Scraped thin

I feel transparent. Here, doing my job, talking with friends, reading. No longer waiting for life to start after school or marriage or kids - this is it, the Rest of My Life, and it feels empty. Meaningless. My co-worker says it's human nature to feel like whatever we are feeling at the moment is what we will be feeling forever - love, sadness, loneliness - and of course it always changes. I've stopped looking ahead, trying not to look behind at the crash scene, just watching my feet and wondering when they'll land on something that feels more like home. I'm not depressed, exactly. I am going places, seeing things - it just all feels thin, like I'm doing it all from so high up I can't quite hear or breathe. Sometimes a memory or a song will make my chest clench, that sharp pain and warmth that feels like your heart really is broken and bleeding, and then a moment later I'll be laughing again. How engaged in life can you be when you know that at any moment you can be stabbed in the chest?
 

Thinking about this Maya Angelou poem:

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.


I got back from Valencia to find that my Mike had not fed or given water to my cat as promised. A car pulled up in front of my apartment and he got out with his girlfriend. An hour later he texted me to say he had just gotten home and that he was going for a bike ride. Gavin spent the rest of the day asking why his dad hadn't come over to say hi so he could tell him about our trip. I explained as simply as I could, disappointed. You want to believe the people will change for the better when they say they are, but Mike has not seen a therapist, not stopped lying, continues to discard his promises and family when his sex life predominates his life. I want none of it.