Filed under: Uncategorized
21 minutes left in my birthday and still no call from him.
I dont know why I bother.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Last night I turned off the light as I looked at the clock which read 12:09. It was officially my birthday. I sighed and looked up at the lights from the passing cars reflected through my window.
I have the entire day spread before me and all I want to do is… all i want to do is wait around for a phone call that I know is never going to come. It is clear that Im getting to the point where I need to make a decision soon. I have my hopes pinned to a man who has no idea what he wants, and Im feeling dragged along. And in the mean time Im closing doors on other opportunities. Right now I dont regret those decisions, never will, but what happens when I get to the place where I meet someone else… how do I move on from this?
Its 14:49 and Ive been waiting all day. Im getting up off this couch. Im going to get in the shower and Im going to turn my music up, and Im going to let a friend take me out for a couple of beers. Maybe Ill begin to move on in baby steps, maybe Ill just stop waiting around for things I know good and well will never happen. Maybe one day Utah will come to his senses. Maybe one day he will come home or maybe he will take another contract somewhere else and be overeseas forever… I suppose maybe Ill never know.
PS: As I was typing this someone walked up and put a notice on my door for a free 8 week trial membership to Bally’s fitness. So, I called. And tomorrow Im going in to begin working out for probably the first time in my life. Change begets change, and Im tired of being scared of it. Who knows, maybe this was just the thing I need. A baby step indeed.
I have been in a funk the past couple of days for a couple of reasons. First of all; the body spray that I bought and L O V E makes me cough. Every time I spray it I am overwhelmed with how much I love the scent riiiiiiiight before I have to run out of the room doubled over unable to breathe. Yeah, it sucks. On the flip side; the lotion smells the same and does not turn me into a coughing lunatic. Thats a good thing. The second reason I have been bummed, obviously, is Utah. Ive been downright depressed, and even the people on the fringes of my life have begun to take notice. People who I barely know in the office have asked me if Im ok, Im not my normal bubbly pain in the ass self and quite frankly, it was beginning to scare people.
I suppose that I was being quiet but I couldnt help it. For days I have been slipping away, falling deeper and deeper in to this dark hole and every night I was looking at pictures of Utah and crying myself to sleep. Oh, who am I kidding? I wasnt sleeping at all. I tossed and turned all ngiht long only to wake in the day unable to feel anyhting. I was unable to be anything. I couldnt concentrate, I could barely work, all I knew was that I was rotting from the inside out. Had it not been for Kat’s insistence I would have sat on my couch all weekend silently sulking and wishing that I was somewhere else. And then I realized that there was a third reason I was blue: I was lonely, and not because of Utah.
When I left Denver I was still coming up every weekend to see friends but when I began txting people about the birthday bash I was putting together I barely heard back from anyone. It was then that I realized that some friendships are out-of-sight-out-of-mind, and that made me sad. The people who pulled through are the ones I have known for ever, and the ones who over the years have gone out of their way to out as much into our friendship as I had. But When Double T, Kayo, Ivy and a couple of others never even bothered to as much as respond… I was devastated. I was forced to look long and hard at the people in my life and the more I thought about it the further I slid. Friendships I thought were more solid than the earth I was standing on suddenly turned out to be frail and transparent. And then when I wanted to reach out to someone the most… I was alone.
Had it not been for Kat I would have sat home all depressed for the entire weekend, but instead I was out last night and up this morning baking cupcakes, sticking candles in it and then jumping with glee as Kat and I blew them out. And so today I have been happy. Utah leaves Iraq for his vacation tomorrow (or right now as it is technically tomorrow already) but today, right now, I am happy. Thanks Kat.
Filed under: "Utah", Deployment | Tags: "Utah", Deployment, eMail, Jack Ass, Jerk, Leaving, Marbles, Selfish
I got it last night, after my friend left, after we decided to turn on the AC, after the house began to cool off from the heat of the day. I got it last night and as I have been with most of your communication: I was pissed. Days before my birthday and its like you are doing everything in your power to destroy me. And the sad thing is that you dont even recognize it.
I sat down and read it, this eMail from my love, and he asks me to come over and work with him in Qatar. Qatar?! He is in Iraq now and all I can think about is him coming home, and instead he basically tells me that he wants to go work in Qatar after Iraq. And then I went to bed as I do most nights, crying.
