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“I am not overly enamored with being lumped in with your exes.”

Well, then you haven’t been paying attention.

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I have this woman on the periphery of my life who is literally everything I am not.

She’s fucking awesome.

She’s also a domme so when she pays attention to me, I squirm a little in submissive wiggly-ness in spite of myself.

It’s really cool to have someone in my life who is my polar opposite yet compatible and accessible.

She posed a question the other day

What would your exes say to or about you?

Tons of feedback. Some negative, some positive.

It’s a good exercise I think, to look back at past reflections of what you were to other people.

It’s grounding and can show you what you need to work on or even just how far you have come.

T’was a wee wake up call for me.

I’ve been feeling unlovable.

I am currently a mess and not my most awesome lovable self.

I remember having conversations with my step-daughter in her teenage years and trying to solve any one of her problems with a straight line.

Somehow, she could take needing new shoes and twist it into the plight of sharks in the wild.

Amazing, yet maddening.

I am doing this thing. I can hear it. I am actually annoyed with myself like I used to be with her and I can’t stop it.

I am in a situation beyond my control and over a month away and I keep throwing around words like ‘mutilation’.

There is no solution. I just have to get to that point in my future and looping unpleasant life altering outcomes in the meantime is not doing me a tiny bit of good.

But, when Bara asked the question above, it gave me pause.

I do not have to wonder what my exes say about me. They tell me. Recently and frequently.

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Not all obviously. I am not a saint.

Ex hubby and Potato hate my guts.

Both still blame me for shit in their lives years after I left them.

6 months later, sure, be mad all you want. 7 years? 10 years?
Come on, grow up.

But, both of them blamed other women in their life for the shit that came before me and that isn’t my cycle to break. Their inability to take responsibility for their own lives is beyond my control.

And ex hubby only revised his hatred of me when I didn’t go running back to him at the beginning of this year. Ew no. So there was love there, twisted fucked up love, but his version of it.

I had joked many, many years ago about getting some of the good ones together to make me a resume.

But I already wrote the handbook for handling me.

This blog.

Lists and lists of what went right and what went wrong.
What I need help with and where I shine.

I know I am exhausting, intense, not a lot of fun to be around sometimes. I get it. I never say “I’m fine” when I am not, and I know that is what people are supposed to do.

But I also never say “I’m fine” and expect anyone to read my mind either, nor do I torture them when they can’t because let’s face it, not a lot of mind readers out there.

I don’t lie, even when it would be more convenient to do so.

I have no filter.

All double-edged swords to be sure, but hey, I come with my own swords, so that’s a good thing.

And an instruction manual. Complete with clearly labeled warnings and contingency plans and a full list of consequences faced by the others so they can be avoided. What not to do, a retrospective.

(It’s the fucking fire swamp.)

When I was 14 or 15, I ripped the first page out of a book.

It just says, “do you love”.

I still have it, in a little frame in my attic.

Been asking myself that for 32 years, and the answer is always the same.

I do.

Quite thoroughly really.

Exceptionally unconditionally as of late.

I added to Bara’s query by saying that I do not subscribe to the normal “I have you” or “I hate you” that usually begets the bitterness between exes.

If I had love for you once, I probably still do.

There are some I cannot speak to, but if you asked them about me, they would say I was a good woman, little bit crazy, but I treated them well.
But those are cans of worms I do not wish to open; I am all out of crows.

Sometimes, due to circumstances beyond my control I can only love the version of who they were when we were together, that happens sometimes and when I am confronted with the ugly truth of what they have become, that love turns to nostalgia and hope that they find their way wrapped up with a bow of indifference. I know I see the potential of who people could be. I don’t even get disappointed anymore, just stand back and watch to see what they do, waving pom poms till my arms get tired or I am excused from the playing field.

Even then, I am never really gone.

They come back for council or comfort, and if I can I give it.

Usually by the second or third swoop back into my life I am a little more arm’s length with my affection.

The strength that comes with surviving their absence.

They pushed me away and I stay there. Away.

I have learned the difference between those who value me in my new place in their life and those who just message to see if I will message back.
Their egos get hungry and they remember me feeding them well.

I’ve stopped answering them.

In turn for my support, when my light goes out and that Stella Polaris in my chest goes dim, sometimes, some of them rally.

Like now.

So many ‘I love you’s’ and while I appreciate it, I truly do.
They aren’t coming from the right mouth.

And it is a bit insulting really to hear things like ‘I wish we could have made it work’ when I have vivid memories of showing up and doing the work.

I am not the one who leaves, except with ex hubby and the Potato.

Maybe that is why they hate me. The only two clean breaks on record.

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There is one sure fire way to avoid getting lumped in with my exes, good or bad.

Don’t fucking leave.

After well over 10 days of deep terrifying darkness, reminiscent of my 7-year depression, I don’t see a light exactly but it is easing off.

That aforementioned cycle of six years of sadness and yuck ended in 2011.

I’m recognizing old patterns at lightening speed, understanding planets and I still don’t have a fucking clue what’s coming. All I can remember is the traumas but it seems like things change every 3 years or so.
Like right now for example.

I do know that the darkness won’t last.

I woke up yesterday and remembered what being happy might feel like.

Its a fucking doozy, this particular black hole I have been in. No doors, no windows, no hope or future that I can see.

Except

Something happened with the Hadron Particle Collider this week.
Not a weasel this time. But equally fucky.
I’ll post the article at the bottom.

The world slipped into the darkest timeline about 6 years back.

I remember when being alive didn’t feel like a low grade panic attack/badly written season 5 all the time; in the time called before. I have tried to pinpoint it. The moment where god threw up his hands and said fuck the world. But really, he left a long time ago. Childhood cancer exists, god cannot, animal abuse exists, god cannot, the Kardashians are a thing, god cannot be.

Shadows settle on the place, that you left
Our minds are troubled by the emptiness

I think I was looking for a singular event, like the toss of a dice, that catapulted us into whatever muck and mire this is. But maybe that isn’t how this works. The 2014 weasel caused a small rip and we, as humans doing shitty shit (Harambi for example) just kept ripping it wider and wider till the world fell in sometime in 2016.

I used to think Bowie was part of the rift, but I think he saw it coming and just went home.

We made it through 2016 with the clowns and the clown in office. And it just kept getting weirder.

And here we are.

Now what?

I cannot see a way forward, I have no choice but to look back.

Spotify gave me my year in review.

Ben Howard, Sigur Ros, Lumineers, Hozier, all good things.

But Youth by Daughter? My most played song?

No, no this will not do.

Destroy the middle, it’s a waste of time, from the perfect start to the finish line.

Well shit.

If the super depressing song fits, lets analyze it shall we? An interpretive dance.

Historically speaking I do a year in review around now anyways.

Why wouldn’t I?

Its over right?

Or close to it.

It looks like I will be leaving the exact same place I left, exactly 3 years to the day, and for as much that has changed in the last 3 years, the next few months are looking eerily similar.

Are we looping?

What did I miss?

I can’t see the future, but I will bet money that Giant and I end up on a couch watching the Illusionist again, hopefully without the Norovirus this time, I think we are still immune. February will be the beginning of a different journey into surgery and recovery instead of driving the unknown. But a trip alone into the abyss with a long recovery period and tumultuous change just the same.

Groundhog day, year 3.

Maybe I can get it right this time.

So what did I miss?

