after.

No fairytales. She wasn't the right one, and to this day, she still doesn't believe it. This is the callousness as well, that once I'm near, I'm some chattel that can be claimed. I belong to nobody. I make demands of nobody. Whoever I listen to, I listen to out of respect. Whoever I love, I love because I choose to and never will I be ransomed for it! I've been called flighty. Some even dared call me unfaithful.

It makes me wonder, what kind of sheltered life they must live, if frankly discussing with someone how things aren't working constitutes unfaithfulness. I didn't string her along. I didn't keep her waiting in bed while I philandered with the local girls. I didn't make excuses and then use the good faith of the relationship as a weight to guilt her into submission. I frankly opened myself.

And if such is the response I get, I am always curious why I'm so honest and forthright. I could bring a platter of silver, and methinks the ladies would complain it's not gold. Such has been my luck. And yet they're perfectly willing to settle for chops of lead and cadmium, such caustic personalities they do absolutely adore.

I find this world lacking in explanations, and altogether drowning in poor advice. And this is why it is frustrating that I must take baby steps before I can walk, before I can run. Before I can rush and hopefully be there before it's all too late, and everything I want has disappeared.