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Once upon a time I decided to wean myself off the fairy tale ideal.

It wasn’t upon a time, it was last week.

Universe is making it really difficult, but I am pushing through.

Standing back, burying myself in work, allowing the Zen tasks at hand to do what they do and having little aha moments.

I heard Angela by the Lumineers last year I think…
Danced to it on stage a lot. Like a lot a lot. Something about it made me able to slip away into my happy place, even though it made me sad.
It always kinda fucked me up.
Lyrically speaking.
I stopped listening to it as obsessively as I had been. New songs joined the ranks of the overplayed and nudged it out. I stopped dancing 2 months ago now, so it was just kinda fading away.

And then…
102.1 the Edge just started playing it as ‘new’.
Was not in a good place when I first heard it and I was continually mishearing the lyrics, “hope it lasts”.
When it’s actually Home at Last.

From the second time around, they raise you up just to cut you down, oh Angela it’s a long time comin’.

I think, all things considered, it is going to take me longer than I thought to quit the idea of a prince charming comin’ to get me.

That comforting, yet ever elusive idea of Home at last.

I know I don’t need rescuing, I got that covered. I can get myself out of 99% of the messes I get into and I can change my own tires thank you very much.

I opened the barn doors and let all of the proverbial stallions out. I stopped caring, they were going to do what they wanted anyways, always have. And none of it involves sticking around.

I said I was done, and was met with a rousing chorus of “no’s”.

So…
Apparently I’m not allowed to be celibate because according to my magic mama Liza, my aura gets too spikey and pokey.
Noted.

Another one of my lovelies (my loveliest lovely) said “You are a sex eater, you can’t…starve.”

Valid point. I have been known to starve myself both literally and figuratively. Remember February?

I was so hungry.

Somewhere along the way I got tangled up in that fairy tale idea again. Started making them more than they are, which, when I’m lucky, is really good food. Other times, just a snack and often just a slice of pizza when I am starving.

This is what she said…

So I recently told my therapist I was a sex and relationship addict and I was going to quit cold turkey.

I’ll never stop being addicted to touch and electricity and people and attention. But so fucking what? What I’ve /finally/ stopped doing is letting the people who give me those things control me or cage me or make me miserable.

Aye, this.

I have been allowing them to make me miserable.

Technically it is no one’s fault but my own.

I could have blocked them, changed my number, made an effort to forget them. Crawled under a new one to get over the old. Gone to therapy and talked them out, gone to yoga and sweated them out. Anything really.

My sex-eater metabolism has become sluggish. Too many months of fast food and no real nutrients.

I will starve myself for a bit, a cleanse is necessary. I will get closer to god, drop some dead weight and come back to the table clean.

I won’t just eat what is put in front of me, I will make better choices.

And I don’t mind this song anymore.
Especially this part.

Vacancy, hotel room, lost in me, lost in you
Angela, on my knees, I belong, I believe…
Home at last
Mmm

The Lumineers

I’m the actor James Franco dammit and I am in love with and common law married to a Japanese body pillow.
(30 Rock S4 E9, Klaus and Greta)

Right behind you buddy. I am looking to order one of those, I shall name her Kimiko.

I got into tentacle porn, it’s the next logical step really.

I jerked off 5 times yesterday. Each time taking a little longer and feeling a little better than the last. But I know my limit. 9 times for a few days and I am screwed.
I am writing this with the infamous bag of frozen peas between my legs, because I was waiting for the dryer and thought “why not?”

Two things happened. Porn Hub was down, so I was left on my own, but I managed quite nicely.

And the second? I’m really sore.

The last time I had sex was nothing to write about. Just two people lack-lusterly trying to figure each other out and get off after a long day. It worked, but just barely. He’d already turned me off with his behavior. But, I was used to getting laid at least once a day (if not thrice) and I was going through withdrawal.

Won’t be going back for seconds. From either of them, or any of them.

I think that is my new credo. If it sucks just leave. Don’t do my usual attempts to make it right. If it’s broke don’t waste time trying to fix it.

In a later episode of 30 Rock (and another strong contender for my top 3 favorites) Emmanuelle Goes to DinosaurLand S4 E21 Liz Lemon finds herself dateless for 3 weddings and decides to go alone and says “Maybe I’ll just lean into it and bring a cat in a baby stroller.”

And that my friends, is exactly where I am at.

