July 2020

I actually had a very clear thought upon waking this morning.

If I keep my eyes closed, I can pretend I’m not here.

The bed feels like my bed. My real bed. My 4 years ago bed. The only one I have ever bought brand new.

The pillows do not. I will amend this.

I reached to the wrong part of the fridge for milk for my coffee this morning, and that is when it struck me where I am.

Yesterday felt like a weird dream wrapped in some déjà vu.

How did I get here?

Enough of me was still here to make my old gypsy bedroom into command center for this mission.

Weigh Station, Captain’s log, star date, who fucking knows time is fucky in this place of no logic.

It is peaceful and I missed some of my things.
How could I have left that here when I bolted in the dark of winter?

Because I meant to come back, tie up loose ends. Deal with this or that.

Doesn’t make the first 24 hours any less strange.

I can see my Ku’an Yin tapestry from my mojo momo mama in the mirror. I did leave some magic here. Quite a bit I think. More than I realized.

I scrubbed and cleaned and squirreled things away yesterday until I was exhausted enough to sleep. And it still wasn’t enough. The body was willing, but my brain had to run through a thousand ‘what ifs’.

First Breath After a Coma by Explosions in the Sky is playing.

Apropos as fuuuuuuck.

Enough of me was left here that I feel like I was in a coma for a while, and I had the most beautiful dreams. Then I woke up, and the house is dirty, but it’s still here. I am different from the lives I did or didn’t live in my sleep. And I am negotiating what that means. I miss my dream life so very much.

The whiskey bottle is still in the kitchen. I want to take it and build an altar like Frieda says, but the candles all burned down in my absence and I am 13 days from new candles and better pillows. I keep catching it out of the corner of my eye when I stand at the sink. I haven’t touched it yet, and I haven’t cried yet.

I didn’t bring enough shoes for the weather, but I found ones I thought were lost forever.

When I left to come here the second time, I decorated Mandabear’s house with the things I left behind. Now I go there and feel home. This feels like that. She sometimes catches me looking wistfully at some thing that she has kept and asks if I want it, like an elephant or a cutting from a plant. I do. I need to reclaim pieces of me I have left everywhere I have been.

Brian says I can have anything I want. But he really likes that lamp. We both love lamp.

I need to come back to center. But Yeats says the center does not hold. Things fall apart. I am things.

3^rd time better hold some charm because I don’t think I can do this again.

I am calling all of my power back to me and taking it with me this time.

I didn’t really announce my arrival. No point to it, I am not really here for the next 13 days.

Try not to move, it’s just your ghost passing through. Tori Amos.

I had concerns regarding running into a few people and better to not be ambushed really.

The rest of this feels like I went to get cigarettes last year and forgot to come back, plus I quit smoking so…where was I and why did I go?

For someone who deeply and truly believes my presence is inconsequential and who is currently trying to figure out my own semi permanence and trying to stop appearing so. I am really reactionary.

I ran scenarios in my head about, what is it going to look and feel like if I run into _______.
Would it be worse to be loved, ignored or yelled at by someone I have history with?

The answer is ignored.

At least if there is an action I can summon and equal and mayhap opposite reaction.

But for there to be nothing would hurt. I must have been through that before, but I can’t remember, and I think on a long enough timeline they all come back.

The opposite of love is indifference. Lumineers

And in the 13^th hour, I got my answer. 2:42am

Is there a tracking system in my vagina that I am unaware of? Like how do they know?

He says he didn’t know I was here. He says he isn’t here. I believe one of those things.

We spoke civilly. Of course there was a call of booty. I declined.

Would have been the perfect moment to use that line from Weeds, “you made your bed, go fuck in it.”

But I didn’t. There is no animosity here.

I said I didn’t plan on getting laid while I was here, and I was going to stick to my plan.

I didn’t like how we left things. I am glad I have one less unknown to be scared of.

It’s been 6 years.

 I keep popping up in ye olde blog and yammering on about my feelings.

Buckle up buttercups, experiment 698 underway.

I have spilled my guts in here, my messy, yucky, stupid guts.

Some of it is hard to write. Some of these stories stayed hidden from even myself because of the shame and absurdity of the choices I have made.

I contemplated quitting this last week. No more blog.

But I am here.

This is my process and half a million people seem to like peeking in at my life and seeing what shenanigans I am getting up to this week.

I just hit a real half a million, I must have missed it. Yay me.

Quarter million on the corresponding Facebook page and I walked away from that too. But this is different.

I follow probably a hundred or so pages on Facebook. My little stained-glass window into the world. And god I envy the poets. They can sum shit up in 50 words or less that has taken me a thousand words in each of my 700 posts. Like a lot. I try not to compare myself to others, but man, I know some really amazing people.

But one woman in particular prompted me bolting to my laptop in the middle of the night last night, she posted a story about how she ended up in a bad relationship.

Some follower of hers chimed in saying ‘you write a lot about your past’, like it’s a bad thing. I rushed in, sword blazing.

The pen is the sword.

I replied, “we examine the past to build a better future.”

I do. Why else would I write this stuff? Why else would you be here?

Some of it is downright embarrassing. Some criminal. Some painful.

But it’s mine. And if I don’t learn from it and figure out what I am doing here, there was no point in living through it now was there.

I gave the PG rated Cliff’s notes of the last 30 or so years of my life to the guy I accidentally messaged from high school. I didn’t just vomit them up, he asked. It was a requested regurgitation. And you know what he said?

I better not develop feelings for you, or I might get crushed.

Please don’t.

We call that a self-fulfilling prophecy ‘round here.

But truth is, this is all just a little bit of history repeating, from high school no less. Not the dude I was talking to, but how things are.

The more things change, the more my life looks like revamped reruns with new actors in old roles.

But him saying that did feel like a light slap in the face.

I actually had to sit down and count how many times this has happened.

Pretty much all of them.

I have the choice now to stop it or embrace it.

Now, I don’t know how far back you have read but I need to tell a little story here.

All about having one foot out the door for 26 years and finally earning the wings I have tattooed on my forearm.

12. 13. 14

The car wreck removed a lot of dates and chunks of my memory. Lost some vocabulary too. I got that back playing scrabble, but the memories are gone. And while that pains me as an archivist, some are probably better off lost.

But I will always remember that one.

It was post car wreck. Post farm emancipation. And almost a calendar year into me deciding to go it alone.

I was never really alone.

And therein lies the problem.

I see all these memes and poems and declarations, usually from a feminine perspective about not wanting to be loved by halves.

Fair. I survived the sisterwife situation, but I was getting around 17% there. He wasn’t every good at loving and I wasn’t terribly lovable. And I loved him by less than half.

And here is the 5:10 epiphany, right on time.

I have spent my entire adult, waking, dating life with one foot out the door.

Gee, I wonder why none of that ever worked out.

One word, one hint of commitment from high school sweetheart and I would have bolted from any of the lives I lived in the middle of the night.

Not terribly fair now is it.

While I was hoping, wishing, and waiting to finally be enough for that one person, there were men right in front of me hoping, wishing to be enough for me. Sorry guys.

In my defense, I was not consciously aware of this. It started when I was 13 years old, I had never been any other way, so how could I know.

