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Wave Goodbye to Daddy

August 17, 2016

Here comes another Mercury retrograde.

Daddy is leaving us for a bit.

He is going to pull way back and prepare for launch.

Life is one big amusement park. And Mercury retrograde is the long, sweaty maddening line before the ride.

At Universal Studios they try to make the lines interesting, the same storylines getting played on repeat on multiple screens at certain points while you wait, they glitch and loop until you think you might go a little nuts. The closer you get to the ride the more they make you panic the story and instructions become more intense.

I’ve ridden this before, not panicking this time.

Also, akin to Universal, you can play with your phone at certain points but sometimes it needs to get tucked away or it worked in this corner but won’t work in that one.

I am trying to figure out my best course of action based on past events.

I have had some colossal fuck ups and meltdowns during retrogrades past. I thought I could use my platinum “daughter of Hermes” card with my sun sign being ruled by this giant hunk of iron and my house of communication and my house of house and home, yep. Mercurial.

I think I just made things worse thinking I could bend the quicksilver rules. That shit is poison when handled incorrectly. Things I held sacred that I dropped (Audioslave)

I will try to abide my father’s voice in absentia as he wanders backwards in the sky and fucks shit up by leaving.

How am I going to be an optimist about this? B^STILLE.

Better yet how do I not fuck shit up?

First and foremost, it’s only 22 days. They seemingly stretch on for years as piece after piece of the puzzle goes missing and messages get sent out and never returned. That’s the hard part for me. The lack of communication. See above where my Mercury is in Gemini, twice as chatty. Fucking answer me already. “I’ve said my piece/peace and counted to 3” (Oh Brother, Where art Thou?)

I swear there is actually a shadow phase pre-retrograde and my phone is already chillin in the darkness. Almost missed a night out because my phone was being a withholding prick with messages. Chatting away with the Giant about his triumphant return from Scotland, totally taking advantage of his jet lag and belly full of scotch to extract truth out of him like pulling lilies out of the dirt, and yet the viable plans I had?
Nothing came through.

It worked itself out, down to the wire, but we got it and it was good amen.

The world wouldn’t have ended if I didn’t go out last night.

The world doesn’t end even when I wish it would or believe with all my might that it’s HAPPENING AGAIN. Versions of it collapse in on themselves and birth new ones just like I collapse in on myself get up with my skinned knees and gravel filled palms and keep going somehow. Things that were paramount once upon a time have become hiccups and bumps in the road.

Now is a time to re-examine, re-read old lessons and learn. This is the one time nostalgia and memory lane are the best places to visit.

No big travel plans. We are already in line, no line jumping.

Finish up old projects and do not start new. Just wait, use this time to reflect and finish your shit.

Back everything up.

Then really all there is to do is sit back and accept the crazy.

Everyone is going to feel a little off, things will go missing, texts won’t go through. Just roll with it baby.

In the amusement park of life, I chose the rollercoaster.
Got stuck on a less than merry-go-round for a bit but I jumped off, of course I skinned my fucking knees, but I heal.
I keep going back to that exhilarating ride of higher than fuck highs, crazy drops, twists that rattle my bones and sometimes the long arduous climb that proceeds one of those falls that wakes the butterflies in my belly.

Look Ma, I am climbing.

Sometimes the ride gets stuck. The world doesn’t end, we just wait.

Time passes whether we are worried about it or not.

Nothing is on my timeline. I don’t get to dictate the when. Just the what.

I prayed for rain. Thunder and lightning specifically and it started the day the Lumberjack left the province, the weatherman is calling for 5 more days of sky tantrums. It stops the day he comes back into my time zone.

I got my rain.

A praying mantis lit upon the porch today. My son found it and called me in that voice where I dropped everything and ran to him. I saw her and smiled, he named her Sally, said she guarded our house now.

I realized something…I can abide the rules.

My book starts with a praying mantis landing on a girl on a porch. It is time to revisit this and finish the thing. That chapter of my life needs to be finished, sent to an editor and closed.

I don’t have to start anything new. I’m already in line for what I want.

I did get a new job, like a big girl grown up job, but under the wire on starting new adventures.

I am smitten with someone I met way before Mercury even thought about spinning backwards into the cold dark night. So I am good there.

The big move is out of the way, house settled into.

Life is good.

Now is a time for finishing things, polishing the silver and hoping the Titanic doesn’t go down. I know where the life rafts are and there is room for 2 on the headboard.

It may not be my magnetically propelled launch preference when it comes to rollercoasters, but I think this climb around I will just sit back relax and enjoy the view, I know the fall is coming and it is going to be spectacular.

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I Love Lamp

August 14, 2016

Sunshine was in the shower and I scared the crap outta her by yelling very emphatically “I LOVE THIS FUCKING LAMP!”

I don’t love this lamp. It isn’t even a lamp really, it’s a retro, scrollwork chandelier hybrid thing with dangling sparkly bits. I wouldn’t have picked it. I love my chandeliers dripping crystals, diamond bright and throwing rainbows. But it’s cute and it matches what we’ve got going on in our living room.

I love that it is up and that when we flick the switch it comes on or turns off depending.

