Archives

Rob Brezsny put forth a challenge this time last year.

I invite you to write down brief descriptions of the five most pleasurable moments you’ve ever experienced in your life. Let your imagination dwell lovingly on these memories for, say, 20 minutes. And keep them close to the surface of your awareness in the next three days.

If you ever catch yourself slipping into a negative train of thought, interrupt it immediately and compel yourself to fantasize about those Big Five Ecstatic Moments.

I didn’t do it when called upon. I was rather busy at the time experiencing an ecstatic moment.

One that made it into my top 5.

42 years on the planet and 3/5 have happened this last calendar year. I take this as a good omen.

I am currently in therapy, digging in the dirt to root out trauma. I cannot think of a better time to remember and reiterate happiness.

Without further ado. In no chronological order, here they be.

Venice Beach with my sister from another mister. I had just embarked on my journey of being single and exploring what it meant to be alone.

I was 100 days in and already over the moon.

We walked the boardwalk, I filled my eyes with all of it.

We went in the ocean. Diving under waves, coming up and laughing. Sometimes getting knocked down and under. I came up sputtering and saw a grey fin in front of me. 7 feet away. I stood as still as the ocean allowed.

It was a dolphin.

A dozen more swam right in front of us.

Bliss is being chest deep in the ocean with your best friend as a pod of wild dolphins swims by close enough to reach to and touch them.

I picked my son up from daycare one August evening right around dinner time. He was 5 . It was a total fluke day. I had nowhere to be but with him. The weather had been warm for days, all the pools and splash pads were staying open late. I had money in my pocket, which was unheard of, and I treated us to puposas from our favorite South American take-out place.

We were hot and sticky from waiting for our food in the cramped little cantina. A kiddie wading pool sounded like heaven, so we detoured through a park. Our favorite.

There was a random drum circle set up at the bottom of the hill. It sounded like a giant echoing heartbeat on our way down. My son started dancing in my arms and I joined him.

We must have stayed for an hour. Just dancing without stopping. Me and all of these women in big flowing skirts dancing with our babies. Everyone smiling and laughing.

I heard a Ted Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert years later talking about daemons and muses. She spoke of those ecstatic moments where we are not in control of our bodies, the sensation that occurs when we become a vessel for something bigger as it translates to writing. She mentioned dancers feeling that way and I had an A-HA moment. I knew exactly what she meant. Because for an hour, I left my body and experienced pure joy. I felt like God’s favorite marionette.

Once upon a difficult time in my life, a man I hold dear saw I was struggling and drove me 2 hours out of the city to a Scandinavian spa. He saw I needed sanctuary and took me to his. Out in the woods far, far away from everything. 6 pools of varying temperatures, 3 hot, 3 cold. A dry sauna and a steam room. A hammock hidden in the trees, a fire pit and a quiet room for resting in between hot and cold dips.

Laying on a cedar bench, in a room set to the perfect temperature, our bodies making a perfect T, touching but barely, I just laid there. His hand on my shoulder and mine covering his. And for 20 glorious minutes I realized and relaxed into the idea that in those moments, I needed nothing. I was not hot nor cold. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty. I wasn’t tired and I wasn’t really awake. I was just perfectly still and content. Happy in my body. I am sure I have had other moments like this, but I realized it in time to really savor it.

On the way home we had the most amazing conversation, we spoke of entangled particles, quantum physics, space and time the whole way.

We crawled in bed later, with full bellies and I fell asleep smiling. I carried that sense of peace and tranquility for a while, and I can still get back there from time to time if I need to. And he still shows up when I need him to.

The next one is bittersweet. It will have been a year ago today.

In an inspired moment of uncharacteristic bravery I reached out to a virtual stranger over the internet. It was as simple as asking him how he was doing. He replied not so good. I asked if there was anything I could do.

I offered my company and he took it.

12 hours later I had watched the sun come up, smoked the better part of a pack of cigarettes and my entire life had changed.

I finally knew what it felt like to open up completely to another human being. To be my absolute messy, dirty self. To trust and be trusted completely.

He loved me. All of me.

I felt like God’s favorite marionette again, but without strings.

I still love him for that. That opening me up and making it okay to do what I do, feel what I feel, want what I want.

I realized that night that symbiosis can exist between 2 people and how good it feels to find your counterpart in another living, breathing being.

Then the Giant.

This one isn’t easy either.

Funny how a girl who writes about sex and has it do frequently is asked to pick 5 moments out my life none of them are about the act of sex. Not exactly.

The moments I had with him blend sometimes and I let them. But if I had to pick one, it would have been the first night.

Lying in bed with him, after. Skin touching and I could feel/see these tendrils of purple lightning like static sparks in slow motion at every contact point, and there were many. On my side, pressed up against him. He rolled away from me and put on Postcard from 1952 and we just laid there for 7 minutes and 7 seconds. Halfway through he turned his head and kissed my forehead and I remember thinking “this is about the happiest I have ever been, in this moment, right here right now.” That this was love.

So there they are.

Honorable mentions go to…

1995 The time a mountain lion licked my face after I rubbed her belly.

1992 Seeing Pearl Jam live for the first time.

2013 Riding the Hulk at Universal Orlando, 9 times. And the whole trip where myself and my son just danced around theme parks for no reason.

2015-16 The Poet calling me his sexual soulmate, or talking to me at all really.

2014 Young Un standing in my foyer smiling at me like he won the lottery.

2015 Sitting in a tree with Gelfing watching fireworks, talking and smiling, and that minute where we stopped and stared at the sky because it was on fire.

2016 Sitting on a stripper’s lap, smoking, overlooking Bourbon Street, talking about the universe, feeling safe and warm.

1984 Laying on a beach when I was 8 with my extended family at 2am, awake because there were Northern Lights over Lake Superior.

1994 Skinny dipping with the same kids I laid on that beach with 10 years later just in Lake Huron this time.

1995 Falling asleep in Dorian’s bed after a long-assed day, that bed felt like it was made from clouds.

1992-4 Falling asleep everywhere with Golden Boy. He made the floor feel like it was made out of clouds.

2015 The Hulk hugging me right after he told me his sister was getting better. Or any time he hugged me really.

1986 Waking up at my Aunt’s cottage. Wrapping myself in my favorite quilt with the pink roses and sitting on the swing alone, watching the sunrise.

2007 Driving to the farm at 5am and not seeing on soul on the road for an hour only deer and coyotes coming out of golden mist.

1974-1989 My Nana’s porch.

2016 Giant’s kitchen, dancing and glancing at each other while John Mayer sang. Giant’s kitchen period.

2009 Slow dancing with Sean in an Italian restaurant at 3am.

2016 The first time I heard Jason’s voice.

1995 The first time my son laughed that perfect baby laugh.

The first time I heard Ocean by John Butler Trio and Ode to Joy. The 1000^th time I heard In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel.

