July 2016 - Our Lady of Lust and GraceOur Lady of Lust and Grace

lost boys

The Graveyard of Almost

July 31, 2016

My ex-husband sent me to therapy. Told me I couldn’t come home until I saw someone to ‘tame my crazy’ and ‘manage my anger’.
He stayed home with sisterwife while I walked into strange women’s houses, sat on their couches and spilled my guts into their loving laps.

Oh honey. What did you think was going to happen?

Did you really believe they would tell me to stay in the toxic waste dump of our marriage?

Seriously?

I had been drinking the poison Kool-Aid for so long I didn’t even notice I was dying until they showed me what happy tastes like.
Freedom and unconditional love are far sweeter elixirs than a man who forced me to share him and called me crazy for not eating his shit with a smile.

Funny enough, my “crazy” became quirky and cute and my “anger” no longer existed at all, thereby negating the need to be managed. I completely stopped panicking when I wasn’t being attacked.

You don’t try to ‘manage’ a tumor, you cut the fucking thing out and let the body heal.

I healed.

I was speaking to the Lumberjack the other day, sitting in Sunshine’s truck, we had just hit the garden center and everything smelled like basil and bougainvillea.

I was that girl. No, not Team Compromise. The other one.

I was a whiny weak little bitch that clung onto a shams of relationships like I belonged there.

I didn’t belong there.

I am ashamed to say I have been back visiting the graveyard as of late.

Saw Giant and Gelfling, been peeking at the Poet’s page when I ought not to be. Had a lovely conversation with the Hulk recently. I wish them well, I truly do. But they do tend to make me question my worth.

Do I have a sign on me that says ‘hey let’s play a rousing game of come here/go away’?

I am tired of trying to figure out what is wrong with me and starting to see what is right with me.

I am a really good girl.

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadows of my exes…

I can’t even call them exes. All they are is ‘almosts’, as in we almost dated. I was poised and ready to put on my monogamy pants and be with them, and they bailed.

The Poet sent me to therapy right before he jumped ship.

Said he was done trying to love broken girls like me.

My therapist asks after him from time to time.

To which I reply “No word, still blocked, just posts photos of his words on my body.”

She has yet to ask me how that makes me feel.

(Comfortably numb for the record.)

She accused me of only being in her office For him.

I corrected her, quickly.

It was his idea, yes. But did I do it because I thought somehow it would make him love me back?

Nope.

During our 2 year on-again-mostly-off-again-whatever-it-is-we-have-been-doing/not doing, I’ve realized that although his delivery sucks, hes often right.
I tasted the idea of therapy that he handed me, and found it delicious. So I ate it. Every Tuesday and I wash it down with coffee.

Oh honey. What did you think was going to happen?

Did you think she was going to tell me to stick around for someone who can’t even pick up the phone yet passive-aggressively posts to Facebook?

That is some teenage drama queen bullshit, and I ought to know. I was one.

On our way back from the garden center/amazing lunch I found myself briefly contemplating Gelfling for a moment.
I looked up and saw a solitary raven outside of a cemetery.
Biggest one I have ever seen this far south.
One for sorrow. Two for joy.
I think I’m getting the message.
Unrequited love isn’t cute or romantic.
It’s ridiculous.
I’m not a ridiculous girl.

My Pixie girl Ciara said, “Sorrow is still a valid emotion. Feel it when it comes, let it pass.”
To which I replied…
Nope.
My brain is my brain, my life is my life. It’s as simple as deciding I don’t want to be somewhere anymore and walking away.

I must again reiterate the Matthew Hussey idea of unrequited love being ugly.

It’s truly a colossal waste of time.

Channel your inner Luda and tell them fence-sittin’ boys to “MOVE BITCH GET OUT THE WAY.”

Even better, realize they’re not listening anyways, and go around.

The important thing is to keep moving.

I was in my car and that Frank Turner song came on.

Because I know you are a cynic but I think I can convince you.
Yeah, cause broken people can get better if they really want to.
Or at least that’s what I have to tell myself if I am hoping to survive!

It’s a long road up to recovery from here, a long way back to the light.
A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right.

So darling, sweet lover, won’t you help me to recover…

He isn’t going to help and the road is not long.

Besides, I know a shortcut.

It is called ‘I have a nice life and if you aren’t making it better you can’t come in’.

I don’t even like Kool-Aid.

Uncategorized

Enough Buddhas

July 28, 2016

Roommate (aka my Sunshine) says “We have enough Buddhas.”

Considering the size of our apartment, she is probably right. Considering who I am as a person, I have since bought one more Kuan Yin and will probably sneak another Buddha into my room.

