March 2015

‘Strange how we decorate pain.’ ~ Margaret Atwood

(put a bird on it ~ Portlandia)

My internal dialog is a funny thing.

There is a prevalent southern twang I can’t explain. Scooby Doo, Martha Stewart, Dr. Evil, Morgan Freeman all knights at the round table/round-a-bout that is my train (switchyard) of thought.

I am incapable of thinking the words ‘shenanigans’ and okay without a dash of South Park entering into it.
‘Okay’ has forever metamorphisised into mmmm’kay.
Mmmmmm ‘kay?

So. Once upon a time. I was sitting on a concrete parking divider in a pretty pair of panties and an exquisite pair of stilettos. Every time the breeze blew by it carried the smoke from my cigarette away along with a soft cascade of gold sparkles shed from the Mardi Gras mask perched precariously on my head, holding my hair back.

I was enjoying the moment, watching the seagulls play fighter pilots, just feeling the sun on my skin.

To my left (always to the left)

“Mmmmm’kay, this chicka is about to step off the edge into a full blown panic attack, what us gonna do?”

She was one chunk of concrete over from me. I could just make out her tiny, pleading mumbles over the whir of the a/c unit.

I didn’t have to hear her, panic was coming off her in waves and hitting me in the chest. I felt sick and sad and scared for her.

She caught me peeking at her, the shaking and rocking started, like my acknowledgement had allowed the floodgates to be breached.
Fuck, here we go mmmmm’kay.

I nurture.

It’s what I do.

I see any Being in pain and I try to fix it.

Can’t help it. It’s literally a compulsion. Even the most vehement, well-deserved hatred cannot trump it.

No matter how many times I get shredded, betrayed, assaulted, used, abused for it. Cannot shake it.

I don’t want to.

Call me nice like it’s a bad thing again, fucker.

“…the kindness I’ve lavished on strangers is more than I can explain” ~ Ani Difranco

Someday I will kill someone with my kindness, I know this.
That someone will probably be me. S’okay.

I am also a homing beacon for the lost. They find me, magnetic phenomenon, Stella Polaris. I get asked for directions in places I have never been. I am a safe house, or one of them priests in a box, tell me all your shitty shit and I will make it all better.

Back to the sad stripper in the sunshine.

She mumbled something about a bad experience on Halloween, the mask was a trigger.

“What’s worse than rape?”
“When you find that out you’ll have all the answers.”
~The General’s Daughter

I didn’t want the answers.

Someone told me a story about how they lost a tooth and split their lip open, my mouth hurt for days after, not just my mouth, my psyche as well. I’m an empath and my heart does get broken with the things that break the heart of God, often.
I have got to stop asking about scars. I fucking know better.

I turned to her and said, in my best authoritative teacher voice “Honey, I don’t know what happened to you. I don’t want to know and you don’t want to tell me. Whatever it was, it isn’t happening anymore. I need you to leave wherever you are in your head and be HERE, with me, safe on this curb. GET OVER HERE (Scorpion, Mortal Combat).”

She opened her mouth to protest. That’s the thing about the sad, sometimes rock bottom gets comfortable and they wanna stay there. She didn’t.

This wave of calm washed over me, and then her.

She didn’t say a word, just picked up the mask and walked inside.

A week later, she sought me out, asked me to go out for a smoke with her.
She said thank you, grateful that I hadn’t asked her to rehash her pain.
She said I was the first girl who hadn’t tried to pry the truth out of her.

She said she had been through years of therapy, self-help, self-medicating, prescribed meds et. al. trying to kill the thing that was trying to kill her and the most at peace she had felt in years was that moment in the sun with me.

Ask me again why I am so nice.
I have been her.
Scared, lost, caught in loops, bound by the past, I am just no longer a prisoner of my ghosts.

http://seraph777.deviantart.com/art/Harpy-441907086

Children have to go through a period of going crazy. I mean, of course, you don’t want it to end in DEATH (laughs). That’s kind of the limit, death. I don’t want it to go THAT far. ~ Mick Jagger

I read that when I was 13, in Seventeen magazine. I cut it out, still have it.

I felt like he was giving me permission. I was already crazy and trying to stifle it.
Moods swinging like an out of control wrecking ball in wide unpredictable arches, smashing into anything and everything and I couldn’t stop it.
‘Sorry about that so sorry’,
Erratic swing, smash.
‘Oh dear sorry about that’.
Except there were periods, mid swing when I wasn’t sorry, I was angry and viciously enjoying the free fall and destruction. Then the guilt set in and I was inconsolable, for a minute, and then back to being a vengeance demon.

