October 2020

My name means both princess in Aramaic and discontent in Greek.

I am currently both of these things.

I feel restless, but with a smack of body tired and no real direction.

Last night was a new moon, a new super moon. I did not realize there were such things, but if Unbreakable taught us anything, it is that for any phenomenon or anomaly there is an equal and opposite phenomenon or anomaly. Basically all a super moon is, is when the moon is currently closer to earth in a full or new phase. So, if you believe like I do, that the moon influences us, which is absolutely plausible, look at the oceans and the tides and remember we are almost ¾ water, then we will all feel it on some level or another.

And just because we can’t see the moon, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Those of us who are more conscious of such things, feel it more.

I am free from the island of opposites, wherein the new moon was always more tangly than the full, but I must admit, I feel twitchy. And the cats are acting foolish.

There are things I do on lunar cycles. Full moon night is always a letting go. Banishing things I do not want. New moon is the time to make wishes and as the moon appears more vividly every night after, those things come to fruition more often than not.

I also like to burn certain things and make sure my space and mirrors are clean.

I sit outside with a candle and I talk to the moon.

Sometimes she listens.

I have reiterated to death the idea of ‘hold the vision, trust the process’ and more recently, ‘let go and let god’.

But today I needed reminding.

I also mentioned Mercury retrograde came in with a bang. But it was more like those fireworks that get lit during Chinese New years while men dressed as dragons walk the streets and everything is gold and red. Rapid fire with puffs of smoke and pagentry.

I went to the movies on Tuesday, something I have missed terribly and realized I took for granted before the end of the world. Sat down, far far away from others and as I took my phone out to make it quiet, I got a slew of messages in rapid succession. The old boss has been dethroned, my son finally found an apartment after wandering like his mama for the bulk of the summer, my PIC bought a new house and my Facebook ban started.

I know this is how life is. Nothing nothing nothing, is this a fucking haboob? Nothing, then everything all at once.

The universe is always in flux.

I decided a long time ago that a wish was nothing but a prayer, a prayer was nothing but a mantra, a mantra was nothing but a spell. They are all the same thing whether you are in a church, a mosque or naked in the woods. Our tiny human brains trying to exert some control over this random series of events we call life.

And while I will absolutely testify that I have manifested some amazing things in my life, a lot of my peace and Zen came from accepting what is in the moment and holding on hope for something better, while actively working towards it and making decisions that were in tune with said want. And accepting that I don’t always have the capacity to separate what I want from what is good for me or serves my higher purpose. I am not even sure what my higher purpose is. I just do what feels good and try to take care of as many people as I can in the process. I forget to look after me sometimes and I am working on that.

I kept that in mind as I made my wishes last night. So mote it motherfucking be, but only if it is for the best and does no harm.

I do that a lot. Want something but have to look at all the angles and possible outcomes to make sure no one gets hurt. And going back to the idea that the universe is always in flux, it truly is an exhausting juggling act. I am much better at being selfless than selfish. I just never really was. I mean I covet, to covet is human. I scroll through social media and se a woman with flat abs or dewy skin or awesome hair, and yes, I want that. but I am also grateful for what I have.

Maybe it is time to dream bigger.

I want to write books, but I want to get paid for doing so as well.

I want to have a steady stream of income no matter where I am on the planet, and I want to explore more of this planet too. I spent decades trapped in places I didn’t want to be by my ideas of what I ‘should’ be doing and in relationships with people who wanted to keep me caged.

No more.

The moon starts to get full again today. And in my way of loving the winter solstice just as much as the summer one, because that is the day it stops getting worse and starts getting better, so it is today.

I have made my wishes and spoken them aloud, I have my goals and I will spend the time between now and the blue moon on Halloween focused and working towards what I want.

Link to one of my books, it is pure pornography, you have been warned

It’s been 3 years, or a millennia depending on how you look at it.

#metoo started gaining momentum in October 2017.

I don’t think the world suddenly turned into a better safer place, but at least it isn’t some dirty secret we are forced to keep anymore. It was never my dirt. I don’t want it.

There’s been charges laid. And there is a dialog.

I think its all of us. Or close to all.

Statistics say 1 in 4 before the age of 18.

But I was 15, 16, 26, 40, 42. Just the bad ones. Not counting the little pressures or the friends that got drunk and took it too far. Or the boyfriends who didn’t listen when I said not now.

Its overwhelming.

Facebook says I posted this 3 years ago today.

I remember the sting from the proverbial slap in the face when I saw my mother post ‘me too’. And I think I know who, but maybe I am wrong. Doesn’t matter if I know, she does. We all know the names of our harassers and rapists. Maybe not all, but a good portion of us do.

That is because, if 98% of women have been harassed or assaulted, there are men doing this to us.
Not all men, see what I did there?

There is an antiquated belief that men who hurt and rape women fit a certain stereotype; scruffy, trench coat, lurking in the bushes or in the shadows. Stranger danger.

I have been assaulted a dozen times and they were never wearing trench coats.
They weren’t strangers either.

