A Real Man Knows

Because a real man knows a real woman

When he sees her

And a real woman knows a real man

Ain't afraid to please her

And a real woman knows a real man

Always comes first

And a real man just can't deny

A woman's worth

-Alicia Keys 'A Woman's Worth'

Cultural Differences

I feel more at home in towns throughout the true south.  The men treat all women as ladies, until a woman proves otherwise.  It is normal and right to see a man take his lady by the arm and walk down the street with her, not walk ahead of her like she's invisible, and then turn around to tell her to hurry up!  Women of the true south are lovely, fresh and kind because they are treasured and cared for, and in turn they care for their men.  In the south, it's this kind of wierd juxtaposition where women are worshipped, yet subtley kept in their place.  It's not in your face, and we call it tradition.  I read somewhere that southern women are one of our countries "best kept secrets".  I'll take a little patronizing with sunshine and smiles, over gray skies, attitude and being treated like a goddamn slave any day!

Man-Whore

Once a man-whore, always a man-whore.

A respectable girl doesn't like to get involved with a whore any more than a respectable man does.  ICKY!  That kind of extreme-marathon-style-sleeping-around-icky is like tree sap that you can't get off of the person you're dating.  It keeps sticking to you and you can't get rid of it, you can't stop thinking about it, and the more you realize they'll never stop sleeping around, and always have a sticky coating of man-whore on them, you can see that the dirt sticks to them, and the grosser they get.

Worse

Every time he apologizes for one thing, he turns around and does something worse.

Pheonix

She was beautiful.  She was so beautiful, just in jeans a t-shirt and gym shoes, that men would trip in the street trying to get a good look at her.  She was my mother.  She was tall and thin with long, dark hair, green cat shaped eyes, and an unassuming disposition.  She never saw her beauty, never realized it, until decades later when she was wiser; then she realized what she had; what was lost.  She was blinded by my father.  My mother's beauty, inside and out, consumed my father; he loved her and hated her for the way she made him feel.  He controlled her, he put her down, he critisized her instead of complimenting her, he was insanely jealous, instead of celebrating her.  He cheated on her constantly.  He threatened to kill himself if she left him.  She was afraid of him.  He took advantage of her, he got her pregnant and trapped her.  Enter: me.  

My dad was famous in his small town, in a bad way.  He was incredibly good looking and incredibly frightening.  Ladies loved him, men feared him.  My mom said that people couldn't believe it when she told them that she was his wife.  I suppose she seemed to innocent.  She was. 

A few years of emotional abuse went on, and there was nothing left of the vibrant, happy woman she once was.  Her dimming light, finally went out, and she sank into a deep depression for a decade.

Then, like a pheonix rising from the ashes, she woke up.  She got help.  She got angry.  Very, very angry.  She escaped.  And she won't let it happen to me.  

The End.   

Respect

I will never be controlled.  My spirit has always been a rebel, independent and free.  If I want to follow a man, it will be because I want to, because I respect him; I see that he can lead better than me, and then we will be a team.  Respect is earned, right?  So earn it.

I Know

4 In The Morning

Waking up to find another day
The moon got lost again last night
But now the sun has finally had its say
I guess I feel alright

But it hurts when I think
When I let it sink in
It's all over me
I'm lying here in the dark
I'm watching you sleep, it hurts a lot
& all I know is
You've got to give me everything
Nothing less cause
You know I'll give you all of me

I'll give you everything that I am
I'm handin' over everything that I've got
Cause I wanna have a really true love
I don't ever wanna have to go & give you up
Stay up till Four In The Morning & the tears are falling
& I want to make it worth the fight
What have we been doing for all this time?
Baby if we're gonna do it, come on do it right

All I wanted was to know I'm safe
Don't want to lose the love I've found
Remember when you said that you would change
Don't let me down
It's not fair how you are
I can't be complete, can you give me more?
& all I know is
You got to give me everything
& nothing less cause
You know I give you all of me

I'll give you everything that I am
I'm handin' over everything that I've got
Cause I wanna have a really true love
Don't ever wanna have to go & give you up
Stay up till Four In The Morning & the tears are falling
& I want to make it worth the fight
What have we been doing for all this time?
Baby if we're gonna do it, come on do it right

Oh please, you know what I need
Save all your love up for me
We can't escape the love
Give me everything that you have

& all I know is
You got to give me everything
& nothing less cause
You know I'll give you all of me

- 4 In The Morning by Gwen Stefani

Answers

"Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."

-Dr. Carl Sagan

The Cure

I will nurse this break up with pure,

 undiluted, raw, bad ass, horsepower. 

And if it doesn't kill me,

then I'll live to love another day.

Cleaning House

Photography 'Chore' courtesy of: Damaris

When nursing a break up from someone that you actually loved, not only do you have to try to purge them from your thoughts, but also purge every physical trace of them from your life.  It's difficult but theraputic to go around the house and see, really see it all, and then either fix or clean every thing that they touched.  Each of these little visitations brings up the painful memories, but the act of ackowledging them, and then purging them is validating.  I've found that guys are really good at doing this right away.  Women tend to linger, unless they're angry enough to take immediate action.