Imagine Chicken Little, if Chicken Little was a mythical Screaming Harpy. 5’8”, 96-140 pounds of sharpened claws, deafening screeches, beating random villagers to death with her wings.
‘The sky is falling guys, can’t you see it.
Seriously, guys, the sky.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK ALL Y’ALL THE FUCKING SKY IS FUCKING FALLING’.
Cue the rage.

Then, as if by some monkey magic. It’s over. Almost like the selective amnesia nature provides after childbirth. Pain threshold breached and then some…then forgotten. My body and minds way of protecting me, knowing it was going to happen again and I would probably kill myself from the memory of what I had done and how I felt.

The devil, you know?

The ‘they’ thought I was crazy, fuck, I thought I was crazy. The ‘they’ thought I was bi-polar. I had no reason to believe otherwise, the only thing more horrifying than I when I get like that is that feeling of chemical induced numbness. I had a prescription, I pretended to take it. There but by the grace of Susan go I.

Basically for 3-7 days a month I lose my shit. I feel like I am in a “glass case of emotion”. I get paranoid and angry, I feel persecuted, like a huge failure and the negative thoughts just keep on coming, it snowballs. I have crippling panic attacks wherein I have no control over my body and huge feelings of sadness that crash into me like waves. I cannot get happy, I drown in it. I want to be alone, but I feel abandoned, I want a hug, but I can’t be touched. It is a nightmare. Angry outburst for NO reason, irrational behaviour, low self-esteem and insecurities caused by a lot of guilt over behaviour I cannot control. It was/is the most evil of conundrums.

The clincher? I sometimes go months between episodes. I never know when it’s gonna hit until I am drowning.

I reached out once in 2011, after 90 days of literally staying hidden. I put myself on lock down and rained down fire and brimstone on anyone who dared breach my sanctuary. I wrote a thing on Facebook basically claiming I was a total piece of shit and deserved none of the well wishes and encouragement people were giving me.

“If I don’t get some shelter oh ya I’m going to fade away” ~ Rolling Stones

This woman messaged me and said “hey Sarah, I have been watching you, keeping track and I think you have this thing”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premenstrual_dysphoric_disorder

I have the thing.

5/12 gets you a diagnosis. I have 11/12, my anorexia trumps the binge eating.

I now know too that certain things can keep it at bay, sunshine, B12 injections, swimming, dancing, laughing, sex and just knowing, you know?

“I’m-a make a deal with the bad wolf so the bad wolf don’t bite no more” ~ AWOL Nation

This devil, I know.

Oh, just for more funsies add to that crippling evil death actual PMS.

Cramps, what a mild and mediocre word for the sensation of being sawed in half. My ‘lady pains’ get so bad I recently fell to my knees in a thrift shop, there but by the grace of some second-hand curtains I avoided smashing my knees on the floor.

Oh, one more thing. I have always suffered from regular depression as well. ‘Regular’ depression? That came out wrong.
What I mean to say is I have always felt everything on a very deep level, I have always been withdrawn, insecure, unsure, scared, misunderstood and angry about it, but guilty about being angry. I feel a weight crushing my chest, keeping me from breathing and eating, sometimes even getting out of bed. ‘Normal’ activities terrify me to the point of non-involvement.

I make Mordor out of a molehill.

The last 4 years of my life have been this fucked up journey out. Starting with Susan reaching out from Tuscon Arizona and giving a shit about me. Culminating with St. Anthony’s insistence that I get my ass in therapy or he wouldn’t take me back.
(“How ‘bout them transcendent dangling carrots” ~ Alanis Morrisette.)

I went. I sat in a conference room, in a chair across from this earthy-horse girl who glowed with kindness, and I found myself saying things to this stranger, just letting the words come. And every time she answered ‘well that wasn’t right’ or ‘that is totally normal, its okay’, I believed her. 10 more sessions and the thing I remember the most is her saying…

“Everything you are is a house, any kind of house you want, you built it. Inside the house are all of these rooms filled with things you love and things that you are. What happens is, starting when you are little, you show rooms to people, they react negatively and you shut the door to that room.”

I was living in my foyer, all the other doors had been shut. She encouraged me to open them and explore.

“I am the key to the lock in my house” (Radiohead)

I opened the doors and let myself out.

(written a year ago, today)

It’s such an odd sensation to look back at my life thus far and see with absolute clarity why certain phrases, words, movie moments, lyrics resonated in me so hard they shook me to my core before I had any idea or context of what they would end up meaning to me.

I am not sure if I am ready for This, but This is really wants out, so I will let it.

“Show me show me show me how you do that trick”~ The Cure

“I can’t” she laughed. “It will make you scream” she said.

