Faerie tales

Once upon a time…I like faerie stories.  Tales of things fantastic.  But when it seems my life is swirling through the twilight zone, what then? I looked at the sky today and the clouds were moving.  There were two layers, and the closer ones were sliding along on a different track. It was surreal, for some reason.  I knew a long time ago that there were no happy endings.  Things don’t end like that…they keep going and when they go, they tends to be messy.  If they do end in that perfect spot, it tends to be Romeo and Juliet style, with lies and death, deception and loss.  Of course, those fit into any story, because real life is messy.  I forgot, though, until tonight.  I forgot a lesson I learned a long time ago…you are your only best friend.  When everything is said and done, there will be no one at your side, but you.  In Dan Millman’s book, he talks about how your body is the only thing you will always have.  That is profound, but I think my realization is more important.  I wonder why I seek the release of too much alcohol…I don’t want to be run by it.  My mother was broken by it.  Her father was a demon made flesh by it, beating the woman he loved, sending his children to hide under a table in hopes he would over look them. I’d like to dream.  To hope and imagine…but I don’t know how.  I keep trying but it just makes me feel selfish and bad.  I know what it is. I had something in me that is smaller now.  I feel life killing that part of me that used to shine…I had something.  Something special, energetic, bizarre and happy to be that way, Grabbing at everything that felt good and fun and strong and bright.  Laughing that way.  I don’t know where that part of me has gone.  I tend to think I deserve only the worst.  That comes from the women who raised me…There are people who barely know me that want to help and I don’t know what to do with that.  I don’t want to need help.  I feel awful when I use that help to buy vitamins that I hope help my joints hurt less and a bottle of wine to help my heart hurt less.  Who am I?  And why the hell don’t’ I know the answer to that at 38 years old??  John loves me so well, I didn’t realize that I had been forgetting how to be alone…how to be the part of me that I forced myself to get to know.  I left everyone that loved me and lived alone, in the woods.  I learned to find support and joy in myself, since I knew for sure I was the only one that would be there forever.  I really thought John would be there too.  When I think that that isn’t true, my world spins.  The thing that makes it suck extra??  He would be, if he could be…but the world had to throw one of the most deadly cancers at him to take him away…I know that is self centered.  I don’t know what to do with that thought, though…if he lives 2 years, 5 years, 20 years, its less than I thought, and I’m left alone.  I hoped I’d never be alone again.  Of course, there is my kids.  So I guess I won’t be alone.  I love them so much it touches parts of me that  you can’t see.  And I am so scared I will screw them up, it tears my heart in ways I can’t put into words.  There is not right and wrong as far as I can see… there is only the best you can do, and heaven help you to be strong enough to make that something good.