If you’re still breathing, you’re the lucky ones, cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs.

That is a little too true.

So why is a 6 year old song coming back to haunt me at the end of the world?

It really is a beautiful song; painful ones often are.

Collecting names of the lovers that went wrong

When Saturn dances across the sky, depending on where his feet land, we get lessons upon motherfucking lessons or, déjà vu and a whole lot of history repeating.

The last 3 years he has had all the grace of an angry, drunk, white guy on the dance floor at a wedding.

I saw a meme, and I will try to find it and add it here, about what Papa Cronos aka Father Time aka Saturn stole from each of the signs in the last 3 years. Accurate as fuck. All sanity, hope, magic gone. Until it wasn’t, then it was again, then it wasn’t and now it’s really gone. How many times did I almost die in Perdition…too many.  Punch drunk and drunk drunk. Trying to stay out of the path of the inebriated uncle at the wedding and failing miserably. Gemini…shocking situations huh? Shocked I lived.

Well I’ve lost it all, I’m just a silhouette
A lifeless face that you’ll soon forget
My eyes are damp from the words you left
Ringing in my head, when you broke my chest

You win. I give up.

Been broken so many times I’m not even pieces anymore, just a fine powder. Add some water and fire, I can make a whole new vessel just to have some Hulk come along and smash. Is that what is supposed to happen?

I suppose, looping back to the beginning, if it wasn’t just one singular even that launched us into the darkest timeline, it cannot be one singular event to launch us out.

The cranberry juice guy was a good start, doesn’t erase anything but he was a tiny speck of light in the dark. Dolly Parton becoming a saint to take Carrie Fisher’s place. Saturn is leaving the station he has occupied for the last 3 years and moving into the dreamier, less harsh sign of Aquarius and chillin’ in the sky with Jupiter for a lil bit.

I don’t have any answers, I don’t even know what questions to ask anymore.

Wait, maybe I do.

In 2014 I was taught to ask ‘how does it get better than this’ whether things were good or bad.
I have fallen out of that practice and I once found it soothing.
Maybe I will go back to that.
2014 was pretty good. Saturn was just entering Sagittarius, there was some love, some loss, a lot of lessons and the first time I ever heard that song.

2014 was my first year of becoming what I am now, and I could not have made it through the last 3 without the 3 before that. I know this.

3 years from now I will be a slightly different person, maybe still in the same place but I will be far enough removed from now to see what I was supposed to learn.

And if you’re in love, then you are the lucky one
‘Cause most of us are bitter over someone
Setting fire to our insides for fun
To distract our hearts from ever missing them
But I’m forever missing him
And you caused it

Exotic hyperons interact with protons at CERN

I shouldn’t be writing this.

I am way too biased.

Or, maybe I should.

I am super ultra mega qualified.

And I believe it can be justified.

I’ve been to every point of the compass rose when it comes to cheating and the halfway points in between.

Done it to others, had it done to me, cleaned up the messes when it has happened to my friends and I have been the mistress more than once.

R.M. Drake has been on A rotation on my newsfeed lately.

This.

This is important. A justification of sorts.

I refuse to be the bad guy for not living up to the expectations and ideals of someone who cannot be bothered to know me.

That is both lazy and illogical on their part.

Want to dictate someone’s every move? Go get a puppy or a puppet.

I don’t need to be trained, and I am a real girl. No strings needed, no leash required. Treat me right and I will return of my own accord.

Do I think cheating is great?

No.

I don’t.

But also, I think monogamy is toxic as fuck so there is that then.

I also know enough about myself and the world to now that the way I feel about things is not the only way things can be thought of.

Not my body, not my business what you do with it.

Do you boo.

But maybe listen to what I have to say before you right me off as a crazy slut with no boundaries.

Too many people in our lives have these false narratives about what they think we should be doing; what they think we should be. How they want us to fit them and how we should behave.
According to whom?

Am I not the boss of me? You go be the boss of you.

This dictatorship towards others leaves very little room for personal growth, truth and exploration. This constant bending and breaking and getting squished inside boxes that never fit, with labels that don’t match who we are.

It happened to me. More than once.

I couldn’t always find the exit. So sometimes I smashed through walls and made my own door.
Not subtle or graceful by any stretch. But I couldn’t stay where I was.

Especially not the last time.

Yesterday I was hit upside the head with the last time I cheated.

Like he sauntered into my inbox mere hours after I spoke of him.

It was weird, not gonna lie.

Remember that time I had a whole bunch of money and an apartment I really loved? (just testing)

I haven’t spoken to him in years. I cannot recall our last interaction, if it was good bad or indifferent.

I speak of him sometimes. He was my first healthy venture into the world of polyamory.

But not to him. Not until yesterday.

10 years ago this coming Super Bowl Sunday, when I was still trapped on the farm and really thought all hope was lost, he messaged me out of the blue.

If I had to guess, we hadn’t spoken since a really shitty break up a year or 2 prior. That time is very fuzzy for me. I just remember him asking about my tits and football.

He threw me a lifeline and like the drowning girl I was, I took it and didn’t let go. Hauling myself hand over hand to safety and sanity in an ocean of shit.

For he record. I hesitated. I had made vows and agreements and whether they were fair or sane, I made them.

2 months later I was sneaking out to sleep with him at every possible opportunity.

I’m telling all y’all it was a sabotage.

My ex husband had his mistress living in my house. I went back to an ex-boyfriend while still keeping one foot in my marriage.

No further justification needed right?

Technically, no, not really.

Literally no one except ex husband took any issue with what I was doing.

Shoulda coulda woulda left.

But at the time it did not seem possible.

So I did what I had to do to survive.

In an email to a friend I stated, “I was going to die or go insane, so I cheated.”

I was the least loved person in the house. Any dignity or ego I had shredded into nothing.

I really had lost the will to live.

The farm that was once Thunderdome had become a never ending episode of Survivor on a horrific loop. The 3 people I lived with doing their best to torture and banish me.

Good job guys, it worked. I left it to rot and ruin and built myself a new life. Several since really.

I did what I had to do to survive the circumstances I was in until I could change those circumstances.

I will not apologize.

I honestly don’t think I would have survived had it not been for my…mister, is that what we call male mistresses? I don’t fucking know. I think I named him the Ninja before. Ninja it is.

I had actually become completely accustomed to being misused and very misunderstood.
I had begun to think it was normal, that that was how things are.
At least when I was with him, I felt something that wasn’t sadness or rage or uncomfortably numb.

He didn’t promise me the world. I had hurt him too badly in the past for him to write a future with me in it, I don’t blame him for that at all.

He did what I cosmically needed him to do.

Showed me there was a world beyond the one I was trapped in. Reminded me that I existed, and that I was once happy and could be again.

He was a band-aid on a gaping chest wound. I know that now. But he slowed the bleeding just enough that I got my strength back and for that I am grateful.

I had to leave, take the knives out for once and for all so I could heal instead of impaling myself on the same sharp shit over and over. Constantly bleeding out.

And while there are raging narcissists like my ex husband for example who will cheat to fill the giant black holes where their souls ought to be, happy people don’t cheat. But, ultimately, he wasn’t happy, and as much as he tried to blame me for it, it wasn’t my fault. Nor was it his fault I was unhappy.

We just weren’t.

I know this is going to be a huge bone of contention with people who have been cheated on.

Sorry, but I believe this to be true.

