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My google homepage is in Spanish, kinda cool.

Also my word is being fucky and I can’t fit my mouse on the tiny table in my room.

However, it is 50 degrees warmer here than home and this is good.

I am at an all-inclusive resort in Cozumel Mexico. Never done this before.

5 hour delay getting here due to -33 degree weather at home, plus a broken conveyor, lost luggage and oh ya, two planes had a little fender bender and there was flames and stuff right next to us on the tarmac, so ya. We got in late.

I am feeling kinda uncomfortable in my skin here, not sure what to do with myself.

So I am in my room writing and waiting for the rain to pass.

I have dipped my toes in the Caribbean Sea which is a new body of water for me, so that’s good.

He who shall not be named because of bad behavior had a whole bit on the ingratitude of airline passengers “did you fly across the sky like a fucking bird?”

Ya buddy, I did. I refuse to complain. They should have given us a meal for having us sit for almost 4 hours on a plane right before a 4 hour flight. I needed a smoke something fierce by the end of it.

But it is what it is. And even though I was woken up by a screaming child at 8 this morning, I woke up in fucking Mexico, with an ocean 100 feet away.

I have found that as my gratitude grows so does my list of things to be grateful for.

But what about these boots I was talking about?

They have been with me through many airports and on many road trips.

I bought them a fairly cheap place 5 years ago right before I left for Arizona.

First adventure alone, Miss Missy picked me up at the airport and drove me to Joshua Tree to see a fiend from public school, named Joshua.

I had a stopover in North Carolina and met a surfer boy who had a perfect circle of shark teeth scars on his torso. “It wasn’t that big of a shark and he let go as soon as he realized I wasn’t dinner.” I asked if he still surfed, he said “all the time’. A little bit of fear left me then.

After Joshua Tree, we, I should say she, drove 3 hours into Los Angeles. I fell asleep in the car and woke up cranky, cussed out her uncle as though I was possessed by some evil demon. I apologized the next morning and he let me stay. We argued about cantaloupe and we are still friends.

That was the trip where I accidentally swam with dolphins.

The boots went into a box of dirty clothes I shipped home to myself because I bought so much stuff I couldn’t carry all of it.

I have learned to pack better, bought a bigger suitcase, and brought those boots everywhere I have been.

Psychic camp in Cassadega, through the mountains in the Virginia’s. Way out east to that beautiful island. To the hotel room with that beautiful boy. They walked me out of his car and to the most easterly part of my continent and I looked over at the ocean and felt humbled.

And now here.

My first destination wedding, first all-inclusive resort, first time at a new salty body of water, and we know how I love those. So many first and so much brave for a girl who used to overthink pushing on a pull door.

They have conformed to the shape of my feet, almost as good as barefoot.

But they are on their last legs.

I bought a new pair in Florida, these ones lasted 3 years longer than I expected a $50 pair of boots to last.

But I am not excited about them yet. I haven’t put them on past trying them on. They are taller, almost too black, and they don’t hug my ankles the way these ones do. Almost too new.

But I think it’s time to break them in.

Time for new adventures and new things and new boots.

When I was in Newfoundland I had a raggedy old stripper purse that I used for superstitious reasons, the manager saw the safety pins holding it together and suggested I get a new one. “Leave one here and take a new one home”. And he gave me a random good luck peso to put in it. So I did, and I made money, amen.

There’s a shoe tree on highway 48, on the way to the old farm house. Always hated that thing. People pulled over on the side of the road desecrating mama nature and slowing down traffic. Sisterwife took pics of it so I knew where she had been.

I might, weather permitting, take a side trip to ye olde shoe tree, with a hammer and nails, and put the final bit of closure on the last few chapters of my life before I make the 38 hour drive into the new one.

Or I will let them take me home.

I love these boots, all the places they have been with me, all the old fears falling away sharing a smoke with a cutie patootie and his scars outside a strange airport. Lacing them up on a hotel balcony in West Virginia, watching the sun come up, knowing I would be back in flip flops by the end of the day. Taking them off and slipping them back on at so many airports. 4 different addresses, about to be 5.

Those old boots were made for wandering. Maybe these new boots are made for staying.

I did.

So be it.

It was the best of times it was the worst of times.

Half of that sentence is a lie, it was just the fucking worst. I have seen scenarios where this works, and I adamantly believe to each their own. But I am not that girl anymore.

I am enough and sharing was not my strong suit in kindergarten, still ain’t.

November 2010 to September 2011. She lived in my house.

But it was never my house.

I left him/them in September of that year, but by November we were sneaking around to varying hotel rooms a few times a week.

