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There is a light that never goes out ~ The Smiths

My mind wanders to some strange places when I am alone.

I also just realized, with one swooping manly-man-big-brother gesture from BBP that I have been alone a fuck of a lot longer than I have been single.
I have this grand desire to eliminate the words ‘you don’t understand’ from my vocabulary, or just from all conversations ever again. Unless it’s followed by ‘explain it to me, I’m listening’.

Alone doesn’t just mean physically sequestered from others. Being misunderstood in a room full of people (or even just with that one) is almost worse.

Welcome to my weird. This was my internal dialog yesterday…

And lo, the Angels of the Lord were napping, or playing euchre or watching old episodes of Dead Like Me or anything other than paying attention.

You know that panicked siren sound when a submarine is submerging in the movies kinda an AHHHHOOOOOHGAH noise? Or more likely the sound of a heart monitor when someone flat-lines.
Ya, that.

And up on high there was a great AAHHHHOOOOOHGAH and a long shrill beep and the Angels sat up and took notice.
“Shit guys, what is that awful noise?”

There was much shrugging of shoulders and ruffling of wings.

“I think its coming from Her.” One of them said.

“Nay nay, her light doesn’t go out.” Argued another.

“No seriously, it think its Her”.

Another Angel of the Lord (not one of hers) walked by and said “Holy shit that is an awful racket. What did you do? Who did you break?”

Her four jumped to attention.

She WAS broken. She was curled up by the fireplace crying, rocking back and forth, repeating over and over “I don’t think I can do *this again.” (*this being love, herself or anyone else)

She was quite literally made out of love. With the gentle encouragement of said Angels, she had come forward as herself over and over. And over and over she had been shunned and neglected. Downright abandoned. Stripped every bit of happy and hope away from her, down to her last reserves she didn’t even know she had.

“Seriously guys, what us gonna do?” one of them said with more than a little panic in his voice. If you have ever heard an Angel panic, just no, not pretty, the shrillness shatters glass.

The other, other Angel of the Lord chimed in “Just show her the map and send in the boy. She’s smart she’ll figure it out”.

“But, but Mercury Retrograde and….ahhhh fuck it. He’s right. Let’s do the thing.”

I’m not saying God has a plan. I think God isn’t what we all think him to be, starting with the moniker ‘him’.
That being said, there are times when I have felt a firm hand push me this way or that, or sometimes swat my ass to get me moving.
Instead I believe that life can be, at times, a scavenger hunt of sorts. Go to there, solve the riddle and move onto the next thing with the knowledge you have gleaned from where you were before. Sometimes shit ends up making sense when you look back. I based a whole blog on this.

I believe in karma markers. I believe in points we are meant to hit and depending on the choices we make, the map evolves and changes with us. Or sometimes we keep repeating the same shit until we get it right.

The map looked a lot like this.

She had sworn off dating younger men after the Ninja Clown/Black Wedding debacle. They turn 32, want babies and they leave. It hurts.

Then there was Young ‘Un One Point Oh. Brilliant beginning with a bad middle and a shitty ending. He still somehow managed to re-whet her appetite.

Then there was Him. He who looked at her like she was made out of magic and made her float, it was because of Him that she knew she could never settle again. Brilliant beginning with a bad middle and a shitty end. He didn’t understand.

Then on the anniversary of Young ‘Un One Point Oh, Young ‘Un Two Point Oh appeared and lied about his age. Said he was 26, no 24, no really 22. Seriously…22?
This is possible?  Apparently so.
Except he upped and r-u-n-n-o-f-t with no warning or reason given*. Right out of the gate. No beginning and no end, just poof.
(she didn’t hear it at the time but *there was a resounding “MOVE bitch get out the way” –Ludacris)

So she rocked back and forth banging her head against the wall trying to find the why.
Asking grown men why a 22 year old did the thing.
They didn’t know.
And the 2 mens she was trying to get answers from love her, so no help there.

