But that makes me sound selfish and weak, and I don't believe my behavior is actually selfish or weak. I just don't want the life that's waiting for me there. I don't want to take care of them anymore: not my parents, not my sisters, not my church, not my adopted family. Is it so wrong to not want to hold everyone and everything together? They are adults...shouldn't they hold themselves together?
If I am running away, I'm running from the fights, the threats of divorce, the actual divorce that's looming, the babysitting, the lies and secrets and distrust, the immaturity--I'm running from the life that I've helped plan, that's caged me in.
I need them all to let me go. I am willing to admit that I'm selfishly guarding my freedom now. I will not go back--they can survive without me, and if they can't, they can come and visit me. I will always be a daughter and a sister to them, but I can't be their rock; I can't be the dependable one. Is it still love is it has to be love from afar?
I will not watch another divorce, and I won't stay where the threat of them exists. I won't live in Ohio again.
The fact that I haven't talked to him in so long puzzles me. This is the longest we've gone without a conversation since we became good friends. I'm more bothered by the fact that I'm not bothered by the silence, than I am about the actual silence. Am I not bothered because I expected the silence, I always expected him to slowly leave? Or, am I content to be me without him as my safety net? I would hope, and be pleasantly surprised, if it was the latter, rather than the former?
For better or worse, there is romance and beauty in self destruction. There is an innate, painful balance between apathy and love. An automatic notion in which apathy shows up like a stray animal whenever love gets too close. An ability to cut ties and leave the people I love most when staying becomes more painful than leaving. A cautious recklessness that shouldn't exist so comfortably in one person at one time. A belief that sex can mean nothing, and cheating doesn't have to be bad, as long as you're honest about it. An appreciation of the beauty of flowers and a desire to tear them from the ground, or throw a bouquet into a garbage disposal. Wonder at nature always alongside a desire to drop a lit match and watch it all burn to the ground. If it came down to a choice, would I save my own life, or just let the arms of death carry me away? I both love and hate, at the same time. How? I would leave everyone, only so that they could not leave me. Recognizing this does not change it. Odd, that...
Hell can be beautiful, too. Just because it looks like Paradise doesn't mean it won't turn on you. A place doesn't have to be ugly to be hellish.
8.9.2011
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