I don’t like words like ‘blame’ and ‘fault’. I also don’t like the idea that I might end up in a situation where I am the only source of happiness for someone and that somehow my punishment for NOT being their everything will be their infidelity.

I accept that I can’t be that for someone, furthermore, I don’t want to be.
I have my own shit to do.

A lot of happy people I know are also polyamorous. Some practice it, others just understand it.
These are the ones who have a healthy idea of love and relationships.

They don’t rely on one source or one person for contentment and sustenance.

No one should really, it is a really too big a burden to place on one person.

And that is where I will accept some responsibility for the actions of my ex-husband, and my actions and reactions.

I did put that burden on him.

While simultaneously demanding he adhere to a picture of him I had painted of him in my head. Yes, he handed me the brush and some of the pigments when he lied to me and edited what he really wanted, and who he really was. But I did the same thing. Feigned contentment when I wanted and needed more than he could provide. Hid the pieces of myself that I fly like multi-colored flags now, announcing my presence and place in the world.

We both failed, ourselves and each other.

He tried to hide me away, but I let him.

He tried to amputate pieces of me, but I laid there and handed him the knife while demanding a limb for a limb.

Neither one of us was ultimately happy, or we wouldn’t have done what we did.

We weren’t compatible.

Like not at all.

I see way too many relationships like that and still participate in some personal relationships built solely on convenience and habit instead of symbiosis. Final Boss was that. Someone to scratch an itch I couldn’t reach, and I tried to make something out of it. Whoops.

But I am getting better.

None of my relationships prior to 7 years ago were built on any kind of understanding, because I didn’t understand myself.

Just one recipe for disaster after another and quite a few that I committed to imploding over and over again. Jamming puzzle pieces together instead of looking for ones that fit.

Ex-husband was a different monster in that knew who he was, didn’t like himself at all, and tried to make me responsible for fixing him and filling an ideal that couldn’t possibly exist in one woman.
I had no idea who I was and thought I could adapt and change into what he needed.

Dishonesty. All of it.

An easily toppled house of cards and lies and every time it would come crashing down, we would hastily rebuild it exactly like it was before.

The literal definition of insanity.

It was never going to work, and I cannot get that time back.

But I won’t dwell on my old prison, nor will I apologize for breaking out.

Part of me did die in that house, she had to so the rest of me could live.

I met you and suddenly I find myself needing to know the plural for apocalypse.
Riley Finn, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I didn’t check my memories when I woke up this morning.

I usually do.

Got a notification reminding me, so I looked.

There is a LOT in there.

Yep.

Martyrdom is exhausting at best. All sacrifice, for what?

Saint Sarah, patron saint of gypsies. For reals, look it up.
I look after those who wander, while I myself wander?
Great, thanks.
And here I am 7 months from homelessness without a clue where to go or what to do.
Pray to myself maybe?

And weirdly, or not so weirdly, “Maybe God is Trying to tell you Something” just came on my Spotify playlist.

It’s been dead air and blackness for a couple weeks now.

Go ahead god, I am listening.

I had a vision of the future where I was happy. I sat down and did the actual paperwork and budget for it and realized it was a practical possiblity.

But then it got snatched away and replaced with the nothing I am currently navigating.

It is dark here.

I have stood at the edges of so many abysses and never seen nothing like this. I’ll jump when it’s time, I always do.

A year ago today I was in Erie Pennsylvania, a week before I was supposed to return to Perdition, a week after I realized I was leaving finally, and I had a way out.

We got stuck in Erie. This stretch of impassable highway, going 10 miles an hour not sure where the road was or if we were even on it. It had happened before numerous times. That last bit of meteorological fuckery stretching out the last 4 hours to home into a half a day or more. Why the good people of Pennsylvania built a road that close to the lake where the snow flies sideways for ¼ of the year is beyond me.

Last year we thought we were going to have to stay the night, stopped for gas and snacks and sanity and somehow managed to get into a clear band between the blizzards and chased it all the way home.

In other words, we didn’t think we were gonna make it, but we made it.

And I too will make it even if I have no idea how. I can either wait out the storm or seize an opportunity of clarity and just keep going.

6 years ago it was this…

Life isn’t something I have. It’s not something that happens to me.
It’s something I participate in, wander around with child like wonderment at the beauty of it, and something I create with my thoughts and actions.
On that note, and being single for once, I have given a lot of thought on what kind of love I want to have.
Someone called me and that boy from high school ‘Mickey and Mallory’, but that isn’t it. I don’t want a body count.
For a while I was fixated on the idea of Johnny and June. But I can be more than a pillar and a muse.
I want Ricky Fitz and Jane Burnham, instant and total acceptance of each other’s weird.
I want Tyler Durden and Marla Singer, with the godlike sex, and the open ending, he came around in the end and the world fell apart while they stood together and watched it.
There is no pre-written conclusions here. and I can imagine them happy after the credits roll.

Wow, I am still exactly where I was before I even started this blog. Not okay.

Today was the day 6 years ago that I scheduled my first post for the solstice.

12.13.14 I let go of that boy from high school and the toxicity that came with it. 6 years and 4 days.

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4 men have reached out to me over the last 4 days.

One I have known since grade 7, one since 10^th grade, one was the aforementioned Mr. Solo from my 18^th/19^th year on the planet, and last night Giant checked in.

2/4 did this weird thing (last night, within moments of each other) wherein they used my full name and demanded to know if I was alright and safe.

They all know I would never cry wolf, not even with a wolf at the door.

I am safe, but I’m not alright.
(You knew that or you wouldn’t be here)
And not to be ungrateful, but let’s say I wasn’t safe…whatchoo gonna do about it?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m far from ungrateful. Giant almost always shows up exactly when I need him before I even realize I do need him.

But these problems I have right now are existential.
They don’t have solutions.

Men like to solve things.

I stumbled on this truth a few weeks back, that I don’t need something to do, I just need somewhere to BE.

I have to accept my lot in life or change my life.
Or just my perspective maybe.

It’s all posthumous autopsies over here.

I asked Solo last night, “instead of going over what went wrong with us, maybe we should look at what we did right.”

Him: A lot I think
We did love each other

Me: It was love wasn’t it

That kinda hit me like a train in my chest. We did love each other and it didn’t end up mattering.

He cited me taking care of him. And I did.

That is kinda what I do.

But I was 19 at the time. It wasn’t what I did then. But it might have been the beginning of becoming that girl.

What teenager put the needs of someone else before her own like that?

Me, I guess. Weird that it took 20 years in between being with him and then 7 more of being alone to realize all of this.

And hindsight says ‘yes’.

That was the beginning.

I also exhibited the emotional maturity at the time to accept that something was good without having a label on it.

Been practicing that for years and years now it seems.

He says we were kids experiencing grown up love and had no idea what to do with it.

He isn’t wrong.

I accept the term ‘grown up love’ with quite a bit of bitterness. I have years of anecdotal proof that most grown-ups do not have a fucking clue about love. But, at 19 and 20 respectively, he and I stumbled on it. The comfort we felt around each other allowed us to safely explore the people we were going to become.

3 out of 4 of the men who I spoke to last night have, at times, expressed different levels of regret for treating me the way they did in the time called before. I would have happily dated any of them. Tried to actually.

Giant no.

But that is different. He is the practice test for all the things I have learned… and I’ve passed with flying colors every time, even when the lessons and the questions change.

