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Do we ever progress past the playground? Childhood games beget adult relationships.

Indulge me… jungle gyms turn into hearts, to climb and conquer, king of the castle. Tetherballs, arguments swatted back and forth until one side prevails (or the ball hits you in the face or the bell rings).The park grass becomes our beds, trees houses, places to play. Swing-sets parallel reward versus effort, I fell once, got as high as I ever have and fell, knocked the wind out of me. Never forget that sensation of trying to scream, but you can’t.

Teeter totter, a lovely balancing act of taking turns lifting each other up, and sometimes coming down too hard and knocking the other one off. That isn’t a metaphor, I actually did that, got a particularly good bump in once and hurt my best friend. So it’s a metaphorical memory, is this a thing?

Monkey bars, the act of reaching for a new relationship whilst gripping the last one, not letting go until your fingers are wrapped tightly around the next. That used to be my favorite game. The concrete was supposed to be lava. It ain’t, its independence, long denied now much enjoyed.

Leap-frog, pushing off of one to propel you onto the next,not really looking down to see what you are jumping over. When is a game of leap-frog not a game of leap-frog? When he wraps his fingers in your hair in that way that you really like and you get dragged along for the ride. Skinned knees are the best case scenario.

Worst case scenario, oh Jesus have I been there. I got out weighing 96 pounds, with a sister-wife and a bad case of the crazies. Thought I had left it behind, I even wrote a piece called “ex pat”, a starry-eyed bit of drivel about being monogamous to a polygamous partner. Just now realized that can’t happen when there is love, your own or theirs, for someone else.

Here we go yet again, recess spent on the merry go round,perpetual motion without going anywhere. So fucking dizzy. This one is pretty. All I have is foresight, I know how this ends. I also know my worth (this time), how spectacular, nurturing, sexy, beautiful, sweet, weird and wise I am. What I cannot figure out is why y’all have to leave me and then realize I am irreplaceable.

I stopped starting things with one foot out the door.

Seriously, this shit isn’t funny anymore. Stop, I want off now.

Could I win? Abso-fucking-lutely.

But it’s rather hard to play touch-football when all the flags are red. Who do you tackle, who do you protect, and where the fuck is my end zone?

Do I even play at all?

Red rover, red rover…ahhh fuck it I am good over here with the hands I am holding.

(I wrote this in October, I should have fought harder.)

You think I fucked up all the Eagle’s juju don’t you? Silver Linings Playbook

The term in China for hookers and side bitches is “Chicken Girl”. So named for their thin stature, preening/strutting/hen-like behaviour and low value. Men are welcomed to have a chicken girl, but not to love them. It’s a status thing, a wife is proud if her man can afford a chicken girl, it’s also an outlet for various fetishes that good married couples don’t indulge in. I am not opposed to this arrangement and the moniker makes absolute sense to me. I have been known to live in the hen house from time to time.

This is neither here nor there. I just find it interesting.

In mankind’s continuing journey towards enlightenment, They (the random They) sometimes conduct random experiments.

I cannot back this up. I am going to attribute this to a conversation I had with St. Anthony during one of our meandering truck rides to somewhere. I think it was an addendum to ‘Ratopia’. We traveled well together, conversations having to be heard to be believed, just believe me. I don’t lie even when I should.

At some point in the 70’s or 80’s a group of scientists got together. Decided they should spend some government money on this little gem. They had two groups of actual chickens and a machine that spit out corn when a target was pecked. Simple enough. Here is where it gets fun.

The control group had to peck the bulls-eye 3 times to get a piece of corn. Every time without fail.

The second group got their reward at random. Sometimes pecking once and getting a handful of corn, sometimes pecking twenty times and getting one little nibblet.

First group went about their chicken business, pecking, scratching, making chicken noises and would, at fairly regular intervals peck the bulls-eye and have a treat.

The second group started exhibiting odd behaviour. Every chicken developed a ritual they would perform before approaching the machine. Scratch the dirt 3 times with the left foot, turn in a counter clockwise circle. Something, anything, every time.

The chickens formed a superstitious religion around random acts of kindness.

Sound familiar?

Walk into a Catholic church on Sunday. Stand-sit-kneel, count your beads, light your candles (in a daze ‘cos I found God _ Nirvana)

Walk into a Buddhist temple. Light some incense and for the love of God do not point the soles of your feet at Buddha, but rubbing his belly is okay.

Go to a Bingo Hall. These people have Troll dolls, rabbits feet and lucky daubers set out before them in a day-glo altar to honor and appease the cruel Bingo Gods.

Any major sports franchise and play-off beards. It’s a thing.

