Heidi Dellaire - Roots and Tendrils

Abandoned

I cant pinpoint the exact moment I abandoned myself.

It was after my failed relationship. As I reflect back, I think thats about when it started. I signed up for a course in the Universal Lessons of Abandonment without the awareness I was even enrolled, and already paying dues.

My guilt and shame surrounding my failed relationship became part of my identity. My guilt for having blown up my life, and for hurting another, stuck to me like dog shit in the crevasses of my shoe.

In the last decade, there have been a myriad of lovers that have come into my life. All seemed like viable candidates for partnership... each one ready to love me for me. Each one ready to explore the depths of my heart and open the door for me to welcome them in.

I lied to myself about them all.

Each one of them ended up leaving a mark, a scar or a lesson, right down to the last narcissistic asshole. I attracted the emotionally unavailable, the self-obsessed egoist, the ghoster, the gas-lighter, and the my trauma trumps anything else on the planet lover. Some came to me, not just once, a few of these themes were revisited.

There seems to be an assignment that I took on with each of them. Each one getting me closer to a passing grade. Each one ripping my heart apart. Each one hurting me and pushing me closer to myself, closer to the truth.

I had abandoned myself.

I looked for love outside of myself. I searched for love everywhere but where I needed to find it the most. They came as an assignment:
look in the mirror.

Looking in the mirror now, I know I have been here all along.
I just needed to open my own heart to see, to see myself.

Welcome home.

Welcome to love.

Caged

Your last spoken words still fill my ears,
Reverberating as a sharp echo from the distance.

I am a piranha.
I am a predator.
I am a shark.
I am an emotional vampire.
I see the bodies of the people I have destroyed and
I want to wash them away so
I dont have to look at the pile anymore.

I have become just that to you,
A body on the pile washed away to ease your pain.

Piranha, predator, shark

I wonder what you will tell your next lover.

Piranha, predator, shark
Shark
Shark

I know what I will tell mine:
She spat fear like venom,
From deep behind the bars of her self-imposed prison.
Without knowing how to love herself, it came out sideways.

I loved her. I could feel the softness behind the wild.

Fire Ants

As I watch and listen, the blood leaves my hands
no feeling in them...cold...numb.

My body is on fire, yet I can feel the blood start to leave.

I witness an eye exchange...recoil. I rub my hands trying to warm them, for I fear the fire ants.

Nothing works, they are on their way. I struggle to stay seated and
I see other hands that arent mine.

The scene changes. I watch. The sounds leave and I am in the bubble. No one can hear me, no one can hear them as they march. From inside my chest, they pierce through my veins and get sucked into the chambers of my heart. From atria to ventricle they are pushed through.
I cant stop it now. They are on their way.

I look again. Locked. Frozen. Bubble. Beautiful.

I am screaming on the inside but no one else hears. Slowly they make their way and the burning starts. They march and open the capillaries of my fingers. My hands are now on fire. They are screaming to be heard.

I want to lay them on you. Cant you feel the heat from these hands. Locked. Dont go. Dont do it. Stay. The burn is unbearable. It hurts.
The fire ants have you in their sights.

Lessons

Its hard for me to let go of people,
Even ones who are toxic to me.

Theres a weird shame in cutting someone out of my life.
Arent we supposed to love everyone?
Isnt that my job?
I am a fixer after all.

Its hard for me to let go of people,
Even ones who are toxic to me.

They stick a little harder than most.
They get to me.
They get to me in my core.
They bring out the parts of me I dislike.

Its hard for me to let go of people,
Even ones who are toxic to me.

There is something in them that I love.
There is something in them that I hate.
They reflect the parts of me I still need to work on.
I cant do this with them in my life.

Now, its becoming less hard for me to let go of people.
I am learning to let go of the toxic ones,
and I am loving myself in the process.

Layers

The loud boom of metal trap doors clanging open startles me,
As I feel myself release to you.
I have been walking alone in a depth of quiet
Yet here you are enveloped in the same quiet
Here we lie silenced by our gaze
Layer by layer, in our vulnerable nakedness, we reveal all to the other.
I try to catalog all that you show me in this deep gaze.
I wont remember it all.
I want to see it again,
Will I get a second reveal?

Fading Into Morning

Midnight passes
Minutes into hours tick away at my heart
Faster and faster they go

My hands touch you as they always do
But tonight, all is voltaic
The moon softly pours in on top of us...I feel your pull

Lips and skin afire
Electric arcs of light between us
I cant get enough of you
I cant breathe you in fast enough
My heart stays with you tonight.

Wakefulness overcomes me
The moon descends
I watch it fall from the sky

Light begins to take her place
My soul becomes weary
For I dread what comes next

I love you, I hear
And my heart snaps like a brittle twig
Its not enough in the last electric hours before morning
My spirit fades with the diminishing light of the moon.

Lens

We are caught up in the story we tell ourselves
We cant see beyond our own anecdote.
We set rigid parameters around the lens we look through-
Spouting off about someone else
To everyone else
Making up a story
Only seen through our self-limiting beliefs-
A narrow lens.
Check yourself.
Check your story.
The beauty of storytelling- you can change the narrative.
Open the lens and look with love instead of fear.
Fear tends to talk too much.

Spoons

We created this game before we met.
Who would be the inside spoon, who would be the outside spoon?
It was a game of longing, a way to be close
Shortening the distance across the airwaves.
Each night we would end our call with the question,
Inside spoon or outside spoon?

You would choose inside spoon every time, even after we actually met.
I acquiesced, and you never knew
How much I wanted to be the inside spoon.
How much I wanted to be held by you.

Later I would realize you are not a spoon at all.
You are a knife.
Double-edged like a razor and ready to slice
Anyone who got too close to your heart.
There was no getting close to you from either the inside or the outside
Without feeling the presence of the blade in wait.

This is how the game has ended.

Clean

The humid air wraps around me with its denseness as I walk down
the front steps.
My bare feet touch the warm pavement and I look up into the night sky.
The encroaching full moon looms overhead.
As I stare at her luminescence,
drops from heaven begin to dampen my face.
The drops are warm and loving,
The type of rain that invites you to bathe in her arms.
The type of rain that begs you to let it all go.
The type of rain that, as it drips down your face from your wet hair says,