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I forgot to laugh when he said I was perceptive.
Perceptive girls don’t fall in love with boys who are unavailable.

Who am I kidding? Of course we do.

We wait, that is also a thing we do, when we find someone who is worth it. I thought if I waited he would know he could trust me. In retrospect, the smarter thing would have been more opening my mouth, more explaining and less hiding and trying to seize the right moment, any moment would have been good. Less reading the signs and more asking direct questions and actually listening to the answers.
Hindsight, you fucking cunt.

I had a dream, about Him. We were standing on the edge of Niagara Falls at night watching the lights, both remarking on how awful it was that they would make a mockery of something so beautiful with a light show. He was holding me close, we were looking down and my hat flew away. He looked at me and said “you have to let it go”, I feebly replied that it was my favorite hat but I didn’t put up a fight, I knew it was gone and he was right. There was nothing better than standing there with him.

I have lots of hats, but there is one that is my favorite. Makes me feel pretty when I don’t, compensates for my bad hair days, frames my face just so, keeps me warm and brings me comfort. There is a metaphor here. I let that hat go.

Then there was the owl. I was driving home the day before fetching Him from the airport and I had the weirdest thought, I have a thousand million thoughts a day, some louder than others. It’s easy to lose them in the crowd. Except when, right at that very moment this really loud thought comes roaring over all the others, an owl flies into your car window. The thought was this “you are going to tell him you love him and then you are going to have to kick him out of your house, it is the only way this will work.” Two days later, that exact thing happened, exactly the way I had watched it happen in my head.

The owl came back last night. The dogs took themselves a walk to the neighbors who were watching the owl fly back and forth across their yard. The mantra playing in my head at that moment? “If you have to choose between me and her. Pick her.”

Once upon a time I was the ‘her’. The “him” picked me, and it ended badly, we all behaved badly. I have a map to that place. It’s the swamp of sadness. I watched another woman disrespect the relationship I was in, chase ‘my’ man until it worked for her, she got what she wanted in the end. Except she still doesn’t have it and she knows it. I don’t want to live that way.

I am not her.

Niagara Falls (photo by me)

What he said
“20 years ago you would have been my dream girl”.
What I said
“I still am”.
He agreed, but he was drunk so I didn’t hold him to it.

What I should have said
“Sorry I am late but I had 20 years of stupid shit to do”.

With an addendum, “I am sofa king stubborn, and honestly I wasn’t ready. I am now. Can you just keep kissing me please, I got a little shredded on my way here.”
Half of the conversation my face was buried in his jacket, I have no idea what he heard or didn’t. I spend a lot of time whispering things to my shoes, I know he can only here me when I am on the passenger side.
I watched “Chasing Amy” the other day and this happened.
Holden: Why me?
Alyssa: …I was thorough when I looked for you. I feel justified lying in your arms. I got here on my own terms and I have no question there was someplace it didn’t look. For me that makes all the difference.
I cried so hard I almost drowned.
A lot of my analogies reference water. My life is this river I am on, it ebbs and flows, there are rapids and blind corners, I only have a map of where I have been, not where I am going. Sometimes the sun is shining, I float and it’s easy. All of the times of great distress and turmoil I have been through can be likened to when I got close to shore and held onto some piece of flotsam for dear life and refused to just let things flow.

I am late.

I am late because I got stuck. I cleaved to a rock for a while back there. Clung to the branches of a tree that was half submerged for like 7 years. I let go. There was a rope holding me back, I cut it. I am sorry I took so long. Thank you for being here when I caught up.
To be clear, he showed up and then I lost him, around a corner somewhere. I zigged he zagged, there was a whirlpool, it was messy. So this wasn’t for him or because of him. The epiphanies came on their own, it was just time. These are all things I had to do.
I let everything go let the water rush over me. My soul has never been this clean.
I mentioned a few blog posts ago that it was an act of cruelty for the Universe to place soul recognition on two 13 year old kids without resolution. I adamantly and vehemently retract that statement. I get it now, the Universe and I have the occasional misunderstanding.
It wouldn’t have worked any other way. I had to go over a waterfall to figure this out, the letting go and clarity that came with it.
The Dalai Lama says “everything is as it should be”. I agree.

Someone needs to write a ‘how to date in the age of interwebz’ in meme form or video or something easily absorbed by our tiny attention spanned generation.

It should read like the Buddha meme that says ‘try not to be a cunt’.

Rule #1 no dick pics.
Yes boys, we all know you like seeing our bits, but women aren’t wired the same and an unfiltered photo of your cock…not fun for us.

We need to a) bring back the concept of the Scarlet Letter and b) start being honest about who we are and what we want.