“Seriously Sarah, You do NOT want to be able to do this.”

Okay.

Its 7 years later maybe, give or take, Skrillex ‘Bangarang’ blaring in the library, “I’m eating Fun Dip right now not giving a fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck”

I don’t even like dubstep.

In front of a mirror. Never watched myself before. (Weird right?)

Wiggle wiggle wiggle … Pop.

Jesus Fucking Christ what the Actual Fuck did I just do?

Do it again.

                           I
just

                   dislocated
my hips.

                      wOw.

#girlswhogetsmashedupincarwrecksandgetbackonstageandowntheirshit.

She was in a car wreck too, busted pelvis, stubborn… like me.

I told you I fell and I got up… on stage in platform stilettos, under black lights with a brass pole in my hand HOLDING myself up.

She mega-twerked to Counting Bodies like Sheep ~ Perfect Circle before there was a word for it. I always stopped what I was doing to watch, I cannot hear that song without thinking of her.

Songs hit my memory hard.

Me: “Did we just fuck to Somewhere Over the Rainbow?”
Him: “Yes my love.”
That was just the once.
The soundtrack to that relationship was Wintersleep, “Oh have you seen my ghost” (ya, I let him into my bed, sorry about that).

“I will (not) follow (that one) into the dark.” ~ Death Cab for Cutie.
Heard that song and dumped a boy, because no, I would not, I wouldn’t even follow him to the place where he lit himself on fire so I could watch him burn.

“Wake up dead man, can’t you see I’m starving” ~ Holly McNarland held my hand in the year of Dan, whilst I was Numb.

Jesus was “Pepper” ~ Butthole Surfers, I could taste him on my lips and smell him in my clothes, at least once a week, he used to come to work and get dances before he decided to fully cheat on his woman with me. Baby steps.

St. Anthony were walking down the street one day early in our relationship, he hands me his ear buds, “I want to (fucking) tear you apart” ~She Wants Revenge. Really honey? That makes you think of me huh, I am touched and terrified in equal amounts.
Hey, I stayed, and a week later we stumbled on Keane, “Is It Any Wonder”. Oh my god I loved that song. He let me play it 100 times in a row. Years later I actually listened to the lyrics…

Seriously, this was our theme song.

I, I always thought that I knew
I’d always have the right to
Be living in the kingdom of the good and true
And so on, but now I think I was wrong
And you were laughing along
And now I look a fool for thinking you were on, my side

Is it any wonder I’m tired?
Is it any wonder that I feel uptight?
Is it any wonder I don’t know what’s right?

Sometimes
It’s hard to know where I stand
It’s hard to know where I am
Well maybe it’s a puzzle I don’t understand

…

Ya, that happened. 7 years of Exactly That.

Sisterwife and I took turns being Dolly then Jolene, then Dolly then Jolene.

Young Un was the singer for one of those death/black/crazy growling metal bands. Sexy as fuck once I wrapped my head around it. But get this, we were eating nachos on our first date and both started bar stool dancing to ‘I got my mind set on you’ ~Travelling Wilburys. That may have been the moment this kitten got smitten. Yes this.

Lana Del Rey was peddling her breathy crony dirty love junk to my ears then too. I meant to sue her for making me fully fucking retarded, high on nothing, worrying about forever. She gets her own post.

The recovery period OST was primarily Daughter namely the songs Youth, Candles and Landfill. ‘I’ve lost it all on just our silhouettes’, ‘you’re too old to be so shy he says to me so I stayed the night’. But mainly ‘this is torture…this is dangerous, I want you so much but I hate your guts.’

Soundtrack to Sunday? The first time we fucked was to Rumors ~ Fleetwood Mac. Oh ya, the ultimate break up album of all time. It fits, sorta. ‘When times go bad, when times go rough won’t you lay me down in the grass and let me do my stuff’. Yup.

I was practicing dancing in the library because I am going back to work. I fucking miss it like mad. My heart hurts, time to get whole and strong again.

I chose my music with great care, based on mood, crowd and energy level. And if no one is around shit gets weird …”Shake Senora” ~ Harry Belafonte, or sometimes “Brenda Stubbert” ~ Ashley MacIsaac, my favorite “Worlock(ed)” ~ Skinny Puppy, now with extra Charles Manson.

I have severe, chronic lizstomania. Part of the reason I love being a stripper, there is always music in the air.