Yes, there are the scrubs who can’t get no love, hanging out the passenger side of his best friend’s ride trying to holler at me…the unwanted attention, the feigned ‘accidental’ grab at a bar in the dark. I am not talking about those, although those really suck too.

I do not understand why tolerating harassment is the price I have to pay to exist as a woman.

I lost a person about a week ago. We were very close. Loved each other even. Never dated exactly, like most of the men from the last 7 years of my life, we had dates nights, but we weren’t dating. We fooled around too. Never quite got to the sex part, he loved cocaine more than me and sex was a physical impossibility.

That’s neither here nor there.

He posted a meme that I won’t bother reposting, regarding Baby it’s Cold Outside versus WAP.

This rings the same as republicans defending Donald Trump ‘grab em by the pussy’ by saying well, y’all read 50 Shades of Grey.

Let me make it abundantly clear. Consensual BDSM is not the same as assault and battery. Never has been, never will be. There is even a sub category of BDSM which is called ‘consensual non-consent’, but there is a safe word that still means no.

Just because I want to have sex, doesn’t mean I want to have sex with you. Just because we have had sex before, doesn’t mean I want to right now.
There is no Golden Ticket, all access pass to enter a woman’s body whenever you want. If that’s your thing, get a sex doll.

A dude not taking no for an answer is not in the same conversation as a woman needing a bucket and a mop for her wet ass pussy. In fact, that whiny cajoling tone makes me drier than the Sahara.

I jumped on the thread of the BICO versus WAP and said plainly, while I don’t think BICO is the worst thing ever, it does insinuate pressure sex. Personally, I have acquiesced to sexual acts for reasons other than a resounding yes, because it was safer to do so, because I felt obligated or pressured.

Yes, all women in this instance.

And it happened with him too.

I was drunk, I said no. I said no more than once, and things went further that I wanted.

Am I mad about it?

No.

We were both drunk and things got carried away.

Had I been sober would I have consented, also no. But all in all it was not some terrible traumatic experience. We talked the next morning and I said plainly, that was not what I wanted nor expected from you and he apologized. It’s water under the bridge and I valued his friendship more than one irritating night of drunken stupidity. I never went home with him after that incident either.

Cut to last week.

So I jump on this thread, tell the truth about other experiences I had, not even hinting at what happened with him and instead of being the supportive male friend I knew and loved, he threw me under the bus, and let a bunch of rednecks mock me.

So I left.

Unfriended him unceremoniously and sat on this for about a week.

Then I get banned from Facebook for the men are trash statement and everything came bubbling back up.

If you are not trash, you won’t mind me pointing out that a lot of your gender are. Once again, someone is doing the raping.

If you aren’t guilty of pressure sex, you won’t mind me bringing it up.

The onus is placed on women way too often. The language has to change. From ‘she was raped’ to ‘he raped her’. We carry all of the responsibility for an act we obviously do not choose to participate in, that is why it’s rape.

Madonna once said that “a woman could be naked, drunk, passed out in an alley in a bad neighborhood and still not deserve to get raped”.

Its true.

Why is this about our life choices as women and not about their choice to hurt us as men?

They make a decision to do harm.

We don’t choose to be harmed.

I really loathe this rhetoric wherein if a woman owns her sexuality, enjoys sex or shows even the slightest hint of using men for pleasure the puritanical collective loses its fucking mind.

When is this going to stop?

How do we stop it?

I raised my son to know that consent is mandatory and can also be revoked at any time. He knows this. This is gospel.

I also saw this last week, and it made me cry bitter tears of relief.

In a world full of mansplainers and men who are guilty of some level of assault who refuse to own the things they have done, there is this guy.

Men who assault women, don’t listen to women, hence the assaulting.

Every single man has either done something or knows someone who has. Just like every single woman has had something done to her or knows a woman who has.

Make the world into one giant airport. IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING.

Sit in your dark truth gentlemen. Realize it’s you or someone you know, do better, be better.

The world isn’t going to end if you realize and internalize that one of the girls you banged didn’t really want to participate. Learn from it.

Stop this.

And at the very least, don’t try and talk over the women who are finally feeling safe enough to talk about this. From personal experience, I know it’s a heavy burden to carry and it’s not even my burden.

At some point, while I wasn’t paying attention, I hit half a million views on ye olde blog.

Yay me. I know half of those are Good Karen. She’s confessed to reading everything, several times.

She has been amazing lately. Her medical background has allayed a lot of my fears and she is just cool beans in general.

7 years ago in December I started talking to myself, and people read it.

So weird.

I did a thing.

I am actually part of a private group on Facebook called ‘I did a thing’, people like me who have anxiety and executive function disorder. I haven’t posted there, and now I can’t, but it’s nice to see people doing things and be part of a community that cheers each other on about accomplishments that seem mundane to others.

I sewed a skirt that I bought at Disney 4 years ago and ripped the first time I wore it 3 years ago. It has been sitting in the ‘mend me’ bag forever. Now I can wear it on my next adventure. I feel satisfied.