Everyone is so concerned about pairing up No one is presenting their true selves or their actual intentions.

It’s kinda like wandering into McDonalds and expecting steak because you are wearing a ball gown.

Is there something wrong with saying, “hey I got really hurt so I’m scared of commitment” and hooking up with someone who either a) has the same experiences or b) a compatible mindset i.e. someone who is busy and/or patient?
You have to wear a red “CC” for commitment challenged, and I get a crimson “MT” for Mother Teresa.

Yesterday I got a call from my man-friend who said, “I need your help interpreting this behaviour from my new partner”. Long story short, she is the kind of girl who doesn’t actively participate in relationships, with anyone. She is a sit back live her own life see you when I see you kind of girl. He is a check in, jump through hoops, tells you when he is thinking of you kind of guy. It’s hurting him and bothering her.
He gets a ruby “II” for in it, she gets a cherry “LWB” for laid way back.

My girl goes on Tinder dates and blogs about the bad ones. I would laugh if I didn’t love her. The last one neglected to tell her he was married until 2 drinks in the first time they met up. Another one sent her a dick pic from the bathroom. I said I before and I will say it again, no dick pics. Explain to me how they got that far in without showing their true colours. How hard is it to say ‘this is what I am’.
http://jennandthecity.com/datingdiary-threes-a-crowd/

I tried the up front and honest thing.
I was rather adamantly single for the last year.
I still wanted to go on dates, just didn’t want to get put back on lock down (right away).
I had Sunday. Who was exactly what I needed for a while, an adult, no strings, no issues, just honest.
I didn’t lie about him and gave him the respect he deserved.
That didn’t exactly work in my favour, it made me seem disposable.
When truth be told, I am fucking irreplaceable.
So I stopped seeing Sunday. After a very honest conversation with him about why.

“When you lie to someone about who you are or what you want, you aren’t protecting them, you are protecting yourself from their reaction” BBP

Am I panicking a little, well ya. But not enough to sign up for Tinder (yet) or lie or string someone along I have no intention of being with long term or pretend I don’t want to date someone long term when I do.

Wear your red flags with pride, someone is going to see them wave their own red flags back at you like matchy matchy pompoms and say “yes, I see you, all of you & I want to be with you AS IS”.

best

feeling

ever.

For 4 months I had 4 lovers.

They weren’t harbingers of my apocalypse, I was already mid chaos and doom when they rode in.
They were trying to save me from it.

Apparently I needed an entire cavalry, but a girl has to sleep.

That chapter of my life was bookended by a severely abusive relationship, which is to say I managed to claw my way out of it, and then fell back into it. He beat me, stole from me, stalked me and the apex culminated in my being held hostage for 7 hours in my own home raped and threatened with death. I escaped, we call him ‘the rapist’.
But for 4 months I had 4 lovers. Never on the same day, not at the same time, not that it matters.

In the eye of a terrible storm, there was peace and calm. They were my friends, knew what I had been through and willingly put themselves between me and him. One still has a scar from it.
They all chivalrously held my hand walking down the street, pulled me close or put me into cars and cabs when we would see my ex and I was scared.

Was I a slut? Sure, that is one word for it.

Safe, there is a better word. In the fortress of my bedroom tangled up in one of them and sex stained sheets, I was safe as houses. I built myself 4 walls out of the bricks and mortar of 4 strong, caring men. Happy, lucky, sated, all of those words fit too.

Ashamed? Not one bit. We all had our parts to play and did so gracefully. You see dear reader, there was no juggling, no lying, no deception. They all knew about each other, because I TOLD them. None of them had designs on pinning me down.

I had a sweet apartment, two floors, all hardwood and arched doorways with huge windows everywhere. I had with 2 roommates, one pretty little blond thing who was never home, and a gorgeous Adonis of a gay man. My room was small and white and tucked in the back. I had pushed my bed up against the window because a woman had told me sleeping in the moonlight could drive you mad, and mad is where I wanted to be. On the nights the moon failed to show her face, the streetlights flooded in and made us glow.

I rarely feel as beautiful as I did in that bed.

One treated me and my body like a temple, a place of worship. Sex with him was slow and sweet and lovely. He made me feel revered and wrote me poems. We still talk, and I adore him.

One made me feel shy and new, was a born tease and drove me insane, and then made up for it. We see each other from time to time and I melt when he smiles at me like that, he is a good man.

Jesus and I didn’t talk much, neither of us really wanted to hear what the other had to say. He was the only one who ever seemed to feel jilted, but he was cheating, so really who was jilting whom. Oh God, the sex with him, he had something to prove, like he had been poisoned and in my pussy there was the antidote. He could rarely stay, but he made up for it.

