Love Me Not

A couple of the bloggers in the Talk Thursday circle posted comments on my TT post from Thursday, which sparked an angry fire in me. Now, this is no reflection on JulieAnn or Sideon, it is merely a fact of my life. The comment, "When you love yourself, Ang, it will happen," just really pisses me off.

For two reasons:

1) All that I want for my life, all I desire to have, all that I long to be... all that is hinged on that statement. Ang, if you want to have desire back in your life, you've gotta love yourself. Ang, if you want to have a healthy partnership, ya gotta love yourself first. If you want to be successful, you're gonna have to love yourself.

Okay, I hear the messages loud and clear, people. Every time you and you and you have said that to me, I have heard it. What is, is... the statement is absolute Greek to me. Which leads me to item number two...

2) If I knew how to do that, I would be doing it. Judging by the obvious results and the feedback as of late, I apparently am lacking the know how in this department.

I feel afraid about that because I completely understand the theory of "If you don't love you, no one can love you." However, people have loved me in the past. Some people still do. Does that mean that, at one point, I knew how to love me? Or does that mean that I just attracted people who were as broken as me so we made one whole? (My guess would be the latter.)

I asked my mother this question in a blurting fury one day, "Good god, Mom. Everyone keeps telling me that I need to love myself. What the fuck does that mean? How do I do that???!"

She answered me with equal intensity, slamming her book shut and looking at me like I had momentarily gone insane, "Angie, perhaps you aren't recognizing that you do love yourself. Look at all you do for yourself, Ang. These classes. The personal inner work. The new business. All of that. Perhaps you already are loving yourself and you just don't realize it. Perhaps you need to do what you tell me to do: look at it differently!"

Okay... so... could it be? Could it be that I do love myself? I mean, I am alive still so I know that I love myself enough to choose life when I could have chosen death. However, perhaps I love myself more than just enough. Perhaps I do love myself and I can have what all I want, be what all I want.

Hmmmmm... perhaps...

TT - Desire (Come and Get It)

Desire and I used to be intimate partners. She used to reside within the depths of my body, surging forth and meandering through my cells, setting me afire. She used to be a part of who I was and I led forth with her. I gave in to her whenever she appeared - and that was often. She generally enticed me to do things that a Good Girl ought not do and I would give in to that burning, go with that moment and come out on the other side wondering when my flaming ticket to hell would arrive on my doorstep.

Somewhere in the last decade, Desire has abandoned me, or I have squelched her. Desire on any level. I feel dry and empty, wondering where my Desire has ran off to and with whom. Is she somewhere having a good time? A good time like the ones from which I chose to cut off myself? Is she somewhere golden and sultry? Somewhere that the answer to yearning is effortless?

When was the last time I stood solidly, firm in who I am and knowing of what I desired and offered myself confidently? When did I last say, "Come and get it" and that command was fulfilled without a moment's hesitation? Have I ever said that, been that, done that?

Fear swept through my life on wings of acid and sliced through my being. It slashed through the center of me, pruned my essence and left me limbless, a mere stump of who I once was. Fear, brandishing an icy sword, pierced me and oozed into the barren spaces left by Desire as she danced into the silence, away from me - a move of self-preservation. In that moment, I caved in upon myself, holding onto the noxious sludge in the hopes that it would make me whole.

It did not.

It does not.

And I weep with the knowing that I once was vibrant with Desire shooting forth from me timidly and leading me to heights of who I could one day be. I felt the fear of her, standing on the pinnacle and looking into the abyss that would soon be only a crack and knowing, knowing that I was amazing in this Desire. To be safe, though, I collapse inward. I ought to play small and they will love me then.

She is gone.

My desire is gone.

And I fear that she will never come and get me.

Photo Credits:
"Heat" (c) Angie Millgate 2007
"Desire (Day 106- 365 days)" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/itsallaboutmich/509387615/
"Fear" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ia7mad/1256122287/
"Staring Into the Abyss" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/whatwhat/22181235/