Mercury retrograde is the best time ever for clearing out psychic and actual garbage, tying loose ends, fixing old things and letting go of what no longer serves us. And eventually I will get to the point of this article which is exactly that.

Papa Mercury spinning backwards is also notorious for having exes waltz out of the woodwork with a ‘sup’.

But we will get to that too. Probably in another article.

Right now I am looking at the sewing kit on my chaise, the pile of clean laundry that needs putting away, the bracelets I wore yesterday that are sitting next to me and an unmade bed. I have enough time before my next doctor’s appointment to fix all of that and do yoga, but I am not doing it.

I have been back for 2.5 weeks and I really thought I would have been writing for 2 of them by now. I have 27 000 words started on a novel that I seem to have channeled from the ether, it is the most euphoric experience for a writer, to see what is happening, to be tapped into another time and place and just be the scribe. I want that feeling back. But first I have to put that last load of laundry away, finish sewing that last skirt, organize my insane amount of bathroom stuff. I really don’t need to buy shampoo or lotion for a year, deodorant for another 6 months.

I was going away, not packing much in the way of toiletries and just buying new wherever I landed, then traveled back in time to the island where I had a full cupboard of more stuff, and some more stuff. And some more stuff and more stuff and so on and so on. I gotta chill out and use what I have.

I think part of me remembers being dirt poor. Kinda compounded and renewed by the plague. I can’t work right now, there is no work. I didn’t panic buy anything, so much as kept everything I had, just in case. Hotel soaps, deodorant that I don’t love but I might need. I am also not used to having this much downtime. Parts of me love it and parts of me remember that feeling of leaving perdition and having all of these adventures waiting for me. Some of them happened and they were amazing. I have a drawer full of ticket stubs from places I have been. To go from hyperactivity and never staying in one place more than 11 days, to 92 days in the same room in the same house with the same routine was a shock to my system.

I think I am better equipped for extended periods alone than most. The Milton house I would go weeks without seeing anyone but the lady ringing up my groceries. Solitude is peaceful for me.

And, as I cited in my last article, I have emotionally matured a significant amount since February. I can see very clearly where I was and where I am.

At this moment I am attempting to conquer this.

I always thought it was how I was raised. My mother takes great pride in her home and in this regard, I am my mother’s daughter. It has morphed into a source of pride for me. I have a skill, whether innate or learned (or both) of creating these beautiful, Zen yet cozy spaces wherever I live. When I got back to the island, I cleaned the house for the better part of 2 weeks. Room by room, finding lost treasures and putting things back to ‘right’. But right for whom?

Brian walked into my room on the third day, my old room, my first room and said, ‘it’s like you never left’. Kinda felt that way.

I also didn’t write when I was there.

Nor did I write at the farm. I was too busy with busy work.

I am noticing a trend here. And if this meme speaks true, I am not alone.

I remember having massive amounts of guilt about all my ‘crafting’ stuff. I never had time to sit down and make things. I think the truth was I did have time to sit down and make things, but I made everything else more important than me and how I actually wanted to spend my time.

I still drool over those huge armoires retrofitted to be a crafters paradise. I dream of making things and I derived and immense amount of satisfaction from mending a skirt yesterday, it’s a really beautiful skirt. When I play fantasy in my head about my dream house and my dream life, there is a room where I can make rugs and wall hangings and jewelry and head dresses. But I never budget for time in my fantasy land.

And during quarantine, I just didn’t have room or use for the things I imagined making. This room is gonna explode if I bring home one more shiny thing. But still…

When did making art have to have practicality attached? I just like making stuff. I loved playing dress up as a kid and would love to make fairy princess crowns for exactly that, and for women like me who still want to play fairy princess and dress up.

And writing. Why is this a guilty pleasure for me, or something I have to schedule after everything else is done.

And more importantly, how do I unlearn this?

My partner is incredibly supportive of me writing. And it almost makes me squirm. I am not used to this.

I think I made a good first step today.

I wrote this before I tackled the ‘practical’ things I have to do today.

And tomorrow is a new day.

Hopefully I can go back to channeling the story of 4 witches in the woods, I want to see what happens next.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Revelation 22:13

See also

It’s happening again – the giant from Twin Peaks, not my Giant.

Wow.

You know…I kinda knew.

I posted this meme and one of the first comments was ‘I caught a ban for this.’

And I let it ride.

I stand by it. If my son doesn’t have an issue with something regarding the male collective, neither do I.
A guy who reported me for hate speech after plastering my page and other posted memes with essay after essay about how ‘rapists don’t mind if you call them rapists’, are you speaking from experience sir?

Personally, I think most rapists are in denial, even the court system backs them up, and society as a whole. Was she asking for it? I can give you the definitive answer on this, from experience, none of us were ever asking for it.

But weirdly, this is not what this is about.

