Well Worn and Threadbare (Recovered from March 5, 2019)

This feeling,
Bittersweet,
Realizing that all
Of those love songs
Over the years
Weren’t being felt
For the right reasons…
For the right person…
Just practicing the emotions
For the eventual one
As it turns out…
Was it wasted time?
I suppose not…
Life experience to help me grow
Into the man she needed me to be…
Needs…
I’m still growing, learning,
Becoming more aware…
Change is fairly constant…
All those heartfelt love poems
Written over the years
To people I no longer know…
They weren’t even written
About who those people really were…
They were written about what my heart wanted…
And I desperately tried to fit them in
to that love story playing out
In my head…
I should have major trust issues,
And I actually do,
But…
No matter how many times
They turned out not to be
“The One”,
that hasn’t killed my ability
To love again…
Oxytocin is an addiction, after all…
All those words…
All those old emotions…
Remembering them
Like old songs
That used to have relevance…
I’ve written about this before,
But with different context…
Music roots my emotions
When I can’t get a handle on them
Myself…
It is the root of my ability to remember
Chronological time…
There’s some emotional fatigue
From everything I’ve put myself through
Over the years…
I feel more real though…
Velveteen rabbit imagery is also a common
Device I run to 
When writing about emotions…
And when we are finally real…
When someone finally, really loves us…
And we feel the same way in return...
We are well-worn and threadbare…
There are scars…
A map of our life written in our flesh 
And burned into our synapses…
Our pain allows us to understand each other…
It is our many teachers…
Still learning, 
Still growing,
I think we are designed to work better
In pairs,
Doesn’t matter the gender…
I would like to grow with her…
All of those words from the past
Could be about her…
Could have been about her…
But our relationship
Has been more complex
And textured
Than any of my others…
Time was taken…
Years of getting to know each other
As friends,
First…
I would like to be able to say
“With no ulterior motives”...
But
There are so many times I’ve wanted this,
Exactly this,
Over the past 7 years…
Whenever my life began to fall apart,
She was the person
Who was there
To let me shed tears
In her presence…
Without telling me to calm down…
Without judgement...
To let me know
Everything was going to be alright…
That means more than everything…
All of those love poems,
Thirty three years of them,
Scribbled into dozens of journals,
Were all 
About the wrong women...