He was 3000 miles away living his own life and checking in at random. He did save my life once, and for that I am grateful.

Then the great cataclysmic events of 2013 occurred, and I went on a journey of self discovery.

I thought no one ever loved me because they didn’t really know me because I never really knew myself.

That’s a fair statement. I don’t really think it’s wrong, just not all of the problem.

And then I just repeated the same shit over and over.

I had Sunday for 2 years.

I would have to look it up, but I would bet the farm that as soon as that head was severed, Giant sprung up in his place.

Not the same. Just similar patterns. I never loved Sunday. The dates and days themselves were lovely. I enjoyed having something to look forward to, but we had an old married couple routine about a month in and I clung to the familiarity of it for far too long. Messed up a couple good things with potential because of my need for a safety net.

Giant I love. But in a ‘I can happily watch him be happy from a distance and that’s enough’ kinda way.

Took a couple years to get there with him too.

But he is not an excuse, nor an out, nor a net.

He did set a beautiful precedent for what it feels like to be loved in my entirety, in the moment, messy bits included. I have forgotten (especially on that island) to hold myself to the standards he set, which is probably the reason he is afraid for my mortal soul when I go back.

There is another article brewing that involves him. But I digress.

12. 13. 14, after a month (or 5) of intense late night conversations with high school sweetheart, I realized it wasn’t just that I didn’t know myself, I didn’t know him either. 26 years had elapsed, and we weren’t who we started out being.

And I realized what a huge block he had been in my heart and my life… and he really didn’t treat me that great, historically speaking. What he was offering was not enough.

The bar for what I wanted and how I allowed myself to be treated was so low it was buried in the sand on the beach from when we were young.

Maybe if we had been brave enough to be honest at the beginning things would have been different. But we were just kids then, and the person I became didn’t really like the person he had become.

So on December 13^th 2014 I let him go.

26 years loving the same person.

But as I put my phone on the charger that night and fell asleep in my perfect green room in the Milton house, I did not know if I was going to exist in the morning.

I have written about this before. At the time is was terrifying and traumatic. Then it was liberating.

A week later I got wings tattooed on my wrist. Almost got 12. 13. 14 on there too, but I knew I would never forget.

The last day of our acquaintance.

The day I became free.

My heart did anyways.

For once I was finally in possession of the whole thing. And while quite large in size, my heart is very light, like a cloud full of love.

Everything changed for me then, as it continues to change. But I know I became much more myself that next morning. The me that exists now, and other than a few fuck ups and foibles, I like myself.

I don’t regret holding on and I don’t regret letting go.

I am proud of what I did, not the chaos it caused to other people, but that I made a decision and held it sacred for 2/3 of my existence. That I was able to love someone unconditionally with no strings or rewards, just because I did.

I am also proud that finally, after a 26 year habit, I quit something that was no longer serving me.

 I know what I am capable of holding onto and letting go of and the general consensus is that this makes me dangerous.

 I don’t see it that way.

My fortune cookie says, ‘compel yourself to do something today you would rather not do’.

That list isn’t terribly long.

I can see it from here.

The basket of laundry that has been sitting in the middle of the floor needs putting away.

My suitcase needs unpacking and I am not ready. Princess cat has made herself a bed on top of it. Hasn’t moved since I walked in the door 8 days ago.

Figure out what else needs to go from suitcase A into suitcase B for this trip and make sure the cats haven’t slept on any of it.

Which also warrants a thorough sweeping of the floor to minimize the amount of cat hair that travels with me.

It has been ungodly hot this week, today I can move around without feeling faint. Small miracles.

Couple that with the fortune cookie and today is the day.

I remember the first time I went to the island of fuckboys, I had no idea how cold is was really gonna be, I know better now.

Sweaters, knee socks, boots and jeans. Leggings to layer under my dresses.

I still have some clothes there but other than 2 sundresses and a pretty cardigan, I couldn’t begin to tell you what I left behind. Feels like another life and mayhap it was.

I have money waiting for me, and friends and they put the second pole back up. I am dreaming of stage shows.

I have a feasible and solid escape plan in the event that the car is too broken to fix.

Apparently, I am learning.

I am not who I was the first time I went there. A broken ghost of a girl who was forcibly shoved onto a plane to stop my moping. I am not who I was the second or third time I went. I used to be an optimist. Rose colored glasses obscuring all the red flags that wave in the wind hat never stops howling.

there is no ‘maybe it will be different this time.’ I already know it won’t be, but I am, so that’s something.

The chivalry was somewhat imaginary. It came with a price that was too high to pay. I doubt I am the queen anymore and I don’t need to be. The kingdom was broken and drunk, and so was I.

They do call it the Rock, just like Alcatraz. I don’t see much of a difference.

I survived 2 years with no magic before I was rescued. I think I left some behind.

Ariadne picked up on one island, just to get dropped into the apocalypse desert.

Chiron went retrograde today. We are now being forced to confront our abandonment issues. I am so ahead of the game.

I am almost doing a case study of myself as I move through this new phase in my life.

I know what I would have done before. I am not that girl now it seems.

I did things this time, different things.

I purged the blog, that was huge and hard until I found a shortcut and just ticked boxes.

‘Apply bulk action’.

Whatever the opposite of ripping a band aid off really quick is. Stitching something closed then cauterizing it last minute instead to stop the weeping.

Changed notification tones, ring tones, playlists. Tucked things in drawers. Got one of my girl groups to send me dorky memes and poems via email to bump everything else over to page 2.

Like Wesley in the Princess Bride. I know the dangers of the Fire Swamp. Flame spurts were proceeded by a certain noise. I keep managing to maneuver around the lightning sand, I know what it looks like so I can avoid it.

But what about the rodents of unusual size?

Well I am going back to that island, they are prolific there.

---

I wonder how I appear to other people sometimes.

I don’t go to church. I have never found any comfort there and I have built my own religion of sorts. When bad shit happens, I pray in my own way. My scripture just looks different than the pious. My prophets are conduits like me. And sometimes I use cards to talk to god.

I started this by saying ‘my fortune cookie says’. Straight into yet another Princess Bride reference and now let’s talk about my 4 hour tarot therapy yesterday with my Colorado Viking witch.

My past was 10 of Wands reversed no less. Oh goody. Double whammy.

Carrying burdens that were not mine. Taking on way too much responsibility for others without even knowing. Enabling co-dependence. But the reverse kicker is I didn’t see it or feel it, just felt normal to me.

That’s astute. Pretty much exactly what was happening.

Next.

Ima skip the recent past card. It still hurts.

In my present there were pentacles aplenty. Laying foundations for financial gain. And the King showed up to remind me to take care of myself, that we perform our best work from a healthy place. I knew that already your highness.

My heart card was Strength and that hit me like a train. The visual is a smiling woman holding the jaws of a lion. Knowing it is dangerous but I am not afraid.

Knew that too.

The future was interesting.

3 of Wands. Ships returning to harbor, wait is ending, plans coming to fruition. Seeds sown reaching their potential. But the harbor and the ships struck me. I am going back to the weigh station. I already knew this.

