Prayers in Boxes

My hands,
once supple and strong,
now aged and aching,
lift dusty books from their shelves,
fit them carefully into boxes,
tape them closed,
label them with a black Sharpie,
the smell of which slices through
the smell of dust and mold
and love grown old.

There are cobwebs in my hair
and tears in my throat.

On one shelf,
alongside books about writing,
I find the prayer journal I made him
I-don’t-remember-how-many years ago.
I flip through its yellowed pages,
touched that he kept it all this while,
and at the same time so aware
he never wrote a word
on those carefully crafted pages.

That was the problem all along,
of course,
I realize
as I tuck the journal into a box
with other books
and seal the top with tape.

We Teach People How to Treat Us

Do you think that's true?

I don't think it's always true.  I don't think that every time someone mistreats us or hurts us or abuses us, it's because we've done something to tell them that's OK.  But when someone in our lives repeatedly treats us poorly in some way, and we allow it to continue, then I think we are teaching them that it's OK to treat us that way. 

And I'm not talking about instances of ongoing abuse.  I don't think I taught my father that it was OK to abuse me.  I'm talking about ongoing relationships between consenting adults, adults equal in power.

There's this guy I've been seeing for just a little while.  Like a few weeks.  I like him a lot but he's got a lot going on in his life and I think he probably needs to get his stuff straightened out before he pursues a relationship.  That's not up to me to decide, though.  What is up to me is what I will and will not put up with in a relationship.

So tonight I sent him an email and basically said, "Hey, I really like you, but this is not going to work for me.  I value myself more than this."

He didn't do anything awful.  He's a nice guy.  I believe he cares about me.  But he's got too much other stuff going on and there's not much room in his life for me right now and that just doesn't work for me.  Because, you know, I value myself more than that.  And I'm not going to teach him, or anyone else, through repeated interactions, that it's OK for them to value me less than that.