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I keep seeing those advertisements for those weighted blankets. Grey, heavy and that insanely soft microfiber made in a government lab somewhere by cloning kittens and angel skin. Sounds like bliss to the stressed and lonely.

I do have a body pillow I jokingly refer to as bae. It’s all I have right now, let me have my fucking pillow.

James Franco got to common law marry his Japanese body pillow Kimiko on 30 Rock, this is where I am headed people.

I am exaggerating for dramatic effect.

I have more than the pillow, I have ghosts and memories to keep me warm at night.

Ha…more jokes.

Ever been in a room when a ghost walks through? It’s just like the movie Sixth Sense, it is cold and a lil scary. Try sleeping like that every night. And living like that every fucking day. Haunted as fuck.

More truth to be told, I have slowly but surely began to navigate towards the middle of my bed.

Sacrilege! I’ve held that space for YEARS, decades, eons.

I don’t even know who I am anymore. Who is this girl who dares sleep in the middle of her own bed, wrapped around pretend pillow bae and a tiny dog all night long?

Me, she’s me.

I climbed the beanstalk a few weeks ago and slept at the house of the Giant. I am always allowed to sleepover but I use this privilege sparingly. Also, I love love love my own bed, even though he makes really good omelettes, good strong coffee and his sleepy morning face is the cutest. We slept bum to bum for most of the night, except the few times I rolled over and he took my hand and wrapped it around himself, and it was warm and good until it was hot and not so I rolled back over.

I love my mornings at home, I’m not alone, but Panda sleeps past me by an hour or two and knows not to talk to me too much too early. I love her for that and a million other things.

Where was I going with this?

Oh ya, people pillows, cushioning and bad sex.

I bet you thought I would never get there.

So, after Cruz and I broke up t’was Mercury retrograde. And I have learned the hard way, specifically the loss of Gelfling, that nothing good comes of tryna date during retrograde. Especially no one new.

But, I decided to remind myself. Wide eyed and with zero expectations.

Drove to London and had hot, high school-esque make out half sex session in a park with a guy we now refer to as the Biter. He left teeth marks for weeks on my inner thighs because he liked hearing me squeal.

He skipped leg day and was a little too domineering for my liking. Dominant, yes, bossy, no.

No great loss.

Then there was the one who I shall now refer to as Coach.

He had been gently asking me out for I dunno, like a year on Instagram. I said no for a few reasons. He was 22. He was associated with someone I had been with previously and then there was the work thing.

But he wore me down and took me out.

And it was a fabulous fucking date. There was tacos and late night walks and he picked me up and dropped me off like a gentleman. He was bratty as fuck in a way that pleased and teased me. He bought me ice cream. Like seriously…one of those dates you see in movies.

A week went by, he was busy with work, all good. But I had an itch that needed scratching, bad.

Remember, I was used to getting fucked at least twice a day for months, and 6 times on Sundays.

I knew I was not myself and I needed a Snickers.

So, despite our having to get up early and getting home late, over he came.

And we fucked, and it was bad.

Like real bad.

Like I haven’t had sex that bad since somebody’s parents couch in a basement after a party in high school.

And we knew it.

He laid in my bed after and I not so politely said ‘you gotta go, I gotta sleep.’

I didn’t even walk him to the door.

Took myself to the porch instead for a smoke trying to make sense of what happened.

It was only then that I realized I was covered in blood from my navel to my knees.

I knew I could not possibly have been that wet.

So I texted him. Told him to not pass go or pass out and get directly into the shower. We had a good laugh about it aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I never heard from him again.

Since we are telling all the truth, I was worried about running into him.

I had shame.

I haven’t had bad sex in 4 years and I knew some of the blame was on me. I was cranky, tired, out of practice and had been with one person for 8 months, I had gotten lazy and I knew it.

4 years of brilliant sex with these young uns, starting with Young Un the first and his incredibly talented tongue. Reaching out and touching the cosmos with Giant between my legs. Gelfling playfully putting out a smoke I had just lit because he wanted more. Wolfling and Drogo with their raw power and finesse. The Hulk with his playfulness that matched his size and a rhythm that matched mine perfectly. Even the epic liar that claimed to be a virgin proved he was most definitely not a virgin when we banged.

Then this.

I didn’t even know what to do with this.

So I kept quiet.

Until yesterday.

He posted something on Instagram and I said “hey”. Not expecting a response. Not expecting anything at all really.

And he said hi back.

And I said no hard feelings for anything at all because “good god damn that sex was bad”.

He said “I know right!?”

We agreed that it really sucked extra balls because we liked hanging out. Which led to an invite for Netflix and chill.

“Started from the bottom now we here.” Drake

And here was a good place to be. New house, new couch, new bed and no pressure.

We talked, snuggled, ordered pizza, and to fill the time we fucked.

So much better. We had nowhere to go but up. He praised my blowies and kept saying how sexy I am, and I’m inclined to believe him for the simple fact that he’d already told a hard truth, and he stayed blissfully hard.