Oh, the one I lost looked like Colossus from the X-men. We had the closest thing to a relationship. He began by being in love with my roommate, and she had me let him down softly on her behalf. He would show up, she would be gone, he would be sad and I would sit him down at the kitchen table, feed him and listen to him be sad.
After a week or two of this he looked up at me, smiled and said “do you know what I just realized…you are sweet, smart, funny, a great cook and beautiful, I think I might be over her all of a sudden” to which I replied “took you long enough” and we broke the table before he carried me upstairs and fucked me some more . He came over the next day and fixed the table.

So let’s examine this shall we. Of the 5 men mentioned, which one hurt me, used me, took from me without giving back? Ah yes, the boyfriend turned rapist. Who made me feel cherished, protected, adored, content, loved, precious…that’s correct, the other 4, the ones to whom I was not beholden in any way, not even obligated to pick up the phone when they called.

All of whom (save the lost boy) are still part of my life as the friends they started as.

So why spit out the word slut to define me like it’s a bad thing? I was brave, I was honest and dignified, treated like gold.

Idle hands are the devil’s playground, I kept mine busy and I don’t feel bad about one second of those 4 months, except the one when it ended and I slipped back into the cycle of abuse.

If experiencing that bliss makes me a slut, I accept, and I wish from the bottom of my slutty little heart that you get to be a like me one day.

My memory is So selective. It’s like one of those old southern country clubs, the ones only old southern white dudes named ‘so and so the third’ can get into.

Some days, I drag the lake by the golf course, recover decomposing bodies of past events, and also old hubcaps.

Natural selection I suppose, only the healthiest, strongest versions of our truths should survive. Cut out all the bad parts, like cancer or the brown spots on an apple. What is left becomes our ‘past’. It could kill us otherwise.

I am contemplating a blog about PTSD, this isn’t it…but the skeleton is there, ready to boogey out of the closet. Not today.

For this blog, and my emotional well-being, I CSI my life.
Dust my heart for prints, piece together what happened to the poor dead hooker with a heart of gold in the hours before her untimely demise.

I had a man friend in the 90’s. Golden Boy.

Had body pillows been invented back then, like actual body pillows, I would have called him that. His brother dated my best friend, and tiny town dictated we were always in the same places. He got drunk and mad a lot, my demeanor had a soothing effect on him. I felt protective of him, that is what I do. So (post bar/party) we would curl up on piles of coats or on pullout couches and guard each other.

In the way back when post * https://www.ourladyoflustandgrace.com/the-guest-room.html I mentioned a boy who taught me the true meaning of intimacy ‘not sleeping with each other, but beside each other, floating like twins in the womb…’ That’s him, safe as houses. He was with us when and after Greg died.

Just to complicate shit a bit, Golden Boy was the only one who ever stood a chance of usurping High School Sweetheart from his throne. But there was a friendship there, a valuable commodity. GB made me feel safe, cared for and useful. Things I covet and crave and constantly find myself wanting, probably because I had them once and lost them.

He was the sun. I basked rather than try to keep him in a jar, or keep him at all. My first experience just letting something be and enjoying it for what it was.

And then, (the inevitable ‘and then’) we broke this thing we had made, the thing between us that had no name. It began as it had a dozen times before, braiding our limbs, touching, talking. I tilted my face up at his and caught a kiss, probably meant for my forehead. We devoured each other like we had been starving.

The next day he yelled at me in my kitchen and stormed out of my life.

My memory blocked that part out. No details, just old grey paint, chipped and cracked. I saw it for what it was, one of those trick pictures, with something hiding underneath.

I relaxed my eyes, and then I couldn’t unsee it, all the little details. The way I could feel my eyes light up and the enormity of my smile when he walked into a room. The way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled back. The thrumming under my fingers when my hands touched him. The weight of him as I held him up when he was drunk. Leaning into him when I was crying over this that or the other thing, how strong and solid and grounding as a tree he was. The timber of his voice, the way he always smelled like sunshine and smoke and good sweat. How I was always cold and he was always warm, so that was just right.

The hurt came back too, I remembered his wrath, not the reason for it. He had a girlfriend at the time, I knew this. Someone had seen him leave my house and started shit. I remembered being calm while he raged, even though that seemed to make it worse, I couldn’t get upset. I thought we could just pick up and go on.

The sun went out, so I moved away.

The void I felt when I got lost again and he was nowhere to be found ate all of it, like a black hole consuming without prejudice, all the good and all the bad. I recall my optimism fading in his absence. He became a parable for what that town was to me, shining moments of happiness marred and made dirty by the actions and words of others who seemed hell bent on my ruination. I felt ground down to almost nothing by the rumor mill and in one final act of self-preservation, I simply left.

