the abyss backer

I got up and didn't make coffee this morning.  Instead, I walked out into the wind with Little Dog tossing bits of sausage into the yard. The wind blowing from 3 directions, tree branches folding, as I watched her wrestle with 2 of the biggest forces I have ever encountered: grief and hunger.

She stood over the food with her tail tucked. Sniffed the air, looked back at me, walked away, sniffed the ground, returned, circled, then ate. I threw another piece and the whole thing repeated. Each time she was deciding which force to surrender to.

Unlike the dog, I have already decided my surrender.  For a couple of days now I have been nursing an old wound that was accidently opened by someone too young to understand.  Too nieve to realize the information she was sharing with me about "something" said that was never meant for me to hear, would hurt me.

It's not a secret what was said: I am a tomboy. Only it wasn't quite put that nice and as it was told to me it was passed around the room with a good laugh at my expense.  A room of people I shouldn't let bother me.  After all, there was a reason I walked away from him and never looked back....

I'm not starting a war with an ex over a few words after 14 years of peace.  Especially not as what he said is true.  I am exactly what they laughed at me for- being masculine.  

Oddly enough by the light of day, it is one of the things I enjoy most about myself.  It is the center of everything I love to do. But in the dark, it is the one thing I would want so desperately to change.

I always thought I would outgrow it.

Then I thought I could change it.

I tried out dressing it.

I tried starving it.

I tried faking it.

I tried covering.

But it isn't something that changes. 

I sit back and watch the woman who would never understand what it is like just by nature to be doing womanhood wrong.  Things that come so naturally to them escape me completely.  I don't have the temperament, the looks, or the body to be a yoga pants mall walker.

I can't get excited about lipstick colors.  One too heavy pass with the eyeliner and I look like a transvestite.  I really like dresses but for all the wrong reasons and high heeled shoes are a nearly an impassable summit.  

I don't really want to be that kind of beautiful. But yet I do. 

It's sort like a shirt one loves but never wears. It doesn't seem to exactly "fit" who you are. You're not sure why it doesn't.  You want to want to wear it, but you don't.  And you don't give it up because one day you think you will... because you should.  

It is an emotional abyss.  With two steep sides.  Two distinct ridgelines.  
My soul wants to be stronger & even rougher- but my heart wants to be dainty & demure. 

Divergent evolution of a species. In this case of a sex/gender.

The truth is I want to run down a snow shoot flecked in mud and ice.  Sit in the desert dirt picking sprigs of sage out of my socks. Drink beer from the bottle.  Sleep in the back of a truck under the sky.  Drink black coffee. Poke curiously at roadkill. Hike in the rain.  Carry bags of feed on my shoulder and big buckets of water comfortably at my side. Dig post holes and move earth.

  
My head tells me, let them laugh. It's true. It doesn't matter.  The voices say things I can't repeat.  They remind me of what it was like living under his roof. A decade of trying to fold myself into corners and dodge flying bottle.

And yet if I could I would change it. I would become one of those girls. 

Sure, I am already decided because I never had a choice. I am standing above the darkness on my own side of the abyss.  

When I startle in the night and I don't know where I am I go through it all over again.  I crawl out from underneath his alcohol-laden body.  Move house to house in my mind until I hit on something solid: I am not there with him anymore.  I am here in the upstairs bedroom of the little white house that rests quietly down on the valley floor. I am with BC. 

But I can still hear him laughing at me. 

Only it's not about this.