December 2020

I have a few tv shows that are my favorites even though they aren’t overly popular.

Carnivale for one, HBO’s first attempt at a series. 23 episodes.

The Wachowski’s made a show for Netflix called Sense8. I am on my 6^th time watching it now since Mandabear made me watch it last year. 23 episodes

And another one that I gravitate back to called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Aaron Sorkin. Also 23 episodes.

There is an episode where everything goes slippy sideways 3 or 4 times and they have to do a bunch of cut ins and retractions on a live feed broadcast.

That is what this feels like.

This was not what I would have pictured myself writing when I sat in front of my laptop yesterday.

You see dear readers, I did DMT yesterday, after 9 years of want and preparation.

I was gonna have a chat with god.

And I know there are a lot of people clamoring to find out what I found out and I am sorry.

This is not the show we intended to do tonight, but it is what is.

This really is a live feed of my life, parts of it. Edited and rehearsed and presented here.

I am absolutely going to write a post about what happened, several likely and what I learned, but for the patreon platform that is coming in January. I am worth something, even if it is a buck or two a month. This witch is now accepting offerings for my gifts.

But this is something that needs to be said out loud.

This revelation that I had was not directly involved in the ceremony, but a side effect of the soul purge.

I am afraid.

I just am and I didn’t know why.

Fear was dictating a huge portion of my life.

Even here. I couldn’t go into the deep water because I was jumping at shadows.

I stick close to home wherever home is at the moment.

I wrote about meeting Solo and that I used to love to dance at regular bars, and when I thought about it some more, I used to love stage shows too, now they are something to get through and over with.

I took on the protector role with friends, never getting drunk, but being the sober babysitter, even in New Orleans when I should have been able to let loose and have fun. I did have fun and I remember 90% of it.

I look at Attica and Carabear and they seem so fearless and I remember being like that, but I didn’t know how or when I lost it.

Upon ye olde Facebook there is/was a meme that makes the rounds about a tribe somewhere in Africa that treats depression and anger by asking the person ‘when did you stop singing, when did you stop dancing’. Basically they remind the person to find the small joys in life.

I did myself and others a great disservice.

19 years ago I was violently raped, threatened with death and held hostage in my apartment for 8 hours.

The 19^th anniversary of said event is tomorrow, and I have exclaimed and shouted from the rooftops how ‘over it’ I am. I mention it in passing with all the emotion of recanting an old tv show I watched.

That I am not a victim nor a survivor because I don’t acknowledge it. It is something buried so far in my past that it doesn’t affect me. I am a vocal advocate for survivors and women’s rights in general. But I never get triggered nor did I think what happened in my past had any bearing on how I live my life now.

I talk a lot about shadow work and gong back to different versions of myself and treating them with love and compassion. 10 year old me, teenage me, I have worked through my failings as a parent with my son and been forgiven.

Even in regard to me being raped I thought I had that covered. I acknowledged the self-loathing I had for who I was at the time, the job I had (stripper) the drugs I was doing, the life I was living. I was making bad choices, I felt guilty about the money I was making and the parenting I wasn’t doing. I gravitated to a controlling man because I felt out of control instead of getting my shit together myself. I had a nice list of things to never do again. And I haven’t.

Now, I feel compelled to say that no matter what you are doing, no one deserves to go through what I went through with that man. He beat me, he stole from me and after I bailed him out of jail for those charges he broke into my house and was waiting for me when I got off work New Year’s Eve 2001. I knew he was there; he had called me from my landline. And part of me thought I could handle whatever he was going to throw at me. My stuff and my cats were more important than my safety, and calling the police meant losing my $5000 bond.

Still didn’t deserve any of it, but part of me thought I did.

I had to tell the story like I was listening to someone else tell it to me.

I dubbed myself forgiven.

Except I didn’t.

There were good parts to the life I had before him.

I made good money, I lived exuberantly, I loved to dance. My sex drive never really went away after, but I lost my voice as far as being able to acknowledge the quantity and quality. I stopped indulging in any kinks I had while I was with him, and that lasted until very recently.

And, this is the first of a couple hard admissions, I felt damaged. Like I didn’t deserve anything good relationship-wise. Parts of me still feel that way. Gestures broadly at most of my exes. Farm life was a holdover from that, Graham and the potato too. Mediocre long term couplings instead of choosing a good complimentary partner partner. Some of that was stripping, what kind of relationship can I really expect if I am a dancer. But that was the mindset that got me into the relationship with the rapist in the first place.

Sitting at the bar at Sneaky Dee’s talking to Young Un the First, I brought it up casually and his reaction was the first step in healing that part of my trauma that had gone unacknowledged. I knew it in that moment; and I remember it now. He didn’t look at me like I was broken or a pain in the ass that needed to be placated, but like I should be protected. He simply asked what I needed and did the thing, like I was worth compromising for. He never once shut the door when we fucked, that was my thing, I needed to know I could leave the room for years after.

The Hulk came along after and treated me the same. Like something to be treasured, like I was worth something, not just in spite of my past, but almost because I had lived through it.
We had a moment the second or third time we slept together where he pinned me down and said, “You’re trapped”, playfully of course. He is a gargantuan man. I should have been terrified, and I was, for a minute. And then my brain clicked into a deeper understanding of what it meant to live in the moment. I wrote about it here https://www.ourladyoflustandgrace.com/trigger.html

Basically that was 2 paragraphs of me saying, I got the sex stuff figured out.

And I realized a long time ago that if I let the rapist take enjoyment away one of my favorite things then he won. He wanted me to hurt and be scared, so losing something as important as sex to me, would have meant he conquered me in the way he meant to, and I wasn’t having that.

I attained a level of the deepest subspace I have ever been in not too long ago and I think that catapulted me to this. I let go of everything and I came back safe and loved.