Alone, I roam through my house, and perform the ritual... in the yard, where the bottle caps lay that he said he didn't want to put his hands in the mud to grab for me... the floors that still need to be cleaned... the toothbrush to be thrown away... the sheets and towels that need to be washed from our lovemaking... the hole in the bedroom door that needs repaired... the dent in the drywall that I'll just cover up... the dents in the side of my truck that need to be fixed... the candlesticks that were a gift from my mother that need to be thrown away now... the food from the party that needs to be dumped out because that's a memory too... all of these little things, these little heartbreaks, these little landmines laying all around the house that have to go.  And there's the shirt... one last thing, the big thing, the shirt, that I bury my face in and give one last, long smell of, and remember the good and tender moments, before throwing it away.

Love Derailed

It's supposed to be so simple, because love is really... so rare.  Whatever happened to those simple days?  You like him, he likes you, you spend all your time together, fall in love and never look back.  That's supposed to be the simple part of the relationship as a whole: the beginning.  Then the hard work begins later, after the foundation is built.  What a shame when that joy is derailed.

Revelations

Revelations of a love that I never should have felt:  He is angry.  Incredibly angry.  Anger is sadness, and sadness is depression.  I ain't no doctor, but I believe he suffers from severe manic depression, mixed with survivor's guilt and Sociopathic tendencies.  A true Sociopath would not suffer from survivor's guilt, because they are not able to empathise to have guilt, but his acute ability to manipulate and the inability to feel remorse for those manipulations are certainly sociopathic behavior.

And I didn't even know him very well.

And he hates me for knowing what I do.

And hate is love.

The Tortured

Because he does not love himself, he finds it very hard to believe that someone else could ever truly love him.

Beauty And The Beast

courtesy of:  angelicwingz.glogster.com

You're not a stranger to me

And you, well, you are something to see

You don't even know how to please

You say a lot, but you're unaware how to leave

My darling lives in a world that is not mine

And old child, misunderstood, out of time

Timeless is the creature, who is wise

And timeless is the prisoner, in disguise

Who is the beauty, who the beast?

Would you die of grieving, when I leave?

Two children, too blind to see

I would fall in your shadow, I believe

My love is a man who's not been tamed

Oh my love lives in a world of false pleasure and pain

We come from different worlds, but we are the same

I never doubted your beauty... I've changed

I never doubted your beauty... I've changed

Who is the beauty?

Where is my beast?

There is no beauty

Without my beast

My beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful beast

- Stevie Nicks

Being Alone

A wise friend told me several years ago about being alone;

"if you can't learn to enjoy your own company,

then no one else will enjoy your company eventually either".

Love Yourself

"Let no man pull you low enough to hate him."

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Electric

"We go together like electric chairs and sparks" 

- The Haints, 'It Only Goes To Show'

Hope To Sadness

So foolish of me to imagine having his baby.  So foolish of me to imagine all of us, his friends and mine, all around the dinner table while his best friend blessed our food, and we all held hands.  Traditions kept and new traditions begun.  I could have added to that.  The precious rituals of family.  Stupid of me to imagine befriending his momma and imagining him telling his family that I was pregnant, and of the precious moment of me telling him I was pregnant too.  Foolish of me to imagine taking care of him, that I would be able to fulfill a man like that enough to keep him home and faithful.  It was so stupid of me to open myself up at all. 

What kills me the most, is the humiliation in front of all of our friends.  I don't know how to bounce back from that.  I do not know how to bounce back from being humiliated in front of his friends and mine, by him.  I have never been disrespected like that.  I could deal with the unanswered questions, I could deal with a lot of things, but not that.  Never that.  He'd have to make a goddamned public apology to make up for that shit, I don't know, I just don't know.  I wanted him to be my King, I thought he was made of that stuff, to have a Queen.  I didn't see all of this coming, because he loved his strong momma. 

He cursed me for my writing.  Sometimes I feel it's a curse too.  I have gotten so much better with speaking though, I've worked on that.  Still, I'll always be better with the written word, than speaking.  When I speak, I never feel heard.  When I write or sing, I feel that even if no one is reading, that it's more permanent.  It's there, it's set in stone and maybe someday, someone will have heard me.

