life lessons
experience
and every time
i wish it was over
i will learn.
until tears
shut my eyes closed
maybe i can teach you,
face bloodied
in the dirt
i can teach you
what it's like
to have everything
stolen.
with every last break
you will learn.

i am a doll. lying there with no say in the matter some people will never learn no. everyone thinks it was my fault, andrew blames me hates me. i know that i disgust him if everything in life is choices every step i followed led to me to that situation and i am that bloody pained mess that is too much for him when he and i both feel cheated. so every time i will deserve what i get and i will become what they want. i just want him to love me and now he wont because everyone else wanted a taste too. i just want him to hold me.

this, where tori amos songs have more meaning, and betrayal is not one sided: it resonates with every breath.

"why did you and mel break up?"

“why did you and Mel break up”
million dollar question or more...

I can't explain how degrading it feels when the person that you love and have dedicated your future life to holds you down and punches you in the face, proverbial or otherwise. I still can't work out if because I hit her first and because I've hit her many times since, am I the abuser, or the victim? Or both? Violence begets violence.

She'd hit me before, and that first time when I went to work I was praying Andrew would notice the dark mark beneath my eye but it looked more like tiredness and crying then anything and that he was already used to. That first time she had been shocked but she never told me she wouldn't do it again and I knew she would. And predictably I thought I probably would deserve it. I knew what sort of person she was. Like when we watched once for warriors and I said "well she shouldn't have been so lippy". In a sick way I was waiting for it to happen. She used to yell at me for flinching when we argued. But I knew. I defended her for the first six months, honeymoon sweet, to her and my friends alike and said it wasn't like that. But I flinched all the same. Realistically she only hit me 3 times. I have hit her repeatedly, tried to (if very weakly) strangle her. But not once, not even when she, a woman twice my size was cowering on the floor in the kitchen scared of me, did I ever stop being afraid. All the while I felt like what I was doing to her was mostly in show, at the end maybe so there was some passion between us: but when I first started breaking and having these strange violent outbursts, where I felt almost possessed by her rage, I wanted her to feel what I had felt.

She came in to my parent’s house and lay next to me. We were both drunk and I was hurt, abandoned (a feeling that would stay with me until our relationship finally ended) and she thought I had made a fool of her. I had made a scene. She didn't want her new, exciting work friends to know she was gay and I didn't want her to keep hiding me like I was something to be ashamed of. So I had drunk too much beer, cried and been rude, and stormed home. Lara had had to lend me money because I wasn't in charge of the money and with my childish 'I'll just walk home!' episode it was probably best someone organised a cab for me. The next morning when I checked my bag it was empty, Mel had taken the change from the taxi for god knows what and I'd had to work out some complicated scheme to pay Lara back without confronting Mel.

Apparently Mel had been trying to call me but my phone had died. So she showed up and told me that she'd been in this fight on Greville St, the police had come, and it was all my fault. And then that she'd picked up some other girl while she was out, and she said it so casually as if it was completely fitting punishment and my heart snapped and I hit her. I'd never hit anyone before. Not like that. Not and meant it. She grabbed me pushed me against the pillow and started punching me in the face. She held me down and pushed my legs apart and tried to touch me 'this is what you want isn't it? you fucking slut' I was crying and must have muttered something like 'please dont do this please dont rape me again' and she said that I was a slut and a joke and I had never been raped. And she left.

I didn't go to work that week. My face was badly bruised and swollen and the white in my eye had turned bloodshot red. Even I, the centre of drama and attention was too embarrassed to face people with that. It was my 20th birthday. I'd stopped seeing most of my friends so I had no one to celebrate with or remember my birthday really. I told the couple of friends I was speaking to I was sick and when Mel was in the shower or asleep I went in to the toilet, shut the door and texted Andrew to let him know I wasn't great, there was drama, but I'd be back soon. We were planning to go to the R&R event at work that friday together, had rallied hard to be able to go so we could get drunk and just hang out. It was during work hours so Mel wouldn't know. I half hoped she would go away for the weekend so I wouldn't have to lie about drinking or any of it. I didn't go any way.