The first future card is written. The second is malleable and depends on decisions I make going forward.

This was a warning.

The Devil.

I suppose I knew the devil is waiting for me there. The corporeal one with many faces. And it is the place of excess, addiction and vices for me.

Unfair contracts or agreements will rope me into something that benefits others more than me.

Basically big neon letters saying IT’S A TRAP.

But I lived in the Fire Swamp before, I know the dangers, I could technically build a summer home there and live, just not overly happily.

It isn’t my ever after.

I didn’t exactly need the cards for all of this, but I am grateful.

I know what just happened, I know what I walked away from months ago and I know what I am walking into. I am only 8 months sober. What I am doing is dangerous. But I also know it has to be done.

I have done hard things before and survived. This chapter needs closing so I can start a new one.

That suitcase needs unpacking so I can pack a new one.

I have written a few posts about consoling my inner child. The girl who hid behind the scratchy brown chair in the farmhouse to avoid getting a patch on her bad eye.

I went back to Disney as an adult and rode on the carousel horse I was denied when I was 7 and did the whole trip the way I wanted to when I was little. It was bliss.

The 10 year old who disappeared into a basement, mouthful of lies about how she had actual friends at school and who was instead ridiculed for wanting to wear rainbows and just being weird in general. The little girl who was legally old enough to be left home alone and so she was.

Very alone. To the point when I finally found her, she had gone mute and feral.

Thought I worked through that, and mayhap I have.

But what about that long stretch between 13 and 19.

How do I make peace with that?

I did find some friends eventually. 3 of whom I talk to and 2 of whom I have spoken to in the last few days.

I forgot about the phenomenon that occurs when the moon and stars are aligned just so and there is a retrograde of epic proportions. This isn’t my recent past coming forward, this is ancient history. Dead sea scrolls and a language I forgot I even spoke. The kin, puck bunnies, Point Clark and strange street signs. Names forming faces that I wouldn’t recognize anymore because it’s been 30 years since I saw them.

I have gone home and it’s funny. I don’t look at the adults on the street to see if I recognize them, I always look at people who are the age now as I was when I left. Part of me is still trapped there.

I won an award for a collection of short stories I wrote in grade 7. Made it all the way to the national finals. The next year I was 1 of 4 students selected for a project that took me out of class for a few hours every day. I didn’t understand why I was chosen. But a few years back, I saw my grade 8 teacher and she made a point of not just remembering my name but fawning over me and called me one of her most favorites.

That was a bittersweet feeling. To be remembered was glorious, but what did I do with the potential she saw in me?

Not a fucking ting.

Cut to the first year of high school.

I walked in one way. Academic. Conformist. And terrified.

I had my grade 9 school pictures retaken, there was a weird shadow under my nose that looked like a bruise or a booger.

In the first one I was dressed in pink with what can only be described as a curly girl mullet.

That was September.

By November, when the photographer came back, I looked so much cooler. Oddly, when I think back, I would still wear that olive green sweater now. I had figured out minimal make up, grew my hair out to an asymmetrical bob and invested in some earrings that weren’t childish ladybugs or little butterflies.

I changed. I have proof.

I had been in a microcosm for all of public school, 30 of us, for the 6 years I was there, and there was really only the one aesthetic to choose from.
High school was a whole new overwhelming world full of goths, skaters, the preppy girls etc etc.

I was a hippy goth for the few years I was there.

None of that is neither here nor there.

What is vexing me is my perception of myself back then.

Dorky, shy, awkward, fairly friendless, never fit in with one group or another really. Mostly kept to myself.

And, utterly forgettable.

Not so apparently.

I told one of my oldest and dearest friends in the world about going back to school and what for. He nervous laughed and implied I was likely to be stalked and killed. Said I had a ‘compelling presence’. But we talked through it.

That’s another thing. I am still friends with some of the cool kids from school. Does that make me a cool kid by default somehow?

It’s been a fucked up week.

3 days ago I added another high school person to Facebook. We never spoke but I knew his sister and father and asked him to pass along a hello from me.

We ended up talking and I got an arcane glimpse into the past.

I thought of myself one way.

He remembered me at a party at the very end of high school, down to what I was wearing.

“Red shirt and jeans.”

I remember that party. Everyone I knew had graduated that year. I hadn’t. But it was a tiny reunion of the halls in grade 9, present and accounted for in a girl’s backyard. I remember thinking, as I looked around surveying the crowd, that I would probably never see these people again, and mostly I haven’t.

I remember seeing my little sister smoking a cigarette and being so pissed off. She hated me smoking, and she probably never had another one after that.

I ran away from home when I was 16. Tried to go back, left again, tried to go back left again and eventually I just never went back. Greg died and there was a great amount of chaos in the fallout and I finally left for good.

A week or two before, I went to watch a rugby game at school and got charged with trespassing by the principal. Then that party and then I vanished for good, for 20 years almost to the day of that game.

I didn’t belong there.

I truly believed everyone believed the rumors about me, perpetuated by the popular girls. That I was a slut and a witch, which oddly I did end up becoming after all.
I thought everyone saw what I saw which was a sad, awkward girl who never fit in anywhere and just floated aimlessly until I ended up floating away.

I still kinda think that way. But something is changing.

This man from high school, who I never spoke 2 words to, who hung out with people who intimidated the shit out of me also called me ‘queen’. Said they all found me very attractive and terribly mysterious.

He said, ‘you must know, people must tell you.’

And mayhap they have.

But I feel like one of the hosts in Westworld. On a loop with fragmented memories that don’t make sense and every time someone gives me a compliment I am somehow programmed to think “it doesn’t look like anything to me”.

It’s not just corrupt data, it is missing data also. I didn’t have all the information.

I am trying to repair my very fragmented self.

I recognize my inner small child and I have worked really hard to make sure she feels safe and heard. I am wrestling with my inner parent who loves to degrade and dismiss my inner child and I am trying to get a handle on being able to call my inner adult forward at will instead of just in crisis.

But what about teenage me?

I just wanted a bit of attention, some kind of genuine connection, someone to notice me and accept my weird. One person did, and he died in my arms a few days after he told me.

And apparently, others did too but I never knew.

Psychology talks a lot about honoring your inner child and healing original wounds that happen when we are little, things that affect us in ways it is difficult to define because it is the beginning of the nurture half of the nature/nurture sense of self. But what about awkward shy teenagers who never grow out of that phase.

I have a hard time accepting myself. And it isn’t necessarily due to traumatic events sustained in high school, although there were a few, it is more about my perception of myself that was formed then and isn’t necessarily wrong per say. How I saw myself was valid and still part of who I am. But because I barely talked to anyone, or formed any kind of solid bonds with anyone, never dated anyone, never really talked to a lot of people. I didn’t get an unbiased view of how I appeared to others, only what I thought of myself. Which was not a lot.

If the reports I have gotten over the years are true I was beautiful, mysterious, ethereal, graceful and above all intimidating.

Too intimidating for anyone to tell me what they thought of me when I needed it the most.

Still no time machines. So I will take these small tokens of niceties and being remembered as something much more than I could have ever imagined.