2009 Listening to Let Down by Radiohead right after my jeep had been tricked out to sound like the Budokan.

1998 The first time I slept with Jesus.

2014 Smoked pecan pie in Sunday’s truck eating it with our hands like little kids.

1976 Running through the field by my first house with my dog watching the grasshoppers fly up around me.

1976-1980 Red winged blackbirds coming just before the spring.

1978 My dad picking me up and running with me while we got chased by a thunderstorm.

All the thunderstorms.

1998 My son waking me up 30 seconds before lightning hit the church by our house, watching it together and falling back asleep in awe of my magical child.

These are the things I want to carry with me forever.
The rest can fall way and make room for the better things that are coming.

I got all worked up about how he takes his coffee and he said I should be saving the world.

But he was the world, wasn’t he? Mine anyways.

I said my goodbyes.

He said goodbye.

Then I had to say hello again. Just to less people, with more clothes on this time.

Oh my god.

I had this epiphany last week, and reiterated it in therapy.

Even in my wildest fantasy I still live alone, in an apartment and I have to work for the love I want/have.

Seriously. This is the premise for the erotica novel I am writing.
They live across a courtyard from each other and she asks permission to enter his house.

I have read many a romance novel and there is always that build up and tension caused by misunderstanding.

At this point I don’t know how it ends. Not the book, my life…I am really lost right now.

I am in the middle of it. Standing in the forest alternately screaming at the trees and climbing them hoping for a better view.

I was recently reminded of a different conversation in a different parking lot wherein I said it didn’t matter exactly what path we took, even the mistakes we make were laid out to get us wherever we are going. It worked, I felt comforted…for a minute.

There is one lover I bonded with above and beyond the others. I asked him permission, in a generic donut shop parking lot to make him my antagonist.
I am his.
He said as much.
I was looking forward to spending time in his kitchen, in sweats, just talking the way we do.
Coffee and a hug or scotch and snuggles. His choice.
I said ‘I won’t instigate anything, but I won’t say no either.’ He instantly tried to bail on the whole thing. Said it didn’t matter what I was wearing, all I had to do was move a certain way and he would lose control.

So we settled on the coffee shop instead. ‘Low risk’ I said.

I also reminded him that I had been driving the entirety of the relationship, so what I said wasn’t a threat.

He left room for Jesus when he hugged me goodbye, the whole Holy Trinity actually.

What I was hoping for was a hug akin to those moments when we would be in bed together and this switch would flip inside of him and he would go from being respectful to ravenous. But with more clothes on this time.

I am trying to be good.

I asked him if he would/could.

I had it all planned out in my head…

I didn’t have a word for that flip of the switch, all I knew is that in that instant, he appeared to be bigger, take up more physical space and draw me right into it. It was the moment he stopped trying to control his actions, and it was one of my favorite things. Still is.

But now he has a girlfriend and I am in a purgatory of my own making with someone else.

Maybe I moved a certain way getting out of the truck.

I used to be accused regularly of having a script ready to go in all situations. I stopped doing that and just let people do as they do.

He asked me about his voodoo doll. Wondered if I had it with me. I said no, it’s home in a safe place. He asked if I had it in my tickle trunk with my toys and I said “Oh baby, no. if you come back I want it to be because you want to, not because I did some hoodoo sex magic on you. Also, you are not a toy.”

I feel the same way about everyone. Be here because you want to be here.

I did play the script game with the Poet. Not dictating what I wanted him to say, God’s no. Why would I deny myself the well thought out words of a writer? Besides, the things that poured out of his mouth were incredibly poignant, and the sweetness was genuine in a way I could never have written. I wrote my own part, a series of cameos. The quiet girl in the corner who wrote porn on demand.

It was so surreal that he was paying attention to me at all.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to be what he wanted.

I lost sight that this is not a work or fantasy or fiction, this is my life.

Except the book, and that is like some weird grey area, wherein I can see it happening, but it’s still in my head.

He corrected me on this before leaving.

Also, and I was corrected on this glaring error 13 000 words in, she/I was not enjoying her exploits. She/I was too centered around him. Too bitchy, too cold, thereby unrelatable.

Truth be told, I like the work.

I am built for it.

But I’m built for more than that too.

Truth be told I like the sex, I’m built for that too.

And I do so love the writing about it.

Everything I ever did was a lead up to this.
How I can case a room barely turning my head and see
a) what I want
b) who wants me
and
c) please let it be the same person.

How I can manufacture the words using 26 letters and various turns of phrase to bring outsiders into said room with me and make them wait with baited breath to see who I chose. How I can bring them with me to bed, or to a fire escape and suddenly they are with me. Watching.

How I can make my readers feel the devotion I have for this man.

The bad part is, I can’t make him see it. I acted the opposite. Too bitchy, too cold, unrelatable.

Deadline is looming on the book and I am without my muse.

I should be happy. I can write whatever beginning/middle/ending I want.

We can run away together. Instead of running away from each other.

In that way I am blessed. I may not be able to manifest my ideal in real life. Not sure I should considering how I deny myself basic human comfort when I visit fantasy land. I don’t even own property there.

I am hoping therapy allows me to unchain myself from my insecurities and maybe see what I am worth.

But for now, I can live across a courtyard from my love, take my moments with him and string them together like pearls.

I haven’t been dealing with anything.

Just deleting things, adding very little, except stress.

I have deadlines and obligations and some serious sadness.

Usurped from my throne as the Queen of Denial.

It’s catching up to me. Like a lion and a tired gazelle.

I have these days I call my Jane Says days and I just vow to try again tomorrow.

I’m gonna kick tomorrow.

It’s been slowly worsening.

I am still in my pajamas from two days ago.

I remember going out and getting groceries, thinking about grabbing boxes to pack for the move and not doing that.
Had lunch, yesterday???
But I came straight home and put my sweats back on. I did eat.
Then I felt dizzy and sick and spent most of the remainder of the day in bed. Vowing to try again tomorrow.

It’s tomorrow. I managed to walk the dog, and that is all.

I don’t remember it getting bad. I am just floating around, on auto pilot.

The dog next door is crying and I envy her, some tears might do me good.

Something…anything.

I broke out my new toy and almost decided halfway through just to stop, it wasn’t worth it and I just wanted to sleep.
I finished and it was nice for a minute, just not thinking about things.

Then I had to get up.

My stomach hurts, I blamed the penicillin I had been taking for a bout of strep throat, but I think it was that I hadn’t really eaten for…some number of days.

I posted the other day that “the sky was falling”. Susan, my ever watchful eye, retorted “NO it isn’t”.
All I meant was that the black clouds had rolled in, the trees were being bent in half and it was raining hard.

I normally love storms, I watched it barely, from my desk.

That storm passed, this one hasn’t.

I have people checking on me so I turned my phone off.
I had plans, I cancelled them.

I was fired 5 weeks ago, from a place where fired doesn’t mean fired, it means “we will call you when we feel like you have spent enough time in the corner or we are short on girls”. That time has passed. The calls have come to come back and I ignored them.