Srangely the people who I was beginning to let down a guard with at work, accepted and were sympathetic to my refusal to give out my number (at mel's request) and were not offended, rather endeared, when I told them I couldn't be their friends in real life. They were concerned when they saw me break after break crying to Mel on the phone, but they never pushed. They just waited.

When I saw my family at my birthday dinner and when I returned to work I told them all what a clutz I was, I had tripped over my adorable new kitten and right in to the corner of the coffee table! Can you believe that?! And they did. Everyone laughed at how it was nearly as funny as if I'd said I'd walked in to the door! And I laughed with them, a funny cynical hard laugh that soon accompanied a lot of truths, the haha that followed most things I said about Mel and my 'insane haha' relationship with her, and later about my feelings towards Andrew. ('one day you'll fall in love with me haha')

Mel told me she would leave me and I begged for her to stay. She said she was bad for me and I howled and screamed and told her I'd do anything. It was all a mistake and it was all my fault, and I really believed it was. I thought, if I'd just done what I was supposed to, if I just didn't keep making mistakes, we would be ok. So the rules came in to place and things became more and more cornered, for my good and hers apparently. For us to work. It was that night that I had first taken that yellow post-it note with Andrews number on it out of my secret pocket and had texted him, nothing important. Maybe she somehow knew that I didn't want the rules any more. But I kept messing up and lashing out and bit by bit I was hardening. I was terrified, bitter, and a loose cannon in all respects.

This time she told me she would never hit me again. She hardened too and distanced herself from me, and though when we fought it was mostly one sided, now the love seemed mostly one sided now too. When we fought it was as though we had changed places through the mirror, now it was me irrationally waving knives and lunging at her with mimiced threats of rape and suicide (I remember thinking how odd I would say all those things, feeling like her, and not understanding a moment of it) and her just sitting there. Motionless. As I had. Things weren't so bad though. I thought maybe she had reached her peak and it had shocked her in to submission. I was finding it hard to control my growing rage, but she was keeping hers at bay so at least there was some balance.

I couldn't work out if I was making it all up. We fought made up fought distanced fought space fought. We tried to work things out. We reset the rules. She DID want me to have friends and did want me to be happy, and I was overreacting. I was going crazy. Everything was voices and fast and loneliness and a terrifying kind of manic and blood again. But she was supposed to be helping me. It was hard to determine what was real and what wasn't. I wonder if I'm still over reacting. Right before we broke up, she on the couch in the living room and me trying desperately to stop crying or wanting to die in our bedroom I couldn't find my way out. I physically couldn't find the door. I had no idea where I was, I just couldn't locate it all. When I think about it, I wonder if I just had my eyes closed. But she DID want me to have my own life. It's just, some rules still needed to be in place. Some how, because I really thought I needed her, I believed that giving her 4 weeks notice (or was it six?) was a reasonable compromise for me to do things with out her. Probably a long enough time anyway for me to get scared, and cancel on the friend before I did anything anyway. Enough time for me to cancel repeatedly on friends. Cut the very few I had left out of my life, the ones we had made together, when it was soon determined they were not a good influence on me either. Which meant, really, she wanted to have her own life.

When we got back from south east asia we joked with another couple, how we hadn't fought "that much HAHA except for those couple of times where I was locked in the bathroom scared you were going to kill me or because you told me I wasn't allowed in the same room/slut/HAHA and you told me being overseas made me realise you could have anyone/why waste time with you/slut/i will bash you when we get back to that roomHAHA" laughed too loud told the story too often, because it all just kept stinging and I knew what the right thing to do was and I couldn't leave but I couldn't let it go either. And I actually believed we hadn't fought that much. We'd had quite a lovely time really. And took some beautiful photos and got some funny stories to tell too. Besides, it's all just experience isn't it? Haha.

At some point layed out on the bathroom floor in ko phangan I'd sent my only text message to Andrew from Asia, and I'd told him-the first time in a long long line of messages and emails to follow that I would have to break up with Mel. I don't even understand how we made up. She called her mum. She asked did I want to come with her to have lunch. She told me I shouldn't act the way I did to her and it wasn't nice. My heart didn't rip this time. It just sort of froze there. I admitted defeat and accepted it was over. I just didn't go anywhere. But I accepted it, when she didn't kiss me for 3 months. I accepted it, when she no longer invited me places with her, when she stopped introducing me as her girlfriend, and when there was no discussion of us spending christmas together. I changed my flights just in case, but I wasn't part of her life any more. I accepted it, when on New Years (after a year of begging her to THIS year "stay with me promise me you'll stay with me") at 10pm she announced she was leaving to spend the evening-and the year, with her more exciting, fabulous friends. I already knew it was coming.