20 years in strip clubs. No different. Girls with shoes that really should have been put to death months prior, “but they are my lucky shoes”. One girl had a bingo dauber in her purse, for reals. Lucky panties, lucky earrings, I got in a fight with a girl once because I used her lucky body spray and thereby rendered it unlucky. I had a good night, sorry Bailey.
Me? It varied, sometimes a coin, a rock, I had a purse held together with safety pins because every time I tried to use a new purse, I had a bad night.

Back in the far off past that we call the 90’s I had a crush on a boy. This was in the time before cell phones, Facebook telling us every time one of us has a sandwich etc.
What’s a girl to do when this boy works random shift-work on contract, disappears for weeks at a time and rarely answers the phone? Well, if you are me and acting quite a bit like a vapid chicken girl…I turned to chicken religion.

Rob Brezny’s Freewill Astrology became my bible (still is) and If I got the right rings on the right fingers, listened to a certain song, put my pantyhose on left leg first yada yada I had a better chance of running into him. BINGO.

I went through a calendar year of this, ‘accidentally’ running into him at a bar, going home with him at random intervals until I got sick of it. Found someone who was nice to me, fucked that up too and in the process, scared the first boy into locking me down. Not on purpose, I was genuinely sick of getting a foot in the ass and cab fare twice a month. People treat you exactly how you allow them to. I walked and he walked after me.

We, as humans, (and chickens apparently) feel the need to find order in our environment, if no order exists, we make our own. Controlling things that cannot be controlled and the end result? Self-fulfilling prophecies wearing masks of comfort. Not a bad philosophy, and it works. It just becomes counterproductive when one gets in a loop of thinking ‘nothing good ever happens to me’.

I kept track of all the money I made for a decade. A super computer couldn’t find a pattern if I gave it a million years to do so. Now I have relaxed and realized I get what I need when I need it, I also have a contract with the universe that gives me everything I want whether it’s good for me or not because at some point I will see the lesson and share it with all y’all (amen).

Life is beautiful. Don’t get me wrong, I still talk to the moon, have a bottle of perfume set aside for important encounters. I have a touch stone in my purse, light incense and smudge the house on the new moon. I am not above manufacturing my own juju.

Now, I think if I get the throw pillows just right on the bed, maybe he will climb back in it with me.
Wolf shirt powers activate?
Or I could just use my words.

“You are the calm blue ocean I swim in.
You make me believe in God.” a~

Someone wrote that for me.

God exists.
I know this.
God is good.
All the Gods are good.
They are Gods after all.
We made them in our image of what good is.

“You should start a church Sarah.” (Jeff)

I do want people to hear a voice without hate it in.

I do want the insanity to stop.

I do see with great clarity that all of the religions are different names for the same thing.

We are doing it wrong.

Perfection is the illusion.

Too much focus on unattainable perfection smothered in guilt when you can’t do the thing it is impossible to do. Just keeps you trapped in a loop, which I suppose is the point. My God wants to be celebrated, not mourned. I can make my own shitty loops of inadequacy in my head. I don’t need the Bible for that.

Remember when we were kids playing the “my dad is bigger/better than your dad” game?
Also
“Mother is the word for God on the lips and hearts of all children”. (The Crow)

*my apologies to anyone who had shitty or absent parents. It’s a metaphor.

Can we please end this bullshit posturing on a point that can never be proven? The idolization that a child has for their parents is infallible and personal. If our parents heard our arguments, they would laugh and think it was cute, as long as there is no bloodshed. So does God.

At some point, children realize their parents are flesh and blood. This leaves a hole in the soul. We ourselves become human and succumb to things like gravity, heartache and work. Security blankets stop being secure. Off to church we go, fill that void with the Lord.

I condone anything that gets you through the night, gives you comfort and keeps you from being an asshole. We’ve been doing it since the dawn of time. Inventing things to explain what we cannot. That is the beautiful thing about having free will and imagination.

Your security blanket holds no magic for me, to me it’s just fabric, maybe some warmth in a pinch. I have my own.

People twist the words of God, make them hateful. All of the major deities and their followers believe in some capacity that man was made in God’s image. That would be everyone, across the board. Not just straight white Americans. To believe otherwise is finding fault in your God. Don’t do that.

We have created this insane mess when, in the name of God, we kill to defend his name?
Who makes up a God that cannot handle being scrutinized?
He’s a God. Just love him, don’t kill anybody.
Every piece of this is man’s bullshit. (Cold Mountain)

Imagine if you will, in the time called before, a group of humans. Slightly more evolved than the rest, in a position of power and collectively they decide, ‘Okay, we need more people and we need to get the ones we have to simmer down. We need order to this chaos’.
People have always loved order, stories, belonging and explanations. Its human nature, it’s alright. So ‘they’ write the Bible, a book of rules for good, clean, organized living masquerading as stories and parables and proverbs. Easily digested. The ‘they’ were also wise enough to honor the old Gods, their names and the days set aside to celebrate them, subtlety. Humans, as a whole reject too much change at once.