We have one in the sanctuary we call ‘porch’ and he is the only one facing the right way. Funny if you think about it. Does Buddha really care? He might have a preference for early morning sunlight on his face, I do too. But he doesn’t actually give a shit where you put him. He is not an overly thin skinned prophet.

The emotional freedom I gained when I finally internalized the words “Everything is as it should be” was…all. I immediately stopped fighting. I couldn’t argue and I stopped wanting to.

I probably don’t have quite enough Buddhas. I still forget. I lose time thinking about what almost was.

So I am talking to my other girl. My North Carolina Mawmawolf. It’s killing me in small increments. She is my mirror image from my sad days on the farm. I want her outta there. Trying to rig up a tough love catapult to launch her out of the past.

She said she wrote something and confessed to attempted murder.

A) It was 17 years ago
B) She wrote an article about an ‘almost’.
Ergo…
C) All it is now is a really riveting story.

Sucks that it happened, awesome that she wrote about it so well.

https://letspretendblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/if-i-had/

I can’t find the words to get her to let go.

Closest I got was “BUT DID YOU DIE?”

There is an alternate reality where I have a crippling opioid addiction and I am still sitting on the stinky farm couch with an equally addicted sisterwife.

But it ain’t this reality.

Currently I am sitting in a house full of Buddhas, music and sunshine. And it’s clean and it smells good. I am only here because I changed how I think about things.

I wrote an article, feels like forever ago, about the times I almost died. It’s been a lot. Enough to write an article about it. I also wrote in “Regeneration, After the Fire” about how imagining what could have been worse about something that was already bad enough was a misuse of time, energy and imagination. Because it fucking is.

But did you die?

Nope.

Carry on then.

Why are we so addicted to drama and worst case scenarios? I know I used to be that girl but I have no interest in digging her up to glean the why. She smells like desperation and monkey shit from running around circus tents that weren’t hers.

Time is too precious.

I lost 3 days fussing over a move that didn’t go my way. I lost nothing but 3 jars and 3 days. Can’t get it back so…moving on.

I could very well have been raped on a Tinder date. But I wasn’t. Not dwelling on what happened other than fine tuning my collection of red flags and adding a few.
The Poet posted some poem about loose women looking for trouble in bars and getting what they deserved right after I posted what happened. Little lemon juice in a wound that was barely closed, but whatever. Chased it with a shot of tequila, had a chuckle and got on with my day.
(Hi honey. I’m fine thanks, and you?)

I saw this lovely British man do a short excerpt/talk about unrequited love.

https://www.facebook.com/CoachMatthewHussey/videos

I watched it until my eyes bled and it became my marrow.

Been turning that grain of sand over in my head like an oyster and I came up with this little pearl…

If he wanted me he would be here.
If any of them were supposed to stay and love me, they would be, right here right now.
Jason has been trying to get me to accept this for a while now. And I always came back with a “But, but, I understand why he is doing what he is doing.” Which translates to a very meek “I’m not worthy.”

Um, ya, I am.

I am a kind, funny, sweet, loving, understanding, talented woman who loves sex and values men as men. Plus I make killer sammiches.
And I am wicked smart.
Me hanging onto a future I manufactured in my own head is not sexy, is not romantic.
I hate martyrs and I am not going to be one. I have shit to do.
I am a good girl, I’m human and I make mistakes and sometimes I have to play dead to get out of bad situations. So be it. No harm no foul, I washed it off.

Poet bailed on me shortly after my birthday citing that I embarrassed him, no explanation, just a block.
Some harm, some foul.
But I don’t have a time machine and if I did I wouldn’t use it to go back and edit a 20 minute conversation I had with a strange woman about coffee cups. Again, I have better shit to do.

Like write a book inspired by my fantasy life that I made up in my head and is going rather nicely actually. Someone once told me sex sells on the internet, and he wasn’t wrong.

Shoulda done this years ago…tee hee.

Everything is as it should be and everything went the way it went.
No amount of fussing or self-flagellation over imaginary sins is going to change that.

You made it, here, to this moment. Enjoy.

I can play the coulda woulda shoulda game like a gold medalist, but it gets me nowhere. I should never have dated that psycho-wannabe-soldja-boy. I had the Giant. But who says if I had done anything any differently that Giant wouldn’t have left me for his safe traveling waitress anyways?

I did what I did. I am what I am and I own it.

I don’t have time to figure out what other people want me to be, I’m way too busy enjoying being myself.

Here and now.

unable to even

Tinder and the No Good Very Bad Date

July 27, 2016

And this little masochist is lifting up her dress.

I put up a status about feeling like shit upon the Facebook. I didn’t go into detail.

I have a bad feeling that as this was happening to me it was going way worse for thousands of girls around the world and maybe I can get some good from this. Or at lease draw the poison out.

