happy anniversary, baby, you can have the flamethrower

Today, I have two things.

a) I have found solace since my last post. In this


Yes, we all make mistakes, even if we are Kevin Smith's version of God. Poor , Alanis. She went on to bigger and better things, like cussing out Uncle Joey in this gem Which is further proof that I am redeemable. Ish.

b)

This is a phase of renewal. Of taking all the things that broke me before, looking them in the eyes and saying, you scare the crap out of me, but even if you beat me before, I'm going to try again. Because before I didn't know things about myself, like how to know the difference between betrayal and paranoia. I didn't know how to take care of me, and therefore be someone who could be taken in, and treasured. I didn't know so many things about myself. But now that I know, now that I have perspective, I want to try them again.

That includes Harry. No, that's not his name, but for our purposes here, it is. Harry and I stomped all over each other. We got scared, and in our circular stampede, endlessly carouselling between the shelter of each other, the (unpiercing, shallow, and therefore safe) refuge of our endless backup plans, and the assurance of the exit, we trampled each other. Until, in November, we found ourselves flattened and dirty, the sorry refuse left for the streetsweepers at the end of the parade's reveries. Our injuries to one another are the pi of numbered indiscretions. Not infinite, but far too close to list. And so I will round it up. We assailed each other with 3.14 units of insult and blasphemy against the very name of that love which we claimed strung us together. And pi is the key to the angry circle. The numbered faults are the equation by which we find the circumference of our grudgery. Towards the end, we were conjoined by the pain. Made siamese twins by the constraining ligaments of our mutual anger. It held us together and forced the endless stepping-on-toes sloppy foxtrot of those who cannot seem to love each other in step.

Our trespassed are ours alone, and not to be shared with any web aside from the one woven between us. But in spite of having watched all the anguish heaped and gathered like the garbage of one infamous Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout, we found ourselves in need of one another. For he is the only man, aside from my mother and the lawyers who knows the words that ended the world, and he's the one whose hair I cut, and who knows exactly what I'm talking about when I start singing the lyrics to songs from The Goofy Movie. He knows I hate underwear and when I demand romance, he gives me the flamethrower in Zombie Apocalypse.

And when I stay the night, and wake up with terrible breath, I sunlight against red eyelashes, and the strangest mix of blue and brown in wide open eyes, who haven't yet remembered to be afraid of me.

It's not perfect. It still hurts. I ask 800 masochistic questions a day, and catch myself looking for proof that I'm failing. Everything feels like a clue, but I am no detached Sherlock Holmes, and I am making clues to fit theories, and not the other way around.

But I want to try. Some part of me has to know that I did my best to hold on to the man who knows all my shame and secrets, even if he doesn't remember them. Because even if it isn't movie perfect, when someone lets you have the flamethrower, you don't walk away from that lightly. So maybe I'll lose, but you never know, I've got the flamethrower now.