The universal lunacy that we as a species have evolved since then but God hasn’t? Ludicrous.
The Judaic dietary laws made all the sense before refrigeration. Bad pork is bad mmmm ‘kay?
The Catholic stance on birth control…well ya, we needed more people. I think we are okay with the population now, we got this, give the kids some condoms and show them how to use them instead of drop boxes for unwanted babies. Stop breaking my heart with the things that break the heart of God.

We have science to keep us alive now. Which, by default is a creation of man who is a creation of God, so science is good too. No need to fight over that. Stop.

Life after death remains a mystery, the concept of heaven and hell are valid karma markers. Live a good life, don’t hurt anyone, and get rewarded later. Dangling carrots are a good thing when it is so easy to get caught up in the chaos.

The Ten Commandments still stand, but we need to add rape in there. Thou shall not take Anything without asking.

I feel like the ‘they’ that wrote the Bible, maybe would have done things differently had they realized the consequences of mankind playing broken telephone with their words and good intentions for centuries.

Practice kindness in all things. The earth is a gift, don’t hurt it. Your fellow man, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation is still your fellow man. Don’t hurt them either. It doesn’t matter what your neighbour believes, look after your own shit and judge not lest ye be judged. Your faith is your own as personal and unique as your fingerprints.

I believe in light and right, I carry around in me a conscience that tells me what hurts and what helps and I listen to it. My interpretation of any religious doctrine is valid. This is my reality I am living in and I am a child of God. This life we have is a miracle and a gift, I refuse to believe in a God that would give me something this wondrous and expect me to feel bad about it. I choose to rejoice.

I believe in a global consciousness that has manifested all of the Gods. I believe in a universal energy that I call God because this body I am in cannot fathom the enormity of it.

Godliness is next to Godliness.

I forgot to wear my boob to school one morning. I was 13.

I thought I might actually die. I was begging the Angel of the Lord to just come snatch me out of Grade 9 drama class, or set me on fire, anything but this.

Thank the Gods for baggy sweatshirts, the uniform of those suffering justifiable body dysmorphia.

I had ‘special’ bras with a pocket for my silicone prosthesis, usually worn by those who have had mastectomies. Something interrupted my morning routine and I forgot to take my boob out of her box and tuck it into my bra. My reaction? Well I immediately ran to the bathroom and did my best with some toilet paper. And, until the day I had my first surgery, I slept in my bra, with my fake boob in place for 2 years, straight. Never forgot it again.

Just before this Christmas past I spoke to High School Sweetheart, during our 3 week ‘break up/ goodbye’ the subject of his torment arose. It’s the closest I have ever heard him come to tears, because he was crying. He couldn’t even say the word jellyboob as he was struggling through an apology. I assured him he was forgiven, I was over it. And I am, over what he called me. He has redeemed himself a million times since then.

I am not over not having a tit.

Or I wasn’t then. Fuck, I wasn’t even over it on Tuesday when I published the prequel to this article.

Baby steps? Ain’t nobody got time for that. How about giant leaps for Sarah-kind.

“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t know or care about any of that.
You’re Sarah, the girl I grew up with. Not a freak.”
(message from a man I have known since I was 7 years old)

So close. But not quite.

My girl Ally was over that night, we talked about it. Her 2 cents? “it’s just a tit”.
My response? Go back and tell 13-16 year old me that, convince her it’s okay. Tell her she doesn’t have to hide, that it’s okay to talk about it, that it’s something she can’t control and she’s going to be alright. Drag Jeff back with you to tell her she would be worshiped for her weird 1000 years ago. She might listen to the handsome man.

Closer.

It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. It’s what I know. That I am not whole.

But I am?
But I’m not.
Yes, you are.

I fucked up. It’s a thing I do.

Men I have been with read this blog.
Case and point, the “dear old friend” from the last post.
He and I were talking about AHS Freak Show, Bell’s Palsy and ancient Rome.
My boob came up. He hasn’t seen me naked in 15 years and remembers me being all brave and stoic about it. My memory paints him as kind and understanding, he still is.

Then I went on to quote shitty ex saying I couldn’t be picky about the men I date, and I agreed.
That is only one side of the coin. I don’t agree, mostly.

I AM picky.