I’ll get to it. I have had yet another post about pressure sex, cajoling, and the huge difference between Baby, its Cold Outside versus WAP a brewin’. But not right now.

I should also touch on an update regarding my last couple posts regarding do I have breast implant illness or silicone sickness or Lyme disease or what.

I don’t know yet.

I took 2 naproxene last week when the pain got bad. Found a Yin yoga guy on Youtube that I will include the link for at the end, and have booked 5 different appointments for blood work, x-rays, consultations et al. Had my x-rays today and it was this archaic looking machine that apparently had been retrofitted and modernized but it was fairly creepy and I had some childhood hospital flashbacks laying on the cold table, holding uncomfortable poses and my breath in a paper shirt.

Long story short, I don’t know anything more than I did last week but I am feeling better and doing something about it, which has put me in a better headspace.

When sisterwife got her tits done at the beginning of the whole mistress mess, her plastic surgeon told her “you need never wear a bra again.” We giggled at the wording, seemed so proper, but it became goals, first hers and then mine 6 years later. But that lil goatling Layla made it not so and I have had a size and shape discrepancy since 3 days after surgery and have been wearing a bra daily, for the last 9 years. So maybe this is the end of that. So mote it be.

Beginnings and endings. Oh look 407 words and I got back around to it.

Not my best nor my worst.

2020 has been about the same, not my best, not my worst. Actually, the year I got these boobs was my worst year, the 6 prior to weren’t so shit hot either. Basically from when sisterwife got hers done to when I got mine done, sucked. But it just kept sucking, and then I left.

It amazes me how much misery and angst I tolerated when all I had to do was leave.

It was scary yes, no doubt about that, but it was also worth it.

The last half of last year and the beginning of this one was my best.
I had some good ones before that. Milton comes to mind.
God, I loved that place and that time. I think of it often.

That was a beginning, and a good one.

I am a funny creature, I love change and new things, but I get scared. I suppose overcoming the fear is part of the delight, and if I didn’t get scared, I would be reckless. Bravery and stupidity are kissing cousins after all.

It was stupid to leave that meme up.

Thing is, I don’t care.

February 16^th 2020 I woke up to a Facebook jail sentence of 30 days over a Bindi Irwin meme wherein the author stated ‘smh, white people are stupid’.

We kinda are.

We are reckless with our bodies because we don’t live in constant danger from everyday activities.
We swim with sharks, ride alligators, sky dive, and climb killer mountains. Because a routine traffic stop isn’t going to kill us, nor is going to the corner store. This is a luxury we have that others do not.

T’was a white person who reported me for hate speech then and a white boy who reported me this time. I said he was butthurt and needed therapy. He is butthurt and does need therapy.

He is not a monster, I love monsters, and danger is relative. But, like I said, I don’t really care.

But the timing is what is tickling me.

I have held this one golden thought close to my heart since the mess of 2020 began.

We had a Friday the 13^th on a full moon in March at the end of the first retrograde and it happened to be daylight savings as well. I firmly believe that is when the hellmouth opened.

I have watched enough Buffy the Vampire Slayer to know, if a hellmouth can be opened, it can also be closed.

And, as if to drive home this lil personal truth nugget, the first day of the last retrograde, leading up to a full moon on Halloween which also happens to be a time change, I catch another Facebook ban.

I believe our life journey is not a straight line nor a graph of ups and downs in linear fashion. It’s a little rollercoaster-esque with the uppy downy, but its also a spiral. We get far from center and then circle back in for a closer look at where we have been to see if we have learned anything.
And I am the girl who got off the Hulk at Universal Studios and got right back in line to ride it again. Both truthful metaphor and literal truth.

I’ve been to the outer limits of my psyche. Most notably during a trip during the last retrograde in June/July. And the answers I found there, are serving me well this time around.

I feel like I am acing a test because I did the work and I studied really hard and I am quite giddy about it.

I panicked in February when I went to fb jail. I admit it. I opened a Twitter account that I rarely use.
I huffed and I puffed and I called in favor after favor. Nothing helped and eventually I just got used to it. And I will again.

This time, I truly don’t care.

As it is retrograde, and I was already mentally prepared, I had a list of old projects that needed working on and have been busting my ass trying to get to a place where I could sit down and just work on them.
Here I am.
With one less distraction.

Thanks Universe.

The turmoil that started this mess, is winding down, cosmically speaking. At least one planet has been retrograde since February 16^th 2020, sometimes several at once. It was a bumpy year astrologically. This is the end, almost, Mars stations direct November 13^th, the same day I get out of Facebook jail.

I do love that I have grown, I also love that I have this very concrete, tangible ‘a-ha’ moment, wherein I can see where I was, where I went and how far I have come.

I also love that we are nearing the end.

In the immortal words of the Weeknd “I feel it comin’, I feel it comin’ baby.”

Amazing the difference that comes from February to October.

October last year I quit my job, among other amazing things and started on this grand adventure, that, with a few hiccups and a plague, has actually been really fucking awesome.