 Am still wrestling with how to process all this. But I am grateful for these glimpses into my past from a fresh pair of eyes and not my own.

I think maybe I should try going home.

Not a huge fan of the word ‘should’. As in ‘you should be doing x, y or z’.

I lived my life in the land of should for far too long. 2 failed common law marriages with less than compatible partners because I thought I should be in a relationship, any relationship.

Nuh uh.

I know why. I was a single mom and a stripper so I felt lucky that anyone would want me at all, so I had to stay. Wow my stomach just rolled bad typing that. That is one loaded sentence full of yuck.

I knew I wasn’t happy; I knew I didn’t want to stay. But I was compelled by the power of ‘should’.

Why should I be? Who says?

I feel like that I am going to need a few blog posts and therapy sessions to clear out that muck and forgive myself.

But ‘I should’ has an evil-er twin.

I shouldn’t have.

I have a planet of regret sitting on my chest and I wish I could go back to that morning we made love and do things differently. A line from Reality Bites that is burned into my brain. Reality does indeed, bite.

Fucking Mercury Gatorade man.

Papa Mercury is my sky daddy.

 I should know better.

See how gross that word is?

I fucked up.

Don’t make big purchases or plans, understand that communication will suffer, technology will fail.
Just hang out in the upside down for 22 days and hang on.

That is what we are supposed to do.

I did not do those things.

I thought I could cheat the cosmos. I have been this bold before. This entire blog is filled with the lessons I have learned, and I listened to exactly none of them.

5 years ago there was a retrograde incident with Gelfling, and I swear I watched myself doing the same thing again, with infinitely bigger stakes and I couldn’t stop myself. I even made a meme about it.

There was a good plan in place and the plan fell apart and I did a bad job of holding it together.

The ramifications are huge.

Like an earthquake in the ocean. Happens far, far away from the eyes of man, and hours later, small villages get washed out to sea.

Tsunami time and the landscape altering aftermath.

We had a plan. Not a should be doing x or a have to do y…but a good idea based on previous attempts and the dissections of what went wrong and how to fix it. It was a lovely plan.
A 5 minute walk in the park.

The plan centered around a ‘where’.

The where was key.

The key got lost and I broke the door down anyways. I really wish I wouldn’t have.

The place ceased to exist, and I had every opportunity to stop the plan altogether, and I didn’t.
I plowed ahead with all the grace of a bull crashing through the front door of a china shop.

I shouldn’t have.

The earth shook and it wasn’t good.

The ‘when’ wasn’t so shit hot either, but I was impatient and didn’t want to wait.

The ‘how’ was a lil sketchy too.

The only thing with any integrity was the ‘why’.

Everyone knows I make decisions based on love.

And the Beatles said, love is all you need.

Yaaaaaa, no. Sorry John, Paul, Ringo and George, hate to say it but you need a little logic too and planning, and understanding and flexibility.

Otherwise the earth shakes, and levees break, and you just have to hope the foundation holds.

Foresight too, foresight is good. Love and foresight.

I am now in the midst of the consequences for the things I did that I should have know better about and should not have done.

As it stands, I am in place and limbo for 2 weeks and 3 respectively.

Booking a ticket today to go see my people and get my tings. Make some money and maybe have a hard reset in the process. But I have to wait out mandatory lockdown now.

Time to return to perdition.

I had a man tell me (upon offering me a job in Calgary) “you need to make sure you are truly finished with this place before you commit to leaving.”

And at the time I was fucking done. I kinda laughed at him, I had been trying to run for a while by the time I met him. But he said it was such wisdom and conviction, he might as well have been a caterpillar smoking a hookah on a mushroom in Wonderland.

Who

Are

You

Alice didn’t have such a good time there either really. She always felt too big or too small, creatures speaking in riddles, crazy tea parties and murderous queens.

I’m wondering why I was there again, why I am here now, and I wonder what I am supposed to be learning. Did I miss something? I feel a pull to go back.

But honestly, all pandemics considered I am in a really good, safe place. I don’t regret anything exactly. Well a couple things, but it’s time to go back and finish leaving.

I quote the Princess Bride a lot. Especially about going back to the beginning.

And maybe I wasn’t done. There is the obvious car, stuff, dog and friends. I promised to spring Attica from perdition months ago and have been stuck in a holding pattern ever since. I didn’t mean to leave my second exit as long as it has gone. But maybe there is some karmic fulfilment that I am missing too. Maybe I left some of my juju in a Rubbermaid along with the statue of the white girl who can’t even.

All I know is I have to go back, and I shouldn’t have gone, respectively.

I feel like half of me got washed out to sea and I am standing on a beach trying to figure out how to salvage what’s left.

I stole the title from a Peter Gabriel Lyric.

I tried posting how I was feeling in real time the other day and it went badly. I just really thought I was having a ridiculous Chicken Little moment and I could use it to look back and see where I was and what not to do.

I wrote a postmortem before death. That’s just weird.

And like the Oracle from the Matrix stated, “would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?”

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK

Noodle is officially cooked.

Good Karen messaged me after and said I write very well when I am in distress. She was one of 4 people who read if before I pulled it down.

To me its just looked like the same building blocks stacked into a different configuration.

46^th verse the same as the first.

The sky fell.

How many times have I fallen apart and how many different ways can I really rearrange the pieces and get back to myself, is myself anything worth rebuilding or do I throw everything out and start over?

I pulled that post and I am mid edit/purge of the entire blog right now. It isn’t easy.

What is really strange, lately I have been talking about everything but what I am to scrub from the web.

I guess I hit the mute button a while ago, until I didn’t.

Maybe I am psychic, but I don’t trust myself as much as I do others.

Talking to my witchy Viking rune girl from Colorado.

I was drowning and called all the witches for help.

They are rallying, slowly. Time and reality have this very thick feeling right now. Like the universe is viscous. Trying to walk through water and there is a wicked undertow. I am fighting the urge to stop fighting. Oh succumbing sounds so good right now. The plane didn’t crash as I had hoped, instead we were locked in our seats for 2+ hours of turbulence. You get to decide if that is a metaphor or not.

All I want to do is sleep.

I am worried about a couple of my best witchy bitches. They just not sleeping, vibrating at some other frequency instead. I am almost jealous, I want to feel connected to the ether again like that, but sleep is my only escape from life right now.

I feel like a ghost. Like I am not real and that is with a good 8 hours a night. I dread being awake. I have said some really fucked up shit when sleep deprived. I have no idea what my excuse is now. Punch drunk?

It is not a good thing for me. Once upon a time sleep deprivation or odd sleep cycles were supposed to make you feel closer to the divine, but whatever god of mine lives there is a screeching angry god of panic.

I trust my tongue more when it is coated with whiskey than I do when I am physically exhausted. But what about mental exhaustion? What about mental exhaustion in a retrograde during a pandemic?

I used to fast to tap into my daemons to write, fun excuse for lingering anorexia. But it worked. It might be what Good Karen said, I write better when I am in distress and my stomach has been rolling too hard for a week to really eat much.

I was trying to eat yesterday and it just felt strange, like I didn’t remember the mechanics of food consumption.

I think that was just a few hundred words of stating I am not okay.