Yesterday, sitting on a mat in an open room full of someone else’s magic, my heart beating hard in my chest, after the craziness had passed and I had done a massive purge of primordial tears and angst, I had yet another epiphany.

There was a playlist of what you might expect to hear in a shaman’s house, and this song came on and I realized I hadn’t heard it in 22 years. In the house of my first Leo. And I was catapulted back there for a minute. I remembered the girl I was when I was with him. I remembered being giggly and happy and so brave and tenacious. I walked the streets of Toronto at all hours without fear. I went on grand adventures. So willing to take risks and live life and experiment. And I still danced and felt joy.

For a minute I thought that Leo had worked some dark magic on me that had stolen my life spark for lack of a better term. But that wasn’t it and I had to go forward in my past and see what it was.

It wasn’t him.

I am still living some of the ramifications of being raped.

I am too careful and too cautious.

I tout the benefits of being an introvert and being okay being alone, safe as houses, inside my house.

But I am not living.

Yesterday, consenting to the ceremony I took part in was a huge step in and of itself.

I am in a strange city, I have no data or wifi, I had no idea where I was going, no idea what was going to happen, like not even a little bit. I didn’t even know how much it was going to be or how long it was going to take. It was a trust fall of epic proportions and even the act of getting in the car and walking into the door (black 19 for the record) was monumental for me.

Some old part of me that exists from before took over and I am grateful.

I even sabotaged my first hit of DMT because I was scared I wasn’t going to make it back.

What am I so worried about coming back to?

I have made some leaps as of late.

I moved to perdition, but even that was safe. I knew my way around, I had people there.

And yes, I have been getting on planes, but with an obscene amount of planning but then staying tucked into Airbnbs just waiting.

I am old enough now and have enough self-love to not get into a situation like that again. I have been assaulted since and lived through all of it. Life hurts sometimes and there is no way around it. Hiding away and only coming out when that damaged part of my psyche decides its safe to do so isn’t really living.

My son gave me an amazing piece of advice about a week ago when we talked about how I have been feeling. He said, ‘do something that resembles death so you can remember how to live’. I did. DMT is the chemical your brain releases when you die. I am going to the market this week and ziplining too, going to swim in the ocean away from the safety of the bay.

I accept that I might get hurt.

The last time I was in Mexico I got on the back of a scooter with a ‘strange’ man and we swam on the ocean side of the island, got tossed around in the waves of the Caribbean. I gave a chunk of skin as an offering, sheared of on a hunk of lava rock under the water. But I remember feeling alive and elated.

I’m constantly saying, everything you want is on the other side of fear, because it is.

It’s the last full moon of 2020.

The first one I had just landed stateside and the world was full of possibility.

Nestled into a mediocre Airbnb too far from anywhere to be convenient.

But I learned.

Took a little journey to the unknown, oh I came back changed I can feel it in my bones

Lord Huron, the soundtrack to my first leap of faith.

3 years ago today I got a message from ‘the boy’ that he was going to fly to the far side of the island and drive me the rest of the way home.

I was over the moon, one of Jupiter’s moons.

I have always just wanted to go home. I don’t know where it is, or what it looks like, but I think I will know when I feel it. He was close, I will give him that.

Then I went to Mexico for a week and he got back together with his ex.

My plans were too far put in motion to stop them. And nothing in me wanted to stop, I wanted to go. I think by May I had given up on him, I didn’t stop crying but I stopped trying. The only time we slept together during that first 6 months was the night before I was supposed to leave for good. Minimum effort is the hallmark of a fuckboy.

We all know I went back, shenanigans ensued and a year ago today I booked a ferry ticket away from there. 4 more days and I was never going back again.

I did go back, for my car and some more of my stuff.

Once more, with feeling.

And back to the states, and back to Mexico.

Just booked my flight home. 17 days left and another 14 after that until my fate is decided and I have a tangible date for getting this poison out of me.

There is a Samurai Jack episode wherein he trains with rocks tied to his feet, after a lengthy montage they take the rocks off and he ‘jump good’. If I managed to live my life like this weighed down by sickness, how good can I jump without it.

All things considered, I was a lot of places this year, you now, with earth being closed and all.

I almost wrote some cheeseball line about how the greatest journey was my journey inward.

I did do that. But it wasn’t poetic. It was ugly and messy and I got out of one cocoon just to force myself into another or climb back into the old one. I wept, I mourned. And in the end, I ran away.

I got a handle on a few things just to uncover more shit, patched one rip in my psyche and 3 more appeared.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
Marianne Williamson

Anyone know how to deal with imposter syndrome or hyper independence?

I think they are feeding each other, and I have twin King Kong sized monkeys on my back, holding me back.

I have part of it solved. I honestly don’t care what anyone thinks of me. I can’t, its dangerous and exhausting.

How many girls on that island truly despised me? A lot. I had to live and work with some of them and considering all I really did was sleep and work that took up a lot of my time. I lived. You need to hate someone to add to your own joie de vive? I don’t exactly volunteer as tribute, but whatev’s do you boo.

But imposter syndrome isn’t really about being hated by others so much as it is about hating yourself and the unhealthy coping mechanisms you develop to compensate. Pleasing those who can never truly be pleased, gravitating to them to justify your life. Zero self-care because you are always caring for others, burnout on an Alderan scale.

Procrastination on personal projects because it’s never going to be good enough anyways, why bother?

Because I love the work. This work, this good work that I chose for myself.

At least I can name the monkeys. One step closer to shedding them.

I was offered help, and I said yes.

My kittenface pixie girl came to me yesterday and offered to help put all my burnt offerings to the world into a Patreon format and see where that goes. Esoteric therapy with swearing. I just have to write; she will do the icky stuff I don’t care to learn like price points and marketing.

