Could I? .. Can I? Would I? Will I?

"I am old enough I do not want to make mistakes ... and I am young enough to still believe I can avoid doing so"

-me

There is a saying about heaping coals .. I felt it. Like a bucket of cold water.

Asshole.

I said no.

Savior.

I said no.

My head exploded and came raining back down on me. The realization of how unfair I was being .. how harsh and cruel. The natural consequences of my words displayed here before me in carnage and ... I tried to salvage what I could.

I apologized. How could I not see what I was doing .. again? How could I be so blind to it ... again? Once more destroying everything good around me ... for what? To protect myself? From what? From the very things I was doing to myself?

Control issue from hell.

So I tried to get back control in a more positive way. I tried to scrape it together and put it back. Sew the seams that I had ripped apart .. stuff the stuffing back into some kind of near-like shape. Rubbing furiously the chilled and faint beating .. breathe damn it ... just breathe.

I said no.

It scared the hell out of me. What happened to "I do not know where you fit in my life, T'zuri". What if I clipped her wings and she lost her spirit? I could not sew them back on. This was all going too fast .. what if I made a mistake? What if I chose too soon? I needed to think about it .. I needed to just not make another mistake .. not about this .... not now. If I just had some time .. I could get it right. I could ... not fail.

Here I was tearing her apart and without realizing it ... I was telling her there was only one way she could get close to me. Using it to carve her emotional flesh into decorative puzzle pieces and then throwing them all over the grass like party favors. I would be the monster I was sure I was .. if I accepted this offer. If I did not give her a chance to make the decision about what all she was offering me without that kind of pressure. Without that kind of expectation that I did not really mean to put on her. I would be everything I loathed if I took advantage of her like this .. now.

I would never believe her. I would always wonder if the only reason she offered herself to me so completely .. for my whim and will ... was because of my terrible temper. Out of Fear. Because of the parts of me that I wish to change and make different. I can not allow a life choice to be based on that fleeting monster that comes and goes without my control. Courage .. not fear ... must be the motive of life choices. I am a jealous possessive man .. it will be for me a woman gives her all .. not because of the darkness. Not to the beast .. but to me.

I wanted to just put it back .. like it was. Somehow to make it all right. It was no longer rage that fueled my pulse but panic. Either way it felt like my heart was trying to crawl through that narrow slit in my chest .. stretching it and churning it asunder beneath the wild beating.

Left with two choices that I did not want. Neither one of them was going to be all right. I had raged my war into a corner and I had no way out. I could accept what she offered to me and remake her to fit my whim without knowing what my whim was... or I could crush her further by denial. I could tell her no and destroy her belief in me. Leave her out in the cold wind of uncertainty. Either way was going to hurt like hell .. either way was going to put her on the brink of destruction. But there was one way I could live with and there was one way I could not.

So she gave me everything.

And I said no.