November 2020

Author’s note, for my own disheveled sense of continuity.

I finished Freak Show this past weekend, didn’t love it for the record, I wanted to, but alas, I sucked.
I hate that I feel compelled to finish things even if I don’t like them.
I only do that with other people’s creative projects, like this thing here, sometimes my own things fall by the wayside.
Anyways, that makes this post a week old at least and I forgot to publish it so it’s going to wreck my timeline.
I complain in the following about not feeling any magic in my life and rationalize this by saying I must be doing something right.

Not exactly.

T’was just the calm before the intense cosmic storm.

And now, for my next trick, I will attempt to write a blog post while finishing the last episode of AHS Coven.

My favorite episode is over, the one where Kyle starts learning how to talk and tells Zoe ‘this road goes two ways’. His broken brain realizing this simple statement means ‘I love you’. Gets me in right smack in the feels every time. I even get excited when I know it’s coming. I do that with shows and movies a lot. The anticipation of the thing that makes me cry, makes me cry.

I’m weird man, I don’t know what to tell you.

It is perfectly normal to re-watch old shows for comfort, this is known. Arrested Development knocks me out in 10 minutes or less, its my sleeping show. No loud bangs, no yelling. Ron Howards voice isn’t as soothing as Morgan Freeman or David Attenborough, but it does the trick for me.

The watching something knowing I am going to cry is a little bizarre, but sometimes what is inside wants out.

I need to remember.

I stopped typing partway through this post and started paying attention to the show. Then I had steak and egg avocado toast for supper and put my laptop away for the night.

For the record, I don’t think I am in the wrong story. Maybe just stuck in one chapter and I want to know what happens next.

I had my cards read yesterday, as a very sweet and unexpected impromptu gift from my Colorado witch.

The first card was Death.

Insert shock, awe and a lot of sarcasm.

We’ve been down this road before. She almost didn’t read the cards because they started out so similar to a previous reading. My opinion was if they were saying the same things, maybe I wasn’t listening before and now the cards were insisting I pay attention. I have been feeling rather stuck. In the immortal words of the Teletubbies, “Again, again.”

Tell me teacher, what’s my lesson?

The only constant is change babe.

The Death card means change and I am definitely shifting, I knew that already.
Everything is. Not rapidly so much as in easily digested metered doses.
I cannot remember the day when I realized my universe was always going to be in flux, but knowing it helped me navigate. The bad times never last, neither do the good ones and every turn I take on this path that I am on leads me somewhere new. I get to decide if I want to stay or not. I rarely do.

The reading she did mirrored things I had been writing and thinking pretty much verbatim, and this show just did it again. In real time, as I sit here typing. Reiterating the cards and her words one more time, just to make sure I took notice.

“You’re scared. No powers, no magic, just a woman facing the inevitable. A divine being having a human experience. No one can help you. You have to do this alone. And the only way out is through. Feel the fear and the pain. Let it all in and then let it all go.”

This is exactly what is happening.

My spirit guides are on a well-deserved break because for once, I am okay on my own.

I miss my magic though.

On the list of ways I start my day and my never ending search for signs and portents, I started following a couple twin flame accounts on Instagram. I usually find these pages and memes irksome. Not the messages themselves, but the comments.

Until you have left the planet at a touch, felt the world melt away at a glance, dreamfasted and also accepted someone for everything they ever were or ever will be, you don’t get it.

I need to level up about this and stop judging others and their path. Just kinda feels like these false prophets are cheapening the thing I searched my whole life for and finally found. But, as I type this, nothing can taint this except me, my thoughts and my actions.

So that’s that then.

The twin flame update today was so accurate it was spooky. Everything I wrote about, all the things haunting me and our current situation within the situation.

Thing is, I wrote the things before the cards spoke and prior to scrolling through Instagram. I was already in it, so the portents weren’t pointing me anywhere or pointing anything out, just a nod of ‘yes, this is what is.’

I am wondering if I am feeling a lack of magic and divine intervention because I am where I am supposed to be and I am ahead of the game. Or at least showing up on time to play.

I trained for this. There is no anxiety here.

I mean I AM scared. But I know these devils.

My fear isn’t in based in the unknown. Not this time.

 It helps that this is not a pass or fail situation, I just have to do or do not, there is no try.

Actually, that is a great explanation for life in general, thanks Yoda.

Same with retrograde. I knew my triggers I knew the rules and I followed them. 22 days of cleaning up old messes and finishing the unfinished. I even preemptively blocked the leaders of the fuckboy army. Not on a whim, nor with malice. I had a moment of clarity. I just knew what was coming and decided not to participate.

Even at the beginning of lockdown. I was where I was, and I was safe. I had to make a few huge decisions in the months prior to get there, it wasn’t where I was ‘supposed’ to be, I didn’t plan any of it. I felt compelled to make a rapid succession of huge lie changes. Turns out it was absolutely for the best and I am grateful.

I think the last decade of my life has had me vibrating in such discord that when everything finally lines up and calms down, I feel empty. Disconnected. No voices telling me where to go because I am where I am supposed to be. It is the absence of chaos.

It is quite lovely to be honest. This quiet calm.

The complete acceptance of what is with no worry for the future.

Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be.

“It’s like every time I sneeze, I am one sneeze away from the hospice.”
Vicki, Reality Bites

Fuck I loved that movie. Still do. It was one of the ones I overwatched in my late teens. Back when we had to rent movies from video stores. My buddy Josh worked at the one movie place in my small town, Superstar Video and I got away with keeping True Romance for way too long. I think I finally just bought it. Maybe I kept it so long so he’d call and remind me to return it. Who knows.

You’re so cool

Funny, the song from the end of the credits just came on my playlist. I downloaded it yesterday and I cried for some reason. It isn’t even shark week and I have been in my fucking feelings. I used to make everyone in the room shut up so I could hear the beginning of the song at the end. Two Hearts by Chris Isaac.

After my miscarriage it was Cold Mountain and Garden State. Both showcased Natalie Portman crying in her brilliant, contagious way and the word conundrum. I love the way she says it. You Will Be My Ain True Love still thunderpunches me in the heart. Found that out yesterday too, Spotify thinks it’s fun to make me cry. I had to wait to the end of Garden State to hear Let Go by Frou Frou. I watched them every day on repeat for 3 months. I had gotten fired so I couldn’t afford to buy them, so I just ran up the late charges instead. Maybe if Josh had worked at the Bloor and Dufferin Blockbuster he could have called me up and pulled me out of my funk, but he didn’t.

A kid named Mike worked there, years before the miscarriage, he chased me in the rain one time to get my phone number after I had rented a movie from him. He said he didn’t want to be creepy and get it from my membership info. It was hella romantic. I was 22.

But that’s not what this is about.

Jumbo Video in Timmins probably got a whole minimum wage 40+ hour a week paycheque so I could listen to Ethan Hawke tell Winona Ryder he had a planet of regret sitting on his chest about how he left her after they fucked. I rented that over and over and brought it back late often.

Oddly, that was a long running reality for me.

Meet a dude, date a lil bit, sleep together for a while and suddenly, without warning they were ‘out the door before the condom came off’. See blockbuster boy above.

Fun times.

And invariably they would show back up all carrying their own planets of regret. A parade of Atlases shrugging. And I would have to decide if I wanted to let them back in the house. I ran into Mike at a bar years later, he apologized profusely. I didn’t take him home.

You get what you ask for and then you realize you have to get better at asking.

Ain’t that the truth. Sure chasing me in the rain was romantic, as was him falling to his knees and begging my forgiveness in a dingy bar. But I don’t want grand romantic gestures with no substance in the middle. I lived 3 years wondering what I did wrong just to find out it wasn’t me. That is movie life, it isn’t real. Montages don’t exist. Just falling and healing and more falling with a few movie moments in between.

That isn’t what this is about either.

Hello time bomb, ready to go off ~ Matt Good Band

During the whole “is it Lyme disease, my tit or bone cancer” debacle of October past, I had to go for an ECG. They found suspicion of left ventricular hypertrophy.

One of the walls of my heart is down with the thickness.