I don’t want to go back.

My PIC from New Orleans was part of a mass unfriending on Facebook. She asked to come back and I deleted the request. Sorry, not interested. The cool kids are all on drugs and trying to relate is like trying to smell the number 9. All y’all picked a washed-up cokehead stripper who wouldn’t know the truth or do the right thing if it fell in her leathery lap, over me. Having integrity and compassion at a strip club is as pointless as casting pearls before swine. Being a good/moral stripper is like winning the Special Olympics, ya, I win, but … at the end of the day, I was still a stripper.

The man I am in love with dumped me again, unceremoniously what was it now…last Tuesday? The one before? When I get numb, numbers make less sense than usual and time slips.

It has happened before, it was for the best, I am used to this, I need to work on me, this was a blessing, it’s okay, I am alright. Everything as it should be blah blah blah.

I believe those things.

I also believe I was trying this time. That I was close to a breakthrough, finally. And it didn’t matter.

Just like PIC, and everyone I worked with, he believed someone else over me and left me, alone.
Didn’t give me a chance.

In both cases I knew where I went wrong and was ready to own it. I wasn’t given a chance.

I was just starting to feel like I was good enough…Survey says “No you are not.”

I am feeling abandoned and now I am pushing everyone else away just in case they leave too, then I could say it’s my choice.

I know I have no choice but to be okay with this. I know that I had to quit work and he had to quit me.

But it really fucking hurts.

This is bringing back old feelings previously dealt with or so I thought. Him leaving. Started a landslide. I spoke to Giant recently, that was nice but it doesn’t change the fact that he left. I thought I had cried enough to wash that away. Nope. Gelfling is showing up in dreams, actually speaking now so I can hear him.

I know that soon, I will go back to sleeping right, eating better, functioning, packing up and moving on.

But just now I am paralyzed.

The book I am attempting to write, that has remained untouched for some number of days I am unable to calculate just now, seems overwhelming and daunting. I can’t open it just now.

Talking to people is freaking me out. I am fighting to shower. I have ‘have to’s’ coming that I can’t avoid. Therapy, tattoo, social shit…all things that require pants and driving.

I am scared.

I just came in from a smoke on my balcony. I saw a hawk, or maybe a falcon. I decided to just watch it instead of running inside for my camera and potentially missing it, so I couldn’t tell you what it was exactly. What I can tell is that it was new, young. Still learning some grace, fighting on the thermals and wind of this fairly chilly day in June.

I came back in, Razorblade by those who Fight the Foo is playing. And I feel a little better.

I have therapy tomorrow, my first real session and maybe going in vulnerable and lost is exactly the way I need to do this.

My past dictates that when I get like this I invariably have a massive breakthrough and reward waiting on the other side.

Like the first breath after a coma. (Explosions in the Sky)

I think it’s time to talk about my rape.

I always hated owning it like that “my rape”, “my rapist”…like “my sweater” or “my dentist”.

I feel kinda like I am jumping on the bandwagon here, but my heart goes out to this girl.

Rape trials are almost as bad as the act itself and now hers is beyond public. I cannot imagine.

I have gotten to the point where mine is just a story, but for her that time is postponed indefinitely due to the overwhelming support of the internet. It’s a catch 22 really. Yes we believe you, yes you must keep reliving it over and over or go live under a rock.

I hope she finds a nice rock, and soon.

I also hope his changes the way our society deals with sexual assault.

I was having a hard time remembering exactly what year it was then it occurred to me, September 11^th I was in the blue house. I remember now.

I am not here to compare pain. I cannot begin to imagine what she is going through. Yes, I have been raped so I can wrap my head around it a bit. Yes, I have had traumatic memory loss due to a different accident so I know what it is to wake up in a hospital and not know what happened to my body. But I am not her.

I didn’t write my victim impact statement, even with a big fat paycheque waiting at the end of it like a dangling carrot. In Canada we have a Victim Compensation Fund, I was eligible but I had to write the whole thing down again in triplicate and I just couldn’t.

There are only 2 similarities between mine and hers. One is a jury trial, the second is a lenient judge.
But we will get there.
Wait, 3…we were both forced to have sex against our will, commonly known as rape.

I was a stripper, pin-balling between bars back then. My ex (who later became my rapist) had beaten me very badly late July or early August. I had moved to the blue house and was picking where I worked dependent on which bouncers were working what night of the week. Did I feel safe? Would someone make sure I got home. I got real spoiled for a while there, one bouncer at bar “A” would drive me home, open my door and check the house for me before wishing my wobbly self “good night”, reminding me to take out my contacts and locking the door behind him.

My ex didn’t know where I lived.

Until I told him where I lived.

He had fled after the beating, to avoid jail, to the other side of the country.

He called and I hung up maybe a hundred times, always different numbers.
Until one day I answered. He apologized. Said he didn’t remember what happened and he was so sorry.

I believed him.

He said he wanted to come home and I said okay.

I am not a stupid girl. I did not grow up in an environment where anything close to a beating ever happened. And yet…he wasn’t the first one to hit me and he wasn’t the last.

I know what happened. Why I ended up in that situation. I spent a lot of time exploring why I walked into an abusive relationship and why I stayed until he held me hostage in my own house and raped me repeatedly and could have very well have made good on his promise to kill me had I not escaped.

I had been dancing for 2-3 years at that point. It took me a little longer than most strippers to hit the ‘going crazy’ point. Drunk on both liquor and money and the easiness of it all. I had avoided any liquor/hard drugs for the first 18 months then I had a little bump of cocaine with the cool kids and 6 months later I woke up and thought ‘what the fuck am I doing?’

I had a lot of guilt about my job, it was too easy, I had more money nightly than I had ever seen in a week of working doubles in kitchens. I got intoxicated by the power of it all and became what everyone thinks is a typical stripper.

I didn’t like myself at all. I didn’t like myself going into it in the first place, this just made it worse.

I needed to calm down, get some focus. I needed an adult.

So I became the stripper who dated the DJ. Not really a step up there but things get a little convoluted at rock bottom. This was a slide sideways, then down.

He was focused, had a plan, was rebuilding his own life and kept me in line. He smoked pot, no hard drugs that I knew of. We went on picnics, read books before bed and I sobered up.

Things went to shit when he got drunk and high (on ecstasy) and beat me severely in his apartment one night. Trapping me under a weight bench, throwing lit matches in my hair and attempting to rape me but the weigh bench was in the way and he couldn’t get hard due to his blood alcohol level.

While he was grappling for better leverage I got out the door. He caught up with me at the top of the stairs and planted his foot in the small of my back. I went down the first flight ass over tea kettle. He caught up with me as I scrambled to my feet. Pushed me again, down the second flight I went. One of his neighbors thought an elderly resident had taken a tumble and opened her door. She saw what was happening pulled me in, locked the door and called the police.