There is a very good chance after I get these implants removed that I will not be able to dance anymore, she knows I am scared and is gently but firmly nudging me into another direction.

The timing is pretty cosmically perfect if you ask me.

Today, in about 2.5 hours I am going to see some shamans and I am going to do DMT.

The god particle.

The chemical our brain releases when we die.

This is something I have wanted to do for 9 years and it was never the right moment.

I want to talk to god.

I feel like I have come as far as I can on my own and I need a push to level up.

I know I was put on this earth to love (full stop), but after having a taste of what it was like to be loved the way I love, fully and enthusiastically and then to lose it. I want to trade in my life’s purpose for another one. I can’t keep doing this.

I know I can, but maybe I can get some help accepting this. Because right now my heart is an angry toddler throwing a monumental tantrum called ‘its not fair’.

I hate the idea of white people taking shortcuts to enlightenment and bullshit journeys of spiritual tourism without doing the work.

But I feel like I did the work. So much work and there is so much more to go. I’m so tired.

I honestly don’t know what to expect. Anyone I have spoken to about it claims a lightness of being afterwards. Freedom from addictions and the bonds of human bullshit.

I know when I stand before god at the end of my life and he asks me ‘did you love?’ the answer with be and emphatic yes. I know when he asks me if I tried, the answer will be and honest and exhausted ‘yes’.

And today, when we talk, I think I just want to ask for a different perspective. I want to see in myself the potential I see in all the others. I only see the good in the people around me and I only see what need to be worked on when it comes to myself.

A little balance please. Direction, clarity, freedom.

And a lot of love.

Please, I need to be loved.

How long baby have I been away?
Oh, it feels like ages, though you say it’s only days
There ain’t language for the things I’ve seen
And the truth is stranger than my own worst dreams
The truth is stranger than all my dreams
Oh, the darkness got a hold on me

I have seen what the darkness does
Say goodbye to who I was
I ain’t never been away so long
Don’t look back them days are gone
Follow me into the endless night
I can bring your fears to life
Show me yours and I’ll show you mine
Meet me in the woods tonight

Lord Huron, Meet Me in the Woods, Strange Trails.

Hey kids.

Welcome to season 7 of my life.

I really wish this was a better post, but it is what it is.

Today would be a good day to go back through ye olde blog.

It is 6 years old today. And by proxy, so am I.

Good god damn a lot can happen in 6 years.

{gestures broadly at everything}

Like seriously.

I don’t know if I am ahead or behind, but god…I am here*.

700+ posts.

And honestly, I am not in the mood to read any of them.

I have been stuck in the morgue doing back to back autopsies and my nose is full of the smell of formaldehyde, back hurts from bending over the bodies and my fingers ache from holding the scalpel.

I put the very first article I ever published up on my Facebook page this morning. With the disclaimer that the person I spoke about assaulted me a few years back. It has happened twice since.

Season 7 episode 1 is as good a time as any to do a retrospective montage, but you have all been here, you know what happened.

And it’s funny. Out of all the things I could be feeling. I have a pretty hefty amount of remorse for the 2 years in perdition where I let everything slide.

I don’t care about numbers, buuuuuuuutttttt… who knows where I could be if I hadn’t slipped into oblivion for 730 days.

I must remember when I started this I lived in the cabin in the woods.

I was gearing up for my second Christmas completely and utterly alone.

The first one 3 years prior had all but killed me.

That one, 6 years ago was my choice.

I had to prep for a court case. I went up against the top employment lawyer in the country, and I won.

He still pops by and says hi on occasion. I never got paid but I am still proud of myself. I should have been a lawyer. I can argue with the best of them.

I skipped Florida that year. Kidlet was tucked in with his girlfriend’s family.

And I started this blog.

An idea I had had a calendar year prior. But was so insecure about, I couldn’t publish anything unless it was perfect.

Wow am I ever not like that anymore at all.

I dump a box of puzzle pieces out onto a word document and either make a picture or get partway there and walk away from it. Sometimes it looks like I puked on the page. And sometimes I am articulate as fuck.

I know if I publish anything with ‘sex’ or ‘fuck’ in the title I am guaranteed a good traffic day as far as numbers go.

I don’t really care about that. It was fun in the beginning. but ‘likes’ and hearts are not real accomplishments.

Nothing about this is an accomplishment expect the work I have done on myself and the help I have provided for others.

I do have to admit that I have helped some people, by the simple act of living out loud.

And if a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.

I have made some men immortal.

This whole thing is a testament to how hard and thoroughly I love.

And tidbits of loving myself and being loved by others.

Compliments and accolades still fall on deaf ears, I am stuck in Westworld, being shown pieces of reality and all I can say is ‘that doesn’t look like anything to me’.

6 years and I can’t undo my own programming.

Up in smoke and given back to the moon goes my angst, my hope, my doubts, my insecurities, my procrastination, my dependence on my muse to write (always welcome, but I will just put my head down and work whether she shows up or not), my ridiculous notion of romance novel love, what is left of my fear of being alone, my need for safety nets, my need for the approval of others, seeing my super powers as a burden and last but very not least rest in peace to the love I carried around my whole life…losing that sense of belonging actually felt like Sisyphus finally getting the rock to tip over the other side.
Who knew?
So mote it be

Notes I left myself on Facebook 6 years ago.

I did some of these things. I have let some things go.

But not enough.

I am not afraid of being alone. But that was easy. The two Christmases alone. One by force and one by choice. I didn’t die either time.
That next fall I survived pneumonia alone, didn’t die then either.
I even wrote a post about all the times I almost died. Kinda a lot.

Safety nets are overrated.

Probably had 6 panic attacks in 6 years instead of 6 a week. Angst still exists and knocks on the door from time to time. I let her in but don’t let her stay.

