July 13, 2017

PIC is home, maintaining, with ALL OF THE DOGS. Angelface is at work, heading to Hawaii shortly. Manda Bear is sleeping and getting her hair did and only had one breakdown yesterday. Panda was in bed with RuPaul, but she ate finally. Kidlet ate too and listened to polka with me in the car.

Okay, I can breathe now.

I still can’t remember what we all did on Sunday. I feel like we were together and it was good, amen, that will have to do.

Then life happened. More specifically death and cheating.

Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days, when the mama sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out. 21 Pilots

We are stressed out.

When something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. It’s not my pain, its hers but it hurts just the same.

It’s been a calendar year since the boyfriend of one of us went on a 5 day bender, sent himself into a cocaine psychosis, attacked the girls in the car and landed himself in the hospital. Almost a year to the day since he sent her life into chaos, and just as she was getting it back together, he died.

She knew it was coming. Just like meteorologists know these super storms are coming, but it doesn’t stop the devastation.

He loved drugs more than life and finally got his wish to be free of the mortal coil.

Death doesn’t stop the pain, it just transfers it to someone else.

I wish he would have realized this.

There were no words or quotes or actions that could have stopped it.

Kidlet lost a friend the same day. 2 weeks in a coma and he finally let go.

Panda found out some bad news as well, and after she laughed, she cried.

We are all in varying stages of grief over varying scenarios and for each other.

I feel like I jinxed us. Like I thumbed my nose at fate. We were all on an upswing, all adulting and I said so, out loud.

“No stress, I feel light as a feather right now.”

That was Monday, before work. Before the bad news.

We got together Tuesday morning and spent the day with each other.
We swam, they drank, I fished, we ate. We laughed and cried and on the way home 2 of them screamed NOOOOOOO emphatically in the back of my car.
It was a wonderful horrible day.

I finally crumbled late Tuesday night after playing strong all day. East side Mario’s parking lot, 9:30 at night. All I wanted was a chicken Caesar salad and some normalcy.
He asked if I was alright, I gripped the steering wheel so tight I could have broken it in half and said no.
“What’s wrong?”
These are my best friends, amazing women all of them, and they deserve better than this life and these men that die, lie, leave, beat, steal and cheat.
That’s why I cried.
That and for my son’s friend and his hardened heart, that growing up a city kid, it’s normal to lose multiple friends by the age of 21.

These women of mine are Queens goddamnit! Where the kings at?

So far it’s just been jokers and fools and little fuckboys refusing to grow up.

I weep for their parents. I thank god for my son and the luck that has gotten us this far.

I weep for my girls, and for me and I thank god again that we found each other in the dark.

Can we just take a good long look at how we treat each other? How we drop everything to be with each other. How we hold each other up and love each other. How we can say ANYTHING without judgement or repercussions. How even on our worst days when one of us is being a total cunt muffin we still love each other. Can we please realize that this kind of love exists? That we deserve nothing less from Anyone we let into our space. Men included. I fucking love you bitches with my whole heart. I don’t have room for any man who can’t keep up, show up and man up.

I say I don’t. But it will be my turn to cry soon enough. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe we can wake up one morning and decide to change.

I told Panda not long ago, “if he spent every minute of every hour for the next ten years trying to man up and be what you deserve, maybe then I could forgive him. But he just wants to throw phones and tantrums.”

Step up or get out.

That goes for all of them and all of us.

I don’t have much money, but boy if I did, I’d buy a big house where we all could live. Elton John

With a big sign on the front gate.

QUEENS ONLY, NO FUCKBOYS ALLOWED.

Authors note:
I wrote this on Monday for publishing on Tuesday. Woke up at 8:49 am, walked to the porch for a cigarette after I’d put the kettle on. Just like every other morning. But unlike every other morning Panda opened the door and said “___ died last night, I am on my way to Manda Bear’s”.
Her face was swollen from crying. I opened our group chat and saw the texts. My heart broke.

I am currently wracking my brain trying to remember what we did on Sunday, but I can’t. And maybe that is some bliss in itself.

I know Tuesday by 11:30 we were all gathered on a patio, just to be together. I had more bad news, but that can wait for another post.

I am telling you this because I rushed this post. My girls wanted something to read and distract so I shoved it out of the nest without spellcheck etc…

So here is the revised version.

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I Walk on Water by Kaleo YouTube, that is what I was looking for.

Actually looking for Peter Gabriel singing I Grieve, which I found, then Kaleo

Because I grieve, I grieve for you and you leeeeeave you leave me…

And also I do walk on water…

Except when I don’t.

