I have held on longer for less I have held on longer for less I have held on longer for less
Really Brain, this is our mantra?
-Yes.
Ego?
-I’m out (sips whiskey from her tea cup and smirks a bit around the rim)
Heart? Vagina? You listening to this?
-Yep. Mmmmm hmmmm.
Heart feels safe enough to come out of her blanket fort and Vagina has been smiling and singing softly to herself for a while now.
Ego is appeased somehow, or unnecessary here. Either way, if she say she good, she good. Just leave her be.
The rowdy tea party in my head hasn’t been so rowdy lately. Errrbody is just sitting around in agreeance, keeping busy, being happy.
Tatting lace, sipping oolong or scotch depending, and sighing a lot. Like a lot a lot. Heart gets cognac in a sippy cup, but still.
Faith joined in, Sass and Swagger showed up after a long absence.
And then that text tone goes off and errrbody snaps to attention.
Lord help you if you message and you aren’t the chosen one.
It’s been about 100 days. It isn’t actually that long.
90 days in he called me his girl.
I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted to hear it until he said it.
I was too busy over here being me. Working, writing, hanging out with my girls.
I’ve had relationships rise and fall in less time than this.
I have heard the words ‘love’ and ‘forever’ within days/weeks of meeting someone.
It never worked out.
How could it?
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Besides, to quote the Biebs…where are you now that I need you.
(see also) I was on my knees when nobody else was prayin’, oh lord.
I have prayed and I have waited longer for less, and I take to my knees often.
It’s what I do.
And I’ll do it again.
Often times I’m left like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, having to one-inch-punch my way out of a wooden box having been buried unceremoniously in the middle of the night in another girl’s grave.
I know why I wait.
2 reasons.
How many times have I been left?
So many.
It hurts like my knuckles after freeing myself from the weight of 6 feet of dirt crushing me. (Give or take an inch or two.)
I stay just in case, so I don’t inadvertently visit that pain on someone else. Or bury them alive.
That hasn’t happened.
Once upon a time I said to the Giant that there must be monks somewhere that visited brothels to test their piousness, it was in the context of me inviting him over for beers. His piousness was mostly intact when he left.
My faith gets tested. I too am weighed, measured and sometimes found wanting.
I want him now.
I do need to humble myself before God now and again.
Prove that I can behave and stay loyal in a world where it is easier not to.
Yea thou I walk through the Garden of Tinder, beset by temptation on all sides, I shall fear no evil.
I’ve had enough of snakes in the grass and poisoned apples. And Tinder for that matter.
An orgasm a day keeps the fuckbois away. I have my toys and I know how to use them.
I shall not want.
I feel very much like my sassy self…with a little extra sass and swagger on top.
Second reason?
It’s in my DNA.
I am hard wired for obstinacy.
Sisterwife called me perseverant once. She wasn’t wrong.
I should’ve left. I was stubborn in all the right ways, just in the wrong place.
My mother and grandmother waited. There were wars, the men in my family fought them and the women in my family waited. Great-great grandmother on my mama’s side too. Her husband sent her to northern Canada to hold down the family homestead. She was high born and had never even started a fire before, but she managed, they all managed and here I am. The result of the love, stamina and tenacity of good women and the good men who loved them.
This is my legacy. Be a good woman and wait.
Like I said, I’ve waited a lot longer for so much less.
I don’t mind. If that was just practice, then it was worth every godforsaken minute.
My sass and swagger came back because they felt welcome. My heart feels safe. My ego dropped her guard. I don’t feel like I have to hold on so tight.
I never did learn how to give up, and right now, I feel like I don’t have to.