On February 15^th 2011, I woke after a bad sleep, broken by her blowing up his phone, and him snoring after some bad sex and I thought “I’m done, it is never going to get any better than this.”

I said goodbye politely in the morning and drove away. I never went back.

I am only bringing this up now because as the 7 year anniversary approaches, I am planning on driving into a new life again, on February 15^th of this year. The anniversary of my actual emancipation and I want the last bit of poison out.

Cells regenerate fully after 7 years, and in 41 days, in my 44^th year, I will be a whole new girl that they never touched.

It’s time to talk about the pink elephant in the room.

And how does one eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

I’ll try to begin at the beginning, but…if you have been following me at all, you know my mind wanders.

And my hindsight makes eagles seem blind.

I got a random message years ago from this woman I used to know. I can’t call her a friend, she only uses people, and calling her a woman makes women look bad. She is one of those non-magical assholes that pretends to be magical. A false positive. Not sisterwife, someone integrally linked to her. Seems sisterwife had thrown her donated kidney and was on dialysis. Apparently this was something I just HAD to know.

She wanted a place to curl up and die, I know this now.

Wait, lemme back up.

Approximately 3 months after I met the man I call ex hubby, he was sleeping with the one I call sisterwife.

They were sleeping together before we met, which I didn’t find out til much, much later.

He presented her to me as a friend, and for a while I fell for it, she played the single mom card like a pro and I had no issue with him popping over there to build a bookshelf or help with this or that. I even naively mentioned maybe we should get a bigger place so she and her daughter can stay with us, seemed like it would help everyone.

A month after that he co-signed on a loan for her to get her boobs done and she blew him in the truck to say thank you.

This went on and off for the duration of our relationship. I liken it to a revolving door, one of us pushing and ending up either in or out of favor.

He left her for me and I really wish he hadn’t.

I shouldn’t say that, not exactly.

I have no love for him and never did. Not real love anyways. Codependence, passion, jealousy, competitiveness, and claws yes. Love, no.

I have immense gratitude for all the things I learned when I was in perdition. Fixing cars and flooded basements, keeping a house running, warm and fed on virtually nothing. What battles to fight and what to walk away from. The feeling of discord in my soul that could no longer be ignored. And finding the strength to leave. That was HUGE.

I survived a hell of my own making.

He had left her for the umpteenth time and come back to me after I had run away and found someone new, but as the girl who lived with her hand on the hot stove, I was expecting to get burned again.

Could he have stayed faithful? Unlikely. He had a hole in his soul he stuffed full of women.

But during the time he was “mine” again, I proposed moving her in. Thought she could help with chores and bills, and at least I would know, you know?

It was my best and worse idea.

After being promised an assured they would listen if I couldn’t handle it and break it off, I couldn’t handle it, made that abundantly clear and she stayed.

She was also as useless as tits on a bull. The horses got out on her watch, things died, she couldn’t cook or clean or fix anything. The garden remained unplanted for yet another year in a row.

I made a valiant effort to make it work, but within a year I was done and he was sleeping upstairs in her room 99% of the time while I screamed and cried in mine.

I tried going to bed with them, but she was a self-proclaimed ‘performance sub’, which is as gross as it sounds. Presenting herself to be fucked and degraded while making the worst fake orgasm noises I have ever heard. All the while I was thinking, “He left me for her?” that only happened the once.

I locked myself in my room, and honestly I wanted to die.

It killed what was left of my self-esteem.

She was high most of the time and no one saw it but me. And at some point I got my hands on some hillbilly heroin and figured if I couldn’t beat her I might as well check out too.

I started cheating with an ex. Felt justified in doing so. Felt better actually. Not better enough to actually leave, but enough to keep living.

By the summer I had gotten a job and adopted into a strange little family at the Shallamar Gas Bar and Grill. Without the support of those people who loved me no matter how fucked up I was, I couldn’t have left.

For the majority of my life I have been the girl who has to jump in and try things. The kind that learns just as much from the things I don’t want.

I have said before as well, she saved me from that place. That farm that was perpetually falling apart, never clean. I get those Facebook memories, and that chunk of my life was a perpetual state of busy work and bullshit.

The things we survive teach us and make the good times so much sweeter by comparison.

I am happier than I have ever been and I know it feels this good because of what I have been through.

When Lana Del Rey croons “I’m a ride or die” I always heard “Ima write or die”.
Me too Lana me too.

Write or die.

Never did quite get ride or die, do we get snacks, can I get out and swim?
Why do we have to die again?
I would much rather live.