Then there was the rather shitty fight with BBP (see above). Which prompted an impromptu visit to the Market to find out if he was still mad, which led to asking his 22 year old apprentice why another one did what he did. “You are terrifying Sarah”.
“So I’ve heard.”
“You should meet my friend, he is on his way”.

Seriously?

Yes.

She met the friend. The next day she tasted him and realized she had been starving. She listened to him talk, he said things that made her think she had been writing memories she hadn’t made yet. This wicked, blissful sense of déjà vu. This is where she was supposed to be.

All of this just happened to coincide with her rather loud AAAAAHHHHHOOOOOOHGAH plea with the Universe to give her back her swagger, magic and juju. And a declaration that she did, indeed want her equal.

Ask and ye shall receive.

There is a school of thought that dictates we are always capable of getting what we want. Hold the vision trust the process.
The flaw is that we, as humans, get impatient before it can manifest.
Our desire is there, like a sprouted seed about to burst out of the ground, but when we begin to doubt, the seed stays dormant.

With some divine intervention, I pushed through.

There is a light.
And it looks and feels a lot like the sun.

So endeth the lesson and begins the living.

Hand made earth toy on hands

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Revelation 22:13

I love beginnings when everything is fresh and clean and new. Like climbing into bed on fresh sheet day.

Ends? Not so good with the ends. Feels like someone is setting my bed on fire, sometimes with me in it.
Takes the safe out of sleeping for a while.

I could begin again forever.
That would be bliss.

Cannot begin without an end. Fuck. Can I at least be the one tossing the match?

There exists a basic Buddhist truth. One that brings comfort to some and terror to others.

Everything is temporary.

I’m on team comfort, in almost all ways.

I exist in two places. Light and dark. Kansas and Oz, I prefer Oz. More magic there.
I am ever changing, like the weather and about as predictable as tornados, earthquakes and tsunamis. Ya, we kinda saw that coming, just not fast enough to actually do anything about it. Sorry about that, so sorry.

If I am to accept my darkness will become light, which it does. I require this to be the truth. Then I must also accept that on occasion, my light goes out. And it does, usually with an earth shattering ka-boom.

Here is the thing. We are no different than flowers or trees. We need all sorts of things to grow. Sunlight, rain, the occasional windstorm to knock lose branches and leaves that no longer serve us and the periodic dormancy that is winter.

There have been times in my life when I thought winter would last forever. I was so buried in the shit I couldn’t see anything much less a way out. By remaining stuck in those moments, I supressed my own growth. “I might die here” is not a good mantra especially when coupled with “and I want to”.

Time moves, life moves, we move. Whether we see it and chose to participate in the movement or not, it’s there. Eventually you will see it. You’re not going to die here if you don’t want to.

“I can’t go on like this”
“That’s what you think”. (Samuel Beckett)

The power contained within those words is almost tsunami-like.

No matter how good or bad a moment is, it’s going to pass, it has to.
You can chose to stay in it, or you can open your eyes and see what is next.
Your movement, your thoughts, your choice.

I now see beauty and the necessity in destruction and reconstruction. Even if something looks familiar, it’s unique to this moment. This moment is new. You can slather the past and fear all over it or you can savour it for what it is. I like my future naked.

Look at it this way. Life is a play. Who in the fuck really wants to watch a play where the scenery never changes and the characters just stand there. Um, no one. Or really, not anyone I want to hang out with, that is not my theater.
Instead we get this…
“wow this feels fucking horrible, this too shall pass and something better will come”
(enter something better stage left)
“wow, this feels amazing, this too shall pass and something else will happen”
(enter the next thing via a bunch of ropes and pulleys from the ceiling)

And so it goes…

I am in a constant state of renewal. Exits and entrances, some grand some subtle but always kind.

Herein lies the twist.

I am holding onto a fear that I am temporary.
If everything is temporary, and I am a part of everything, why does it trouble me to feel this way?
If there is always a beginning and an end, why do I need the end to come from an outside source?

I don’t.
I can decide this.