I was in shock. At the police station there were regular cameras and video cameras. I never mentioned the part where he tried to pull my pants down after undoing his. I fought hard in the police station to keep my pants on, just as hard as I had fought in the apartment hours earlier. And I won.

I tried going back to work a week later because I had to. Rent was due. I wore a fishnet body stocking to cover my bruises, told the girls I had been in a car wreck and they blindly believed me, except one girl who said ‘huh, I didn’t know they made cars with fists’.

I went to work at another bar. I found a new place to live.

I started rebuilding my life.

Then he came back.

Then he raped me.

I didn’t report it right away. I didn’t really report it at all. I had been in therapy for 9 months, which started out as couple’s therapy oddly enough. My ex had stopped attending and I kept going. I knew there was something wrong with me and I was desperate to fix it.

I skipped a session the week after the rape. My shrink called and asked why I wasn’t there, and I told him. I had barricaded myself in the house and had no intentions of leaving.

He came and got me.

He cancelled his appointments for the day, let me shake and cry in the brown chair and insisted that I let him call the police.

I let him.

They found my ex at work 4 days later and put him in jail. I slept for the first time in 10 days.

I began the slow process of rebuilding my life. Just to have it torn down and apart 8 months later when we went to trial.

I had shunned all my old friends, left my job. Had started dating someone that knew very little of what had happened before. And I went to trial alone.

I was cross examined for 13 hours by his vicious and slightly insane lawyer.

Accused of doing heroin, which I had never done.

Accused of using him for money, but I paid for everything.

Accused of being a stupid stripper, couldn’t argue that one.

And we won.

Against all the insurmountable odds stacked against me. No physical evidence, “he said she said rape case with a stripper as a defendant at a jury trial no less, and we won. There were 12 charges against him and he was found guilty on all counts.

I was told to prepare for a separate trial about the beating from before. None of that was admissible during the rape case. But he plead guilty.

I went home.

I got a call from the lead detective the next day. He got 6 months after the time already served, which was at a ratio of 3:1 due to a sewage problem at the jail he had awaited trial at. So one month equaled 3. He was going to be out by the spring.

The detective was livid. The judge was new to the bench and felt ‘uncomfortable giving him more time’.

My rapist stated he was so intoxicated he didn’t remember what happened, but I did. I wasn’t drunk. I had consumed half a bottle of champagne 3 hours before I got home and found him in my house.

He was unaware of his actions.

I was aware.

A few times I had lost consciousness from being hit in the head and choked-out. But every time I came to, he was still there.

He passed out once and I tried to leave but he caught me at the door and dragged me back.

I screamed, no one came.

Last October, 14 years after it happened, I finally had my breakthrough ‘a-ha’ moment and really felt like I was over it. I was having sex with a wonderful man who playfully pinned my arms over my head and whispered “you’re trapped” in my ear. Something that should have sent me off the rails, but I realized I was safe, there, with him and I relaxed.

My son is now the same age as Emily Doe’s rapist. From a young age I have taught him, “even if you are already having sex with a girl and she says stop, you stop. Cover her with a blanket, put your pants on and wait. She will either tell you why or ask you to leave. Listen to her.” It’s not an easy conversation to have, but when that DID happen to him, he was grateful that he knew what to do and we talked about it. His girlfriend at the time had been raped before.

A lot of women have been raped before. Too many.

Scrolling through Facebook this last week has been hard. I don’t have PTSD, I see it as an isolated incident. But I hurt for women everywhere who are going through this. I know triggers exist and social media, all media right now is a minefield.

I hurt for this girl and I hope against hope something good comes of this.

I pray that all of this support she is receiving has the desired effect and she feels less alone.

I hope she heals physically and mentally.

And I hope she knows this isn’t her fault.

Half a bottle of champagne or three times the legal limit.
Student or stripper.
Doesn’t matter, rape is rape.

And so it began.

Someone I admire, admiring me. And all I could think was I’m not overly proud of that piece, why that one and why me?
Instead of just being happy, I was embarrassed. I knew I’d written better. Could do better. I tainted my own excitement and his compliment with it.

Good job Sarah.

I had a very expensive glass of scotch bought for me as a congratulations.
That tasted funny too, what with all the tainting.

I was at the same restaurant I had been at 3 months prior and the waiter reiterated everything I did, said, ate and drank 90 days before.

When did I become memorable, noticeable?

I don’t understand.

‘He whom I admire’ messaged me a little less than two weeks later and spent 12 hours talking to me.
And I spent some of that time silently enumerating all the things that were wrong with me and why it wouldn’t work instead of savoring the moment and listening to him explain why.

Same thing I did when he liked my writing.

Didn’t serve me at all, just lessened my enjoyment of a very profound experience (or two).

I messaged someone today, one of the sparse handful that know (a hand that has wrapped itself around a firecracker and held on like Darwin’s dummy, so missing a few digits) and said,

“If I knew then what I know now, it still wouldn’t be enough”.

I chuckled to myself around my coffee cup. Which reminds me, I need new coffee cups too.

There is no bitterness attached to that thought. Just a wistful smile.
It’s a good memory, most of them are. Ones I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I just know I’m not done learning and it’s okay.

That first night, lying in bed, hearing his words crashing over me like waves, drowning in them, in him. It was a baptism.
But I didn’t come out clean.
He said I was perfect (for him), I was what he always wanted and…
All I could think was ‘he is going to find out that I am not shiny/pretty/whole, then what?’

So I hid. And when I wasn’t hiding, I came forward as my idea of what he wanted.

I was wrong. Mostly due to the not listening.

He left those versions of me as quickly as I could invent them. I don’t blame him.
The thing he coveted/loved most about me was my penchant for telling the truth. I was acting out a lie. All the while knowing what I meant…

After another absence I thought I had it all figured out.
I sent him a photo, only looking at the thumbnail on my phone, knowing he doesn’t like filters and fighting my urge to use them. He said he loved that he could see my stretchmarks. Something in me withered and died. Not what you would think or what I did before…I wasn’t embarrassed of my body, I was ashamed of believing he wouldn’t love it/me. That was a good little death.

Took me forever to see he loved what I am/can be, not what I look like.

He called again. Said I wasn’t meeting him with enthusiasm, I wasn’t bringing my own joy to the table. I feebly squeaked that I thought I was protecting him.
Instead of arguing, I opened all the way up, as me.
There was ebb and flow and wet.

A few years ago I watched him embark on a relationship with another girl. The whole internet did. I wasn’t stalking, he was just in my newsfeed way back when it was less cluttered and he was open about it/her.
I remember being jealous of her. How sweet to have a man of that caliber and depth celebrate you so openly. I wondered about that feeling of being claimed and adored for the world to see. Even then, I wasn’t sure if I could handle it.

After the first night we spoke I thought to myself, this is how it begins. I get to be that girl. And I knew I couldn’t handle it.