I said I joined Tinder. I did.

After a year or two of inside jokes and me not doing it.
*Say Tinder 3X and a cute boy appears.
*Sarah, you can’t go on Tinder, you will break the internet.
* Q: Is there a Tinder for cougars?
A: No that’s just regular Tinder

All of these were funny to me because they’re true.

That whole retrospective thing? Half-funny.

I have a date tonight with the very first man I right swiped on.

This will be date number 3. He is a literal giant and an arborist. He is funny, sweet, gorgeous and kind.

I call him the Lumberjack. He calls me Sweetcheeks.

I had other Tinder dates. 2 before and one in the middle. This is where it stops being funny ha-ha and starts being funny as in ‘okay universe I got it thanks’.

What happened is this. I temporarily forgot how my life works. And that OF COURSE the first one would be the best one.

I kept going.

And now for our regularly scheduled metaphor…
I felt like I’d been living in Africa, in one of the famine-stricken countries, mostly eating bowls of rice but on occasion getting fed really good snacks by UNICEF. Then suddenly someone put me on a plane and flew me to the nearest Mandarin Buffet.

So I loaded my table to the breaking point with everything I could carry and I just looked at it, overwhelmed. Tasting this or that. Spitting some out immediately (yet discreetly) into a napkin. But nothing topped that first bite I had. It was/is delicious.

I mentioned in my last post that I felt like I was doing something wrong, and I was.
I forgot about eating the elephant. One bite at a time.

I did that thing I promised I wouldn’t do.
I won the lottery and kept buying more lottery tickets.

Universe said “NO dummy, STAAAAAAP”.

I don’t need to hedge my bets. I like this guy. I want to see what happens.
I know where the Mandarin is, and if this one leaves and I get hungry again I can always go back.

I digress.

I’m stalling.

It’s time to talk about the bad date.

I haven’t told my therapist yet. I almost told the Friendly Giant.

I told my roommate last night by saying “I’m not sure if you still read what I write but I think I should tell you about my bad date before you read about it.”

There is yet another Tinder guy who I have struck up a conversational friendship with, I told him. We were discussing Catholicism and I realized I really needed a priest in a box.

And this little masochist is ready to confess.

I was late for the bad date. I got lost as I tend to do going up the mountain. I picked a pub close to where bad date was doing a radio interview to save him navigating downtown.

This was my first mistake. The pub was almost empty. I was on my own and out of my element.

I walked in flustered and stayed that way throughout dinner. He had the power position and kept it.

I felt like I was sitting across from Sigmund Freud when he was in a particularly vicious, misogynistic mood. Or like I was with a hyper-intelligent toddler asking why why why over and over. I felt ripped apart, like a vivisection with salad.

He sent a dick pic AT the dinner table. I already knew I wanted out, but this cinched it. Things went from being mildly entertaining to yuck with a hot fudge brownie on top.

I was scared of him. I see that clearly now. I didn’t then.

So unlike me, I’ve put a man up against a wall by his throat, while I was naked, in stilettos for behaving this way. I got grabbed on a patio once and stopped 2 inches short of breaking his nose. I don’t know where that girl went. I lost her in the move maybe.

The closest I can figure is I was sitting across from some kind of super predator, real life Christian Grey/American Pyscho, and I froze.

I agreed to continue the date as we walked outside to our cars. I would have said the sky was green with conviction just to open my car door and climb inside. All the while I was turning excuses over in my mind trying to find one that would be bulletproof.

We started driving, I was following him. I called to say my kid was locked out of the house and I had to go.

Here is where it gets weird. He said “pull over here so I can say goodbye”. Empty parking lot.

AND I FUCKING DID. I could’ve kept driving. I felt the stranger-danger, I was still in freeze mode when I should have been in full flight.

The point I am at in my novel, our heroine gets drugged and almost raped in a parking lot. Life is imitating art. And I am the idiot holding the pen. But in real life, no one came to save me.

Here is where I start blaming myself, my dress was short enough that he easily reached in a groped my vagina with me in the driver’s seat of my car. And I didn’t hit the gas and rip his arm off. I just sat still until I could get away.

I’m more disgusted with my behavior than his. I never said no. My mind was screaming it and my mouth stayed silent. I put myself into a bad situation. I felt like I regressed to high school and had that ‘just tune out until it’s over and then get far way and stay there.’

Roommate says I did the best I could given the circumstances. Tinder buddy said it wasn’t my fault.

But I still somehow feel like it’s my fault.

I’d already found a really nice guy and I went on another date because…I could? Lame.

Karma came down and bitch-slapped me for my stupidity.
I sat in my car crying because I was scared he had followed me so I drove way past my house.