Grey sweats.

The suit and tie of our generation.

Not exactly, but still…

I still remember my first pair, second hand and oversized. They had served some husky dude for what was probably 4 years before they lived in my closet until this last move, I finally had to let them go, but oh how I used and abused them. I bought them with the intent of wearing them to paint the house but the minute I pulled them on it was love.

Felt like being home, being held by a cloud. So warm, so roomy. I finally understood all those women in the grocery stores wearing something similar. Liberating to be drowning in soft grey jersey, all my curves hidden from view.

I became a collector. I have sexy sweats and ones that feel like home and hugs. A whole laundry basket full. It’s hard to pry me out of them now.

Wearing a pair right now actually, although not the big ones. And I have a boy coming over, he will invariably be in sweats too. Because we discussed this.

Seriously. There is something about a dude in a pair of grey sweats, clean of course, with a spotless white t-shirt.

I hit a new level of smitten with Lumberjack way back when he invited me over out of the blue. I was exhausted from a long day and although I REALLY wanted to see him, I did not feel like dolling myself up at all. Said I would come over but I was in comfy clothes, and wanted to stay that way. He messaged back he had just put his on.  “Just get over here dork”.
I melted and the visual matched the fantasy upon arrival.

I switched from my ‘bumming around the house’ pjs and showed up wearing my cutest grey sweats, the ones that hugged my butt just right and are oh so soft to the touch.

I spent many a happy moment on his comfy giant sized couch with the jersey of his sweats caressing my cheek, my head in his lap and his hand tucked in said pants, caressing my ass.

It can go the other way too.

In a little known movie called Extract, Jason Bateman knows he isn’t getting laid the second the drawstring is tied on his wife’s track pants. It becomes a running joke throughout the movie.

Personally? I like the ease of access with a drawstring instead of trying to wiggle out of a pair of skinny jeans or the seam marks left by leggings. The only thing better is a skirt or a dress, but that denotes going out, and I would rather stay home.

My first date with Young Un the first he told me a story wherein he had gotten catfished by a girl he knew from high school. She showed up carrying a 6 pack of Coors Lite and about 60 pounds more than she showed on Facebook. She was wearing what he described as “I gave up on life a while ago” sweat pants.

I know them well, I have owned them, mowed the lawn in them, bled all over them and yes…when life was too hard and I had pretty much given up, they became my sad girl uniform.

I always joked that one day when he showed up at my door I’d be wearing them. He didn’t mind, he knew what was underneath.

He never did see me in them. Although, he did publicly state that I was beautiful no matter what I was wearing, even my man jeans. I have a pair of worn in dude jeans too that I adore.

Only one man saw me in them, Moon Face. I pulled them on to walk him to the door one chilly morning. Asked him not to judge me when he gave me the once over. Instead he smirked in his maddening way and pulled them down half over my ass and snapped this picture of me, messy in the morning, holding onto him like he was a headboard and the Titanic had just sank.

I was as comfortable with him as I was in those pants. And for a time, he saved me.

Giant came over to pick up some bookshelves after we had split. On went the slightly too small sweats, waistband rolled down so just a little lace peeked out, messy bun, not there but there make up. I knew what I was doing, calculating my cuteness to be casual and accidental.

He mentioned it the other day, 14 months later. I admitted what I did and he just smiled and kissed me. He knows what a brat I am, we can smell our own.

And what of this one wandering over tonight?

Well, as I am writing the rest of this the morning after, it is safe to say that grey sweats were the way to go. Easy on and off. Just easy.

He had been in my bed before and it went badly.

But we stripped away the stress and pretense.

Zero expectations and a pair of grey sweats.

The universe listens you know. Good or bad. We decide our truth and the voice of God (who sounds like Patrick Stewart) says “Make it so.”

I know I did this to myself. Had perfection in front of me and said ‘there’s no such thing as perfect’.

Universe replied “okay baby” and poof, gone.

I have never been that girl who didn’t know what I had til it was gone. I have spent almost 5 years being present and aware.

Until I wasn’t.

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken, and many times confused
Yes and I’ve often felt forsaken, and certainly misused
Ah but I’m alright, I’m alright, I’m just weary thru my bones

Paul Simon
American Tune

Like right now.

I am in a permanent state of confusion. Reeling and dealing with a loss that has no explanation other than the words he said that last day, which were in complete and utter contradiction to the words that came out of his mouth every day before that.

You will be my wife without the ring.

Begat “I need to be alone”.

Something was changing in me. I saw the dynamic we had and the girl I was once, who didn’t want to get married ever again or feel that weight and I suddenly found it comforting, like one of those blankets for people who have anxiety. He was my thundershirt. My person.

One could argue that if he was indeed my person he would indeed be here instead of leaving me alone to wander, go on bad dates and crave sleep above all things.