This feeling, person, place or thing no longer serves me.
I chose to let this pass.
The end.

Sounds simple on paper. But…there is always a fucking but.

I struggle with low self-worth and abandonment issues. I am 10X more likely to hear the negative than the positive, especially when I am dark, then that phenomenon is amplified.

I used to lie. A LOT.
I stopped.

I was lying to keep people, telling them what I thought they wanted to hear. Padding things I had done to make them look softer.
I got called out on it by someone who basically knew the entire time and loved me anyways.
I realized if I had to lie to keep people, then they weren’t worth keeping and I was not worth being around.
Nothing was real.
Lying is like fucking work and leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Also, people shouldn’t be kept, with lies or without.

It was a process to quit. I had to admit any lie I told within 24 hours and accept the consequences.

It worked. And it is so much better here.

I need to face my fear of temporary and doling out my own ends the same way.

I need to remember in every moment the companion truth to everything being temporary.
“Everything is as it should be”. (The Dalai Lama)

Nothing is the end of the world, except the end of the world. At that point, not all of the fucks in the world will make a damn bit of difference.

Mmmmmm mind fucks.

The good kind. Not the ones that make me question myself, everything I know to be true and think  ‘are you out of your fucking mind?’
Or worse, my least favorite, the one that hurts me the most…”who does this?”

The kind of mind fuck that becomes tantric. Waxing and waning, going light and dark but never losing its gravitational pull. The moon is always there even when I can’t see it, I feel it.

After some self-induced penance of hiding away from the world for…god, let’s not.
I felt like Oliver Twist, hungry.
So I asked the cosmos for more.

Put in a request to the Universe for 4 things, specifically things I wanted back.

My Swagger.
My Magic.
My Juju.
My Equal.

I realized the fourth was something I haven’t had yet. That thought used to strike terror in me, my openness and intensity send most running. Hell, I ran from me too.

“You had the power all along my dear” was the answer to the first 3. It always is. I get bogged down in the shitty opinions of others and absorb them as my own. Note to self, stop doing that.

Woke up the next morning, wishes granted. With the usual highly amusing twist (wait for it).

I always get what I want. It is part of this deal I have with the Universe. Not to be confused with getting what I need, I get that too. Christians are prone to saying “God only gives us what we can handle”. Apparently I can handle every fucking thing EVER, even when I think I cannot even. Its always funny in retrospect I swear. I am here to explore, experience and learn I know this and its alright.

Oh wait. There is one thing I cannot abide. Fucking ellipses. Limbo, oh I do not like limbo. Waiting.

But wait. This is new. This feels more like anticipation, like the week leading up to Christmas where the gifts would multiply overnight.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who rip the house apart and know what they are opening Xmas morning, and those who wait.
For this, I’ll wait.
It’s delicious this not knowing, not forcing, not rushing, being teased.

He gives comfort, conversational reinforcement. This is tangible. The tree is there. The presents are present and multiplying exponentially.

So, I ask the Universe for my equal, and what follows is this exquisite cadence. This whole business of living and working getting in the way, making us wait to see each other again but the physical void filled with eloquent teasing. This constant pull, this low thrumming drawn out mind fuck physically manifesting itself in this sensation where I feel constantly orgasmically on the verge, where the gifts keep piling up as words and epiphanies.

Wait.

If my swagger and magic were always there, that means as an equal, he has his own. My wide eyed, smiling exclamation of ‘what are you’, answered with an impish grin.

Frida Kahlo said “take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic.” Beautiful thought, but please, sir, I want more. I want someone who sees my magic because he has it too.

Oh yes, the cosmic twist. The equal I asked the universe for manifested as a young un’ artist with the prettiest mouth I have ever seen, felt or heard.

My exact words were ‘give me what I want or something better’, well played Universe, well fucking played.

Thank you

There has been a lot of talk in my house about the value of the vagina.

Yep. These are the things we talk about.

