I love words.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

I feel things on an energetic level and sometimes words are not enough.

I speak in gestures, body language and more often in tones.

There are the perfect storms when lyrics and harmonies collide and express everything.

“All the things that we both might say” Peter Gabriel

There exists a condition called synaesthesia; from the Ancient Greek σύν syn, “together”, and αἴσθησις aisthēsis, “sensation”. It’s a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.*

Union of the senses.

I read through the variations and did not find mine, the one that matches auditory experiences to feelings and emotions that I cannot begin to eloquently express. But I will try, here and now.

There is no word/diagnosis for how certain tones reverberate through my core and transport me elsewhere and sometimes bring me home.

I went to a strange therapist. The one I call the Obelisk. She told me I was a lioness, it fits.
I hunt, I protect, I provide, and I love lounging in the sun with my sisters.
But as we were making the journey through my subconscious I realized, a lot of the notes that hit me feel like they are being heard underwater. I imagined a sea turtle, compelled to return to the same beach over and over and just as driven to wander the vast ocean in between.

Thankfully the tides ebb and flow, hurricanes form and make landfall depositing flotsam and creating new landscapes to explore.

“Back to you, it always comes around, back to you.” John Mayer

Music for a Found Harmonium (Penguin Café Orchestra) is my heart when she is happy. I have said before she exists in that state just post toddler. A little-pixie-wisp-of-a-thing that babbles and coos in that secret, soothing high speech of children that know there is magic in the world.

You’re So Cool (Hans Zimmer) is how it sounds when I escape the world for a minute or two. Completely content in whatever is happening in that moment. A delicious bite of food, the sun on my skin, those few seconds when I wake from a good dream and it still feels real. Belly laughs and warm beds.

Dorval (Julia Kent) one woman, one cello and a reverb pedal. The cadence reminds me of foreplay, tentative touches and tastes. Fingertips on skin building to caresses. Pulling back and prolonging the moment, shifting bodies. Little uncontrolled undulations brought on by feeling like a marionette, tied to and reacting to the slightest movement of the other.

Panoramic (Atticus Ross) this one is not easy. It’s my heart again. When she is lost, or has lost. It’s a whalesong reaching out across the universe. But as with everything, hidden in the wails there are moments of light and optimism. Please come home.

Parabola (Vitamin String Quartet) is what his absence feels like. Hollow, empty, haunting echoes.

Host of the Seraphim (Dead Can Dance) is the sound of surrender. What is done is done. This is catharsis with intermittent high notes and dulcet tones that say ‘this too shall pass’.

With or Without You (More Strings) strip the title and the lyrics and what we are left with is the same transportation I experience every single time I smell hyacinths. I get to be 4 years old, its spring. I can smell the earth after its been sleeping. The sun is warming everything, coaxing it awake. Robins and red winged blackbirds. Buds on trees, life forces awakening everywhere. It sounds like spring and hope.

Any Other Name (Thomas Newman) is the soundtrack to dreaming. Imagining wonderful places and times where everything is light and good and strange like me. Slow languid wanderings through worlds that haven’t happened yet, but they are coming. I have seen them.

Ocean (John Butler Trio) is an adventure. It’s a summer drive with the windows down and no agenda. A full tank of gas and two cups of really good coffee. It’s driving through the countryside and the beauty in old barns. Stopping at yard sales and finding treasure. It’s a cooler in the back seat full of sandwiches and cold water. Picnic blankets and beach towels. It’s one of those days where the world falls away and its just us.

Acoustic #1 (Pearl Jam) is the inarticulate murmurations of my teenage years. It is the beginning of me. It is a mashed up, flashback to when I was unapologetically myself, becoming. It is where I had to get back to after the world told me what I should be doing. I should be me, I am irreplaceable and full of promise.

Six Feet Under Theme (Thomas Newman) is my musical reminder that death isn’t the end. It signifies letting go of the old ways to make room for change, hope for renewal and the lightness of letting go and the space it creates to thrive.

Postcard from 1952 (Explosions in the Sky) until recently Dorval used to be my musical equivalent to how sex feels to me. That changed. Everything changed. It has become this. Zero to sixty and everything in between. Summer storm clouds coming across the lake, the sky changing colours, lightning flashes illuminating everything, burning perfect pictures into my memory, thunder heads roiling, caught up in the most refreshing downpour, dancing in it, that calm in the center followed by more baptisms falling from the sky and the sun coming out after.

Stalafur (Sigur Ros) is the feeling of calm acceptance. It is not thinking or hoping everything is as it should be, it is believing it with everything I am. It is the realization that although I may not understand the words the lesson itself is beautiful.

Run to Me (Ben Harper & Leila Moss) is what sated feels like. Absolute contentment. Those moments when everything is still and clear. Like a lake so clean you can see the bottom. Enveloped in that feeling of floating weightless and safe in water. It’s as pure as my soul gets. It’s the sensation of being held by something or someone bigger than myself. And the laugh at the end. Happiness.

Idumea (Sacred Harp Singers) is the sound of strength. Its my convictions, my loyalty. It’s the rousing chorus of all the people I used to be working together to move forward. It’s the weight keeping my optimism from floating away.