I mentioned briefly that I went to a secret wedding, so secret it can never leave the private room in which it occurred. It was officiated by this tiny woman who was made entirely of good vibes and sass. Five foot nothing but larger than life. She believed so adamantly in the idea of marriage that I started to believe in it too.

I shouldn’t say that, it isn’t entirely true.

I have changed my mind but it was an amalgam of things that changed it, not just her, she was the last tumbler in the lock before it opened. That whole night was. Sitting with 2 beautiful couples, watching the love flow across the table. Watching two people agree in earnest and certainty that yes, they decided on each other and it was for good, for sure, for real.

But the key had been found before that.

When I saw in him things that reminded me of my father. When the dynamic we had was reminiscent of the love I had been raised around and witnessed my whole life. My mother and grandmother ruled their houses. Sometimes I saw it as too dominant, not that the men were weak but the women almost too strong, how could the men be happy that way? Then he came, and I saw that with his whole heart he wanted me to be as strong as I could possibly, in my way and this made him strong in his way.

He said words like forever and perfect and I balked. There are no such things right?

I denied them for years.

But those are the thoughts I have when my mind turns to him. Infinite, like the sky at night. Milky Way galaxies in his perfect freckles. The sound waves of his laugh like something cosmic and inexplicable, other worldly, the perfect circle of us holding each other and how complete I felt next to him.

I seem to have made an accidental covenant with the universe to settle. Settle for less. I thought I was doing the right thing, to lower expectations, put a lid on what was possible. And I fucked it up.

I would get married and promise forever to the right man. I just hadn’t met the right one before him.

The universe always knows what is best for me, and I promise from this day forward, not to question or squander the gifts I am given.

At least now I have an idea of what is possible. Perfect circles and contentment.

With my body I thee worship.

Forever and ever, amen.

Its Scorpio season.

I saw a fairy ring around the moon, the sexy kind, not the one that says a storm’s comin’.

Although, I suppose they are one in the same. Bring on the wet and the boom.

I love the wet and the boom, or I did. I am not myself it seems.

Scorpions shed their exoskeletons. I wonder how pinched, agonizing and constrictive those last few moments are, before they become new again.

Its Scorpio season and I am wasting it.

Refusing to go outside. To look at any man or entertain them.

I want only one and he isn’t here.

I got dressed up, and I left the house.
On my way home in the dark after witnessing something sacred, I heard a new song.
It’s been forever since I let anything new in.

But this.

I scribbled lyrics on the back of my hand on a dark highway in the rain and disappeared into the melody.

Can you be slow for a little while?
Widow your soul for another mile?
I’m just the same as when you saw me back then
And we’re bound to be reconciled
And we’re bound to be reconciled
Too long swinging in the night
All will wash over you in a night so unending
Not long now to the rising
Not long now to the rising

Fleet Foxes, a song called “Kept Woman”.

Universe sending me messages in tattooed wings peeking out of dresses, numbers and new songs on a long dark road.

I kept speeding up and over reaching my headlights, a lot of curves in that stretch.
It’s been a long time since I drove it at night, and that was before Hamilton was home.

I should keep going right?

Universe says so…

But, there is always a “but”…

What is the universe if it isn’t him messaging me back, or even acknowledging my existence?

To the point where I don’t even want to be.

I can’t keep writing one side of a love story that never happened. I am bleeding out.

It’s killing me and I need my power back. I let it out in echoes and tendrils trying to wrap around him, but I am blocked and I am tired.

I went to a wedding, unconventional, something I didn’t even know happened outside of books.

A secret wedding. Officiated by a tiny woman with the same name as my mother. Who said she thought she knew me and my first response was, I wish you did. She was soothing.

I watched the couple (and others) interacting, so full of joy to be with each other. The gentle back and forth and teasing, the comfort.

I want that. I decided this.

Weddings never did anything for me, but that love, that conviction to stay together and try.

Star crossed love. A plague on both our houses.

Romeo and Juliet is often labeled a love story, it isn’t. It’s a tragedy and selfishness and miscommunication with a body count.

Together twice and then death, like literal death. That isn’t okay.

I should know, it just happened to me. And if he is poisoned underground, I have no way of knowing.

One miscommunication and I was locked out of the mausoleum.

Maybe people romanticise this story because they never saw each other get old, or dirty, or sick or a mess, or how they behaved when the internet went down.

Maybe that’s my problem too. Why I can’t break out of this.

I saw glimmers and glimpses of darkness in him. His eyes for one. I mentioned I had never dated anyone with dark eyes before, he said I was Wiccan and I ought to know what it meant, dark eyes, dark past. I just thought they looked like the night sky. Felt like night swimming, naked and unafraid in the heat of August. Not unafraid, but scared in that exhilarating way, like rollercoasters and unknowns.