Maybe.

It’s just a maybe based on a quick picture of my heart.

As a result, I am hyper aware of my heartbeat. And the last 24 hours it has been a-beating and a-fluttering something awful. Every other thump freaks me out, “is this it, am I done?”

I am sure I am fine. I have naturally low blood pressure, I eat like a saint, I quit smoking and I have been almost sober for over a year now, hey, 53 weeks. Yay me.

The weird miracle here is that if I hadn’t gotten so insanely sore driving back from SJ and gone to the doc to figure out what was wrong, I never would have been misdiagnosed with one thing and figured out the other things that are wrong.

That rash trip I took this summer to tie up loose ends and move forward with my life got me where I am right now.

It’s my tit by the way. None of the other 6 things they tested me for, and I knew it. As sad as it is, my good tit is The thing that is making me hurt all over. Making me feel 84 years old some mornings getting out of bed. Making my shoulders feel like they are dislocated and my hip feel like it is constantly in the wrong place unless I am face down in an awkward yoga pose. I never had Lyme disease, but I took my meds just in case and my face was pretty for a bit, tetracycline kills Lyme bacteria and acne it seems. I knew that but was still tickled by the results. Medicine done and the bumps are back. I’ll figure out what to do about that later. I have tanning to do and a life to plan.

The heart thing is vexing. It might be the same as the Lyme.
We think you have a thing but we’re gonna run 57 more tests just to tell you you don’t have the thing.

My doctor was funny when he cleared me of Lyme.

“Why did we test you for that again?”

“Because I asked you too. I knew it was my boob, but we had to prove what it wasn’t, remember?”

“Oh ya ya, smart girl. Thank you for telling me.”

He said that a lot. He is an urgent care doc, I had to fill him in on my vast medical history as we went along. He always responded “Okay, thank you for telling me.” And then went back to whatever he was doing or scribbling. And he never once got upset that I did some research on my own. Good dude.

Almost smart.
I didn’t research enough to realize that silicone migration could actually trigger a false positive, just thought the symptoms were identical, and they are.

Yep. Smart-ish girl with a potentially broken heart. And half the answers I need.

I told Attica what was happening, and she said, “oh no, does that mean you could die of a broken heart?”

Technically, yes.

Although if that were an actual threat, I’d be long gone.

I break my heart all the time.

I used to anyways.

I used to carry aspirin in my purse in case someone had a heart attack. I hung out with a lot of drug dealers and cokeheads; the threat was real. Turns out I needed it too. Maybe. Still haven’t gotten the next tests yet. I always worry about other’s hearts before my own.

I think it is high time I worry about mine.

My messy, oversized (now thicc too apparently), pink bubble cloud of an all-encompassing stubborn heart.

The kind of heart the universe falls in love with.

I almost broke my heart today. I had the option of staying safe and just keeping doing what I am doing, or I could let her parade out onto my sleeve and say what was on my mind and take the risk of being rejected.
Clincher is, it wouldn’t have broken my heart had the answer been no.

I’m not that girl anymore.

I spent a couple weeks mentally preparing and truly looking at all the fear factors, the possible outcomes and not only did I learn a lot about myself and my past, but I attained this level of enlightenment where I accepted all of the possible answers to my question.

Things only affect your life if you let them; and any loss you feel that involved another person is just you mourning a future that hadn’t come to fruition yet.

I don’t know what my future is. I have to deal with my tit and my heart before I can make any grand leaps forward. But I have an idea.

If you would like to support me in my folly I get $4 every time someone buys my book.
And you know it’s going to lead to some pretty amazing blog posts if I make a big leap of faith, so win win win.

American Kindle link here

You asking your mother to react to you in certain way is exactly like her expecting certain things from you.

Don’t do it.

Break the cycle

Let her be her.

You aren’t going to change her, don’t try

Do you boo.

Fuck that is all I have been saying lately.

“Same vacation different agendas”. = do you boo

“I understand but I don’t have to agree to abide.” = do you boo

Attica stopped drinking Monster energy drinks and now chugs kombucha instead, I did one good thing.

I have been getting mighty judgey lately though. More often than I am comfortable admitting.

 Quietly though, I am not being a douchebag out loud, but I think if I keep rolling my eyes with this frequency and intensity, they are gonna get stuck back there.

I said yesterday I think I am where I am supposed to be, but now I dunno. I used to be very live and let live, and I still am, but I am kinda sneering and biting my tongue in two.

I think it means that maybe it’s time for me to level up again. I am irritated by my own shortcomings that are mirrored in others.

I’m also tired. I have one child, I cannot mother the world, I have been known to try…and if I could…it might be a better place. I am mostly love light and acceptance over here.

Mostly.

I know the way I interact with everyone is a result of things I have never really received. I definitely do unto others the way I wish they would have done unto me.

I try to.

I have to remember other people are trying too.

Everyone has their own reality.

And the world is a really strange and hostile place right now.

I kinda want my mom.

I can’t remember exactly when I realized my mom is a person.

I know that sounds weird, but its true. I always saw her as MY mom, as in how she related to me and my existence. Not who she is on her own. I think that was terribly unfair. To judge her by the station she claimed by giving birth to me and not as the sum of her experiences and who she really is.

It went on way too long. I left home young and we never really had that opportunity to come to each other as women, I was still a girl when I left. I became a mother 5 years later and I still couldn’t see her as a peer, just as an authority. Someone I had to do right by, but I couldn’t.

I do remember years ago before I started driving so at least 12, maybe more. She fell and scraped her hands, face and knees on the pool deck. I don’t know why I called home that day, probably needed a recipe, or something or maybe she called me because it was the same weekend they had to put their dog down. He was getting old and starting to bite. I think he was deaf and blind and tired and mad about all 3.
So he snapped at my folks and a decision was made.

I heard my mom’s voice sounding uncharacteristically defeated on the other end of the phone and the epiphany started to hit as she listed off the laundry list of shit she was dealing with.

She’s just a woman who gets overwhelmed too.

So, without telling her what I was doing, I booked a bus ticket and took the 3 hour trip home just to be there and cook and help out. I think they had just listed the house for sale too. I know exactly what it is like to have everything happen all at once. My parents moved 4 times after I was born, I’ve moved 48 now, probably 30 then. This is my wheelhouse.

I never really got the luxury of needing my mom, but I took the leap that she needed someone and why not me? I was off work that week, my sisters were away, my dad still working.
We had a nice week and it changed absolutely nothing about our relationship, but it changed me and that is enough.

Our parents are not the gods and monsters we see when we are little. They are their own people with their own reality based on the catalog of experiences they have had throughout their lives. They have baggage and pain and joy that has nothing to do with us, their children.

I didn’t want to be like her.

I decided that she could no sooner change to love me than I could change to be loved by her. Asking either one of us to bend was fundamentally unfair.

I realized early on, even if I couldn’t articulate or accept it, that I either lived a life that made her happy, or I could be happy. Those two things could not coexist. Didn’t stop me from trying to find a balance and being mad at both of us when I inevitably failed.

We would never have been friends in real life. That realization made things easier for a couple decades.

I could never truly please her without denying who I am.

Whether it works out or not, I chose me.

But I have realized recently, that isn’t fair. I never gave her a chance. I never got to know her.

And the cosmic joke here is, I am like her, in a lot of ways. On my best days I am strong, in control, organized, efficient and logical. I nurture as second nature. My house is almost always clean and a source of personal pride. Who knew spending a few Saturdays a year rearranging furniture would give me this gift as an adult? I got my lisztomania from her. There is always music wherever I am. I can cook like a chef and I am a brilliant hostess.

The housework I resented as a child I carried with me into adulthood.

And I am grateful.

If the power threatens to go out, and it has, for 8 days once, 4 one time before, I kept my family safe, clean and fed because of what I learned from her.

And when her sister died in May, we talked.

We talked probably the most we have ever.

And I actually like her, my mother I mean. As a person. She’s very smart. And deeper than I ever imagined.

I remember hearing stories about her holding together the commune her and my dad lived on when he got back from Vietnam, and the fact that she drove across America to go get him when he disappeared for a bit.