Lessons learned. Learn with me girls.

* Tori Amos, Hey Jupiter

Boys

2 Girls 1 Tinder and a Move

July 26, 2016

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been…hang on lemme check…10 days since I have written a word. The good word, any word at all that wasn’t a list of shit to pick up at IKEA or Home Depot.

I am still not fully settled. But roommate is sleeping and thou shalt not use the drill nor the hammer till both of us have some coffee.

I’ve realized that I am my mother’s daughter.

Not the dirty nasty bits, those are mine and mine alone. But I cannot function in a house of chaos.

I like things where I like them goddammit.

And where I like them is not in boxes and bags willy-nilly/errrwhere, mmmm kay?

For someone who drifts and wanders as often as I do, one would think I would have this all down to some kind of science. And I do. I know how it goes, I just plug away and try not to stop moving, not to waste my movements, there is an order to things.

My OCD kicked in, and my PMDD, as things went sideways and my brain turned to mush.

That was fun, a bout of crippling turbo-charged PMS right at the end.

I went on Tinder too, the Friday before the Friday we moved.

As if I didn’t have enough on my plate.

I have no idea what is wrong with me.

In my defense I didn’t understand how it worked exactly. But like I do with all things, I went overboard. Talked to too many people, got confused and overwhelmed. Ended up blocking almost everyone. It was boy chaos on top of life chaos.

And no fucking manners anywhere to be found.

I see your dick pic and raise you a dick video. At least his bathroom looked clean.

I love sex, lord knows I do.

I don’t want a relationship per say, lord knows I don’t…but can we maybe grab a coffee before you demand I meet you at a hotel room? Did you think you were on Backpages?

The shit show culminated in one less than glorious date that I bailed in the middle of, but a little too far past the stranger-danger portion of the evening. What happens when the person who follows you to your car and gropes you in a parking lot is the person you agreed to meet? Who do you call for help?

The Giant, but his girlfriend was on her way over, so no sanctuary for me. He did make me smile though. Bless him.

I regressed these past few weeks. I’ve had this nagging feeling like I’m back in public school and I don’t understand the lessons and everyone is whispering behind their hands about me and I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. My solution seems to be to pile more wrong on top.

I am stopping now.

I don’t know where my big girl panties are exactly, but I found my big girl voice and a few others things I thought were lost.

I also found someone who speaks to me nicely. Calls me sweetcheeks and asks before he touches my bum.

unable to even

When Shit goes Sideways

July 16, 2016

So, um. Catharsis is good. Rolling with shit is good.

Having those things thrust and forced upon you while in the middle of moving.

No Bueno.

Keep on rollin’ baby.

11:30am… turn the key to the new place and it’s brown.

Like that coffee you left in your car for a week and opened for some weird reason just to look. And ew.

Add to that the bubbling/patchy mess and I sent a strongly worded email to my landlords.

To which I got no response other than two strange men in the new house telling me I was to remain in my unit until they said so. To which I replied ‘get out of my house.’

Add to that an unannounced viewing of my old unit and times that by 2.

Add to that the fact that we hadn’t seen the place since May and looked at a lot of places and in the way that memories go, they got jumbled and tangled and there was a moment of ‘is this the place we looked at?’ where in god’s name am I going to put anything at all?

I threw out a lot of shit, let a lot of things go…felt really good about it. Wrapped the remainder carefully in liquor boxes and newspaper. Then one slip over one lip between two rooms and things got smashy smashed.

I cried. I admit it.

More things are going to have to go.

Maybe I need this to attain enlightenment.

Magic 8 ball says ‘yesh’. Universe concurs.

I had delusions of standing in the new place directing box traffic. Saying things like ‘kitchen, bathroom, my room, office’. Thought mayhap I would be able to sleep in the new place last night.

Big bag of nope.

I have moved 42 times and I vaguely remember one move going this bad, maybe. My brain has deleted that file as I hope this one gets erased one day.

Except I’m archiving it here.

With purpose.

I woke up this morning in my bed that never made it over to the new place, feeling better. My week is not going the way I wanted it to. I’m missing 3 more days of work which puts my total at 10.
I have played the ‘coulda woulda shoulda’ game and no one wins. It just steals more time that apparently I have no control over and is a precious commodity.

My friend/mens have been awesome, supportive and sweet as fuck. Mostly.

The new place is currently being painted a beautiful soft dovey grey and the movers come to do part two on Monday. So we have time to go over and sort after the paint dries before they come back and I can fulfill my dream of standing in the middle of my new life directing traffic.

I have a dedicated office now so when I do get back to work, I will be working.