On our second last fight, probably the most dramatic of them all, I watched it all happen. I saw the knife and crying and screaming like all of our fights speeding up in to one and I figured either one of us was going to die that day, or we were going to be like that forever. I told her I loved her and kissed her and told her I couldn't leave her. Completely detached (like her) I accepted that this was the life I had chosen. I knew what she was like. I couldn't expect any more or less. This was what I had chosen.

A week later I moved out.

i have a very short fuse and am treading on a very thin rope, which is poor excuse for being a cunt to most people most of the time.

i think the most frightening thing about this whole situation is myself- i know that i know that's why i make predictable mistakes stumble out of control something obvious, but apparently i am quite entertaining like this, even if that's all.

but i love him i love him and i want him home.

i wrote to him when he gets out we will have a perfectly us love story to tell (i wish i didn't have to tell it)

i am predictable product//imitating photographs of who i used to be.
i am angry.
i may do many things i will regret//i choose not to regret not today i just want to feel something else.

i hate him for leaving me for making mistakes before he even had a chance to know me.

this story is different- half a year later or so, back to a different beat.
ive forgotten how to blog.

ive been writing letters every day which is different to any type of writing i know and i don't think i quite do it right because i just talk to him like i would and i tick tick tick and stutter and run off on bizarre tangents and interrupt myself and sometimes it is pretty and sad like i sometimes i am and sometimes its the day, always it is me. i never have to know how he felt when he got a letter from me. but i know they are read.

ill try again maybe with this blog-business
it feels strange like
i hope im not straining for something to say, but it feels familiar too. like an old friend.

FOR MEL

I love the way we put beautiful flowers you gave me in a blender in the laundry and China tries to have a bath in the kitchen sink. You make me so happy. The horse and carriage you took me on rode us around the city and everywhere I looked reminded me of you and even the driver; country and smelling of horse, teaching us that riding a horse was like riding a woman- it was all so perfectly you. I hope you know the pawprints on my back are not about being a kitten, or even my little China or awful Fleta but something of you too, steps of our journey. Now I have something of you on my skin- not just under my skin.I love you Mel. I love that you can still tell me new secrets, sing loud cheesy music on the train platform, dance in each other's eyes aand complain about long walks to Mcdonalds. I love that you can say you're sorry without apologising for the wonderful, complex person you are. I love that you can accept me and fall asleep next to me on the floor in front of the tv. I love that that's only one weekend of our lives.

they talk about the masculine/sublime/the feminine

you are every bit as beautiful

as the truth of your lips.

there i was searching

for some pearl of wisdom

i found between your thighs

venus,

a womans touch.

'i wonder what we look like from a birds eye view'

'perfect' i said.

someone please recreate me as sylvia plath's long dry pen, i want to be that sentence that you take a moment to breathe in, that leaves you dizzy trying to remember what it was you just read.

you are the deepest point in me
if you'd only touch me
i dont want to measure in time
i will measure in your distance

i will travel in the memory

of your breath

against my skin

in the shower

i will sneak a glance

at your reflection in the mirror.

do u think when we live together things will still be the same?

i reached my arms around her/its always something/she said/as she inched away/my arms were still airbone/like/i was waiting for something/to/lift me.

i cried in a room of boxes, fleta malting all over me. and i thought, well.i never thought id cry. i never thought id miss a pair of ballet shoes, or a text book. or my mess i never use. i never thought id wonder what to do with socks that are too small and torn for me to wear.

in two days i fly the nest.