The closest I can get to an explanation is  feel like I died at some point and this is just some weird limbo simulator and I am getting punished like Sisyphus, just on this loop and I want off this ride now please. This rock is too heavy and Albert as wrong, I am not happy.
I felt like this in Newfoundland too. I remember saying it out loud and it seems just as ‘real’ right now as it did then, maybe more so. Maybe I got to visit heaven for a minute and was deemed unworthy, so I was cast out back into whatever this is.

Hulk and Giant saw the bat signal that is my Stella Polaris self, flickering in a weakened state but they are both a mess too. I can’t ask for much. But it was nice to know they still care. Still part of the same weird loop though.

I think everyone is struggling now, we are all exhausted. Being held in siege by the media and the dangling fear of what panic button is going to get pushed today. Rehashing the old with a twist or is it going to be some new toxic cocktail of crazy.

I got an email today from a girl who follows my page. She had messaged me last week and asked for help getting a racist fired. She gave me shit for a curt response.
It wasn’t curt.
I was upset that I couldn’t do something, I don’t have that kind of power.
I wish I did.
I wish I had a magic eraser or even some magic words to right all of these wrongs, but I don’t.
How do you convince someone that something they believe isn’t necessarily the truth, or it doesn’t have to be.
How do you undo damage that was done in childhood?
I am still trying to undo my own and that ain’t going so great.

Every example that could have been made, every metaphor, analogy or suggestion has been meme’ed and people are just comfortable and stubborn in their own antiquated beliefs.

And sis? I am just one person. If I had any kind of influence, I would have sold enough books to buy a truck and trailer by now. But I don’t and I haven’t.

Mother Teresa said if you want to save the world start with the people closest to you.

Stabbing Westward said I cannot save you I can’t even save myself.

I thought the full moon and eclipse were last night. I was wrong. But I laid in bed feeling nothing, disconnected and it hurt me. I didn’t want to go through this again, that is why I left that island. The Weigh Station. The void, the nothing, the lack of magic.

At least now I have a shot at redemption.

Tonight I am going to sit in the backyard and give my fears to the moon.

And tomorrow I am going to figure out how to bring the rest of me back from Newfoundland, and start walking into the unknown.

Angel, angel or devil, I was thirsty, and you wet my lips.
U2, Trip Through Your Wires

This meme really pissed me off.

For a myriad of reasons.

The obvious… ‘a right woman’. Should have read ‘a good woman’ or ‘the right woman’, but alas, grammatically correcting memes is a task without purpose or end.

But seriously.

The concept of a ‘good woman’ is open to interpretation. What is good for some is bad for others. I should know. I am for all intents and purposes a good woman. I don’t nag, cheat, steal or lie. I am supportive and loving, forgiving and accommodating. I also exhibit devilish behavior. I am wanton, I don’t bow down to rules written by men on behalf of an imaginary sky daddy. I used to smoke and drink. I still cuss and I love to fuck.

Just as the concept of ‘good man’ or devil is relative. I prefer horns, to me those are the good men.

I also believe that ‘right’ is a malleable term that can change and warp over time. Yes, that was the right outfit to wear in 2002, but I no longer have the fashion sense of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in her cardigans and chunky heels.

I also think that change is good, just not forced change, or denial of who someone is at their core for our own comfort.

I am really sick and tired of the idea that we need to find one human in our 20’s that we don’t mind fucking, and then just fuck them until we die.

I realize monogamy was not mentioned in the offensive meme of offensiveness. But hear me out.

Let’s say you actually find a devil and that is not what you want.

Hell is empty (after all) and the devils are all here.

There are 7.7 billion people on the planet. Why pick one that is not exactly what you are looking for and then try to bend them and break them into a shape you like better? Why grind their horns down until their magic and power are lost?

If someone made a meme about ripping the wings off angels to suit our purposes, there would be a mighty ruckus. But from all accounts I have read, angels are subservient, sycophantic and pretty boring. Vanilla really.

Speaking of angels, Mister Rogers said that love is the action of loving someone as they are moment to moment as they are, not how you want them to be. I am paraphrasing but I think he would forgive me.

He acknowledged that people change in a good way.

Change is great, I love change. But forcing someone to deny who they really are and change to suit your agenda is wrong.

Devils aren’t for everyone, I get that. They run hot and passionate, there is a bit of underlying evil that can be misconstrued as cruelty if you don’t know what you are looking at. But the original Lucifer was God’s favorite and the most beautiful among the angels, he was cast out of heaven for arguing with god. Personally, none of that sounds bad to me.

I usually love a good devil and a good debate. But I am not omnipotent, and I understand that I have been wrong, I will be wrong again and it isn’t the end of the world if I am.

And for the record…the Satanic bible has thou shall not rape in it’s commandments, actually goes so far as to say thou shall not even hit on a woman who is not interested in you so, ya…god dropped the ball on that one.

I just don’t think the devil is as bad as he has been made out to be.

This meme reminds me of the one that says women are not rehabilitation centers for badly raised men. It’s my blog, I can go adjacent to topic for a minute. Hush now.

I mean really, someone is raising them. They exist, these bad men. Brock Turner had a mom. I have met horrible men, dated a couple. They scare and infuriate me. But I wouldn’t call them devils, they aren’t that cool. Demons are fallen angels and these incels have no soul at all. I wouldn’t imbue them with supernatural qualities, they are trolls if anything. Angry misshapen men who lurk in the darkness and fantasize about taking what they haven’t earned. Who raised them?

I have a devil child, I do. He is a giant pain in my ass. He is passionate and strong. He doesn’t just blindly follow rules, which is great now, but was a little tricksy when he was 5.

Did I raise him as well as I could have?

No, see above where I am not infallible.

However. He is a good man. And for that I am grateful. I will take a small bit of credit for this. I raised him without shame and fear.

He fucked up, I fucked up and we talked about it. He knows it isn’t the end of the world. And he is stronger for it. He also knows he doesn’t have to be strong 24/7. He has the seemingly rare ability to express his feelings and not worry about this being construed as weakness.

I say rare, but I see it a lot with is generation, especially among his friends and it gives me hope.

Repressed emotion begets violence, either against oneself or others.

Shame is a spiral that only goes down.

But my point is someone is raising these badly raised men who are so caught up in their idea of masculinity that they cease to be human. Generational curses are hard to break, I know this. I broke them.

And sometimes it’s not just the mamas. Sometimes it’s the world or other women.

I have met some very broken men with good mamas and bad exes.

Now the therapy part.

I fucking love therapy, everyone should go. Everyone should always have access to a trained, non-biased individual whose only goal is your improved mental health and general contentment. Somewhere safe to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth it is a gift from god. And we should be able to try on therapists like shoes until we find one that fits and have different shoes for different occasions.

I realize that is unrealistic, but it shouldn’t be.

If I could, I’d be like Oprah in this.

YOU get a therapist, and YOU get a therapist, EVERYBODY GETS A FUCKING THERAPIST.

But mental health is a fairly new idea. And the toxic idea that we should just be able to handle whatever life throws at us is forced upon men a thousand times over. They are never allowed to be not okay. Asking for help is, again, construed as weakness.

