April 2018

If Stompy will rip her own bible to have something to stomp about, what else is she capable of?

Who fucking knows and more importantly? I don’t care to find out.

I am halting the writing of this to check my horoscope, brb.

Shit, cue the tears. Thought we had those in check. Survey says…nope.

He gets me every time…

http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/20180412.html

Welcome to the Beauty and Truth Lab.

It’s a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you are on the verge of finally figuring out exactly what it is you really want more than anything else . . .

Every moment, with all its stars and scars is the perfect one. Even if I can’t see it yet.

I already know what I want. Everybody knows. Except him. He seems to think I don’t know what I am getting into, that I need to be sheltered. Fuck that.

I know exactly what I want, I am here right?

So does the convenience store clerk. Her name is Ophelia and she is lovely.

Her: He better be a saint

Me: Jesus no, I have no use for saints.
He’s like sitting next to a lion, that protects me and listens to me…but only sometimes, then I have to let him go be a beast. And he wanders.

He is currently wandering. So be it. We’re magnets, he will come back.

But that isn’t exactly what this is about.

Everybody also knows, weird shit happens to me. It’s the only reason anyone reads this damned blog. And truth be told, I like my weird little life. Without adventure, things get boring and stagnant. So…technically, I invite all this chaos.

Weird shit happens to me…but it’s like nothing for a long time, then all at once. Like I am driving on this highway at night and I go miles and hours with no sign of anything, then this barrage of billboards hit me so fast and I can’t decipher what the fuck is happening or where I am or where I am going or what the signs say.

I didn’t want to spend the night in the cathouse on my night off. Better to be the fuck away from here. Also…hot tub, king sized bed. We call this winning.

Except.

I didn’t really think this through. I had no idea how close in proximity I was to the place where I spent that one night in heaven with the boy. The one that called me back here. I walked through the parking lot of the church and I saw us in the car, smoking, keeping warm, before heading back to bed. I saw us in the bed, in the reflection of the glass of the fireplace. But the bed was cold this time around and I stayed on my side.

Cue the repressed memories of paradise.

I didn’t really mean to be there, I just had to leave and that place came up first on Google search. So I called. Vacancy, hotel room (lost in me lost in you*)

Not gonna lie, there were a few hot, sad tears rolling down my cheeks, but I got in the Jacuzzi and let my troubles boil and bubble away. Sent my angst down the drain.

Was mildly irritated by the fact that I forgot my pain pills and my laptop cord. I had a headache, real and proverbial butthurt. But I settled in and watched bad movies on AMC instead of my usual Netflix.

I forgot about commercials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riNi-4MO42E&pbjreload=10

Here be the background music I was looking for. I still have no idea what the hell is going on though.

It’s my song with Giant, in a beer commercial about anchors.
For a minute I couldn’t breathe.

For a minute it was -30 degrees outside, 25 months ago, my belly was full of scotch and steak. I was sex sore and so sated, my head on Giant’s chest, listening to his heartbeat with one ear and “this” song with the other. I was overwhelmed and asked him if he could stay a while. He said yes. There is no way either one of us could have realized how true that was going to be.

We talked till 3am his time

Just to put this into context. I never ever watch tv. Like ever. And this song is beyond obscure.

Your Hand in Mine

Explosions in the Sky

The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place

Released: 2003

How does that even happen?

Some indie beer company’s advertising exec pulls a song from 15 years ago and voila, my heart stops because I am in the hotel watching actual television for the first time since I was in that hotel last time.

Sending postcards to himself in the future to remind him of being happy. I do that. Every day.

The world is full of anchors, meant to keep you in place. And sometimes, the only person who can remind you to lift those anchors, is you.

There is message in here somewhere. Something about ships being safe at harbor but that’s not what they are for.

To be completely fair, that particular song is not our song. Ours is Postcard from 1952, same band, same cadence, less heart punch.
It’s the one that is close, the one that I allowed myself to listen to, in the car one varying playlists, because it’s close but not quite. It was safer.

But still. What did that sign just say?

6 months. Go back. I have no fucking idea. Honestly. I got lost somehow.