I have no words to describe the last 28 days of moving chaos and shit going right sideways.
This fucking chandelier was at the eye of the hurricane, the poster child for everything that was going wrong.

Put it back in the corner, put the tools back in the box and try again tomorrow.

Yesterday was the tomorrow that seemed like it would never come.

Out of the blue my dear friend Cory shows up, says, “looks like you have a light missing.” And voila. There was light and it was good.
Amen hallelujah and all that sparkling jazz.

It sat in various corners and spaces for 28 days. I held it over my head for about an hour all together until my shoulders burned and my forearms shook. Giant got it to light up once, but we needed a part that he had at home and we gave up because we wanted to look at each other and I was making funny little squeaks of protest awfully close to his crotch.

The wiring in this retro apartment we live in is…well fucked. The whole building is eccentric and adorable until it’s time to switch out a light fixture, then it becomes one of the 12 Herculean tasks and there are 5 wires all coated in white paint and no configuration of 3 to 5 makes the light turn on.

“We had to make a lamp that looked like an elephant and when you pulled the trunk the light was supposed to go on. My lamp didn’t go on.”

…

“Without lamps there would be no light.”

Breakfast Club.

Then God said, let there be light and there was light and it was good.

All of the mens that tried (4 for the record) balancing on chairs and then a step ladder, twice having sparks fly from the wires, many times having the light just not go on at all and then that one time where the safety wire snapped and it fell and Hot Neighbor caught it whilst balancing on a ladder…all channeled our inner Jane Says and decided to try again tomorrow.

Someone came waltzing out of my ancient history yesterday. And there was light. Well at first there was only light, it wouldn’t turn off…but he fixed it and leveled it and now we have light.

I feel lighter.

I haven’t seen him in 22 years.

He says he can’t read these stories because it gets his blood up. Reading what I go through and not being able to see that I’m okay. I told him I was alright and he believed me and there was more light and it was really good. Literally his face lit up.

It was hard when he left. He reminded me of all the good there was for me in my high school years. I tend to remember the shit, but there was so much good.

Kinda like the damned lamp.

It was nagging at me that it wasn’t up. It’s continued tenancy in the corner behind the door a constant reminder of the things that weren’t done yet. Ghostly marks of droplets of sweat on the living room floor from when Giant tried to get it working reminded me of the coldest night of the year when he fired up the charcoal barbecue to make me steak. He spent the hottest night of the year trying to get this fucking lamp up.

And I still have days where I question whether or not I am loved?

I focus on the bad and fail to see the good right in front of my eyes.

I live in this beautiful apartment with one of my best friends. I call her Sunshine because she lights up my life daily. And I let this lamp vex me?

The lesson here is twofold at least, quite possibly many folded, like an origami crane.

I am loved.

Things get done and get better. Eventually and always.

Not everything can be on my timeline, barely anything really, and the more time I spend worrying and focusing on what is not I miss out on the glory of what is.

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Yesterday is Where I Left it.

August 10, 2016

Yesterday I saw a soldier demon try and claw its way out of a little girl. Constantine

Yesterday, all my trouble seemed so far away. The Beatles

Wait, no yesterday was the trouble and I was the little girl with the demon in her, wanting out.

I live with chronic pain. I just do. I don’t talk about it often. I haven’t had more than a week below a 3/10 since Arizona, and that was 7 days out of 7 years. I miss that chiropractor like oxygen. I swear she had angel wings and a halo. Her hands were made of magic and she rearranged my bones into a less painful configuration for a time.

I don’t talk about it often because to speak of pain aloud gives it acknowledgment and thereby power over me.

I hurt, and that’s okay. I am used to it and most days it doesn’t bother me. And on the days it does, I either let it or I don’t. Some days I have no choice and it huffs and it puffs and it blows my house down. So I nap and cry and put ice packs in interesting places and wait it out. All storms pass.

I am in control over my own damned self.
I manufacture my own happiness and other emotions in my own mind.

Giant said something the other day and I was quick to correct him.
He said “I can’t come running over and make you a happy Sarah.”
No you can’t, you can add to it, but you can’t create it with your presence or take it away with your absence.
My sadness also belongs to me and me alone.
I cried rivers over him, which flowed into oceans, but they were my own.
I could have stopped at any time, but I chose to go with the flow and see where it took me. Which is here, and here is good. I float.

4-6 days a year I hit an 8.
10/10 being active labor or the first while after the car crash that started all of this.

Yesterday was an 8.5

When I say I live with chronic pain I mean she sleeps with me every night, I try to roll over and ignore her, but she wakes me up sometimes. She sits with me in the car and I avoid acknowledgement until about hour four then she sits in my lap and weighs heavy on my legs and lower back.

I made a decision upon a farm couch 7 years ago.

There is no parallel universe with any version of me who would not have stubborned herself up off that couch. There is no doppelganger of mine that convalesced and died there. Sisterwife lays there dying now, her choice, not mine.

There are days where I hurt so bad that I cry hysterically and this opens me up to emotional outbursts that I cannot control. But there are days when I don’t. I live for those. I love being in the water because I float myself down to a 2.5. The stretching and cardio I get on the pole and the endorphins released during sex lessens the pain as well, or distracts me the same way opioids do. The pain is there and I simply don’t care.