He says he has questions for me. Things he regrets not asking.
I don’t know what they are.
I don’t mind when he is cryptic.
I promised to answer them when I get back.

I feel bad for him actually. He seems to always find me right after a storm. The levees break and he just stands in the rush of my thoughts and my words getting drowned in my inability to shut the fuck up. I can hear myself talking way too much and I cannot stop myself. It has always been this way now that I think about it, and he is still here.

My tattooer friend from grade 10 sent me a long message asking me to see myself as more than the sum of my physical parts. I am trying.

They are all trying really hard to get me to see what they see, and I am grateful for it. Willfully blind but grateful.

I haven’t felt inclined to lie or sugarcoat how I am feeling and that in itself is a gift from god.

Solo says I am a good woman. They all do.

I needed to hear it.

I am not inclined to argue, but I end up alone regardless of my goodness.

And herein lies the existential dilemma. Do I continue to love the way I do and have that be reward unto itself?

Memories say yes.

Love these kings dressed in rags who have amnesia*, until they remember who they are.

No further instructions.

Just this.

Source*

Why You Should Date A Normal Girl Versus A Wild Mystic.

I knew today was gonna be a two-fer.

I have been purposefully avoiding my blog and the internet trying to write another book.
But like a siren, she calls to me (U2)

I made it 2 or 3 days.

Flipped from 8 hours scrolling and one writing to 5 writing, 2 tanning and still spent some time upon the interwebz. But less than before.

33 000 words on the new book. Not in 3 days, altogether (6 months now?) But all things considered. Not bad. 3000 in the 3 days I tried.

Zero today but they can’t all be diamonds.

Inspiration exists but it must find you working. Picasso.

For comparison I can churn out a blog post (1000-1500) words before my first cup of coffee is fully consumed. Pour a second, sip, edit and voila. Ta da. Fairly instant gratification. Maybe that is part of the problem.

I have to break so many loops, one of them being beating myself up for the things I didn’t do when I had the time.

I forgive myself for the things I didn’t accomplish during the apocalypse.

Life happens, and rarely goes how we planned it.

I can’t plan now and am anxiously awaiting the transition from that particular fact being a source of terror to liberation.
I remember feeling free once. I know I did.
All this cosmic fuckery and eclipse portal energy that is normally reserved for the summer months is occurring in Sagittarius, the archer, the bowman, the personification of the reconciliation between man and beast. High energy fire sign shenanigans, like the Lion’s Gate portal that opens in the sign of Leo, but the energy here is more mature and refined, less ego and more forethought.

Add to that, the bow and arrow.

That is exactly the sensation I am feeling right now, a rapid pull backwards into things I thought I had conquered and dealt with, but I haven’t.

The tenseness of pulling forced backwards and the need to hold steady from back here and aim properly.

I am getting pulled way way way back.

I am 19.

I wrote earlier today that once upon a time I used to like to dance, in bars, for fun.

I did.

I don’t know what happened to that girl who felt confident enough to do so, but she’s long gone.

I don’t know who said what or what happened that took that away from me. But I am too self-conscious now. Which is super bizarre considering I am a stripper and I dance on stage in front of a crowd for a living. I don’t know how it is different, it just is.

But let’s go back and visit the girl who could dance for fun, shall we?

I am going to age myself here, but I have a very vivid memory of Lenny Kravitz singing ‘are you gonna go my way’ and me smiling in a crowd of people, moving my hips and being happy.

And I have a very vivid memory of walking up to the bar to get a cranberry juice and seeing ‘him’.

I agonized last night about what to nickname him, everyone gets a nickname.

He was just gonna be LLTL, long lean tanned and lovely.

He was.

But he Solo’ed me 3 months prior to that night in the bar.

My girlfriend from public school was getting married and we had these events called ‘Stag and Does’. The couple would sell drink tickets and have raffles for prizes and raise money for the wedding. I am sure they exist outside of the tiny town I grew up in by other names.

And I wasn’t old enough to go as a guest.

I was 18 though, and old enough to tend bar. So I did, and I was good at it.

I served this boy I had never seen before. And I knew almost everybody.

He was beautiful. Lithe, tanned skin, cheekbones for days. And cocky as fuuuuuuuuuck.

And at some point during the night he was climbing up he stairs to the bathroom of the community center rec room as I was climbing down and in a moment of brave I stopped on the last step, spun around and said “hey, you’re gorgeous.” He smiled this megawatt smile and said, “I know.”

I think it was March.

By June I had turned 19, had a new tit and I ran into Mr. Solo at the bar.

I got brave one more time and made sure we went home together.

This went on for a few months at least, throughout that summer into the fall, 27 years ago.

So why bring it up now…

Glad you asked.

Once upon a time, probably 14 years ago when myspace was a thing I got a message from Mr. Solo.

He apologized for what happened at the end of that summer.

And what happened was this.

He looked me in the face and said, “I had fun with you but there’s girls you fuck and there’s girls you take home to mom.”

He started dating a girl he could take home to mom. I can see her face, she actually had really nice hair (don’t they all), but her name escapes me. A year younger than me and one of the popular girls. I was never popular, and I didn’t know if I was good amongst the moms, no one ever took me home to meet one.

I spun around again, probably 9 months to the day we met, and I walked away.

I was pretty upset. It was a shitty thing to do and say.

His roommates didn’t like me.

He rented a house with a bunch of dudes and they all worked shift work at the nuclear power plant.
They would sneer while he and I were snuggled on a scratchy, plaid, hand-me-down couch in the living room and listening to oldies.
He loved Janis Joplin. I loved all of it. The cuddles, the company.
The sneering and shitty commentary not so much.

His house was down the street from mine. And every Friday and Saturday night (prior to the aforementioned conversation) for months on end I would go dance with my friends until he was done drinking with his and we would go home together. In the morning I would walk the short walk home, shower and go about my week. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I was happy.

His bedroom had knock off Holly Hobbie wallpaper and we would giggle about the big headed kids. We fucked of course, a lot, but we talked a lot too. I remember waking up and telling him about a dreams I had while the moon glow came through the window and covered the bed in this beautiful blue light.

He always held me while we were sleeping. He always listened when I spoke.

He was the closest I had ever gotten to having a boyfriend. And even though there was no label on it, it felt good and real.

I didn’t know at the time that he would stay awake and watch me sleep too.

He didn’t just apologize back in the myspace days. He said I was the one who got away.

That he had massive regrets.

I saw him 8 or 9 years ago. I have a weird feeling it was the weekend that I went to another ex’s wedding, the one who kept saying my name instead of his bride to be’s. Whoops. Must have been another vortex of cosmic madness.

After a nice lunch and catch up session at the very bar we used to hook up at, he walked me to my car and stole a kiss. Said something about not wanting to add one more regret about me to his life.

And I talked to him last night.

He was just checking on me. He used to do that a lot.

He disappeared a couple years ago, off my friends list.

I finally asked him why last night.

He said he was jealous, and he didn’t like seeing me get hurt.

I didn’t dig any deeper. I honestly don’t know which part of the parade, in the festival of pain that is my dating life, was the trigger there. I don’t need to know.

My need to archive and be historically accurate all the time is waning these days.
Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. (Steve Miller Band)
I just know history repeats itself.

Just like I knew Solo’s birthday even before I checked, August 4^th, of course it fucking is.

I asked permission to write this so I could try to sort through everything.
He said okay.

