Close the door, hang up the phone and fold your cape.

Its 2am on one of those rainy weekends, the type in New England that have always left me restless anyway - pacing, itchy.

And among the things weighing most heavily on my mind tonight is the changing of a phone number. Now it doesn't matter that i don't have a Hawaiian exchange anymore - the cool "Hawaiian" part of me doesn't need an 808 area code to live on. I'm not worried that my friends on the islands will cease to call - cell phone calling plans still work the same there - and nights and weekends remain free. Its not even the pain in the ass of trying to make sure everyone that needs to knows the number has changed, actually its a good excuse to talk to some old friends.

Its that with this change i look behind me and hear the permanent closing of a door. There is one person to whom there can be no call to say, "i've changed my number, here's the new one". With this, i have withdrawn the final life raft and be it true or not - in my mind i have written the final mark of failure on years of a relationship i longed to work with every bit of me.

And now i have left him to sink or swim completely on his own
the last tiny lifeline, pulled up and overboard and gone.
in the form of a changed phone number...

and it makes my heart hurt...almost enough to pick up the phone and call

almost

if i didn't know the monster he's become could destroy me again in one breath

its time to walk away
shut the final door
failure or not
maybe someday i'll learn
it was never in my power to save everyone....
and sometimes that means, not even the ones you love the most.


You can't be a superhero - when no one gave you superpowers.

i was meant to love you....

i've known that thought...i've felt it, to the core of my being...
and i've known how its felt to watch the reality of it crash into the rocks and dash into a million pieces.

It sounds melodramatic and perhaps it is..but that is part of the reality of loving with your whole self, you pour all you are into something, and you hope on the other side, you remain standing.....

i do, i remain standing...because i have chosen to do so...to love without loss - of course the ultimate outcome of loss or not, well its not so much in my court...the ball tends to roll out on the other side.

So what's the lunatic ranting about.....

i love her, and yet here i sit wondering what has become the tone of our relationship. I said months ago i could be quiet and patient and be a friend, and a friend i'll always be. But there was supposed to be more there, we still exist in part as if more is there...yet is there, will there ever be again and does she want there to be?

They are no longer small questions...and be it unfair or insecure - i can no longer quell the fear alone that the one way i desperately need her to need me, is the one way she no longer even wants me at all.

And i'm scared to ask the question...for the answer may be more than i can bare....but i don't know that i can take not feeling wanted like this again....

its a musical week....

There's comfort in music this week.

When i first moved home i'd listen to a lot of Jack Johnson, especially on the long drives between Maine and Vermont when i was torn between places and the landscape would remind me just the slightest bit of my old home in Hawaii as i drove through the mountains. Jack would take me back a bit and with some wind through my hair i could feel calm and cool and a bit of the tropics again.....

Bubble toes made me giggle - my little princess had the most beautiful eyes and fat bubbly toes and somehow this song was just meant to be our song. And i started to sing it to her in our dancing hours - and one day, out of the blue - she agreed in a most startling way for an 11 month old, she sang it back to me. Much to the amazement of her mother and father and me, when the song finished she started singing la ta da da da da....much too much in rhythem, and she's done it ever since, breaking into a huge grin every time i put her song on. So she and i, we sing, and we dance, and we smile together, and that pretty much can make anything okay...

And Maybe if you'd just listen
you'd realize what you're missin
you're missin me.

Rainy Sundays and a little musical interlude

It makes a rainy sunday a little better....i can't help but laugh a little watching the video and it reminds me of someone i love very much.

He watched me last night with a curious look in his eyes, as i rocked her, my little borrowed miracle to sleep in my lap. She'd fought slumber all day in that tenacious little way she has about her, and as she finally succumbed in those late hours of the night, and we rocked together in a quiet happy bliss he watched us from across the room. I've never seen that look in his eyes, and i wonder what was behind it.

I suspect its a thousand dreams that may or may not ever come true, his dreams for me, flashing behind his tired eyes, mixing with love for the beautiful little precious bundle whose eyelids slowly lose the battle against sleep.

i had my beautiful blonde headed boy once, whom i nestled in my arms and i loved with all my heart....and then years later for a brief time i fell in love with another child i would have given everything to. i have missed my little princes - and my heart is full with the knowledge that somewhere in the world they are hopefully healthy and happy and maybe they remember just a little how much i love them, how much i always will.

