i never was very good at chess...

lately, life seems to be a pretty intense game of chess. the problem is that i never was very good at chess. i don't know why, and everyone always assumed that i should/would be, because it's a 'smart person game'. and i was deemed a 'smart person'.

i have friends who think that i'm a know it all. i have one friend who says to me...'you know everything' when i imply that i know more than i'm being told.

my response, my statement to the world is - I don't know anything. I'm fucking clueless. I have no idea how to do anything in my life that I'm supposed to be doing right now, no idea how to figure it out. I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't know. And I admit that it's probably for the best, because everything that I do know, that I've come to believe, has been wrong so far. I'm so tired...of trying to convince people that I really don't know. That under all of this tightly wound and intensely hard to please exterior is someone who is just looking for something real enough for me to hold onto for a while. There has never, ever been a safe place for me to be vulnerable or sick or broken and know that someone else was going to take care of things, or pick up the pieces. For my entire life, I have had to be okay, no matter how not okay I am. This month was the 21st anniversary of my dad's death. I don't know how not okay I'm allowed to be about that, but I've been pretty fucked up inside about it but haven't spoken it aloud to anyone. This month, my son who lives thousands of miles away packed up and left for his very first summer camp and he was so excited and desperate for me to know about it and all that I could think about was how much it hurts to always ache for him no matter how much I get to be an acitvely involved birth mother.

I don't speak aloud how much it hurts, not only to see pregnant women and babies and toddlers but also 8 year old boys who are similar to him and know that no matter what or who I find in this life, I'll never have that option again. I don't choke people who say, 'well, at least you know how rewarding adoption can be.' and I don't break nearly as often as I'm breaking inside, even though the people who know when I am breaking would be sad to hear that.

I don't speak aloud how tired you get, how literally bottomlessly wiped out you feel, when you constantly have to think about your pain and your health and your insurance and your lab work and your iron and vitamins and calcium and cancer and oxygen and fucking always be hurting and thinking about your body. I am so fucking tired. I am so fucking tired of being in pain. Of being tired. Of dealing with doctors and medical procedures far more frequently than I do any other thing. I am tired of taking pills to make me feel better.

the thing about chess and all of this other stuff is that, on top of life shit, there's People In Your Life shit. and it's so much worse most of the time. to me, relationships are proving to be more and more like chess with each passing month. and honestly, I don't have the wherewithall or inclination to strategize my interactions with my 'friends' out. i want people with whom i can be honest, vulnerable, me...just fucking me. i don't want to have to think three conversations ahead, stay on top of the back and forth of balancing someone who knows your weaknesses with your own neediness. i don't want to deal with people who would take me any way that they could have me, or who need me to fill a role for them, or who see friendship as a synonym for 'endless niceness.'

i'm tired of people who mistake my kindness for weakness. who act as if my sincere love for them makes me worthy of suspicion. i'm just so tired. so very, very tired. and i just want to go out and do the things that a normal girl my age would be doing...but then that takes days to recover from. :( i'm so tired.