New Year Thoughts

I'm becoming a situational night person. At 10 PM my active duties of caring for CW are over and I have time to myself. It isn't so bad as I'm getting used to it. If had a job, that'd be a different story. I am subsisting mostly on cheese, ice cream and coffee. I spend almost all of my time preparing CW's meals and washing dishes that I can hardly bear to make things to eat myself, and I am tired of eating pureed soup. I know I'll have to eat better soon. Maybe June. I don't mind caring for CW. Sure there are times that I feel pinched, and we have hard days now and then. I know it can't be easy for her, unable to perform the simplest of daily living tasks.

This has been a really wild ride. Sometimes I am afraid that CW won't come all the way back from the dark valley she's been in. That her cognitive functioning won't improve. I have to constantly remind myself that I've seen this before, and it does indeed lift. It can take months though. Right before the leap, when she was in the worst internal spin, and I was so tired of not knowing what to do, I got to the point within myself where I made a pact with myself "this is the last relationship for me." This was a double edged decision. I really like being in a relationship, I can blossom, and I sincerely *love* being part of a mini-cooperative unit. I can get easily lost too. I tend to like people, and settle only for people who are 'larger than life' in their own way. CW is larger than life. She is a bucking bronco of a spirit. As much as I fall head over heels aesthetically for waifs, I can't ever date them. Give me a powerhouse or give me death.

The problem with being with someone who is larger than life, is that they automatically need an audience. I become too good an audience. If I were a professional audience type, that'd be fulfilling. However, I have larger than life-ness desires (if not actual potential) inside of me, and they get all lost. I can no longer tolerate this. A part of me feels as though it is dying due to this decision.

I happen to be listening to Alanis Morrisette's song "You Learn" and am feeling rather optimistic right now.

[ I should mention that I could never really like this album because it came out when I was dating Katie, an aries with the same birthday, 7 yrs older, as me. I can say that so far, even with CW's stuff, Katie was the worst relationship I *ever* had. Susan was a close second, although the sex was pretty fabulous for awhile. So I couldn't listen to Alanis b/c it reminded me of Katie. Wince. She was a meanie.]

Anyway, I don't want to be a rock star, but I know that I want to live my self expression with a solid, resounding, unfettered, unapologetic loudness that is naturally mine, in the area that is my natural place of being. This 'You Learn' song isn't the best that ever was, but it has a passion to it, a belting out that I like, that I'd like to do in my own life in my own way. I am coming to a place of absolute conviction that I cannot do this and be in an intimate, live-in relationship. I need space. A lot of it. Knowing this, I do not extend my affection randomly or thoughtlessly.

I love CW and it is not a contradiction to say that I have druthers that involve not being her caregiver, that involve feeling more liberty than I do, that involve being involved with other people. To sit with CW, to be with her is an incredible experience in so many ways. I have to give up my expectations of how I'd like her to be and accept her for who she is *right now* and what she can do *right now* and not be what she has been, a spitfire intellect and fireball of a spirit. My heart feels like it has broken into a million pieces. I've whispered to it that it won't happen again, but we both know that isn't true.

I don't want to be in another intimate relationship after CW, and yet I do. I don't want the heartbreak, no matter what it is, and yet I also know that to not risk that possibility I also cut off my chances of feeling a very particular kind of love, of affection, of understanding, of raw empathy that I'm sure that I came to earth to know over and over again. Be all that as it may, I have a lot of passion and my passion isn't linear, and it defies definitions of others, and it has many targets and aspirations. I am too quiet about what is inside of me, and ultimately I think that means that I am not presenting myself in a truthful way. Guess I'll see what the new year brings.