a modern day fairy tale...

cuppa java any one?
a couple of years ago, i stopped drinking coffee. not for any health or religious reasons, but because i decided i only like really good coffee. and since my husband actually preferrs instant coffee (can it even be classed as coffee?) and the crap they have in the teachers workroom is no better, i decided i was better off brewing tea. so i invested in a number of quality teas and carried on with my little life. so why? why oh why? did i accept the gigantic coffee proffered to me by my mentee starfish? because it was such a sweet gesture. and i really was tired. but it was, after all, gas station coffee, and even miss dii, who practically shoots caffiene in her veins, would not take a sip. but let me back up a minute.
this evening miss dii and i revisited one of our old haunts: the PLO. this is a class given by teachers, for the benefit of other teachers. and for all my reservations about her personality, we do make a good team. i like her. i accept the fact she is a snob. and she accepts me with all my faults...
so, starfish, my sweet young mentee (brand new teacher, no training, took the job as we were desperate- teaching positions pay much better than aide positions, just ask T3). although T3 is nowhere near as green as starfish- he's a good kid, but honest i don't think he has what it takes. each day he comes to me with a new career path- one day he wants to be a postal carrier. the next day, he's taken the TSA test (airport security). all the while he maintains to anyone at work that his mission in life is to be a biology teacher. hey, i give the kid credit (i call him kid, although he is three years my senior) as nervous as he is personality-wise, he's holding together rather well. although i have not given up on the little voice in the back of my head that tells me psychos live with their mothers with mundane names like "norman" and surface after much stress to their lives. but, again, i digress.
so starfish appears, a little late, but toting four large coffees, with milk, and several packets of sugars. i've had week upon week of what the hell is coming up next and here he is sweet as pie. he wanted a coffee and thought someone else might like one too. so i take one, no sugar, and proceed to drink it all before it's even gone cold. while it buoyed me up for the rest of the presentation (best we have ever done, miss dii and i!) i found myself slipping back into my old "meth" habits while in the grocery store later in the evening. i arrived home and proceeded to take care of my daily unpacking and unwinding at record speed... and finished just in time for heroes. i thought three glasses of wine would calm me down... but alas, here i am one episode of journeyman later, wide awake and lamenting my folly.
folly- something worth a good laugh- the little mistakes in life should be taken lightly. not held as a knife to the throat, as a threat. what is burnt toast in the scheme of things? a wasted piece of bread, only, until someone makes it so much more than it was. admittedly, it was the last of cheese, and not quite enough for cheese on toast. i was distracted by the slicing of apples- perhaps i should have opened my mouth and uttered the unforgivable curse, "why don't you do it then?" a simple phrase, uttered before the burning of the toast might have produced only grumbligs while shouted after the burning of the toast created much more like a firestorm recalling every burnt morsel of food and every time it wasn't just like he wanted. the last straw was the pie. the pie he'd watched me create from start to finish, he'd watched me fill the tin with skinned apples, sliced thin. watched the pastry come out of the fridge and roll out on the counter. my first ever perfect pastry. he'd watched the crust, laid delicately in the tin receive the pile of sugared apples before being covered by the second skin. i had considered, for a moment, the lattice for the top pastry- but conceded for a slitted skin with leaves in the detail. a lattice would be too much, too fine. i had already achieved enough with this perfect pastry and the thinly sliced peeled apples...
it wan't until the thing was in the oven that it was brought to my attention there were too many apples inside. he's seen many apple pies baked before and there were far too many apples in there. i couldn't believe it. i absolutely lost my mind. i fantasized about taking the thing out of the oven and flinging it at him. i envisioned the apples, stuck to the side of his face and slidig down his cheek as i walked out the door; going i know not where. in the end i left the pie in the oven, slammed the bathroom door, and took a long shower- washing my hair. i never said another word to him that day, while the pie baked, when i went in to check the browning of the perfect crust, when i removed it to cool on the sideboard. i threw a towel over it and left it there for the rest of the day. eventually i left, without a word, i had something else i had to do that day. something that took me away from home, and him.
all the words stuck in my throat this morning as i carried the perfect and uncut pie along with a frozen banana bread out to my car on my way to work. not a word was said by either although the gesture did not go unnoticed. the home baking would be appreciated elsewhere- ironically enough with a cup of steaming hot coffee- cream, but no sugar.
when i got home tonight it was too dark to check on the horses. i had to take the groceries in, open the mail, tidy up a bit. i think buddy will be ok. i should have known it would not work to take him in the trailer, alone. he is getting old and does not tie well (that would be an understatement... when he is tied up he is a danger to himself and others.) it is even an excercise in manners to cinch a saddle on him. too tight, too quick, and he will try to back out of something which is quite well attached to his back and more difficult to loosen. not to mention the last time he saw someone led into that trailer it was his only friend brownie- whom he never saw again.
i should have known not to take him. i had the other horse, the younger horse, the well trained horse. but i'd made my decision, based on a few different factors. and when he didn't load immeditely, i became arrogant and tried to trick him. i put dakota in the trailer, loading buddy in next to him. when i backed dakota out, buddy began to buck and rear, trying for all his might to break the ties binding him to the front of the trailer. in the melee he bumped his head, scratched quite a lot of fur and skin off his rump, and ended laying in the trailer with his head pitifully held up by the tie down. i managed to get him free of the tie, and undid the back door of the trailer and waited. in the back of my head i heard the mr. calling something out to me. i nodded and said yes, i didn't need to understand what he was on about- only to know the horse was ok. if he got up on his own, he would be ok. i knew that somehow. after what seemed like ages, but must have only spread into seconds, he suddenly scrambled to his feet from a still, quick breathing, wild animal. he backed down the ramp and allowed me to take the halter. i walked him around for a bit. i checked his mouth. i checked his eyes. everything looked normal, except for some blood in his mouth. there was no foam at the mouth, no blood at the nose. his eyes looked clear and alert. he walked normal, if slow, back to the paddock. i went to the first aid kit to get the wound spray. there was a buzzing in my ears the whole time. at first, i thought it was the stress, the adrenaline, the moment. but as the buzzing noises formed themselves into words, i realized i was being yelled at. i didn't need telling that was all my fault. i didn't need a play by play of how badly i had F***ed up. especially i didn't need this repeated to me over and over again. not when i needed to calm down enough to drive this truck and trailer and horse out of here for the first time on my own.