It is a fucking book.

All about sex. Lots of sex with lots of people.

I am scared to publish it lest people think I am a turbo slut, but I am. Just not in the way the main character in the book is.

I am not putting my name on it, not my real one anyways.

My author’s note is hilarious if I do say so myself.

Author’s note

This is a work of pure fiction.
Any resemblance to any person, living or dead (to me, or otherwise) is coincidental.
Except Nelson, but he knows about this, so it’s okay.

Also, the sexual practices outlined in this book are not even remotely safe.

Like, not at all. STI’s exist in real life, they’ll kill ya.

Even I wouldn’t do most of this.

This is fantasy only.

Do not attempt any of it.

Don’t try dating a writer you meet on the internet, the unprotected sex, the random hook ups, none of it.

Seriously, just don’t.

Really, do as I say not as I write about. Some of this shit is downright dangerous.

I was trying to reconcile with someone that didn’t exist. These were his fantasies, not mine.

I took it to the extreme, because, have we met? This is what I do. Or what I did.

I am feeling remarkably more centered lately.

I am mine before I am anyone else’s Nayyirah Waheed

There’s also that whole thing where I found the other half of my soul in human form, but we will get to that at another time, when I can find the words for it. Or maybe I will keep that for myself. I haven’t rightly decided.

I am so fucking glad it’s done.

I started the godforsaken thing 2 years ago, my best day writing I got down 10, 000 words and then it would sit for months on end.

I got it back from my editor in October but I kept telling myself, I will get to it tomorrow. Tomorrow never came.

Bring in the New Year.

I decided I was not walking into another year and a new life with this thing sitting on my shoulders.

Its time.

I don’t even know if it’s that good.

And I honestly don’t care anymore.

It’s done, its porn, sex sells, time to let it go and see what it does.

Best case it goes half of 50 shades and I can use that money to write better things about better character. Worst case, it’s over and that is enough. I am anticipating something in the grey area between those two things.

I am no longer attached to it in any way. Which is a really good feeling for the record.

I feel like Elsa, all frozen and letting shit go.

I am however excited about the next things coming. Think I might write that cougar handbook after all and maybe some version of the little mermaid where she gets to go home to the ocean.

I will be posting links like mad, I have found some comfort in selling myself.

I did a thing!

It’s a dirty filthy thing but it’s mine.

And for my faithful readers, a random excerpt. One of the more tame things that occur in the 375 pages of smut.

Thank you for being with me this long. Letting me talk and listening to what I have been saying.

5 years ago I started a new life. No idea where I was going, but I like where I ended up and where I am heading to.

“Can I open it?” I ask. Still confused.

“Of course.”

I wiggle the lid off the box and peel back the layers of tissue paper.

“Is this what I think it is?”

“Yes baby.”

In my hand I am holding a rather sizable clear glass dildo. The mushroom shaped tip takes up most of my palm. It is almost as long and thick as my forearm. There are perfect glass circles spiralling up the shaft, sticking out in smooth, pronounced ridges. It is huge and beautiful, I can only guess at the weight…a pound of solid glass, maybe two?

“Look through it.” You say.

I am not sure what you mean. But I hold it up to my eye like a telescope. I can very clearly see my fingers wrapped around it even in the dim patio light. My imagination starts spinning with the idea of this new thing.

“This is perfect. Can we play with it?” I ask, just now thinking to keep an eye out and my voice down for neighbors.

You laugh, take another drag and stub your cigarette out. Your hand reaches back and snags a handful of my dress, a makeshift leash, but I don’t need much coaxing, if any. I allow myself to be led to the bedroom. You have tilted the lamp on the bedside table to create a perfect spotlight. I lift my dress up over my head, getting caught in the straps…I am rushing and excited. You untangle me. You have slipped out of your clothes while I was snagged in mine.

I lay diagonally across the bed, grab a pillow and put it under the small of my back, tilting my hips up. I wiggle into position, letting you adjust me so the light hits me just right. You ask me if I want to watch too, I nod, too worked up to make words. You prop me up on more pillows so I can see what is happening between my legs.

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time.
Death Cab for Cutie

I posted a countdown of days until things happen this year.
2 days til the storage space is empty and ready to be filled again.
3 days to Mexico.
Guru responded “making plans is a good way to hear god laugh.”
And I laughed.
That might have been true of other things in another time, but not this one. I smiled and started plotting my drive east.

I already know where things are going to go in my new room.

Father Time, Cronos, Saturn. He who teaches lessons over and over, with pop quizzes and final exams galore.