darling, in our years together, we discover i can fit my arms around you perfectly. i can curl into you no matter how far you turn away.we write poetry on our bed and you try not to laugh when i stumble over the big words i use when i write about the way i feel about you. you sing to me your stange past that mystified me when we first layed next to each other; and i dig into you, and i learn every wink and every memory you draw on my palm. we watch movies i never thought id bring myself to watch and you look down your nose at my snobbery and i kiss your freckles and bury my face in the covers so you can't see how much im smiling. we teach our children something i could never teach myself and they are perfect, as our love, and they are happy, as we are. you cook for me and i try to cook for you, and i eat from your mouth every pure and devourable thing you have to say, and i lick from your skin something of soap and nectarines and home. we greet every predictable tear with a shoulder and embrace our firey passions as necessary, carthatic, as a means to a beginning.as a means to our forever. we are friend, lover, mother, wife. we are unknowing, we are unbroken. in our years together we discover those times when we didn't kiss, when we brushed against each other unwittingly, are as beautiful and explosive as the hours we made love in. i see that when you shower in the dark you give me more light to search for you. you become used to every bad habit i overcome becoming another for you to recognise. i get used to the idea that i can never get used to you when you are ever changing. you are ever beautiful. in our years together, we grow, we relapse, we learn, we forget, we love, we fight, we make up, we fight again, we are indescribable, we are hopelessly in need and disgustingly in love. we are always.

i sometimes think of my life as a folk song sweet with the whine of a wronged womans guitar. in each twang of each string of each glostening aiiiiiii can over relate to something of longing desire. i used to see myself in events, i used to see myself in a used tissue. i buried myself in some disjointed melody crying to the off beat, strangling myself with an overused chord.

love creeps, jumps at you from dark corners. Startling, the least expected of bumps in the night. It grabs you by the throat, pulls you around to her mouth, and holds you closer than you ever dreamt you'd know.

in this heart where things are taken heavy things are sliding sweetly lightly through my knotty hair i can feel your sweat on me or is that my own im beating quick the tapping of heels on an empty street your eyes are tired when they meet me. your eyes are a journey when you kiss me. we dream of a two story house with more bedrooms than we need it makes my stomach turning struggling to fill itself in redemption shudder clean sheets and tupperware parties singing in your studio with my mouth shut dancing in the living room with new furniture on the new sheets. leaping through i can feel something i recall my parents once told me was happiness this is where we join each others paths so wavered and nervous so unsure most decided i kiss you with open eyes treasure that smile and we're moving out. and we're moving in.

i bite my lip
and i can taste blood
on my tounge.
like when i taste you;
i savour every pearl,
press you into me
our fingers impetuous,
impending
molden in kisses
in dark places
and in holding your hand.

a single red drop in my white carebear underwear; a reminder i am woman, i am roaring in my implicant complacency to be. Men see themself in a squirt of creamy substance that trickles and dries unused. i see my future in snow white lips as red as blood on snow, life looming, life pulsating.

my stomach is growing-i can feel the skin expand as i breathe wonder if this is what its like to be pregnant, aware of every hidden movement and growth, slowly growing in my self content with the way my body can suddenly change on me.

my parents have been married for 25 years. 'and i never stopped loving her' he said. except for that time he cheated on her and told her he was leaving for another woman, i thought.

every 3 minutes and the time it takes to breathe in / the time it takes to stop myself from crying i look out the window for her. i know i shouldn't expect to hear from her but i always do anyway, and in between the depth of time where im looking out the window and when im looking at the screen im glancing at my phone, im thinking about her driving by herself in the rain, a scene near the end of the movie-just before it all gets resolved and she kisses me. any moment now, im thinking, any moment. she'll come back. 'are you ok?' my mum asked me. im ok. i don't care if we fight forever. i will spend the rest of forever fighting for her. she'll come back.

EDIT

or i'll come running.

i called someone at work whos name was Sappho-she probably didn't know who Sappho was-not some 'who am i what does it all mean' questioning- but SAPPHO. I can feel my heart lift at the thought, which shows how strange the things that excite me are, but it does make me dizzy with the thought of old poetry and all that comes with it. So gorgeously enriched-and I have to say enriched though it's long and sweet unbareable-enriched with history; with delving for some universty lecture written at high school standard, connotations that find me related, realised. It is in her writing, not that lesbian undertones, or the historical spectacle that captivates; that which surrounds each subtle phrase and circumstance, but the honest, timeless, way anyone is able to see themself in a poem. Even a poem written by a greek lesbian, thousands of years ago.