Culturally we are so far from where we started with the way we view sex. We’ve been handed this broken thing and everyone looks at it and tries to untangle it their own way. Physiologically we are built to fuck. We are one of a handful of species on the planet that derive pleasure from the act and thereby have it recreationally. We are also sentient beings with way too much free time and we have found a way to slather guilt all over something wonderful until it’s unrecognizably soiled.

Exhibit A: Some women/girls feel like they have nothing of value to offer to a man so they start handing over the vagina. I’ve done it. I have also extrapolated that if someone doesn’t want to fuck me, I mean less to them. Pretty twisted. I will not go so far as to say it’s normal, but I know I am not alone.

We are trading sex for the most valuable thing of all, time…and (for me) more sex.

You see, my vagina does have value. To me. I no longer see it as a commodity, just a very amazing part of who I am as a whole which just so happens to be an exceptionally sexual and honest creature.

The downfall of people who do what they want and always say what they mean is they assume everyone else does too. So I keep crashing into these walls, falling down and skinning my knees on the hard reality that that is rare.

So I run crying to those I know speak true, and they give me band-aids and cookies. St. Ant and Tristan console me over this that or the other (mostly just the one thing) and they both said ‘next time, make him wait 90 days, if he really likes you he will wait.’
Tristan loves me, I know this, without doubt and without vagina.
Ant’s horse is the highest of all as he waited for me with the patience of a saint, in all ways and he remains my longest relationship, but also the one with the least amount of sex in it.
Normally I would do some more research, but ain’t nobody got time for that.

I really like sex, like really really. Sooooooo, what if I don’t want to wait? What if that is presenting myself as something I am not. I cannot find the logic here.
I have no patience. I see something I want and I want it. I have something good and I want more. I can’t be the only one.

The actual question I asked of them both is ‘why am I temporary’. Their response, a resounding “because you present yourself this way”.
Hmmph, fuck. I get this, I truly do. It’s a good general rule.

But, there is always a but…If I pull all the veils and see things as they really are, I am temporary because everything is.

So be it.

I will just come forward as myself and be seen, valued and wanted for what I am.

There are some things in life that can’t be explained.

This isn’t one of them.

That would be the worst blog entry ever “You don’t understand”. The end.

ha

We can call it Rantings of a Girl Who Cannot Even.
Flashes of my step daughter. She would come to me with a problem about shoes or some shit, I would fall for it every single time, try to fix it and 2 hours later we are talking about sharks…and she had an argument for that too.

I get it now, and I always did which is why I indulged. She wanted someone to show her some effort and patience. That isn’t my empathy showing, that is my life and my fears walking around outside my body. So I give her what I always needed, unconditional love and proof that I am, indeed, listening. I am.

I’ve been doing the same thing with my problems since I dunno, birth. Attacking them from all sides, turning them over and over until I can solve them like those blindfolded kids do with a Rubix Cube. But, how many times did they twist and turn the thing over and over before they could just do it?

The longer I live the better I get. My turn around time is shortening exponentially.

Laying in bed one night, my brain came up with the magic words and ‘poof’ my angst over a situation dissipated tangibly and immediately.
I fell into a deep beautiful sleep and have been fine since.

‘Yes, I love you. No, I don’t want you. Not like this.’

Herein lies the explanation.

Once upon a time, actually twice upon a time, I’ve been here, this path leads to the land of Misery and Mistresses.

Once he thought he wanted me, but he didn’t. It was always her. It was that simple. 7 year mess of carnage and death.
She ended up the mistress. I was constantly vying for a space that I was never meant to occupy. That has to be the worst feeling for me, being at a party I wasn’t invited to. Ugh I HATE that, spent so much of my life being looked at like I was strange and out of place. I said I would dance on her grave in a red dress.
We were miserable together.
Step-daughter and I found each other here, so it was worth it.