I snubbed my nose at him for years.

Not anymore. Now I am praying and smiling a lot.

Humbled before god.

I spent many years ignoring even the heaviest of pushes in directions that might have been good for me. Miscarriages, punches from those who were supposed to love me, signs and sisterwives.

How was any of that a good idea?

It wasn’t.

I’ve forgiven myself over and over for the bad decisions I’ve made.
Celebrate all the things I learned from my mistakes.

This might be another one, but it feels so right.

I know, I know, everything is as it should be. Dalai Lama says so.

I learned so many things because of what came before.

My life is firmly divided into before and after.

Sarah the Serial Monogamist became Super Sarah Single Girl.

I started recognizing miracles and they began happening in abundance.

Buddha also said, when you realize how perfect the universe is you will throw your head back and laugh at the sky.

I am howling.

I feel the cosmic pushes and embrace them.

4 summers ago I spent a great many days riding a great many rollercoasters. It was the beginning of my after and I cannot think of a better way to have spent that time. I had the beautiful burgeoning beginnings of my fuckboi collection. Woke up every morning in the woods. Sipping my coffee alone and naked on the porch. I have been grateful ever since. Even bought a trailer thinking I would make it into a tiny house, roam wild and free.

I was living alone, working on my own schedule and my friend Andrew Ryan Fox just so happened to have season passes to Canada’s Wonderland and a job that left him free weekdays.

So we went, often.

Rode Leviathan 5 dozen times if once.

It was a really good summer.

The summer I started writing articles for this very blog in fact.

Then he left me. Ran off to L.A. to make his name as a comic and marry not one, but 2 women. Engaged to 3 in a calendar year. It’s in his stand-up routine (links at the bottom). The way he tells it, its hilarious.

He’s nothing if not tenacious as fuck.

Fall down seven times stand up eight walking around in human form.

Love that fucker.

We’ve known each other a decade at least, met at a strip club, my home club for a long time. We were both roont for our own reasons and hell bent on self-destruction. Misery truly did love company and we bonded, but we made it through the muck and stayed friends.

Friends who ended up on rollercoasters that first summer I was single.

And it was good amen.

He also planted the idea in my head that I should go dance at a club he had worked at in St. John’s Newfoundland. Yep, Siren’s Cabaret. Went so far as to write me a glowing recommendation and send pics. Bless him.

But I wasn’t ready then. I had barely started becoming myself.

But there was a seed planted regardless, and it stayed dormant until my PIC brought up working at the same place this past summer.

It was supposed to be stripper mecca. Good clean easy money, ‘oh they will love you out there’.

I wasn’t even ready in November of this year, 3.5 years after he brought it up. But I went.

And the hardest part of going there was the leaving.

I loved it.

It wasn’t stripper mecca, such a place doesn’t exist anymore, but it felt like home.

I cried the whole way back and for most of the week after. Until I started scheming on how to get back, that made me feel a little better. Go for two weeks as soon as I can, and maybe a month in the summer. Not enough, but it was something and the idea appeased my sad soul enough to function.

I began to look at how I had even gotten there in the first place. Had the Last One stayed, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere, but he bolted in the night, leaving me to try and keep myself occupied. So I went away, twice. Bought the biggest suitcase I have ever owned and started wondering how much of my life I could fit in there…more than enough was the answer.

I started having flashbacks of my old jeeps jammed to the brim with all of my precious things, sleeping in cathouses, trailers, fitting everything artfully into one bedroom while everything else sat in storage and waited for me to return.

It all started to sound like a really good idea.

Every time I would think ‘well what do I do about…’ an answer presented itself.

My son moved to Toronto, into a great place.

I slid off the lease with ease after Panda and I had a righteous fight.

A friend was contemplating a second dog and is taking my wee Alice until I get settled.

I didn’t want the job that was waiting for me here, I don’t want to be here at all. This hasn’t felt like home since we moved in.

Other majickal things happened, my girl had a dream about me dancing and den mothering.

And the elephant in the room. What about the boy?

I started making these plans before I spoke to him. I can say without doubt this is for me…but (there is always a ‘but)

Funny story.

I was a wee bit frightened to tell the boy my plans.

Thought it’d scare him or make him feel pressured in some kind of way.

I’m going out there for me. Whatever happens with him, if anything, would just be a bonus.

But he knew I was up to something somehow.

So I blurted it out.

Now he wants to fly out to the ferry dock and drive me the last 9 hours home.