The elephant in the room is getting harder to ignore. i've been in this place before, but it was so much easier to identify the elephant when it was leaving me black and blue. the power and control wheel does not leave a mark i can see, nor does it hurt in the way that i can't hide in it. all the things i want to say to him are lost on deaf ears. while he has license to ridicule and restrict my every movement, any complaint i have is met with laughter and a hug. hardly makes me feel like an adult. when this behavior does not suffice, or when i've hit a nerve, he turns my words around, making me the enemy, making the dischord my fault...
he found me at a terrible time in my life. i did not spend enough time rekindling my inner lioness before i was scooped up by the king of beasts. there is hope for us, but this hope relies on his ability to adapt to the changes in me. it's been too long since i've been myself. for a young woman who once had control of her destiny, for whom bad things seemed to miss her like she was charmed, i sure have let the last seven years wash over me and take me further out to sea than i planned. it's a long way back to me. and i'm afraid he won't like me when i get there. he's already started calling me a bitch, telling me i have a bitch face, while the words don't taste as good as some of the other words he used, they are more freeing somehow than the half-hearted compliments...
but that was very negative and i didn't mean it. the complements were not half hearted, if they weren't genuine he would not have to truncate them with insults. i forget he lives in a world of his own. he has created a picture of exactly how things should be (and therefore are) if anyone makes a change to his perfect picture he becomes angry and blames everyone (but himself). i'm not describing a crazy person, but one who is autistic. a very intelligent, very highly functioning very textbook autistic. at this point i would like to stop making excuses for him- i am only presenting this case as what i have to work with.
it's a classic fairy tale, really. he's locked in the tower of his own creation and i have the ability to set him free, but doing so would mean that his world would come crashing down. and he would be forced into a reality he never dreamed of, and with no armor. would he be able to love the one who set him free (for now he can see clearly, but to him it is unfocused, scattered) or would he hate me for all eternity for removing the curse which is all he's ever known.
but simpler still. can his love for me survive my metamorphasis into something more like myself? will he still love me when i break free of the chrysalis he has imprisoned me in? and what an ironic prison it is. all i ever wanted to do was please him, to make him happy. but there is no pleasing him, his tastes change like a woman in a shoe store. i do believe he deeply loves me. if i did not deeply love him i would not have allowed myself to go through with some of the baser portions of our married life. but can our love survive a rebirth of sorts? he has admittied to being in a state of "peeling off the layers of the onion" i've not been sure i've liked the metamorphi that have emerged from the smelly leaves. but each one gets closer to the core. he's finally letting me in, all the way in under that crab's shell and i'm not sure i like what i see in there. i guess it's like a new born baby- looks alien and makes horrible noises but you love it because it's yours.
will i be brave enough to peel off the chrysalis that has been forming around me layer by layer for the past seven years? will i like the creature that emerges to spread her wings? if we are each someone else at the end of all of this, how can we still be in love with each other?

M&M as you know there is always some truth in fiction. my mistake in writing was trying too hard to make something up. writing is just like lying. you have to have something personal in it in order for it to flow like blood without stopping. i've finally got to doing what we three decided i would do and all it took was a little tradegy. when i first began this writing, the reality seemed as bad as this does on the screen. but towards the end, i felt more and more apart from it. my reality will follow this to a point, but i can see the fantasy turning many different and unexpected ways. my dad told me many years ago that writing is like bloodletting. i never really understood until now. the feeling, the emotion must be there. otherwise the words on the page are hollow and empty. writing does not come from outside, but from within. and watching your own life's blood spill into words (metaphorically speaking, of course) is the only way to get the emotion to translate through the coded letters and symbols and affect the blood of the reader.