I cannot wait to see what comes next.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0UsdewWXLA

I remember sitting in the backseat of my bestie’s parent’s car in 9^th grade. We were going to Paris Ontario for some reason and her and I were going fabric shopping. Sinead O’Connor had just come out with the I Do Not Want What I haven’t Got album. And her dad let us play the cassette on the road trip.

It’s actually a really good album. I quite like her.

But the lyric that is pervasive in my head right now is ‘this is the last day of our acquaintance.’

I went through a phase about a month into lockdown wherein I visited old albums and artists I once loved. Her ‘best of’ and another obscure album called Gospel Oak were on the list.

Petit poulet tout ca c’est okay.

(Little chicken, everything is okay)

It’s really not okay, but hopefully it will be.

A few times I have posted upon ye olde blog while I am in my feelings.

Historically speaking, it hasn’t gone all that great.

I did it again yesterday. But it wasn’t about anyone else, it was just about me.

I think that’s the difference. I can have internal dialogue/free association writing when it come to my own thoughts about my own body, but when it comes to dealing with my thoughts and feels about others, I am better writing in retrospect.

My mind is a whirling dervish on occasion. Like now, now is one of those occasions.

I have had to take a long hard look at my health over the last 48 hours. A little longer really.

I had originally contacted the doctor to get ‘just in case’ meds for when I go away. Oh and by the way, I have a pain in my hip that wakes me up at night and my shoulders fell dislocated more often than not.

I try and treat everything I can holistically, but BV, Strep and bladder infections aren’t anything to fuck with, especially in another country. I learned this the hard was with a pervasive 104 degree fever coming close to kidney failure after an untreated bladder infection 20 years ago.

As always, I am learning.

And, in the immortal words of Wolf, “Turmeric isn’t doing shit.”

It’s really not.

I am also on yet another huge self-improvement kick.

I read something about long haul plague fatigue and how after six months of this new world order we are all bound to hit a wall. So I decided if I was going to hit it, I was going to be aware and twist it to my benefit. But as I struggled through 8 yoga poses for 8 minutes this morning, and for the last 3 mornings, it kinda hit me.

How much of my inactivity has been my choice and how much has it been my body demanding to rest?

I could always come up with some excuse.

Well I am not used to sitting so long, I wrote in an Airbnb stateside for most of the month of January after being cramped in a car full of my stuff for 3 days and having wild amazing pretzel sex. Of course I hurt. That’s normal right?

Then March came along and we all went into lockdown. I had never really rested and sat for prolonged periods of time, my life before was very physically active, so of course this hurts right? But it lasted 4 months. Then 2 weeks of quarantine out east moving furniture, then back to work. Of course that hurts. 3 days drive home, of course. Drinking heavily for 2 years of course.

I am sober, I’m reasonably active and I am out of excuses.

I don’t want to feel like this anymore, I have realized that while I may have made this my normal, it isn’t normal.

I did this to myself during my marriage too. Filled my days with watching Jerry Springer and Maury and Sisterwives and any other reality show that portrayed people who had it worse than me. I did busy work constantly, tried to put on a brave face for the internet. Spent Monday to Friday cleaning and taking pictures from just the right angle so the dirt and rot wouldn’t show through. Then weekends friends would come and I would get some reprieve because ex hubby would join in the façade.

I think my depression wasn’t so much me being sad so much as part of me knowing this wasn’t right, it wasn’t where I belonged.

I’d watch True Blood and see Sookie being loved and adored and it would physically pain me. Every once in a while, the blinders would come off and I would see the junked out cars, the failed projects the dirty (but healthy) livestock, the weeds where the garden should be and it would hit me like a train.

It wasn’t right.

And I think it’s happening again.

I do want to do yoga for more than 8 minutes without shaking, poses that used to feel good are incredibly difficult and painful now. I do want to learn how to do new things. I want my body back. But whatever survival mechanism I have hard wired in says ‘well this is what is, and we’re used to it.’

I am, after all, Princess suckitup Buttercup.

Today marks the 9^th anniversary of my emancipation from my farm life.

I did not leave that relationship gracefully. I cheated with a 20 something at my job, got caught and thrown out with a laundry basket of clothes, my purse and my jeep in the middle of the night.
It was violent and messy, and I am so fucking grateful that happened.

I moved in with the 20 something because I honestly had no choice. The people at the gas station where I worked had become my temporary family and with their help, I was able to get my stuff out and into storage. And I slowly but surely started to rebuild a life from absolute scratch.

I never went back after that and apart from a couple years here and there, where I was being stubborn about stupid shit, I became who I am now and I am happy.

Well, I will be happy after my doctor’s appointment. I need some answers. And I need this anti-inflammatory pill to kick in so I can see if that’s part of this.

I have Tibetan singing bowls on in the background. I am looking around my room at all the things that need doing before I head out and although I am terribly afraid of the future, I am hopeful too.

If I survived the tumultuous catastrophic events of October 2011 and the 7 years of hell that preceded that day, I can do anything.