The night before he left Panda said I was jinxing my own love karma. I don’t think she’s wrong. I was scared.
I was bargaining.
I’ve said many times out loud that I know I don’t get to keep the giant but I’m grateful for this time with him.
Trying to find the silver lining in this pit I’m in.
And I don’t want to seem like a brat to the universe.

But NO.

This isn’t what I wanted.
I’d put him to ground many times over.
Mourned him thoroughly.
I didn’t need to go back.
I knew he loved me and I’d found absolute contentment in his absence.

I did this and I don’t know how to undo it. I’m scared to use magic because I don’t want to hurt anyone.

But everything I held back the whole time was out of fear. Fear of spooking him. Fear of being vulnerable. Fear of actually finding the one after wandering so long. All I know is nomadic. I cry home all the time but when I had it I dropped it.

This full moon coming is in Taurus. He’s a Taurus.

I have to wash the green blanket and let him go.

All will wash over you in a night so unending
Not long now to the rising

I am a child of the universe and I am  Bound to be reconciled.

For a few weeks now I have walked to the corner store to fetch the milk for my coffee. Been going there for over 2 years now. They always rotate the stock.

But for the last 3 weeks it’s been the same 3 cartons of 3% all dated October 24^th. Yesterday.

2 days ago I was waiting for a tow, for the second time, 10 feet away from the time I was waiting for a tow 2 days before that and Hotel California started playing on the radio.

It is déjà vu all over again.

I have been here, maybe 10 feet away.

My whole life is feeling like this. Down to the brand new cold sore and my crippling period.

Seriously, I was just here 2 months ago. This isn’t supposed to happen like this. My body betraying me and not my own. Just trying to get through.

He never saw me shiny.

I showed up to our first date and apologized about an hour in. Said I would normally get my hair and nails did but life was so hectic I figured it was better to just show up, considering he drove 5 hours to see me for 5 hours. I was right and he forgave me. Looked at me like I carried the grail in my hips.

After he left, I woke up feeling like I was getting sawed in half and got the worst cold sore I have had since 2005. I had barely recovered from either when he came back. And yet he looked at me like I was spun from gold.

I miss him.

Frieda Khalo said two things

1. take a lover who looks at you like you are magic

   and if he leaves you…

2.  change the locks even on the house he’s never visited.

He did look at me like I was magic and I cannot lock him out of anything.

Everything is just spinning in circles, like the tight part of the spiral of time. I know it goes in and out, and loops back around, fresh perspectives on old occurrences.

There is so much new in my world. Too much almost. I can’t figure out which way to sleep in my old/new bed. I finally got my bed back. Had to trade with Panda for just over a year, her room was too small for her big bed, so my room became all bed…her bed.

The Last One slept in her bed with me.

I asked for a fresh start. I painted my room. I pouted and got my bed back.

So I am not even sleeping on the same mattress as I did with him. Maybe that’s it. Maybe my body misses whatever molecules he left behind.

I still can’t wash the green blanket. It guards the end of my bed now. Keeps my toes warm and the monsters at bay.

Margaret Atwood said its strange how we decorate pain.

It is.

I tend to water it down, color it with pale hues, translucent like it was never really there, just a hint of itself. I don’t pretend it didn’t happen, I just dilute it and take all responsibility for the butterflies I thought I felt, like I made it all up in my silly little head and heart and he never really said those things. He was imaginary and my imagination is over active at the best of times.
Hush now, its fine babygirl.
We can do what Jane says and try again tomorrow.
We’ll just be realists this time instead of water colored wisps of shapes and ideas.

Then the inevitable happens and I open that message thread or that box.

And its déjà vu all over again.

And again.

And again.

I see the words he said and I cannot believe he left.

But here he isn’t.

I open old posts on here and see pieces of the girl I was. I study her to see how she got through. But it is different this time. My body is recovering, my heart is not.

Everything and everyone says it’s time to move forward. Go out into the world and find new things. But I want to stay in my tight spiral. I don’t want to leave.

I finally got everything put away enough in the house that I feel I can rest a bit. Everything is in its right place. The closets need some love and that table has got to go. But I can move without tripping over boxes.

The wings finally made it into the house, on the mantle where I can see them. More bed guardians.

I finally dyed and cut my hair, haven’t since before I met him, it was on my list of things to do before he came back and when he disappeared I had no desire to look any kind of way for anyone. I wanted to be mousy and unappealing.

Last night, this house finally felt like home and I cried because he can’t see it.

Maybe at some point I will have cried enough to wash all of this away.

I have to force myself to get up, get dressed, go out into the world, leave this nest and start living again.

But not today. Maybe I’ll do what Jane says and try again tomorrow.

Someone posted this to Facebook.

I started typing, compulsively, without thinking just letting my sadness pour out of my fingers into my phone.

The 15% battery warning flashed and my screen went dim.

Me too phone, me too.

But I kept going.