Something else happened, rather monumental, but I can’t write about it. Let’s just say this island is tiny as fuck and my life is like a weird soap opera directed by Quentin Tarantino with the same cast and premise as Peaky Blinders.

Giant told me I’ve come too far and not to deny myself the finale.

I’ll abide.

Anchors up.

(* Lumineers, Angela)

I just had a massive epiphany in the shower. Like huge.

Shaking from it.

I wrote the following article about an hour ago. But I realized something.

He is to me, what I am to the others.

The idea of caim, a protective circle. The embodiment of calm and soothing. Why they can sleep on me and have good dreams. The reality of sanctuary wherein anyone can knock on the door of a church and be allowed in, the be safe and sheltered without question.

He makes me feel like other people feel around me.

I know what I am now.

I did a thing.

Made it 18 days without speaking to the Giant. Not a record, but all things considered, herculean effort.

Not entirely my fault. Watched Thor Ragnarok and when Chris Helmsworth gets his haircut and enters the arena, ya. That’s what Giant looks like.

The guitar player up the road from work has a penchant for playing John Mayer songs and last night one of the girls danced to Tennessee Whisky by Chris Stapleton. It’s his song for me.

The drawing of three.

I tried to severe things two and a half weeks ago because I thought I was supposed to.

Sent him a Panic at the Disco song.
This is Gospel.
Lyrics like “truth be told I never was yours…if you love me let me go.”
Music was always our first language when speaking to each other so it seemed appropriate.

More truth be told. I fucking missed him.

Told him so. Filled him on how things have been, which is not great.

I sent a screenshot of part of our conversation today to the group chat I have with my girls.

Panda said ew.

I found her reaction strange. I thought he was starting to grow on her by the end. Guess not.

Doesn’t matter. I love the fucker.

Talking to Giant and remembering I am still lovable even when I am a mess. That poor boy let me cry on his kitchen floor, put kittens in my lap, food in my belly and whiskey in my hand, wiped my tears and took me to bed more than once. Bless him.

He loves me consistently and unconditionally and has since the beginning.

The only one guy out of all the guys who have been terrified of me, the idea of me, the intensity of me to stick around and talk me through shit.
To explain to me why he couldn’t stay back then.

I get that I am a lot to handle. I also know I am worth every minute of it. Because he told me so in a way that I believe him.

And I have been a mess around him. My messiest really.

And he stayed.

And I left.

I am beginning to wonder why.

I have been more vulnerable in front of Giant than in front of anyone I have ever known.
It took me losing that luxury to see it.

I think that is what Panda doesn’t quite understand. The comfort and joy of walking through a door that is always open and having a man on the other side who can put you back together with a hug and a forehead kiss.

Talking for hours about stars, mythology and music sipping really good scotch until I forget what I was sad about.

He’s my Charon, always bringing me back from the dead.

His long distant advice was astute. Told me to get through this season. I am Persephone, anxious for spring and this is third winter version 7 point oh my god are you serious right now 4 inches of snow followed by buckets of rain a few hours later. Haven’t seen the sun in days.

“I’m going to follow your advice. Spring will be better. Summer might even be glorious.”

We talked about doors. He said I was a farther walk than before but his was still open.
Acknowledged that it wasn’t time yet.

I thanked him for loving me and he said I made it easy.

I stole this photo from Biker Body Pillow’s shop’s Instagram. I needed it.
If you are ever in Toronto go to Kensington market, Reactive Ink. Tell the boys I say hi.

I miss my people back home. I am not feeling very brave.

Tennessee Whisky came on last night and I almost messaged the Giant. I wasn’t drunk enough to figure out what to say, so I left it alone.

Sober nights make way for better mornings and less regrets.

Woke up a little earlier than I would have preferred but I almost got my 8 hours.

I see a nap in my future. But I am awake now, and writing. That’s something.

Surrender Dorothy.

My wise woman Monika posted this…

Surrender is better
Giving up denotes a lack of faith
Surrender says…ok. I see what is…so what’s next.

https://www.facebook.com/MonikaCarlessAuthor/

I hit rock bottom with my coccyx night before last. As best as I can piece together I poured 6 shots of whiskey on 2 english muffins before 9. We were upstairs talking and my eyes leaked. Haven’t heard much from him since. We will circle back around to that, just give it a minute.

