And I don't feel any different..." Death Cab For Cutie ------ I hope everyone has gotten off on the right foot in the new year, but, if not, know you are not alone. I didn't get another job I had high hopes for, I had a last minute breakdown about moving to the middle of nowhere to get a break on rent and extended my ridiculously expensive lease through the end of the month despite a serious lack of money, the legal battle with my government licensing board has resumed, and my relationship is back on the line. I didn't mean to, I didn't think I was, but I placed "the last straw placed on the camel's back"; it's too fucking tired to keep going, and I don't know if there is anything I can do to convince it to keep trying to move forward. I don't even know that I can get it to LOOK forward, let alone move... All it wants to do is look back toward where we came from and see all the struggles we have gone through, how many times we have fallen down, how much lighter its load would be if it were to just leave me here. And I don't know what I would do if that were to happen. I have nothing but this metaphorical camel, and no idea how to move forward without it. I can't even turn around and go back to where I was before we started on this journey. And so here we are. Not really speaking for weeks. Me wanting to just look toward the future and work on getting to a better place, and him dwelling on the circles we have gone in, convinced there is only more of the same around the bend, and not having the heart to keep going if that is the case. Every time we make it past and obstacle or turn a corner, there seems to be more of the same. But we don't have a map right now, so there is no telling what is around this corner. We have drawn a bunch of maps, but they have all been blown away by the wind, too weathered by storms to read, or we simply light them on fire and they go up in flames. It feels like it's always my dumb ass accidentally dropping it in the fire, and once it's there he just says fuck it and pours fuel on the fire then walks away. No matter what the reason, every time our map gets ruined, he decides he is ready to give up on cartography altogether, rather than trying to piece together what is left to figure out where we are and working to remapping out the road ahead. Right now I am so afraid that he is giving up. That he is sitting there by himself thinking about nothing but how lost we keep getting and convincing himself he will never get out of the woods with me constantly dropping the damn map and holding him back from finally just drawing one the way he wants it. I don't think he realizes that he gets frustrated and rips the fucking thing up in my face on a fairly regular basis... Even when he does acknowledge that yes, he ripped it up and tossed the shreds in the fire, it seems it is always somehow my fault that we are lost and that the map was too shitty to bother keeping. I might be sitting in darkness with him, only able to see the light from the flames fueled by our ripped up map, but I *know* there is light through the trees. I know we need to sit down and draw a good map and laminate the thing so that it will weather storms and can't be ripped up in fits of rage and might be salvageable if someone lights it on fire. We could even mark it up with dry erase markers as we go, then draw on with permanent markers what we discover, but we need to keep that stupid base map. When that one runs out we can file it away for later reference and draw a new one for the next chunk of the path, but we can't keep destroying them. They can't keep fading to the point I'm the only one who can still read it enough to know we aren't completely lost. I can still read this one. I can read it pretty well actually, to the point I'm pretty sure he needs to get some fucking glasses because it's so clear. I guess his eyesight has been getting worse the farther we go... But I can draw bold lines. I can make icons bigger and write more legibly. But that makes no difference if he doesn't believe it would help, that I can't even do it, that it's just going to get ruined again, etc. to the point that has no interest in even reading a draft. I can still see where we are going. The end is still clear to me. I can still see a path forward. I'm willing to get out the tape and to mend the rips and tears, and to sit down and redraw it in a way that he can read it too because I know we can finally have a good copy. It might not be perfect, we might need to make revisions, but as long as we keep moving forward and hit our checkpoints, we are going to make it. I know we will. I just hope he can make out the lines, even if he has to squint to see a faded blurry squiggle, enough to give me a chance to make it legible and to not just give up on our journey. I don't want to give up. I don't think he WANTS to give up either, I just don't think he has the heart to. And I don't know how I would possibly survive without him. We might keep losing our damn map, but I couldn't have made it this far without him, and I don't know that I could make it any farther. His hopelessness is making me feel lost and hopeless. I am so afraid of being left here alone in the dark; of someone giving up on me yet again, finally realizing how much easier their journey would be without me and deciding my companionship is not worth the hardship. I'm just trying to prepare myself for that abandonment, in case I do end up having to attempt to navigate on my own, and praying to God I don't have to.