It sounded a lot like “I want”

Like “I know where the cupboards are, I know where the car is parked, I know he isn’t you” ~Tori Amos

Like this…

I miss you.
Like the French say “you are missing from me”.
Like I am emptied and hollowed out.
I don’t know if you took something from me, or if when you were here, I finally felt fulfilled and I am readjusting to my half empty/half full state but I don’t know how, even though I must have lived this way for years before you got here.
It’s harder now that I know what it is to be sated in all ways.
Like I still can’t think straight.
I’m Eeyore and there’s a rain cloud over me always.
I miss you like sunshine.
I’m trying to move, to live and breathe but it’s like work now.
Everything is grey and heavy.
I want to hear you laugh that way again when I walked up behind you and touched you.
I want to map your freckles. In the way astronomers do, find the patterns, name them with the names of the old ones and make up myths about them, tell you the stories of your past lives and why your eyes are black moons.
I want to spend an eternity trying to figure out why all of me wants you all of you so much.
I want to pull your atoms apart and see how they match mine. Like puzzle pieces from an old exploded star, I want to put the star back together and have it shine somewhere only we can see because we know where to look.
I want you to call me wifey again. I don’t care about the ring, the diamond can stay coal and I will love it just the same because you gave it to me and it carries with it the idea of warmth and wanting.
I want to fix your couch and make you dinner. Like I promised I would. That is what this is, open ended promises with no way to fill them, no way to fill the minutes in my day, but I am trying.
I want you to see this room and home I made for us.
I want you to come home.
Everything made sense when you were here and now nothing does.
Trees whisper your name. I was supposed to be your flower girl and now I don’t know what I am, so I keep their names safe in my mouth and plant bulbs called hope and allium and narcissus and amaryllis.

I keep sending echoes out “please be okay” over and over again.
Maybe this isn’t love, when I love I can find contentment knowing whomever I love is alright wherever they are.
But you, you I want here, with me. On the other end of the phone telling me about your day. With you, in your house playing housewife for real, knowing you are coming home, floating on the butterflies in my belly. With you in this room I made for us. I thought of you with everything I kept and everything I gave away.

I think of you always.
There is this one remaining red thread tying me to you.
It’s too fragile to pull.
So I stay still.

I’ve been left before. Worse than how you left but…
This is killing me.
I don’t want anyone else even looking at me.
I’m still yours and you’re gone.
I don’t understand how a god or a universe could finally let us find each other and then let you walk away.
Say something…
Anything.
Please.

Even if you tell me to fuck off, stop or go away.
Anything would be better than this silence I am forced to fill with my own thoughts and the echoes of the things you said and the things I didn’t get a chance to say.

Like I love you.

I can still feel you there, are we tangled in time somewhere. Armistice

I woke up early in the dark.

The last traces of yet another hurricane bringing the sky down in big fat drops or warm, wet rain. The morning quiet punctuated with far off rumbles of thunder.

Everything is closed. I was home alone and the dog refused to come out from under the blankets. I wish I could be her and have that choice. Just stay in bed until this metamorphosis is complete. It must feel like chaos to the caterpillar. All of this change, locked in a cage you made yourself, turning to liquid, hoping the casing holds lest you spill out before you are done becoming.

I keep thinking I am breaking through, any minute now emerging with wet wings, still fragile and vulnerable but closer than being goo.

I found my wings yesterday. Real ones, made of metal and rusted from being left outside.

I am trying not to read too much into it, but have we met?

I pulled into a parking lot to turn around, on an errand I didn’t have to run, and there they were.

I realized after I had picked them up and put them securely in my backseat that I was behind the hotel he stayed at, the place we had our first kiss.

It’s not a metaphor, I did really find a bit of metal that looks like wings. General consensus is that it was a fireplace hearth. Removed from god knows where and just left in the parking spot I had to turn around in.

Now the only question is, do I clean them up or leave them as is. Rusted and a little beat up but heavy and beautiful.

And for a minute, before I peeled myself out of my dirty, thrashed in sheets, I could feel him in there with me.

He is supposed to be here. And in some version of reality, he is.

We didn’t get a chance to sleep together and touch each other in the night. The one night he stayed, it was too hot for autumn. The temperature in my room soaring into the 90’s. So we left space between.

I woke up in the night and put my hand on his chest and it came away burning.

But I kept doing it anyways. Making sure he existed in the night. He reminded me in the morning, of how real he was and I let him in. Pulled him closer until we were as close as two people can be.

That was real.

I know it.

I have text messages and a random dirty sock to remind me that yes, that happened and yes he was here in this house, with me.

But I have moved houses. Called all my power back from the old walls and windows and doorways. Left those keys on the kitchen counter and I know they are gutting the place. I am gutted. Flesh falling off my bones because I keep forgetting to eat, to breathe, how to tie my shoes.

How will he find his way to a house he’s never been too?

If you are sad you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are content you are living in the present.

I do not like this present. This is not the reality I choose.

The future is uncertain and full of the holes of what we were supposed to do.