It occurs to me that I have been avoiding the truths of things. In relationships and in love we ignore all the flags, we see the past and we refuse to believe that this can be the future. When I met Utah he was back in the US for maybe a year. Our courtship was intense, passionate, unworldly, quick. Three moths alter he was in the truck heading to the airport, he was getting his tickets, he was walking away and as he promised, he never looked back. But Im skipping ahead.
Utah has been contracting for years, he has been in places Ive never been and places I’ll never know about. He has never stayed -anywhere- and I suppose that I was foolish to think that he ever would. In the back of my head I never really thought that he would leave. I was supportive when he began to talk about taking a contract in Qatar and then eventually he settled on a contract in Baghdad and I never wavered, my flawed logic thinking that if I was supportive then he would realize this amazing thing that he is leaving,… and he would stay. You can see the idiocy in it, cant you? Yeah, me too. But I stood by him bcs just being there was a form of holding on to every last second. And I tried. but what I didnt realize was how much he looked forward to leaving, and it begs the question, would he ever really be able to stay?
Utah’s legacy this far, in this situation, has been one of confusion. He says one thing but acts another. He is conflicted between what he wants and what he needs. Those two I doubt will ever meet, but there I am trying to bridge the gap regardless, in the vague hope that it might matter. And then I hear about Qatar, even if this is nothing but a fleeting thought and I have to face the fact that he might never come home. Not because he is dead, but because something out there is more alluring than the things he has waiting for him here. And that my friends, that is a bitter pill to swallow.
Filed under: "Utah", Deployment | Tags: "Utah", Birthday, Deployment, Iraq, Love, Missing
Deployment is a mother fucker. I dont mean to be crass but there is no other way to describe it. Distance is tough but deployment… deployment is quite possibly the toughest thing on earth. It is a sword that cuts even without provocation.
My birthday is next week. Monday the 30th. The same day that Utah leaves for his R&R. ::sigh:: Being a contractor he is granted tax free pay but there are some technicalities that the public does not know. In order to keep their tax shelters most contractors must stay off US soil for a certain amount of time, so he cannot come home to see me or his family. Instead he is going to Qatar to see friends, Rome to see his mother, Somewhere else to visit an ex girlfriend (loving that!), Malta for some scuba and I think Turkey after that. A week ago he called me begging me to come meet him in Malta for a couple of days and while I wanted to… I couldnt. A billion reasons for both sides come to mind but most importantly there is the fact that while running off to an island to spend a week with my love sounds like the most amazing opportunity in life, I felt like an absolute afterthought. He gives me two weeks before he leaves for vacation for me to get my shit together and leave,… I have other responsibilities to worry about. And then there is the part of me that wondered: Whats the point? I go to Malta, we spend an AMAZING week together and then…? I head back to the US and he goes on his merry way. Nothing changes. I may have backed out bcs Im a weak little girl but I just cant watch him walk away one more time unsure of where or what we are. I cannot handle the immediate fallout that comes from the separation. Not again.
But I digress…
My birthday is next week and as such gifts have begun arriving. My friend Lisa sent me wildly amazing soaps, Kat bought me some Tequila, Double T has something for me up in Denver and then UPS shows up at my door today with a three tiered birthday cake looking box choc full of bath products. No card but it was sent via 1-800-flowers which is a favorite of Utah. 2 hours later I get some flowers. Again no card but Utah loves to send flowers. And then I sat down on my couch… and nothing. I felt empty. This is how deployment kills you, it shells you out. I wanted to feel joy, I wanted to be excited but you remember that no matter what you feel he is still gone, he is still on a different continent, he is still your ex, and he is still not even close to coming home. You get to the point where even simple joy cannot be joyful.
This brings me to a point Breathe With Me made “Happiness shouldn’t be so difficult”. No. It should not. For me I can see happiness, I can almost reach out an touch it, but it is always lying just outside of my sticky fingers. Sometimes I even get the feeling that it is laughing at me. Fucker.
::sigh:: Happy freakin birthday to me.
