Halterbroke's Journal

            I have to start my way back “home” tomorrow but “home” is a really peculiar word because “home” ought to be a place you love and long to be.

            My “home” is a box with stuff in it.  I love some of my stuff.  I love my portrait of Fierce Grace and I love the set of crystal champagne flutes I got for my 21st birthday that I never use.  I love my funny dogs and my cats that always have to be with me and my plants and my Kitchen Aid mixer because it’s fancy and it reminds me that once I used to be quite the chef.  I love my books.  All 84,000 of them.  I love my crummy green couch because it loves me back, I have been living on that couch for umpteen years and we cradle each other like lovers.  I love my blue room and the comforter on my bed with all the galloping white horses on it.  I love Dagny and I love Mary and I love my other friends.  I love that my psych hospital is close enough to drive to by myself in case of emergency and I love that I have had the same doctors virtually since the infancy of my diagnosis.

            But.

            Nearly all that stuff is portable.  I’m portable.  I can pack my portrait of Fierce Grace and the champagne flutes and the dogs and cats and the mixer and the books.  The couch really should be burned because it smells like a German Shepherd.  I can recreate my lovely blue room anywhere.  The love of my friends will always be with me and maybe it’s time to let go of the baby blanket of living ten feet from a psychiatric hospital.

            Because all that’s left when you take the previous paragraph away…is nothing.  I live a nine hour drive from my family, who misses me a great deal, painfully and deeply all the time.  I live with a man I never loved, who doesn’t bother to understand me, who clogs my air and makes me choke on my mistakes…and he always waits till a really great time to do it too.  Master craftman of psychological terrorism.  I cannot even cry.  All I can do is hang out on my tiny front porch late at night in my white nightgown and stare at the sky with my Chihuahua tucked under my arm and blow smoke at the moon and wonder how the hell it all got so fucked up.  I probably look like a ghost from a great distance.  I feel like a ghost sometimes.

            Finding love is not the hard part.  Love WILL find you.  I think anyway.  If you are open to it.

            I found love.  We found love I should say.  And now that we put that puzzle together, and we know that Yes, We Belong, we have another puzzle.  Sort of like “The Davinci Code” if you read it or saw it…  I guess every puzzle leads to the next puzzle.

            This puzzle is How To Be Together In The Shortest Amount Of Time With The Least Amount Of Emotional And Physical And Fiscal Damage To Ourselves And Our Loved Ones.

            Because, to be simply put, it’s fucking unbearable to be apart.

            On the whole, nearly everyone has been UNBELIEVABLY supportive and to you I say OH thank you.  I have been warned only twice to protect my heart.  And I can very honestly say that while I do retain a small bit of heart for myself (as I have someone else’s to look after now) the rest of it that he is taking care of couldn’t be in stronger, more loving, more capable hands. 

            To The Beloved:  I laugh a little because you’ve said, “Honey, I’m home,” to me a bazillion times, without realizing that really the proper way to say that is, “Honey, I’m Home.”  I love you more every day and even though I just saw you yesterday, I miss your touch, your hand in mine, two heads on a pillow, your sweetness, your gentle heart.