I also expect them to recoil in horror. All of them, all of the time.
When they don’t, it is such a relief it clouds my future judgement of their behaviour. After all they are tolerating the monstrosity that I am.
Second case and second point. I continued to date the douchebag who said that for another 6 months or more AFTER he said it.

No one has ever said Ew.
And yet EVERY FUCKING TIME my bra hits the floor I brace for it.
I am a stripper, my bra has hit the floor a lot.

I realized it’s because I think Ew. Every day.

I have been on a journey as of late. Something big is going to happen and I am preparing for it, like going to the moon.

I have been exploring everything I am, was and have ever done. Figuring out why and forgiving myself.

How do I forgive myself for something that happened in utero. Poland Anomaly is a congenital birth defect. It’s not like it was my choice. Even if I had lopped of a tit in my previous life as an Amazon Princess (Wonder Woman).

Closer.

I started the last article by stating, as fact, that I chose this body. I did, I believe this.

I also stated had I been normal I could have ruled the world. Also has a lot of truth in it.

But I would have been an asshole.

I do not have a conceited bone in my body. Every compliment I get is weighed and measured and it doesn’t stick unless I feel I have earned it. I came by my bravery, acceptance, nurturing nature, my ability to love unconditionally and a grand sense of humility the only way I should have. The hard way.
The same way that carves rivers into solid rock and writes braille on my psyche in scars. This IS me, it’s what I am made of.

“It’s what you deserve to hear… That you are whole, that you are worth loving”. Veronica Roth, Allegiant

But I am not whole, I never was.

But you are, you always were.

It’s not about being loved or lovable in spite of my deformity.

That is no different than the men who said ‘it doesn’t bother me’. Like they had a right to be bothered.

I also don’t want my accomplishments to be padded with “in spite of her affliction” she did the thing.

I didn’t overcome anything that I didn’t do to myself. Mostly.

“When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you love it.” Caitlyn Siehl http://alonesomes.tumblr.com/

Follow my logic.

This thing I am missing IS a part of the whole. It has shaped everything about me, everything I ever did, ever felt and what I am now. Which is kinda awesome, so…

I am whole.

I am worth loving.

I’m me.

“Can you imagine this mug on a normal body? I could have ruled the world.”
Paul, American Horror Story Freak Show

One of the schools of thought I subscribe to (a few actually) dictate that my soul chose this body before we got here. Um Soul…what the fuck were you thinking?

Figure that out and I’ll have all the answers, and quite possibly rule the world.

Remember me saying that I cannot shut up, even if it means no man will ever love me?
This is the post that prompted that fear.

2 things happened.

1. A massage
2. Drinks with an old friend/ex from my 20’s.

Common thread? Me naked.

I went for a massage with a new woman. She looked at me, poked, prodded, clucked her tongue a bit and proceeded to deal with my body as two separate halves. Treated each side differently BECAUSE IT IS FUCKING DIFFERENT. My ‘normal’ movement comes from my muscles never knowing what normal is and my body compensating.

I have Poland Syndrome. (http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/poland-syndrome )

I have two great tits, sadly they belong on two different bodies. I have always padded any disclosure with ‘it could have been worse, I could have webbed fingers and toes, shortened limbs, curvature of the spine and Bell’s palsy on the affected side’. I don’t. Yippee?

Fat only grows on muscle. Breasts are composed of mostly fat ergo…No boob. When I was in high school and had to wear a prosthetic I/it became not-so-affectionately known as “Jellyboob”.

Yep. That happened. The perpetrator of said nickname was none other than High School Sweetheart, the man I loved for 26 years. I think there is a huge tanker truck full of worms that is about to spill out, going to try and keep it contained, or perhaps call in the crows to clean that up.

But, but…wait. Stripper?

Yes, I was a one-titted stripper. Add another tanker truck full of worms to the pile up on the highway. We will have to get to that later too.

I am quite literally a circus freak. I am fucking deformed.

I am missing my pectoral major and minor on my right side.
I have had 4 corrective surgeries since I was 16.

I started seeing a plastic surgeon when I was 13. He said “we can’t do the surgery until you have finished growing, you have to be the same height for 3 years.” He measured me I was 5’5”.
Twice a year I went back, for 3 years. He measured me and I was 5’5”. On my 6^th visit, sometime in December he whipped out the plaster of Paris and began sculpting me a tit. Surgery was schedule for that summer, I had a custom made prosthetic coming, one that would reside UNDER my skin and I’d be a real girl.
Last consultation before surgery. He measured me. I was 5’8”.
Had to start over and build a new boob.

I supressed my growth.
Yes, that happened.
That is how badly I wanted to be a real girl.
also, I AM magic.