How could I not see how amazing she is?

Where did I think I got my brave from if not her.

She’s 75 years old and posted half the BLM memes I shared to my page. She is staunchly equal rights for all, always has been. And loud about it.

My mom is really cool.

We both spent a lot of our conversations when my Aunt was in a coma saying ‘yep, me too’. I realized my core philosophies about life and death are compatible with hers. Identical really. We decided my Aunt had a really wonderful life and we chose to celebrate that and only mourn a little.

And she told me the one thing that made me feel better about losing such a wonderful Aunt.

“She always loved you.”

Its hard for me. I don’t even orbit my family. I am a weird comet that shoots through the night on occasions. Weddings, funerals that’s really it. All my cousins have babies and I have met maybe 6 of them. I missed them growing up, I have no rights to be involved with their children. These are my choices for the most part and I only hold myself responsible. I am lucky in a way. My last memory of my Aunt was her happy, healthy and smiling. I feel selfish about it and I am crying as I write this. But it is what it is. No tears or regret are going to change the last 31 years that I have been gone.

My 31 year old cousin died suddenly 7 weeks later. I’ve written about it. But I haven’t really dealt with it yet.
I was in an antique store in Galveston. And unknown number rang and I picked it up. Didn’t recognize the voice on the other end.

“Sarah, it’s your mother.”

In that moment, I really truly recognized her…hearing her small, sad, scared voice that 12 year old realization that my mother was indeed her own person attained a new level of clarity. She gets hurt and scared and devastated too. Something strange happened as I collapsed into a kitchen chair clutching some pretty pillowcases to my chest. I felt protective of her in that moment and I felt helpless and I realized how she must have felt so many times with me. When your child hurts and you can’t fix it. I am a mother, I know this feeling. But I wanted to fix things for her and I couldn’t. and I am wondering too, if maybe she was confronted with the possibility of losing me or my sisters as my other Aunt had just lost hers.

I don’t know where to go from here. I still haven’t taken those pillowcases out of the bag. That was June.

We joked bitterly that we really need to call each other when things weren’t terrible, and we have a little. Breaking a 30 year habit isn’t easy.

I can’t call her tonight, it’s too late.

I don’t even know if I can post this. i can barely see it, my glasses are fogging up and there are a lot of tears.

I hear a lot about healing the ‘mother wound’. I have been to a ton of therapy and gotten a lot of things off my chest, but I never felt the need for some dramatic confrontation about anything. I remember saying to my therapist years ago, ‘she did her best with the tools she was given, it’s not her fault we aren’t compatible.’ And I left it there. A game of x’s and o’s with no winner.

I know it’s hard for her when people ask after me, I haven’t lived a life she is proud of. Half the time I haven’t been proud either. But I hope she knows I am happy and I hope now that is enough. Maybe I will finally write a book I can put my real name on and she can read.

I know enough about her to understand why things happened the way they did.

I think that is my reason for always trying to glean the reasons behind other people’s actions and this is a gift I have that I could not have come by any other way. It is something I love about myself.

On a completely related note, I spent a lot of time alone in my room as a kid. And as a teenager I found music. One of the first albums I ever bought was the Joshua Tree by U2. I played it til I wore the cassette out and bought another one. To me it was poetry.

Running to Stand Still is playing right now.

And that is kinda how I feel about all of this.

You gotta cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice

I screamed enough when I was younger. I was an angry child.
I talk a lot now.
And I am weeping.

This is just catharsis and epiphanies brought on by someone asking me how to process their mother’s disapproval.

I don’t have the answers.

I am 46 years old, I am scared, I am sad, I am alone and I want my mom.

And now, for my next trick, I will attempt to write a blog post while finishing the last episode of AHS Coven.

My favorite episode is over, the one where Kyle starts learning how to talk and tells Zoe ‘this road goes two ways’. His broken brain realizing this simple statement means ‘I love you’. The road should go two ways, I never knew what that was like. Gets me in right smack in the feels every time. I even get excited when I know it’s coming. I do that with shows and movies a lot. The anticipation of the thing that makes me cry, makes me cry.

I’m weird man, I don’t know what to tell you.

It is perfectly normal to re-watch old shows for comfort, this is known. Arrested Development knocks me out in 10 minutes or less, its my sleeping show. No loud bangs, no yelling. Ron Howards voice isn’t as soothing as Morgan Freeman or David Attenborough, but it does the trick for me.

The watching something knowing I am going to cry is a little bizarre, but sometimes what is inside wants out.

I need to remember.

---

The trick didn’t work at all. Stevie Nicks started singing Seven Wonders and I got goosebumps and ya, that was the end of that. I stopped typing a few paragraphs later and started paying attention to the show. Then I had steak and egg avocado toast for supper and put my laptop away for the night.

---

I had my cards read yesterday, as a very sweet and unexpected impromptu gift from my Colorado witch.

The first card was Death.

Insert shock, awe and a lot of sarcasm.

We’ve been down this road before. She almost didn’t read the cards because they started out so similar to a previous reading. My opinion was if they were saying the same things, maybe I wasn’t listening before and now the cards were insisting I pay attention. I have been feeling rather stuck. In the immortal words of the Teletubbies, “Again, again.”

Tell me teacher, what’s my lesson?

The only constant is change babe.

The Death card means change and I am definitely shifting, I knew that already.
Everything is. Not rapidly so much as in easily digested metered doses.
I cannot remember the day when I realized my universe was always going to be in flux, but knowing it helped me navigate. The bad times never last, neither do the good ones and every turn I take on this path that I am on leads me somewhere new. I get to decide if I want to stay or not. I rarely do.

The reading she did mirrored things I had been writing and thinking pretty much verbatim, and this show just did it again. In real time, as I sit here typing. Reiterating the cards and her words one more time, just to make sure I took notice.

“You’re scared. No powers, no magic, just a woman facing the inevitable. A divine being having a human experience. No one can help you. You have to do this alone. And the only way out is through. Feel the fear and the pain. Let it all in and then let it all go.”

This is exactly what is happening.

I am scared. And no one can help me.

My spirit guides are on a well-deserved break because for once, I am okay on my own.

I miss my magic though.

On the list of ways I start my day and my never ending search for signs and portents, I started following a couple twin flame accounts on Instagram. I usually find these pages and memes irksome. Not the messages themselves, but the comments.

Until you have left the planet at a touch, felt the world melt away at a glance, dreamfasted and also accepted someone for everything they ever were or ever will be, you don’t get it.

I need to level up about this and stop judging others and their path. Just kinda feels like these false prophets are cheapening the thing I searched my whole life for and finally found. But, as I type this, nothing can taint this except me, my thoughts and my actions.

So that’s that then.

The twin flame update that day was so accurate it was spooky. Everything I wrote about, all the things haunting me and our current situation within the situation.

Thing is, I wrote the things before the cards spoke and prior to scrolling through Instagram. I was already in it, so the portents weren’t pointing me anywhere or pointing anything out, just a nod of ‘yes, this is what is.’

I am wondering if I am feeling a lack of magic and divine intervention because I am where I am supposed to be and I am ahead of the game. Or at least showing up on time to play.

I trained for this. There is no anxiety here.

I mean I AM scared. But I know these devils.

My fear isn’t in based in the unknown. Not this time.

 It helps that this is not a pass or fail situation, I just have to do or do not, there is no try.

Actually, that is a great explanation for life in general, thanks Yoda.

Same with retrograde. I knew my triggers I knew the rules and I followed them. 22 days of cleaning up old messes and finishing the unfinished. I even preemptively blocked the leaders of the fuckboy army. Not on a whim, nor with malice. I had a moment of clarity. I just knew what was coming and decided not to participate.

Even at the beginning of lockdown. I was where I was, and I was safe. I had to make a few huge decisions in the months prior to get there, it wasn’t where I was ‘supposed’ to be, I didn’t plan any of it. I felt compelled to make a rapid succession of huge lie changes. Turns out it was absolutely for the best and I am grateful.