Apparently poles of all kinds are good things for me.

I take the same attitude with my PTSD. I don’t have it. It has a key to my house and pops by now and again to remind me something bad happened years ago. But I have mentally put so much space between me and then, it’s like watching an old movie clip. If I put effort in I can remember the whole film, but why would I? I didn’t do that to me, someone else did and they are long gone and far, far away. I’m in no clear or present danger. Those little flashes are just warning lights when I veer down a familiar path. So I leave.

I do not understand why we would prolong our suffering. Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?

I didn’t do those thing to me, someone else did. Not my problem. I practice kindness not cruelty because I can. The only person I can control is myself, and these are my choices.

Let go and let god.

Everything is as it should be.

This too shall pass.

Laugh and smile as often as possible and pass it on to others.

I live for belly laughs, good food, better sex, writing, loving and learning.

Yesterday all of those things seemed really far away.

Yesterday don’t matter ‘cos it’s gone. Rolling Stones

Today is a whole new glorious day.

lost boys

Tinder and the Really Big Fish

August 8, 2016

I shut that shit down 2-3 weeks ago now?
I don’t know exactly, just more time has passed that I have not been on it than I was actually on it.

The first guy I pulled out of the water is the one I want. He’s huge.

But the fuckbois just keep on coming. And I keep throwing them back.

My arm is tired.

Bad date messaged yesterday asking if I wanted to see him again. I did not engage.

‘He who bailed’ keeps checking in on that weird timeline I only associate with my lost boys who don’t have access to clocks or any concept of time.

I am totally out of get out jail free cards, must have lost them in the move.

I told him that I already have amassed a fuckboi army with those from my past and I wasn’t looking to add to it. They are enough trouble as is. I have already established patterns and relationships with them. They are not ideal but they are familiar, and as much as a fuckboi can belong to anyone, they are mine. And I have the anti-venom for when they bite me in the ass.

The problem with a fuckboi army? They don’t show up when I need them, they just show up, fully armed and ready to take over whenever it suits them. ‘I wonder what Sarah is doing, she was really nice.’

See also “when I am happy a bell gets rung in the graveyard of my heart and all my skeletons get up and ask me to dance.”

And the new ‘recruits’?

Ew, no.

I didn’t ask for this.

My tinder window is closed so they are finding me on instagram and messaging me there. Delete/block/repeat.

I had tentative plans with one or two, but that was July and you are just messaging me yesterday?

‘He who bailed’ said he was trying not to message me so he didn’t appear desperate. He’s a nice enough fellow so I gave him the following advice.

“If you are interested in women my age I will tell you a secret. Good morning texts are good, good night texts are good. Shoot a message out during the day and we might not answer because we are busy, so don’t double up. Don’t listen to your cock or your brain, go with your gut, your gut won’t lie.”

I didn’t want someone who was going to message me every day. Until He did. And I liked it. And then he stopped, and here I sit. Feeling like shit, wondering what happened.

A month, a full calendar month of checking in here and there daily. I didn’t feel overwhelmed and I didn’t feel neglected. Now I do.

I really did try to keep feelings out of it, just breathe and see where it goes. But that is the thing about being in the ocean. You are bound to get wet.

Sunshine and I noticed a strange category of men on tinder who had a profile pic of them holding a fish.
(See also men holding gators and goats, a bizarre sub-species)

“Is this fish for me? Am I supposed to be impressed with the size of the fish? Do you need me to cook it for you? Did you wash your hands? What do I do with this fish?”

I like fish and I like fishing, it just seemed odd, like a cat proudly yowling after the gift of a dead thing.

Then I looked on my guy’s Instagram and there he was, grinning and holding a huge pike.
And I thought it was adorable.

If you like someone, perceptions change.

Changing them back, now that is a bitch.

Establishing happy habits just to have them taken away?

Ain’t that the fucking truth.

This would be a good time to call in the army, but they don’t come when I call, they only come when I’m happy and I ain’t.

I don’t want to go fishing again.

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Firewalking

August 7, 2016

The neighbors are fighting again.

At least she is fighting back this time. She sounds like a different woman when she sticks up for herself.

It’s not going to last long, she is going to crumble, I give it 15 minutes.

I have heard their soundtrack before, played it too.

I relocated to a bigger apartment in the same building and now I have front row, balcony seats.

It hurts me.

Mostly it’s him calling her names and smashing shit and then this shrill wail, like a banshee comes out of her mouth.

It is echoes of my own.

I used to be her.

I dated a him.

And another him with another face, and probably a few more.

I want to reach out and down from my balcony and pull her up to mine. Show her what it looks like when women make it on their own. How nice it can be, how clean and quiet. How we laugh. How we swap stories saying ‘yes honey, I’ve been there too’ over coffee.

One of my best girlfriends is in the shit right now.

She said “I know you are getting sick of me.”

I replied “I got 9+ years of being in those relationships, my patience for you is nowhere near ending. However, please don’t take that long.”