I miss that feeling of “holy shit, I just fucking nailed that”. My Cheshire grin that comes with getting away with it…  and it’s fun for me. I escape for 12 minutes at a time, become the Angel Of Small Death  ~ Hozier (shoulda worshiped her sooner)

I know I’ll shake when I climb back on stage, like it’s my first time, hence dance practice. I am back up to 95% flexibility, spending a week with the Queen of pole tricks, finally going for that Thai massage to re-tear ligaments. I think this last triumphant return of mine will be triumphant.There are a few songs I simply must dance to and I need this, it’s the Monster Hospital where I nurse my wounds.

I was always a snake charmer, now I am a snake girl “So shed your skin and let’s get started”~ Hunters and Collectors.

I can unhinge my hips I’ll swallow you whole.

We will just add that to the list of my super powers, “I slithered here from Eden” ~Hozier, after all.

I am watching season 4 of True Blood and daydreaming of amnesia.

It is such an odd sensation to covet what you fear the most.
Except I don’t want to forget.
I just want to be clean.

Tabula Rasa Tabula Rasa Tabula Rasa

I always liked old chalkboards, the ghosts of old words making accidental poetry. But, there is magic to be found being the first to make your mark somewhere, the possibilities are…all.

“All is possible”. ~ Eric

I suffered substantial memory loss after the car accident. Bad. Lost words, worlds, days.

I wasn’t making good memories anyways, so s’okay.
And I get to watch a bunch of movies and TV shows over again like it’s the first time, so that’s pretty cool.

I retained one conversation with kidlet and Baby Who and another friend. We had fetched an X-mas tree so the apartment had that sharp pine smell, we were drinking tea and belly laughing whilst they tried to explain the plotline of “Lost” to me… a polar bear, really? I still think the show is one big intelligent joke, like Scientology.

Weird (not weird) I managed to, a year later, lose 10 folders of all corresponding photos to the gap in my brain. If that ain’t the Universe screaming out “let it go”, I don’t know what is. That one was a big ol’ lit up Vegas marquee, it said “RUN”.

But that was back in a time when I was deaf dumb and blind to the signs. I stayed put and suffered for it.

I have since taught myself to read.
Quieted my mind so I can hear.
Cried my eyes out until I had new eyes, all the better to see you my dear.

March 20^th 2015 the ultimate cosmic reboot. Solar eclipse on a New Moon on the cusp of the astrological New Year and Spring Equinox.

Tabula Rasa Tabula Rasa Tabula Rasa

I have always been superstitious about how I spend New Year’s. Whatever I am doing at midnight is a reflection of the year to come. Always seemed finite, set in stone. Nothing is.

I did a Wikipedia search, keywords New Year’s.
Vernal Equinox, the day the days start getting longer
White People Sparkle Hat Drunky Eve
Epiphany
Tibetan/Vietnamese/Chinese Lunar New Year
The Quickening
Babylonian, Assyrian et cetera et cetera.

Basically, if it suits me (and it suits me just fucking fine) I have a myriad of days between December 21^st and June 21^st I get varying degrees of do-overs, with some new moons thrown in for good measure.

But this, this was a big un.

There was a war between old me and new me. I was torn in two.
Fuck it, that wasn’t the only war, but the other one has become unspeakable.

The Great Conjunction.
What was sundered and undone,
Shall be whole,
The two made one.

The Dark Crystal

I have seen the future.
I remember as much of the past as I need to.
History repeats.
I know what is going to happen.

“Tell her I was born the night she found me.” ~ Eric

Do we ever progress past the playground? Childhood games beget adult relationships.

Indulge me… jungle gyms turn into hearts, to climb and conquer, king of the castle. Tetherballs, arguments swatted back and forth until one side prevails (or the ball hits you in the face or the bell rings).The park grass becomes our beds, trees houses, places to play. Swing-sets parallel reward versus effort, I fell once, got as high as I ever have and fell, knocked the wind out of me. Never forget that sensation of trying to scream, but you can’t.

Teeter totter, a lovely balancing act of taking turns lifting each other up, and sometimes coming down too hard and knocking the other one off. That isn’t a metaphor, I actually did that, got a particularly good bump in once and hurt my best friend. So it’s a metaphorical memory, is this a thing?

Monkey bars, the act of reaching for a new relationship whilst gripping the last one, not letting go until your fingers are wrapped tightly around the next. That used to be my favorite game. The concrete was supposed to be lava. It ain’t, its independence, long denied now much enjoyed.

Leap-frog, pushing off of one to propel you onto the next,not really looking down to see what you are jumping over. When is a game of leap-frog not a game of leap-frog? When he wraps his fingers in your hair in that way that you really like and you get dragged along for the ride. Skinned knees are the best case scenario.

Worst case scenario, oh Jesus have I been there. I got out weighing 96 pounds, with a sister-wife and a bad case of the crazies. Thought I had left it behind, I even wrote a piece called “ex pat”, a starry-eyed bit of drivel about being monogamous to a polygamous partner. Just now realized that can’t happen when there is love, your own or theirs, for someone else.