The past is full of clues, and repeating patterns, lessons on loving prophets and him.

8. When you find him in his room, thrashing the sheets, pressing his palms into the wall, howling. His face a river. Close the door. This is how he makes wine. Leave him in his sorcery. 

Lessons on Loving a Prophet-Jeanann Verlee

The door is as closed as I can get it but my fingers are welded to the jamb, they won’t let go. Iron grip or whatever those wings are made of, something heavy and unyielding.

She goes on to say be ready with tourniquet and prayer. I have been praying, kneeling, hoping.

All that is left is one fragile red, silk strand, holding.

The last line of that poem is YOU WERE MADE FOR THIS.

I am.

Karma markers and amalgams. Pieces of what came before, the good parts, the kind you put in a scrapbook and keep, all presented themselves in him.

Old songs that struck my soul like a chord, all making sense now. Things I have read and quoted and seen. All lining up like stars taking me home. I drifted so long. I am impatient for shore and solid ground.

The wings will be the last thing to come into this house.

Seems like the right thing to do.

Metamorphosis complete.

After we move I’m gonna…

(The list keeps growing)

Get my nails did

Make some asleepin’ playlists

Apply the edits to the book and work on the separated Siamese twin.

Get my hair cut

Take my fucking life back.

I once wrote to dear Brother Matt and also Habibi that ‘the moment we think we are cursed, we are.’ But we will get to that in a minute.

The secret is all inside your head she said to me, the answer is easy if you take it logically.
 (Paul Simon)

I had to go digging through all of my things, I had no choice, we’re moving.

So much useless junk I have been holding onto, in white file boxes named “novella” and “mementos”. The scraps of paper, scraps of a paper girl I used to be. I remember thinking it was soooooo important to remember, it ain’t. I saw my stupidity and error laid out on the living room carpet in black and white and other colors. I got 3 boxes down to a small accordion folder and set a few things on fire. Releasing that energy back into the world where it can be recycled into whatever I choose.

I know what hurts, I don’t need paper cut reminders.

I kept a few things, from public school, high school, there is a section for the 90’s. The tag from the first horse I rescued at auction, the memoriam cards and leaflets from the dead. Faded construction paper finger paintings from my son and other people’s children. Those I will keep.

I had things the poet sent me tucked away somewhere, bound in red thread and silk. I didn’t want them and I was going to give them away. But I couldn’t find them anywhere, not in time for the deadline to send them away anyways.

I have been time traveling backwards. I spoke to 10 year old me and rescued her from the basement with the brown speckled carpet. I made peace with the girl who stayed at the farm 6 years past what she should have. But there are no ‘shoulds’ here. We did what we did and it’s alright now.

Except that one thing.

When I looked back along my timeline, to this version of me right now. I am mostly large and in charge. I am better off financially than I have ever been, I wrote a book for fuck sakes, yay me. My home is beautiful, my friendships unparalleled, my dog adorable, my son a mystic…farm girl me would be so pleased, and I am.

But there is that one thing…

The poet came into my life at the beginning of my transformation. Dripping honey from his tongue over the phone whilst I was holed up in the chalet in the woods. Figuring out what it meant to be alone with myself, to hold my lovers and myself to higher standards. When I was finding my voice and understanding what it meant to be me.

He came and went, and then came and went again. Other lovers that seemed like they might stay just up and left in the night without warrant or warning. Just ouf and poof.

And this whole time, I blamed myself, I am the common denominator am I not?

In a conversation with the Giant the other day he was forthcoming about his first impressions of me whilst we were brainstorming about why men run from me.
The stripper thing came up and I said
“I know that makes me disposable.”
He said
“No. It makes you intimidating because you can walk into a room and do/get whatever you please. Naked and unafraid no less. It’s terrifying.”
“Then we get to know you and you’re so much more. It’s even more terrifying.”
I’m glad he stuck around and we muddled through.
I don’t see myself as anything but a squishy dorky ball of love.
I need eyes to borrow sometimes.

I thought that was it, the stripper thing and I’ve made plans and provisions to cut that out of my life. I am truly over it.

4 years ago Poet said to me that I was everything he ever wanted and everything he’d ever run from.

And in that moment I was cursed.

I liked that idea.

It made me something.

But it no longer serves me.

Just like the scraps of paper, I am setting that idea on fire and letting it go.

I am nothing to run from, and everything to run towards.

I have no desire to be everything to one person.

I am my own.

I am not dangerous, I am simply kind.

Let the curse be broken.

Its 5 am

And I am up.

I wake up almost every day at 5 and I force myself back to sleep. Today I cannot. Too many thoughts. Too much to do.

And him.

We used to text each other in the wee hours. Both up around 5:30. I was writing before work, he was hitting the gym before school.

Sometimes, twice if I am being honest, I can feel him peeking at me in the morning dark. Once in a dream and once awake. I saw him looking at me.