For the better part of a year I envied her. How easy it had looked between them. Or I’d imagined it that way…how there were no minefields for her to cross, no hoops to jump, no riddles to solve. No maddening absences…

Ah there it is. There was one absence, the last one. And he has never spoken of her again.

What I failed to realize and see and remember really that the last I ever saw of her on his timeline was she visited and then…nothing.

I don’t know the details. Not my business. I never asked.

She is inconsequential. I wanted something that lasts…

Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight, gotta kick at the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight. (Bruce Cockburn)

He called me on my birthday and tore into me for about an hour. Then we had make up phone sex for the next hour.

I tried hard to listen this time, he has been right 99.9% of the time in retrospect, so I tried to silence my inner voice of ‘not good enough’ and really listen.

He wasn’t wrong.

He left me the next Tuesday. Again. Said I embarrassed him, and I can think of 3 things I said that might have done exactly that.

Before he left he basically double-dog dared me to go to intensive cognitive therapy. I now understand why almost every time we spoke I felt myself being broken open and examined.

I kinda liked it, this being ripped apart, because every time he left and I rebuilt on my own I felt better, faster and stronger with an added bravery that hadn’t been there before.

I did a lot of soul searching during his last absence, for once actually putting in some work instead of layering bandages to cover the loss.

Sadly my focus was NOT me doing any actual work on myself, but my attitude about the situation.
I decided I wasn’t all in.
I was too busy protecting these things in and about myself to give myself completely to him.
I had had a taste of living publicly and having my movements scrutinized and watched and it felt yucky.
Pendulum swung far and wide and I landed on disappearing in him completely.

That isn’t it either.

He didn’t want a prisoner, willing nor otherwise. Not another sycophant nor a slave.
More like a dirty pirate hooker (just for him, not on the phone with a business partner) with substance and soul. Someone he could be proud of.

Not there yet.

I likened myself to a hoarder’s house. No one wants to open the door and show off the mess, no matter what treasures might be buried in the clutter. Half this garbage/baggage isn’t even mine, just left behind by those I let in the door.
I’ve seen what happens when people get sick of their own shit. I can clean this up, I know I can.
First order of business, change the locks.
I have to figure out why I do what I do and let the right things go. Be whole, productive, clean and proud on my own.

I don’t think he is coming back, this is not about that.

This is about someone I admire seeing potential in me and shaking me up enough to actually do something about it. He has fulfilled his purpose, I can’t ask for any more than that. He was patient enough.

He left Tuesday night. I had a realization on Thursday at 5:46 pm… it was this.

As I sit here alone with my thoughts, something occurred to me.
Him leaving might have been the most pure, unadulterated, selfless act of love another person has ever shown me.
I was ready to disappear in him. He could have had all of me, all to himself, 7 ways from Sunday, ‘til the end of time. But probably not on Sundays because football.
Instead he told me I was intelligent, talented and capable of changing the world if I could just change myself.
He left me to do the work I needed.

This might just be a line I am feeding myself, but it tastes enough like truth. I know the difference between horseshit and horse leather.

Whatever gets me doing what I need to do which is going to therapy/rebuilding.

He said was done with broken women, it just so happens I am done being one.

And so it began.

Someone I admire, admiring me. And all I could think was I’m not overly proud of that piece, why that one and why me?
Instead of just being happy, I was embarrassed. I knew I’d written better. Could do better. I tainted my own excitement and his compliment with it.

Good job Sarah.

I had a very expensive glass of scotch bought for me as a congratulations.
That tasted funny too, what with all the tainting.

I was at the same restaurant I had been at 3 months prior and the waiter reiterated everything I did, said, ate and drank 90 days before.

When did I become memorable, noticeable?

I don’t understand.

‘He whom I admire’ messaged me a little less than two weeks later and spent 12 hours talking to me.
And I spent some of that time silently enumerating all the things that were wrong with me and why it wouldn’t work instead of savoring the moment and listening to him explain why.

Same thing I did when he liked my writing.

Didn’t serve me at all, just lessened my enjoyment of a very profound experience (or two).

I messaged someone today, one of the sparse handful that know (a hand that has wrapped itself around a firecracker and held on like Darwin’s dummy, so missing a few digits) and said,

“If I knew then what I know now, it still wouldn’t be enough”.

I chuckled to myself around my coffee cup. Which reminds me, I need new coffee cups too.

There is no bitterness attached to that thought. Just a wistful smile.
It’s a good memory, most of them are. Ones I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I just know I’m not done learning and it’s okay.

That first night, lying in bed, hearing his words crashing over me like waves, drowning in them, in him. It was a baptism.
But I didn’t come out clean.
He said I was perfect (for him), I was what he always wanted and…
All I could think was ‘he is going to find out that I am not shiny/pretty/whole, then what?’

So I hid. And when I wasn’t hiding, I came forward as my idea of what he wanted.

I was wrong. Mostly due to the not listening.

He left those versions of me as quickly as I could invent them. I don’t blame him.
The thing he coveted/loved most about me was my penchant for telling the truth. I was acting out a lie. All the while knowing what I meant…

After another absence I thought I had it all figured out.
I sent him a photo, only looking at the thumbnail on my phone, knowing he doesn’t like filters and fighting my urge to use them. He said he loved that he could see my stretchmarks. Something in me withered and died. Not what you would think or what I did before…I wasn’t embarrassed of my body, I was ashamed of believing he wouldn’t love it/me. That was a good little death.

Took me forever to see he loved what I am/can be, not what I look like.

He called again. Said I wasn’t meeting him with enthusiasm, I wasn’t bringing my own joy to the table. I feebly squeaked that I thought I was protecting him.
Instead of arguing, I opened all the way up, as me.
There was ebb and flow and wet.

A few years ago I watched him embark on a relationship with another girl. The whole internet did. I wasn’t stalking, he was just in my newsfeed way back when it was less cluttered and he was open about it/her.
I remember being jealous of her. How sweet to have a man of that caliber and depth celebrate you so openly. I wondered about that feeling of being claimed and adored for the world to see. Even then, I wasn’t sure if I could handle it.

After the first night we spoke I thought to myself, this is how it begins. I get to be that girl. And I knew I couldn’t handle it.

For the better part of a year I envied her. How easy it had looked between them. Or I’d imagined it that way…how there were no minefields for her to cross, no hoops to jump, no riddles to solve. No maddening absences…

Ah there it is. There was one absence, the last one. And he has never spoken of her again.

What I failed to realize and see and remember really that the last I ever saw of her on his timeline was she visited and then…nothing.

I don’t know the details. Not my business. I never asked.

She is inconsequential. I wanted something that lasts…

Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight, gotta kick at the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight. (Bruce Cockburn)

He called me on my birthday and tore into me for about an hour. Then we had make up phone sex for the next hour.

I tried hard to listen this time, he has been right 99.9% of the time in retrospect, so I tried to silence my inner voice of ‘not good enough’ and really listen.

He wasn’t wrong.