I still flirt with the notion of hope, but hope is a fuckboy.

Romance novel love is still out the window, rip out the middle where they fuss and fight. Just go from the love at first sight to the happily ever after please. Love shouldn’t be hard.

And I did disconnect from high school sweetheart and took my life back after 26 years of not belonging to myself.

Maybe I did okay.

Maybe I put too much pressure on myself to do a 180. 6, 7, 9 years ago I was a wreck of a girl.

Hold the vision, trust the process?

Didn’t I used to say that all the time?

Maybe I did need the 2 years of disconnect in Perdition.

When I look back at Newfoundland it feels like an alternate timeline the writers of my life came up with and then explained away as a dream at the beginning of season 5. Sloppy, sloppy writers.

Right now feels like that too. Like I am out of place and out of time.

I know change is coming, I can feel it even if I hadn’t been inundated with proof from the cosmos.

As I sit and write this retrospective of sorts all I can think is that most good shows only go 7 seasons.

Maybe this will be my last year.

I started this blog so I could monetize it with ads and go live somewhere warm with a trickling revenue stream. Never got that far. I just want to write.

Time to go back to the book.

I wish I thought it was good enough.

I wish I could come up with a good earth-shattering plot twist, but right now they are all in the house and I just need to find a way to get them out.

The two main characters are enamored with each other but unable to communicate. And I have to rip them apart before I can put them back together.

Earthquake? Or maybe he just gets frustrated and leaves.

Art imitates life but I really want to write us a better story.

Right now, Tom Waits is crooning in my ear “you gotta hold on girl.”

I am.

I have watched some very satisfying final seasons/episodes in my day.

It is my fervent wish to end this part of my journey exactly this way.

And start a life I don’t have to write about to understand.

*Alice Walker, The Color Purple

buy my book please

“I am not overly enamored with being lumped in with your exes.”

Well, then you haven’t been paying attention.

---

I have this woman on the periphery of my life who is literally everything I am not.

She’s fucking awesome.

She’s also a domme so when she pays attention to me, I squirm a little in submissive wiggly-ness in spite of myself.

It’s really cool to have someone in my life who is my polar opposite yet compatible and accessible.

She posed a question the other day

What would your exes say to or about you?

Tons of feedback. Some negative, some positive.

It’s a good exercise I think, to look back at past reflections of what you were to other people.

It’s grounding and can show you what you need to work on or even just how far you have come.

T’was a wee wake up call for me.

I’ve been feeling unlovable.

I am currently a mess and not my most awesome lovable self.

I remember having conversations with my step-daughter in her teenage years and trying to solve any one of her problems with a straight line.

Somehow, she could take needing new shoes and twist it into the plight of sharks in the wild.

Amazing, yet maddening.

I am doing this thing. I can hear it. I am actually annoyed with myself like I used to be with her and I can’t stop it.

I am in a situation beyond my control and over a month away and I keep throwing around words like ‘mutilation’.

There is no solution. I just have to get to that point in my future and looping unpleasant life altering outcomes in the meantime is not doing me a tiny bit of good.

But, when Bara asked the question above, it gave me pause.

I do not have to wonder what my exes say about me. They tell me. Recently and frequently.

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Not all obviously. I am not a saint.

Ex hubby and Potato hate my guts.

Both still blame me for shit in their lives years after I left them.

6 months later, sure, be mad all you want. 7 years? 10 years?
Come on, grow up.

But, both of them blamed other women in their life for the shit that came before me and that isn’t my cycle to break. Their inability to take responsibility for their own lives is beyond my control.

And ex hubby only revised his hatred of me when I didn’t go running back to him at the beginning of this year. Ew no. So there was love there, twisted fucked up love, but his version of it.

I had joked many, many years ago about getting some of the good ones together to make me a resume.

But I already wrote the handbook for handling me.

This blog.

Lists and lists of what went right and what went wrong.
What I need help with and where I shine.

I know I am exhausting, intense, not a lot of fun to be around sometimes. I get it. I never say “I’m fine” when I am not, and I know that is what people are supposed to do.

But I also never say “I’m fine” and expect anyone to read my mind either, nor do I torture them when they can’t because let’s face it, not a lot of mind readers out there.

I don’t lie, even when it would be more convenient to do so.

I have no filter.

All double-edged swords to be sure, but hey, I come with my own swords, so that’s a good thing.

And an instruction manual. Complete with clearly labeled warnings and contingency plans and a full list of consequences faced by the others so they can be avoided. What not to do, a retrospective.

(It’s the fucking fire swamp.)

When I was 14 or 15, I ripped the first page out of a book.

It just says, “do you love”.

I still have it, in a little frame in my attic.

Been asking myself that for 32 years, and the answer is always the same.

I do.

Quite thoroughly really.

Exceptionally unconditionally as of late.

I added to Bara’s query by saying that I do not subscribe to the normal “I have you” or “I hate you” that usually begets the bitterness between exes.

If I had love for you once, I probably still do.

There are some I cannot speak to, but if you asked them about me, they would say I was a good woman, little bit crazy, but I treated them well.
But those are cans of worms I do not wish to open; I am all out of crows.

Sometimes, due to circumstances beyond my control I can only love the version of who they were when we were together, that happens sometimes and when I am confronted with the ugly truth of what they have become, that love turns to nostalgia and hope that they find their way wrapped up with a bow of indifference. I know I see the potential of who people could be. I don’t even get disappointed anymore, just stand back and watch to see what they do, waving pom poms till my arms get tired or I am excused from the playing field.

Even then, I am never really gone.

They come back for council or comfort, and if I can I give it.

Usually by the second or third swoop back into my life I am a little more arm’s length with my affection.

The strength that comes with surviving their absence.

They pushed me away and I stay there. Away.