I know myself. I know I am a hermit and having my life unsettled and straddling homes and all that other shit that some people can do with ease, I cannot. But I am learning.

Things weren’t quite right in the time called before.
I needed a shake up out of my old routine and into a new…

Pretty excited about a new life.

But not until I know where my pants are.

wanderlust

Moving Day Catharsis

July 15, 2016

7 am. Sons of Scotland alarm just went off.

I have already been up for 45 minutes.

It’s finally moving day.

I’m packed enough to allow myself to sit at the keyboard and type. Oh how my fingers have itched. How my mind has wandered whilst wrapping trinkets and glassware in newspaper and I totally meant to write that down. I didn’t.

The light was wrong in my room when I opened my eyes.

Everything was wrong. My canopy is down, probably not going back up. Curtains are in the wash, probably not going back up either. Maybe on the porch…maybe.

I had a wall of mirrors. I gave them all away except the one that reminds me of my Nana. Never looked in them anyways. Been collecting them for over a decade. Probably owned 100 at some point or other. Never looked in them then either. When asked why I was getting rid of them I simply replied “I am tired of moving them”. I am. I’m tired of keeping them clean. Really, I’m just tired. A lot of them have been with me since the farm. I’m not that girl anymore.

Time for a new life.

I realize moving isn’t the answer. But it kinda is. The catharsis of downsizing. Throwing away bits of the past I have been carting around from house to house. I have lost track and I don’t have time to count just now but I’ve moved at least once for every year I have been on the planet.
When I pulled up to the farm in a U-Haul with my now ex-husband he said ‘you never have to move again.’ that thought and those words filled me with a lightness I had never felt before. And then I moved out 4 times in 7 years and then there was the time I moved and never looked back. I’ve tossed most of what I had accumulated during farm life. He left the one piece of furniture I couldn’t move alone, outside to get warped by the weather. It is a dresser that was my changing table as a baby. It’s been with me forever. I have lugged it to 5 house since it got wrecked and I never did fix it. I’m having the movers set it out with the trash. It’s time to let that go.

“I can’t say baby where I’ll be in a year.” Aerosmith, Sweet Emotion

I mean I can. I signed a lease.

I saw the perfect tiny house for sale in the Hammer and for a minute my gypsy wanderlusting heart sighed and said ‘maybe’. Small, double-bricked, attic space, corner-lot with a fenced yard and a garage. Kinda perfect really. But when have I ever just settled on one thing and decided ‘forever’.
I haven’t.

Giant pointed this out night before last at his house. Said exactly what mi Mami said a while ago…you aren’t getting what you want because you don’t focus on any one thing. I replied ‘oh honey, I am focused. On you.’ These distractions are me doing what I need to do to get by. Both as far as my heart is concerned and my living situation.

I’m working on the book still. It’s been incredibly hard to be away from it for a week while I packed. My life was too expensive for an unemployed writer. My Sunshine showed up in January and stayed. We have made it work in this apartment that was never meant to house anyone but me. Me, my son and my best girl somehow dancing around each other in this tiny house, sleeping beside each other in my tiny bed…I think we got this. She is cutting my bills in half and she really is my sunshine. Bless her.

Therapist keeps asking where I see myself in 5 years. The answer is a pretty steadfast ‘writing books and living in California.’
I have lived long enough to know, the only constant is change.

All I really know for sure is this…I can look back at my life and see this map laid out, with pushpins, post-its, marker marks and areas circled that say ‘you were here’. And it reads kinda like a map of varying fantasy lands. The Swamp of Sadness, the Deadly Desert, Narnia, Wonderland and Oz.
This move is a little different, bigger apartment in the same building. Dedicated balcony bliss. I have been happy where I am. All storms have been weathered without major life interruption, save that one nasty one in February when there was lightning and rain, so much rain. This place was almost perfect, so I am staying close.
Just moving a little East of Eden.

Uncategorized

Digging in the Dirt

July 8, 2016

Every harlot was a virgin once. ~ William Blake

Everything changes, letting go is the only way.

I’ve been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could’ve been.
I’ve been wallowing in my own chaotic
And insecure delusions.

I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
Cleansing I’ve endured within
~ Tool 46 &2

I can feel it. Mostly in the lack of things that were here before…and in the warmth that has replaced them.

I can control time, speed it up to get through the unpleasant, slow it down to savor the bliss. I have the blessing of not noticing the unpleasantness around me until it is time to get out of harm’s way…or just not at all.

It has been years since I had soul crushing panic attacks that would rob my breath and sanity and cause me to feel as though I would never be happy again. My limbs used to solidify into deadwood. No more. I am rooted in the ground and branch out to the sky collecting sunshine and rain.

I have succumbed to baby backslides now and again, but I accept them…learn from them and find great satisfaction in conquering them.