I was sitting in a pub with my dear friend, known him for almost 20 years. I must have called myself deformed once for each of those years. I said I would have been in a freak show had I been born in the 30’s. “But you weren’t Sarah”. He kept reminding me that I am lucky. Apparently my old speech was rather convincing. Except I never convinced myself. I said “I would have been discarded had I been born in ancient Greece”. He disagreed and thought I would be worshiped Gods bless him. It could have gone either way.

Every girl says “I’m not like other girls” and while in a philosophical sense, I tend to agree. It still gets my back up 7 ways from Sunday. I want to shake them and say at least you have 3/3 things that make you a woman.

One of my rather shitty exes said to me “well you only have one tit, you can’t be picky about the men you date”. Shitty thing to say right? My mom said it was abusive, it was abusive, he was abusive. But I didn’t think he was wrong.

The most comfort I ever received was from a stranger, she heard about me and sent me a letter saying that I was an Amazon in a previous life, that I had willingly lopped off my breast because it made me a better warrior. Which would also explain why, at age 7, I was reigning archery champion at camp having never picked up a bow before. While lovely and mildly comforting, something is still missing. A tit, and with it a huge piece of me and my peace of mind with it.

It’s what you deserve to hear… “That you’re whole, that you’re worth loving…”― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

I don’t need to hear it, I need to believe it and I don’t know how.

This subject is far from closed, I’m having revelations like lightning strikes and need some time to ponder.

“I’ve been fucking around while you’ve been saving the world.” Robert Delong

I am ignoring my self-imposed word count today. I want this out.

I am not vicious or mean for fun or profit.

This post is neither fun nor profitable (yet)

Something bad happened.

I held an infant.

Quite pleasant for most folks. For me it was an exercise in terror.

Who the fuck sees an infant as a trigger for trauma…oh right, me.

Nope, not because of that. I have made peace with that.

Put me in a strip club, let one person say or do something untoward and I BECOME the Angel of Death raining down fire and brimstone like Loki in Dogma. Gimme sec, I must contemplate Matt Damon’s mouth. Ahhhh. Okay where were we.

Maybe not fire and brimstone, but I am viciously accurate with a platform stiletto, broke a nose. Choke holds, check. One time I launched a girl 10 feet (she was coming at me) and made many a man cry.

Treat me like shit in real life and I will take my shirt of so you can better see where to put the knife. And I will also give you my shirt.

Phone conversation 2 days ago
Me: Well of course I loved the baby. I watched him come out of her vagina and I looked after him every day for 3 months. Then she dumps this cat on me, an owl eats it in the middle of the night and suddenly I am the devil.

I then went on to explain how ‘I understand why she did what she did to me’.

Wait, what?

This girl invites me to her baby shower, an acquaintance from a strip club. She is 6 months pregnant, alone and starving. I swooped in and looked after her. I cared for her for 6 months, to the tune of 6 grand. And I understand why she cut me out of her life in the most vicious of ways? I can justify her still slandering me to this day, 2 years later, whenever my name gets mentioned?

Yup. That’s right folks. I get it.

Somehow ‘getting it’ and ‘deserving it’ became synonymous to me.

Putting my stiletto clad foot down right about………………..now.

No. nay fucking NAY.

Another prime example.

Young Un.

Even in proverbial death I managed to write him this flowery, candy coated obit.
(Bringing Home the Gold)

There was an aside at the end about how I left him better than I found him. Elaborating now.

It hurts me to say it. It reads an awful lot like ‘how I got used for 2 months because I allowed it’.

I failed to mention the loans never repaid. Him borrowing my truck which I put on the road 3 months before I needed to and paid the insurance on which was the chariot he used to escort his new girl to Niagara Falls, before returning it to me reeking of Axe body spray with a busted transmission. No remorse, just a desperate plea for me to ‘stay down’ in the friend-zone where he wanted me. All the better to use you my dear.

I failed to mention scrolling through his old Facebook pics (with him) and my realization he had severe and justifiable ugly duckling syndrome. He was a fat kid with braces and acne. Hadn’t been pretty long enough to see what I saw. The way I spoke to him, treated him and coveted him made his balls drop and he started dating an alt model closer to his age. Their kids are gonna take the best duck face selfies EVER.

I get it. Didn’t deserve it, but he is a kid and I don’t care anymore.

The other night I went out, to the same bar in which Young Un treated me like He had won the gold.  I meet this girl. Quickly put two and two together. Oh shit she’s friends with Bad Kitty.
I got ready to bolt. I can only trip down memory lane so far before I end up bloody and crying.

The war Bad Kitty launched on the man and wife was decidedly more vicious than the one she started against me, but she started it.