There are pieces of me in here that defy language, that have to be heard and felt to be understood.

Listen.

“The way she tells me I’m hers and she’s mine.” Hozier

(*Wikipedia)

There was never any more inception than there is now, 
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Walt Whitman

Today is Leap Day.

I am smiling. Fittingly occurring on my 42nd run around the sun.

I tried to recall what magic and dreams I weaved on the last one.

I’m guessing the answer to be a quiet, mousey “None”.

I think I was still a mess, mired in the land of ‘should’.

Fairly unaware of the universe, it’s energy and my place in it. I knew nothing of entangled particles, star dust, supernovas.
My ability to divine and create the future yet untapped. Kind of like maple trees, the sap was almost running, but not yet.

I believe that was the year everything started to get better.
If I wait 10 minutes Facebook will tell me.

(Cue the ellipses)

…

I waited, the answer was not exactly. I said it was a magical day and then proceeded to post like a non-magical asshole, all tangled up in humanness, drama and bullshit.

Said something about ‘every time you lie to me an angel shits her pants’. I can only guess who was lying at the time.

Feels like another life, another world, a different me.

Probably because it was.

I am not that girl any more.

I have survived several apocalypses, old veils being lifted so I could see.

I have survived waiting and wanting and made a covenant with the universe to always receive my desires in their totality.

I promise to keep learning and smiling back at the gods for the gifts they send me.

Please may I have some more.

Now is blessed, the rest remembered.

I am not sure if it matters exactly when I woke up, it only matters that I did.

Now IS blessed.

Today is the grandest of all wishing days. We are all invited to dream as big as we can, then a little bigger and the universe is listening, waiting and willing to set our wildest desires into motion.

Never under-estimate the power of blind faith. It manifests in ways that bend the laws of physics or breaks them entirely. True Blood

The hard part is keeping the faith.

I got this.

This perfect moment is brought to you by those pine trees whose seeds are so tightly compacted within their protective covering that only the intense heat of a forest fire can free them and allow them to sprout. (Rob Brezsney)

I have walked the fire before, experienced the burning, and was born and warm from it.

The trick is to keep walking.
Keep looking and watching for signs. They will come.
I always come out the other side into something better.
Sometimes things need to go away to be appreciated.

I concede and concur.

The first step to better times is to imagine them. (Unknown)

and

Everything you can imagine is real. Picasso

I know what my wishes are for this strangest of days, the clearest reception for our telephones to god.

The girl I was 4 years ago would have never dared dream them, but now I can see it, crystal clear.

Publishing contracts, word recognition, comfort, a tiny house of my own, a room to write in and love.

Love like I do.

The last time the stars aligned on a blood moon eclipse I created a Frankenstein monster, beautiful pieces of what I knew was possible stitched together with good intentions. And he was better than I had dared imagine. The gods read my mind as well as my words, and here I thank them for it.

I knew what I had to do and I shed all the suitcases that only held one or two of my favorite things.

I feel weightless.

My Oracle told me he has to walk the desert for 19 days. Black 19.

His own personal retrograde where the mercurial magic he tasted is absent.

At least I made him playlists for the trip.

He said they are taking over and he loves them.

There are pieces of me in there.

On the blood moon eclipse I also sent a fiery paper lantern into the sky with the following words inscribed…

I can imagine the moment, breaking out through the silence, all the things that we both might say, and the heart it cannot be denied, til we’re both on the same damn side, all the barriers blown away. Peter Gabriel

So it is written.

I missed hitting publish at 11:11 like I wanted to, s’okay, my gods don’t wear watches.

Windows 10 tricked me into updating and this article I was working on for a few days now got stripped back to the bare bones. Art is imitating life again. Or mayhap dictating it. The latter sounds correct.

I did the thing I try so hard not to do, I let the past colour the present.

I built it, he came.

I forgot the next message from the Field of Dreams voice. Go the distance. I was too busy holding my ground.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Einstein

At some point I will stop.

Self-preservation will kick in. But not today. Definitely not tomorrow either. Maybe next Tuesday.

My D.J said, as I walked off stage eyes already shimmering with salt water,
“Sweetheart, I have never seen you this messed up over a boy before.”

In all fairness Mr. Brightside had played and I got a bad loop in my head.

Now they’re going to bed and my stomach is sick and it’s all in my head but she’s touching his chest now, he takes off her dress now let me go

(I don’t want to let go.)

I feel like a newborn, kicking and screaming.
Filter

When you were here before,
I couldn’t look you in the eye,
You’re just like and angel,
Your skin makes me cry.
Radiohead

Fuck, everything is making me cry, song lyrics like painful slivers of truth working their way to the surface.

I listed what I liked about the Giant. Took me a good part of 5 minutes but still.

“Me neither honey, especially not this fast.”

I searched through the filing cabinet labeled “experience” in my mind for anything similar in hopes of reminding myself how to deal.

Quickly, something familiar.
The Tragically Hip

I have been re-reading the blog. Because I know the Giant is.

I tried to hide it from him, I know I look a mess. Always going back and forth about what I am and what I want. I post epiphanies in real time. Stumbling and fumbling and clumsy as fuck.