Me: You unfriended me a long while back Can you please tell me why?

Him: Basically, I was an idiot. I think I was jealous.

Me: Okay, I didn’t understand

Him: I didn’t like that you kept getting hurt and knowing you didn’t deserve it

Me: It seems like that’s just my life
Actually 90% of my relationships have been like ours was. Like disturbingly eerily similar

Him: Ya?

Me: Guys get really excited about me and then bolt.
You used to watch me sleep (and you left anyways)

Him: Ya, it was cute.

(it was)

Me:Was that a ‘me’ thing or is that a thing you do with women?

Him: I didn’t do it before you, or since

Me:I was 19 ______. 27 years of living the same relationship
What voodoo did you do?
Maybe you could write a letter on my behalf advising them not to run

(pause)

Me: Do you still have regrets?

Him: With you? Definitely.
I should have listened with my heart instead of my ears.

Me: Your friends were pretty douchey
Or is there more to the story?

Him: No, that’s the story. It never ends with me not being an idiot.

Me: I’m sorry
I wasn’t very brave either

Him: Don’t be sorry. I could have fixed it and I didn’t. That’s on me.

Me: I could’ve said “um no, you’re not dumping me”
I’ve heard that is a thing
Instead of just walking home a crying about it

Him: Ya, but I should have realized what I did to you. Youth is wasted on the young.

It truly is.

But what if we aren’t young anymore and what if there is some cosmic fuckery pulling off old bandages and showing me this is just the same thing that happens to me over and over. I’m finding no comfort here.

I don’t want to be a regret any more than I want regrets of my own.

How do I stop this?

I don’t know what I am supposed to do.

It isn’t even new information.
He was the first to do the thing, and the first to admit regret.

But there have been so many others.

Am I supposed to dig my heels in and refuse to go when I am being exchanged for ‘wifey material’?

Had I found the brave to say “No, this is good and we both know it now shut up and fuck me.” Instead of returning his hoodie when asked to do so, cheeks aflame with shame and cocooning in my room would it have made a difference?

I’ve never actually tried that.

The closest I ever got was asking Giant ‘why’ and continuing to sleep with Final Boss after the fact. I slept with both of them after the fact.

No.

What’s past has passed.

Everything went the way it was supposed to.

I just wish I knew what I was supposed to take from this before I launch into the unknown yet again.

And maybe this is it.

Maybe I never asked them if they were really truly sure that they really truly wanted me to leave was because I didn’t feel worthy of being there in the first place.

And a big part of me still doesn’t.

I just accept what is given instead of asking for what I want.

Cosmic energy like what we just experienced is manic, like the worm at the end of a bottle of tequila. We were already drunk and this took it next level.
Euphoric and intoxicating and absolutely leaves all emotions raw and exposed.
Then there is the hangover.

I have an eclipse hangover.

We were told to dig back through 2017 for lessons between the darkening of the moon and the sun.
But my lessons are always the same.

I do the same shit over and over.

Make someone into something they are not, and I end up like Ke$ha at the beginning of Prayin.

“Am I dead? Or is this one of those dreams? Those horrible dreams that seem like they last forever? If I am alive, why? Why? If there is a God or whatever, something, somewhere, why have I been abandoned by everyone and everything I’ve ever known? I’ve ever loved? Stranded. What is the lesson? What is the point? God, give me a sign, or I have to give up. I can’t do this anymore. Please just let me die. Being alive hurts too much.”

To clarify. I don’t want to die. But I don’t really want to live either.

My life is just a void now. Return of the Haboob.

I get up. I feel like shit. I try to keep going. But going to what? Back to the attic? Then what?

At least my sweatpants are there.

There are so many unknowns. More than those the plague has created, which was already a fucking lot.

At least in 2017 I was brave. Not anymore. Punch drunk and hand shy.

Frozen in fear now.

I wasn’t really dealing with what was vexing me.

I thought I was.

But the other day I had a 2 hour long text conversation with someone I have known since I was 14.
And some extra truth came busting out like the silicone in my tit.

It’s leeching into my body and making me hurt. Bad.

He originally messaged me regarding writing erotica. Then we spoke of his divorce and finally my tits.

I can’t imagine how that one simple seemingly insignificant thing could have such a staggeringly significant effect on a young girl’s psyche, and the ripple effects that could cause.

Ripples became waves and I am drowning here.

That is what is bothering me. And now my good tit hath betrayed me.
Et tu good tit?

Something is wrong with the other one too. Feels like an air bubble trapped behind it.

I have been dealing with this since before he and I met. I started seeing my reconstructive surgeon in the 8^th grade. I met Scott in grade 9 or 10.

My first surgery was a disaster, second also went badly.

3rd was great.

This was the 4th and they’re making me too sick to move.

It doesn’t matter if time has passed or the situation is different. 

I am still that girl.

I’m 15 years old waking up from surgery, in pain, hopes crushed, a more deformed tit than the nothing that I started with, bawling while my mother screams at me. I am giving myself pneumonia at Christmas because I didn’t want to go home and be resented or pitied.

Or I am 18 going through the same shit that happened at 15. With the same ugly results. T’was a blessing when that one broke.

Or I’m 35 sitting in a freezing barn 3 days after surgery. Crying and getting screamed at, then abandoned so my husband could go fuck someone else in my house. An hour later I have a coat full of baby goat. The goat’s foot hooked into the binding holding my boobs into place and pulled it loose. I didn’t care. I got the goat fed and settled in for the night and collapsed into a depression sleep without fixing my bandages and they have been crooked since. Her name is Layla and she still lives.

Or I’m 40 away from the farm, sitting in another surgeon’s office getting poked and prodded while he draws incision lines on my skin. He proposed a lot of incisions. I didn’t go back.

I’m not creating scenarios. I’m remembering what happened. 

The good news is, my friend is an incredible tattooer and if I cannot accept the scars that will come from getting these hideous things out and amended, there is another option.

I had another surgery when I was 19.

It went well. Like super awesome, non traumatic day surgery with really symmetrical results. It was the day before my birthday and I really pissed my parents off by going to the bar the next night.

Honestly? I felt fine. My pocket was well established, I had 3 stitches internal through an old scar. I didn’t drink at the time. I was sober from my 18^th Christmas until I was mid 20’s.

The same Christmas party that I learned I was a really good bartender, I also realized I was a really bad drunk. I threw up a lot, on my boss’s girlfriend’s shoes.

Out of all the things I had done drunk, and there were some stupid, violent, terrible things…that was the thing that stopped me. I loved my job, I needed it to exist. So, I quit doing the thing that might make me lose it.

Didn’t stop me from going to the bar.

I used to love to dance, on dance floors, at bars, sober even. I don’t anymore, the idea terrifies me, and I have no idea why.

Everything is terrifying me lately.

My girlfriend went online for me and looked at some reconstructive surgery results, post mastectomy etc. and said the results looked really promising.

I can’t look.

I have been under the knife and come out disappointed too many times. I can’t see myself in those women.

At least she acknowledged the difference between being excited about elective surgery and what I am going though now. Too many people think I should be happy, and I honestly can’t be.

Yes, there is a chance that everything will be great and obviously better than now.

But…

I am going on well over a year of sickness with no idea of the cause (until recently) and I have a 75% personal failure rate and the absolute bullshit clincher is, I didn’t even need these tits, all I really had to do was leave my shitty husband and put on a bit of weigh.