Looks like retrograde is coming early for me.

Once upon a time, after my sexual liberation from my mediocre relationship after my failed sexless marriage I talked about my vagina at work a lot.

To the point where one of the girls at work made a snide comment, verbatim, “here comes Sarah to talk about her vagina again.”

Hush sis, just because yours is lonely, don’t be getting mad at mine.

I have also spent a lot of time explaining and exploring Poland’s Syndrome.

I have that.

I talk about my boobs a lot too.

In the immortal words of the Teletubbies, “again, again.”

Cliff’s notes, I was born without my pectoral muscles on my right side and since fat will not grow on bone, I never grew a tit where a tit oughta be.

Earned me the nickname jellyboob in high school and is probably predominantly responsible for my rock bottom self esteem and crushing body dysmorphia. I had to wear a chicken cutlet prosthesis until I could go for surgery, so like 2 years.

And yet, I strip. I date. I do things.

That’s kinda my existence in a nutshell. Missing something really normal and important, do things anyways.

I am the girl who worked at the strip club right after physio so I could rent an apartment and get out of my marriage even though I was in insane amounts of pain and could barely walk right. If it needs doing, I do it.

I have had implants since I was 16. Several over the years, the last ones being 2011.

The last few years I have been feeling not so great.

I was in a car wreck in 2009, my knees hurt all the time, my neck too, I function at a 3 or 4 on the pain scale every day and it spikes bad a few times a month.

I figured this was just life now.

But lately it has been so much worse. And I can’t begin to tell you when it started.

I did notice this last trip to Newfoundland that drinking a drink or 3 knocked my pain down to a very manageable 1 or 2, then I would get drunk and then hungover and regret it. Drinking truly is borrowing tomorrow’s happiness.

I had previously chalked my health problems up to the amount of drinking I did for the 2+ years I lived there. I was technically chronically hungover. But I stopped last November, I should feel kinda better by now. I also quit smoking a year ago in June.

I now have this sneaking suspicion that a fairly large part of my drinking problem was pain management.

I cannot enumerate the amount of times I have woken up over the last year with horrible pain in my hips and lower back. But it must be the car wreck right? I damaged my pelvis, I am getting older.

Driving 3 days made me feel like my shoulders were dislocated and somehow on fire. My knees swelled up to half cantaloupes. It wasn’t like this the times before.

Then I started thinking about all the times I swam at the quarry and how bad ticks were those years. Do I have Lyme’s disease? I looked up the symptoms and a few are on point. Headaches, vertigo, dizziness, joint pain. But there’s more, that don’t need to be discussed here, belly tings. Yucky hurty belly tings.

About a month ago I was watching Botched with my Lexi girl in the kitchen. The girl who ‘won’ Flava of Love was on asking to get her implants removed. I say won, because did anyone really win anything there?

Anyways, she described the symptoms of breast implant illness.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. But in the last 24 hours I have done a little research and it has become a very real possibility.

I think what hit me the hardest was ‘misdiagnosed Lyme’s disease’. And I have 8 out of the top 10.

My tits are not currently great. They never were. I had a baby goat get rejected by her mama about 3 nights after I had surgery. She ended up in my coat and kicked my compression bandages off on the way to the house, by the time I got her fed and settled I was too tired to look after myself and as a result my left tit sits lower than my right, noticeably so.

Add to that the fact that my last set of implants were a result of my doctor bribing me out of my eating disorder. If I could gain and maintain weight, she would give me a referral and 50% of the cost would be covered. Gotta love Canadian healthcare.

But it worked, I have since gained more weight and since fat loves to grow on muscle, I am a full cup size heavier on the left as well.

I have been back and forth about getting them fixed, even going so far as to have a consultation with an incredible surgeon, but …

There is always a but…

Do I go through this, the recovery and risk a lot of scarring to still be imperfect?

Can’t I just love myself as is?

I can, mostly. I try to anyways.

I think perfection is not in the cards for me as far as tits go.

But what if these things are making me sick?

I should be excited by the idea of being a normal, pain free human being again. And if this is it, then yes please.

By most accounts once they are out life gets immediately and noticeably better.

But can I live without tits? Do I risk getting a new set and going through this again?

What if that isn’t an option?

2 jellyboobs instead of one?

I want to go back to school in January, is this going to fuck with that? why is that every time I make a life decision and start working towards it something gets incredibly fucky?

I am so close to having a breakdown and a tantrum at the same time.

I haven’t written much lately. I think the big delete I did kinda knocked the wind out of me. Plus BLM and all the injustices and crazy circus shit going on south of the border made me feel inconsequential and like I wanted to be quiet.

But I forgot. I do this for me. And I am scared right now. This is me sorting through my thoughts and fears.

I have already messaged my plastic surgeon, done as much research I can on the brand and serial number of my implants, they have been recalled and they are Allergan. Not the Biocell textured ones that cause cancer, but still same manufacturer and still recalled.

I have a requisition for bloodwork to see if its something else.

But I won’t have any answers today, and today I am afraid.