Here we go yet again, recess spent on the merry go round,perpetual motion without going anywhere. So fucking dizzy. This one is pretty. All I have is foresight, I know how this ends. I also know my worth (this time), how spectacular, nurturing, sexy, beautiful, sweet, weird and wise I am. What I cannot figure out is why y’all have to leave me and then realize I am irreplaceable.

I stopped starting things with one foot out the door.

Seriously, this shit isn’t funny anymore. Stop, I want off now.

Could I win? Abso-fucking-lutely.

But it’s rather hard to play touch-football when all the flags are red. Who do you tackle, who do you protect, and where the fuck is my end zone?

Do I even play at all?

Red rover, red rover…ahhh fuck it I am good over here with the hands I am holding.

(I wrote this in October, I should have fought harder.)

You think I fucked up all the Eagle’s juju don’t you? Silver Linings Playbook

The term in China for hookers and side bitches is “Chicken Girl”. So named for their thin stature, preening/strutting/hen-like behaviour and low value. Men are welcomed to have a chicken girl, but not to love them. It’s a status thing, a wife is proud if her man can afford a chicken girl, it’s also an outlet for various fetishes that good married couples don’t indulge in. I am not opposed to this arrangement and the moniker makes absolute sense to me. I have been known to live in the hen house from time to time.

This is neither here nor there. I just find it interesting.

In mankind’s continuing journey towards enlightenment, They (the random They) sometimes conduct random experiments.

I cannot back this up. I am going to attribute this to a conversation I had with St. Anthony during one of our meandering truck rides to somewhere. I think it was an addendum to ‘Ratopia’. We traveled well together, conversations having to be heard to be believed, just believe me. I don’t lie even when I should.

At some point in the 70’s or 80’s a group of scientists got together. Decided they should spend some government money on this little gem. They had two groups of actual chickens and a machine that spit out corn when a target was pecked. Simple enough. Here is where it gets fun.

The control group had to peck the bulls-eye 3 times to get a piece of corn. Every time without fail.

The second group got their reward at random. Sometimes pecking once and getting a handful of corn, sometimes pecking twenty times and getting one little nibblet.

First group went about their chicken business, pecking, scratching, making chicken noises and would, at fairly regular intervals peck the bulls-eye and have a treat.

The second group started exhibiting odd behaviour. Every chicken developed a ritual they would perform before approaching the machine. Scratch the dirt 3 times with the left foot, turn in a counter clockwise circle. Something, anything, every time.

The chickens formed a superstitious religion around random acts of kindness.

Sound familiar?

Walk into a Catholic church on Sunday. Stand-sit-kneel, count your beads, light your candles (in a daze ‘cos I found God _ Nirvana)

Walk into a Buddhist temple. Light some incense and for the love of God do not point the soles of your feet at Buddha, but rubbing his belly is okay.

Go to a Bingo Hall. These people have Troll dolls, rabbits feet and lucky daubers set out before them in a day-glo altar to honor and appease the cruel Bingo Gods.

Any major sports franchise and play-off beards. It’s a thing.

20 years in strip clubs. No different. Girls with shoes that really should have been put to death months prior, “but they are my lucky shoes”. One girl had a bingo dauber in her purse, for reals. Lucky panties, lucky earrings, I got in a fight with a girl once because I used her lucky body spray and thereby rendered it unlucky. I had a good night, sorry Bailey.
Me? It varied, sometimes a coin, a rock, I had a purse held together with safety pins because every time I tried to use a new purse, I had a bad night.

Back in the far off past that we call the 90’s I had a crush on a boy. This was in the time before cell phones, Facebook telling us every time one of us has a sandwich etc.
What’s a girl to do when this boy works random shift-work on contract, disappears for weeks at a time and rarely answers the phone? Well, if you are me and acting quite a bit like a vapid chicken girl…I turned to chicken religion.

Rob Brezny’s Freewill Astrology became my bible (still is) and If I got the right rings on the right fingers, listened to a certain song, put my pantyhose on left leg first yada yada I had a better chance of running into him. BINGO.

I went through a calendar year of this, ‘accidentally’ running into him at a bar, going home with him at random intervals until I got sick of it. Found someone who was nice to me, fucked that up too and in the process, scared the first boy into locking me down. Not on purpose, I was genuinely sick of getting a foot in the ass and cab fare twice a month. People treat you exactly how you allow them to. I walked and he walked after me.