He left me the next Tuesday. Again. Said I embarrassed him, and I can think of 3 things I said that might have done exactly that.

Before he left he basically double-dog dared me to go to intensive cognitive therapy. I now understand why almost every time we spoke I felt myself being broken open and examined.

I kinda liked it, this being ripped apart, because every time he left and I rebuilt on my own I felt better, faster and stronger with an added bravery that hadn’t been there before.

I did a lot of soul searching during his last absence, for once actually putting in some work instead of layering bandages to cover the loss.

Sadly my focus was NOT me doing any actual work on myself, but my attitude about the situation.
I decided I wasn’t all in.
I was too busy protecting these things in and about myself to give myself completely to him.
I had had a taste of living publicly and having my movements scrutinized and watched and it felt yucky.
Pendulum swung far and wide and I landed on disappearing in him completely.

That isn’t it either.

He didn’t want a prisoner, willing nor otherwise. Not another sycophant nor a slave.
More like a dirty pirate hooker (just for him, not on the phone with a business partner) with substance and soul. Someone he could be proud of.

Not there yet.

I likened myself to a hoarder’s house. No one wants to open the door and show off the mess, no matter what treasures might be buried in the clutter. Half this garbage/baggage isn’t even mine, just left behind by those I let in the door.
I’ve seen what happens when people get sick of their own shit. I can clean this up, I know I can.
First order of business, change the locks.
I have to figure out why I do what I do and let the right things go. Be whole, productive, clean and proud on my own.

I don’t think he is coming back, this is not about that.

This is about someone I admire seeing potential in me and shaking me up enough to actually do something about it. He has fulfilled his purpose, I can’t ask for any more than that. He was patient enough.

He left Tuesday night. I had a realization on Thursday at 5:46 pm… it was this.

As I sit here alone with my thoughts, something occurred to me.
Him leaving might have been the most pure, unadulterated, selfless act of love another person has ever shown me.
I was ready to disappear in him. He could have had all of me, all to himself, 7 ways from Sunday, ‘til the end of time. But probably not on Sundays because football.
Instead he told me I was intelligent, talented and capable of changing the world if I could just change myself.
He left me to do the work I needed.

This might just be a line I am feeding myself, but it tastes enough like truth. I know the difference between horseshit and horse leather.

Whatever gets me doing what I need to do which is going to therapy/rebuilding.

He said was done with broken women, it just so happens I am done being one.

I know what sin tastes like. It’s delicious. Been eating it for years. Probably why I am so thin.

Flavored with the salt of sweat, the sting and burn of whiskey, the sharp taste of smoke and the intoxication of horse leather.

Like that first roll of the word ‘fuck’ from your mouth, 4th grade, just knowing it was bad but no concept of what it meant. That rush that came not from kissing a boy, but the first time his tongue slipped past your lips, hands reaching elsewhere. Still not exactly knowing what fuck meant.

That rush.

As you get older those rushes dwindle to ripples on a pond instead of waves crashing on shore, so most of us seek out other ways of getting wet and drowning in oblivion.

Dancing, drugs, boys.

I had my eyes opened recently and I came to a few conclusions.

I’d rather have one good glass of scotch to sip in good company than a dozen shots of Jack that make me spin, forget and inevitably throw up.

I had my first taste of nicotine when I was 11 or so. My bedroom was in the basement. My mom was watching a neighbors kids. Neighbor would walk by my window and drop her cigarette, still lit, uncrushed on the other side of the screen. I wasn’t sure what the smell was, but I knew I liked it. Stood on a chair to reach the sill, popped the screen in and took a drag. Got a head rush and almost fell off said chair. And for the rest of the summer, it became habit.

Didn’t pick it up again until I was 15. With Nicole. Her mom smoked, Nicole palmed a couple and we went outside. I had forgotten I had tried it before, so had my body, and there was that rush. A little coughing and sputtering, but enough of a head rush for me to escape into obliviousness for a few blissful seconds.

That is what all of those things are. Drugs, sex, cigarettes, whiskey, rock and roll. Just little minutes of escape. Vacations from real life.

You cannot live in Disneyland. I mean technically you can, many people do. But it’s not real. It’s hollow.

He said…

“Until you figure out why you started dancing and kept going back, you will never quit.”

He also said, a million years ago, that if I went back it would hurt him. My memory glossed over that bit and I went back while he was away. Thereby doing the thing he asked me not to do and hurting him in the process. I hurt me too, I just didn’t see it. My foresight is that of a naked mole rat.

It’s easy, I am lazy, once upon a time it got my child and I out of poverty…but that was a long time ago.

I am sure there are some rusted bits of some old machinery that plowed over me as a child that are going to come up in therapy. Of that I have no doubt.

But at this moment, I can see the boneyard. I know a bit about what is in there. Graves labeled Pectoral major and minor. The two muscles I was born without. Fat doesn’t grow on bone. Breasts are composed mostly of fat…ergo

Next on stage. Lili/Scarlett/Siren/Sarah/Billie…aka The One-Titted Stripper.

I am a sideshow freak that hides it well.

Every shift, every show wherein no one called out ‘EW what is that THING’ was another tissue I could stuff in my bra to even myself out.

Herein lies the problem.

Coming home at night, taking off my bra and having all that ‘even’ falling to the floor. So I had to start over again the next day.

Lovers too. Just Kleenex and padding. At some point I had to come home and be naked. Shower, dry myself off and I am still me. Incomplete.

He said I have been getting by on my looks for half my life and it was time to change. To live up to my potential.

Funny thing is I haven’t ever accepted my physical self as whole, how in god’s name do I figure out this brain of mine. I am going to have to somehow wrap my head around my deformity. And I have no idea how to go about it.

He told me I was one of the most intelligent women he had ever met, and I couldn’t wrap my head around that either.
It’s not the first time I have been told this. Psychiatrists, other writers, police sergeants, teachers and more teachers and more teachers (some of them grooming me to be a writer) pulling me aside after my first 2 disastrous years in high school asking me ‘what the hell happened to you?”
It’s not the first time I disregarded it (and the source). I answered something akin to “On what grounds?”

That didn’t go over well. I should have considered the source.

Sin is delicious, there is no way around it. But all of those things are hollow tricks for a hollow girl.

I need actual sustenance.

For the first time in a while I am quite frightened.

I am scared I am afraid of my potential.

But I am more afraid of stagnating and atrophy.

Starving on nothing.

At some point it stops being cute when you lift your dress up over your head to show people your skinned knees or your favorite panties with the stars on them.
For me the last moment of “aw that’s cute” that came before shame and a sense of being demure should have been 38 years ago.
But I only stopped a few Tuesdays ago.

And I have to Facebook memories and blog posts to prove it. Lucky fucking me…

A gem from 2 years ago today or last year, I didn’t look.

Public service announcement.

Just so everyone is aware, I am Kali the destroyer walking around wearing a really pretty skin suit.

Also, when I am happy, it’s the same as stomping kittens.

