you'll think you can break her, 'cause you, you think she's crazy and weak

closed off from love
I didn't need the pain
once or twice was enough
and it was all in vain

So there's a split in the road ahead, and both paths are shadowed from here. There's broken glass on either path, and while one way offers thorns, the other barbs, it's going to feel the same, pushing through. No hope of going around, and the path is closing behind me, so I can't return the way I've come. There's nothing left but to make my choice, and walk forward, and hope I survive. Until then, I stand, wondering which way would cause the least damage.

time starts to pass
before you know it you're frozen

The problem with bad relationships is, no matter how good anything feels in any given moment, overall, it's still a bad thing. No matter who's at fault, there's damage. No matter how much we try to step back and heal, there's damage. All we can do is work around the wounds, let them heal, hope for scars that disappear in time.

My problem is, I scar so easily. Everything lasts.

but something happened
for the very first time with you
my heart melts into the ground
found something true

A friend once told me, he'd never met anyone with such a flair for self-destruction. A better friend told me that I seem to be drawn to men that have fantasies of taking me apart, and making someone new out of the bits that remain. I'm not truly comfortable with either assessment, but I can't discount the validity of them. Denial of such truths just means I'm drawing the curtain over something I need to see, to accept; because if I don't, I keep making the same mistakes. And I have had enough, more than had enough, of being sectioned and resewn.

It's not a comfortable view of my rules for attraction. And it doesn't entirely help make the choice of which pain to swallow, as I walk my path from here.

and everyone's looking round
thinking I'm going crazy

And I keep having spider dreams. They're getting worse, not better, and they're never threatening me--I have no fear of spiders. But they seem to be threatening those I love. Palm-size, more legs than average spiders have, or more spiders than most rooms usually have...night after night after night. The spiders differ, so it's not so much repeating nightmares, but they are becoming unnerving.

Last night I couldn't take it and looked up a random dream interpretation page for spiders:

Spiders are a little like snakes in that they usually refer to something bad in your life. They will usually refer to some situation where you feel trapped or stuck. Perhaps you dislike your job and wish to move to something more interesting. Perhaps you feel stuck in a relationship.

Oh.

Hell.

but I don't care what they say
I'm in love with you
they try to pull me away
but they don't know the truth

And the truth of this is, some folks think I've broken up with a love already. The truth of this is, I'm not sure what I'm doing in SL anymore. The truth of this is, I only feel creative in a virtual sense, these days, when I'm working on a charity project or building on a sim; a lot of the joy has left, and I know that's not all me, and my associations going bad; it's also the world.

The truth of this is, I've been bleeding out for a while, from earlier wounds, but I'm so used to the sensation of bloodloss, life lost, I haven't even really noticed.

my heart's crippled by the vein
that I keep on closing
you cut me open and I--

And I--and I--and...The dream page was right. I don't know what to do. I know I'm largely trapping myself, in this, but there's not a good, clear choice I see yet--and there hasn't been for months, now--that doesn't involve pain, mayhap more than I wish to bear, at present. I'm such a coward.

Sooner or later, I have to accept that. Sooner or later, I break a heart. Sooner or later...

I just don't want it to be mine. But I'm more comfortable with that thought, than with the thought of breaking another's heart. Save, if I break mine, I might be causing corollary damage somewhere else. Again, I've run out of good options.

keep bleeding
keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love

And when love feels like flesh wounds, I'd say I'm in the wrong affair, but...maybe this is just familiar ground for me. It's not what I want from a loved, but it's what I've come to expect.

I need better expectations.

keep bleeding
keep, keep bleeding love
you cut me open

Worse, I describe things, situations with one love, and I hear myself, and I have heard these same word choices coming from abused women. He doesn't like when I do...whatever it is. I can't do that then, I have to wait for tomorrow; he expects me to be there at that time... Making explanations. Making excuses.

Is it in me? Is it external to me? I have been abused before, I know the feeling, and I know how long I tried to make excuses for the idiot giving me the bruises in the first place. But now, in this situation...is it just that my phrasing feels like that pattern of emotional response? I'm hearing the bell ring not because it's happening with someone else, but because I sound like I did then?

It's still unsettling.

trying hard not to hear
but they talk so loud
their piercing sounds fill my ears
try to fill me with doubt

Doubt I have in spades. Doubt I've always had. And it's never doubt of others, per se...it's always self-doubt, doubt of my own actions, my own reactions. Am I making the right choices? (Probably not.) Am I making things too hard on those around me? (Likely.) Am I dragging everything out? (Yes.)

Will I be able to move in future and resolve things? That is the question, isn't it?

yet I know that the goal
is to keep me from falling

And I have to make this decision, I'm the only one that can. I know that. If people push me too hard I'm just going to dig in my heels and refuse to move at all. And worse, if people push me and I jump and do something--positive or not--I will feel for the rest of my life as if someone forced my hand.

This time, this time, I can't do that. It has to be my decision. I have no other option. I have to know it's me, and no one else; I have to do this on my own.

But it hurts, so much, some days. Being in love wasn't supposed to hurt this much.

yet everyone around me
thinks that I'm going crazy...
maybe, maybe--

Stress and pain and lack of solid sleep and more fatigue than I want to deal with and an endless supply of low-level functionaries with nothing better to do than impede me, and yes, okay, I can admit this to myself: I am not in the ideal emotional place for more ruin. But I'm losing the luxury of waiting, bit by bit. Sooner or later, I'll have to walk forward. Sooner or later, I'll have to reach the end of the path.

Sooner or later, I'll have to look up and see who's still with me, and who isn't. And I'll have to deal with that.

and it's draining all of me
oh, they find it hard to believe
I'll be wearing these scars
for everyone to see

And once again, this is the problem. I remain cripplingly unable to show simple, basic emotion so that those around me understand what's going on. One I love was teasing me today, and I know it was meant to be light banter, but it sunk in, it sunk in deep. In my mind I pleaded with her to stop, but I think all that made it out loud was a quiet 'No', half-voiced on the warm summer air.

"Oh, you need a little griefing," she said playfully, but the inflection made it sound like she'd said 'grieving'. I just shook my head and I thought, No, I really don't. I'm already grieving.

I'm already grieving. I haven't taken a single step forward, and I'm already mourning what I'm going to lose. And I don't even know how much I'm going to lose yet.

How stupid I'm going to be.

you cut me open and I
keep bleeding
keep, keep bleeding love--

(Lyrics taken from Leona Lewis' Bleeding Love.)