Then you get a meme like this, which agrees with my above statements, but says it in a really bitchy way. We can drop the eye rolling any time now.

Everyone has their own path and they might be tiptoeing or striding along it. Or even standing still. It’s their path. Stop yelling at other people and work on your damned self. Grow your own horns or find someone without if that suits you better. More devils for me. Win win.

I am sick of people judging people really.

Why keep people in your life just to make them feel bad about themselves because they aren’t what you imagined them to be.

Rude.

The takeaway from all this?

Shame is bad.

Therapy is good.

And a devil without his horns is just a dude with a bumpy forehead, crippling anxiety and a lost sense of self.

“If I don’t come out of this better, the plane should have crashed.”

I went a long, long time in my life feeling like such nothing that I didn’t realize I had an effect on people at all, like not one bit. Like I could disappear, and no one would really notice.

I remember when that changed too. 6 years ago, a phone conversation with a girl I have known since I was 7 years old. She said her mother always asked about me and worried about me. I figured Mama Plowright had heard tales of my self-destruction through the rumor mill that is the main industry in all small towns and was just being kind. She is a kind woman. But it wasn’t pity, it was because she actively cares about me, even now almost 40 years later.
Another high school friend’s parents saw me at a concert later that year, and I dreaded seeing them. My best friend from back in the day had wreaked havoc on their family and I could only assume they found me guilty by association. But they didn’t. They showered me with the same love they had given me pre havoc and before I divorced the shitty friend and ran away from that town and didn’t go back for 20 years. They hugged me while I cried tears of relief and consoled me in thick Scottish accents. Told me they always knew it wasn’t my fault, that they always thought I was a good girl. I was happy to be thought of at all.

Then Good Karen came along and told me she found me a few hours after she came out of a coma and this blog helped her recover. My Colorado Viking Witch said the same, not including the coma.

I suppose I never really made the extrapolation that I affect people who I have never met or spent limited time with. The concept is foreign to me.

I am still trying to figure out why I have to fill buckets with love and favors before I can ask for an eyedropper in return. I have a therapy session this week. I suppose we will find out then. I asked her and then stopped thinking about it.

But that is really neither here nor there.

I touched on feeling helpless to stop anything that is happening in the world right now, mine or otherwise. And then I stumbled on a Mother Teresa quote about saving people close to me.
But they are pretty okay, all things considered.

So I decided something.

I am 46 years old and I am going back to school. Seems ridiculous I know. But if I don’t do it now, I’ll be 50 and borrowing money off my kid to get by because some bar just cut my waitressing shifts.

I’d rather be 50 with a degree.

I had a few things in mind. I do love writing but if the last few months have taught me anything its that my muse wanders off often and I have a hard time managing too much free time. I want a job. I like the structure and discipline of having a schedule.

So I rewind in my head. When was I happy and productive?

Milton, after the ex moved out. I worked Monday to Friday. Got up early every morning to write. Up at 6 like a rocket, dogs out, coffee on, scribble scribble scribble, shower and off to work. A thousand words a day. Probably a thousand dollars a week too, maybe more. Saturday was housework and visitors and Sunday was city visits. I remember amusing myself weekly by forgetting that I had made my bed with clean sheets Sunday morning and I was always so pleased climbing into bed Sunday night. I liked my little life.
The bar I worked at then is closed now, before the plague sadly. I miss it. Those were the good old days and I didn’t know it at the time. And now earth is closed.

But I kept that routine into the next house, and the one after. When I worked at the brewery and the stadium. It was a good life.

Then I turned into a very drunk Bill Murray circa Groundhog Day on the island of fuckboys and never got my shit together. I stopped writing, I had no time, no clarity and nothing good to say.

Then this last phase of prolific word smithery on the island and off which I am currently hiding away and a book that I can’t write the next chapter to. And honestly? Even if the stadium was open, or the brewery hiring, or the bar open. It’s not enough. They were disposable jobs and I am tired of temporary.

So what do I want to do…

Honestly? I would like to be a staff writer for a tv show. But I have no idea how to break into that business. Set decorator for movies would be fun too, but I would want everything to be pretty and perfect and they would inevitably be torn down and I would be sad. See above where I am trying to shed temporary.

I could decorate houses for rich bitches with too much money and no soul, but…see the problem there? I wouldn’t like my clientele and my face is incapable of lying, they’d know. Plus I suck at selling myself. Apparently, every space I make is Pinterest worthy, but I wouldn’t know. I use it for quotes, if ever.

Those are practical/non practical things. The general consensus amongst my tribe is I would have made an amazing lawyer, but…that is a lot of school, like a lot. I helped a buddy study for the bar in my 20’s. So that ship has sailed.

Hmmmm

Ships, sailing, harbors, lighthouses…

No, I don’t want to build boats or work on the docks.

Newfoundland.

When was I my happy, powerful self there?

Rarely really.

But

The only thing I miss about Newfoundland is stepping in between big mad drunk dudes bent on destruction and having them stop because I said so.
I was never afraid, not even the first time.
Because ever other time they were a mess it was my belly the cried into while I held them and coo’ed and they trusted me and respected me.

And I trusted them and respected them.

Drug dealers and delinquents sure, but I treated them like friends because they were.

There is something about me that inspires honesty from the dishonest, growth from the stagnant. I have long been a rehabilitation center for lost boys. I am a walking safe place. I was a really good lighthouse in a really bad harbor.

I remember feeling satisfied, loved even.

The only fights I failed to stop were always when I was on stage. Couldn’t help them and I felt bad. Yelling accomplishes nothing, dulcet tones and a well placed hand soothes beasts.
And once I was outside smoking during a fight, and I felt bad that I chose to walk away even though I saw the signs and knew it was coming.  The shitty baby bouncer we had wasn’t listening and I secretly hoped he’d get popped in the mouth for mouthing off to me.
I asked the guy who started that fight “would you have stopped if I asked you to?”
He screwed his face up funny as he gave it some thought. “For you? If you asked me in the same voice you just used asking me now? Ya, I would have.”

We weren’t even super close; he knew me more by proxy than anything. But that made me feel good.
I miss feeling that satisfaction of being the virgin sacrificed to stop the volcano from erupting; and emerging unscathed to stop more volcanoes and other natural disasters another day.

Since I am too small to be a bouncer and there is no actual job for professional soother of angry men, she who gets lions to calm the fuck down or she who magically stops bar fights before they happen with one hand and a word. Why not criminals? I already know how to handle them outside in an uncontrolled environment, in stilettos no less…

I have been preaching till I lost my voice about how the system is fucking broken.
And I don’t think I can fix the whole thing, but what about one small corner.

Today I try to figure out how to get Alice back from Newfoundland, file for travel exemption so I can go get her, reclaim my car and whatever other juju and tings I left there. And apply for a grant to go back to school for social work with a focus on prisons.

I think it would be very satisfying to make someone’s sentence a little easier while they are stuck inside and try to make sure they don’t fall back into old habits once they’re out.

(*title by Hozier)

I feel like I already wrote this.

There is a part one and I haven’t looked at it. I will. But in my continuing stubbornness of doing everything backwards, after I post this.