I just wrote a really long email to someone about forgiveness and understanding.

I can literally sit down and figure out why everyone who ever wronged me did what they did.
And, for the most part I have.
I took the time to know them well enough to understand them and the ‘why’.

Granted, until 6 or 7 years ago, and even still sometimes, my first instinct is to wonder what I did wrong. But this has lessened over the years.

I went through a breakup recently. It didn’t stick, but I was pretty amazed at my reaction to it in the moment.

Theoretically and historically, I should have been decimated, devastated, a crying puddle on the ground. And I did cry, and I cocooned a bit. But instead of falling down the self-deprecation rabbithole (that for me has no end) I just decided it was because I hadn’t dyed my hair. Ridiculous, yes, but something that I could easily fix.

Instead I put myself in his shoes and understood as best I could. And dyed my hair.

And I decided to make some changes to my life, for me.

I cannot control other people’s actions, I can only control my reactions to them.

This was a person who I love and care about beyond measure, there is no flip switch that turns that off if he doesn’t do what I want him to do.

Everything is better than fine now because things we couldn’t promise in words have been proven by actions.

I have abandonment issues and this blog is explanation for that in and of itself. A treasure trove of the times I have been left. And that’s okay.

For every one of them that left, they all came back eventually, and I got my answers. But the funny thing is I didn’t need them. And maybe that’s why.

I forgive. It’s what I do.

Sure, I mourn their absence, I obviously wanted them around in the first place or they wouldn’t have been in my life. But everyone has their own path and that’s okay.

Final Boss would have had to rise above the familiarity and comfort of mediocrity to be with me. Babe, I get it, I struggle with this every day, and it’s hard. I am the queen of underachieving and meeting someone who sees your potential and wants to stick around and support it is fucking terrifying and hard.

It would be easy to get mad and say he used me, and he kinda did, but I allowed it. I didn’t do anything for him that I wouldn’t have done for anyone else if they needed it. He paid me back eventually and I hold no grudge, never really did.

All of this is neither here nor there.

Everyone has baggage, myself included. The secret is realizing a lot of things you are carrying never really belonged to you in the first place. It’s a lot of their issues they put on you and you decided to keep.

I posted this to my Facebook page and good God did people get mad at me.

Go ahead, be mad.

Hold grudges, live with your hate, hold it in your fist and see how badly you get burned.
Keep sipping the poison other people handed you when they wronged you and complain when you get sick.

It just seems like a colossal waste of time to allow someone who hurt you to continue to do so by your own choice.

As far as I can tell, I have this moment, this one right here that I am living in, and unless I am in the midst of a trauma, this moment may not be perfect, but I’m here.

If I closed myself off to experiences based on the bad experiences I have had, I would truly never leave the house, have a job, or speak to anyone, ever.

I got assaulted on a Tinder date a few years back. I didn’t delete Tinder or stop dating altogether. I vetted people and places to meet better, I changed how I dressed, I reported him and got on with my life.
Tinder still sucks, but that’s not the point.

I don’t know when I made the decision not to live in my trauma, but I must have.

I think it was when I was raped. He wanted me afraid, he wanted me traumatized, he wanted some semblance of control over my life even if he wasn’t in it. And for a while, I was afraid and traumatized, I still get a small shudder if I see someone of his stature approaching me on the street.

But what he wasn’t expecting is that I spent a lot of time in therapy after, not reliving the experience at all, but trying to figure out the neurological miswirings in my brain and my previous life experience that facilitated me letting someone like him into my life. I realized I had very low self esteem and was in a place of self-loathing about my job and my lifestyle.

So I fixed those things, I changed my thinking patterns and stopped self-medicating.

I came out of that experience better.

I decided I really liked my job and there was really nothing wrong with it other than society’s antiquated beliefs about female empowerment, sexuality and nudity.

Then I married Captain Save-A-Hoe and backslid like a motherfucker, and subsequently ended that 7 year mess by self-medicating again. But I started recognizing my patterns and eventually broke them.

There is that old adage about ‘living well is the best revenge’.

Revenge doesn’t factor into it for me, I just want to be happy, and holding grudges, reliving trauma or judging others isn’t conducive to happiness, nor is wallowing in my old mistakes.

Against all odds, I am alive and mostly well. This world, and some of the people in it have tried pretty hard to ruin my life, I have done a pretty bang up job of doing that for myself too. And I forgive myself. I forgive them too.

Everything I have ever done (or has been done to me) has brought me to this moment. Yes, I need a shower, and I have a couple stubborn pimples on my chin, my bed needs making, and I really ought to check on my kidlet, but I am here.

And in this moment, I am happy.

In approximately 3 hours it will have been 3 years to the minute that I cried in Ikea.

I used to cry a lot. In high school, in Timmins, in varying restaurants and venues in Toronto, at the farm, and in St. John’s Mark would always remark if I got through a whole night without crying, so that’s that then.
I had panic attacks and the sting of hot tears streaming down my face, but no sound would come out, just that feeling of being locked inside this body, constricted, locked in that life really, but the tears would escape. And eventually I did too.