Insta – @killandrewfox
Facebook – andrewryanfox
Twitter – @killandrewfox
Youtube – https://youtu.be/3XFAmAXPd4Q

“Babe, it’s only been a calendar month since I sat on your floor and cried on your kittens, what the hell happened?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here.” He said.

Having had been through my own bizarre run of extraordinary events in the same 30 days, I wasn’t overly surprised. We often run parallel, he and I.

And so I went.

That was not the easiest thing I have ever done.

But easy things are rarely worth it.

I had my own things that needed saying.

The only rule is, there are no rules.

Except maybe one… them tables, they always turn.

I went to the Giant’s the other night. Oh Giant, my Giant.

My first taste of lightning sex. He who has hands the size of dinner plates and knows exactly where to put them.

Not the safest place to be, I will admit.

But, in our way, where we would drift apart and back together just to ‘see’ if we could be faithful and pious, leave room for Jesus when we hugged. Sometimes we actually succeeded in seceding the union. Keeping boundaries firm. Well he did anyways, when he dated Becky.  I tried so hard to be good.

(Turn tables.)

Now t’was I who had devotion to prove. And I did.

Listened to his stories about his hot neighbor and how she had seen him for what he is, genetic gold, husband material and a jackpot in general. Home owner, nice truck, great bone structure, full head of hair, gainfully employed, plays guitar and sings beautifully, fucks like a beast, intelligent (why am I not over there right now again?)…lottery win beyond words About how she had made ‘jokes’ about her biological clock like clockwork and how they had been rather deafening. I know he wants a wife and children one day, (which answers the question why am I not over there right now) but not right now honey. He was overwhelmed and then underwhelmed. Luckily his mother did as I myself have done and said ‘it doesn’t matter if she says she’s on the pill, wear a condom anyways’.

Too much too fast.

How do we first begin to covet?

I get it sista, I truly do, more than you even. It’s been 2 years and 7 days.

So, what do I do when a Giant falls and I feel the rumbling over at my house?

I go to there.

I confirmed what he already knew, he had avoided quicksand, narrowly.

We spoke of tarot cards and palmistry, she had read his cards and not liked what she had seen. I never could or would read his palms again, I would put too much me into it, but she is a rookie. And again, see above where I don’t blame her one bit. He is glorious. A king dressed in rags who has amnesia ~  Alison Nappi

But he is starting to remember, I can see it when he speaks, and that too is glorious.

We spoke of soul mates too. We are kindred he and I and of this I have no doubt.

But

There is always a “but”…

I have come to realize (in a rather short period of time) that once we hold palaver with our souls, recognize them, tend to their needs, ask good questions and accept the answers. The mates being to appear. Sometimes in droves.

They come to learn and to teach us things that we couldn’t learn on our own.

To make us feel like home. To keep us company in the dark and to show us the way out. Like ghosts staying with us until we can start living again.

My covenant with him is not finished, but it has gone through a metamorphosis into something new.

Unconditional love and happiness for each other no matter what.

Do you remember the late morning
When we went back to bed,
When we found the first position
And every muscle rested

I do remember that I already
Knew it was the last time,
The last time for first positions
The last time you’ll be mine

Do you remember the scars I showed you
The stories I told you
How I always said forever
When you asked me to stay true

Do you remember when we forgot
How to smile at each other
To believe that the other
Want only what’s good for you

Do you remember the late morning
When we went back to bed,
When we found the first position
And every muscle rested

I do remember that I already
Knew it was the last time,
The last time for first positions
The last time you’ll be mine

Ane Brun

That little canvas was a gift from a woman I’ve never met.

Truth be told, I saw it and it scared me.

I wanted what I wanted goddammit. Or I thought I did.

I just moved to a beautiful house. There was a boy. He returned.

Then I saw another door.

And peeked at the other side.

Magic.

Right on time it seems. Always is.

On February 14^th 2018 I will have been emancipated from my sham of a marriage for 7 years.

7 years prior, right around the same time of year, was when I entered that particular contract.

It takes 3 weeks to make or break a habit. Or, if you are me, 7 years.

The time before the farm and the marriage was rather unremarkable.

7 years split between 2 alcoholics, or 10 between 3 if I am being honest and I always am.

I left one version of perdition for another, though I did not know it at the time.

Maybe I was paying my penance forward, or I just needed lessons upon motherfucking lessons.

I didn’t realize until I had long left the farm how much I learned. Physically, mentally and practically.

I can survive quite nicely on my own. Keep a house warm in winter, feed many with little. Grow things, tend to the sick, make an awful lot out of nothing and survive absolutely everything up until this point.