I have learned the difference between those who value me in my new place in their life and those who just message to see if I will message back.
Their egos get hungry and they remember me feeding them well.

I’ve stopped answering them.

In turn for my support, when my light goes out and that Stella Polaris in my chest goes dim, sometimes, some of them rally.

Like now.

So many ‘I love you’s’ and while I appreciate it, I truly do.
They aren’t coming from the right mouth.

And it is a bit insulting really to hear things like ‘I wish we could have made it work’ when I have vivid memories of showing up and doing the work.

I am not the one who leaves, except with ex hubby and the Potato.

Maybe that is why they hate me. The only two clean breaks on record.

---

There is one sure fire way to avoid getting lumped in with my exes, good or bad.

Don’t fucking leave.

After well over 10 days of deep terrifying darkness, reminiscent of my 7-year depression, I don’t see a light exactly but it is easing off.

That aforementioned cycle of six years of sadness and yuck ended in 2011.

I’m recognizing old patterns at lightening speed, understanding planets and I still don’t have a fucking clue what’s coming. All I can remember is the traumas but it seems like things change every 3 years or so.
Like right now for example.

I do know that the darkness won’t last.

I woke up yesterday and remembered what being happy might feel like.

Its a fucking doozy, this particular black hole I have been in. No doors, no windows, no hope or future that I can see.

Except

Something happened with the Hadron Particle Collider this week.
Not a weasel this time. But equally fucky.
I’ll post the article at the bottom.

The world slipped into the darkest timeline about 6 years back.

I remember when being alive didn’t feel like a low grade panic attack/badly written season 5 all the time; in the time called before. I have tried to pinpoint it. The moment where god threw up his hands and said fuck the world. But really, he left a long time ago. Childhood cancer exists, god cannot, animal abuse exists, god cannot, the Kardashians are a thing, god cannot be.

Shadows settle on the place, that you left
Our minds are troubled by the emptiness

I think I was looking for a singular event, like the toss of a dice, that catapulted us into whatever muck and mire this is. But maybe that isn’t how this works. The 2014 weasel caused a small rip and we, as humans doing shitty shit (Harambi for example) just kept ripping it wider and wider till the world fell in sometime in 2016.

I used to think Bowie was part of the rift, but I think he saw it coming and just went home.

We made it through 2016 with the clowns and the clown in office. And it just kept getting weirder.

And here we are.

Now what?

I cannot see a way forward, I have no choice but to look back.

Spotify gave me my year in review.

Ben Howard, Sigur Ros, Lumineers, Hozier, all good things.

But Youth by Daughter? My most played song?

No, no this will not do.

Destroy the middle, it’s a waste of time, from the perfect start to the finish line.

Well shit.

If the super depressing song fits, lets analyze it shall we? An interpretive dance.

Historically speaking I do a year in review around now anyways.

Why wouldn’t I?

Its over right?

Or close to it.

It looks like I will be leaving the exact same place I left, exactly 3 years to the day, and for as much that has changed in the last 3 years, the next few months are looking eerily similar.

Are we looping?

What did I miss?

I can’t see the future, but I will bet money that Giant and I end up on a couch watching the Illusionist again, hopefully without the Norovirus this time, I think we are still immune. February will be the beginning of a different journey into surgery and recovery instead of driving the unknown. But a trip alone into the abyss with a long recovery period and tumultuous change just the same.

Groundhog day, year 3.

Maybe I can get it right this time.

So what did I miss?

If you’re still breathing, you’re the lucky ones, cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs.

That is a little too true.

So why is a 6 year old song coming back to haunt me at the end of the world?

It really is a beautiful song; painful ones often are.

Collecting names of the lovers that went wrong

When Saturn dances across the sky, depending on where his feet land, we get lessons upon motherfucking lessons or, déjà vu and a whole lot of history repeating.

The last 3 years he has had all the grace of an angry, drunk, white guy on the dance floor at a wedding.

I saw a meme, and I will try to find it and add it here, about what Papa Cronos aka Father Time aka Saturn stole from each of the signs in the last 3 years. Accurate as fuck. All sanity, hope, magic gone. Until it wasn’t, then it was again, then it wasn’t and now it’s really gone. How many times did I almost die in Perdition…too many.  Punch drunk and drunk drunk. Trying to stay out of the path of the inebriated uncle at the wedding and failing miserably. Gemini…shocking situations huh? Shocked I lived.

Well I’ve lost it all, I’m just a silhouette
A lifeless face that you’ll soon forget
My eyes are damp from the words you left
Ringing in my head, when you broke my chest

You win. I give up.

Been broken so many times I’m not even pieces anymore, just a fine powder. Add some water and fire, I can make a whole new vessel just to have some Hulk come along and smash. Is that what is supposed to happen?

I suppose, looping back to the beginning, if it wasn’t just one singular even that launched us into the darkest timeline, it cannot be one singular event to launch us out.

The cranberry juice guy was a good start, doesn’t erase anything but he was a tiny speck of light in the dark. Dolly Parton becoming a saint to take Carrie Fisher’s place. Saturn is leaving the station he has occupied for the last 3 years and moving into the dreamier, less harsh sign of Aquarius and chillin’ in the sky with Jupiter for a lil bit.

I don’t have any answers, I don’t even know what questions to ask anymore.

Wait, maybe I do.

In 2014 I was taught to ask ‘how does it get better than this’ whether things were good or bad.
I have fallen out of that practice and I once found it soothing.
Maybe I will go back to that.
2014 was pretty good. Saturn was just entering Sagittarius, there was some love, some loss, a lot of lessons and the first time I ever heard that song.

2014 was my first year of becoming what I am now, and I could not have made it through the last 3 without the 3 before that. I know this.

3 years from now I will be a slightly different person, maybe still in the same place but I will be far enough removed from now to see what I was supposed to learn.