At least, after talking to Njava and Scott, I feel a little less alone. Mandabear is letting me stay with her while I recover. Giant will come check on me too. I have a contingency plan of sorts.

And the surgery itself and the physical part of the recovery isn’t even what is bothering me so much as who will I be if I can’t dance anymore?

What if I end up too scarred and hideous to work?

How will I get by without the job that has kept me safe and fed for 22 years?
Who will I even be?
Where will I go?

I already feel fundamentally unlovable, 36 years of tit issues and I have never figured it out.

None of this is getting answered any time soon. I won’t know until I know.

And I am guessing everything I ever wanted is on the other side of this fear.

---

Author’s note.
This is not a plastic surgery vanity thing and even if it was, that’s my business.
But, to clarify…
I have a congenital deformity called Poland’s Anomaly and have written several articles about it.
Just use the search bar at the top right of the blog’s main page or Google and type in Poland’s Anomaly.

With Saturn leaving Capricorn and joining up with Jupiter, I have been charged with reconciling and figuring out what lessons we have missed from December 2017 specifically.

Not just me, every fucking body.

Where were you? What were you doing? What have you failed to fix or accept? What did you do wrong?

Good thing I have this blog so I can go back and look and see exactly where I was and what I was doing.

At the beginning of December 2017 I was pontificating about how things weren’t so bad the year prior.

And they weren’t. Looks like I had Big Spoon and Giant keeping me company after the Last One left.

Cruz was the spring/summer, and that was a whole big lesson on not building a relationship on sex alone. And seeing who someone truly was the first time they showed you.

November was setting up the house I didn’t want to be in and soon after left. My first trip to Newfoundland to heal from the Last One in October.

It truly was one of the best spaces I have ever created. And I did it alone.

No regrets or unfinished business there except a dryer full of my favorite linens that disappeared.

New Year’s Eve was spent finishing up the final edit on Half Wild Thing, after 4 or 5 years of not doing that. So that was calm and nice. Cathartic and necessary.

January I went to Mexico, check, here again, likely leaving 3 years to the day I arrived.

But what about that cosmically important part in between when Cronos was handing out life lessons?

I have 21 articles to tell me all about it.

Roy Moore almost got elected, #metoo was happening, I wrote about my desire to have a gangbang or I got banned from Facebook and had to republish the article with a different title and featured image. I think the latter.

I went to the secret wedding.

Ben Howard took his place in the A-rotation on my speakers and the soundtrack to my life, alongside Lord Huron, which is aptly playing right now.

To the ends of the earth would you follow me?

And I think I figured it out. Fuck

December was Florida. The journey through the Sierra Madres this time made me extra reminiscent for those last 7 years of journeys to peace and waves and ocean.

West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home, country roads.

It did look and feel like that, just with unfamiliar palms and cacti and the mountains were higher.
The tunnels and bridges were different but beautiful. But still, take me home.

I don’t know if I had made the decision to move yet. I must have.

The clincher there was the disaster trip with Panda to Florida, after which she told me she had hated me for a while. Even though she spent 10 days being a parasite in my happy place. But I know things weren’t great leading up to that trip, because she apologized when she got there and took it back when we got home. 3 years of friendship gone in an instant.

I also finally acknowledged the existence of twin flames and renounced my interest in participating in such nonsense. I gravitated back to a soulmate instead. Giant and I were going through some shit separately and healing together. A girl, with really good hair, tried to trap him with a baby. Bullet dodged. We held each other a little tighter in the night after that.

But I would never trap or manipulate anyone. And we still love each other. That wasn’t the lesson.

Twin flames do exist and it’s not a choice to be made, just a reality to accept and adapt to or run from.

I think I figured it out.

I made that boy from Newfoundland into something he wasn’t. And I made a big life changing move after he showed me the truth of who he was… and I suffered for it. I held onto what was said at the beginning and ignored the rest.

I think I do that a lot.

I focus so hard on what they were, I can’t see what they are.

It is easy to be excited about me at the beginning, I am shiny and new. I am low maintenance and high sex drive. I am acceptance personified.

Then there is this…

Most men’s predecessors were not leaders. They were men who served under those leaders and as such could only emulate those men in hope of touching to some extent the divine masculine force. Consequently, it’s those impersonations that ended up being passed down, and that’s why there’s no real explanation for any of those behaviors. That’s what begets the innate frustration; a need to tow the party line with no understanding of why and no willingness among any in the party to question it.

Women teach about feminine power all the time, whether they realize it or not, in insults just as well as in instruction imparted as a rite of passage. So whether they use it or not, many are in possession of that power.

And men who lack their own will quickly latch onto women who possess it. Because women can confer power to an extent (consider the effect Erykah Badu is said to have on men) because she can force him to grow into a force to match her own. This is likewise why those same men later cut and run; the Work is too much for them and they couldn’t handle it.

Arias Ethaniel Ri’Chard

I do think there is something about me that forces men to grow or run.

I also think I have tainted the life experiences of a couple young ones wherein they have known me and can no longer settle for less than what I give. Maybe that’s a blessing, they don’t have to go through the mess of lesser love.

I know this endless search and how painful it is though, to be wrong over and over.

I’d spare us all if I could.

But maybe that is part of it.

I think the not knowing is worse than knowing. The atrophy of acceptance without the thrill of trying.

I tried.

12.12 portal is open, inside the eclipse portal that closes in 2 days, with the Great conjunction a week after that. And a new moon close to the new year.

It is a powerful time. The sun is going to go dark and so am I.

I was a-ready to die for you, baby
Doesn’t mean I’m ready to stay
What good is livin’ a life you’ve been given
If all you do is stand in one place

I’m on a river that winds on forever
Follow ’til I get where I’m goin’
Maybe I’m headin’ to die but I’m still gonna try
I guess I’m goin’ alone

Lord Huron, Ends of the Earth

fuck, i wrote this whole thing and forgot to go back far enough.

The Aftermath

My Viking witch from Colorado that reads my cards and holds my hand when I fall apart messaged me at the beginning of 2020 and said,
“Buckle up buttercup the retrogrades this year are overlapping and intense”.

It isn’t like I didn’t believe her, I did, but how could anything go wrong?

I had met the love of my life, I had a grand plan, I had moved away from perdition, I was writing a book, I had a cute little attic space to hold me and my things when I wasn’t visiting here or there, I found a great place to work where I was 2 weeks on 2 weeks off, so I could travel, how amazing is that? The future was laid out before me so beautifully.

It was a leap year, weren’t leap years good?

Well, 2016, but nothing could be quite so bad as that with losing Bowie, and the clowns, and the gorilla, and Prince and the election and and and 2012 wasn’t great either. Still dating the potato and struggling. 2008 I was still stuck in my marriage, okay, leap years are bad, historically they just are. I know this.

But this one felt different. Didn’t it?
My optimism is an idiot of epic proportions. Just clueless really.

But I had good reason at the beginning of the year to think things were going to be…good.

I saw my man in January and again in February, the price of plane tickets dropped dramatically in March, so I got to go to Arizona and then go see him again for 5 days.

I had been sequestered on an island of ‘not quite right’ working every day for 2 years, never really going anywhere but work and home then work and back home. Dating dudes but not really dating, trying to get sober but never really staying that way. Living the same day over and over for 2 years and pretending it was a life.