It seems to be some rite of passage. Like some phoenix from the ash bullshit but the fire has fists and a drinking problem.
And what happens if you don’t rise? You have to pack so much ice around you, you freeze to death.

Mental abuse is still abuse and she has suffered with the rest of us.
And she is in it again.

Different man, different face, different way of cheating on her.

He is an addict and his mistress is drugs.

“But he has demons”

Honey we all do, he just chooses to feed his.

He would rather risk another psychotic break than stay clean.

The core 4 friends I have are all strippers, or were until recently. Myself included. We’ve all seen drugs change people we knew and loved into strangers and we have all watched as years have gone by and somehow some of them stay intact.

There is a spectrum. On one end is the unfortunate kid that smokes one crack rock and dies of a heart attack at age 16 and there is Keith Richards. Everyone else falls somewhere in between.

I have watched people succumb to cocaine psychosis and it made me quit. I didn’t love myself but I didn’t want to give myself a chemical lobotomy either.

I have watched girls end up on the street from bad boyfriends and bad drugs. Took a few into my house and gave them a shot at getting clean. They took it.

I wish we had some kind of hive mind collective we could tap into, project our experiences into the minds of our friends. So they could feel what we felt, the fear, the knuckle that left me with a scar on my lip. The warm arms of those who loved me taking care of me and now…the men who defend me, protect me, love me, take up arms against those who even look at me the wrong way.

The ones that love to watch me belly laugh and squeal, not scream. The ones I can melt into because I trust them.

They are what is waiting on the other side of that firewalk.

This is the “warmth that can only come from a burning”. (SK)

I know you are tired, but come, this is the way. Rumi

The neighbors got evicted, too many noise complaints. I hear him blaming her for it and my eyes roll so bad they get stuck and my blood boils. But that is the way it is, I can see it from one floor up and across the way, she is in it and can’t see what he is. I wish she would just realize he ain’t nothing but a wet paper bag and fight her way out.

I don’t know how old the neighbor is 25-30 if I had to guess, the years haven’t been too hard or too kind, she wears her sadness like a mask that only the rest of us who have shed one just like it can see. The fake smile that never reaches her eyes that dart in fear lest she get caught talking to me.

I am the enemy. I am a walking example of what she could be if she left him.

And I called the cops on him one night when I heard the sickening sounds of a well landed punch and the air leaving her body for a minute. Nothing happened, cops came and left, she stayed. I’ll call them again.

I’ll go get my girl again and bring her somewhere safe. My house is safe, we built it that way.

My Sunshine went through some shit too, an addict witnessed the whole thing left her to get beat. So I rolled up with my kid and a baseball bat. Still regret not running that waste of skin down with my car.

I will do it again for anyone in harm’s way.

I escaped death by the kindness of strangers and the patience of friends.

Someone has to help. I am someone.

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Who is this Masked Man?

August 4, 2016

Who is he really? I have no idea.

There exists a meme that makes the rounds about forgiving someone who isn’t sorry and how that’s strength.

It is.

I should know, I just did the thing.

It’s going to take longer for me to forgive myself. But only by a lil bit.

2 years it took me to come to the realization that I fell in love with a masked man.

And only the mask.

He’s kinda an asshole without it.

He is not the Batman, beyond the rich/hermit thing. He can’t even save himself.

The lightbulb that went off burned my retinas.

Sitting in therapist’s office, she was questioning why I even come to her at all.

“Sarah, you seem to be able to figure things out rather well on your own, why are you here…am I actually doing anything for you?”

She is, but I have to stop with the day-to-day and resurrect my past. I am afraid I did that thing that I warned her I would do which was twist the conversation into a new direction to get away from what I don’t want to deal with.

Recent past? I got this.

The time called ‘before’ like when I was married? I am actually alright with all of that too. I learned a lot, mostly what not to do. I shed skin that didn’t fit and itched something awful. I have already danced naked on that grave enough. I can’t even remember where I buried them.

Way back when I was a little girl with glasses, a huge vocabulary and skinned knees?
She needs some love and attention and then I think we are going to be okay.

Someday soon I will reach back and pull her out and tell her everything is going to be better than fine. It is going to be spectacular.

I hold onto ghosts, lawd knows I do. I feed them, water them and give them a place to manifest. My bedroom is a Ouija board and I commune with the dead on soft sheets, my hands are wandering planchettes that move with psychic, spiritual guidance and spell out sweet things on their skin or trace the constellations in their freckles trying to decipher maps to home or both.

At least when they appear I can recognize them, they remain true to the men I knew, and their newfound transparency is pretty sweet.

The golden rule with the dead is ask them what they want.

I said to the Giant “When I start to develop genuine feelings for someone it’s like a bell gets rung in my heart’s graveyard and all my skeletons get up and ask me to dance.” Via text the morning after we slow danced in my dining room.

Happened when I loved him, Jason too and the Hulk. Young Un the first was the first so he got immunity and I recovered alone.

I am doing that thing again. Talking (non)sensical nonsense in avoidance.

What of this masked man…

Well shit.

I can see it with abundant clarity now.

Flowed off my tongue as the truth tends to do.

