The Downward Spiral (Our Soundtrack)

I feel like some sort of Victorian-era wife. I allowed you your indiscretions. I even encouraged them for your happiness above all. I turn my eye. I turn the other cheek. But I am bound in some antiquated system of ties and restrictions.

You somehow encourage me still to be more like you. And the more you do, the more I hold fast to my frigid ways. The smallest touch seems like the greatest betrayal.

I hate that after all of this time, I do not belong to you anymore... I haven't for so long. But my body and my brain have not received the message yet. I have a mental shut down, a physical freeze up.

I wish I could be the me before I met you. I have all of this ancient baggage I am dragging around with me. It is heavy as hell. I keep warning others not to try to help me take it on. So many have tried. But after a few groaning steps, they can't continue.

I am so used to waiting for your whim that I am completely comfortable in my solitude. I pass the time with sleeping and creating and living inside my head. It has made me calmer and quieter than I used to be. And alternately, much louder when it is warranted. I have screamed at your ghost in the empty, rain-lit streets during too many whiskey-boiled nights in my evenings best, my eyeliner creating little black fractures on my pale face.

Today it was a morning cocktail of the bends and almost-tears. I've decided I must be poison. No good has come from my pursuits in years. I attack, I inhale, I spit out in disdain... disdain for the act, for the taste, for the thought of the destruction at my hand. I got to the point to choose between nothing and everything... so I taught myself how to become a glutton of affection, drowning in sensuality. But never allowing satisfaction.
No, I am far too calculated at this point. Mixed with my Puritanical upbringing, I deprive like I was born to do it.

All because I couldn't break you down, I am compelled to break everyone else down around me.
But truly... I am just a shaking, fragile wreck.

Power Shifts and Balances

It did not wreck me to see you. I was so surprised that I felt so little towards you.

You, the one who can shake me faster than anyone else, left me without tears or anger this time.
Oh, how I still wanted you... But I did not NEED you.

But then it preyed on me last night, subtly nibbling on my nighttime wounds, laid bare by romanticism and unhealthy doses of media soaked in nostalgia and un-reality.

I rarely am affected anymore, but it strikes always when I expect it least. I cried a little. Not for you so much as for the death of the dream that I once had when I was young, the murdered youth of us all as we age.

We all have to lose our starry-eyed expressions and naivete as we gain experience. And for the better, I think. There is a certain calm that comes with knowing truths and lies that previously eluded me.

It is hard to think of how cruelly life worked against us in our paths and choices more than anything.
I either perhaps will always love you or maybe never really did. I'm not sure that one can tell the difference.

There only two things left to dwell upon at this point. Should I allow one last time of exploration? And also, why does my dissatisfaction only come up when I am trying to move on with someone new?

I am quite at ease and happy on my own. But every time I try to venture into a new relationship or even just a flirtation, it is the trigger that sends my emotions to scatter and I bolt. I can't help but leave them as quickly as I found them.

I do not fear the pain that is possible with romantic couplings. I fear the intimacy. I hate letting men see my flaws and inner self. I hate working past the awkward first stages. I hate giving up my independence. I hate compromising. I know that I am selfish for it. But how I love my solitude...

You taught me so much. You woke me up. But now I am lingering, dormant and apathetic. It is such a waste. But perhaps just a season...