And if you’re in love, then you are the lucky one
‘Cause most of us are bitter over someone
Setting fire to our insides for fun
To distract our hearts from ever missing them
But I’m forever missing him
And you caused it

Exotic hyperons interact with protons at CERN

I shouldn’t be writing this.

I am way too biased.

Or, maybe I should.

I am super ultra mega qualified.

And I believe it can be justified.

I’ve been to every point of the compass rose when it comes to cheating and the halfway points in between.

Done it to others, had it done to me, cleaned up the messes when it has happened to my friends and I have been the mistress more than once.

R.M. Drake has been on A rotation on my newsfeed lately.

This.

This is important. A justification of sorts.

I refuse to be the bad guy for not living up to the expectations and ideals of someone who cannot be bothered to know me.

That is both lazy and illogical on their part.

Want to dictate someone’s every move? Go get a puppy or a puppet.

I don’t need to be trained, and I am a real girl. No strings needed, no leash required. Treat me right and I will return of my own accord.

Do I think cheating is great?

No.

I don’t.

But also, I think monogamy is toxic as fuck so there is that then.

I also know enough about myself and the world to now that the way I feel about things is not the only way things can be thought of.

Not my body, not my business what you do with it.

Do you boo.

But maybe listen to what I have to say before you right me off as a crazy slut with no boundaries.

Too many people in our lives have these false narratives about what they think we should be doing; what they think we should be. How they want us to fit them and how we should behave.
According to whom?

Am I not the boss of me? You go be the boss of you.

This dictatorship towards others leaves very little room for personal growth, truth and exploration. This constant bending and breaking and getting squished inside boxes that never fit, with labels that don’t match who we are.

It happened to me. More than once.

I couldn’t always find the exit. So sometimes I smashed through walls and made my own door.
Not subtle or graceful by any stretch. But I couldn’t stay where I was.

Especially not the last time.

Yesterday I was hit upside the head with the last time I cheated.

Like he sauntered into my inbox mere hours after I spoke of him.

It was weird, not gonna lie.

Remember that time I had a whole bunch of money and an apartment I really loved? (just testing)

I haven’t spoken to him in years. I cannot recall our last interaction, if it was good bad or indifferent.

I speak of him sometimes. He was my first healthy venture into the world of polyamory.

But not to him. Not until yesterday.

10 years ago this coming Super Bowl Sunday, when I was still trapped on the farm and really thought all hope was lost, he messaged me out of the blue.

If I had to guess, we hadn’t spoken since a really shitty break up a year or 2 prior. That time is very fuzzy for me. I just remember him asking about my tits and football.

He threw me a lifeline and like the drowning girl I was, I took it and didn’t let go. Hauling myself hand over hand to safety and sanity in an ocean of shit.

For he record. I hesitated. I had made vows and agreements and whether they were fair or sane, I made them.

2 months later I was sneaking out to sleep with him at every possible opportunity.

I’m telling all y’all it was a sabotage.

My ex husband had his mistress living in my house. I went back to an ex-boyfriend while still keeping one foot in my marriage.

No further justification needed right?

Technically, no, not really.

Literally no one except ex husband took any issue with what I was doing.

Shoulda coulda woulda left.

But at the time it did not seem possible.

So I did what I had to do to survive.

In an email to a friend I stated, “I was going to die or go insane, so I cheated.”

I was the least loved person in the house. Any dignity or ego I had shredded into nothing.

I really had lost the will to live.

The farm that was once Thunderdome had become a never ending episode of Survivor on a horrific loop. The 3 people I lived with doing their best to torture and banish me.

Good job guys, it worked. I left it to rot and ruin and built myself a new life. Several since really.

I did what I had to do to survive the circumstances I was in until I could change those circumstances.

I will not apologize.

I honestly don’t think I would have survived had it not been for my…mister, is that what we call male mistresses? I don’t fucking know. I think I named him the Ninja before. Ninja it is.

I had actually become completely accustomed to being misused and very misunderstood.
I had begun to think it was normal, that that was how things are.
At least when I was with him, I felt something that wasn’t sadness or rage or uncomfortably numb.

He didn’t promise me the world. I had hurt him too badly in the past for him to write a future with me in it, I don’t blame him for that at all.

He did what I cosmically needed him to do.

Showed me there was a world beyond the one I was trapped in. Reminded me that I existed, and that I was once happy and could be again.

He was a band-aid on a gaping chest wound. I know that now. But he slowed the bleeding just enough that I got my strength back and for that I am grateful.

I had to leave, take the knives out for once and for all so I could heal instead of impaling myself on the same sharp shit over and over. Constantly bleeding out.

And while there are raging narcissists like my ex husband for example who will cheat to fill the giant black holes where their souls ought to be, happy people don’t cheat. But, ultimately, he wasn’t happy, and as much as he tried to blame me for it, it wasn’t my fault. Nor was it his fault I was unhappy.

We just weren’t.

I know this is going to be a huge bone of contention with people who have been cheated on.

Sorry, but I believe this to be true.

I don’t like words like ‘blame’ and ‘fault’. I also don’t like the idea that I might end up in a situation where I am the only source of happiness for someone and that somehow my punishment for NOT being their everything will be their infidelity.

I accept that I can’t be that for someone, furthermore, I don’t want to be.
I have my own shit to do.

A lot of happy people I know are also polyamorous. Some practice it, others just understand it.
These are the ones who have a healthy idea of love and relationships.

They don’t rely on one source or one person for contentment and sustenance.

No one should really, it is a really too big a burden to place on one person.

And that is where I will accept some responsibility for the actions of my ex-husband, and my actions and reactions.

I did put that burden on him.

