jakorte's blog

Sometimes, the best compliments come from people who you don’t think really know you.
Sometimes, they’re the one that see you most clearly and are ready to best define you in a short sentence or two.

These sort of compliments can be ugly, though. It has to do with things you don’t think people see. For the most part, I think I make a pretty good actress. Then someone shoots that down with an errant, bulls-eye accurate comment. That’s what I think scares me the most. I tend to take it for granted that people won’t see through me. I also tend to release those who can. I don’t want that, or do I?

Of course I want to go back, but that’s not an option, is it? Going forward isn’t an actual choice, either. I’m just doing what needs to be done and what has to be done. I thought I could help push this along a little, but it feels wrong. I can’t force it by leaps and bounds. The good news I can see what I think I want. And I think it’s going to disappoint a lot of people.

I said it out loud about two months ago. At a funeral of all places, someone turned to me and said, “Your mother really hoped you’d meet someone.” “Really,” I asked. “She wanted me to go through all THIS again?” See, it’s those things you say without thinking that are the most revealing. Of course the response was “You don’t mean that.” I do, or don’t I?

It’s difficult to have and to hold specific expectations, and even more difficult to expect nothing. Where’s the drive for dreaming? Long gone. I off loaded that baggage a while ago, in Kentucky, I think, on the road home to Michigan. Bills to pay, work to be done, projects to be finished so no one else has to do them for me, or clean up after me. Everyday chores and obligations have been enough to fill my day, and my night, and all my time because no one else does. Another weekend of driving and a random grab for a bunch of cd’s before I left home gave me something to consider. I stumbled across a lyrical truth courtesy of Lifehouse. I’ve listened to this song and sung along hundreds of times and saw no pertinence to me or my life, until now.

“Every time I reach for you there’s no one there to hold on to,
nothing left for me to miss. I’m letting go of this.
I want to breathe in a new beginning, with someone who
will wrap their arms around what’s left of me.”

I don’t wish I could feel this way. I just wish I could admit that I do.