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.