Once he thought he wanted her. But he kept coming back to me. A different 7 years with a different man, but still a big ‘ol bloody mess.
I hadn’t shaken my narcissistic inner toddler that would constantly rant ‘mine’. So I ended up the mistress. Took what I could get, which was him, more often than I should have had him considering he belonged to someone else. Not a proud memory, but fonder than the other. He came back to me 3 years later and reminded me I had said I was going to show up at his wedding in a red dress and object. He looked for me that day, and for quite some time after.
We were miserable apart.

My flare for the dramatic is lessening with age. I get enough movie moments, no need to force it.

Everything is temporary and as it should be.
I don’t need you with me, I just need to know you exist. (Blake Sibbitt)

I don’t need this blood on my hands, it’s sticky and messy. I’ll just be over here, clean, probably wearing a red dress.

All 3 of these aforementioned men are still in my life, in the capacity they were meant to be in.
All the fussing and crying and forcing in the world didn’t change that.

I’m removing myself from the latest equation, leading us not into temptation, delivering us from evil, for mine is my own kingdom, my power is glory.

Amen.

favim.com

Once upon a time, in a deep, dark forest lived a girl.

Everyone called her Little Red Riding Hood because her grandma made her an awesome sauce cape and it was red, and most people have shitty imaginations when it comes to nicknames. This is how I ended up being called “Sarah with the long hair”. Come on…Seriously, this is my moniker? Meh, I’ve had so much better and I’ve had way worse.

Anyways…

She lived in a big, HUGE house in the woods all by herself, because she could.

T’was tucked way far, far away from anywhere, in the magical kingdom of Narnia, without the fur coats because mmmm, no fur.

In the winters the Snow Queen was a fucking asshole making messes and ice storms and killing the internet and making sure the roads never got plowed. Our heroine merely gave an unremarkable “Meh”… and she just dealt with it. The Lion King, Aslan always showed up with spring even when she was rather convinced he had really actually died this time and winter was going to last forever but it didn’t, so…s’okay.
Some days she felt like Cinderella, because she had to do tons of shitty housework and collect sticks in the woods and she had spent a good portion of the winter bundled up by the fire place and often had ashes on her face, because … zero fucks.

After the winter of her discontent, in the preamble to summertime she went out walking. Because, fuck winter walks, she lived where the air hurt her face, still not sure why that is. There are plenty of lovely magical lands where the air rarely if ever is as offensive as it is here. Even Mordor is warm.

Ever notice how twisted fairy tales really are?
Hansel and Gretel, blatant abandonment and neglect with a not so subtle hint of cannibalism. Cinderella = child labour, theft on a grand scale and abuse and she had a fairy godmother the WHOLE time who just left her in squalor? Not cool fairy godmamma, not cool at all. Sleeping Beauty, dude she is sleeping, that shit is rapey and the only think I know that is sharp and makes you sleep for a hundred years is a needle full of heroin. Snow White chokes and they bury her alive, not one dwarf can do the Heimlich, pinces kissing dead girls? And that other Red Riding Hood has a whole big, creepy pedophile vibe going on.

I make fix.

Back to our revamped Red.

She packed a basket full of goodies, because it was Friday and her turn to bring the Timbits and she wandered off into the other woods. She popped in at grandmas, who was a witch and a cougar of the highest order and happened to be entertaining the young woodsman. So our girl just said a quick ‘hey’ to them both, snagged a coffee and went on her merry way. She saw some dragons and bad witches but whatev’s, she had shit to do and they didn’t tend to fuck with her.

She wandered further and further into the forest until she came upon a dark and dreary cave. Terrifying and misunderstood by most, she loved it. To her this place felt cozy, like home or Wonderland complete with flowers that spoke, Cheshire cats, mushrooms, hookah smoking caterpillars and a Queen that was sofa king two-faced and irrational who ruled the realm with a dwarf and a giant. All of her woodland friends were there, little birds that played with her hair and bunnies to snuggle and elves that fixed her shoes while she was asleepin’ on 20 mattresses with a pea under them, making napping hard. The music was good and the river was made of whiskey in a big rock candy mountain and the cow jumped over a moon  made of cream cheese, wait where was I? Dishes will be running with spoons soon. Must focus.