I think the last decade of my life has had me vibrating in such discord that when everything finally lines up and calms down, I feel empty. Disconnected. No voices telling me where to go because I am where I am supposed to be. It is the absence of chaos.

It is quite lovely to be honest. This quiet calm.

The complete acceptance of what is with no worry for the future.

Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be.

This post has been a long time coming. Maybe not long long, but an inventory of the things in my head is overdue. Perfect timing.

The eclipse is imminent and today just felt like the day.

Full moons are for letting go of what we don’t want and a full moon eclipse is super ultra major purging and cleansing.

We have to know what to get rid of. And for that we need to go into the shadows and parts of ourselves that don’t often see the light and dig deep.

To exhume is to unearth something that was previously buried.

Get your shovels kids.

5 more sleeps.

I watched Warm Bodies the other night with Attica. She had never seen it and it was one of a handful (out of hundreds) of DVD’s I took to, then brought back, from the island. Dave burned 12 of them to his Plex server and now I have a tiny collection of my obscure favorites.

It’s the little things.

I am not going to go into a deep synopsis of the movie. It follows a typical teen romance trope. The end of the world can be undone by 2 plucky kids in love. One of them happens to be a zombie. I added a link at the end to a rather good analysis of the book by another blogger. Or you could just watch the movie. I’ll link the trailer too so you know what you are looking for.

There is a scene where the main character is healing for lack of a better word and asks another group of zombies for help.

R: Heeeeeeeelp exhuuuuuuuuume?

(Mumbling slightly less dead zombies)

Marcus: they said ‘fuck ya’

Its adorable.

And it got me thinking about my current dilemma.

I have had a reoccurring conversation about paranoia versus PTSD.

Paranoia, in small doses, is actually healthy. It’s a safety measure built into our brains. Assessing potential threats is a good thing. Thinking everything is a threat is exhausting at best.
Aaaaaand, just hear me out, PTSD can be useful.
Both things serve a purpose, you just can’t let them dictate your life.
But you can access old files and data to help make educated decisions moving forward.

Paranoia exists in the imagination, creating scenarios out of fear of the unknown. Our brain’s way of filling in gaps and trying to predict the future, but not in a fun crystal ball, tarot card kinda way.
It activates the fight, flight or freeze reptilian instinctual part of our brain and can be paralyzing.

PTSD is memory and recognition.

“Yes, this actually happened to me and I am scared it will happen again, because it fucking happened.”

This is why we only have to touch hot stoves once, or in my case a few times, I worked in kitchens, it happens.

As someone who has lived through some funky fucked up frightening shit, I really should have massive PTSD.

But I don’t.

What I do have is an intricate filing system for a brain that cross analyzes current situations with a pretty deep understanding of human behavior and patterns using all of the information I have ever collected on other people’s actions and reactions to similar events. Along with movie quotes, Jeopardy trivia, cross analysis of quantum physics and how it relates to the human experience, recipes and so many song lyrics.

Most of the time it serves me well. I think I am lucky.

If I am conversing with you, I am learning you. I can’t help it. I am listening to your stories to see how you reacted to different scenarios. If I know you well enough, I can fairly accurately predict your behavior. Not always, just mostly.

Sometimes people throw me a curveball and I end up questioning my entire existence, or I blatantly ignore what is actually happening because it doesn’t fit my narrative and then hindsight smacks me upside the head, but that is not what this is about. There are plenty of blog posts about that.

I also adamantly refuse to let people who have hurt or wronged me live rent free in my head and dictate my behavior and what I do with my life. They aren’t here, they can’t hurt me. But that is a choice I made a long time ago.
Living well is the best revenge, not that I am vengeful, I just stopped caring about those who do not care about me.

Same goes for people that I hurt who are no longer a part of my life. Of course I feel bad about it, but at the very least I learned a lesson about what not to do moving forward. Data analysis all the same. Changed behavior is the best apology. Dwelling helps no one once the lesson is learned.

The problem with PTSD and why it isn’t always a useful tool is that the connections in the brain will automatically see how certain people and situations are the same as a past traumatic event, as opposed to seeing how they were different.

PTSD equates all similarities as red flags and no white or green or chartreuse.

Red flags exist for a reason, I have long been colorblind, but I am getting better.

No situation is all or nothing. In actuality maybe, but not in the safe distance that is the contemplation of it.

Everything done can be undone. I am walking proof.

I have made some bizarre decisions on a whim and landed in some weird situations. I have been 3000 miles from home flying by the seat of my pants often in the last few years.

But I am still here, and those events, traumatic, euphoric or anything in between, are just stories I tell now.

We do also have to factor in Albert Einstein’s motto ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.’

I will admit there have been times in my life where I was absolutely insane by this definition. 2005 to 2011 as an example. By rights I should be bitter and scared and vehemently monogamous or a full blown lesbian instead of bi.

Instead I came out of a very unfaithful marriage, constantly fighting to be the ‘only one’ and instead of being staunchly against polyamory, I embraced it. I can only assume this pisses him off. But he went about it all wrong. It wasn’t an agreement, there was no honesty, just force.
My conclusion, once all the data had been analyzed, was that I no longer expect monogamy from partners, nor will I ever be with him again.
Healthy reaction to PTSD and trauma. I learned something valuable, kept the lesson and threw the whole man out.

Like Sarah at the end of Labyrinth. “You have no power over me.”

No one does.

Don’t get me wrong. I still worry. I still hesitate and edit the words coming out of my mouth sometimes…lie detector determines that is a lie, I have no filter…but I will wait for better moments to bring things up. I read the room. And actually plan things by the moon and stars too. No point having a big emotional talk when I am 2 days from bleeding during a retrograde. I do have an inkling of self-preservation left and a blog I can vent on instead.

Do I think everyone should be like me and just do random shit while hoping for the best? No, of course not. Some people are only happy when they are safe, and that’s okay too. But to squander a chance at adventure because of what some dipshit did a decade ago doesn’t sound right to me either.

When does the art of self-preservation equate a lack of living?

When paranoia and PTSD take over would be the easy answer. But it isn’t that easy. How do you tell someone who has lived through unimaginable pain that it won’t happen again just because you said so. You can’t, to do so is dismissive. Time heals, patience, learning that person and what hurt them and definitely trying really hard not to do those things to them. That’s a start.

Or you could be me, running willy nilly into the next thing just in case it’s good.

And every time it rains
You’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen
And I don’t know when
But just saying it could even make it happen
Kate Bush, Cloudbusting

Of all the times I wanted off this mortal coil, and there have been plenty, what kept me going was the idea that I haven’t seen everything there is to see yet. I haven’t lived, loved or been loved fully enough yet. And no matter how bad things got, I could remember the other bad times and I knew they ended eventually. And I am getting better at leaving.

I think I have always known something good was going to happen and staying somewhere safe and hidden was not the way to find it. But that is just me.

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time, and always one more time.” — Maya Angelou.

Yes Maya, I agree, Kate too.

But there is still a scared girl who sat on a bus with an army surplus rucksack full of half my worldly possessions and a baby in my belly escaping a ‘leap of faith’ move gone wrong. The 2 dozen times I fled the farm and rebuilt my life from an air mattress on the floor to a nice apartment, just to get sucked back in again. Until I left for good and rebuilt one more time. Then the island debacle, where I was almost free but did an 18 day turn around and stayed 18 more months in perdition.

And for that, we must exhume.

Not just to find the cause of death, but to see what worked and what can be thrown away.

Once it’s all out of the ground you are gonna find a lot of the baggage buried with your past was never yours to begin with.

http://empiresandmangers.blogspot.com/2013/03/warm-bodies-exhuming-humanity.html

cool blog book review of warm bodies.
I now need to buy the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07s-cNFffDM

This was in the top 3 bedrooms of all time, probably tied for number one really if I think about it, such a good space, a beautiful bed, albeit a little broken…and I had no problem walking away from all of it.

I still have my lion and the blue wall hanging and apparently I have a thing for Beatle’s lyrics. I still have that too, stashed in the corner of my attic. It comforts me in a way I cannot articulate.

