This Sinking Ship

I am beginning to fall apart again, after I worked so hard to pick up the pieces and I thought I was doing so well. In trying to make everything right, I'm just ripping myself to pieces again. I want to be happy, and I want everyone around me to be happy, and those things can't all physically coincide - but I'm trying anyway, because it's what I do.

For as long as I can remember, I've been the pillar, the rock, the support for anyone and everyone who needed me. The first time I remember being that I was six, and I held my mother while she cried because her own mother was in the hospital. I was worried about my grandmother too, of course, but I didn't cry, even though I had never seen my mom cry before and it scared me. I knew she needed me to be strong, and I was.

In high school, my friend Maria cried on me when everyone else picked on her for being a foreigner. When I found out my mom had breast cancer, I didn't cry because she needed me. When Maria's mom died of the same thing, I went to the funeral and supported her. When my dad told us that he had Lou Gherrig's disease (ALS) and had approximately two years to live, I didn't cry. When we found out six months later that he was lying, I brushed it off.

When his alcoholism finally caught up to him and he did actually die, I stayed with him and my mom and my oldest sister in the hospital after the rest of the family had all gone home, and they never saw me cry. At my cousin's funeral two weeks later, I supported the rest of the family. At my grandmother's memorial service two months ago, I was the only one in the room aside from the pastor who didn't cry.

It's not to say I don't have feelings, or that I never cry; neither of those are true. But I've always felt it's my duty to be there for everyone else when they need it. When I want to be strong, I am. I never crack, not until the opportunity I'm looking for presents itself. The entire world could fall down around me - and there are days I've felt that it already has - and I would be unbreakable until it was all over.

When I started dating my first girlfriend and realized how many emotional problems she had from her past, I was her love, her support, and her personal therapist. When we broke up and I moved on to Kevin, I was the same for him. He said I showed him what real love was like after he broke up with his fiancee of four years; when his father was dying in the hospital, I was there at his family's side.

When I met Aiden at work, I was ecstatic to have made a new friend, as I am the posessor of a strange personality contradiction: I'm a good friend, and I love having friends, but I have a very hard time making them. Two days into our friendship he started telling me about his problems with his wife, and it was familiar territory for me; give a shoulder, offer advice. It was a comfortable place.

I wasn't entirely surprised when we ended up having an affair. We were both cute, friendly, had the same interests, and were experiencing stresses in our current long-term relationships. It almost made sense.

But I never meant it to go where it has. I thought it would be a physical thing, like friends with bennies, so we could both blow off steam and have some fun. But then we both managed to get emotionally involved. Suddenly I went from being the fling on the side to being told, "I'd rather be with you than my wife. You're so much more fun, so much more understanding..."

I am everybody's savior but my own.

Aiden, I'm sorry I've been ignoring you. I'm not trying to cause you any hurt or worry, but it's all I can do to hold myself together these days. I just can't get out of my own head and my own worries and problems. I feel like I'm drowning, and I'm grabbing at the only thing I can see that might save me, which is pushing you away.

As you have said to me before, I never wanted to hurt you in any of this. I was confused and didn't know where my life was going, but I never meant to take it out on you. I guess I did, and now I feel bad for doing it, and I don't know where to go from here. I'm pulling everyone in my life down with me and I can't figure out how to stop.

~

I don't know how to leave you

And I don't know how to stay

I've got things that I must tell you

That I don't know how to say

The man behind these empty words

Is crying out in shame

Holding on to this sinkin' ship

When nothing else remains

All I want is everything

Am I asking too much

All I want is everything

Like the feel of your touch

All I have are yesterdays

Tomorrow never comes

(Def Leppard, All I Want Is Everything)