burwell

monkeyfrog:

I don’t know how to have guests.

I never had room for them. Now I have a lot of rooms but they are filled with stuff we have yet to unpack after five years and stuff that we have gotten since then but haven’t sorted and put away properly. I’m a bit of a hoarder, but worse than that, I cannot organize. I am just pretty incapable of it. I would rather take a punch, have a tooth pulled, fall down on an ice patch in the street, or shoot vomit out my nose than try to organize even a desk drawer. Organizing is painful and hard for me, like a statistics class.

So I have space that it is kind of full, but I also don’t know how to have guests. I bought my first house with someone who hated people. We had a welcome mat that said “Go Away” outside the front door. The Tasmanian Devil was on it with a threatening snarly face. Eddie meant it. He didn’t want people coming over.

We had one or two people over a few times for dinner or a bonfire, but I never have overnight guests or dinner parties. Even when relatives come over I don’t know what to do with them. I clean up and drink a lot and Jeff puts the stuff together.

Last summer or fall YHF came to visit. He needed a break and we wanted to meet and seriously? My house has five bedrooms. One of them has an extra bed. I invited Jim up on the spur of the moment for a tiny respite. He had no idea, probably still has no idea, how terrified I was. It was a huge deal, and if the Boy hadn’t been here I’m sure I would have seemed quite insane. It was nice outside so we sat on the deck and talked. I can do that. Sit or walk outside and chat or look at the birds or garden or whatever.

But inside? It’s like I don’t know where to sit or stand. Do I have to wear real clothes instead of pajamas? What do people eat or drink? Do we just sit there? Do they want to be left alone? Do I? Do I have to drive them all around and be entertaining? Should I show them around the messy house? Sometimes I like to sit and stare at the wall or out the window while my brain runs marathons. Sometimes I listen so hard I get tired from listening and I have to stop.

I’m tired of being isolated. I’ve isolated myself, and I’m not sure how to stop. I’m so afraid of doing it wrong I don’t do it. I could have so many people here for tweetups sleeping in rows or pup tents or on the hardwood, but I have a crazy dog who might misbehave and I have me, who might misbehave.

Now I have mold, and an ex-husband. I promised someone from Georgia she could stay here, and now I don’t even know if it will be safe by then. All my life my socializing was centered around work. From age 14 to 44. I haven’t worked in nearly two years. I don’t know how to become human again-human on the outside. Like a person who has people over and is just a natural person.

I don’t have to be perfect, I just have to be perfect. My head is a strange a creepy space and sometimes it ruins my sense of place.

i want to make you a cup.

Stupid snow, never letting me do anything.