Here comes the sun
And I say
It’s alright
The Beatles

It poked through the clouds just now for a fleeting moment, promise for later maybe. The clouds are different today, low and dark, cutting quick paths across the sky.

There are workmen up a ladder banging 4 feet away from my balcony. I leave the door open when I can, I have always preferred fresh air to canned. Fresh everything compared to canned really, I wouldn’t make it on a submarine, not even a yellow one.

I feel like I am being pulled out of and simultaneously driven from my space, but I want to be in it.
I am stubborn, I’ll just endure; it is what I do. This is reminiscent of a 3 year old pilgrimage to Florida wherein they were repairing mild hurricane damage to the outside of the building and the unit upstairs. 10 to 4 the condo was uninhabitable. That was the trip where Panda could no longer hide her hatred of me either.
Fun times all around. I made it through that I can make it through this.
Spotify playlist is co-operating, and I found incense that smells like brownies baking. I am not used to burning candles and incense without any magical intent, but I haven’t made it to the magic shop yet. Maybe today if the construction continues.

Had I gotten up with my alarm this morning, maybe things would be different.

But I didn’t. I was dreaming and whatever was happening in my subconscious psyche was more important than coffee or waking life. I was trying to sort through something in dreamland, I don’t know if I did or not, the banging started and here we are.

The siren’s call of my bed was too much to resist.

Ah yes, not the prettiest of my segues but there it is.

You know, I can only remember a smattering of what I wanted to talk about yesterday.

I ought to learn to scribble stuff down even if I don’t have time to sit down and compose things. Even then, sometimes I still forget.

I behind left my notebook with all of my book notes, but I have an authentic kimono hanging in the closet. My priorities are skewed sometimes.

 Where were we, ah yes…you made your bed, go fuck in it.

I just tried to find the scene on the Youtubes and got the motivational speech by the Naval Admiral instead. If you want to change the world start by making your bed.

I should probably watch that, and also make my bed. There are a few dishes in the sink that need doing too and my hair needs a post wash brushing so it doesn’t dread, but it is a lazy day with no sun (ain’t no sunshine when he’s gone) and I don’t really have a plan beyond talking to you fine folks and potentially working on my tan.

If I had my way, I would be fucking in my bed right now. I always want to be fucking lately, but alas, it isn’t in the cards this week.

Instead I am cocooned alone trying to speed up time while still using it wisely. It’s not working.

My mind wanders.

See yesterday’s post that took a rambling path of its own and left me here trying to remember what I wanted to talk about.

I was recalling an argument yesterday, as I was pouring my morning coffee. No idea what triggered it.

Not an argument so much as series of unfortunate events and a missed opportunity for a wicked closing statement.

As far as break ups go, it was fairly screen worthy. The slow dawning of comprehension on my face that went from demure and smiling to sparks and rage. I power up when I am angry, and the entire bar stopped what they were doing and took notice.

I don’t ever try to be dramatic, but sometimes it just happens. I had a couple whiskeys before I walked down the street from one bar to the other.

It felt like some season ending scene from a tv show, except at the end; there was no rain and he didn’t chase me. I wouldn’t have chased me either. The last thing I said was “I don’t like the way my name sounds coming out of your mouth.” Not so much said, as roared.

Can’t really argue with that.

It would have been good to just leave it there, but if you have read any of this blog, nothing ever ends so much as it morphs into something that it probably should have always been. Flirtatious friendship, emotional support and unwavering loyalty.

I do regret not using that line from Weeds, that stood out to me 15 years after it was said. A show I never watched more than 3 episodes of. I do love Mary-Louise Parker, I have since Fried Green Tomatoes. I just like her face when she says certain things, the tone of her voice when she said it wryly with a smirk and a cocked eyebrow always tickled me.

And I have had so many opportunities to use it.

I coulda, shoulda, woulda used it then but I was flustered and admittedly angry.
I did my best. My best was pretty good.

Anger is just grief wearing a different mask.

Difficult not to feel a little bit disappointed and passed over.
A Perfect Circle, 3 Libras

That happens to me a lot.

I gravitate to men who have some thing that is their priority in life and I always come in second. Which in itself is fine really, I am too much my self to be anyone’s everything. Or they leave me for some watered down girl.

Or both.

He did both.

More important to be a gangster than be happy, I guess. So be it.
Not my fault she sucked in bed.

It didn’t end there, in the bar, with me looking like gorgeous raging Valkyrie in a grey dress spinning on my heel, doing a quick shot handed to me at the bar by one of the onlookers and striding out the door before climbing into a cab with what was left of my self-preservation and crying bitter tears all the way home. I refused to hit my patented self-destruct button which would have had me walking another half a block up the cobblestone street, past the cab stand to the basement bar that sold 2 for $5 Wisers on Thursdays. It was a Thursday and I think I was just done with all of it.

I leveled up in that moment when I went home to my perfect sanctuary of a room, washed my face, changed into pajamas, popped a movie on a fell asleep by midnight.

I think I spent so much time fighting against break ups during my marriage, I have no fight left in me. You want to leave, there’s the door. Or in this case I was in his space so I walked out the door without looking back.

You made your bed, go fuck in it. I am going home to sleep in mine.

I tried to sleep, he called me that night, a lot. He said he was sorry quite sincerely, but it didn’t change anything.

I told him I understood, and I did. That is also a thing I do quite well.

What he couldn’t wrap his head around is why I was still angry.

“Hun-nee” I said, my voice metered, my words clipped, “just because I understand why you are doing what you are doing doesn’t mean I can’t be mad about it.”

And that my friends, is the gospel truth.

I have the ability to understand the ‘why’ about most things, even if it is something I would never do or haven’t ever done, I still get it enough to wrap my head around it.

Grasping the reasoning behind your folly doesn’t mean I have to participate.

Understanding doesn’t necessarily denote approval. Nor do I argue against things I don’t fully grasp. Not my place.

And that is how it was left. I left.

Life doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. People make decisions every day, and I get to decide if I participate in the consequences of decisions they make and make my own accordingly.

I react, or I don’t. That is entirely up to me.

Lately I don’t react. Full system fail safe shut down instead of full blown dangerous melt down.

Grudges and tantrums are pointless, and anything I was mourning the loss of was just a future I had invented in my head. Gave me the freedom to invent a new one. And this one is pretty good.

There is no such thing as a mistake. There are things you do and things you don’t do.
Oliver Martinez

Here it be cloudy.

Cloudy and peaceful and quiet.

I really needed this. I also really need a shower. I’ll get there. There is no rush. My legs are stubbly and my hair needs washing.

If the sun was out, I might feel more compelled to run around and do things. But this grey cocoon of mediocre weather suits me just fine today.

I have a few things I check on Facebook that set the tone for my day. Haven’t read my tarot scope and Rob Breszney was a little vague and unremarkable last week, they can’t all be diamonds.
Tomorrow is a new day with a new riddle wrapped in a horoscope to solve.

This is one of my morning tings, I shall abide.

I remember mornings like this in Milton when my kidlet was finishing high school in Toronto and we had to get him on the 8:08 train. I then had a couple hours to myself to put the house right and get to work myself.

Up at 6 in the dark of winter mornings. Stove light on, enough illumination to navigate the kitchen but not too bright. Coffee maker hissing, the clink of his spoon against a cereal bowl. Neither one of us like to talk in the mornings. Music on to break the quiet, but no conversations. Tiny dog sleeping on the couch of the library with one eye open, waiting for us to get bundled up and head towards the door. She always wanted to come with us, no matter how cold it was.

I miss her on quiet, chilly mornings like today, silent (yet insistent) snuggles keeping me in bed for a few more minutes. Her miniscule harumph of irritation when she had to go from sleeping in the bed tucked into me, to sleeping on the settee in front of the fireplace. She would watch me rebuild the fire every morning after I had tucked her into an afghan, and she’d wait while we went about our morning routine. Never in a rush to go outside that one. Preferred snuggles and naps, me too Alice, me too.

I miss that house and that life. I miss my dog too. She isn’t gone gone, she lives with her Auntie Mikah and they love each other beyond measure. It was an incredibly hard decision to let her go to a more stable life than I could currently provide, but I stand by it.