So sayeth my ex.

So be-eth the reason I am no longer suffering his shit with a smile.

Just EW. No one should say stomping kittens like ever, and if they do I shouldn’t be repeating it…and he was long gone a buried, why did I dig that shit up?

Followed closely by this right here…

I am having a mini temper tantrum.

I am mostly mad at me.

Today I must rip apart a very complicated bed, move a giant wardrobe and get the lawnmower rolling after a long winter’s rest.

I had the worst, girly, pathetic thought pop into my head. For a split second, I wanted a man around to help.

I love being single and living alone, but that thought crept in and mewled in that obnoxious cajoling girl voice, the one that sounds like nails on a damned chalkboard.

I grossed myself out.

And then I realized that MOST boyfriends of times past wouldn’t have helped anyways and I have been doing this shit alone for years as is.

I have full confidence that the next man to sit beside me on the throne will be an equal and a partner as I will no longer settle for less.

As much as some help would be appreciated, I know I’ve got this.

When am I not having a tantrum or a meltdown, or lifting my dress up over my head???…rarely.

At least there was a lesson in here.

I spent almost 2 years in a passionless relationship with a useless man who couldn’t even change a tire.

Am I supposed to be proud of myself for this? Do I think I have time for this?

At what point could I not have just realized on my own that I was a capable girl? Why was I so blind?

Ah yes, couldn’t see past the dress pulled up over my eyes.

See why this isn’t cute anymore? I do.

I have said with great pride and full enunciation as loud as I can that I hold my memories close. That my heaven is a big editing room where I can add dragons and explore alternate endings.

Cool idea sure.

But isn’t an editing room where 90% of the footage falls to the floor and some nice janitor named Tim or George comes along and sweeps it all up and at the end of the day it didn’t further the plotline so it wasn’t really useful.

Um ya.

By replaying over and over and fucking over all these things have lost their meaning.
I thought I had to keep them to learn things, but we are kinda past that now.
It isn’t learning if I just play everything back on a loop.

I need help, not coddling.

My current train of thought has a lot to do with comfort zones and weaning yourself out of them. Methadone for the soul so to speak.
It is my way, or has been.

It’s time to face the cold sweats, the shaking and puking and just hole up in my house for a bit until I can sort through this.
The solitude is a comfort zone. But this one is new and I have room to move.

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

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

…

Contemplate what I’ve been clinging to.

Tool 46 & 2

See also Ænema

Mom’s gonna fix it all soon.
Mom’s comin’ round to put it back the way it ought to be.
Learn to swim.

I am going back through this website. It’s mine, I can edit and pull and cut as I please.
Then onto my life, I have to figure out why I do the things I do. Then throw it away.

Not every memory is worth keeping.

I did that thing again.

That huge arc of the pendulum swing.

One extreme to the other.

I have somehow figured out how to stay, to hover at the amplitude. Suspended there, building summer homes and camping out for months, sometimes years on end.

I must keep everything and hoard memories and words like a shut in with priceless antiques, stacked all willy-nilly but they make perfect sense to me. Tiny little corridors to maneuver, I have the map, so it’s not a death trap for me…but beware all ye who enter, you are likely to get crushed under the weight of it at one wrong move.

I thought I had the map, I must have set it down somewhere.

Oh shit.

I remember, back at the beginning, I knew where everything was. I thought I knew where I was going. Honestly I just wanted a cup of coffee and a shower and to find that one dress, sit and sift through the mess. But I have been lost in the maze for quite some time and I lost sight what I was doing here. All the while collecting new things and memories and lessons and losing track of those too.

I was hiding out in the places that seemed familiar, had some wiggle room. Upon closer inspection, they were children’s forts lined with old security blankets tied together with g-strings and good intentions..

So, I fired up the wrecking ball and swung far and wide to the other side, called Nothing.

I don’t want any of it, tear it down, burn it. Smash it all and let me fly free and unencumbered.

But that scared me too. There are bits of me in there. Nice bits. Good bits. Smart and clever bits.

Also, I am naked and it’s cold up here. Never did find that dress.

I spoke to a woman yesterday. She could have just pulled pages from the phone book and read them to me, her voice has that lilt and cadence. I shouldn’t say I spoke, I mostly listened.

She said the same things I had heard on my birthday, just with the kindness of a woman.

I interrupted a few times, epiphany after epiphany. I tried not to.

What do they feel like?…depends on the epiphany. Sometimes they feel like gut rot after a 3 day bender, so sharp you worry for the structural integrity of your appendix and other organs. Sometimes it’s like a fog clearing, like rubbing your eyes after waking up, a slow adjustment to clarity. And sometimes it’s like flying. As though you have been training to run in the water and you finally get to feel what your legs can do on dry land, without resistance.

She said a human being under stress has 3 options. Flight, flight or freeze.

I had never heard the third.

I smiled into the phone when I realized that was exactly what I was doing.

I had fought so long to keep all of this things. Antiquities, pieces of who I used to be.

I woke up one morning a few weeks ago ready to run. I set about a great purge. Burn it all to the ground and disappear into a man. Thinking I was coming to him clean. And I would have. But I would have been naked, dependent and a slip of a girl prone to slipping into old habits to hide her nakedness and mess.

“He should want you as is.” Romantic theory sure, but I don’t even want me like this. I know I can do better, I just needed a push. I needed to see what I looked like with someone else’s eyes.

Unkempt, dirty…but I have potential.

There was a forced pause. I was suspended in limbo.

I am moving in 6 weeks. I had a moment of panic about it. Wondered if I could pull it together and be as happy there as I am here. I scrolled back to look at photos of past houses and realized, yes I can. I always do. I may have to shed a few things, replace things worn out with new, like my throw pillows. But I can do this. I have done it before. Methodically, logically and seeing the upheaval as an opportunity to build something even better.

What I cannot do is downsize from a 5 bedroom, fully furnished chalet out in the country thinking I can bring everything with me.

I didn’t physically do that. I purged like a pro. Kept what elicited joy and had function and purpose and disregarded the rest.

I have 17 mirrors in my house and I look in none of them.

It’s time.

I am heading back into therapy, much more intensive this time around. I have been coddled enough and will take the same approach with me. I have been carrying a lot of boxes around in my mind, and good god it’s heavy and messy. I will open everything up and try to find the why.

Build a nice home here, inside of me. Somewhere that I won’t be embarrassed to open the door and let the right people in. Somewhere I can be proud of. No more revolving doors. No more hoarding then running, then hoarding again.

I will hang a sign over the door that simply says Equilibrium.

He said he didn’t really know who I was and that scared him.

I didn’t understand, wasn’t I all in here on display?

He looked and then he really didn’t understand.

Told me it wasn’t a diary, called me darling and I missed that in my stubbornness.

He was right.

I am sorry.

I didn’t understand.

I do now.

I don’t believe in apologies without follow through.

I will now try to get through this without quotes and curse words.

And that will be the end of it.