The night went downhill from there, and I was already pretty fucking low.

I have my period too, which is not an excuse but…pelvic sorcery and a lot of pain, both physical and emotional. I was due for a breach.

Always calm or breaching.

I managed somehow to be much less drunk in the middle, then blacked out around 2:30am.
No idea how I got home.
It seems I tangled with a now broken kitchen chair and we both lost. I am now the not so proud owner of a very bruised tailbone. I woke up at 8 the next morning, still drunk, looking like a pinball on tilt trying to get to the bathroom, dry heaving from the booze and the pain in my ass.

I am a stripper with a broken butt. The irony is not lost.

The Weeknd was playing on a loop in my head “I might not make it, this time I might not make it.”

I realized I haven’t been that drunk since 2006, I almost died that night.

But I made it then and I made it now. Got right terrified at the beginning of last night. Then a couple strippers and co-workers rallied around me, kept me off stage and at work. Made a bit of money and surrendered to what is. Life is just gonna hurt for the next while. Bruises heal eventually, hearts too.

I’d just finished healing from the last stupid thing I did to myself. Now this.

I seem to be stuck in a loop of ‘if I can just get through this ____ everything will be okay.’ Then the next ____ happens and I am back at zero.

My Facebook statuses were enough to scare my mom. She checked in on me and I cried a bit as I told her the truth, but it meant a lot to me to be noticed, even if it was me falling apart that got the attention. Some things never change. Forced me to problem solve. This is what is happening and this is what I am going to do about it.

Guru chimed in too. Told me not to fight or run, just freeze and ferfucksakes stop drinking for 2 weeks.

On it.

But darling, if you could see the size of the blessing coming to you, you would understand the magnitude of the battle you are fighting.

I’ve fallen apart before, and once the shattering is complete I rebuild with the broken bits and make something better.

I was scraping my knees along rock bottom, climbed out a bit when the boy held my hand, and when he let go, I fell, hard.

It’s not his fault. I should know better than to put any amount of my happiness in the hands of others, they drop it every time. From what I can recall of our conversation, I think he thinks I want more than he can give. Same song, different mouth.

I want nothing. Just sex. Why is this hard?

He is hard every time he gets near me, I know this.

And so what if I cried a bit? I am beyond frustrated and I am human. I just did a big, huge, terrifying thing. I am allowed to break.

I am Dorothy. I am in Oz. A place where the snow flies sideways. Good witches, bad witches, flying monkeys and a man hiding behind a curtain.

And at some point I will realize I had the power all along.

There’s no place like home.

I’m home.

For the record I do not regret the things I’ve said when I was drunk. Except maybe when I told Mark to leave me on the bathroom floor because I didn’t want anyone seeing the fucked up puddle I had become. Poor guy had to carry me down the stairs, I dressed myself though, so that’s something.

I have also never been on to write drunk and edit sober. Feels too much like lying.

Drunk words are sober thoughts. Everyone knows this.

I am held up and together by so many inebriated “I love you’s” sworn into my collarbones by drunk boys hanging on to me for dear life. Just to let go the next morning when the hangover and reality kicked in.

I’ve done it too. Never said I love you when I didn’t mean it, not lately anyways. Not since I figured out what it meant I mean.
Said shit drunk I wasn’t brave enough to say sober. It happens.

Lately, when I drink, I cry.

I’m beyond frustrated and I can’t keep it contained. Whiskey is the key to the lock on my glass case of emotion.

I mean, I’m actually made of glass. If my mouth doesn’t say it, my eyes will. But my mouth always says it. If not in real life, then here in these pages I write.

Most of the time I am bulletproof, and sometimes there’s a crack.

I am transparent. I live without a filter and I speak without lies.

I sit in my emotions and my truth and sift through them endlessly.

Most people can’t, don’t or won’t, and sometimes I envy them.

They smoke/drink/fuck/run/hide…anything to quiet the noise.

And they lie.