I said

“The first night, the night we talked for 12 hours he was this attentive, excited, vulnerable man with this unyielding strength. I fell in love. I did. I fell in it and stayed there, wet up to my waist and waiting for his return.

But the man that called me the next day and every subsequent day or night after that, wasn’t him.”

Maybe the stars were aligned a certain way that first night, or it was the Fireball, blame it on the alcohol. Or maybe the doors of perception were either cleansed or filthy…filthy sounds more astute.

Or it could have been prima nocta. I was taken away and mindfucked by a man that wasn’t mine.

There it is.

Whatever happened, he never came back. Except to lord over me a bit.

I wanted that back so badly I couldn’t see the truth. I just wanted My Poet back. But My Poet didn’t actually exist outside of that time and place.

It was a well-constructed mask that fell away over the next two weeks and then he fell away too.

I did the same thing in my marriage. Fell for him in the first 3 months when it was summertime and we were new and life wasn’t hard. Then he turned into a video game playing couch-potato and I became a Fallout widow. But dammit I hung on to those 90 days for dear life and wasted my dear life for the next 2556.69539 days.

Until I landed in therapy.

I’ve worn masks too.

I wasn’t exactly myself when I’d go to work, but that veil was a fake name and more make up than I wear on a day to day basis. Geisha-face with stilettos basically. Salome in her war paint. Call it what you will but I was only selling the skin my soul came in, not my soul itself.

I’ve spent a lot of time teaching and training myself not to lie, I can happily say ‘what you see is what you get.’ I’m mutable and I have my moods, but I am always myself.

I wandered off again.

He claimed to be one of 4% of men who derive pleasure from sharing his woman with other men. We talked about it at great length, I sent stories and started a book about it.

I had yet another moment of clarity. They have been coming down from heaven like lightning strikes in the heat of July.

He’s never had what he wanted. What if the reality of it is actually more than he could bear?

That too feels like truth as it rolls off my tongue. It’s my truth as well. I am not sure I could be that girl/his girl, but I was willing to try.

I am all the things all these men ever wanted until they are confronted with the reality of it.

Be careful what you wish for.

This is my one true face.

unable to even

Medusa’s Other Curse

August 1, 2016

On a long enough timeline everyone settles into the boxes I put them in.
He’ll stop blowing the lid off eventually or so help me I will get out the duct tape.

Or the coconut oil.

Once I’ve compartmentalized them and figured out the lessons they were sent to teach me I still get nostalgic twinges from time to time. I cared for them, still do when they let me. I saw different versions of different futures with them.

As of late, it has become abundantly clear that when I feel like I could actually end up in a viable relationship with someone new, them old ghosts all come a knockin’. Like I have to run the gauntlet of temptation and answer the Sphinx’s riddles to come out the other side clean.

It has happened before, it will probably happen again. It is history repeating on repeat, just with a few new players.

I also have to remember everything they taught me, pop quiz tomorrow or the next day. Every day.

I see your patterns and raise you a ‘if you wanted me you would be here’.

The gargantuan moral in all of this is no matter what I saw happening, or the promises they made…none of them are here with me now.
I went to bed alone last night and for as many nights as I can rightly remember in the recent past. Unsustainable. The center does not hold (Yeats)

Viable.

That’s the million dollar word.

Spoke to Jason last night. At least he acknowledges what a big deal it is for me to use that term to describe a man.

Basically translates to ‘I haven’t fucked this up yet’. Don’t plan on it neither. There is no angst here. Just so far, so fun. And due to circumstances beyond my control I haven’t slept with him yet, but we keep talking. It’s like accidentally dating. Probably a good chance to get it right all things considered.

The last few times I tried to date someone it went bad. I stumbled and fumbled, said things when I ought not to have, kept my mouth shut when I ought to have been saying something. The usual.

But I learned.

Hulk taught me that I didn’t have to settle to settle down with someone. That all the qualities I admire in a man can be found in one body. Just not his or with him. He had his dream life waiting and I stepped aside gladly.

Young Un taught me that 20somethings are plausible, possible options. And that friendships can grow from the bones of old not-quite relationships…on that long enough timeline I speak of with fondness and regularity.

And now the Giant.

He said he was riding his bike over, I knew it meant he was planning on drinking. I had no plans to stop him. A few beers tends to flush his cheeks and loosen his lips a bit. Look, don’t touch was my mantra, might as well feed my eyes if that is all that can be fed. Ears too. He says nice things. Enigmatic things, prophetic things. I swear he is the only exception to my rule of men where the words they say are the words they mean. He speaks in riddles and rhymes sometimes. Not sure if I like when he does it as I have grown so accustomed to the other and found peace there.

Working on peace. Draping myself in white flags trying to keep both the sexier and more vulnerable pieces of me covered, but he is a snake charmer and sometime I cannot help but wiggle and dance this way or that, then the music stops and I am not sure how I ended up tucked into the space we should have left for the Lord.

I forgot myself after 2 beers myself and bent over in front of him trying to find a song. I know what I must have looked like in that moment. Blissed out, swaying a little to this random piece of music I found with baroque guitar and Uilleann pipes. Smiling, eyes half closed. Hot Neighbor was here too (oh ya, that happened) and him being near me is akin to being in water (I float), Sunshine was in fine drunk form too and we had all been belly laughing. I am pretty when I am happy and I was.