While simultaneously demanding he adhere to a picture of him I had painted of him in my head. Yes, he handed me the brush and some of the pigments when he lied to me and edited what he really wanted, and who he really was. But I did the same thing. Feigned contentment when I wanted and needed more than he could provide. Hid the pieces of myself that I fly like multi-colored flags now, announcing my presence and place in the world.

We both failed, ourselves and each other.

He tried to hide me away, but I let him.

He tried to amputate pieces of me, but I laid there and handed him the knife while demanding a limb for a limb.

Neither one of us was ultimately happy, or we wouldn’t have done what we did.

We weren’t compatible.

Like not at all.

I see way too many relationships like that and still participate in some personal relationships built solely on convenience and habit instead of symbiosis. Final Boss was that. Someone to scratch an itch I couldn’t reach, and I tried to make something out of it. Whoops.

But I am getting better.

None of my relationships prior to 7 years ago were built on any kind of understanding, because I didn’t understand myself.

Just one recipe for disaster after another and quite a few that I committed to imploding over and over again. Jamming puzzle pieces together instead of looking for ones that fit.

Ex-husband was a different monster in that knew who he was, didn’t like himself at all, and tried to make me responsible for fixing him and filling an ideal that couldn’t possibly exist in one woman.
I had no idea who I was and thought I could adapt and change into what he needed.

Dishonesty. All of it.

An easily toppled house of cards and lies and every time it would come crashing down, we would hastily rebuild it exactly like it was before.

The literal definition of insanity.

It was never going to work, and I cannot get that time back.

But I won’t dwell on my old prison, nor will I apologize for breaking out.

Part of me did die in that house, she had to so the rest of me could live.

I met you and suddenly I find myself needing to know the plural for apocalypse.
Riley Finn, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I didn’t check my memories when I woke up this morning.

I usually do.

Got a notification reminding me, so I looked.

There is a LOT in there.

Yep.

Martyrdom is exhausting at best. All sacrifice, for what?

Saint Sarah, patron saint of gypsies. For reals, look it up.
I look after those who wander, while I myself wander?
Great, thanks.
And here I am 7 months from homelessness without a clue where to go or what to do.
Pray to myself maybe?

And weirdly, or not so weirdly, “Maybe God is Trying to tell you Something” just came on my Spotify playlist.

It’s been dead air and blackness for a couple weeks now.

Go ahead god, I am listening.

I had a vision of the future where I was happy. I sat down and did the actual paperwork and budget for it and realized it was a practical possiblity.

But then it got snatched away and replaced with the nothing I am currently navigating.

It is dark here.

I have stood at the edges of so many abysses and never seen nothing like this. I’ll jump when it’s time, I always do.

A year ago today I was in Erie Pennsylvania, a week before I was supposed to return to Perdition, a week after I realized I was leaving finally, and I had a way out.

We got stuck in Erie. This stretch of impassable highway, going 10 miles an hour not sure where the road was or if we were even on it. It had happened before numerous times. That last bit of meteorological fuckery stretching out the last 4 hours to home into a half a day or more. Why the good people of Pennsylvania built a road that close to the lake where the snow flies sideways for ¼ of the year is beyond me.

Last year we thought we were going to have to stay the night, stopped for gas and snacks and sanity and somehow managed to get into a clear band between the blizzards and chased it all the way home.

In other words, we didn’t think we were gonna make it, but we made it.

And I too will make it even if I have no idea how. I can either wait out the storm or seize an opportunity of clarity and just keep going.

6 years ago it was this…

Life isn’t something I have. It’s not something that happens to me.
It’s something I participate in, wander around with child like wonderment at the beauty of it, and something I create with my thoughts and actions.
On that note, and being single for once, I have given a lot of thought on what kind of love I want to have.
Someone called me and that boy from high school ‘Mickey and Mallory’, but that isn’t it. I don’t want a body count.
For a while I was fixated on the idea of Johnny and June. But I can be more than a pillar and a muse.
I want Ricky Fitz and Jane Burnham, instant and total acceptance of each other’s weird.
I want Tyler Durden and Marla Singer, with the godlike sex, and the open ending, he came around in the end and the world fell apart while they stood together and watched it.
There is no pre-written conclusions here. and I can imagine them happy after the credits roll.

Wow, I am still exactly where I was before I even started this blog. Not okay.

Today was the day 6 years ago that I scheduled my first post for the solstice.

12.13.14 I let go of that boy from high school and the toxicity that came with it. 6 years and 4 days.

---

4 men have reached out to me over the last 4 days.

One I have known since grade 7, one since 10^th grade, one was the aforementioned Mr. Solo from my 18^th/19^th year on the planet, and last night Giant checked in.

2/4 did this weird thing (last night, within moments of each other) wherein they used my full name and demanded to know if I was alright and safe.

They all know I would never cry wolf, not even with a wolf at the door.

I am safe, but I’m not alright.
(You knew that or you wouldn’t be here)
And not to be ungrateful, but let’s say I wasn’t safe…whatchoo gonna do about it?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m far from ungrateful. Giant almost always shows up exactly when I need him before I even realize I do need him.

But these problems I have right now are existential.
They don’t have solutions.

Men like to solve things.

I stumbled on this truth a few weeks back, that I don’t need something to do, I just need somewhere to BE.

I have to accept my lot in life or change my life.
Or just my perspective maybe.

It’s all posthumous autopsies over here.

I asked Solo last night, “instead of going over what went wrong with us, maybe we should look at what we did right.”

Him: A lot I think
We did love each other

Me: It was love wasn’t it

That kinda hit me like a train in my chest. We did love each other and it didn’t end up mattering.

He cited me taking care of him. And I did.

That is kinda what I do.

But I was 19 at the time. It wasn’t what I did then. But it might have been the beginning of becoming that girl.

What teenager put the needs of someone else before her own like that?