I wrote in Lost and Found Boys that I wasn’t getting what I wanted because I didn’t know what that was.

He was already standing right in front of me, and he was HUGE…how did I miss it?

I was looking back at the old. I let the past taint the present.

I stuck to the covenant of the cougar, I felt like a whim and made him feel that way too.

11:11 A Wish for My Pet Monster.

Oh shit.

I wished for him.

He was my Christmas gift from the Gods.

Things I held sacred that I dropped.
Audioslave

I didn’t treat him as sacred, I rearranged the consonants and was scared instead.

He was the culmination of them all walking around in one beautiful body.

Magic and mysticism of Gelfling.

Passion and playfulness of Wolflng.

Acceptance and adultiness of Sunday.

Chivalry and compassion like The Hulk.

Ease of conversations and dirty, nerdy compatibility of Drogo.

The eagerness to explore my experiences and make new ones like Home.

Youth and beauty like Young Un.

Musings and motivation to write that trump the Poet.

Unlike all of them, he was corporeal and communicative on a level that suited me perfectly.

Add to that the massive musical compatibility and the slightest touch making purple lightning under my skin.
Sex like fireworks and thunderstorms.
And he looked at me like I was magic.

I called him Nephilim behind his back. Been looking for one of those ever since Sara said the word Fallen. Rare as rainstorms in February and hurricanes named after us, but it happened. Should have said it to his face but I held my tongue.

I wrote in Parallel Paradigms regarding these new ones I meet “We are building foundations for worlds that haven’t happened yet. The stardust coursing through my veins is magnetically compelled to pull them in. Touch them, learn them, exchange energies so when we meet again we will know each other.”

Unlike the others we have built a solid foundation in this world, it just isn’t time yet. Fear has been replaced with familiarity.

He saw this and asked about it, lyrics framed and on my wall.

So shed your skin and let’s get started.
Hunters & Collectors

Fresh start it is.

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I stuttered as a child.

I had to take special classes pre-kindergarten.

My speech therapist told my folks “her vocabulary is more than her tongue can physically handle, her mouth has to catch up to her mind.”

Nothing changes.

My current speech impediment is overthinking before I speak.

It is amazing how I channel for everyone else unfiltered, just let it flow. Yet, when it comes to me, it’s all second guessing and insecurity.

In addition to my stutter I had a mousy brown bowl cut, glasses, small stature and a crooked little smile.
I was a strange little girl inside and out. Still am. Still insecure too.

She thrusts her fists against the posts and still insists she sees the ghosts.*

I have ghosts. I speak of them and to them with alarming regularity.

Communion with the dead. Wafers and wine included.

Last suppers that haven’t ever really been the last.

Corporeal/imaginary friends and lovers. Arm’s length, mostly.

Ghostlings and Changelings and Angels oh my. Must be a day that ends in Y.

On my never ending quest to glean the why, I think I figured something out.

The man I call Home sent me this.

I am haunted because, to others, I too am a ghost.

The man I call ex-husband published this.

I had vanished, he wanted me homeward bound instead. Bound being the operative word. I went back to him numerous times after this. Even spoke to him in the summer. It ended just as badly every time. So I buried him, unceremoniously. With a clove of garlic in his mouth just to be safe. Salted the earth and haven’t looked back.

I have one foot in the underworld and the other is only hovering in the present.

I am so messed up about how I used to be that I seek validation from the time called “before”.
Giving it more weight than what is happening here and now.

“I miss you” and “I still love you after all this time”.
Like choirs of seraphim singing, I didn’t hear it at first but they are warbling way off key.

A man from 1992 came to me years ago and told me he regretted letting me go, that I was his one.

On my 40^th birthday, 2 men from high school spoke up. One said he dumped me because he didn’t feel worthy, it was preemptive. Ran before I could hurt him. The other recalled what I was wearing the first time he saw me, said I looked like an angel, he never spoke more than a dozen words to me back then, I actually thought he hated me.

Months prior I had High School Sweetheart speaking to me in ways he ought not to, told me he loves me too, more than his wife. At the same time Golden Boy exhumed the past to show me what he did whilst apologizing for it. I had buried all of it.

I admit, I rejoiced in the resurrections. I felt vindicated.

But all of this is an abomination against the Lord.

“There’s no way around grief and loss: You can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.” Johnny Cash

Something happened as I was falling for the Giant recently.

And behold, the veil of the temple was torn into two from top to bottom. And the earth was shaken, and the rocks were split. And the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints having fallen asleep arose. And coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city. Matthew 27:51-53

Gelfling rose like Lazarus. I looked the other way.

Wolfling attempted to trespass against us and I didn’t forgive him.

Sunday delivered his weekly sermon. I did not sit and I most certainly didn’t kneel.

The Poet wrote and called me.
My head spun around and I puked him out.
Blessed purging.

I was using Young Un for parables. I squandered my own gifts to lean on the past for advice. Forgive me. He was no Angel of the Lord in this. He said ‘be afraid’ instead. And I was and it was bad, amen.

Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” Mark 5:9

Deliver us from evil.

Wait…

Buddha is chiming in, bless him.