I escaped, albeit on a whim, with some good luck and help from a dear friend.

It was time for me to fly, right?

I knew about the virus, my roommate owns a business in China, we’d been following the news since December, but I had lived through SARS in Toronto, much ado about very little, surely this would be that. Zika, MERS, Ebola, this is just how the world is now right? Tiny little outbreaks far away and the world spins madly on.

That didn’t happen this time. But we persevered, this is what we do. This is what I do.

Destroy the middle it’s a waste of time, from the perfect start to the finish line. Youth, Daughter

In the middle I kept getting sicker and sicker and not knowing why. My man and I split briefly after a disaster trip to see him in June (mid retrograde, what was I thinking). Then quickly reconciled. I went back to perdition for 80 days. Collected the rest of my things, fixed my car and made peace with the past and then I drove home in immeasurable pain. I left just in time for my work here to shut down, I could have turned around and gone back but I didn’t, and I am wondering if I made the right decision.
Then I came here just to have all of that fall apart again.

As it stands, when I looked at the previous trips on and off the island, the 3 days in the car, it never hurt like that before. Pulling over every few hours, crying so hard I’d puke. I went to the doctor, and a month later I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, then undiagnosed and they finally found the rupture in my implant that I knew was there. And a not so metaphorical hardening of my heart which is now also metaphorical.

I see clearly that needed to go back, and I needed to leave, and I needed that push to go to the doctor and get this figured out.
Just like I needed to leave in January and be in the safe space of my attic as the world got weird.

My life was getting stolen by the silicone migrating around my body, but because of lockdown I didn’t even realize. Almost a full year lost to sickness, my own and this virus.

But I kept living and trying.

And now we are 25 days to the end.

I thought I was going to get a cosmic do-over. My optimism somehow made it through the worst of all this.
Until now.

All the things I wanted to do at the beginning of 2020, the life I saw for myself not gone, just delayed.

Right?

Universe says no. Tarot cards say no. Eclipses say no. What was the point of surviving all those retrogrades and all this chaos just to get to the end and have that taken away too?

I suppose I will just have to keep going to find out.
My optimism has taken a back seat to stubbornness.

If I don’t know where to go, I’ll get there ~ Reality Bites

That life I thought was just delayed ain’t happening either. Creeping deadlines come and gone, replaced with other (more urgent) deadlines. Surgery, eviction. My hetero life partner in crime tucked into a very good relationship 1000 miles away from where we were going to live. And I am happy for her, I am.

My relationship has dissolved into nothing. My son turned the key on his very first apartment of his very own. He has a union job, and he is happy. I am officially unencumbered, and I am truly alone. I am still adjusting.

25 days to the end. Sitting on my girlfriend’s couch while the rest of the household sleeps off a drunken night at a cowboy bar, drinking mediocre coffee in my bestie’s boyfriend’s sweatpants. Not ideal, but not the worst either. He said I could keep the pants.

I don’t really believe the universe adheres to the Gregorian calendar, but as someone on this earth and stubbornly clinging to this mortal coil, I kinda gotta.

I supposed I should be grateful to be entering the new year free of attachments and obligations.

And I truly am grateful for all the things I have, the things I have lost and the things I have learned.

This was a year of rest and recovery; I have more rest and recovery waiting on the other side of surgery. I will start feeling human again approximately a calendar year from when the world shut down.

And, yes, there are a lot of unknowns.

Where will I live. Where will I work. Will my tits be better or worse. Am I really going to start feeling better after surgery or is this just the one head of the Hydra and two more monsters will grow in it’s stead. What if I do feel better and I am still not capable of accomplishing anything. Then what.

So many then what’s, where’s and what if’s and so few answers.

I think I am going to cocoon for the next little while. I have no ‘have to’s’ until my consultation and subsequent surgery.

I remember one new years when I was hold up at my girlfriend Anna’s house, with intermittent Wi Fi, mid break up with ex hubby. Her house was so full of cat hair and despair. I’d bet money it was a leap year. I cried so hard I puked for 3 days and in between I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and decided to keep living. I know the plural of apocalypse, I have survived many.
That was about my lowest point on this earth.
If I made it through that, this coming one on the ocean should be a cakewalk.

I’ll sit quietly through the eclipse and the great conjunction on the solstice. Welcome 2021 down at the ocean just letting everything go to make room for the new.

I have built myself up from nothing before and I know I can do it again.

Damn, y’all are toxic.

Let me rephrase and qualify that.

Probably not the people on my page who take an active interest and have the wherewithal to actually click on the link to come to the blog instead of just commenting on the meme I use for the featured image.

Most of you are okay, if not amazeballs.

But jesus fucking christ some of these other ones.

Toxic as fuuuuuck.

I guess I am lucky and must exist in a bubble, or I choose to ignore or cut out certain ‘types’ of people in my real life. Whatever it is, I was shocked and appalled at the reactions to this meme I posted.

And this lady.

This is a verbatim comment on my page on this particular post

Sounds like a “sex worker” seeking customers to me. If your definition of pleasure’s got nothing to do with anything sex outside a good & healthy relationship,i’ve got no issue with my lover hanging out with he’s friends. This post kinda sound like a add for sex workers to me,besides, if my man’s happy in our relationship,he ain’t gonna have much time for ppl out there cuz he’ll be too busy having fun with me. Again,am not saying he can’t hang out with he’s buddy’s which includes female friends. There’s no way on earth am gonna be in a relationship that i’ve got to share my man sexually,nope,i don’t want no damn STD’s sister   . LZG

Sis, who hurt you and why can’t you let it go?

And why is sex worker in quotes, are we imaginary?

I feel bad for her man, I truly do. I will bet money she won’t ‘let’ him watch porn.

Out of the 700 posts I have posted on ye olde blog I would hazard a guess that a good portion have contained something about ‘if you really love someone, you let them be themselves’ or ‘relationships are not tantamount to slave ownership.’

We all know I was married, we all know he cheated, we all know that I attained a state of stubbornness and crazy that I allowed the mistress to move in at one point. If memory serves, and sometimes it doesn’t, especially around then, it lasted February to September. I got caught cheating and was forcibly removed.

I started cheating in earnest in May of that year. Kicker was, I wasn’t technically ‘allowed’. There was no goose gander agreement. And while I technically agreed to the fine print, it wasn’t working for me. How could it. There was no room for renegotiation so I cheated.

He had spent years making damn sure I had no meaningful relationships outside of ours. I lost friends like a tree loses leaves in the fall for 7 years. Not entirely his fault, but still.

I was technically dependent, and he liked it that way.

Except it backfired, because I am me and I am likeable.

He still fusses that he can’t go here or there around where we lived because people judge him for how he treated me.

Well ya, what did you think was gonna happen? I am a good person, people like me.

Sounds like a lot of not my problem. I was a good farm neighbor, I helped when helping needed to be done. I was nice to people, I worked at the gas station and was pleasant to my co workers and customers. Not my fault they didn’t see his failed attempt at totalitarian Mormonism the way he wanted them too.

But that is narcissism 101. And has nothing to do with going forward.

From the things I post, and a few pages I share, I have noticed that I have amassed a small following of polyamorous people on my page. And I love them.

“I am too polyamorous for this comment section.” -Amy

Me too sis, me too.

I didn’t start out this way, see above where I was married, and he cheated*. I hated it; I didn’t want to share.