Sometimes we have to let the things we love go so they can be happy.
That is the definition of love after all.

7 years ago in July I moved into that house in the middle of nowhere with my little family. Sight unseen, I was functioning on trust and instinct.
It remains one of the best things I had ever done.

It was the jumping off point in my life where I truly started living and doing things for myself.

We are encroaching on my 7^th year of being pretty much single. January something 2014 I said ‘get out’ and out he got. I am sure Facebook will let me know in my memories and I can have a small celebration. I have a feeling it is the 9^th. The same day next year that I will be leaving Mexico to regroup one more time.

No regrets.

A year ago today, at this very moment I was getting in Dave’s jeep at the beginning of our 2 day journey to Florida. Another place I loved, a roof and 4 walls that represent so much change and inner peace for me. Another place that is no longer.

Jumping off points galore.

Today I mourn small losses of safe houses I no longer hold the keys to.

This is not what I intended to write when I sat down at my laptop.

I was pouring a cup of coffee half an hour ago and thought “you made your bed, go fuck in it.”

It’s a line from an episode of Weeds I watched a million years ago.
Before the car wreck punched holes in my memory, before ex-husband and the life I’d rather forget maybe. I honestly don’t remember.
Yesterday I was having a conversation with a girl I should have met a million times (but never did) about old clubs and where was I in 1999, 2004, etc. etc., ad nauseum. And reaching that far back splintered off tiny shards of memories, which popped into my head as the coffee maker hissed and spit an “I’m ready, come get me.”
Which then became clouded by the nostalgia of the clouds.

If nothing else comes of this blog, at least everyone can have a small glimpse into my strange thought processes. Maybe they aren’t strange, I have only ever thought as myself. Nothing to compare it to really. But on mornings such as this one, where I decide to write a thing and something else entirely spills out effortlessly, it becomes notable.

So what do I do now?

That is the million dollar question even though I know exactly what I would be doing if I had a million dollars.

But in this moment do I…

Keep waxing nostalgic with no point in sight? Do I let my fingers do as they please and see what happens or do I redirect my own course?

Let’s do that. The Weeds quote can wait.

I can just talk without having a point. I forget this sometimes. I do not always have to have a purpose, sometimes I can just be.

I am 4 days into a 7 day shark week. The pain has subsided, mostly (they come at night, mostly*). But I find myself fluctuating between weepy and emotionally disconnected. Like a tap I can’t adjust. Too hot, too cold, never just right. This too shall pass and the cosmic timing kinda worked out.
This was a good week to bleed.

The less I plan lately, the better things seem to work out.

“I’m not really a planner, more of a fly by the seat of my pants kinda girl.” Pretty Woman

Me too hooker Julia, me too. (Vivian, her name was Vivian)

I didn’t really get to indulge in many free falls or deliberate lack of planning when I was younger, I was someone’s mother, I had to be somewhat responsible, and being ‘homeless’ and wandering wasn’t really an option. So I am doing it now as he is poised to finally have an apartment of his very own, with no help from me and no roommates. I have experienced this, and I am living in something like it now and it is a bliss everyone should experience.

That isn’t to say I didn’t make leaps of faith, see above where I moved to the Milton house sight unseen and made a home there, found myself there, my son graduated there. Make a decision, make it work. The decision was a good one and making it work was pretty effortless after I cut the deadweight of the last ‘real’ boyfriend I’ve had. 7 years, now that is something.

Some previous leaps left me flat on my face with the wind knocked out of me, gasping for breath and thinking I might die, drowning on dry land. But eventually I catch my breath, get my bearings and get up. I don’t regret the jump, I survived the landing, but sometimes ‘making it work’ grated against my soul so hard I lost myself clinging onto things that were not meant for me. When all I really had to do was let go and fall into the next thing. It’s a human thing, we do this.

My son is actually the result of one of those leaps I took as a teenager. Packed a bag and ran far, far away. It didn’t work, but I became a mother and forever altered the course of my existence.

Farm life too. Fuckboy Island. They don’t always work out, but every decision alters my path in indelible ways, and that is okay. Everything is a gift or a lesson.

Sometimes the lesson is just give up when things stop working.

Shouldn’t need to be so fucking hard, this is life on earth**

I have eluded to another one of those life altering crossroads coming up soon, and it is. I am not 20 anymore, and this is definitely not my 84th rodeo. I can see them coming now at least.
I can go left, or right or continue on my present course. I won’t go back. Sarah in the Labyrinth.

(Author’s sidenote, I clicked out of MSWord to find the caterpillar quote from Labyrinth and somehow got sucked into a 90 minute internet surfing vortex, 3 conversations, checked my horoscope, played a few rounds of solitaire and now I am back… without the quote. Fuck my life.)

“If she’d have kept on going that way, she’d have gone straight to that castle.”

There it is.

Things I am keeping in mind as I ponder which way to go. Unless I am clear about my goal, any advice I get might be skewed to keep me safe, but ultimately get me no further ahead.

Do I want to go straight to the castle, or do I want to wander this unfamiliar labyrinth and have more adventures along the way? Do I even really have a choice in any of it?

Do I even have to solve the labyrinth?

So many questions and I am in no rush to find any of the answers. Today I can just enjoy the comforts of a cloudy day the respite the weather has given me.

The way home, this is always the way home, so you can rip that map to shreds my dear. **

*Newt, from Aliens
** Snow Patrol, Life on Earth.

And I forgot how cute that caterpillar really was.

I was overdue for one of my death periods.

Not a period of death death, but cramps so bad I can barely move. This makes the chronic pain in my hip feel like a tickle, it is not a tickle.
I feel like one of those magician’s assistants in the box, but the saw is not a trick saw and I really am being sheared in half by a rusty blade. And here I am faking a smile for the audience.

If I had my way it wouldn’t be here and now, but I am here now, and it is happening.

So I will deal.
Chew a couple Aleve with my coffee and write about something completely different with tears streaming down my face because it hurts, and I have never been one to hold things in. If something wants out, tears, laughter, truth or blood, I will hold the door open. I am forever the key master, never the gatekeeper.

According to my memories on Facebook, the experience I digest every morning with my coffee, tripping down memory lane while I power up for the day, today is a day of death, the beginning of the end of my current cycle. Pretty apropos that my body is on board.

So shed your skin and let’s get started (Hunters and Collectors)

3 years ago today.

Motherfucker this is gonna be rough.

Cosmic timing is hilarious.

Why not start 6 years ago (or is it 7 now, no 6) where I had just survived pneumonia, alone in the woods with 3 dogs. And I made it. No one came to save me, and I made it. I saved myself and I came out of that experience with a ferocious sense of independence and zero fucks to give, I think they burned away in the fever.

Because that was just phase one.

We have been over that phase, analyzed it 500 ways from Sunday. I started the blog there and then, started traveling. I went to California and Arizona. I lost people who were important to me in the sloppiness and overwhelm that was my shiny new enlightenment. But I found me. And here I is.
Trying not to bleed on someone else’s kitchen chair, as fetal as I can be while still being upright, looking through the memories of the last few years and seeing a very clear path between there and here.

Here is good, I could see myself staying here.

And that is exactly what happened 3 years ago.

I went to visit somewhere, I met someone, had an otherworldly experience and it was akin to just taking a random exit on a dark highway at night with no rhyme or reason, just functioning on pure instinct and finding what (in the moment) felt like home.

At the time, it was this euphoric bout of sustained contentment that lasted 24 hours.

And it was enough to pack up my entire life and move.

I can pad this with the fact that a lot of other things were going wrong back home, things were changing rapidly and for the first time since I gave birth to my son, I had no real obligations outside of my own happiness.

And while all of those things are true, I had survived worse than that before, much worse and none of them nor the culmination thereof were enough to catapult me out of the life I had built for myself in the Hammer.

I had good friends, jobs plural, we had just gotten a beautiful new apartment with the prettiest living room I have ever conjured, and I have conjured and created some stunning spaces. Giant was there and emotionally available in a way he never had been before. Yes, there was some bad, but there was enough good to be worth saving, and I knew I could. I could have kept the apartment; I just chose not to.