I know how to pack my car to live quite comfortable for quite some time. I can build homes from nothing, just 4 walls and a bed.

And I am on my way to do just this.

It is my belief that we have certain fates, karma (whatever you want to call it) to fulfill. Certain people we are supposed to meet. I have had soul sisters, soul brothers and soul mates galore. I see them clearly now. And they are calling me home.

I am not saying our whole life is planned out before we are born, no no. But I think in each life we have universal obligations to meet. Soul mates to find and teach, who will in turn teach us. And a whole lot of lessons about what we don’t want.

I have felt the discord and agony of playing small, hiding from what I should be doing and apparently, every 7 years it gets to be too much for me, so little by little then all at once, I get the courage to run into the future.

I imagine I felt (and feel) like a cicada when it is time to wake up and start singing.

I have been dormant long enough.

This time though, I welcomed my lessons, invited new, rearranged all of my broken bits into a beautiful mosaic.

I feel good. Strong. Prepared.

So it’s been 7 years.

Now what?

Second verse, same as the first.

I am currently mentally sorting my belongings, what goes what stays, moving things around in yet another in a long line of storage spaces. Do I keep my bed? It is the first big girl bed I ever bought that wasn’t a futon. How much stuff can I fit in my car? What do I need to make me happy where I am going?

I have realized the answer is ‘not much’.

I am already content where I will be.

There is a prolific absence of doubt.

I have done the dress rehearsal for this. I know my lines and directions.

I have practiced this so much it is all coming naturally to me.

The foundation has been laid, stage set.

All I have to do now is move into the future.

Sacred contracts waiting to be filled.

Mercury stations direct today.

It is a glorious day.

Life starts again.

Truth be told I tried my best to stay quiet the last 18 days. There was cosmic fuckery afoot and I know to just duck and cover. Don’t make any big life plans or purchases, expect communication breakdown etc.
I got put in Facebook jail at the onset and I was not surprised. Irritated as fuck, but not surprised.

More truth be told…

I have been trying my best to be quiet and in a holding pattern of my own design since October 6^th.

The day he left.

He left prior, he lives far. But he wasn’t gone, he was still with me, texting goodnight and good morning, studying for tests about flowers, telling me about his day, listening to me about mine.

He wasn’t mine yet, more holding patterns.

But we had consummated our desires at least.

September 22^nd, he remembered.

We both remember everything.

We were in the getting to know each other exploratory negotiation stages of things.

We were both holding back.

He came back.

“Did you miss me?” I asked.

“You have no idea.”

Oh honey, I do.

He also said that I didn’t deserve his ‘shit’.

Oh honey, hush. I was made for this.

You see…I don’t see any shit. Just a war boy at war with himself.

I see a beast, not a burden.

Did I ever tell you the story of my mother and my grandmother?
I must have, it is my favorite story, my matriarchal legacy.

Both my father and grandfather went to war. Both my mother and grandmother waited for them.

My father saw my mom and knew right away she was the girl he was going to marry.
The love between my grandparents was so strong that his family had a pact when he came home from Europe to keep him hidden from my grandmother for as long as they could, if she knew he was home, she would take him and they would never see him again. I think they managed for a week or two before my grandmother came to claim her man. It is told in light, but rooted in truth.
My father went west when he got home. My mother waited for him to come to his senses and then she just went and got him. Drove across the country to claim hers and brought him home. But the way he looks at her, she is his home.

I have heard these stories told over and over since I was little.

And I have been yearning for mine all my life.

I come from beautiful, prevailing love, it is in my blood.

My mothers and their mothers were shield maidens, powerful women. And what good is a shield maiden without a war boy? Where would I put all this love? I have been tending to my own empty house long enough.

For a war boy to exist and thrive there must be someone to love and someone to hate. Otherwise there is nothing to fight and nothing to fight for. No rest, no respite. They need to protect and be protected. Somewhere safe to come home to else they live in the battlefield. There has to be balance, sanctuary.

I will keep you calm and you will keep me safe.

Never ‘if’, only when.

I should know better, and I do.

I still have crippling self-doubt.
I go through periods of time where it feels like all of the magic has left the world.
I am beginning to see the correlation.

I have dubbed these times “the nothing”.

The hardest part of a two day drive is the second morning. That halfway-there feeling.

Closer but still so fucking far away.

The best part is that first morning, you feel like you have all the time in the world, everything is beautiful and new.

Nothing but possibilities ahead of you.

But you gotta sit in the car for 11 more hours to get there.

I am okay with sitting and waiting.

At least I try to be.

I used to be impatient, and greedy mine mine mine now now now.

