Spiralling

I'm spiraling. The orange glow at the end of my cigarette is becoming more and more frequent, the swirl of alcohol and rocks a daily occurrence. Popping the top off of that beer that’s waiting for me at home is something that I look forward to. It's because of him! The Taylor Swift song “Haunted” makes more sense to me now than ever – “He would try to take away my pain, and he just might make me smile, but the whole time I’m wishing he was you instead.”

I feel lonely. I feel alone. I have begun to wonder who would miss me if I were gone. I don't mean gone from New York City; I mean literally gone. I'm not going to jump in front of a bus or anything so don't freak out. There are no prescription pain meds or illegal substances in my house. These are words with no real sincerity behind them, but they pass through my mind. The sleeping pill container in my bedroom is less full than it used to be though.

I feel like the writers who script my life abandoned me. I’ve been left to improvise the storylines they laid out before they left. I don’t like improvisation. I like having more control than that – knowing what happens next. That inability to relinquish control has always been my problem.

I find myself desperately seeking a connection. I often wonder if pushing it away for so long means that now that I truly want it, it won’t come. Did connection finally give on me? “Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor” as Cinderella states in Into The Woods. Have I missed all of my opportunities by scoffing in the face of anyone who wanted me?

I’ve begun to freak out in situations where freaking out has no point. I’m playing out both sides of the conversation in my head without any true facts. I’ve been sad one minute and giddily happy the next. I have erased phone numbers and asked for them back. I have deleted others with no care for reconnecting. Some of these actions I’m truly sorry for and others I couldn’t care less about.

There are songs that I keep coming back to over and over that seem to sum up my life and situation right now. In particular there are two Lady Antebellum songs that hit me in the heart as if there was a bull’s-eye hovering over it, beckoning the heartbreak arrows to fill me with their sting. The titles, “Wanted You More” and “As You Turn Away” already speak to the pain I’m feeling, but the pain is more fully expressed in the beautiful, heartbreaking lyrics of each song. Where’s my royalty check?






I keep putting myself in situations where the outcome is disappointment. I keep hoping for a different result each time, but it’s always the same. The interesting part is that I always keep this little spark of hope that this time it will be different, this time there will be a positive payoff for trying. The question I keep asking is why I keep putting myself through it? Why do I send an email or text thinking this time the response will be quicker or something that I want it to be? It hasn’t been that in months. It’s always the same. I feel like an afterthought. I wish I was important to someone – to him – but I’m not.

What is it inside of us that makes us keep up the masochistic machinations that cause so much emotional upset? What bothers me the most is that I’m angrier at myself than I am with him. I am the one with hopes. I am the one with the fantasies. I am the one with the expectations. I am the one with the desires. He can’t and won’t fulfill any thing that I’m looking or wishing for.

Lady Antebellum song lyrics sum up my present: sometimes “I wish I was cold as stone,” then again, “I’d rather hurt than feel nothing at all.” I guess, “I love this pain just a little too much.”