Give Me Your Tired

She texts me late, after I'm asleep.
I don't respond the next day but I had a feeling she might text me that day because I had been thinking about her quite a bit that day. The universe is listening. The universe is always listening. Communication travels and I don't just mean through phones and facebook messages. The universe listens.

I wake up today and we talk at length: about what she has going on, about what I have going on, why I'm emotionally unavailable, her promises that she accepts me as I am, failings and all.

It's only the second time a girl has said those words to me. In the past, other women would show with action they would tolerate my unpredictable and distant ways, but only two women have consciously admitted they will take me lock, stock, and barrel.

It's appealing. She promises she doesn't want to restrict my freedom, but what else is living with someone and being married? What else is now deciding based on where they can work and you can work?

Am I inventing reasons to flee commitment? Is that immature? Is it the depressing reality of the human condition that some birds rightfully fear the cage?

I am tired. They always come when you are weak. They want to help you pick up the pieces and use the glue with their little painted fingernails and they pat your head, run fingers through your hair, they soothe your damaged and tormented personage.

Women have some sixth sense about fixing the broken, the weary, the tired, the crazy.
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After the abortion, part of her hated me. I withdrew because that's what I do when I'm hurt or uncertain. She became more demanding yet more bitter when we were together. I began drinking more and more. Finally, she won, I walked away, but in the aftermath she saw things differently and admittedly, she was much better. Yet, as always happens, when I walk away...my feelings don't quite come back. A part of them or perhaps a different version of them returns....but it's like a copy of a copy....and it's blurred and not the original document.