I’ve looked inside myself and found grace, peace, strength, bravery and love.

I know I must allow the universe to unfold as it will.
My responsibility is to think happy thoughts, work hard and follow my gut towards my desires.

I know I can only control my actions and my reactions to the actions of others.

I no longer feel the need to cloister myself in the nunneries of dry, sexless, loveless, passionless relationships.
Hiding my potential behind men who were never worthy or enough, just to justify my feelings of being unworthy and never enough.

I have freed myself from those prisons and somehow I feel my eyes are still adjusting to the light.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell. ~ Buddha

I do revel and rejoice in my victories over myself, no matter how small.

I cannot seem to shake this feeling of unworthiness, but it is lighter than before.
I am no longer crushed under the weight of it but I am still dragging it around.
Still laying my boots to long expired equines on occasion.

Past dictates that no matter how hard a hold of my heart someone once had I can learn to let go, or at least adapt and maneuver in the parameters given.

My heart is currently bound to someone worthy. I am working at becoming worthy back.
And regardless of outcome, that will be mine to keep.

The relationships I find myself cultivating in my present life are passionate, lovely, satisfying and yet my past dictates that I still anticipate the alternate piece of footwear will succumb to gravity at some point. I’ll just go barefoot.

It’s true, everyone comes and goes. It’s my job to love them.

I am hand shy I have to stop flinching.

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

I am working on it.

Digging in the dirt, find the places we got hurt. ~ Peter Gabriel

All due respect to the process, the earth has been turned enough now. Time to plant and start growing up.

Those who sow in sorrow, reap in joy. ~ William Blake

I sowed in sorrow for a long time.
Always pouring concrete over the gardens I had planted right before the seeds broke the soil, so they never saw light. Self-sabotage.

I constantly find myself marveling in how far I have come and reveling in how far I have to go.

Sometimes I wallow.

I have been alternately wallowing and skating by for years.

What have I done?

A much easier question to answer than ‘what do I do now?’

It is time to live, breathe, move and work with purpose.

I will suffer fools, gladly. But I can no longer beat them nor join them.

I have no enemies in this place. You are with me or you are inconsequential.

My past does not dictate my future. I have conquered everything that has happened to me up until now and I am still here, with more grace and strength because of my trials and tribulations. They haven’t made me what I am, I have.

The time has come to thrive instead of barely surviving.

I am no longer scared of my potential.

I suppose by sitting here waiting to find patience I am, in fact, being patient…

lost boys

Archives and Arenas

July 7, 2016

I am so understanding of others that I routinely fuck myself over to keep from inconveniencing anyone I care about. Or just anyone really.

I remember driving home from the vet with an emergency rescue pup. A recently fixed (hours earlier), very young /hyper husky singing the sad song of his people while my son and his buddy argued in the back seat. I was driving erratically due to the chaos contained within my SUV. I had a moment of clarity. Every car on the road is a microcosm. I have no idea what is happening to them at this moment, and I’ve been a more courteous driver ever since.

You cut me off in traffic? You must have had a reason, come on over, I will let you in.

This is both the truth and a metaphor.

I step out of myself often to try and see things from someone else’s perspective.
Sometimes I forget to come back.
Sometimes I forget I am someone too.

I rarely trespass, I can forgive those who trespass against us with grace and ease as long as I can wrap my head around the ‘why’.

Doesn’t mean it hurts any less. But I get it. I don’t value myself much either, why should anyone else.

I sent memoranda out onto the ocean of the internet or via text and my queries go unanswered.
I see that you have seen it, but you haven’t answered a message I sent you last night, last week, last year? I’m sure you’re just busy.

It takes herculean strength of will for me to reach out to anyone.

I am shy. I am scared of rejection and even more of imposing on someone. My greatest fear is realizing I wasn’t invited to, nor am I welcome at the proverbial party.

Triple that with whipped cream and a cherry on top when it comes to men I have a) slept with, b) I am currently sleeping with or c) want to sleep with.

I am too much Tate and not enough Violet.

I care about their feelings more than mine. I don’t know how to make demands without feeling bossy and selfish. Even the word ‘demands’ sounds too demanding. But I cannot even muster a ‘please sir, can I have some more’. I usually want more. I am pretty insatiable, but in a cute way.

I will have to check the cougar handbook but I think that might be the golden rule when you find a golden ticket in the form of a golden boy. Enjoy the candy, respect the process.

I have won gold at the cougar Olympics the last few years running. It’s not a competition though. Any time an older woman finds a younger man and they run off into the sunset to enjoy each other everyone wins.