*Cheating is not polyamory. Polyamory is honesty and a custom agreement between the people in the polyamorous relationship.

But as all that water has gone under that bridge that I napalmed into oblivion, one of the first things I realized is that it wasn’t the sex that bothered me, it was the dishonesty and the ensuing, unending drama. So much drama.

The man I cheated on my husband with was polyamorous. The way he explained it and his honesty about his expectations and limitations from the beginning, plus the fact that he held me in the elevated regard and made sure I was emotionally okay all of the time made the whole polyamory thing make sense to me. He was a good partner, his extracurricular activities never affected me, he made sure of it.  He stated he tried being monogamous a few times and he was fundamentally unhappy. I accept this.

Everyone has different needs and if you want a healthy relationship you should probably figure out what those needs are and make sure they are compatible with yours.

It is literally just accepting your partner for who they are.

The end.

He was 6’3”, blond, blue eyes and not monogamous.

He couldn’t change who he was anymore than he could grow or shrink a few inches.

Just is.

I doubt in my lifetime I will ever see the death of this traditional prison everyone calls marriage.

And I am sure I have said this before but literally every other contract has terms and conditions and escape clauses. There should be a renewal clause. Every 5 to 10 years a renegotiation. People change and grow apart. The 7 year itch is real and has merit. The divorce rate is over 50%, normalize not staying somewhere you are unhappy be it a job, a relationship, a city anything. We are not built to live the same year over and over until we die, unless you are and that’s fine too.

If I ever did get married damn skippy I would be checking in every so often to make sure they still wanted to be married to me. Who am I kidding? I’d know if it wasn’t working and I would leave gracefully. I will always leave a party before I am asked to.

It is unrealistic and downright disturbing for an adult to rely on another singular adult for everything until you die. That ain’t love, that’s dependence.

Yes love is grand and wonderful, and even though the term bae bugs me a bit, I do like what it stands for ‘before anyone else’. That doesn’t negate the need for ‘anyone else’ but it denotes respect and a hierarchy of sorts, that to me is perfectly acceptable.

I am taking back bae.

Yep.

Mrs. Klukach grade 7.

It’s not really her fault, not really. I always wanted to be a writer.

I won an award that year for a collection of short stories, horror stories. She was the one who submitted it. It was a really big award. I was an all Canadian finalist, I think. Not bad for a pre-teen kid in a tiny village.
I was a weird kid man, I read It by Stephen King 2 years before (I was 10, bad idea) and although I still have nightmares about it and it brought back my dormant stutter for a while, it changed me. It made me want to write. So really it’s Stephen King’s fault.

I was 12 and I think I came in 3^rd in all of Ontario. My memory is a bit fuzzy, it was 34 years ago after all. I remember the basic layout of the classroom, I remember where I sat, second row from the door, 4 seats back. We could see trees out the window, I had a purple pen that smelled like grape bubblegum and I won a writing award. I don’t think my parents really cared that much, but like I said, those memories are muddy.

I saw Mrs. Klukach the summer after grade 9, she came to see me on purpose to ask me what the fuck happened to me. Second time ever I had heard a teacher swear I think and it jolted me. I was such a good student, I had such potential etc. and I was failing, badly. She was visibly upset, and I didn’t understand why she cared about the nothing that was me. I don’t remember the answers I gave her, but I am still that girl, standing in the driveway of the house my parents rented while our other house was getting built. Feeling intense shame about letting down an adult who believed in me so much that she came to my house to try and stop my self-destruction. I couldn’t figure out why I mattered to her, but it seems as though I did.

That book I wrote got thrown in the fire after we moved, and I didn’t write another word for years. I ran away and dropped out of school shortly thereafter.

So at least this is my excuse for the last 10 months but how about the 396 months between getting that award or the 372 months between her and the driveway and March 13^th 2020 when the world shut down.

In no way in my entire life have I ever lived up to my potential.

Law of averages states I am a little over halfway through this particular lifetime. Maybe another 396 months if I am lucky. Probably less if my heart breaks.

I could run through the gambit of excuses for why I am the way I am. I have a deformity, I left home at a young age, I had a child young, I never really felt supported, had testing been around when I was school aged I might have been diagnosed ADHD or something like it. I struggled financially my whole life really until I turned 39 and dumped the last of the leeching boyfriends. I could lay the blame at the feet of literally all of my exes if I wanted to. From the one who knocked me up, to the ones who took advantage of me stripping and virtually pimped me out and wrung me dry. To the ones who weren’t ‘readers’ and couldn’t figure out why I wanted to spend half my days with my face in a notebook or my laptop and thieved my time making their supper or washing their dirty drawers.

But it’s really no one’s fault.

Lots of people who had it worse than me made something of themselves. And here I sit, on borrowed time in an overpriced Airbnb talking to you fine folks about how I wasted my life. And all of it boils down to my choices.

I wanted to be loved so badly that it encompassed my life, all of it. I searched and settled and searched again, and in between I survived. Never really thriving.

I am writing yet another book, at least I am stubborn about one thing, it’s quite good, little rambling in bits, but considering the state of the world as is, and the post-apocalyptic landscape I created in the fantasy world I am writing about, I just want to make sure everyone is crystal clear on why the world ended, greedy men and the alt right christian patriarchy.

Even then, I started it mid-March 2020 and have had all the time in the pandemic world to work on it and I go weeks and months without looking at it. Even this last little trip when I decided this is it, it’s time, I can do this, I have barely done this. 3 weeks and maybe 6000 words. Not even enough for a novella. I am failing.

I couldn’t sleep the night before last, couldn’t eat either, my stomach in knots and my brain spinning. So I didn’t sleep, and I didn’t eat, I just wrote, a few blog posts that will be posted eventually and a few just to take my pain from out of me and into somewhere where it can’t hurt me. And I made some headway on the book. One of the secondary characters is getting his backstory. I wrote the life he wanted instead of the one he chose. It’s the least I can do.

I find it funny too, for a girl who has always pined for love, I still write these powerful, witchy, sassy awesome female characters, loosely based on me, and they always live alone. 2 published works, and it’s still ‘her’ apartment. At least this book I live with other witches, but it’s still my magical house built into a yew tree.

Maybe I am creating my own destiny, both through crippling fear of failure and the resulting inaction and the inability to fucking focus on one thing and through these fantasy worlds I have the gift of creating in my head and sometimes on paper. Writing my destiny to always want something but never have it.

I am thinking too that I may actually have some kind of chemical imbalance that makes it harder for me to focus than your average Joe, plus a little mystical magical karmic interference. And the irrefutable fact that I have honestly never felt good enough, even when one of my favorite teachers was standing in my driveway (verbally) shaking me and telling me that I was.

Before I really started writing again as an adult and just kept a diary of sorts, and scribbled bits of magnetic poetic genius (they were pretty cool snippets really) I wrote 2 things.

As always, she is a prisoner of her ghosts

And

I’m afraid I am scared of my potential.

I threw those diaries and notebooks and collections of other people’s quotes away 4 or 5 moves ago but I still haven’t fully escaped that girl I was, pining for a love that would transform me, trapped by the negativity of myself and others and scared of my potential.

Those two things are just as true in this moment as they were when they appeared on my refrigerator half my life ago, as they were in the driveway of that rental house and I don’t know how to stop it.

Humans tend to take the easy way out. ~W

It’s not like I am even being easy on myself, just hard on myself in all the wrong ways.