“…nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. it just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.” Pema Chödrön

The Giant/Goliath/Nephilim?

He hasn’t become an apparition just yet, but he would rather miss me than be with me.

I cannot process this. I’m trying.

I asked the Hulk/my other Giant this morning, if I’d untangled myself from my supposed safety nets in a timely manner, would the situation have been reversible.
Him: Hard question to answer at this point. But I believe I would have.
Me: Please know that I’m beyond happy you are happy. I care about you a lot, as a friend.
Him: I don’t think to a mature mind the damage would be permanent
Me: I feel extra stupid because I should’ve already learned this lesson.

I think I am done regrouping now. I layeth down in green pastures and shit for almost a week now. Time to get up and walk through the valley, with both feet this time.

I will listen to both the men in black, Johnny and the Gunslinger “go now, there are other worlds than these.”

The Lord works in mysterious ways, and my gods are even more tricksy.

No choice but to let go and let god, all my Gods.

The football player was in purgatory. I dreamt I was going to see him again after my baptism in the ocean, I denied the second coming.
I cannot fight what is so written apparently.

I might yet find my glory glory hallelujah, forever and ever amen.

But for now, football season cometh.

Hail Mary passes et al.

(*the one thing I remember from speech therapy)

Sometimes wishes come true.

Saturday night at work I was outside in the corner smoking and I had a crystal clear thought “I wish Oscar would come by, I would feel a lot better if he did.”

To be clear, Oscar is a rescue Greyhound from Florida. His nightly walks take him by the bar and we have bonded. He feels like warm silk and puts his head on my shoulder and sighs.

30 seconds later, Oscar!

I saw them coming 30 feet away and his owner did something he’d never done before, dropped the leash and let Oscar run to me, full derpy Greyhound tilt.

He has become one of the only things I love about my job. It’s time for a new job. We will get to that another day.

I did feel a lot better. Put a cramp in my night of wallowing, or lessened the cramp.
But I had such grand plans.

Walked in the door issuing storm warnings.

Then someone put on Jeopardy and the tequila started flowing. I got fed. Everyone danced to music I liked. I only did three shows they went well.
What the fuck guys?
I wanted to be sad girl.

“I’m tellin’ all y’all its a sabotage.” Beastie Boys

No it isn’t. Well it is, but I did it to myself.

You see dear readers…

I fucked up.

There is gold in them there words.

There is magic in all words, that’s why they call it spelling.

Life becomes a little less magical when I fuck up the same way every fucking time, and my mantra becomes ‘why do I always get thrown away?’

The waitress called me beautiful and I cried at the bar. “Obviously I’m not pretty enough.”

Oh, god, I have said this before.

This is all just a little bit of history repeating.
Second verse same as the first.
Saturn/Cronos is up there laughing at me. I can hear him loud and clear.

The gods don’t abide whining, especially not Cronos the Titan, father of all Gods, time and lessons. He always answers with a great thundering “I’ll give you something to cry about.”

I know exactly why I get thrown, because they know if they drop me I have soft places to land.

BECAUSE I FUCKING TELL THEM I HAVE SOFT PLACES TO LAND.

What the fuck is wrong with me? (See above)

How many times are we going to do this Sarah?

Once too many.

But not again.

You can become deathly allergic to bee stings if you get stung enough. The venom builds up and one day your heart just says ‘fuck this shit’ and stops.

They also use bee venom to treat MS. So there is that then. Controlled stinging reactivating atrophied musculature.

Same sting that stopped me in my tracks and got me moving again, different trajectory. Thanks honey.

I have been lied to so often that it is abhorrent to me. It physically hurts me to be lied to and I can spot a falsehood a million miles away. Addendum, I can spot a lie as long as the person telling it is not so mentally ill and pathological that they actually believe what they are saying. But I am done turning that one over. Let’s put that one in a pine box and move on. So mote it be.

I can’t lie now. I spent years training myself not to and I just can’t, makes me feel sick to even think of one.

Leah screamed at me this morning “do not to tell the new ones about the others”, my collection of lost boys. The Hulk told me that too. Should have asked the colossus about the giant instead of a lost boy.

But omission is the kissing cousin to lying. So what do I do?

Stop.

For a girl who believes so deeply in free will and natural order and everything is as it should be I say a lot of stupid shit.

Out of fear.

I realized a few days ago that my adamant non monogamy is not as adamant as I thought it was.
It’s a self-defence mechanism/bullshit posturing and it backfired.
On a long enough timeline all weapons become outdated and dangerous really.
This blew up in my face.
The realization came a little too late.

I also chose advice from others over my own intuition. The one I leaned on was the wrong one. Chosen for his age, not how things went. He dated the one AFTER me, not me.
How many times can I ask what is wrong with me before I fix it?

242

For a psychic witch of a girl, my foresight sucks.

I’m lying now. I knew. I knew right away. I always know. I even said it to him, told him I wanted to keep him, but not until a week after that crystal clear thought manifested itself. And after the damage had already been done.

“My stupid mouth has got me in trouble again”. John Mayer

I know I fucked up. I cannot fix the past.

But I can do better next time.

The Gods smile when you smile and say ‘please sir can I have some more.’

