enough
I swung on this pendulum for many years.
I must repair myself or no one will want me.
The right Him will guide me, fix me.
How can I look outside of myself for direction?
For awhile, I came to a tentative agreement with the idea that some mystical male would guide me, correct me, complete me, fix me. A lot of us think that, right? Maybe more so in this world.
I am insignificant and insufficient on my own without Your strong hand!
I rattled about this world on edge, a careening pinball on a nonsensical labyrinth. Halfheartedly looking for that elusive Him, I spun chaotic through deep black midnights, the flat black of a hopeless soul.
I have my type that turns my head and always will, gaunt nightmare creations in black and maybe even eyeliner. That stink of sweet poison that beguiles me every time, tattered visions fraying out at the seams. I fell in love with that perfection for the first time when I was 17, a dangerous boy all in black with a mind that trapped my words in a corner until the proud virginal farm girl that I was dreamed in blood and unspoken longing, craved this physical embodiment of dark ideas that had stalked my mind for as long as I could remember. He destroyed me, he created me - all in a single sun-drenched autumn afternoon, all without laying a finger on me. I hid this knowledge so very deep, I sought to fool myself and so it was all unreciprocated, unrequited.
I wanted what was denied to me. I sought carbon copies of that dreadfully beautiful boy.
That type that turned my head was more often than not vain, oh-so-vain and I quickly grew bored. Eyeliner smudges off and when those beautiful vicious lips part, the banality would bore me to tears. Every midnight has a sunrise, and the truth revealed by that sunrise...ugh.
I am strong, fierce, I radiate confidence. Perhaps those things aren't exactly true, but I know how to control and manipulate what others think and it delights me to do that. With enough bravado, panache, pizazz oozing from every pore nobody ever questions you.
Of course, nobody ever looks closer, either.
I radiated these things so that I would someday convince myself. Long strides with shoulders back and my chin oh-so-high. It kept the tears from spilling out and if you looked into my eyes you could see the fault lines fracturing as you watched.
But who looks?
If I could just find that Him, He would look! He would see and gather those fault lines together, paste them together with the slurring drunkenness of the endorphin rush that all good masochists crave.
My mind unraveled bit by bit into those flat black nights so I tried winding it back up with anything I could lay my hands on. Make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop give me silence just for one blessed day for I feel as if I will shatter into a thousand sharp edged pieces, my skin cannot contain this. The things I laid my hands on gave me precious seconds of silence then unraveled me further.
I wanted a Him, a dark twisted nightmare that would corner me with words until I begged to submit. I fought that urge within myself - I wanted a Him to force me to admit these things I wanted until I had no rationalization left to dance around it. I wanted a Him to hurt me until I achieved that marvelous numbness. Hurting yourself just isn't the same, there is no anticipation to sugar coat the impact.
And yet, there was none to be found. Too eccentric, too goth, too wild at heart and untameable. Wrap that up in too much intelligence and who wants it? Sharp tongued and acidic, thinking the right Him will see past that and bridle that wildness.
For awhile, I thought that was D. I had more education, but he was wily. I decimated him at chess but he took charge anyway, pushed me up against a wall and pinned me there. I was dark and goth, piercing my body with safety pins to get that pain, him a vision of clean, preppy good looks. I wore my darkness on the outside, he hid his away behind golden skin.
And yet...it wasn't enough. It wasn't the right Him for what I was after, although I loved him. I was still unraveling, leaking out around the seams. I found opiates around then - right before, right after? It muddies. Ah yes! This was it, a simulacrum of what I was looking for.
D dissolved into viciousness beyond what I wanted, craved. There is a line and it was crossed, many times. And yet, I could not, would not walk away. More lines scored onto that glass chessboard, just filter it from behind this opiate haze because who else wants you? We were to 'take a break' for my sake, since I was disappearing into insanity but D interpreted that as rejection and lashed out at me.
And so, I fell apart. There was no Him to guide me, fix me, hold me. I took slow, agonizing steps to fix myself.
And then that dreadfully beautiful boy resurfaced. I was wary, standoffish. It had been years and I still harbored the bruises of our parting, deeply scored into my soul. He coaxed me with acerbic wit until I couldn't hold my tongue and roused from the fuzzy trance that I moved through the world in.
That chess game I lost.
What I had thought unreciprocated for so many years was in fact, not. We were both proud, stubborn. He made me gasp, he made me beg, he trapped me with my words. That dreadfully beautiful boy had grown into a viciously addictive man. I clung to his voice through memories of D, the golden haze long worn away. I clung to his voice through wretchedly difficult months of learning to exist and function without opiates. I despaired of ever regaining this knack of life without pills or sticky brown powders so many times, and every time a wave of longing threatened to bowl me over he was my floodwall keeping me contained.
Surely this was the Him that would complete me so perfectly.
And yet...my timing was always off. There was always another woman. No - I became the other woman.
A Him, a Sir, they cannot complete you when you cannot respect them, when loathing them eventually makes you loathe yourself.
I flew to him, 2000 miles away, it ripped my heart out out to fly back home. It was a beautiful week of imagination, our 'golden week'. Vicious and carnal and bloodstained...I carefully slit open my skin and he locked eyes with me as he licked up my blood. I am the Master, you are the prey.
Jealousy spiraled out of control, and that anger fed my secret places of inadequacy. It all deteriorated over years. He pushed past boundaries that should not have been touched and that eroded my trust. If we weren't engaged in wild, soul-searing sexual power games we were fighting until I was reduced to quivering mess with no way to regain myself other than a razor blade.
This is not how a Him was supposed to shape my life or complete me...
The addict has a hell of a time getting away, but I knew I had to. I couldn't live with him, I couldn't tear myself away. I exploded what was left and forced his hand, which destroyed me at the same time.
It was like learning how to live without opiates all over again. Have you torn away part of your soul and tried to be a meaningful person afterwards? External pressures kept me from careening and so I drank a fifth of whiskey every night in the bathtub until the cooling water sucked me into a mental hospital.
Post hospital, one foot in front of the other, that Lacuna Coil setback but in recovery we do not cope with substances or knives. My soul scabbed over - a scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding - and I needed the bleeding stopped. But the scars wouldn't stop growing until I became unreachable, impenetrable.
Now, more than ever, I needed a Him, a Sir, a Master to hurt me into the right path.
This one whipped me with my own belt until I was delirious with delight, welts and bruises rising instantly to pale Irish skin. Another one demanded I braid my hair in pigtails, bound my hands behind my back and buckled a ball gag in place, then showed me my reflection in the mirror. You're a dirty slut, aren't you? This is when you are most beautiful. More beating, belt, cane, flogger, paddle until my flesh was marked and my mind finally silent except for please.
But these men weren't enough. They could not put me together again, they could not keep up with who I was outside of the need for debasement, outside of the masochism.
And so I gave up. I resigned myself to the idea that there was no Him that was enough to guide me and fix me and love me and hold me. I became accustomed to the idea that as a whole, I was unlovable. Maybe this part of me or that part of me was acceptable, but all together? Not possible.
And once I did that, I began to heal myself. I lanced the abscess around the memory of that viciously addictive man and let my heart finally heal. A good friend helped the rest of it follow until I realized that I was enough without a Him to guide me.
It was enough, who I was right at that moment. My strengths and my weaknesses, my flaws and my idiosyncrasies, my successes and my failures. It was enough and I could stand on my own.
I was enough.