Not now.

I want what I want, just as sure as I am about what I don’t want.

I got a phone call about an ex this morning. At the end she said ‘sorry for putting you through that.’

Nothing to be sorry for.

I am really okay.

On the surface it looks like I hang on way too long, get too invested, hurt way too much.

But I don’t.

Not unless it’s unfinished.

The ex in the phone call, I was done. It was over. I had no angst or remorse. Just done.

The one before that too, his girlfriend messaged and asked me to stop talking to her man, so I did.

It was easy, before she said a word I already knew.

He said he would make a hammock into a sex swing and I said ‘I fucking love you.’ Casually.

“No.”

“No what?”

“You’re not allowed to love me” he said.

I replied, “it’s been a year, what did you think was going to happen?”

He didn’t have an answer.

Just said ‘stop’.

So I did.

I stopped. It was finished, and I won’t speak to him again. I know this.

Thread severed.

But what of the unfinished ones, the ones that linger, the ones that wrench my guts and sneak into my heart at night, appearing in dreams so I wake up to experience the loss all over again.

I couldn’t reconcile it. I didn’t understand.

I also know, historically speaking, if I have my mind on something it comes, without fail.

Not necessarily on m timeline, but it comes.

So did the answer.

We aren’t done.

It’s that simple and that complicated.

My girlfriend asked me how am I always “swimming in dick”. Her words. I am not really. But it was hella funny to hear her put it that way.

“You are not going to like the answer” I said.

Patience. No ego. Let them come and go.

It takes a lot of faith in my gut feelings about someone.

Giant was a prime example. Even when he was with her we still thought about each other. Sent random messages and songs, he would even come over to test his piousness until he wasn’t pious at all and we had to stop that. We couldn’t not talk to each other, kept erratically messaging each other just to make sure we still existed, and we did. And when he came back, I knew why. We weren’t done. And this last time with him was so much more satisfying, I knew when he was leaving and it didn’t hurt. Now I can let go.

Contract fulfilled.

I have been learning my lessons.

Gelfling was a rough one, I didn’t know how to handle his absence. It’s been 3 years. We still talk from time to time, like today.
Honey why are you surprised by how you are feeling? Did you forget what I am?

Spoke to the Swain boy today too.

There is a vast amount of difference between my handling of the first two and the last two.

I have attained some semblance of Zen about it.

Win, win really, I spook them less when I am calm.

That is why they came to me in the first place. Looking for peace.

I would like to say I KNEW the Last One would be back, but I admit, I lost my faith for a bit, on the second day of the drive, feeling like forever before we would get where we were going. One more message into the ether. And there he was.

It’s that simple and that complicated. He is geographically close to me right now and I can’t see him yet.

My faith is restored. I knew we weren’t done, I didn’t want to be.

Now it’s just a matter of when.

He said I “didn’t deserve his shit.”

Baby, you are not a burden.

I don’t really believe in the bible, but if the verse fits, post it.

A year ago today, I posted this pontification and justification.

Romancing May to December

I guess I knew what was coming.

Truth be told, I didn’t know why I only dated young ones. Until now.

For someone who spends so much time introspectively sifting through the wreckage of her life with a magnifying glass and a whole forensics team, I don’t know if I have a definitive answer.

The closest I can figure is that I left home and dropped out of school at 15. While my friends had the luxury of prom nights and dating I was working, paying rent, adulting basically. I had my son at 21, so while my friends were off to college or university switching majors and figuring life out, I was changing diapers and trying to keep a tiny human alive.

I’d only dated men my own age. Long term monogamous relationships wherein I had no semblance of self, other than what it meant to be ‘their girl’. I have said before I carved off so much of me to fit in with them that there was very little of me left.

5 years ago I stopped doing that.

I literally spent 2 years in a cabin, alone in the woods figuring myself out.

The first person I dated after coming out of my cocoon was 24 years old. I was 40.

“I didn’t plan it, it just happened that way. I guess fate stepped in the middle, and I needed him then.” Sarah Slean

I remember bracing myself for that first date thinking “I don’t care how pretty he is, if he starts regaling me with tales of beer pong and yammering on about his band I’m gonna politely excuse myself and bail.”

Instead, 6 hours later we were still talking, like old friends really. I forgot I was on a date, I forgot he was a stranger and I forgot how old he was.

For 3 months he brought me around his friends, we went out, stayed in and had a great time. His folks knew about me. It was the happiest I recalled being for a really long time.