“Accepting all I’ve done and said,
I want to stand and stare again,
Until there’s nothing left out.”
Peter Gabriel

More. Please. Thank you.

I am mutable. Everything changes, even me, eventually.

Today’s titanic lesson?

If I meet the right kind of man, I don’t want anyone else.

Time for my lost boys to stay lost. Go on now, git.

Moving forward I am not going to start something new in a place where I have safety nets manifesting as arms and beds belonging to other men that I can climb into. If I wanted to date any of my lost boys I would be, instead of just fucking them from time to time.

It makes me seem disposable, having disposables.

I haven’t been fair to any of us.

The last (now lost) boy kept saying over and over “You aren’t a booty call.”

He is right, I’m not.

I have enough grace to walk alone. No nets.

I’m not afraid anymore.

Falling isn’t so bad. Feels kind of like flying actually, unencumbered.

The next time I meet someone I’ll be able to say truthfully “I’m not seeing anyone right now. I would love to have dinner and see what happens.”

Then we can have dinner and see what happens.

I’ve never had a good relationship, but I hear that’s how they start.

Spring is coming. Feels like a good time to begin again.

“So shed your skin and let’s get started.” Hunters & Collectors

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This is what I intended to write for today.
Life happened and I posted yesterday.

This is the worst diary ever. Worse than Memento.
Past, present and future all jumbled up in tattoos, Polaroids and post-it notes. No cohesion. Not surprising, my life has no cohesion. I am not chronological girl. Not terribly logical either.
The center doesn’t hold. I believe everything spirals out just to spiral back in again.
S’okay, I love amends and open ends.

Wednesday was unpleasant. Thursday was incredible. Friday sucked the devil’s balls.

Midweek haboob. One of those desert storms, cover your eyes and ears and just try to keep breathing. I hate the desert. Nothing grows there, just void of everything. I dislike beige. Give me pale greens and blues, oceans and seaglass. Give me storm clouds all black and grey. Give me green grass, blue skies and lemon yellow suns.

Haboob is the word I use for when all the magic goes out of the world and I feel like a sad, weird girl, but not in a good way.

Carried over to Thursday. 4pm I was still in writing/sleeping clothes, hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t written really. Watching The Office allowing Jim and Pam to give me false hope (fuckers). Coupled with a sense of foreboding I just felt decidedly blah. Something bad did come, surprise. Being psychic sucks some days.

I had plans in the city. Made them before Christmas. I was invited to see Golden Boy play with his band. He said the words ‘guest list’. I wasn’t sure if we would even have a chance to talk, and there was the whole having to take the bus thing, and dressing myself and everything just seemed so hard.

And like that white girl who can’t even, my motivation was sorely lacking.

Also, I was secretly hoping the Giant would materialize.

He didn’t.

I showered. Got on the bus and wrote.

A girl walks into a bar…

No joke here. I just did. I was outside smoking and I saw Bad Kitty on the sidewalk. Bar was safer.

Ordered a whisky and settled in to wait, I was early. Wrote a bit more while watching the door.
Looked up and saw Golden Boy walking towards me.

He hugs like I remember.

We chatted briefly, he mentioned his parents were waiting, I asked him to say hello for me.

I went back to whiskey and writing.

I heard my name called out in the thickest of Scottish accents. Spun around on my bar stool. Eric and June, parents of Golden Boy, looking just like I remembered. And they were…smiling at me?

I never know how heavy a thing is that I carry until it’s lifted and I float.

Once upon a time I had no friends, save one. Sessily. I didn’t know it at the time (I was 17, I knew very little) but she was clinically insane. Vicious, toxic, manipulative, just awful. But when you have no one and nothing, something seems better. Even a narcissist of epic proportions.

She dated Golden Boy’s brother. She pitted us against each other because I knew all the dirty shit she did. She made him believe I was the crazy liar to keep her crazy lying self safe. It worked. Until it didn’t. He and I now have this weird, unbreakable bond that comes from two people surviving the same disaster. We made peace years ago and he treats me with incredible kindness now. Still shocks me how little I feel I deserve this. I was a rotten kid. Self-esteem still fluxuates down to those painful lows. But I don’t live there anymore.

Hurricane Sessily. Wait, too much poison and human error and lands that can never be lived on again. More like Chernobyl.

I watched her flush her birth control pills. She wanted to get pregnant to keep a man.

That man happens to be Golden Boy’s brother. She did manage to get knocked up eventually and proceeded to drag his whole family through hell and back. I was there at the beginning.
I watched it. She went that extra batshit mile. I couldn’t abide. Then slept with my baby daddy just to drive the wedge all the way through.

Golden Boy and I had our own thing. “You really did look after me when we were kids.” We reminisced a bit.

I was protective of him. Not for lack of friends but because he needed it and he let me.

His family welcomed me into their home. Fed me. I slept there.

When I cut strings with Sessily I lost everything and everyone, or so I thought.
Went on a walkabout trying to find me. Still walking. Always will be.

The amount of shit she said about me and did to me could fertilize the aforementioned desert and she could irrigate it with her overly dramatic crocodile tears.

When Greg died, she made sure I couldn’t go to his funeral.