Or maybe I just moved in that mythical way he has accused me of, the one that flips his switch. He hasn’t explained it to me, just acknowledged it. He has explained nothing. Or quite possibly everything, who knows at this point.

It was probably just the Coronas.

And the mood lighting, and the good moods, and the food and the whole night.

He kissed me on the porch in the fairy lights. And there may have been some territorial pissings in the dining room prior, as I said Hot Neighbor came by.

I told Jason this and he asked if that was when the orgy started. No habibi. No orgy, and not stress either oddly. Everything just flowed, as it should be.

Giant thanked me profusely for not letting things get out of hand. As if I had a choice. As if any of them give me choices. “Jumping takes strength of will”* and I don’t want him by halves.

I think he sees me as Medusa, too scared to look right at me so he just sees my reflection.

And therein lies the lesson. The Giant, the Poet and Gelfling. All left because of preconceived notions about what I am and what I want.

None of them thought to ask me. None of them took the time to learn me.

Giant says he will one day finish the book of me.

Jokes on you darling.

For one, you never looked past the cover.

I am an open book. Rare and valuable.

And two…

I plan on dying with a pen in my hand.

Rewriting until I get my happy ending just right.

(*Dead Like Me)

lost boys

The Graveyard of Almost

July 31, 2016

My ex-husband sent me to therapy. Told me I couldn’t come home until I saw someone to ‘tame my crazy’ and ‘manage my anger’.
He stayed home with sisterwife while I walked into strange women’s houses, sat on their couches and spilled my guts into their loving laps.

Oh honey. What did you think was going to happen?

Did you really believe they would tell me to stay in the toxic waste dump of our marriage?

Seriously?

I had been drinking the poison Kool-Aid for so long I didn’t even notice I was dying until they showed me what happy tastes like.
Freedom and unconditional love are far sweeter elixirs than a man who forced me to share him and called me crazy for not eating his shit with a smile.

Funny enough, my “crazy” became quirky and cute and my “anger” no longer existed at all, thereby negating the need to be managed. I completely stopped panicking when I wasn’t being attacked.

You don’t try to ‘manage’ a tumor, you cut the fucking thing out and let the body heal.

I healed.

I was speaking to the Lumberjack the other day, sitting in Sunshine’s truck, we had just hit the garden center and everything smelled like basil and bougainvillea.

I was that girl. No, not Team Compromise. The other one.

I was a whiny weak little bitch that clung onto a shams of relationships like I belonged there.

I didn’t belong there.

I am ashamed to say I have been back visiting the graveyard as of late.

Saw Giant and Gelfling, been peeking at the Poet’s page when I ought not to be. Had a lovely conversation with the Hulk recently. I wish them well, I truly do. But they do tend to make me question my worth.

Do I have a sign on me that says ‘hey let’s play a rousing game of come here/go away’?

I am tired of trying to figure out what is wrong with me and starting to see what is right with me.

I am a really good girl.

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadows of my exes…

I can’t even call them exes. All they are is ‘almosts’, as in we almost dated. I was poised and ready to put on my monogamy pants and be with them, and they bailed.

The Poet sent me to therapy right before he jumped ship.

Said he was done trying to love broken girls like me.

My therapist asks after him from time to time.

To which I reply “No word, still blocked, just posts photos of his words on my body.”

She has yet to ask me how that makes me feel.

(Comfortably numb for the record.)

She accused me of only being in her office For him.

I corrected her, quickly.

It was his idea, yes. But did I do it because I thought somehow it would make him love me back?

Nope.

During our 2 year on-again-mostly-off-again-whatever-it-is-we-have-been-doing/not doing, I’ve realized that although his delivery sucks, hes often right.
I tasted the idea of therapy that he handed me, and found it delicious. So I ate it. Every Tuesday and I wash it down with coffee.

Oh honey. What did you think was going to happen?

Did you think she was going to tell me to stick around for someone who can’t even pick up the phone yet passive-aggressively posts to Facebook?

That is some teenage drama queen bullshit, and I ought to know. I was one.

On our way back from the garden center/amazing lunch I found myself briefly contemplating Gelfling for a moment.
I looked up and saw a solitary raven outside of a cemetery.
Biggest one I have ever seen this far south.
One for sorrow. Two for joy.
I think I’m getting the message.
Unrequited love isn’t cute or romantic.
It’s ridiculous.
I’m not a ridiculous girl.

My Pixie girl Ciara said, “Sorrow is still a valid emotion. Feel it when it comes, let it pass.”
To which I replied…
Nope.
My brain is my brain, my life is my life. It’s as simple as deciding I don’t want to be somewhere anymore and walking away.

I must again reiterate the Matthew Hussey idea of unrequited love being ugly.

It’s truly a colossal waste of time.

Channel your inner Luda and tell them fence-sittin’ boys to “MOVE BITCH GET OUT THE WAY.”

Even better, realize they’re not listening anyways, and go around.

The important thing is to keep moving.