I came back from that fateful trip and immediately started prepping and packing to go on my annual pilgrimage to ride the Hulk in Florida.

I had bought a new suitcase. I had to, I packed so badly for the trip to the fucky cold island I ended up coming home with half a new winter wardrobe and some wolf pants. The suitcase was bigger than what I was used to traveling with and I began to wonder if, I packed just right, how long could I stay away from home and be content. And what if instead of flying, I drove to where I wanted to go and retained that bit of independence that had always been missing from other adventures where I was beholden to someone else who held the car keys. And what if I could pack the car as well as a suitcase or two and potentially bring my magic and the comforts of home with me?

I am still not great at packing by the way.

I had the same thought 7 years prior, came home from Florida, immediately dumped my boyfriend and bought a trailer. Circumstances and a lil Gift of the Magi dictated, not there and not then, but the dream never really died.

It’s not the entirety of the truth, but those trips to Florida were always sooooooo cathartic and amazing, in part, because of the 2 days in the car, watching the foliage and weather change, 60 miles an hour down familiar highways, through tunnels under mountains until we finally saw the ocean. There was beauty in the repetition of it. My mind could wander far and wide. I had nothing else to do but think my thoughts, aside from taking over driving a few hours through Georgia, and I really loved it.

Sidenote, this year also marks the end of that era. The condo is gone. There is no more Mecca in New Smyrna Beach. No big wooden pelican and floor to ceiling mirror in the dining room. No seashell themed sheets and decor on a twin bed, no dolphins to watch for as I watch the sunrise from the balcony. No long walks on the beach coming back with my pockets filled with shells and soft, twisted bits of wood. No 4 mile walks to lobster rolls and cute shops full of everything I ever wanted to wear, and the crotchety old crystal shop owner who makes my favorite perfume oil.

It’s over, and somehow, as sad as that is, I feel like that is part of this, whatever this turns out to be.

And 3 years ago, my thoughts were a very distinct loop of ‘could I really run away from home’. In a grown up way of course. But could I?

Turns out I could.

So I did.

And man, it got weird.

The peace and contentment I had felt that one night, that was enough to make me abandon every comfort I had, evaded me. I drank myself sick and stupid and hurt over and over, I cried so often it became a topic of conversation if I didn’t. And yet I stayed. I blocked that particular ‘him’ before this last Mercury retrograde. His purpose was served, he got me where I needed to be and for that I am grateful, the rest of it doesn’t matter.

2 years ago today, I left the island for a few days and remembered what life was like in the real world. I started getting the itch and the urge to run again, but I stayed. Squandered a trip to Florida even, had I known that was going to end I might have done things differently, but hindsight is always very crystal clear, and if one boy got me there, the one I met when I was supposed to be in Florida that year made me stay past when I thought I couldn’t tolerate another second. I am grateful to him too.

Then last year, of course exactly a year ago today I was packed and ready to get on a plane to go to Florida one last time, and of course on the drive and during the time spent on mama ocean I had the clarity and inspiration that landed me where I am now, a couple weeks away from making yet another big life altering decision.

What good is a life if we can’t alter it at will.

I came to my adventurous spirit later in life, I had a child to raise and I regret very little.
I still struggle sometimes. Worrying about what people think and knowing I am flying without a real net. But I also know I float and the only person I really have to answer to is me, in the mirror at the end of the day.
But these last 3 years filled with plane rides and navigating new places have truly been blissful as a whole, even with the harsh winters, the drinking and the crying.
Trying new locations on like pairs of pants to see if they fit and then trying something else, even though I did get stuck in that one pair for a long minute. Ultimately, I know I am here now because of strange trails I wandered down then, in proverbial pants that no longer fit. The path behind me is exceptionally clear and it makes perfect sense now.
No grudges, no hard feelings, just gratitude and lessons upon mother fucking lessons.

And as I sit and type all of this out, I am beyond sure that in 3 years I will once again be talking to you fine folks about how today and the week before and after this one changed my path in some remarkable way.

Maybe the take-away is nothing more than the transition between Scorpio season and the rule of Sagittarius is just as an astrologically tumultuous time for me as my favorite, the Lion’s gate of August.
It seems to be the time the universe takes me by the hand and gives me a taste of what could be if I am just brave enough to do something rash.

Scorpions shed their exoskeletons when they become too restrictive. Sagittariuses (not a word) are the archers, pulling the arrow back before letting loose. And that is exactly how I am feeling right now, wiggling around in my newfound freedom of my freshly shed skin and getting ready to launch.

I had an affair with a married man when I was 18. He was 28, I think?

Memory does not serve here.

In my defense, I have no defense. He doesn’t either. Ad I am typing this out and forcing myself to remember, it was all pretty yucky.

He was new in town, we played pool after my kitchen shifts at the restaurant I worked at.

He was older, obvs, interesting, charming, he had traveled and I got really good at pool that winter.

He didn’t wear a ring, the flirtation and courtship went on for 4 months at least and it wasn’t until our relationship escalated to physical that he told me he was married. He had always referred to his wife in a past tense, I assumed divorce as would have anyone, in fact most of the people who worked with me where we met assumed the same, so it wasn’t just me he had fooled.

Still not a defense. I am not looking for absolution here, just story-telling, it’s what I do. And there is a point to this, there always is, and I almost always take the long way around.

I remember being angry when he finally told me the truth, I felt tricked and betrayed. Never a nice feeling.

But god gave us all free will and 18 year old me really liked him, I didn’t really know better and I was already emotionally invested. Part of me was kind of excited by the whole thing.

I pouted for a few days and then said okay.

It lasted maybe another 2 months. He bought me red cowboy boots and orchids. And then he left his wife.

He wanted me to move in with him, take over being a housewife.

I immediately came to my senses and I broke up with him.

I had no idea what I wanted, but I knew it wasn’t that.

This is such ancient history that I can barely recall much but his first name and his glasses.

So why am I bringing it up?

Kamala’s vagina.

I love these women on their soapboxes deciding on some moral pretense that someone the new Vice President of the United States of America is somehow less worthy because of her vagina, and its activities over 30 years ago.

The job I had where I met the married dude I got through nepotism, plain and simple. Most jobs I have gotten because I knew someone. It doesn’t matter how you get a job; it matters if you can do well enough at it to keep it. I kept that job for 3 years and then I fucked up badly and was promptly fired.

Shit happens.

She was 22, I was 18.

Yes, there is some difference between the emotional maturity of an 18 year old me and a 22 year old her, but not a lot.

And honestly… Why the fuck does it matter how she got into her field 3+ decades ago?

I don’t like a lot of things she has done since, career-wise. She wouldn’t have been my first choice. I loved Warren personally and my heart broke a bit when she dropped out.

The difference between myself and the internalized misogyny crew ripping her to shreds on the internet is I don’t conveniently forget the mistakes I have made.

I have fucked some questionable creatures. See above. See the whole blog really.

Damn your wife, I’d be your mistress just to have you around.
Cleopatra, The Lumineers

And this is coming from someone who was cheated on within an inch of my life. I went crazy, was on antidepressants, opiates and lost 30+ pounds while being cheated on for 7 years. I don’t recognize the me I was back then. I was jealous, weak, stubborn and ultimately stupid.

While I don’t exactly blame myself, I know I did things wrong too, like not getting out at the first sign and ignoring so many red flags.

And like all these women blaming Kamala, I blamed the mistress too.

In retrospect, in my situation, they really loved each other, and I should have just gotten out of the way. I know that now and will carry that lesson to the end of my days.

If you are the least loved person in the house, you are in the wrong house. Michael Xavier

I was in the wrong house.

There is some serious internalized misogyny in this world. Men don’t need to hold us down and tear us apart, we do it to each other.

#metoo should have been the end of it, we should have all realized we are in this together, we should have rallied with the good men and stopped all this nonsense, but that was 3 years ago, and we seem to have completely forgotten. 55% of (white) women voted for a rapist instead of a woman, twice now.