We, as humans, (and chickens apparently) feel the need to find order in our environment, if no order exists, we make our own. Controlling things that cannot be controlled and the end result? Self-fulfilling prophecies wearing masks of comfort. Not a bad philosophy, and it works. It just becomes counterproductive when one gets in a loop of thinking ‘nothing good ever happens to me’.

I kept track of all the money I made for a decade. A super computer couldn’t find a pattern if I gave it a million years to do so. Now I have relaxed and realized I get what I need when I need it, I also have a contract with the universe that gives me everything I want whether it’s good for me or not because at some point I will see the lesson and share it with all y’all (amen).

Life is beautiful. Don’t get me wrong, I still talk to the moon, have a bottle of perfume set aside for important encounters. I have a touch stone in my purse, light incense and smudge the house on the new moon. I am not above manufacturing my own juju.

Now, I think if I get the throw pillows just right on the bed, maybe he will climb back in it with me.
Wolf shirt powers activate?
Or I could just use my words.

“You are the calm blue ocean I swim in.
You make me believe in God.” a~

Someone wrote that for me.

God exists.
I know this.
God is good.
All the Gods are good.
They are Gods after all.
We made them in our image of what good is.

“You should start a church Sarah.” (Jeff)

I do want people to hear a voice without hate it in.

I do want the insanity to stop.

I do see with great clarity that all of the religions are different names for the same thing.

We are doing it wrong.

Perfection is the illusion.

Too much focus on unattainable perfection smothered in guilt when you can’t do the thing it is impossible to do. Just keeps you trapped in a loop, which I suppose is the point. My God wants to be celebrated, not mourned. I can make my own shitty loops of inadequacy in my head. I don’t need the Bible for that.

Remember when we were kids playing the “my dad is bigger/better than your dad” game?
Also
“Mother is the word for God on the lips and hearts of all children”. (The Crow)

*my apologies to anyone who had shitty or absent parents. It’s a metaphor.

Can we please end this bullshit posturing on a point that can never be proven? The idolization that a child has for their parents is infallible and personal. If our parents heard our arguments, they would laugh and think it was cute, as long as there is no bloodshed. So does God.

At some point, children realize their parents are flesh and blood. This leaves a hole in the soul. We ourselves become human and succumb to things like gravity, heartache and work. Security blankets stop being secure. Off to church we go, fill that void with the Lord.

I condone anything that gets you through the night, gives you comfort and keeps you from being an asshole. We’ve been doing it since the dawn of time. Inventing things to explain what we cannot. That is the beautiful thing about having free will and imagination.

Your security blanket holds no magic for me, to me it’s just fabric, maybe some warmth in a pinch. I have my own.

People twist the words of God, make them hateful. All of the major deities and their followers believe in some capacity that man was made in God’s image. That would be everyone, across the board. Not just straight white Americans. To believe otherwise is finding fault in your God. Don’t do that.

We have created this insane mess when, in the name of God, we kill to defend his name?
Who makes up a God that cannot handle being scrutinized?
He’s a God. Just love him, don’t kill anybody.
Every piece of this is man’s bullshit. (Cold Mountain)

Imagine if you will, in the time called before, a group of humans. Slightly more evolved than the rest, in a position of power and collectively they decide, ‘Okay, we need more people and we need to get the ones we have to simmer down. We need order to this chaos’.
People have always loved order, stories, belonging and explanations. Its human nature, it’s alright. So ‘they’ write the Bible, a book of rules for good, clean, organized living masquerading as stories and parables and proverbs. Easily digested. The ‘they’ were also wise enough to honor the old Gods, their names and the days set aside to celebrate them, subtlety. Humans, as a whole reject too much change at once.

The universal lunacy that we as a species have evolved since then but God hasn’t? Ludicrous.
The Judaic dietary laws made all the sense before refrigeration. Bad pork is bad mmmm ‘kay?
The Catholic stance on birth control…well ya, we needed more people. I think we are okay with the population now, we got this, give the kids some condoms and show them how to use them instead of drop boxes for unwanted babies. Stop breaking my heart with the things that break the heart of God.

We have science to keep us alive now. Which, by default is a creation of man who is a creation of God, so science is good too. No need to fight over that. Stop.

Life after death remains a mystery, the concept of heaven and hell are valid karma markers. Live a good life, don’t hurt anyone, and get rewarded later. Dangling carrots are a good thing when it is so easy to get caught up in the chaos.

The Ten Commandments still stand, but we need to add rape in there. Thou shall not take Anything without asking.

I feel like the ‘they’ that wrote the Bible, maybe would have done things differently had they realized the consequences of mankind playing broken telephone with their words and good intentions for centuries.