I ‘sex-friend’ like a champion. I really do. It’s my wheelhouse. I built it that way and I know how it works. Been fine tuning the inner-workings, cogs and gears for years. If a friendship is established, I’m good. I got this. Put me into a situation where I start becoming emotionally attached and I go full retard. The wheels slip and I with them, usually ending up in a ditch somewhere wondering what the fuck I did wrong.

“Never go full retard. Just ask Sean Penn.” Tropic Thunder.

Me: I swear if I trip and fall into feelings for this one I am going to need a full frontal lobotomy.

(And a ticket to the Special Olympics, just make it a one way please.)

This is all tongue in cheek. They are not a sport and I am not a game. I am not even the colosseum. I am not worried about being forgotten and I have no desire to compete with anyone, I never have. It is my lot in life to learn and archive, I am the embodiment of the Nalanda University library in Ancient Rome. I like my nickname Dharmaganja Treasury of Truth. Suits me. I don’t know how to lie anymore.

That is how it goes. As a walking juxtaposition being both a sapiophile cougar one would think I would constantly be left hungry for intellectualism, good conversation, something to feed my mind as well as my body. But that hasn’t happened.

Somehow, as if by magic, the ones that gravitate to me are both beautiful and smart.

I can only assume it is because my body is a temple, an athenaeum. Not an arena. Worship and learn. No need to compete. Although playing is encouraged.

I was lying in bed with the new one last night. Enjoying how easy it was, the conversation I mean, everything else was hard, in that really good way. A little bit of downtime between round one and round two. But round two never came. We talked for the better part of an hour.

There is a scene in Lost Boys (the irony is not lost, especially when the boys are) wherein Sam says “They pulled a mind fuck on us and talked.”

It’s true. Were circumstances different and this one didn’t have a best before date in the form of a plane ticket home I could see wanting more than I have.

But for now, he is really good food and I am full.

Boys

Not Forgotten

July 4, 2016

So Gelfling, derived from “Ghel-lflainngk” roughly translates to “those who live without knowledge of the future.” (Grant Volker).

That was posted under an article from a year ago about a boy I called Gelfling, Ouf and Mind Fuck.

I always felt like ‘ouf’ was an onomatopoeia for the sound of getting punched in the gut.

He said ouf like it was a good thing. To him it meant guttural/literal sex noises.

He did knock the wind out of me, both coming and going.

That is fucked up.

Seriously.

Both the Muppet and the boy have no knowledge of the future, by choice.
And I cannot shake the past, not by choice.

He did make a choice, they both did. To wander out of the safety of their cave dwellings out into the world for some greater purpose that has yet to be revealed.

So be it.

Oh Gelfling, my Gelflng.

He cannot possibly be my Gelfling.

If he was he would be here. With me, right now. Or at least message on occasion.

Giant messaged me recently and said “My dearest Sarah”. I opened my mouth to protest, but he wasn’t wrong. Part of me still lives in his head, his heart and his bed. I wouldn’t know how to take that back if I wanted to. And I don’t. There are threads that bind and alternate timelines that I somehow remember even though they didn’t happen here.

The only way I run is at something, not away.
Wait.
That isn’t exactly it. No straight lines, I spiral out and back in again.

That thing we had for the most fleeting of moments that defied logic and words and could only be described as a magical convergence of entangled particles.
Both of them.
“You tie my tongue. You make my fingers into these clumsy things on the keyboard, like trying to articulate the aurora borealis in a foreign language and the only word I know is ‘yes’.” (I wrote that)

Tangled in timelines that went awry and I still can’t figure out why.

I saw this and things started to make more sense. Think I might get this tattooed on me. My best girl calls me a vampire, she is wrong. I just see time moving in spirals instead of in a straight line and I spiral with it.

At this very moment, as I am writing this there is the clear and present danger that I may run into Gelfling tomorrow.

I kinda want to. Cosmic finger crossing for a cosmic path crossing.

(^that was Thursday)

I saw him.

Truth be told I was terrified. The butterflies in my stomach were worked into a frenzy and their wings felt like sharp cutting things, leaving me slightly shredded inside.

I knew he would be where I was going, because I asked. I needed and heeded the warning. I thought he had wandered off to Tibet, or maybe Sedona, called home by the ley lines and returned to the cave of mystics that he came from.

I was warned that he got exponentially hotter in the last year.

Good god damn. Somethings cannot be prepared for even when you think you know what is coming.

He came to mind every time the sky went red or there were fireworks, literal and sometimes proverbial. I dream about him often, sometimes when I’m awake.

I have the ability to compartmentalize almost everything and everyone.
He never fit into a box, kept slipping out.
Everyone else becomes, after enough time, a page or three in a scrapbook.
Mental photographs, scraps of paper, bits of music and candy wrappers pressed between pages in pretty little vignettes of the good stuff.