All of this is inconsequential and not who I am anymore. I love that girl I was, the one who survived.
I didn’t always love her, but I do now.

But let us wander back to that unseasonably warm day at Ikea. I don’t think any of us needed anything, does one ever really neeeeed anything at Ikea? Mandabear and Panda knew I was about to break down and were attempting to postpone the inevitable, little did they know, I have no shame. My emotions demand to be felt, they don’t care where. And as I put my phone on speaker and they listened to the rote message saying ‘the person you are attempting to contact is unavailable’, neither one of them wanted to be the one to tell me I was blocked, but I knew.

By the man I had been seeing, boy really. 28 at the time. But he had a youthful, playfulness about him. After a year of talking and me keeping him at arm’s length, I became the girl in the Fleetwood Mac song, “she broke down and let me in.”

I did. And I wasn’t sorry at the time. He was lovely, at the time. He eluded to marriage, introduced me to friends and family, I did the same.

Then, one insanely fateful day in October, he vanished.

Best thing really, even though it didn’t feel like it at the time.

But he was the noticeably clear and mildly violent catalyst to where I am now. And for that I am grateful.

I am currently tucked in my attic about 7 city blocks from my old house and a 20 minute drive to the very same Ikea. It amazes me to think about all the places I have been and all of the things I have done since that day. How much the world has changed, and how much I have changed with it.
My room is 97% clean and I did 7/10 things on my list of big things to do.
I think I have been so busy that I didn’t really realize where I was until now, and suddenly the last 3 years kinda hit me like a train. So, here I am, talking to you fine folks after a very long hiatus. I need my acrylic nails taken off, typing is hard and they need a rest. One more thing for the list.

I changed my bedding yesterday as I always do on Sundays, and it is strange to look over at my bed and see a coverlet that graced my second room in St. John’s. Feels out of place somehow. I am not who I was when I bought it, but its pretty and it suits this space. I spent my first two weeks in SJ setting up my old room and going from room to room like Gollum taking back my precious. I still don’t know what happened to the pretty yellow damask cover and I left the green blanket of sadness behind, or maybe I wrapped the mirror in it, who knows. It was the last bastion of bad memories from the catalyst.

I woke up a week ago here. To a room in disarray and covered in cat hair. I stormed and raged a bit then just put my head down and did what needed doing. The cats are healthy, and the plants thrived being outside for 2 months, so that is enough in itself.

There are still things in the car that need to find a home in storage. The rest of my stuff n things arrived a week before me and have already been fetched and unpacked and sorted through. I did that on Tuesday and it about killed me, 3 days solid driving, 10 to 12 hours every day respectively, just to come home and have to power clean in time to drive 4 hours to get more stuff and move furniture. My body hurt in new and interesting ways.

For the record, I have a lot of stuff for a homeless person.

I mean I am not homeless homeless, but I don’t pay to stay where I stay and I am constantly fighting the urge to pack up and run away again. But it is an interesting feeling, this sense of completion, everything I own within reach and all in the same time zone for the first time since shortly after the catalyst. I plan on enjoying it for a little while.

I went to Newfoundland for the same reason they took me to Ikea. Just to get me out of my head and my funk and my sad and it turned into an almost 3 year adventure which ultimately led me to meeting the love of my life.

The same day I was flying over that island full of sticks and rocks and dirt and trees, staring out the window of the plane, dreading what was to come, was the exact same day 2 years later, that he told me he loved me for the first time.

I would love to wax poetic right now and say that was the same day I realized everything I had been through was totally worth it, and it was. But I tend to always feel that way. I never minded the wait I always knew something better would come. A lot of people despise hindsight, thinking they shoulda coulda or woulda done something different.

Well, we didn’t. We did what we did, and here we are.

The sooner we all accept this, the better off we will be.

I accept where I am and how I got here.

I see my past as a map, full of pushpins and ticket stubs of places I have been and exits on the highway sometimes planned out and other times taken on a whim that landed me wherever I was at the time, which sent me in another direction and so on. I can see very clearly the how and the why.

And in this moment, I am happy.

I found the most random bag yesterday under the table downstairs. All my shampoo and whatnot from my trip to Florida last year. Seems like a lifetime ago, so much has changed, but as I scrubbed my face with the soap this morning I could feel the sun coming through the patio doors overlooking the ocean, I could see myself sitting down at  laptop at 6am, half writing and half watching for dolphins. I could hear the waves and everything just felt good and right in the world for a minute.

I am in the same mindset I was back then after 2 years of treating my body badly out east, I am once again eating clean, doing yoga and drinking lots of water. That was my Florida resolution and I have the same one starting today.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

In 5 weeks I will be somewhere else, and 4 weeks after that on to a new adventure.

That’s all this life is really, just an adventure. Sometimes we have to wait, sometimes we get violently ripped from our reality and catapulted into something so much better.