Filed under: "Utah"
I was in the middle of eating what can only be described as the worlds best Egg Roll when I got two txt msgs in a row. One was from Wrestler and the other was from Tattoo, both boys I have briefly dated and both boys who for their own reasons refuse to go slowly into that dark night. Like I said, while Utah and I were completely broken up I began dating here and there. Wrestler is an Olympic hopeful (who just lost his Olympic bid when he came in 4th) and he is on the team for the Navy. Tattoo is a Sargent in the Army and as his nic name implies, completely covered in ink. Wrestler… well, I have given him the heave ho a while ago but it has not seemed to permeate his thick skull and as for Tattoo… he is sweet and I love being around him but I cant. I just cant do it. My heart belongs to someone else and how can I keep him straggling along behind me? Here is the answer to that: Bcs Im a complete pussy. Spineless. Weak. Pathetic.
He was over at the house Saturday watching movies with the roommate, Kat and I, and I escorted him out of my house so swiftly when he got too clingy that he has now become a verb. For example: Roommate went over to his Blonde #2’s house for a movie and some making out. Things got hot and heavy but when she had had enough she walked him to the door. He came home and told me “I think I just got tattooed…!”.
But yesterday I got a txt from Utah: “I miss you. Badly tongiht.” and I could not shake it. I was crying all evening while Roommate was out being “tattooed” and I just knew. SOmehow I was going to have to grow a pair and end it with Tattoo. And Wrestler. And maybe even the 22yo (he is another story altogether. Trust me, it will be told). ::sigh::
The risk is in putting all my eggs in a basket that might not exist. It is thrusting your hands deep into the darkness and hoping that there is nothing there to bite you. Its a risk. And Ive risked so much already.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: "Utah", Deployment, Iraq, Love, re-work, reincarnation, resume, un-boyfriend
I am stuck. More stuck than I have ever been in my life and unsure of where and how to progress. I want… I want my un-boyfriend home. But here I am, sitting home alone watching Grey’s Anatomy re-runs, drinking a glass of wine and trying to figure out how this all got so screwed up. How did I get so screwed up?
His name is “Utah” and he is my un-boyfriend bcs we are together, but not. Trying to work it out, but not. Im single but… somehow not. He left for Iraq as a contractor for the DOD and what followed were weeks of wretched pain and then a calm knowledge that this was it. I was in for the long haul. All the dust settled and we dug in. We were going to tough it out. We had weathered a few blows both from his mother and from the distance but we could do this right? I signed up for MSSN (Military Spouse Support Network) and every time we hit a bump or I was thrown for a loop I had this group of women all of whom were going though the same thing. Every time I was scared or lost or furious i could get online and I had these amazing amazing women who got it in a way that no one else could. My friends tried to relate but how could they? They have had breakups or people who have moved away but to so many Americans war is just something they read about in the papers, debate at the water cooler, or watch in CNN. And those were things I found I could no longer do. I could no longer relate to people were oblivious, I could not watch the news every night, I could not listen to John Michael Montgomery’s stupid Letters From Home song without bawling bcs in the desert somewhere was my love. And I was missing him to death. I was living in a suspended state of existence.
And yet days went on. I built my friends around me like fortress and I put one foot in front of the other and impossibly I moved forward. And then somehow there was this gulf that began to grow between us.
I may have pushed too hard or may not have pushed enough, but in the end he said he couldn’t handle it and suddenly we were done. Or were we? Since then we have spent months in this animated limbo, some days working on things, some days sending heart wrenching txt msgs, and other days…? Other days we were so far from working on it that I wondered if “working on it” would ever again be words out of my mouth. SO I did the only thing I new how. i forced myself out the door and into the sun. Spring was coming and I was single in every sense of the word. I was single and I needed to get back out there.
And then you get used to it, the ying and yang of old emotions mixed with the new. Bit players coming in and out of your life all while your heart continues to beat for someone who cannot let himself feel the same. You get used to new smiles but never forget the old. You learn to laugh again, not just on the face but in the soul. But what I have found, what I continue to find is that I enjoy the hunt, the capture, the kill, but when it comes to the prey touching my heart i quickly turn tail or run. This is how broken Utah has left me, entirely incapable of letting people in. Especially if it is in an attempt to move on.
So he is my un-boyfriend. The person I love even if we are not what you would technically describe as “together” and could not technically describe as “apart”. And in some warped way it works. So what you will read, what you will hear are my stories, as we begin to re define our worlds. One mistake at a time.