I haven’t forgiven her for that. Mayhap I should. I was the last person he saw before he died, holding him, smiling and something is telling me that is more than enough.

Back in the bar, Eric and June hugged me. Golden Boy grabbed us a table and more drinks, and I was transported back to a floral print couch, smiling talking, laughing.
I tried so hard to dance around the subject of her and failed.

I braced for the fallout.

Instead June said “Oh Sarah, we always knew that had nothing to do with you. We always knew she lied. We always knew you were a good girl.”

You know that moment in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams says over and over “it’s not your fault” until Matt Damon ugly cries?

I almost cried like that at the bar, I am crying like that now.

I carry a world of guilt and shame about how I used to be. I don’t try to rationalize it. I was awful and I know it. I knew what she was doing was wrong and I didn’t stop her. Not sure if I could have, I never tried except that once when she tried to lie about rape. Add that to all the dumb shit I did of my own volition and it is a fucking heavy burden to bear.

Every time someone who knew me then opens their home and lets me in I get to leave some of that weight at the door.

Everything ebbs and flows.
Nothing good is ever truly lost.
Everyone comes back at the right time.
I’m reminded why I MUST  forgive everyone, because it feels so incredible to be forgiven.

Crushing? Yes. Crushed? Not yet. Wait for it.

Once upon a time my finger hovered over the publish button.

It took strength of will to touch it.

I had allowed my feelings to spill out on the internet before where people could see it, but this was bigger than that.

And I was scared my mom would read it.

She threw everything I had ever written into the fire when I was a teenager. She had read a few things and deemed them pornographic. Ironically I hadn’t had sex yet, but I wanted to.

I am sorry Mom.

This cannot possibly be what you wanted for me.

But it’s what I want. Mostly.

Consolation prize? I am happy. Mostly.

Except right now. I’m contemplating an Aleve/whiskey combo to keep my head from being torn in two.

I have this paranoia about my words looking like verbal vomit on a white blank page.

It’s happening again.

Michael Xavier read something I consider to be subpar and he liked it. Later went on to tell me I have ‘the gift’ I just need discipline. I am trying honey. I am holding onto his words and the rousing choruses of ‘me too’ that occur when I hit the publish button now.

I am a soothsayer, daydreamer and storyteller.

It’s easy to let my mind wander to the past, exhume what I find there and dress it up for viewing.

I gloss over everything with high gloss primer, shellac the shit out of my exes until they shine like diamonds, sand down the edges that used to leave splinters in my fingertips.

“Your past is just a story. And once you realize this it has no power over you.” Chuck Palahniuk

They are just stories, with window dressing and pretty quotes to hide the smell.
It’s easy. But it isn’t safe.

I know what I look like making them look good.

A paint-splattered whore of a girl with a distinct red blood trail from sternum to sleeve. Hearts chosen residence. We’ve talked about this dear heart, it’s not safe. And I look a frightful, flaky mess. Because I am.

In my 42 years on this plane one would think I’d have learned the only thing more dangerous than fluffing up the past. Daydreaming about things yet to come.

I knew it before and I forgot.

Those are the stories trying to split my skull right now. They want out and gone. The plug has been pulled and they can’t live anymore.

Hope sucks.

When someone leaves you experience a loss. Can’t be helped. Connections severed. Conversations lost. The memory of how it felt to be around them starts to fade with no hope of renewal. They occupied a space and it is tangibly empty. There are things left unsaid and undone. It’s messy. And the hardest thing to scrub out is the thing I knew I shouldn’t be doing. Thinking ahead.

“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.” Lao Tzu

Today was supposed to be duck and collard greens. Snuggles and a cd I made him. Coconut oil and massages. Lightning sex and more touching and talking. Didn’t seem dangerous at the time to think ahead to Saturday.

Everything felt natural and good.
I didn’t know.

Everyone else fell away.
I let them.

No search parties. Didn’t need anyone else. I felt safe where I was standing.
I wasn’t.

Do you remember the game with the pieces that would pop up and make a mess if you didn’t put them away fast enough?
That was my platform and the timer ran out. In my defense I didn’t hear the ticking, I was too busy listening to music and the things he said. Now there is a mess of plastic shrapnel. I’ll put it away here. Tidy up.

I have that fear gnawing at the pit of my stomach again. Past says it is akin to the fear of my mom reading this. I know the Giant is. He told me.

Over before it started.

He made a choice yesterday, and surprise. It wasn’t me.

In retrospect it would have been easier to sugar coat and swallow had we both stayed in a state of blissful ignorance. But I told him how I felt, deeper than I had let on. I extrapolated how he felt about her, deeper than he let on. The edges are jagged.

Past popped up around midnight, whispered in my ear it was ex-hubby and sisterwife all over again.
One man, two relationships. That’s not how this works.
That, and the whiskey/Aleve combo allowed me to drift off finally.

Real funny Universe.

He made a choice before he asked me, papercut.
Stuck with it when I told him the truth about how I felt about him, flesh wound.

And now he is in here. Navigating my guts.

This is infinitely worse.

He said he would have loved hearing how I felt a week ago.