As for children of my own...that's a story yet to be written and perhaps a page always to remain blank, i do not know if the fates will ever be kind, or even if such remains a true possibility given certain medical history. For now i'll simply be content with the amazing little gifts i've been given in my life. i've been privileged to know the gift of being called mom, and though i ache at times for that feeling once again.... well, maybe someday....an answer that doesn't satiate two anxious parents who long for more grandchildren and a settled married life for their daughter.

I wish at times i could be simpler, that i could settle down and be the daughter they pictured in their dreams........when i was a little girl bouncing on his knee long ago.

Writing to heal.....

It would be easy perhaps to regret him....
But i've never lived my life that way - and there's too much beauty in these past years to resort to regret in light of what's happened....and besides, deep down i will always love him - as much as in some moments i want to curse him, hate him, hurt him as deeply as he etched scars upon my heart.....in the end all i can do is glance with a certain sadness back at a shadow of the man i fell in love with and wish that something might have been different, wish him a different path than i see him walking down and believe that somehow this is how its meant to be.

What becomes difficult now is forgiving myself for the outcome of these years....that ultimately the decision to walk away was forced into my court, for my own sanity and welfare i had to allow the distance to accumulate emotionally between us, i had to shut the doors. The physical distance is happenstance, but it added another layer of insult and injury on a wound that little needed more salt rubbed therein. He is no longer the man i fell in love with, he has spent a long time diving deeper into his mourning and misery until i can barely recognize the shell of the man that is left....yet occasionally i could still see that old twinkle in those eyes, those eyes i longed once to be lost in forever...oh and that nose i loved to kiss. It was my epic dream...he was my epic love....and none can say i didn't try so very hard to make it work.....

And the nightmares come now - more frequently than i can bare sometimes and i find myself walking in the early morning hours simply to be free of my bed and my dreams. In night terror i see what i have long feared, the ultimate loss of him. How many times over the last two years have i heard him beg and plead and long for his own death i wonder.....the peace he longs for is the thought i cannot bare....and it haunts me. Life did this to him and he chose the path, he pushed me away despite my attempts to stay close, to love him, to fight for that - maybe someday i'll let all those arguements actually absolve me of the feeling of responsibility for his happiness, or at least his survival.

I spent many years hoping, trying, praying that i could bring him back from the misery that he wished to swallow him. I don't know how any parent recovers from the loss of a child - and the light went out in his eyes and in his heart that day when his took his own life. i don't think i've ever found it in me to truly blame him for what happened between us - not even as ugly as it got at some points - maybe he shouldn't have gotten the ultimate get out of jail free card - but if you ever saw the tears in his eyes in the morning, or on a holiday, maybe you'd understand - just a little bit of why i would have done anything - why i almost let myself drown in the misery before i couldn't go any further, before i walked away.

i have learned many things from him and in part thanks to him, i have learned the true measure of my strength, the beauty of my commitment, i have shown myself and the world just how tenacious and self-reliant i can be, he opened up a new world to me, and i lived it, breathed it, drank it in in all its splendor - and i will never be able to repay him for all that he gave me, in many ways he set me free and showed me my wings to fly. He gave me hawaii, he gave me home, my rainbows, my history, my waterfalls, memories of my Daddy holding my tight in sweet tradewinds......he gave me history and science and politics as i sat adoringly at his feet.....he gave me my lullabye, and once upon a time, a long time ago, for awhile, he gave me his heart.....before it turned to stone.

But there are a few things i must fix that he left me with, a vulnerable voice afraid to speak at times, afraid of the rejection or the anger or the mocking which were constant in those later days. He left me with a fear of putting this heart on the line - a fear which makes me angry inside because i've never been that person before. i became prickly, defensive - with walls much higher than they've ever been.....


I walk on every day - and every day i glimpse back wondering if he's okay. That's who i am - he won't believe i loved him - i haven't stopped loving him since the very first day we met. There are other things i'm meant to do with my life now - i'm not meant to drown in him, but it makes me endlessly sad that he refuses to grab the life preserver and that i must swim away in order to live.

I write to heal.....maybe i'll sleep tonight....maybe....

I watched you today

I watched you...

i watched you work,
i watched you play,
i watched you laugh
and be for a moment
truly carefree and happy
i saw your strength
and your beauty
and your humor
and your love
and your passion

i watched you
and i knew without any doubt
why i love you
why i kneel