RELATIONSHIP Poem: Ode to Journals, by Idalis Wood

My husband misses the woman he married.
I miss her too, especially since
There are parts of her I can’t remember.
I remember her face,
But now I can’t be sure if it was hers.
I remember her strength and smile;
Borrowed and stolen from time.
Her dreams were reachable and real.
Now there are a floating fantasy,
Slipping through my fingers like smoke.
How fitting.
My dreams and the woman I were
Set ablaze and I have the sinking feeling
I am the one who struck the match.

I floated high on the fantasy of ease and comfort,
Only to crash down and scrap my knees
For another cog, another temporary placement,
Another far-fetched belief this will become something.
Something more. Something worthwhile.
Something that makes the cake real.
I bought it, and I need for it to be real.
Otherwise my life will be wasted.
One life; one chance.
And what do I do with it?
I constantly refresh my phone looking to cover
More shifts at work so I can have a chance
To breath freely.

I understand why my husband hates people.
I feel there are moments where he hates me.
Or at least regrets having to take care of me.
What’s worse is I am dependent on him.
I depend on him to love me today, tomorrow, and
Onward.
I know he loves me, but he’s got to be tired
Of dealing with me.
My incessant questions about his day,
My constant hunger,
My compulsion to “fix” whatever I did (real or imaginary),
My messed-up mind.
My strange sense of honor.
My childish dreams of being a writer,
But freezing at the sight of a blank page.

My spending, which I promise has gotten better.
My simple childishness notions about how
Screwed up I am, my family thinking all I
Must do is make him a true patriarch
While I skip along to take classes in the wishful
Delusion that some random certificate
Will birth my dream job.
This coming from the parents who didn’t prepare me
For the eventuality/possibility of having
To face the world alone.
The same parents who when they tried to
Force me to think about life without my husband
Drove me to tears.
The same parents who either can’t or don’t
Understand that every day I am trying to
Make whatever I can to survive.
Two jobs. Writing articles. Donating plasma. Bottle drop.
Everything I do with my husband is to survive
When the world is a nightmare, I am unable to wake up from.
Maybe that’s why my husband is silent and taking
His anger out on video game aliens and terrorists.

I am alone. Just my thoughts until tomorrow.
My husband will be back.
Another voice for me to lose myself into and avoid
The moments in my mind that lure me into self-hatred.
Another body in the apartment that lights up
My darkest days and keeps me tethered to the world.
A nightmare alone, but a hero’s journey with him.

We are both survivors;
Our pasts broke us.
We nicked our fingers gluing ourselves back together.
Some pieces we are still looking for.
The empty spaces make an unsettling noise
With every breeze blowing through us.
It stopped hurting me for now.
I can tell it hurts my husband,
but I don’t know how it hurts him this time.
He sleeps with that pain.
I feel him fight against it every night.
I feel him grab me.
He’s trying to shield me from something.
He never tells me what it is. I think he fears saying it.
If he ever says it, it can’t manifest, and I’ll be safe.

But we can’t be safe forever.
We silently fight our way out of dead-end life
And survive another day without succumbing to the voices
In our heads that tell us how meaningless,
Worthless, hopeless wanting more is.

Maybe if I fake my smile enough those voices will
Leave me alone and tell the voices in my
Husband’s head to fuck off and drive those
Dinosaurs in Congress to act their age and (for
Most of them) die.

Why can’t they die, but I feel myself die a little more inside?
My heart feels trapped.
Caged and laying still out of fear and survival.
Stay still and pretend you’re okay and then you’ll believe it.

I am a broken record.
Maybe that’s why my husband is probably grateful for the alone time.
At least for today.
I have no tears left to cry. I thought I had more left from yesterday.
But my head told my body I didn’t have enough of a reason
To cry myself to sleep.
I didn’t know how much my own brain could fuck me over by
Getting me to NOT cry.
I’ve had so many chances where I could’ve cried.
So many chances to unload those heavy words.
Mine and others.
But I put on the mask and now I think the mask is my face.
I’m so tired and I need my husband to get this mask off.
This there some solvent that can get it off? At least for one day.
Maybe one night so I can sleep without white noise?
Please. I’m scared of my thoughts. I’m scared of myself.
Because I hate myself. I hate what I don’t know,
But not in a politician sort of way.
I don’t know why I don’t know who I am.
I am kind, not nice. I am petty, not cruel. I am simple, not stupid.
I am here, not present (most times).
I am breathing, not living (mostly surviving, as I’ve made it abundantly clear).
I am broken, not gone. I am a mess, not a lost cause.
I am scared, not fearless.
I am almost enough when the world wants me to have enough.
If this is supposed to be my story,
I want to make it just before the end where everything
Makes sense and the journey through Hell
Is a memory.

Not a repeated venture,
If I must go through Hell, I wish it would be
One version as opposed to its many reincarnations and sequels.
Maybe if I get a taste of Heaven, it will be the cake
That doesn’t disappear on my lips.

My fingers hurt. My heart aches. My eyes are heavy.
Being alive hurts. How easily the body can break.
Funny how our bodies keep us alive only to do us in
Without a care.
They don’t discriminate, I guess.
My appendix could burst and kill me no matter how
Many miles I run or how many bench presses I do.
I could drop dead from an aneurysm with a salad
In my stomach when I really wanted the bacon cheeseburger.
Who am I kidding?
It’s the other way around and that would make the difference
In the size of urn my husband would pick for me.
Either way, it’d be the most affordable housing either of us could afford.

How sad.
In death, we would be truly free.
Work ourselves old and miserable before our time only
To find peace in death when we should’ve tried and make more
Time and love for one another when we were alive.
This could be the light of the tunnel we need to find each other again.
I hope my husband and I can find each other.
I hope we are on the right path.
We have our torches. It’s just a matter of time.