Good morning. It's a lovely spring day - the sun is shining in my face, the birds are chirping, and I can hear the landscapers clearing up a distant neighbor's yard from the winter debris. Funny how to some that sound might be bothersome, but to me it's comforting. It reminds me of warm summer afternoons when I was small enough to fit beneath my mother's arm.
The cats, Topaze and Frisk Ivbony, are out here with me, and I've got my "E" mug with my favorite tea in it. I guess the only way it could get better than this was if I had a forest as my backyard.
Lately, I've been contemplating the concept of love. I'm not sure I understand what it is. Or how to show it. Or even if I feel it for anyone...family included. I thought that love was the inability to bear the absence of another, but that doesn't make sense. Because there are long-distance relationships, and you can probably still love people after they're dead.
But honestly, it's probably not even spelled L-O-V-E. I think it's spelled T-I-M-E. Because how can someone know you love them if you never make an effort to spend any time with them?
I'm guilty of that.
But I nearly always want to be by myself. And I'm not by myself nearly enough to suit my own desires and leave room in my heart for other people. Here I go making excuses again.
No, but wait. Really. Interacting with other people drains me. Annoys me, after a while. So when I'm stuck interacting with those I don't want to interact with, I have no more energy for those I would/should want to be around.
For example, my mother.
If she could sit and be quiet, I could sit and read a book next to her and be happy. But she's an extreme extrovert (five points for the alliteration, ten more for recognizing it) and always needs to talk, to share, to ask questions that require my response...it's draining. So I avoid her.
Now take my brother.
I barely know him - I realized this the other day when he refuted my claim that I love him. He moved out of the house when I was eleven, I think...and we never spent much time together before that. Of course, he was the brooding teenage boy with family issues...the stepson and the scapegoat on many occasions, and I was the annoying kid sister who couldn't keep a secret and idolized her big brother but got in the way of everything and wouldn't stop touching his stuff.
So he avoided me. I think. At least that's how it felt. Maybe he was just reclusive.
But anyway, then he moved out. And I remember being really upset when I found out he was leaving. Strangely, though, I can't remember him actually leaving. Taking his things, or anything. I just remember that he was no longer there. And I didn't know where he'd gone, either. I just stopped seeing him...and then he'd come by like...once. No, twice.
Then we moved.
And it's been like that for over a decade and a half now...with the occasional awkward visit from him and his family, and the even more un-occasional and more awkward visit from our family to his.
I can see why he thinks I don't love him. I don't text him enough. I suppose I ought to call, too. That's what siblings do, right?
But I mean, I don't even know what his favorite color is. Or his favorite food. Or...random crap that I guess siblings ought to know about each other.
Do you see how sad my life is when it comes to relationships?
This has been bothering me for a week now. Well. The "you don't love me" bit, anyhow. The rest has been bothering me for half of my life.
And I always push people away. I'm not comfortable with outward expressions of affection...it took me forever to warm up to holding hands with HIM, and I dislike getting hugs from my parents. I don't like it when other people (like my coworkers) are talking to me and then they reach out and touch me...we're not in church where a pastor has said "touch your neighbor and say 'NEIGHBOR!'"
I have a bubble of space around me, and I like it that way. I don't like when people poke said bubble. It's not okay.
And when people try to be my friend, I'm always so suspicious. Like, what could you possibly see in me that would make you want to be my friend? Why do you want to hang out with me?
I have very few friends. Really, only three or four, and of those, only two that I confide in. You know what else is weird? Of those, all four have called me their best friend. I don't understand that. When they introduce me to their other friends, these friends almost always go "Oh, hi! It's so nice to finally meet you, so and so talks about you all the time!" Like, really? Why? What do they say? What is there to say?
Well. It's getting to be time for me to find some food before I starve or my stomach hollows out (It's talking to me) and apparently it's not quite spring weather yet, if my frozen fingers are any indication. But I need to work on love. On showing it (ugh..can't I just do nice things for you?) and spending time with the people that matter.
I'm exhausted.
Have a great day.
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