I really hate this “ideal” that women are supposed to be non-sexual (but still sexualized) creatures who get married at 18-25 and just stay home and cook and clean. Anything else is a scandal and opens us up to ridicule and persecution, like we never made it out of Salem.
Need I remind you, it’s 2020, body autonomy is a thing, and we have our first woman vice president.

I for one, choose to celebrate this. It’s a big deal. What she did 30 years ago is not.

I invite every woman trying to tear her down to revisit her teens and 20’s and air out your own closet and skeletons contained therein.

Even Jesus defended Mary Magdalene by saying let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Don’t y’all pretend to love Jesus?

Just take your pocket of rocks and go home. Have missionary vanilla sex with your boring husband every other Tuesday after book club and let the rest of us fight the good fight so maybe your daughters can live in a world without the oppression of the patriarchy pitting them against each other.

I don’t know why I never published this.

The phone probably rang or I saw something shiny and walked away from my laptop.

The past week has been a whole lotta exactly that. Finding reasons to be fussing about, nesting…and the big bad…scrolling.

I quit drinking before I left the island but that was not the only bad habit I had there. Face in phone constantly to avoid people and boredom at work. I have to stop.

I think another thing is I am always very insecure about selling myself. Because I am insecure. Not a lot to sort through there. So I procrastinate, because that way I can’t fail. Which makes zero sense as I type it out, that is failing really.

Nothing is ever good enough. Cue the thing about project paralysis and gifted kids. I has that.

I had a notebook when I was little (and 500 notebooks since then) that I refused to sully with bad penmanship or bad writing so I never used them. I am ridiculous, I know this. I am laughing at myself right now.

I am getting better at just letting things go out into the world and not worrying about what other people think. It is enough because I say it is, and honestly after years of sifting through other people’s opinions on my page, I just don’t care.

Plus, failing isn’t the end of the world. Took me forever to figure that out.

The foreword to this long lost post is being written in WordPress so there’s that then.

(And I think I figured it out. I don’t want Wolf reading about the folly that was me thinking I had feelings for other people, before him. I don’t want to read about it either, makes me feel ashamed of what I settle for, the crumbs of attention I existed on before I was allowed to feast on real love.)

Come dear readers, let’s take a journey into where I was at mentally on February 20th of this year, so many lifetimes ago really. Pre Covid, still watching the Witcher, mid retrograde likely because we had 487 of those this year…

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Nothing ever escapes, even when I want it to and sometimes it crushes me and leaves teeth marks on my psyche.

I can drive along a road ten years later and I can feel exactly what the sun and air felt like a decade ago, what trees were in bloom, the tang of cigarette smoke and sweat, flowers recently picked covering the back seat, what creatures revealed themselves on the side of the road and sometimes what was playing on the radio.
A song comes on and I am transported back in time.
I scroll back through Instagram or Facebook, see what I was wearing/saying/thinking/feeling and that day/date come rushing back to me. The boy I was with or flashbacks of mini adventures with my girls. The conversations had, drinks imbibed, how I felt when I finally poured myself back into my own bed that night. Or someone else’s.

Every muscle holds memories, my skin too. If the light, temperature and breeze hit me a certain way I can travel backwards in time. Climbing into my car on the first warm day of the year feeling completely warmed through for the first time since winter closed it’s icy fist around my bones.

The longer I am with Wolf the bigger the divide becomes between Before Him and After Him.

I know I existed.

I have photographs, Facebook memories and this blog as proof.

I know there were men and relationships before him, but I don’t care.

We had this conversation last night, I just don’t remember anymore.

I spent 3 hours putting 5 years-worth of unsorted documents into different folders. A surprising number went into published (yay me), followed closely by ‘trash’. A few unfinished, a bunch of letters to whomever. I gotta say, if I sit down to write someone a letter when I am feeling any kind of way, I am eloquent as fuck. Landlords and Panda and Exes, oh my.

Wolf now has his own folder. He wasn’t wrong about me writing more. I went from publishing maybe 24 articles in 2 years, to 24+ since we met. And a smol book. I have so much more to write, and I will. I just don’t remember how right now.

I played Cyrano again the other day for a boy I used to know. He is having a hard time letting his ex go. We talked for a bit and I admitted that I used to spy on Sisterwife a dozen times a day if not more, every day. At some point I must have decided to stop. And I wasn’t perfect at stopping, but it went from 20 times a day, to twice, to never. Told him to try not driving by her house for a day at first, then a few, then a week. It’s like quitting anything really.

I wrote what I thought he should send, and he sent it.

In doing so I was forced back into my old mindset. And I didn’t recognize the girl I was. That was all over 9 years ago.

I have had this laptop for 7 years now. I was not always this version of myself.

Just like this computer, my hard drive gave out and was replaced, apps updated. I used a sketchy mp3 downloading site in Newfoundland and crashed terribly. We’ve been through some shit.

I got this huge computer for processing photos. I didn’t travel back when I bought it. Now I am scraping pennies together for a smaller laptop and a bigger phone and I don’t own a camera anymore. I don’t want one. A go pro yes, but not a bulky DSLR.

To properly sort the massive list of documents, I had to read some of them.

I gotta forgive myself for how dumb I was.

Like Jesus sis.

What were you thinking?

I put myself through some very unnecessary shit.

I am better, faster, stronger for it I suppose.

I signed a very rare copy of the other book I wrote 2 weeks ago.

I remember being sequestered in my room, in a house I decorated but never belonged in. Neck and shoulders aching, just trying to get it done and out before midnight December 31^st  2017. I didn’t want to enter another year with it hanging over my head. 80 000 words of yucky smut and revenge porn. My stomach rolled reading it. So disgusted with the girl I was when I started it, settling for scraps from a catfish.

I have reread passages here and there. And I gotta admit, although the subject matter is abhorrent, the muse a jerk…the writing itself is  pretty good.

I have to stop beating myself up for not knowing what I didn’t know before I knew it.

I need to look at it for what it is. Money waiting to be collected. One notch in a key that I have been carving for years, it will open a door to a new life if I let it.

I am the key to the lock in your house
I am the pick and the axe
Climbing up the Walls, Radiohead

Half Wild Thing aka the fucking book

(an excerpt)

She had been the one to back down, bare her throat. She had been timid at first, but quickly growing accustomed to the climate, the city and him. She always acquiesced when he would rage while somehow maintaining strength and poise, and he loved her for it. And in the way of felines remaining on the brink of feral but almost tamed, she brought him strange gifts.

He had watched her walk to the planter, read the discontent on her face and watched it melt away when she saw him. Her eyes gave her away every time. The whole world knew she was irrevocably his. He knew she had just saved some tiny lost soul. He smiled at the thought, she was always saving something. She had rescued him once too.

She was 10 feet away now, he stubbed out his cigarette, the humid air was punctuated by a slight puff of wind and it filled his nostrils with the smell of her. His eyes fixed on her…his cock couldn’t help but to start to rise. A low growl escaped his lips and he saw her smile, he smirked a half grin back and it was an invitation that she gladly took. As she stepped into the space between his legs and rested her hands lightly on his shoulders, the world fell away from both of them.

He sat up to greet her and she gently ran her fingers through his hair, pulling him close and caressing his neck. His arms formed a protective circle around her waist, he drew her to him. She leaned in, pressing the softness of her belly against his cheek and they both sighed, content and relieved. He inhaled deeply, coveting the moment. She always smelled of summertime, oceans and sex. He could imagine her pussy, pink petal lips, dew kissed and open like dripping lilies. He melted into her and she molded herself around him.

How many had it been? He struggled to remember. She had told him the night before, curled up in his bed, his fingers tracing calligraphy on her body. Conversations punctuated by soft moans and his hands wandered to her most sensitive places. 3 maybe 4 boys that night? All of their adventures were starting to become a maze in his mind, he got lost in them and didn’t worry about finding his way out or marking certain passages. He had found himself happy to be lost in her. She led and he followed willingly. It didn’t matter, she was here now, with him. And she would tell him again as he asked, as many times as he needed.

Available on Amazon