Today might end up being a two-fer.

Nope, it’s just really long. 1979. My usual is 1000 to 1500.

I promised my therapist I would write 1000 words a day. Fell a little short yesterday if you don’t include emails. And I would bet the farm that is not what she meant. Even if I do some of my better writings in there.

I managed to tap out 900 words in the new book. The 2 main characters have finally gotten together in the same room and I am struggling to make them struggle. They can’t just fall in love and live happily ever after on page 46. In my post-apocalyptic world marriage doesn’t exist, happily ever after sure. But ever after what?

Fucking minutiae and misunderstandings. I wrote a post way back when about that too. Novel Romance. Wherein my early ideas about love were tainted by pages and pages of struggle just to have it all work out at the end. I still do that a bit I guess.

As with rom-coms and romance novels and life in general, there is always some yuck to get through. And I have about 350 pages to go. They will get there.

I am doing this newish thing in real life, wherein I don’t skip over the yuck and just see what I want to see.

I have said ad nauseum to all the women in my life (and in here), when they come to me with man troubles, asking me ‘well what did he mean by that?’
My first query is always “Well what words did he say?”
And my unwavering response is “He meant the words he said, no subtext. Just the words.”

Most women are lucky, we have our own language and a chosen few friends with whom we can be ridiculous, emotional, illogical and just spin like whirling dervishes until we come to rest. We are privy to the luxury of not knowing how we are feeling about something and working through it in a safe place with our friends.

Men, not so much. They are expected to get from problem A to solution B with no stopovers.

And I know, I know, broad generalizations and gender specificity. But for the purpose of this post let’s just say there is an allowance made for women to be emotional and an expectation for men to be logical.

I have also said, repeatedly, if you have a problem and want to vent, find a girlfriend. If you want it solved, start planting logic trees with men. I have a deep-rooted respect for the fundamental differences between the sexes and I genuinely believe we are designed to work harmoniously, but modern society got in the way. We can have this discussion at great length until the end of time some other day.

It would be nice if women decided en mass to be safe spaces for men to explore the emotional illogical sides of themselves. That would be a lovely new normal.

Oh, I just rambled there.

What was I talking about?

Oh ya. Men say what they mean. Most of the time. Boys lie to get you in bed, sure; but men tend to speak true. It is less about gender and more about maturity.

I have gotten into a lot of trouble skipping over the blatantly obvious statements made to me by men because I didn’t want to hear them. And believing the lies of boys because I wanted to.
Sometimes they are both in one body.

Perfect example.

After 11 months or so, I slipped and said the word love to Lumberjack.

His response?

“You aren’t allowed to do that.”

It took about 6 weeks after that statement and an Instagram message from his actual girlfriend to fully disengage from that shell of a relationship. But that simple declaration he made that day made it so easy for me to cease and desist a month and a half later. I already had one foot out the door.

He was a lying boy but that one crystal clear assertion was him acting as an honest man, if that makes sense.

And same as with every other situation ever, it is one thing to kinda already know and another to hear it/read it in its full unadulterated truth.

I have this fun game I play with myself wherein after a relationship dissolves, I decide to make it ‘easier’ on myself and I decide I made the gravity of it up in my head. Like they really weren’t that into me, I just misread the situation.

Have…had. I am trying not to do this anymore. And I will tell you why.

Because, invariably without fucking fail, on some sunny day months or years later, I will be sitting somewhere, minding my own business, rifling through the archives for looking for this thing or that completely unrelated thing and I will stumble on some fucking message from one of my exes and instead of the lump of coal I fooled myself into thinking it was, it’s a fucking diamond.

And then I get to go through the trauma of ‘well I guess I am not crazy after all’. And this flimsy excuse I made for the end of things, falls apart in my hands, and I along with it.

I have to deal with the confrontation of the reality wherein they did actually love me, and they left anyways, and I wasn’t crazy I was just stupid because I didn’t see it coming.

I believed the good and ignored the bad. Then I focused solely on the bad and negated the good.

So, moving forward, I am trying not to do that.

Trying not to bend and fold myself into another person. Trying to take things at face value. Listen to all of the words, not just what I want to hear.

And it’s working.

Besides, I was never the little girl who dreamed of my wedding day.

I find weddings to be a colossal waste of money. Thousands of dollars for what? One day of revelry that never quite goes as planned even with the months of stress and planning expended beforehand, and a 50/50 shot of making it?

And what does ‘making it’ constitute? Forced monogamy? The division of shit if you do opt out?

Is it a financial agreement? The giving up or amalgamation of your last names? I have had my last name for 46 years as of tomorrow, no one can pronounce it and it’s fine. It’s weird, it’s mine and I love it.
What is so exciting and important about marriage?

Back in the caves when women were pregnant or had babies to look after, they needed a provider. Genetics took care of that and traditionally speaking, the firstborn usually favors the father’s looks. Makes them more emotionally compelled to take care of their offspring and the mother of said offspring.
Then women became property, something to be owned, so marriage made sense.
But all of this is outdated.
We don’t need that now. We good. Well, 77 cents to the dollar good. But still.

Monogamy has never been a natural human attribute. We aren’t designed for it. So forcing it is a recipe for disaster. Then there’s the governmental and financial aspects. I don’t need the government in my relationship thanks, nor the bank.

I have had a few men propose to me.

And I can now see it for what it was. They wanted to keep me. One was in love with me, but we were young and dumb, and he was drunk most of the time including when he proposed. One was afraid of being alone, one ran out of other ways to make me stay.

I shudder to think of what my life would be like if I had stayed with any of them. I am no longer the girl they knew and bent a knee for.

And therein lies another reason not to get married, or why marriage kinda sucks.

I am not who I was at 24. I am not who I was at 29 and I am really not who I was when ex hubby proposed 3 times.

Marriage is the only contract we are expected to enter into with no fixed term reassessment period. How can the version of myself I am now, know what I want 10 years from now, or forever?

There needs to be an escape clause written in. Every 7 years one or both are allowed to opt out without consequences.

I know people exist who refuse to evolve, grow and change. Carousel people, round and round and they are happy with that.

Do you boo.

They probably see my life as a curse; or would if they bothered to look at it.
I don’t.
I am happy changing. I get excited about it now. What can I learn today?

Well, what I learned is that love to me, is not paper handcuffs or betting half my shit that I will want to be with someone a decade from now. It never was.

I also accidentally stumbled on the idea that we don’t have enough words in our language to define love and relationships.

I use the words dated, boyfriend and even marriage with boatloads of salt.

I was common law married twice, but I just say ex hubby. The last 6 years I say I ‘dated’ so and so, but there were no technically definable relationships in there, maybe one or two. The rest of the time it was just sex and suppers and some decent conversations. And even then, I might have been ‘theirs’ for a time, but they were never mine, I stopped asking remember?

I never dreamed of being married.

I might someday, decide to change my mind about that.

There will be no paperwork involved and that is a blessing in itself. Handcuffs? Oh yes. Paper ones, no thanks.

Love, to me, is choosing someone over and over. Not out of obligation but freewill.

Not because of who you thought they were or who you want them to be but because of who they are in the here and now.