Practice kindness in all things. The earth is a gift, don’t hurt it. Your fellow man, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation is still your fellow man. Don’t hurt them either. It doesn’t matter what your neighbour believes, look after your own shit and judge not lest ye be judged. Your faith is your own as personal and unique as your fingerprints.

I believe in light and right, I carry around in me a conscience that tells me what hurts and what helps and I listen to it. My interpretation of any religious doctrine is valid. This is my reality I am living in and I am a child of God. This life we have is a miracle and a gift, I refuse to believe in a God that would give me something this wondrous and expect me to feel bad about it. I choose to rejoice.

I believe in a global consciousness that has manifested all of the Gods. I believe in a universal energy that I call God because this body I am in cannot fathom the enormity of it.

Godliness is next to Godliness.

I forgot to wear my boob to school one morning. I was 13.

I thought I might actually die. I was begging the Angel of the Lord to just come snatch me out of Grade 9 drama class, or set me on fire, anything but this.

Thank the Gods for baggy sweatshirts, the uniform of those suffering justifiable body dysmorphia.

I had ‘special’ bras with a pocket for my silicone prosthesis, usually worn by those who have had mastectomies. Something interrupted my morning routine and I forgot to take my boob out of her box and tuck it into my bra. My reaction? Well I immediately ran to the bathroom and did my best with some toilet paper. And, until the day I had my first surgery, I slept in my bra, with my fake boob in place for 2 years, straight. Never forgot it again.

Just before this Christmas past I spoke to High School Sweetheart, during our 3 week ‘break up/ goodbye’ the subject of his torment arose. It’s the closest I have ever heard him come to tears, because he was crying. He couldn’t even say the word jellyboob as he was struggling through an apology. I assured him he was forgiven, I was over it. And I am, over what he called me. He has redeemed himself a million times since then.

I am not over not having a tit.

Or I wasn’t then. Fuck, I wasn’t even over it on Tuesday when I published the prequel to this article.

Baby steps? Ain’t nobody got time for that. How about giant leaps for Sarah-kind.

“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t know or care about any of that.
You’re Sarah, the girl I grew up with. Not a freak.”
(message from a man I have known since I was 7 years old)

So close. But not quite.

My girl Ally was over that night, we talked about it. Her 2 cents? “it’s just a tit”.
My response? Go back and tell 13-16 year old me that, convince her it’s okay. Tell her she doesn’t have to hide, that it’s okay to talk about it, that it’s something she can’t control and she’s going to be alright. Drag Jeff back with you to tell her she would be worshiped for her weird 1000 years ago. She might listen to the handsome man.

Closer.

It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. It’s what I know. That I am not whole.

But I am?
But I’m not.
Yes, you are.

I fucked up. It’s a thing I do.

Men I have been with read this blog.
Case and point, the “dear old friend” from the last post.
He and I were talking about AHS Freak Show, Bell’s Palsy and ancient Rome.
My boob came up. He hasn’t seen me naked in 15 years and remembers me being all brave and stoic about it. My memory paints him as kind and understanding, he still is.

Then I went on to quote shitty ex saying I couldn’t be picky about the men I date, and I agreed.
That is only one side of the coin. I don’t agree, mostly.

I AM picky.

I also expect them to recoil in horror. All of them, all of the time.
When they don’t, it is such a relief it clouds my future judgement of their behaviour. After all they are tolerating the monstrosity that I am.
Second case and second point. I continued to date the douchebag who said that for another 6 months or more AFTER he said it.

No one has ever said Ew.
And yet EVERY FUCKING TIME my bra hits the floor I brace for it.
I am a stripper, my bra has hit the floor a lot.

I realized it’s because I think Ew. Every day.

I have been on a journey as of late. Something big is going to happen and I am preparing for it, like going to the moon.

I have been exploring everything I am, was and have ever done. Figuring out why and forgiving myself.

How do I forgive myself for something that happened in utero. Poland Anomaly is a congenital birth defect. It’s not like it was my choice. Even if I had lopped of a tit in my previous life as an Amazon Princess (Wonder Woman).

Closer.

I started the last article by stating, as fact, that I chose this body. I did, I believe this.

I also stated had I been normal I could have ruled the world. Also has a lot of truth in it.

But I would have been an asshole.

I do not have a conceited bone in my body. Every compliment I get is weighed and measured and it doesn’t stick unless I feel I have earned it. I came by my bravery, acceptance, nurturing nature, my ability to love unconditionally and a grand sense of humility the only way I should have. The hard way.
The same way that carves rivers into solid rock and writes braille on my psyche in scars. This IS me, it’s what I am made of.