I’m very aware that every day is technically the first day of the rest of your life.
I’ve decided that tomorrow when I wake up that will be the truest of truths.
It’s time to change a lot of things.
I’ve been gifted with this influx of newness.
I won’t squander it with behaving like I have in the past.
Nor allowing people to treat me the way I have before.
1 strike.

2 if I’m in a good mood.

I wrote that last year. Put it on Facebook to remind myself that I have both been there and done that. And for a year I kept doing it again. Until today.

Something in me snapped or unraveled. I am no longer tethered to the same things as I once was.

Yesterday Mercury stationed direct and I am calling a cosmic do-over

When the eclipse happened. The sky went 50% dimmer and my hope went with it.

Something happened on that darkening day, couldn’t tell you what. Our Sara of Lords and I tried to name it, but it can’t be, and she is the keeper of names and numbers.

A large portion of my tribe found themselves drained. I did not. I felt energized and renewed. Like the silky pink skin under a scab that has itched like crazy and refused to fall off. But with that newness comes vulnerability.

The world once was a booby trap filled minefield with portals to other times when I thought I might have a shot at being happy in a relationship.

Still is.

Every dandelion fluff is still a fucking wish to have the Lumberjack back even though my mind keeps explaining to my heart that there are no earthly words gestures or ways I could ever go back after what he did. My brain has graphs and flow charts and insurmountable amounts of evidence and logic. But that fucking heart of mine is an idiot. I will stop eventually.

Panda made a good point on the porch yesterday, all of this just needs time to heal and fade.

She is not wrong.

I need to figure out how to make my personal time machine move in a forward direction instead of meandering back into the past at every damned trigger there is.

It used to be VW bugs, we played punch buggies for 7 years and I couldn’t shake that memory.

PIC staying at the Lord Nelson hotel and the first touch of scotch on my tongue last night made me crave my own Lord Nelson, but he is gone into the abyss with the other monsters.

Nina Simone once said “You must get up from the table when love is no longer being served.”

She’s right. I will eat alone.

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day it’s a new life for me, and I’m feeling good.

Him: I heard you talking in your sleep last night

Her: What were you doing?

Him: I was watching you, you seemed sad

Her: Why didn’t you wake me up?

Him: I didn’t want to intervene, you seemed like you were suffering somewhere else and I didn’t think it was my place to drag you out of it, so I just let you be.

Her: So you just let me suffer?

This is the opening dialog from Florence and the Machine’s video for What Kind of Man

It’s also kinda the story of my life.

People see me drowning and just assume since I spend so much time in the water that I can swim just fine and save myself.

There is truth there, I can. Always have. Almost actually drowned twice as a child. Saved two others from drowning (as I was saved) before the age of 13.

I am tired of treading water.

Sometimes I know how to float and then something or someone comes along and knocks the wind out of me and I fail and flail. Coughing and sputtering trying to keep the water out of my lungs. Thinking how nice it might be to just succumb, let the water have me.

But then my fine-tuned, over-used survival instinct kicks in and I start kicking and I finally get to breathe.

I revisited a post I once wrote called Chivalry.

I don’t think I realized at the time, or maybe I did and I am just trying really hard not to reopen that wound.

I am such a sucker for the subtle things. The minuscule body movements of a bouncer that make me feel safe.

Offhand comments that weren’t meant to flatter but made my heart soar and then plummet just as quickly.

“You don’t know my girl here, she’s got this.”

That one was double-edged.

I’d just survived a death wobble caused by a wheel sheared off at the axle careening down a hill at 80km/hr and somehow managed to not die and get the evil death smoky dragon wagon jeep off the road with the remaining wheels 3 inches on the proper side of the white line with room for the tow truck. So ya, I got it, but every atom in my body wanted to break down and get scooped up into the strong arms of someone.

The same someone that was telling the second tow truck driver that I had this. So I had no choice.

What is it about me that makes everyone think I am fine?

In most aspects of my life I am, I see that and I’m grateful for it. I looked around this morning and realized my house looks like my dream bedroom from when I was a kid.

I write and there is no greater joy than this for me. When I turn a phrase just so.

My body and I have made peace.

I have the kind of friendships I coveted and craved as a child.

We are problems that want to be solved, we are children that need to be loved. P!nk

Her, Florence, Ke$ha and Miley have been on A rotation in this house. Women who changed.