I said it, here, in this blog. I sent him the link but not until last night. Hazard of being a writer I guess, walking around with all these feelings, getting them out and not putting them where they ought to be. In my defense the last time I tried to tell someone how I felt they ran, and the one before.

It’s only been a month, a week, 3 dates, countless conversations. I said things here I didn’t say to him.

Past dictated it wasn’t time yet. Past also is screaming that it didn’t matter. I didn’t have all the information either, there was more to ‘her’ than he let on. It is the only reasonable explanation. He told me he knows what he is giving up. He doesn’t. He might yet figure it out and that is terrifying.
I think it’s infinitely better to get left by someone who doesn’t know anything. Ego says so anyways. Papercuts versus sucking chest wounds.

I told him he wouldn’t even want to say hi to me after he wandered around in here.

He said challenge accepted.

This isn’t a challenge, this is my life. He scratched the surface and walked.

I am 15 again. I am the culmination of romantic ramblings and musings, pornographic pieces of paper that keep getting misunderstood and thrown away.

I have a whole magical kingdom inside me, a universe barely contained. And wearing the crown is that teenage girl with a head full of stars, who still believes in love and doesn’t have a clue about anything but keeps writing and trying regardless.

Oh some days I do need saving. Not from any outside forces, just from myself.

Yesterday was that day.

Had a wonderful date planned with the Giant and work got in the way.
Not the end of the world by any means, just made me feel like someone cancelled spring.

February is happening in fits and starts and weird little backslides of time. I feel like it should be both earlier and later in the month. And like it’s always supposed to be better or warmer tomorrow and then tomorrow doesn’t come. It will be warmer tomorrow.

I have always been of the mindset that even if the groundhog sees his shadow, it’s only six more weeks. 42 days. My inner Little Engine that Could awakens and I really think I can.

Leah asked me how I do it. How I keep loving/living/trying/staying open after what I have been through with men.

Fall down seven times, stand up eight. (Buddha)

Even when my knees are still bleeding and throbbing from last time.

Oh I bleed, red like everyone else.

Gravel in my palms, wind knocked outta me.

It’s almost compulsive to get up and keep going.

I know this too shall pass and something better always comes. Not always better per say, but different, shiny and new. I also know on a long enough timeline everything makes sense and we go back to being friends, except him and him and that other guy.

Some I keep close. Sometimes we need each other. I could have called on any number of exes yesterday. Young ‘Un drew the black marble and did right by me yet again. He said “Hush. People that get to keep your company are fortunate indeed.” Bless him. I sent him a thank you today…”I am wise enough (now) to know when to keep my mouth shut, but I am grateful for you helping keep my crazy contained.”

(I walk slow, I walk slow, take my hand, help me on my way. Mumford & Sons, Lover’s Eyes)

I don’t want to blame the moon, but it’s the moon.

Shark week cometh and bringeth forth all the self-doubts, old fears, insecurities and a dash of crazy for flavour.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I think William Butler Yeats described my yesterday with poetic perfection.

I know everything is coming up blood red roses.  I had the girl I call ‘my sunrise’ waving crimson pompoms trying to get me through the night and it worked.

This morning Rob Brezsney told me “The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms. The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter.”
…” That’s why we implore you to nourish yourself with delicious, nutritious tales and tunes that inspire you to exercise your willpower for your highest good.”

I’ll abide.

Sorry Mr. Yeats…sometimes the center does hold.

This story I’m telling is a good story, I’m self-aware. I know I’m stuck on a page and it will turn. This chapter isn’t done yet and everything gets better. I know because I get to write it myself. I know nothing ever ends, it just evolves and changes and it’s bliss.

Soundtrack for today?

Somewhere out there on the horizon
Maybe there’s a glimmer of hope
Maybe it’s just a mirage
‘Cause you never know
And maybe things have changed

Storm clouds pass take their rains

And I wait for spring to come
But how long, tell me how long
‘Cause I wither at my post
I’m walking like a ghost, alone
How long tell me how long, how long

Out of the darkness, only light can come
After a lonely long night comes the sun.

(Spring to Come. John Butler Trio)

See, gets a little angsty in the middle but spring always comes and the sun is shining bright and warm this morning.

I love that feeling when you hear a new piece of music for the first time and it is just so beautiful you get overwhelmed with joy.

I see/feel/hear beauty everywhere. “But it helps me remember – I need to remember. Sometimes, there’s so much beauty in the world – I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart is just going to cave in.” Ricky Fitz, American Beauty

I don’t know if my heart caves in or just grows. With me it’s more like being in the ocean, feeling tiny and overwhelmed, being lifted by something so much more powerful than I can fathom.

Just had one of those moments.

The universe is sending messages again. The kind that raise gooseflesh and make my eyes leak a little (alotta) bit.

Two moments truth be told, 12 hours apart.

Melodious messages.

I have lisztomania, the compulsion to have music playing always.
I find myself uncomfortable in environments without it.
My happy place is a summer drive with the music down and the music cranked. My old jeep used to sound like the Budokan and it was bliss. I remember listening to Radiohead “Let Down” and floating.

That is what music does to me, crashes into me in waves, knocking me over and lifting me up, sometimes making me fight for air. But mostly it makes me feel buoyant, floating, content.