To me.

And themselves.

Sometimes convincingly.

You see dear readers, this is not a new story.

It’s a culmination of all those who came before.

I’ve had a million moments of self-doubt.

Especially when it comes to men. Wherein I have thought, with bone shaking clarity “Maybe I made it all up. Maybe it wasn’t what I thought it was.”

I repeat this till it is true.

It’s easier that way, to blame my imagination. I have a habit of seeing only the good in people I care about, and I tend to take the blame when they leave. It’s just easier.

Time passes, I convince myself of this new ‘truth’ and then…oh and then, I will be looking through this inbox or that one and the earth shakes and the truth comes out.

The actual truth. Spelled out in black and white, in old messages. Their words, not what I imagined, what I remembered and tried to forget.

And then I have to deal with the loss and confusion all over again.

So maybe it isn’t easier.

But I don’t know how to be angry.

Knowing I was right and having them still gone brings no satisfaction at all.

And sometimes they come back.

Always, they always come back. Seriously it’s fucking weird.

My girls back home will kill me if they read this, but here it is.

Lumberjack found me on the Siren’s Snapchat.

Ya, that Lumberjack.

The one who hid his actual girlfriend the whole time.

And I didn’t block him. I let him say what he needed to say, and I forgave him. Just let it go. He is what he is, being angry won’t change what happened.

Cut to a few weeks later, Monday I think it was. He pops up again with a snap of a rather delicious looking seafood stew of some sort. I said “noms, how are you?”

I have a rather fond memory of him taking me out for a glorious seafood dinner to satisfy a whim I had, and as I was struggling with a crab claw he reached over, cracked it for me and handed it back, smiled and called me a dork. He remembered too, which is why he sent me a pic of my favorite foods. Fucker.

Now, please understand I am drowning. Monday was extra bad, I saw a lifeline and I reached for it.

I said “I need some advice”.

He complied.

Took me a minute to spit out what I wanted to ask. Sometimes I can’t find my words.

I asked if I had been more assertive, less passive would he have still gone back to her.

He said “I thought you were in love.”

(eyeroll*)

I said “I am, and I am scared. I just don’t want to repeat my mistakes.”

There was a long pause and then he said “I can’t believe you are blaming yourself Sarah, I’m a terrible person.”

Followed by, “if this guy is reminding you of me, you might want to run sweetheart.”

It’s not that. Different man, similar situation. Bitch of an ex.

I told him he had potential to be good, just had to fix his broken ego.

I ended it there. No point in continuing.

I didn’t really get an answer, but it was nice to get some closure.

The answer didn’t matter anyways. Not like I could be a bitch if I tried.

I do not demand anything of anyone, I take what I am given and work with it as best I can.

*Typical of him to think I was wanting him back though, I got a good chuckle out of that.
Nope, I can forgive but I won’t forget.  “I may think of you softly from time to time. But I will cut off my hand before I’ll ever reach for you again.” Arthur Miller

Speaking of…

Gelfling found me before I left. Triggered by some pic on Instagram I’m sure. Just wanted to remind me he existed. We chatted briefly. He recalled everything I did and said one night we were together, 4 years after the fact. Even what I was wearing and how my legs sit when I drive.

Fuck you.

I am so tired of being held so fucking sacred, after the fact.

How is a memory of me worth keeping when I wasn’t?

I might be strong and brave and weird and loving and forgiving…

But underneath all of this…

I am just a girl, who wants to believe the sweet things.

Like getting a place together, picking me up from the ferry, taking me home for Sunday supper.
That I am magic and you miss me. I know all these things were said at night, a few beers in, to my face, in my inboxes.
And I can’t help but remember that Friday night when you told me you were shy sober.

This is the one time I want to be remembered. I am right fucking here.

I need a hard reset.

A trip into the woods sounds like bliss right now. I miss my old cabin out in god’s good nowhere and the isolation. I am isolated now, just in a different way where I am surrounded by people, most of them good, but part of me aches for the past, or the future to hurry up and start. Anything but this limbo I am in. I do miss the good times with Panda and my girls. Hamilton was home for a while, but I don’t want to go back there.