Everything I said before is what I was. I am not that girl anymore.

The blog and my job were fast food for my ego. I never liked her, time to starve her out.

I am turning 42 in 9 days.

5’8”.

I don’t know how much I weigh, I just know when those jeans fit and when they don’t.

My hair is brown and grey but I dye it black and white. I have a Samson complex about my hair, I can’t cut it short and cringe at trims.

I have worn glasses since age 2. Had a bowl cut. I am missing a boob. A lot of people told me I was ugly. I believed them.

I got my boobs done, grew out my hair, got contacts. People tell me I am pretty and I rarely believe them. Except some moments when I get that selfie juuuuuuust……right. They are fleeting and the photos filtered.

I am tired of filters. The pic up is just me, no make-up. Fresh out of the ocean.

I would rather be called clever or kind. Things I can control.

I am convinced people only notice me because of my tattoos and a lot of the time I wish I didn’t have them for that exact reason.

My favorite tattoo is never displayed in public, I got it for us/him alone.

I like long skirts and dresses, or jeans and a t-shirt. Tight things make me feel vulnerable and constricted.
Unless I am with a man, and I feel safe…then I want him to be proud to be with me.

I’m often proud of others, rarely myself.

Sometimes I get dressed up. Usually for brunch with my friends.

I have never stood in line or gone into a nightclub but I’ve stood in the same line 9 times to ride the same roller-coaster.

I hate shoes, I would rather be barefoot. But heels sometimes make me feel sexy and powerful.

I like getting my hair and nails done because it feels nice to be touched. I don’t complain if they don’t do it how I asked. I always tip.

I wear make-up because I don’t like my skin. I love it when my face clears and I don’t have to, I know it’s a catch 22.

I don’t know how to conture and I am okay with that. I can’t tell the Kardashians apart and I am really okay with that.

I don’t really watch TV. But I binge watch Netflix from time to time.

I tried yoga, liked it haven’t been back, yet.

My body and I have learned to get along.

I hate my stomach, I have a really bad tattoo. I don’t envy women as a rule, but I covet their bare-skinned bellies.

I don’t understand how some women pay more for a purse than I paid for my car. They don’t understand that I have paid more for my tattoos than their cars, so we are even.

I have never paid more than $200 for anything I have ever worn. Except a vintage Afghani ring. I wear it and second-hand dresses to weddings.

I’ve never been a bridesmaid, never a bride. I have been proposed to 5 times it never worked out. It’s alright. I have left behind every piece of jewelry my exes gave me. The only ring I regret losing was my mothers. I still haven’t forgiven myself for that. I was young and foolish.

I have a handful of friends that I have known since I was young. And I am constantly amazed they stuck around. I was a bad kid and a worse friend. Haven’t forgiven myself for that either.

As long as I can understand someone else’s behavior, I forgive them.

I have good friends now that know I like to be left alone. I love them for that.

Understanding means more to me than anything.

I would rather be alone than with the wrong people.

I learn things slowly and then all at once. I have to try to learn anything. I can’t just read it or be told something and know. It’s frustrating. I make a lot of mistakes.

I have one child and lost 7 before they figured out that complications from the one that made it, made it so I couldn’t have more. I stopped trying.

I have several step kids. Not because I couldn’t have more of my own but because someone has to love them. I am someone.

I help arrange fosters and transport for shelter dogs. Someone has to help them. I am someone.

I stop and move turtles off the road and brake for deer. Someone has to. I am someone.

Everything I learned about how to treat beings smaller than me I learned from my grandfather. He walked across the road 365 days a year for several years to look after a dog chained in a backyard. I went with him.

My favorite number is 242 because it was my grandparents address and the happiest times of my childhood were in that house, with them across the street from that dog. Her name was Sheba and she was always dirty.

I was always dirty too, I was a tomboy. I played at the pond and climbed trees. I still like being dirty, something satisfying about well-earned sweat. I hated baths as a kid, still do. I would rather be dirty, or swimming or both.

I love being naked in the sun and skinny dipping at night. As long as no one is watching. I was okay being naked at work, as long as I had heels on. Something about them made it okay.

I would rather have a picnic in the sand and sunshine than eat a fancy dinner.
I am anorexic but I love food, it’s just that when I get upset I choke. I love cooking. I put love into the food when I cook for people I care about. I can’t bake, but I always want dessert.

I mix up desert and dessert in my head and choose and chose. I am good with my twos, to’s and too’s. There, their, they’re.

I could and have walked along beaches for hours picking up rocks. I find it soothing and humbling knowing they were once mountains and I can hold them. I bring a lot of rocks home and I can tell you when I got them and from where.

I can and have spent hours in thrift stores touching things that belonged to other people. I find it comforting to know that they were once loved by someone. I bring a lot of clothes home and I can tell you when and where I wore them.

I don’t believe in God but I believe in miracles.

It will be a miracle if he talks to me again.

I love thunder and lightning and watching the sky.

And him.

I believe in love at first sight. My dad saw my mom and knew he was going to marry her. I believe that love requires effort. When my dad got back from Vietnam he disappeared to California, my mom drove out west with two friends and brought him home.

She lost a lot of babies before she had me. She kept trying.

I am someone’s mother, daughter, sister, ex and friend. I tried to please everyone for a long time by trying to be normal. I stopped doing that and some of them stayed.

My son is happier now that I am happy. He tells me this often and it makes me happy. He isn’t normal either, I never asked him to be. I only ever ask others to be themselves.

I have been a bartender a waitress a cook a gas station attendant a secretary an events coordinator a stripper. I am not those things. At every job I ever had my happiest moments were scribbling words on napkins and post-its. I always wanted to be a writer. I can write now.

I have whatever math dyslexia is called. I got diagnosed when I was 21 and a nice man helped me retrain my brain. I can add now.

I am funny about numbers, I stuck to word counts before, 555, 777, 1010 was my favorite and 1111 if I was wishing hard on something. I am struggling to not look right now, I want this out, all of it. So I can work on what I want to work on.

I write erotica like I was born to do it. I have a pen name because I don’t want to be famous, or shame my parents and family.

I am overly sexual and until a few years ago I was ashamed of this.

That’s the thing about being strange. Sometimes it takes someone coming along and confessing their strange to realize you can find home in another person.

I ran away from home.

I have never liked running. Funny considering how often I have.

I have moved over 37 times in 28 years and never found home. Its not a metaphor, I moved a lot.

I am moving again, in with a room-mate. Save some money so I can stay away from work and write more. She gets me out of the house and I keep her home. It’s a good balance.

She doesn’t talk much when I am writing.

She knows how I take my coffee.

Milk, sugar and quiet.

I love her.

I love our house.

I am starting to love myself.

I found my voice on Facebook, shouted it from the rooftops with the blog. Used both for good or evil depending.

I am happier with my life in general than I have ever been.

But I would let all of it go in a heartbeat to be with him and learn how he takes his coffee.