Apparently, I had opened a document and forgotten what I was going to say.

It’s been an interesting few days and after a brief brain cramp, I do know what I was going to write. The Giant, Mandy and the quarry trip that didn’t happen.

But I don’t want to talk about that right now.

I don’t want to talk about what I am about to talk about either.

I make jokes about the writers for this season of ‘earth’ and how they are grasping for audience retention with increasingly absurd plotlines. I think I went numb from it.

The Sirius portal opened last night and I just wanted to go home. I just wanted the plane to crash too. But I don’t think there is an easy way out of this.

Kanye just announced he is running for president. The murder hornet thing, SOS from space that no one seems to be talking about. People fighting over pancake syrup and burning masks while the body counts climb and no real progress is made. I had to step away from the internet. It isn’t safe for me right now. I am not even running my page. I gave it to a girl I met while traveling this last time. I knew her for 2 days, but she seems to be a really good fit. I don’t know if I am passing the torch for good or just taking a rest.

I used to be the girl who drank and knew things. Well, sometimes I was Jon Snow and knew nothing, but there was some balance. Not anymore. I don’t drink and I feel like a ghost passing through. I am not sure if I even exist.

Nothing has felt real in a long time to be perfectly honest.
I left Newfoundland on November 21^st 2019 and got on a plane. I didn’t sleep in the same bed for more than 11 days until lockdown happened. After literally living the same night and day over and over with slightly different faces for 2 years in that bar, the sudden leap to constantly changing scenery and pure joy and excitement when my phone would bing instead of being filled with existential dread seemed amazingly surreal. 
I had never had back to back adventures before, I got really good at packing and getting on planes and navigating strange cities, then all the sudden…the nothing. In Arabic, this is the haboob. I wrote about it before.

Considering we are mid apocalypse with no end in sight, I haven’t really cried much.

I haven’t felt the soul crushing anguish one would expect. I was mildly concerned about myself to be perfectly honest. I had a conversation with the new page runner the other day about crying when Trump was elected, and I do recall sobbing, heavily and often. I cried a lot in 2016 and looking back now, that year felt kinda like a cake walk, even with the gorilla and the creepy clowns everywhere, including in the white house.

I think the last soul sob I had was leaving the fucking Starbucks in March. The pandemic was just starting and the air was thick with panic. I cried the second I got into the uber and I didn’t stop until my 18-hour travel day had come to a close and I was climbing into bed in my attic. It really felt like the end of the world. And in a way, it was. I just didn’t know it yet.

I must have cried since. I hit and 8.6 on the period pain scale a few times. But I honestly cannot remember. Everything is kinda bleeding together. I know I was so messed up at one point I called my therapist from 8 years ago and we picked up where we left off. She was so instrumental in prying me loose from my terrible marriage we never got to the why I got myself into that in the first place. I was slipping and I reached for support. It worked.

My normally weepy, panicking self has been dry eyed and able to accomplish tasks.

To the point that I received a congratulatory message from someone telling me he was proud I didn’t meltdown right before shark week this month. Truth be told, I was proud too.

This too shall pass. All things must end.

I have spent the bulk of this week crying. And as much as I don’t want to talk about it, this is my therapy for now.

My baby cousin passed away. I found out a week ago today as I was antique shopping with my girlfriend. An unsaved number rang, and I thought it was my mom, but her voice sounded young somehow and very far away.

“Sarah? It’s your mother.”

We don’t talk a lot, and she usually calls me from her cell. For some reason their house phone number didn’t transfer to this phone when I got it. And honestly? She didn’t sound like herself, she sounded small. But it was her.

She made a bitter joke about only calling with bad news, and as I heard the following words coming through the phone, I was confused.
“Cousin Emily died last night.”

I have 2 cousins named Emily, one first cousin, one second cousin. Doesn’t matter, either would have been a tragedy. I haven’t seen my second cousin since we were kids. It was my first cousin. I remember her being in my aunt’s belly and feeling her kick 31 years ago. I haven’t seen her since her wedding two years ago wherein she made a huge effort to make sure I was there and felt included and welcome. Even though her birth heralded the beginning of my estrangement from my family. I was 15 and I left home shortly thereafter.

I wasn’t there as she grew up. But she insisted I be there for her wedding and I am grateful.

She was a beautiful wonderful woman. And I remember finally feeling like I got to go home, surrounded by aunts, uncles and cousins. Holding their babies I had never met and meeting the cousins anew, as the adults they had become. I remember feeling so happy and included. Like I got let back into a house I had been locked out of for decades.

I had a long moment where I just decided this wasn’t happening, I was having a really vivid dream or hallucination. I forgot where I was and how I had gotten there. I forgot everything except for my mother’s strained voice coming through the phone. She was trying not to cry, so was I.
But as the reality that this was actually happening and I wasn’t having a weird dream, I sat down hard in a random dining room chair in the antique market I was in, clutching the pillow cases I had found tightly in my hand and I just kept saying no over and over. This isn’t real. I know the responsibility of having to be the bearer of bad news. It always fills me with angst and more sadness, having to relive your own trauma over the event and then spread it to others. I tried so hard not to make it harder on my mom, but seriously no, this can’t be happening. She just got married to her absolute soulmate, they weren’t a couple, they were two incarnations of one entity. They were in love and happy beyond happy. She turned 31 a few days ago.

I will always remember her birthday; she was born the day after our grandmother died. In the same hospital. The first time I saw her was at the funeral.

I spoke to my mom again today and we surmised that there are different kinds of grieving over different kinds of death. My maternal aunt passed away in May, other side of the family. I loved her so much. I have nothing but good memories of her. She was 88 and had a wonderful life. I think because of the numbness and lack of closure I hadn’t grieved her really either. I haven’t seen her since my sister’s wedding 3 years ago.

I’ve been so estranged from my family, both blood and otherwise for so long. I feel like an asteroid or a comet cutting through their solar systems and orbits. I’m only ever around for weddings and funerals.
I think I had left home a year before a family friend of ours passed away, almost 30 years ago and I am feeling now what I felt then. She was 9 years old, I was 16.
I don’t know how to grieve for them or with them, like I am outside of the house looking in, and I hurt but my hurt and loss are less than everyone else’s because I haven’t been around for decades now…and I have to tread lightly. But it still hurts.
I can’t explain it better than that. My Aunt passed away and I feel like I was lucky in a way because the last time I saw her she was happy and healthy, and I get to remember her like that. But then I feel like a selfish outsider and interloper. I haven’t been able to process her being gone and everything is hitting all at once.

Now my mind keeps refreshing hourly, I keep remembering they are gone. I keep thinking about my cousin’s new husband, they were soulmates, I saw it and my heart breaks fresh every time. And even that is a selfish hurt, because I am scared that I will die alone, unloved. I don’t belong anywhere to anyone. And my heart breaks for my uncle who only ever loved my aunt with his whole heart for his whole life and now he has to keep going without her. They both do these men that were happy, loving and loved. And I just think that is so fucking unfair.

I am in this orbit of my own, at the far reaches of the cosmos. Sending out distress signals that go unheard because I don’t speak the language and I have no one to send them to.