P!nk goes on to ask what about all the broken happy ever afters?

Ya, what about them? I have too many.

I used to buy into the idea that one day everything would make sense.
I’m 43.
None of it makes sense.
Everyone seems to think I’ll be fine on my own.
Track record proves this true…I am technically still here.
But
I’m not actually fine.
I think I’m done.

I know all the adages, broken windows still let in light, blah blah blah.

But I’m having a hard time keeping the faith that someday someone will come along and do much of anything at all.

I think it’s all on me.

I am letting go of the fairy tale.

If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Shakespeare

Love turns its back on me over and over. So now I’m turning my back on it.

Sure I will still love, it’s what I do. I love my son, my girls, my life. Coffee, words, sunsets, the little noises my dog makes, dew on the grass, sun like diamonds on the water, floating, driving, singing off key.

Just never could find a balance between physical attraction and requited love. So I’ll stop looking.

I’ve had epic adventures, godlike lovers, and a wonderful life, if you cut out the part where I keep craving being loved in return and being let down every. damned. time.

Full stop.

No more monsters I can breathe again Ke$ha

The cat came back the very next day,
yes the cat came back,
we thought he was a goner
but the cat came back.

Well fuck.

T’was not a cat. That would have been alright, or really weird since I haven’t owned a cat since 2009.
Although I did have a cat that left me for 3 weeks and came home, all beat up, right about when I gave up thinking I’d ever see him again.

Why does my life have to be one giant metaphor?

Probably because I make it that way.

I see all the parallels, the history that repeats, hear every crackle and skip of the record as it spins round and round one more time.

Then one little thing will be different and I will think I have broken through some gateway to the other side, just to spin around once more.

A 35 date rule would be better/safer. Not realistic though.

My ex came back. Not the very next day.

To be totally honest, when I was younger, his less than majestic exit would have been one of those big turning points and events that I would have committed to memory. But I don’t know. Chalk it up to the fact that if I wanted to I could scroll back through messages and put dates to things. But I don’t wanna. My patience cup is empty or too full. I can’t remember how it works.
Over it.

It’s been less than 2 months and more than 2 weeks.

I didn’t want him back. He needed to hit rock bottom and I was the cushion he kept crashing into on his way down and or pulling me under with him. I forgot for a while, that my natural state of being is to float.

I was so relieved when I heard he had finally gone far, far away after a horrible bender, during which he lost his damned mind. Forgot who I was and hurled horrible accusations through my phone. I was scared he was going to show up at the house. And now, as he returns, so does the fear. That sharp, acidic flux in my stomach like a phantom punch. Fight or flight. There will be no freeze and my feet are planted here.

Irrational behavior begets rational fears on my part.

I have been through EXACTLY this before. Bad break ups, exes finding out where I moved to and showing up on my doorstep in the rain, wind, snow, ungodly early or late, never an announced afternoon pop by. Always finding me groggy and unawares. The end result always the same, making me change the locks one more time.

It isn’t a romantic gesture like in the movies.

Boys who don’t understand the word No.

He went away to get help. Then decided 2 weeks in that a 2 day bender was a better idea. Ended up passed out on a front lawn. Came to cussing and fighting and biting the hands the feed him. This is nothing new. He tossed gasoline at matches on the bridge he had to me.

Way to skid along rock bottom.

Now he is coming back here to nothing. Which was the name of the cat that came back by the way.

Aaaaaand I’m back to not sleeping the night through, listening for scratches at my back door. I know where the baseball bat is (Swing away Merrill, swing away*).
The fire poker is off the hook and lives once again by my bed. Phone must be charged and in arm’s reach at all times. I’m back on high alert.

In the interest of not being home, I went on a date last night. With a guy who has been gently asking me out for a year.

Told him about the 3 date pact I have with Panda. No boys knowing where we live until after the 3^rd date. He said I was smart not to let him pick me up before we had met.  I chuckled because of my current orange alert regarding the last one that made it past the 3 date rule.
He said he understood but I don’t think he knows how dangerous it is to be a girl.
How could they?
Once we are out the door we are fair game. Like gazelles on the plains, safer in groups but barely.
Safer at home but not when your past threatens to kick down the door to your present.

I have been through this before, I know the precautions. Spent yesterday fortifying the door with the longest screws I could find.

I know what I have to do.

I’d rather not have to do it.

(* M Night Shyamalan, Signs)