I moved her twice and bailed her out often. Second verse same as the first, just no babies.

I was Waiting for this stranger to rip into me. She didn’t.

She knew the truth, got used and betrayed in her own way. We hugged it out.

My nail lady had twins, got my nails done last week, she was there with the babies.
I finished, went to get my coat and ended up getting handed a fussy twin.

My first instinct was to shove it back at her and say ‘you can’t trust me with this’.
I fought the fear and he fell asleep in my arms.

Wow, that fucking cunt did a number on me.

I know why I do what I do. I cannot imagine being another way. If I see someone in distress, I literally have to help them. Bad Kitty’s was broke and broken, I gave her cash. No one else was looking after K___ and her baby. Young Un was stuck in a conundrum of shitty job for shitty pay with no light. I turned the light on.

I paid dearly for all three. I am fucking damaged for the good I did. I am scared and hurt. They paid me for my kindness by giving me this sinking feeling I am not worth anything so I run from people who won’t hurt me. I used Young Un as a human shield but that is a story for another day.

I still refuse to lose that part of myself.

What I need to do is start treating the world as my strip club, wherein I am an angel to some a devil to others.
Where there is a distinct line between right and wrong.
Where I have value.
Where I feel safe and powerful and where I know my worth.

I have never questioned the naming and claiming of the involuntary muscle in my chest to explain how I feel.

“It wasn’t until I felt actual physical pain when you left the room that I knew I was in love”.
Dangerous Liasons

I know the quickening, swelling, breaking, bruising and aching void that can only be described as a sucking chest wound. The center of my being lies in my rib cage. The bars are too far apart and heart is prone to slip out and sit on my sleeve, enjoying the view.
Oh honey, it’s not safe out there.

Certain lyrics, tones, words, songs thunder punch me in the heart. My body reacts.

She flutters, beats a staccato. On occasion it murmurs.

My heart is my last vestige of childhood, she never grew past 3 when happiness was clouds, flowers, sunshine, red winged blackbirds, swing sets and fresh baked bread. She still believes in fairies and an indescribable goodness, loves cupcakes, tiaras and sunsets. She speaks in that magical language that occurs between toddler and articulation. She hums and coos, babbles when she is excited. When she is lost or hurt she sends out a whale song, low moans traveling the vast oceans of time and space looking for comfort.

I read a meme a few months back.

“Find someone who loves the way you love”.

I simultaneously jumped back from my laptop and closed the tab, knocked my chair over and sent the dogs into a fit of barking. They were scared. I was HORRIFIED.

I will, on occasion, exaggerate for dramatic effect. This is not one of those times. I am being literal, in the literal sense of the word literal, which means that actually happened.

Terrified of being loved like I love? What the ever loving fuck?

I giggled a nervous giggle, righted my chair and posted (quickly) to Facebook, thinking ‘ha ha Universe, good joke.’

Oh wait, I need to add that to the list of things to ponder. In fact, that has to be the list. A list of just that one thing.

I pondered. At great length, saw the meme again the other day and sighed a contented sigh.

I think we need more words for love, in love.

Once upon a time, a girl walked into a strip club, the one I was working at. I watched her glide across the room, didn’t make eye contact or speak a word. Fell in love with her instantly. Loved everything she ever was or ever would be. It was months before we met. That first feeling I had was justified.

Work with me here for a minute. Here is why I think we need more words for love, a LOT more. I didn’t fall in love with her and want to fuck her or touch her beyond holding hands. You don’t fuck art.

I mean in a Namaste kind of way. The universe in me saw the universe in her, and recognized her as home, familiar, sacred contract, soul sister. Love. When I told her, she smiled and said she knew and felt the same.

She loves the way I love. Loves me like that.

She isn’t my only soul sister. I have a few. In no way do I covet what they have or what they are. My contentment comes from knowing they exist and their energy, which is compatible and recognizable to mine.

I think where my block and fear come from is this.
I have never been completely me.
I have never been loved, by a man As Is.
They loved what I showed them. I never loved me, so they couldn’t either. I would also become all consumed and lost in the person I was with, safer to hide behind them than to come forward and show myself and risk rejection. The fear of rejection is bred in my bones, if I could be misunderstood forever it would be better than being turned away for being me, it’s not real hurt if it’s not really me.

I am fucking over it.

Love is not some fiery passionate mess. It is finding home with another person. It’s looking at this man and thinking ‘you are my favorite’, and feeling that warmth back.

Dear heart, that is not frightening at all, it is the safest thing there is.