“It’s what you deserve to hear… That you are whole, that you are worth loving”. Veronica Roth, Allegiant

But I am not whole, I never was.

But you are, you always were.

It’s not about being loved or lovable in spite of my deformity.

That is no different than the men who said ‘it doesn’t bother me’. Like they had a right to be bothered.

I also don’t want my accomplishments to be padded with “in spite of her affliction” she did the thing.

I didn’t overcome anything that I didn’t do to myself. Mostly.

“When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you love it.” Caitlyn Siehl http://alonesomes.tumblr.com/

Follow my logic.

This thing I am missing IS a part of the whole. It has shaped everything about me, everything I ever did, ever felt and what I am now. Which is kinda awesome, so…

I am whole.

I am worth loving.

I’m me.

“Can you imagine this mug on a normal body? I could have ruled the world.”
Paul, American Horror Story Freak Show

One of the schools of thought I subscribe to (a few actually) dictate that my soul chose this body before we got here. Um Soul…what the fuck were you thinking?

Figure that out and I’ll have all the answers, and quite possibly rule the world.

Remember me saying that I cannot shut up, even if it means no man will ever love me?
This is the post that prompted that fear.

2 things happened.

1. A massage
2. Drinks with an old friend/ex from my 20’s.

Common thread? Me naked.

I went for a massage with a new woman. She looked at me, poked, prodded, clucked her tongue a bit and proceeded to deal with my body as two separate halves. Treated each side differently BECAUSE IT IS FUCKING DIFFERENT. My ‘normal’ movement comes from my muscles never knowing what normal is and my body compensating.

I have Poland Syndrome. (http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/poland-syndrome )

I have two great tits, sadly they belong on two different bodies. I have always padded any disclosure with ‘it could have been worse, I could have webbed fingers and toes, shortened limbs, curvature of the spine and Bell’s palsy on the affected side’. I don’t. Yippee?

Fat only grows on muscle. Breasts are composed of mostly fat ergo…No boob. When I was in high school and had to wear a prosthetic I/it became not-so-affectionately known as “Jellyboob”.

Yep. That happened. The perpetrator of said nickname was none other than High School Sweetheart, the man I loved for 26 years. I think there is a huge tanker truck full of worms that is about to spill out, going to try and keep it contained, or perhaps call in the crows to clean that up.

But, but…wait. Stripper?

Yes, I was a one-titted stripper. Add another tanker truck full of worms to the pile up on the highway. We will have to get to that later too.

I am quite literally a circus freak. I am fucking deformed.

I am missing my pectoral major and minor on my right side.
I have had 4 corrective surgeries since I was 16.

I started seeing a plastic surgeon when I was 13. He said “we can’t do the surgery until you have finished growing, you have to be the same height for 3 years.” He measured me I was 5’5”.
Twice a year I went back, for 3 years. He measured me and I was 5’5”. On my 6^th visit, sometime in December he whipped out the plaster of Paris and began sculpting me a tit. Surgery was schedule for that summer, I had a custom made prosthetic coming, one that would reside UNDER my skin and I’d be a real girl.
Last consultation before surgery. He measured me. I was 5’8”.
Had to start over and build a new boob.

I supressed my growth.
Yes, that happened.
That is how badly I wanted to be a real girl.
also, I AM magic.

I was sitting in a pub with my dear friend, known him for almost 20 years. I must have called myself deformed once for each of those years. I said I would have been in a freak show had I been born in the 30’s. “But you weren’t Sarah”. He kept reminding me that I am lucky. Apparently my old speech was rather convincing. Except I never convinced myself. I said “I would have been discarded had I been born in ancient Greece”. He disagreed and thought I would be worshiped Gods bless him. It could have gone either way.

Every girl says “I’m not like other girls” and while in a philosophical sense, I tend to agree. It still gets my back up 7 ways from Sunday. I want to shake them and say at least you have 3/3 things that make you a woman.

One of my rather shitty exes said to me “well you only have one tit, you can’t be picky about the men you date”. Shitty thing to say right? My mom said it was abusive, it was abusive, he was abusive. But I didn’t think he was wrong.

The most comfort I ever received was from a stranger, she heard about me and sent me a letter saying that I was an Amazon in a previous life, that I had willingly lopped off my breast because it made me a better warrior. Which would also explain why, at age 7, I was reigning archery champion at camp having never picked up a bow before. While lovely and mildly comforting, something is still missing. A tit, and with it a huge piece of me and my peace of mind with it.

It’s what you deserve to hear… “That you’re whole, that you’re worth loving…”― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

I don’t need to hear it, I need to believe it and I don’t know how.

This subject is far from closed, I’m having revelations like lightning strikes and need some time to ponder.