I read this today of someone else wrote, of her love, and it makes me miss the "good" him even more, the brief glimpses that I saw of him.  It makes me think of what could have been, what should have been, and it moved me so much:

"I woke twice last night.  The first time, I wanted some water, and slowly pulled away from your arms where you were holding me. We’d fallen asleep that way. The moment you felt me slipping away, you pulled me closer. I pulled again and you pulled me closer again and held me tighter still. The stubborn refusal to let me go, even as you slept seemed magical, almost undeserved. Who is this man who cherishes me so he can’t let me go, even in sleep? I finally rose and watched you, drinking my water in the door way. It was so cold, it wasn’t long before I climbed back to you. The room was freezing, but your arms — those arms that can so easily pick me up — were warmer than the midday sun.
In the morning, when I gave a start in my sleep trapped in a nightmare where my father’s corpse awaited me in murky waters, you woke me kissing my eyelids. You said my name, kissing them over and over until the dream faded away and there was only warmth.
You can psychoanalyze that. I prefer to spend my morning sipping coffee and reflecting on how fragile yet powerful this thing we’ve built between us is."  (http://gutsymmetries.tumblr.com/)

'Magical'.  That's the word I used for us.  But the words 'cherish', or 'treasure', no, I never got those from him.  Maybe they don't teach that in his part of the north; how to 'cherish' and 'treasure' women.  It's just another question that he might not have been able to give me an answer to.  It's just all very sad, from hope to sadness.
     

Solace

Ah, Rhett.  He was a criminal for the war torn south, and so, our hero.  He was a bad ass gentleman.  He was a ladies man.  He was a family man.  He was Scarlett's one true love, and she was undoubtedly his in the end.  The last 3.5 minutes of this movie clip always get to me, but are always solace when I'm in pain: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8etPTVveGb4&feature=related

"You once said 'heaven help the man who really loves me'."  He must be quite a man. 

From Insecurity To Reason

Me:  If you were dating a girl, and she asked "are you my man?" when she was out, and you said "yes", and she said "so I can tell all these other mother fuckers 'hell no', right?", what would you say?

Wise Friend:  I would just smile and say 'sure'.  I would think it was funny.  Why?

Me:  Cause I just had a guy blow a gasket over it.

Wise Friend:  And what was his reason?  Did he blow a gasket over your statement, or because guys were hitting on you?

Me:  Both.  I asked the question because I wanted to know where we stood and how he would react if I was getting attention. 

Wise Friend:  Yeah, I know, but why did he pop?

Me:  That's what I don't know.

Wise Friend:  Rhett doesn't have a bad temper my dear.

Me:  He hit on a girl right in front of me in retaliation.

Wise Friend:  Ask him to explain it.  You must be able to have communication, or forget it.  Maybe he thought you were playing a game with him.

Me:  Yes, I'm sure he thought I was playing a game with him, which I kind of was because I thought that we were at a point in our relationship, and adoration of each other that we could have fun like that, where he would say "that's right baby, you're mine now!"  Was I wrong?

Wise Friend:  No, you were totally correct.  Remember what I told you before, it is how people react that shows their character.

What I didn't tell my wise friend was how evil this guy was to me in detail...  He's the kind of guy that likes to break good women and destroy their hopes and spirit.  He almost destroyed his ex.  He will not destroy me.

Everyone Has A Journey

If you can't accept someone for all that they are, including their past, and how they chose to deal with their pain, then you don't deserve the true love and true intimacy, that comes with that acceptance.  There is no judgement in love and acceptance.  You can never be accepted for who you are, without giving acceptance in return.

Truth And Respect

Honesty and Respect. 

Two things that are absolute must-have's in a relationship. 

Two things that I have been giving, and never got back.

I put a knot in my necklace for every time he blew up on me. 

Every time I did, it made my necklace shorter,

and I knew that eventually, it would choke me.

Waiting For The One

Faith Hill, I'm so jealous, girl!  Sometimes doubt gets the best of me, but I'm sure, that if I continue on the good path I've been on for over a year now, that he'll come to me.  I will never lose faith.  Somewhere out there he's thinking the same thing.  "Where's my classy girl, that is fabulous, talented yet loyal and family oriented, like Faith, but still a blast to be around?"  I'm here!

'Girl you've never known no one like me
Up there in your high society
They might tell you I'm no good
Girl they need to understand
Just who I am
I may be a real bad boy
But baby I'm a real good man

I may drink too much and play too loud
Hang out with a rough and rowdy crowd
That don't mean I don't respect
My Mama or my Uncle Sam
Yes sir, yes ma'am
I may be a real bad boy
But baby I'm a real good man

I might have a reckless streak
At least a country-mile wide
If you're gonna run with me
It's gonna be a wild ride
When it comes to loving you
I've got velvet hands
I'll show you how a real bad boy
Can be a real good man

I take all the good times I can get
I'm too young for growing up just yet
Ain't much I can promise you
'Cept to do the best I can
I'll be damned
I may be a real bad boy
But baby I'm a real good man

I may be a real bad boy
Oh but baby I'm a real good man
Yes I am'

-Tim McGraw, 'Real Good Man'

Blind

When he made love to me, he put his hand on my face, as if he was blind, and he was trying to really see me.  I gave him everything, all of me, no secrets, there was nothing I wouldn't share.  I can honestly say I really tried, and that is my consolation.  The rest is on him.