Then Satan said ‘here, have feelings’. I asked if he would date me officially and that was that. He ended it, stating he didn’t want to be in a relationship. He started dating the next one 30 days later. I wished him well and decided enjoy it while it lasts, don’t lock them down. Leave them better than you found them.

Seemed fair.

The idea of being in a proper relationship made my skin crawl anyways. I loved living alone, had no desire to cohabitate with anyone for a long time. This just seemed to work.

I met another and another.

I warned them, told them how old I was and their eyes would light up like stars going supernova.

And like all bright lights that burn with that kind of intensity, they didn’t last. And I remembered my lessons, and wished them well.

I met and dated a 28 year old for the better part of a year. He didn’t want children so I felt safe to stay. He also didn’t want to break up with his actual girlfriend either, a little fact he kept hidden from me, so safe he was not.
I’ve met men like him and there are not enough women in the world to plug that black hole he has where his heart should be.

But this isn’t about him.

This is about the Last One. Also 28. I wanted it to work.

I know the pieces fit, I watched them fall away. Tool Schism

Schism
ˈs(k)izəm/

noun

1. a split or division between strongly opposed sections or parties, caused by differences in opinion or belief.

But we are not opposed. We are like-minded and compatible as fuck.

However there is discord.

And an ellipses.

I am sitting in the abyss, refusing to become a monster, and just waiting.

I will be waiting here….
For your silence to break,
For your soul to shake,
For your love to wake

Rumi

I left myself that note last year, Romancing May to December.

I have seen enough examples of these things working. He was 16 and she was 32 and they are still together into her 50’s. Another relationship where she is 20 years older, another going on 8 years now with her 22 years his senior.

Just because this isn’t normal doesn’t make it any less viable.

Yes, it’s rare, but so am I.

I read this and I howled. It is the first page of her new book*, I read the rest like I was starving.

I would never say any of this, although I feel it sometimes. Sometimes I want to shake them and ask “Do you not see it doesn’t get any better than this?”

but…

They don’t understand. Their eyes haven’t seen all there is to see yet and I am just a piece of the mosaic that their life will become.

What I have finally started to realize is, they are also part of mine.

I didn’t understand.

I learned not to ask early on.
I don’t ask much at all. Not for you to come, or stay or what you do when you aren’t with me.
I rarely ask questions that I might not like the answer to.

I have ‘no rules’ tattooed on the inside of my wrist.

Do what thou wilt, that shall be the whole of the law ‘round here.

This goes for me too. If I’m with you I made a decision to be here, do not doubt this.

I, in turn, will do no harm, and take no shit.

I know it seems like I am in charge of all the things but I am not.

I like it when you drive, plan things, decide…especially on me.

And so you know just because I don’t try to keep you doesn’t mean I want to be kept.

Of course I want you to stay, I decided you didn’t I?

I love you dummies.

And don’t even start with the fussing, just because I love them doesn’t mean I love you any less.

You have seen my heart, how big it is, how much room there is to move, explore, play, be yourself and still be safe in here.

They are friendly ghosts.

Truth is they will pop by, ask me advice about this girl or that one and I will tell them what I think. Un-vex them as best I can.

Say things like, “she just doesn’t understand yet, but she will, be patient.” Or “did you try telling her that? Say it like you just said it to me.”

Just because they are still around doesn’t mean they are allowed in. Do you understand?

If the conversation turns to flirting I will undoubtedly say ‘I am with someone now’ and they will understand because they were my ‘someone’ once and heard me say it to the others.

But sometimes they still need guidance and kindness.

I have all the advice, I have had many experiences and I have learned to learn from them, just like I am learning from you.

I have theories on so many things. Some rooted in truth, tried and tested and yes, still truth.

Some of you come along and blow my theories to smithereens. This pleases me.

Thank you for showing me what is possible, I hope I have done the same for you.

That being said.

If it seems like I am holding back it is because I am.

I read this once and it scared me…

Junot Díaz — ‘She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you’ll know loss the rest of your life.’

I don’t want to be that.

But sometimes what I want and what I am end up in conflict.

“You spoil me”

“You are the only who…”

Those words hurt me, they shouldn’t but they did.

What was I doing? Was I being selfish? Am I hurting them?

I know what it is like to eat the best piece of cake when I was young and having everything after taste like sawdust.

Until now.

I started thinking about things differently.

Life is comprised of moments, the ones I have with them are good moments. I am kind among other things.

So what if I raise the bar?

Stay as long as you want to. Take what you need. There are no conditions here. No limits.

Just love and exploration of what is possible.

• https://www.amazon.com/dp/099907962X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510239258&sr=1-3