Oh ya, so there she sat, drink in her cup, rings on her fingers, glass slippers and bells on her toes, the fairest of them all, waiting her turn to dance around the May Pole, and lo what should appear? No, not the angel of the lord… A big bad wolf, in wolf’s clothing so he was instantly recognizable, way fucking better, all the better to see them. Noms. She sauntered over.

We are warned early and often of wolves in sheep’s clothing, I prefer my wolves naked and free, it’s those fucking sheep masquerading as wolves that fuck you up and break your heart every time. Mindless things awfully concerned with what they ‘should’ be doing.

He flashed his wicked smile at her and her knees buckled a little. She threw out some sassy-ass comments in an attempt to regain her composure and cut her eyes at him.

“My, my, what mesmerizing eyes you have” he said.

She rolled her mesmerizing eyes, took a long haul on her cigarette and said sweetly “What a lovely mouth you have”.

He just smiled. Way less cheesy that way.

So they discreetly retired to a darker corner of the dark cave in the dark woods, she slipped out of her cape and revealed that, she too was a wolf.

He looked at her like she was made of magic, moaned a low moan and bared his throat ever so slightly and she sank her teeth in nibbling and kissed the sweet spots, then titled her head back and ever so gently (then not even remotely gently) he returned the favour.

Then they ate each other all up.

And it was good.

Happily ever after or until they didn’t feel like it anymore.

flash by Angelique Houtkamp

Sitting down at the beach with the new boy the other day. Making out like we were in high school. Telling stories in between the molten, moving, consuming of each other. Good god he is delicious.

Funny how new lovers always end up discussing old scars and hurts. Part of exploring each other I suppose.

We both mentioned, more than once how lucky we felt to be where we were, with each other.

I am the luckiest person I know.

It sounds odd when stacked up against how many times I have almost died.

Starting with how I was born.

A few weeks early. Backwards. Mostly in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
What is true for most mammals is true for humans too.
When your feet hit the air, it triggers the impulse and reflex to breathe.
So it’s bad to have your feet out unless your head is very quick to follow.
A nurse told my mom I almost died. Pretty insensitive thing to do to a brand new mom,
but I made it.

I went to swimming lessons when I was 4 or 5. I wandered to the deep end by accident and almost drowned.
4 years later, I almost drowned again trying to swim to a raft.

Age 18 I walked out onto the ice of Lake Huron on a foggy February night and came inches from falling off the edge…someone grabbed my coat and pulled me back.

Age 21 house fire while 9 months pregnant with my son, the landlord had not put batteries in the smoke detectors. I went back in for the cats (they all made it) and so did I.

At 24 I was running for a street car, crossing on a green, got hit by a big ass pickup truck making a right on a red. Rolled over the hood, hit the rear view mirror with my ribs. He then pinned my feet under the back tire. I got up and yelled at him for ruining my pantyhose…he took off.

At 28 I was held hostage and beaten severely by a boyfriend, twice. He has said, recently, that he will kill me if he ever sees me again. Restraining orders are just paper.

At 29 I was attacked by a mentally ill homeless man.

I have worked in 3 bars where guns were drawn and fired, twice I was in them at the time.

I have been scary stumbling blackout drunk and home alone, once almost breaking my head open on a bathtub.

At 34 I flipped 2 trucks, was almost impaled by a flying piece of lumber flying off the back of a transport truck. I have blown a tire going 120km/h in the fast lane on a busy highway, like shredded the fucking thing, rubber flying in my window hitting me in the face.

So am I lucky? I think so.
Or someone is looking out for me.
Making the lifeguard notice me, making the piece of lumber bounce at the last second, clearing traffic so I can get to the shoulder.
When I enumerate these things, I truly question everything, why am I still here?
What am I supposed to do that I haven’t done?

I think I know.

I am supposed to live, and be brave.

If that which does not kill you makes you stronger, I am fucking bulletproof.