I came here with purpose and I am craving him.

If I look back to see where I’m homesick for it’s the time spent alone in the quiet. Sunbathing naked on the porch, the hummingbirds having endless aerial acrobatic dogfights with the bees, the dogs lounging, and good work…like stacking wood and mowing the lawn and the endless playlists. Yes, this.

But that isn’t what I meant to talk about exactly. I do tend to wander off topic.

I’ve watched one movie since I got here.

Silver Linings Playbook.

In my tiny room there is only a tiny tube tv with no HDMI port, so it is laptop or nothing.

Last week when the reality of what I had done hit me like a fucking freight train I cocooned in my room and tried to regroup.

I needed a happy ending. Or to remember they exist.

What I got reminded of, and realized I was lacking, was signs.

When I cannot control what is happening to me (even if I did this to my damned self) I get superstitious.

I think anyone who works in any kind of industry that is based on randomness for money, it becomes a thing. I have a lucky bandana. Little rituals before work. Sometimes they work sometimes they don’t. What it really boils down to is that I am on my hustle or I am not, doesn’t matter what rings I am wearing or what color the bandana I am sitting on is.

But there is another side to that coin.

What it comes down to is rituals and signs.

When the body goes through a traumatic accident, like mine did, all muscle memory is reset to zero. Except when a certain song plays and I sit up like a meerkat and laugh at myself for thinking Jesus is coming.

An old portent triggered a gleeful response years later.

Not actual Jesus. I have been handing out nicknames to people for as long as I have been out in the world. And once, I knew a man we called Jesus.

Music jogs my muscle memories.

I now have YouTube rabbit holes, where I tumble down and find new things, wonders to behold. And alternatively I have playlists saved from varying points in my life.

It’s been a constant stream of Lords of Huron, Ben Howard, Kaleo and Lumineers lately.

Meet Me in the Woods, Take Me Back to the Night We Met and Promise on repeat.

But I needed something different.

In my nostalgia, I clicked on an old list. Took me back to the first time we went to Florida. I came home from that trip and I was free. And that was the beginning.

But it went even further back.

Somewhere in between the new things I had found was an old gem.

Here Comes Your Man, by the Pixies.

My tired little brain instantaneously thought “Jesus is coming.” And I laughed out loud.

You see dear readers, many lifetimes ago, I had a crush on the boy we called Jesus.

And well before we had little GPS’s in our pockets and Facebook check ins and everyone knew what everyone else had for lunch or how they felt about politics or knew what their dogs were doing at any given moment, I had psychic flashes and ‘signs’ about this thing or that boy.

I used to go to a bar called the Dance Cave religiously every Wednesday. My friends were there, the music was amazing and it was kinda like church. I felt weird if I didn’t go. I would see my people, confess my sins, sing, dance and just feel better after. And sometimes Jesus was there.

Not every Wednesday mind you. Just every time the Pixies were played. That song specifically. The guitars riff would kick in and I would instantaneously be on high alert. Head bobbing up and down, watching the door. And Every. Single. Time (but once) at some point, there he would be. Jesus. And it was good amen.

We were having a conversation last night outside the strip club about religion. And the usual points were made about imaginary authority figures and mass population control. Old Testament god versus New Testament god. But when it came down to ‘why did we ever come up with religion in the first place’ I knew the answer. Before science we had no idea why sometimes the earth would shake or the sun would go out in the middle of the day. So we invented beings even bigger and more terrifying than those phenomenon to explain why the world gets weird sometimes.

Ritual is the same thing. One time a girl fell into a volcano and it finally rained after a long dry spell so every year to bring the rain, toss in another virgin to appease the gods.

Personally? I can google anything I don’t understand. I was never much one for churches. I do pray, but in my own way.

When things aren’t going exactly my way, I pray a little harder and try to look for signs.

Logical me knows there has to be something bigger than all this. Not a vengeful god whose stomach rumbles and refuses to make rain until he gets fed.

And if there were sacrifices to be made, good god I have made them.

I leapt into the volcano willingly.

There is a wait so long
You’ll never wait so long

Here comes your man

(The Pixies)