We talked last year and it all came back. I remember everything. He called me darling and love, left me turning everything over in my mind, savoring it.

Made my eyes smile, the feel of the sun on my skin after years in the dark.

“…I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the obstacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your reward. Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation.” (O Brother Where art Thou?)

I had a shitty thought.
One of those thoughts that lingers, poisons and taints the air.

Time to open a window.

The Parable of the Bed.

Mr. Jesus…no… he is no here.

Once upon a time, in an apartment far, far away. St. Anthony and I were on break up number 6/250.

His excuse for continuing communication…his stuff. HIS stuff was in MY house. Oh the horror right? The excuse people come up with to stay in each other’s lives, kidnapping lamps and whatnot. It’s ridiculous, with a bit of sweetness once enough time has passed and your eyes relax.

Really, he was still talking to me because he still loved me, he still does…love doesn’t dissipate, it morphs, but it never goes away.

The opposite of love is truly indifference. There are players from my past life that could have stolen the Hope Diamond from me and talking to them for one minute to try and get it back? They ain’t worth it. Their absence is bliss.

St. Ant? Hindsight with him is as beautiful as a stained glass window on a sunny day.

But um…what about the bed?

That was the clincher.

In a grand show of independence and feigned indifference I spent a tear filled day packing everything he owned, down to the last coffee spoon and artfully stacking it in the back mudroom of the house. Every box labelled with great clarity as to the contents. It was impressive really. The futon, disassembled, bookshelf artfully wedged in a corner. And the extra amazing thing? I could lock the inside door, mail him the key and he could have all of HIS things without stepping foot in MY house.

Except the bed.

Fuck.

There is no rest for the broken hearted forced to sleep upon the mattress of sex-stained memories. I wanted that fucking thing OUT god dammit. I even bought a new bed, one I had wanted since I was a teenager. Glorious off-white paint, slightly beat-up, scroll-worked, wrought-iron, antique perfection.

Fuck I loved that bed.

Fuck I loved that apartment. But when the new bed was leaned up against the wall in the bedroom and I was trapped in our old matrimonial bed, sleep was elusive at best and my room felt like a prison.

I know I made all of that up in my head, putting emotional attachments on hunks of wood and iron, but again, I had yet to pull back and realize the broken window was actually a beautiful mosaic.

I was vexed. Proper vexed. The longer the new frame leaned, the longer I had to hear from Ant. I wanted out of jail and I just had to solve the puzzle.

2 weeks later, having slept on the couch (my new couch, I bought it myself) for 10 days. I woke up one morning and realized…THE BED GOES UNDER THE BED.

By nightfall, I had my shiny new bedroom all feng shui’ed into perfection with my dream bed in place and the old frame, disassembled and stored artfully under the new. Shot Ant a text saying, “come get your shit, I don’t want or need it or you”, and slept like the dead.

3 days later, there was a fatal shooting at my work, he was home, at the farm, heard it on the radio and did the 90 minute drive to my house in 60 minutes and proposed to me, for the second time. Of course in that bed.

That bed?

Sisterwife sleeps in it now. That vexed me for a bit too. Until I realized things are just things. Literally everything can be replaced or lived without. Shit happens, stuff gets lit on fire, or stored for 2 years whilst I wander and I can’t remember why I kept that whatchamacallit. It’s all perspective and the ability to relax your eyes and let go. There are unicorns and sailboats waiting.

The shitty thought that prompted this whole thing?

Life is a series of smooth sailing and obstacles. If you want something bad enough, you’ll figure out a way. I wasn’t worth even the slightest attempt at thinking around a corner.

He said his peace and counted to three.

The end.

Erte

I went to an amusement park when I was 15 or so with the family. As I was heading back alone to the rendezvous point one of those portrait artists stopped me and asked if he could draw me. I was brokety broke broke and politely declined. “No, no” he said, “I don’t want money, I just really want to draw you”. He was really cute, I didn’t know how to say no, and I wanted him to.

Remember that thing I said about this face on a normal body ruling the world…ya. My past is littered with the bones of these massive compliments I just left to bleach in the sun. I had no idea what to do with them. Blood doesn’t course through my veins, low self-esteem does/did/still does sometimes.

I ended up pen pal dating the portrait artist. There was no facebook, snapchat, msn nothing. If that were to have happened now…it would sound more like ‘hey, show me yer bewbs’.
Instead, in one of the letters he said that ‘if the face of Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships one look from you could have convinced them all to turn around and come home’. I can’t make this shit up.