Ambisexual

Sacred creation

All loving

Reformer of instinctual liberation

Ambassador of the Kama Surtra

Hearts desire

Omnivorous nymph, embodiment of sexual perfection

Empress of empyrean stature

Naked mutable muse

Mother Mistress

Impious to some mundane masses

Nomadic lover

Debauched, daughter of Venus

ALPHABETIC PAINTING

by j.s. devins

for she whose name means princess

Sarah means Princess in Hebrew. Also ‘fiery one’, ‘discontent’ and also the Patron Saint of Gypsies.

I am those things.

I am in that photograph.

I am what was written above for me when I was 19.
I have no idea how he knew all of those things, we were never together. I was just a dumb, clumsy girl then.

That is what I saw. The general consensus of those who knew me when I was young is that I carried myself with some kind of terrifying grace. Tuesday’s child.

I am a magpie, a gypsy, I love all the colors, all things sparkly, I wander.

I am a water nymph, water is one of two places everything goes quiet for me.

I believe in fairies and ghosts. I think I am a fucking fairy which would explain my metabolism among other things.

I count crows and flip coins when I can’t make up my mind, but only if it’s important.

I spent a long time being angry. Hurricane Sarah is the rarest one of all, unless you are talking about me. I was a storm with skin. (BloodandFlowers)

I had a boss over 7 feet tall, he had to fire me after I threw the sharpest of tantrums, he said he had never been scared of anything like he was of me, in his office at that moment. I smiled, said I understood. I had my job back in a month.

That was in a time called ‘before’.

Now “I want people to hear a voice without hate in it”. ~ Pass the Light.

“Where were you?”
“I just got back from a place called ‘Say it, say it, say it. I said it.”
(Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip)

Writing is all I ever wanted to do.

Someone wanted to know who I am.

I can tell you what I am not.

Dead.

January 26^th 2009 I was driving my son home. We were in a near fatal collision. My 14 year old son pulled me from the wreckage. I overheard bystanders saying ‘there is no way anyone lived through that’. I corrected them.

He is made of rubber and was half asleep. Me? Saw it coming and braced for impact.

3 weeks later I saw two very distinct paths. Stay on opiates on the couch, get huge and live my life like that, if you can call that a life. Or get up.

I got up.

I fell.

I was a wretched mess. Truth be told I was a mess before I got mangled and crushed. I used to have these panic attacks that would turn my limbs into tree limbs, my hands into claws, if I wasn’t hyper ventilating I wouldn’t have breathed at all. Every vein would stick out, I quite literally turned into a twisted tree, solid.

The next 18 months were the hardest I have ever been through. I had lost muscle memory, actual memory, a huge chunk of my vocabulary. I was an angry ghost floating around making everyone miserable, even me. I locked myself in my room for 3 months and screamed at anyone who tried to come in.

I got up.

I left my husband and the farm.

Got scared, wanted to go home.

He wouldn’t let me unless I went to therapy.

I went.

2 kinds. One traditional, with this woman who was made of kindness. She rescues horses and she rescued me.

Another woman who spoke in tongues, put rocks on me and pried open my third eye.

I left them both feeling better than I had since I was little.

I fell.
Immediately back into an old familiar pattern. Abusive mediocrity.

Until one day, another 18 months later. This woman I hadn’t seen in a decade messaged me out of the blue. Showed up at my house, told me I had wandered off my path and she was here to get me back on it. She predicted the future, I believed her. She’s magical.

Here I am.

Gemini Wood Tiger.

40 times around the sun.

98% mobility, 90% vocabulary and all me.

Alone for the first time since my son was born, mostly.

Finally writing like I always wanted, someone 4 year old me would recognize and look up to. Fairy princess made of magic and love.

I still fall down, I just don’t stay down.

I have wings after all.

http://www.markryden.com/

When I was a teenager I would drop acid, hang out with my friends, go home and write trippy-teenage-angsty-drama-laden poetry.

Some of it wasn’t half bad from what I remember.

There was a drawer. Everything I Ever wrote, (dis)organized in layers, from public school until I was 15. I still have the dresser. The words went in the fire. Apparently the stuff on top was pornographic, funny since I was a virgin well into my 16^th year. Not funny ha ha. I admit to a little bitterness, there are ghosts and slips of the girls I used to be in here with me.

Took me 25 years to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of that funeral pyre.

I’m writing again, now is all that matters.

One thing I remember writing, (yes 25 years and I still remember), was ‘there is a rowdy tea party in my head’.

There is.

The Me I am now has dubbed them “The Royal We”. I stole that from a song (Silversun Pickups)

I am composed of 4 elements.