I am not sure if I can articulate the elation I feel when I see an email notification or hear the bing of a text. Nor can I summarize my disappointment when it’s just another garbage email, or roomie asking me where something is.

It’s been 14 days since he left. Abruptly.

I was given permission to go crazy for the first 72 hours, and I did. I thought about trying to find him, driving 5 hours in the middle of the night, getting up with the sun to try to find the orange house with the red door in a town I haven’t been in since I was 8 years old. I recalled, with great clarity that he was 5 minutes from here, 25 minutes from there and I triangulated which streets I had to drive along to find him. I found a motel near him called the Time Travelers Inn or something like that, took it as a sign from god.

I took everything as a sign from god. Lyrics here, billboards there, old memes I had left myself in my memories on Facebook.  Even the story of how I came to be. My parents met, my dad went to war, my mom waited. My dad came back, went a little crazy and ran off to California. My mom waited some more then drove across the country to bring him home. This is my legacy and reason for being.

I have no knowledge of any conversations that transpired between my parents after my dad returned stateside. Maybe I am just not as tenacious at 43 as my mother was at 23.

I am the sum of my wounds that won’t heal. I am used to being abandoned.

I wrote an article about what happened, I sent it to him, I regretted it.

Unfinished Symphonies. That is what this feels like to me…like we hadn’t even gotten to the good part yet and then it was gone. Looking like a limb torn off*.

I cried in an Ikea.

And I cried some more.

After the 3 days had passed I sent another email. It went unanswered.

None of this is fair, and yet it’s happening.

I don’t know why. Except that we were new and he went dark.

He had no idea what I am capable of handling and he chose to leave. Before I got to show him my favorite things, poems, pictures, songs…all the things that reminded me of him before we even met. I realized, before he left that I had been looking for him for a really long time.

I never told him that

Had this happened a month from now I could’ve known what to do. We could’ve had a plan. Or, I suppose if we are making wishes, I could’ve freed myself earlier and saved him some hurt as well. He’d been scratching at my door for almost a year before I let him in. I regret that too. I didn’t know.

I know this has happened before. This is my wheelhouse. I loved a man who was incurably sad and angry. I still do, he is numbered among my best friends. He lets me be me and supports me without question or agenda. I used to reach out very gently and tentatively. Checking on him once a week or so. Sometimes I would drive an hour to see him, shaking the whole way. Bring him candy, I called it reverse trick or treating. One time there was a mudslide and the 60 minute drive took 4 hours and I had to pee in a coffee cup with the car in park on the off ramp. But I made it, he laughed at my stubbornness and we had wings.

I’m speaking of the Hulk. I called him that with reason. He would rage and turn green, then shrink back to giant sized and have a world of regret on his shoulders. I couldn’t carry it for long, he wouldn’t let me. But I tried.

Everything about him belonged out west and not with me.

I accept this.

It helped that he didn’t shut me out. Sometimes I would drive the hour and he couldn’t muster anything but a hug. And I would hand him his candy and drive an hour back.

I ran to him for answers when this one left. Did he think me strange, crazy, pushy or rude?

He laughed and said no, I made him feel loved.

I would drive an hour or 5 to give someone that feeling, even if it just meant standing on the doorstep for 5 minutes and driving home. It’s who I am.

This new one made me feel cherished, protected, cared for and home.

I wish I could have given that back to him.

I just want to be let back in the house.

(Band of Horses*)

I went digging around in my dark place.

I had to.

If I remember it exists it makes the bright brighter and the happy happier.

If I say it out loud it makes other people feel less alone.

If you can name a thing, describe it with language and science it takes some of its power away.

I call all of my power back to me. Now.

Once upon a time I thought I had to be perfect to be loved.

The problem with that is everyone’s idea of perfect is different and in actuality, perfection doesn’t exist.

It’s our flaws and cracks that make us beautiful like stain glassed windows.

One of my many therapists told me that my psyche is a house. Filled with rooms that are, in turn filled with things I love. Ridicule from others, especially at a young age, made me board up the doorways to most of the rooms in my house until I was only a foyer with a wide open door, letting anyone and everyone in even if they were only there to cause harm and havoc.

I had locked up and blocked so much of who I was, I became an easy place for vagrants to sleep and gather warmth. I had no substance, I was malleable and too open to everything. They didn’t want to build or repair. Just stay and piss in the corners until they found somewhere else to sleep.

I still carry deep shame about being that way. I am trying to air it out.

But the house stood.

Despite every earthquake I invited in, every hurricane that threatened to pull it all down and left everything a soggy mess, every tornado that picked me up and dropped me somewhere strange. I stood.

After the therapist explained this to me I tentatively started walking up the stairs. I took a crowbar and opened the rooms. Some of the things contained within were silly bits of childhood, others rotten and useless, piles and piles of other people’s carelessly packed baggage they had left behind. And some of these things were precious beyond description. The ideas of home and hope and truth and love were all written on the walls.