When triggered my mind flips to their page I sigh and smile because I have cut out the bad bits, the part where they left. Instead my mind sees a slideshow of their more redeeming moments.

I read an article about our brains having a delete button and I recoiled a bit.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3059634/your-most-productive-self/your-brain-has-a-delete-button-heres-how-to-use-it

I have yet to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I am scared of Jedi mind tricks, the red flashy thing and the glamouring by vampires in True Blood. When Lena tried to save Ethan by wiping herself from his memory my heart hurt and when he remembered anyways it soared.

I am more afraid of forgetting than being forgotten.

I suffered severe memory loss due to a concussion/brain injury from a car wreck that stole the month of December 2008. I also misplaced 35% of my vocabulary which came back with great effort, a giant red dictionary and about a thousand games of scrabble. The word ‘enough’ was the last to return. Still looks funny to me and cause a slight skip in my synapses. Gone also was my ability to make new memories for approximately 90 days (I can’t exactly remember). That was a blessing I believe my temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex were in cahoots, making it so I don’t have to recall that level of suffering.

You see dear readers, my life was shit before the car wreck. Being immobilized with physical pain matching my mental anguish just made it more vivid, or so I can only imagine and blissfully not recall.

I hold onto the memories I have left and the ones I make now pretty tightly, almost compulsively.
Hoarding them like a fat kid and Halloween candy MINE MINE MINE.
You can look but you can’t touch.

I was getting tattooed by Gelfling’s best friend who said something about ‘forgetting’ (meaning what happened between he and I) which, ironically I have forgotten the exact wording of.
But ‘oh honey no’, I said, ‘not remotely, not one tiny bit, not an iota‘. Nothing is forgotten.

I saw him.
I saw him and nothing happened except a few flashed smiles and a little banter. But that want that I had tried to quash or tame came rushing back.

If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are. (Zen koan)

Uncategorized

Chapter One

July 2, 2016

“I’m not sure if I am happy you made it, or sad that no lady mantis found you sexy enough to rip your fucking head off.” She smiled at the little brown male dancing on her finger, trying to read his bizarre sign language. He had landed on her shoulder, startling her and pulling her out of a daydream.

He did look like he was praying for death. Understandable, not getting laid and all. “Poor thing” she muttered and clicked her tongue.

She wondered if he had found her on purpose, looking for assisted suicide. She herself had a habit of proverbially beheading her lovers after she fucked them and collected what she needed.

Her heart had mated for life, like swans and wolves do. Her pussy was an entirely different creature, predatory, emotionless, ravenous and decidedly insectile in her feeding habits.

LA in July was absolutely stifling, even with the sun long set.

Every story she ever told always began with, it was ungodly hot.
Some things never change even when everything does.

She sat in the courtyard. Plumes of smoke from her lit cigarette curling into cursive curse words in the lamp light, dissipating at the slightest puff of breeze. She was trying to swear less, but it was so fucking hard. The lanterns were swaying ever so slightly. The air carrying with it the ocean and magnolias, playfully lifting the edge of her skirt, then the smell of sex overpowered everything. The corners of her mouth curled into a wicked grin.

Could this little creature smell it on her?

She shifted her skirts to stand, and realized it was entirely possible. She was perfumed with sweat, the dark, secret, earthy smell of her own sex, peppered with the cum and sweat of several random boys. Her thighs ached with the effort of standing. She was bruised everywhere, knees to navel, inside and out. She clenched her pussy tight, as she walked over to a hanging basket full of jack-in-the-pulpit. She didn’t want any of the precious liquid she carried to escape before she saw him and he took it from her.

Him.

The very thought of him seemed to conjure him out of the dark. A wisp of smoke caught her nose and she whipped her head around, realizing simultaneously that that too was sore, and not caring one bit. His side of the courtyard was dark, no candles tonight…but as her eyes adjusted to the dim and she saw the cherry glow of a cigarette.

“I outta pop your head off for distracting me” she hissed under her breath at the mantis and flicked him off her finger into the planter where he landed gracelessly.

She had been waiting for her man to emerge from his apartment. Her man. That thought pleased her beyond reason. She tried to collect herself a little while closing the distance across the courtyard…walk, don’t run. Breathe. What she wanted to do was sprint to him and climb him, hold onto him and never let go.

She never really did know what his mood would be like until she was standing in front of him.

That was a lie, 10 feet away she could read him by the meter of his breath, how sharply he inhaled his cigarette, how hard he sat his drink down or even how loud he closed the patio door.

But she’d missed all that, fucking mantis.

She hoped he was praying for her.

Someone ought to be.

She was walking in blind.