Logic.
It’s just Mine. Clean cut, flawless. Honed and sharpened over 40 years of grinding against the illogic of others. Forged in the fires of right and wrong.
“Logic stepped in, wearing the shining armour of truth and slayed the twit with two words.
“I know”.
Logic flashed a sunlit smile, confident and infallible”.
My logic is diamond encrusted and I wear it like a crown or wield it like a sword, depending.

Ego.
Freudian fo’ sho’. What I want, what I am. The masks I wore. Ego is mutable and well tamed by Logic and time. For most of my life not a lot of outside thought was given to what I want and who I am. She got buried under everyone else’s ego. Not anymore. And the masks? Just decoration now.

Oh heart.
Dear sweet heart. Think Boo from Monster’s Inc. always in pj’s and pigtails, forever 3 years old, speaking in that candy-coated jabber no one understands but it pleases our ears.
Mostly she walks around with her blankie and colours.
On occasion she wails, sounds like whale noises.
Then sometimes she turns into the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man and lays waste to New York, accidentally. She’s just so big.

And last but always loudest, Vagina.
Imagine a teenage girl. Temper tantrum after temper tantrum. Also, she is always STARVING. Sometimes we feed her just to shut her up.

Fear, Doubt, Hope and Angst used to sit at the table with us. Bunch of fucking assholes, always spitting on the good cupcakes and letting the tea steep till it was bitter.
They hid under the table, everyone but Logic sneaking them crumbs.

Angst murdered, Doubt thrown into a fire. The locks have been changed Fear and Hope gaze in the window.

The remaining 4 rarely agree.
A lot of their time is spent trying to coax Heart off my sleeve, back to the safety of her blanket fort.

I see very clearly now, from the head of the table, diaries spread out before us that every failed relationship was a result of leaving one of me out of the equation. I never bothered to hold out for “He Who will Appease Us All”.
It’s no one’s fault. Ego had a 40 year identity crisis. And we had already met Him, he was just over in another time zone, being married and shit, yet somehow having full custody of Heart. That has been amended. Heart wants, we abide.

Case and point? Young Un. That was ALLLLL Ego and Vagina.

St. Anthony? Ego had slipped into a coma, like Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of thorns. We were lost without her.

Pimp Daddy. That was Logic standing alone, stubborn, can’t recall why. Trying to be a grown up I suppose. Yuck.

Sunday. Closer. Logic, Ego and Vagina all concur. Heart smiles at him but keeps colouring and humming to herself.

I had an Epiphany.

United we stand, divided we fall. (Aesop)
Fuck, united we fall harder.

Twice the Council has voted unanimously. Giving rise to the 5^th element.
Love.
That is all I really am.
Love walking around in human form.

Less like Milla Jovovich and more like Mother Mary. The way the Catholics draw her.
Our Lady of Lust, Grace, Serenity with our gargantuan glowing Immaculate Heart.
 

Most girls and women do this thing where they get talking about something they are really passionate about and become all animated and lit up and excited. Then as quick as a light switch, we shut down, mumble an apology and it’s over. It’s because someone we held in high regard once, twice or a thousand times, sneered at our enthusiasm and told us to calm down. I am beginning to realize that all of the times that happened to me it was because when I get like that, it’s like looking at the sun. Instead of shining back, they tried to shut me out. It took me a long time to just shine anyways.

When I was 19 years old, I met someone who wasn’t scared of me, who wouldn’t let me mumble or apologize. He was a writer and he was strange too. He wasn’t putting up with my weird to try and sleep with me. He just liked my weird. And then he died.

____________________________________________________________________________

I wasn’t supposed to be there, I think you called me.

I hope the last thing you remember about being on earth is me holding your head in my lap, brushing your hair from your face. I was calm in that moment, the love I had for you was genuine. I shut everything out and just focused on you. I didn’t realize the permanence of what was happening and I am glad, when I said everything was going to be alright, it was the truth.

I hope the chaos of the days that followed were lost on you and that you were experiencing something amazing and ethereal, not quite in your body, straddling this life and the next.  I got shut out of the hospital and funeral. It angered me at the time, but I think you and I had the best goodbye possible. Everything happened exactly like it was supposed to. When you died all the veils were lifted and those of us left behind saw the best and worst in each other. Thank you for that.

I want you to know that you leaving was a catalyst for me leaving. Neither one of us belonged there.

I can sit here now, 21 years later, with a map, a timeline and push pins and I can see how everything you did and were has affected who and what I am now. I am not the only one. You lived a huge beautiful life in a really short time.

I miss you, I love you and I’m writing again. I have finally let someone other than you read the things I write, all of the someones. You pushed me towards good things, you made me brave, made me feel like strange was a good thing to be. You saved me, more than once. I am finally living a life full of people who see me the way you did, like we are made out of magic. I found someone who makes me shine.