I was in my car and that Frank Turner song came on.

Because I know you are a cynic but I think I can convince you.
Yeah, cause broken people can get better if they really want to.
Or at least that’s what I have to tell myself if I am hoping to survive!

It’s a long road up to recovery from here, a long way back to the light.
A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right.

So darling, sweet lover, won’t you help me to recover…

He isn’t going to help and the road is not long.

Besides, I know a shortcut.

It is called ‘I have a nice life and if you aren’t making it better you can’t come in’.

I don’t even like Kool-Aid.

Uncategorized

Enough Buddhas

July 28, 2016

Roommate (aka my Sunshine) says “We have enough Buddhas.”

Considering the size of our apartment, she is probably right. Considering who I am as a person, I have since bought one more Kuan Yin and will probably sneak another Buddha into my room.

We have one in the sanctuary we call ‘porch’ and he is the only one facing the right way. Funny if you think about it. Does Buddha really care? He might have a preference for early morning sunlight on his face, I do too. But he doesn’t actually give a shit where you put him. He is not an overly thin skinned prophet.

The emotional freedom I gained when I finally internalized the words “Everything is as it should be” was…all. I immediately stopped fighting. I couldn’t argue and I stopped wanting to.

I probably don’t have quite enough Buddhas. I still forget. I lose time thinking about what almost was.

So I am talking to my other girl. My North Carolina Mawmawolf. It’s killing me in small increments. She is my mirror image from my sad days on the farm. I want her outta there. Trying to rig up a tough love catapult to launch her out of the past.

She said she wrote something and confessed to attempted murder.

A) It was 17 years ago
B) She wrote an article about an ‘almost’.
Ergo…
C) All it is now is a really riveting story.

Sucks that it happened, awesome that she wrote about it so well.

https://letspretendblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/if-i-had/

I can’t find the words to get her to let go.

Closest I got was “BUT DID YOU DIE?”

There is an alternate reality where I have a crippling opioid addiction and I am still sitting on the stinky farm couch with an equally addicted sisterwife.

But it ain’t this reality.

Currently I am sitting in a house full of Buddhas, music and sunshine. And it’s clean and it smells good. I am only here because I changed how I think about things.

I wrote an article, feels like forever ago, about the times I almost died. It’s been a lot. Enough to write an article about it. I also wrote in “Regeneration, After the Fire” about how imagining what could have been worse about something that was already bad enough was a misuse of time, energy and imagination. Because it fucking is.

But did you die?

Nope.

Carry on then.

Why are we so addicted to drama and worst case scenarios? I know I used to be that girl but I have no interest in digging her up to glean the why. She smells like desperation and monkey shit from running around circus tents that weren’t hers.

Time is too precious.

I lost 3 days fussing over a move that didn’t go my way. I lost nothing but 3 jars and 3 days. Can’t get it back so…moving on.

I could very well have been raped on a Tinder date. But I wasn’t. Not dwelling on what happened other than fine tuning my collection of red flags and adding a few.
The Poet posted some poem about loose women looking for trouble in bars and getting what they deserved right after I posted what happened. Little lemon juice in a wound that was barely closed, but whatever. Chased it with a shot of tequila, had a chuckle and got on with my day.
(Hi honey. I’m fine thanks, and you?)

I saw this lovely British man do a short excerpt/talk about unrequited love.

https://www.facebook.com/CoachMatthewHussey/videos

I watched it until my eyes bled and it became my marrow.

Been turning that grain of sand over in my head like an oyster and I came up with this little pearl…

If he wanted me he would be here.
If any of them were supposed to stay and love me, they would be, right here right now.
Jason has been trying to get me to accept this for a while now. And I always came back with a “But, but, I understand why he is doing what he is doing.” Which translates to a very meek “I’m not worthy.”

Um, ya, I am.

I am a kind, funny, sweet, loving, understanding, talented woman who loves sex and values men as men. Plus I make killer sammiches.
And I am wicked smart.
Me hanging onto a future I manufactured in my own head is not sexy, is not romantic.
I hate martyrs and I am not going to be one. I have shit to do.
I am a good girl, I’m human and I make mistakes and sometimes I have to play dead to get out of bad situations. So be it. No harm no foul, I washed it off.

Poet bailed on me shortly after my birthday citing that I embarrassed him, no explanation, just a block.
Some harm, some foul.
But I don’t have a time machine and if I did I wouldn’t use it to go back and edit a 20 minute conversation I had with a strange woman about coffee cups. Again, I have better shit to do.

Like write a book inspired by my fantasy life that I made up in my head and is going rather nicely actually. Someone once told me sex sells on the internet, and he wasn’t wrong.

Shoulda done this years ago…tee hee.

Everything is as it should be and everything went the way it went.
No amount of fussing or self-flagellation over imaginary sins is going to change that.

You made it, here, to this moment. Enjoy.

I can play the coulda woulda shoulda game like a gold medalist, but it gets me nowhere. I should never have dated that psycho-wannabe-soldja-boy. I had the Giant. But who says if I had done anything any differently that Giant wouldn’t have left me for his safe traveling waitress anyways?

I did what I did. I am what I am and I own it.