I’ve been thinking on Miss Helen.
How angry/beautiful do you have to be to start a war? Kidnapped and disrespected…kill everyone, seems like a logical reaction.
Unlike Ariadne who, when abandoned on an island by her dude, just chilled the fuck out and got picked up by Dionysus and made both his wife and immortal. Upgrade, go mama go.

I have things in common with both of these mythical women, Ariadne we will get to another day (Sunday’s Greek name is actually Dionysus *swoon).

Helen and her war. Her face…I am willing to bet it was the mouth part of her face that sparked the epic battle. I too am my own best spin doctor, and hell hath no fury like a woman (period).

If I hadn’t run away from home shortly after the amusement park trip thereby negating my college fund…i would have made a fan-fucking-tastic lawyer. I manipulate the truth without breaking it with the deft skill of a blacksmith heating and beating a horseshoe into being.

Case and point. My best friend during the temptation of St. Anthony, bailed on me when I went back to him the 250^th time. She met him twice and HATED HIS GUTS. Not because of anything he said or did to her. She couldn’t take it, watching me kill myself over and over. She didn’t get it. I never gave her a chance to get it, I only ever said bad shit about him, painted myself innocent. I used her for a container to hold all the negative. Like a priest in a box.

No one walks into confessional and says, ‘Hey Father, I had a really good week, paid a few coffees forward, smiled a lot and was just good and kind”. Confession makes you pan for the bad like gold. Even if you were a good human all week, you must have had impure thoughts. Why do we gravitate to the negative like that? What is wrong with being happy?

I am so strong, smart and utterly convincing, I COULD call all the ships home, but the negative creeps in. I get this hhiccupingsensation when things are going well. I get scared.

I bare my throat in self-doubt and all of a sudden I am this submissive little twit, and I can’t shake it.

It’s not that I am scared of things not working out, are you kidding? I got that shit HANDLED.

I’m afraid I am scared of my potential, somewhere in here I know how powerful I am and I don’t want to inadvertently start a war.

This thought process of mine is quickly going the way of the Dodo. I’ll just feed it rocks until it dies. All of the outside positivity in the world can’t undo the years of self-doubt, I have to conquer this one my own and I will be calling the ships home. It’s safe here.  So say I.

Heaven is action, living, this very moment the freedom to move in it untethered, and those moments yet to come.

Hell is a waiting room, with no doors, fluorescents that flicker in no disconcernable pattern and really bad muzak.

Hell is also the thoughts that dwell there, in that room. Thinking on everything you’ve ever done or could be doing.

Perdition = could be, should be and was.

Hope = will be.

Biker Body Pillow gently scoffs when I say I am psychic. So is his right. Then he turns around and asks me to tell him what is going to happen. It’s pretty cute.
He says I read the secret codes written into the past like a first language, and I am an empath who can see every side to everything ever and therefore a grand predictor of future behaviour. I’ll take the compliment.

This goes doubly so when I am dealing with his girl, we have the same shoe size and I walked in hers.

I pretty much know what she is going to do, and why.

He is hoping for the best and prepping for the worst.

What’s worse…trying and failing with a chance of victory or just leaving it to rot? Leaving it and wondering.

We trade off, BBP and I.
His pessimism is just realism in a Sunday hat. And I float around like a helium balloon, unwary of sharp corners. He keeps me from banging into things.

Reading the past looking for clues is fine, but I have said before, it’s full of old files that restrict your beliefs on what is possible.

I say, what was…not good enough. I want ecstasies and magic and grandeur. I want actual comfort, I want to BE safe with someone, not just feel it but BE it.

I don’t just read the past, I read the signs. I count crows and follow the stars. I keep my mouth shut when my home planet (Mercury) goes retrograde.
“If it was me reading the signs…I don’t send the Eagles guy whose personal motto is Excelsior to a Giants game.” Silver Linings Playbook

I got so focused on counting the days, waiting for the moon to be in the right place, waiting for the crows to pair up again (for joy) I forgot to live for a while there.

Grandpa: Now, on Wednesdays when the mailman brings the TV Guide sometimes the address label is curled up just a little. You’ll be tempted to tear it off. Don’t. You’ll only wind up rippin’ the cover and I don’t like that. And stay outta here.

Sam: Wait, you have a TV?

Grandpa: No. I just like to read the TV Guide. Read the TV Guide, you don’t need a TV.

Lost Boys

Reading isn’t living. Neither is watching or waiting.
I have brought shame on my ancestors whose love/actions made me into being. They don’t get to live anymore, except through me.

“This life be over soon, heaven lasts always”. The Color Purple

Time to start living.