First time in the new boy’s house he walks in the kitchen and hits play on the iPod, an old Blind Melon album I hadn’t heard in ages. I smiled. Haven’t stopped really.

That was a good smirk inducing moment but not the aforementioned notes from above.

We were lying in bed just holding onto each other, the Neighborhood was playing and had been for a while. He said he didn’t want to move but he wanted to hear a particular song. I pulled away and was confronted by a rush of cold air.

The only good thing about moving when you are incredibly comfortable nestled naked with someone is the act of touching and shifting whilst getting comfortable again.

I put my head back against his chest for the briefest of seconds. The music began to play and I had to raise my head so I could hear with both ears.

Postcard from 1952 by Explosions in the Sky.

This one has no words, just slowly building cadence then crashing, pushing, pulling like storm swells.

It was so beautiful I cried. Couldn’t help it.

When it was done I wiped my eyes and said “What was that?” I wanted to add “and what are you and where did you come from.” But I didn’t.

Instead these words slipped out of my mouth.

“The first time we were together I had one crystal clear thought, ‘can I please keep him for a bit’.”
I had to correct myself, I don’t keep people. So I said…

Wait a minute (baby)
(just) Stay with me a while.

In my defense I was sex drunk, high on harmonies and the scotchy scotch scotch warming my belly didn’t help either.

He tilted his head to look at me, smiled, kissed my forehead and said ‘yes’.

We touched and talked for a little bit longer. I had the hardest time drifting off. The rest of the album was still playing I fought sleep to hear it.
I had the loveliest of dreams, carousel horses, leaving my job et al.

It was ringing in my ears the next day. The song he played, the words I said and his answer.

I found myself overthinking things, this isn’t what you say to a new one, a young ‘un. I was beating myself up a bit disregarding his response, my words playing on a loop. I started singing it in my head…

What the actual fuck now, to Google…ah I have heard it before.

Sara by Fleetwood Mac. I heard the rest of the lyrics and re-teared up.

“…when you build your house

Then call me home.”

“You think it’s not magic that keeps you alive?
Just because you understand the mechanics of how something works doesn’t make it any less of a miracle, which is just another word for magic.
We are all kept alive by magic, mine just happens to be different from yours.” ~True Blood

The above statement is mostly true.

Some people have so little magic in them it creates a black hole from the void of it and it sucks the light out of the rest of us.

Some have dark magic, some light with 50 shades of grey in between.

I have said it before and I will say it again. People ought to come with warning labels.

I am thinking of one specifically right now. I call it…

“She/he won’t go down now.” *

My poor baby Scorpios aren’t getting head. My older one wouldn’t give it.

Hardly seems fair considering.

I remember the first time I won the Cougar Olympics.

The house was clean, I was clean.
He had my address. Music was playing, whiskey was poured, beer in the fridge and I was making tacos with butterflies in my belly.

He knocked and the dogs barked, I opened the door and the butterflies went insane.

We were both nervous, you could feel it crackling in the air like lightning about to strike.

I looked at him across the kitchen island, knife in hand chopping something or other…took a big ‘ole swallow of whiskey and said “Do you want to just fuck before dinner so we can stop feeling so twitchy?”

Lightning.

He just about choked on his beer but he managed to utter a gruff ‘yes’.

Whenever I sleep with someone new there is always that (hopefully) grace(ful) period where you figure each other out. Easiest way, in my humble yet slutty opinion is to give them head and assess what they like. Like reading braille, with your tongue I guess.

So I did that.

When it was time, he reciprocated. He had previously mentioned that he was ‘pretty good at it’. I smirked, inwardly and just thought “ya, ya…sure young un’. Show me what you got.”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAnd my head exploded.

I am sometimes blissfully wrong.

I asked him after, mouth still slightly agape and ‘gina still more than slightly tingling “How did you get so good at that?”

“I wanted to be good at it so I read about it.”

Never underestimate the power of a sexually determined Scorpio.

Another Scorpio from waaaaaay back when refused to go down on me because the girl before me ‘tasted gross’. But I don’t taste gross…fucking Scorpios and their baggage.

Two sides to every coin.

Ima digress and wander out of the past now, into the recent past.

Had lunch with yet another Scorpio young un’. He can’t seem to get head either even though he LOVES going down. He asked me how to ask for it.

I sat across from him and tried to recall ever having to be asked and truth be told, I never have. It’s just what I do. I like doing it, sometimes I love doing it.

So I put up a poll on Facebook. There was no clear answer other than ‘don’t beg’, and ‘do the dishes’.

Which leads credence to my earlier and repeatedly repeated theory.

We cannot and should not fuck outside of our kind.

This is now my divine law and I have followers. I need to make t-shirts and write it in the sky.

There is a spark that exists inside of some of us. If we open ourselves up sexually to ‘the others’ (aka the spark-less) ours dims.
If they are the void kind of humanoid we can literally get sick from it, sad, lost and weakened. They steal our light.

The equal and opposite is therefore true, if you can find someone whose fire and lightning feeds your own that is how stars are born.

*From an Absolutely Fabulous episode that is burned into my brain.