I don’t have time to figure out what other people want me to be, I’m way too busy enjoying being myself.

Here and now.

unable to even

Tinder and the No Good Very Bad Date

July 27, 2016

And this little masochist is lifting up her dress.

I put up a status about feeling like shit upon the Facebook. I didn’t go into detail.

I have a bad feeling that as this was happening to me it was going way worse for thousands of girls around the world and maybe I can get some good from this. Or at lease draw the poison out.

I said I joined Tinder. I did.

After a year or two of inside jokes and me not doing it.
*Say Tinder 3X and a cute boy appears.
*Sarah, you can’t go on Tinder, you will break the internet.
* Q: Is there a Tinder for cougars?
A: No that’s just regular Tinder

All of these were funny to me because they’re true.

That whole retrospective thing? Half-funny.

I have a date tonight with the very first man I right swiped on.

This will be date number 3. He is a literal giant and an arborist. He is funny, sweet, gorgeous and kind.

I call him the Lumberjack. He calls me Sweetcheeks.

I had other Tinder dates. 2 before and one in the middle. This is where it stops being funny ha-ha and starts being funny as in ‘okay universe I got it thanks’.

What happened is this. I temporarily forgot how my life works. And that OF COURSE the first one would be the best one.

I kept going.

And now for our regularly scheduled metaphor…
I felt like I’d been living in Africa, in one of the famine-stricken countries, mostly eating bowls of rice but on occasion getting fed really good snacks by UNICEF. Then suddenly someone put me on a plane and flew me to the nearest Mandarin Buffet.

So I loaded my table to the breaking point with everything I could carry and I just looked at it, overwhelmed. Tasting this or that. Spitting some out immediately (yet discreetly) into a napkin. But nothing topped that first bite I had. It was/is delicious.

I mentioned in my last post that I felt like I was doing something wrong, and I was.
I forgot about eating the elephant. One bite at a time.

I did that thing I promised I wouldn’t do.
I won the lottery and kept buying more lottery tickets.

Universe said “NO dummy, STAAAAAAP”.

I don’t need to hedge my bets. I like this guy. I want to see what happens.
I know where the Mandarin is, and if this one leaves and I get hungry again I can always go back.

I digress.

I’m stalling.

It’s time to talk about the bad date.

I haven’t told my therapist yet. I almost told the Friendly Giant.

I told my roommate last night by saying “I’m not sure if you still read what I write but I think I should tell you about my bad date before you read about it.”

There is yet another Tinder guy who I have struck up a conversational friendship with, I told him. We were discussing Catholicism and I realized I really needed a priest in a box.

And this little masochist is ready to confess.

I was late for the bad date. I got lost as I tend to do going up the mountain. I picked a pub close to where bad date was doing a radio interview to save him navigating downtown.

This was my first mistake. The pub was almost empty. I was on my own and out of my element.

I walked in flustered and stayed that way throughout dinner. He had the power position and kept it.

I felt like I was sitting across from Sigmund Freud when he was in a particularly vicious, misogynistic mood. Or like I was with a hyper-intelligent toddler asking why why why over and over. I felt ripped apart, like a vivisection with salad.

He sent a dick pic AT the dinner table. I already knew I wanted out, but this cinched it. Things went from being mildly entertaining to yuck with a hot fudge brownie on top.

I was scared of him. I see that clearly now. I didn’t then.

So unlike me, I’ve put a man up against a wall by his throat, while I was naked, in stilettos for behaving this way. I got grabbed on a patio once and stopped 2 inches short of breaking his nose. I don’t know where that girl went. I lost her in the move maybe.

The closest I can figure is I was sitting across from some kind of super predator, real life Christian Grey/American Pyscho, and I froze.

I agreed to continue the date as we walked outside to our cars. I would have said the sky was green with conviction just to open my car door and climb inside. All the while I was turning excuses over in my mind trying to find one that would be bulletproof.

We started driving, I was following him. I called to say my kid was locked out of the house and I had to go.

Here is where it gets weird. He said “pull over here so I can say goodbye”. Empty parking lot.

AND I FUCKING DID. I could’ve kept driving. I felt the stranger-danger, I was still in freeze mode when I should have been in full flight.

The point I am at in my novel, our heroine gets drugged and almost raped in a parking lot. Life is imitating art. And I am the idiot holding the pen. But in real life, no one came to save me.

Here is where I start blaming myself, my dress was short enough that he easily reached in a groped my vagina with me in the driver’s seat of my car. And I didn’t hit the gas and rip his arm off. I just sat still until I could get away.

I’m more disgusted with my behavior than his. I never said no. My mind was screaming it and my mouth stayed silent. I put myself into a bad situation. I felt like I regressed to high school and had that ‘just tune out until it’s over and then get far way and stay there.’

Roommate says I did the best I could given the circumstances. Tinder buddy said it wasn’t my fault.

But I still somehow feel like it’s my fault.

I’d already found a really nice guy and I went on another date because…I could? Lame.

Karma came down and bitch-slapped me for my stupidity.
I sat in my car crying because I was scared he had followed me so I drove way past my house.

Lessons learned. Learn with me girls.