I sink and I swim and I float.

Had a good float going.

But Nooooo YouTube is trying to kill me, Explosions in the Sky, the album “Those who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Live Forever” (the album) just came up.

Fuck you YouTube. I didn’t need reminding, I never forget.

That’s I all I ever do.

Remember and tell my truth, the whole of it and nothing but the truth so help me god.

Help me god, seriously. Need a little help down here.

I know I’ve sinned, it’s what I do but I cannot abide a lord who would give me a body like this that does the things it does and then says ‘nay Sister Sarah, deny thine fine self.’

I’ll make my own kingdom of heaven here just in case I’m wrong and I don’t get in.

Heaven once was Black 19/Moonface or picking up take out and coming over for couch cuddles.

“I miss the way he talked” Panda said.
Me too baby, me too.
And him cutting his eyes at me while we were watching a movie because he knew I wasn’t paying attention to anything but the curve of his top lip, and how it curled when he knew I was looking.

I sent the bulk of this post to our Sara of Lords. I was in the car on my way back from a bar.

Not a fan of bars.

When did I stop dancing and singing and smiling? Who told me my teeth were ugly and my voice unpleasant and my dancing awkward?

And why did I listen?

I know who…Varying exes and toxic friends. My sister mocked my singing voice until I just stopped. For like 30 years I didn’t sing. Now I sing in the car, alone. One person has heard me, once, because I didn’t care.

And I know why. I didn’t love me. I didn’t love me because I didn’t know me. I am still learning.

I’m getting better, in this circle of friends I have. I don’t have to care about what they think because they love me, tone deaf derpy dumb girl that I am.

When they hurt, I hurt. And some of them are hurting right now. These mens of ours are not doing right by us.

I can sit here like some wise woman on top of a mountain doling out wisdom about heartache and how I’ve overcome losing men I’ve loved.
How I survived being the girl you fuck but never marry. but I gotta tell you a secret.
It could be 2am or noon and sometimes it’ll just hit me that one or all of them or gone and it’s a sucker punch to my heart.

It fucking hurts.

I dread running into Giant and his traveling waitress because I know I’ll time-travel back to the girl who ugly cried and chain smoked in her bedroom begging for another chance while Panda and kiddo pulled their hair out trying to pull me out of my heartbreak funk. I don’t think the hurt would last as long as the first time, but still. Wounds reopen and you never can tell.

Every breakup is a loss.

You have to mourn.

It’s the same as death.

And we have to get up.

Someones gotta buy the milk and walk the dog.

You force yourself.

You baby step and purge. The time spent not crying starts getting longer like the days leading up to summer.

Then you start deleting messages and pictures like pulling out splinters so your body can heal itself.

My girl sent me pics of her ex.

So she ‘knows they exist somewhere’ before she deletes them.

I wish I was so brave

My inboxes folders and archives read like war memorial. Date of birth, date of death, pics and screenshots.

They have to exist somewhere just in case I start feeling crazy, like it was always unrequited and maybe I was just too blind to see. But I open them from time to time, I wasn’t blind, they said those things.

I know this shall pass.

But right now I am thinking about the Muay Thai Fighter and his face when he opened the door and saw me in the red dress, or when the Hulk saw me in the other red dress.

Red dresses instead of black.

Funerals for the living.

Those whose eyes used to light up when I walked in the room turning to cold, dead stares.

I remember when I lost my joy, just like I remember every kiss every hit.

When my Jeep got plowed into from behind and we rolled and skidded for a mile all my muscle memories were lost on impact. I barely remember learning to walk and talk again, but I did it. I am here.

I still get jolted awake in the night remembering the accident to but I got behind the wheel and drove. I got back on stage with knees made of jell-o and agonizing pain and I did it. I moved.

Bravery is movement anyways.

It is dragging yourself out of bed with a broken heart, crying in the shower hoping no one and everyone hears you, but you have to get it out because it’s killing you.

It’s waking up one morning down the road and not crying first thing. Its moments of forgetting that stretch into hours and eventually days.

Its seeing punch buggies and not cringing, its hearing that song on the radio or smelling that cologne and not having the sting of tears breach your ducts and hit your cheeks.

You think you won’t live, but you will.

And scientifically speaking, 7 years from the last day they touched you and it burned like a hot stove that you couldn’t keep your hands off, your body gifts you with regenerated cells that they haven’t ever been privy to.

Memories fade. Time moves forward whether we want it to or not.

And at least we have each other.