I still don’t lock the door, but I do shut it from time to time, when I need quiet and time alone.

I started inviting people in, on purpose, with purpose. And much to my delight, they liked me. They called me sanctuary, and I am exactly that. 

They celebrated my weird collection of curios and curiosities. Show and tell at Sarah’s house.

I started writing again. First on my own walls, then finally in signs on the yard that passersby could see and they smiled, and said me too and thank you. And the sun was always shining.

I almost developed some amnesia about the dark places. Like in the pain of giving birth to my light self my dark self was forgotten completely.

And when I tripped and fell in one the other day, I forgot how to get out.

I said…

I hid my scars. And in them are written the answers.

There are still mines and shrapnel from the war I fought inside myself, blood and bones of who I was. They hide under the flowers and sunshine of where I live now.

And I trip and I fall and I explode.

Not remembering is a dangerous game. I was unprepared.

Someone who could have benefitted from seeing my dark place was denied, and I can’t reach him.

And even then.

Isn’t that scared and tattered girl a valid part of who I am? Doesn’t she deserve recognition for making it through?

I have to reconcile. I have to welcome her and love her.

Because she is part of who I am.

Skinned knees from crawling, raccoon eyes from crying, I love her anyways.

I found her. Behind a door I had never unlocked. Alone, scared, dirty and feral.

Dressed in tattered remnants of her favorite things, before someone told her trying to wear all of the colors in the rainbow was ridiculous and she decided to cover herself in grey to avoid ridicule. A hand-me-down man’s sweater she wore because it looked like sunshine and felt like a casual embrace. All of her clothes hand-me-downs because she loved the feeling of being touched by something someone loved once, still do.

Her hair not long or short because she could never grow it without becoming impatient.

10 years old was old enough to stay home on the weekends.
So she did. Watched spaghetti westerns and fell in love with stockings and petticoats.
But she was lonely being left alone.
Her vocal chords atrophied with no one to talk to.
If she could speak, she would try to tell you it was her choice, and it was in a way. “I didn’t want to go anyway”. But she still wants to be included, feel like she belongs somewhere that isn’t her bedroom and her her forehead will crease into what has become the only deep line I still carry, the mark of discontent between my brows. She feels sick when she lies, but she does it so often it’s almost a first language.

Lies like “I’m fine” when she’s screaming inside.

“It’s okay” when she needs to be held. Someone told her she touched too much and she believed them. She fights to keep her hands at her side. They make fists and push people away.

Then the bad ones. Pretending the kids at school actually like her and let her play without consequence and judgement. They don’t. Her friendships are imaginary and precarious. One wrong word or move and she will sit alone for days. So she stays quiet and still.

She made a fortress in her closet. A reading lamp and a stack of books she has memorized. Stories of other little girls and she prays to any kind of god, that she will someday get a happy ending too. Someday never came.

She is forced to take dance classes and has all of the stage fright and none of the grace. The other girls mock her and giggle into their fists. She doesn’t belong there either. She belongs outside.

All skinned elbows and knees from climbing trees and playing in ponds. She can’t keep her clothes clean, she bites her nails and they are not for polish. She isn’t polished at all. She is a wilding trapped in a world of shoes and should, and manners and homework and chores.

She has started to notice boys and has no idea why they don’t like her, or what that even means to be liked.
She wants them but doesn’t know what to do with them and it doesn’t matter. She is unwanted. They tell her she is strange, she talks to much, laughs too loud. She is too intense for them, but 10 year olds don’t use words like intense, or outcast they just ignore her.

Always too much for everyone but ends up feeling not enough.

She wants to be held, touched, kissed, loved and listened to without judgment.

But that mouth of hers, full of big words and ideas no one understands.

Her funny mouth.

Someone told her that her smile was crooked so she covered it with her hands and then stopped smiling altogether.

Someone told her to stop singing, so she did, but didn’t she get picked to be in the school play and had a solo? The negative outweighs the positive, so I just started singing in the car 6 years ago, always alone.

And I think, therein lies the secret.

I am standing here, in this dirty basement named depression, staring at this incredibly strong and brave girl, who lived through all of this and has been holding me up the whole time. She is my foundation.

I will bring her up into the light, let her wander the rooms. She can shower and grow her hair, I will braid it for her with her head in my lap. I will let her wear whatever rainbows please her and feels good.

I will tell her stories of how we danced, naked on stage and people applauded, not because they had to, but because we were good.

I will show her all of the music and watch her eyes light up at new songs.

She can sit with me in the car and we can sing them off key.

I will teach her how to drive so she can be free to go anywhere she pleases.

I will show her the places where we swim and we still climb trees.

She can howl at the moon whenever she likes and the wolves will come when we call.

I will show her forgiveness for how we had to survive.

She’ll meet our friends that truly love us even when we are dirty or sad or weird.

And I can tell her about the time I asked a boy if we could touch him and he said ‘yes please’.