Me, I guess. Weird that it took 20 years in between being with him and then 7 more of being alone to realize all of this.

And hindsight says ‘yes’.

That was the beginning.

I also exhibited the emotional maturity at the time to accept that something was good without having a label on it.

Been practicing that for years and years now it seems.

He says we were kids experiencing grown up love and had no idea what to do with it.

He isn’t wrong.

I accept the term ‘grown up love’ with quite a bit of bitterness. I have years of anecdotal proof that most grown-ups do not have a fucking clue about love. But, at 19 and 20 respectively, he and I stumbled on it. The comfort we felt around each other allowed us to safely explore the people we were going to become.

3 out of 4 of the men who I spoke to last night have, at times, expressed different levels of regret for treating me the way they did in the time called before. I would have happily dated any of them. Tried to actually.

Giant no.

But that is different. He is the practice test for all the things I have learned… and I’ve passed with flying colors every time, even when the lessons and the questions change.

He says he has questions for me. Things he regrets not asking.
I don’t know what they are.
I don’t mind when he is cryptic.
I promised to answer them when I get back.

I feel bad for him actually. He seems to always find me right after a storm. The levees break and he just stands in the rush of my thoughts and my words getting drowned in my inability to shut the fuck up. I can hear myself talking way too much and I cannot stop myself. It has always been this way now that I think about it, and he is still here.

My tattooer friend from grade 10 sent me a long message asking me to see myself as more than the sum of my physical parts. I am trying.

They are all trying really hard to get me to see what they see, and I am grateful for it. Willfully blind but grateful.

I haven’t felt inclined to lie or sugarcoat how I am feeling and that in itself is a gift from god.

Solo says I am a good woman. They all do.

I needed to hear it.

I am not inclined to argue, but I end up alone regardless of my goodness.

And herein lies the existential dilemma. Do I continue to love the way I do and have that be reward unto itself?

Memories say yes.

Love these kings dressed in rags who have amnesia*, until they remember who they are.

No further instructions.

Just this.

Source*

Why You Should Date A Normal Girl Versus A Wild Mystic.

I knew today was gonna be a two-fer.

I have been purposefully avoiding my blog and the internet trying to write another book.
But like a siren, she calls to me (U2)

I made it 2 or 3 days.

Flipped from 8 hours scrolling and one writing to 5 writing, 2 tanning and still spent some time upon the interwebz. But less than before.

33 000 words on the new book. Not in 3 days, altogether (6 months now?) But all things considered. Not bad. 3000 in the 3 days I tried.

Zero today but they can’t all be diamonds.

Inspiration exists but it must find you working. Picasso.

For comparison I can churn out a blog post (1000-1500) words before my first cup of coffee is fully consumed. Pour a second, sip, edit and voila. Ta da. Fairly instant gratification. Maybe that is part of the problem.

I have to break so many loops, one of them being beating myself up for the things I didn’t do when I had the time.

I forgive myself for the things I didn’t accomplish during the apocalypse.

Life happens, and rarely goes how we planned it.

I can’t plan now and am anxiously awaiting the transition from that particular fact being a source of terror to liberation.
I remember feeling free once. I know I did.
All this cosmic fuckery and eclipse portal energy that is normally reserved for the summer months is occurring in Sagittarius, the archer, the bowman, the personification of the reconciliation between man and beast. High energy fire sign shenanigans, like the Lion’s Gate portal that opens in the sign of Leo, but the energy here is more mature and refined, less ego and more forethought.

Add to that, the bow and arrow.

That is exactly the sensation I am feeling right now, a rapid pull backwards into things I thought I had conquered and dealt with, but I haven’t.

The tenseness of pulling forced backwards and the need to hold steady from back here and aim properly.

I am getting pulled way way way back.

I am 19.

I wrote earlier today that once upon a time I used to like to dance, in bars, for fun.

I did.

I don’t know what happened to that girl who felt confident enough to do so, but she’s long gone.

I don’t know who said what or what happened that took that away from me. But I am too self-conscious now. Which is super bizarre considering I am a stripper and I dance on stage in front of a crowd for a living. I don’t know how it is different, it just is.

But let’s go back and visit the girl who could dance for fun, shall we?

I am going to age myself here, but I have a very vivid memory of Lenny Kravitz singing ‘are you gonna go my way’ and me smiling in a crowd of people, moving my hips and being happy.

And I have a very vivid memory of walking up to the bar to get a cranberry juice and seeing ‘him’.

I agonized last night about what to nickname him, everyone gets a nickname.

He was just gonna be LLTL, long lean tanned and lovely.

He was.

But he Solo’ed me 3 months prior to that night in the bar.

My girlfriend from public school was getting married and we had these events called ‘Stag and Does’. The couple would sell drink tickets and have raffles for prizes and raise money for the wedding. I am sure they exist outside of the tiny town I grew up in by other names.

And I wasn’t old enough to go as a guest.

I was 18 though, and old enough to tend bar. So I did, and I was good at it.

I served this boy I had never seen before. And I knew almost everybody.

He was beautiful. Lithe, tanned skin, cheekbones for days. And cocky as fuuuuuuuuuck.

And at some point during the night he was climbing up he stairs to the bathroom of the community center rec room as I was climbing down and in a moment of brave I stopped on the last step, spun around and said “hey, you’re gorgeous.” He smiled this megawatt smile and said, “I know.”

I think it was March.

By June I had turned 19, had a new tit and I ran into Mr. Solo at the bar.

I got brave one more time and made sure we went home together.

This went on for a few months at least, throughout that summer into the fall, 27 years ago.

So why bring it up now…

Glad you asked.

Once upon a time, probably 14 years ago when myspace was a thing I got a message from Mr. Solo.

He apologized for what happened at the end of that summer.

And what happened was this.

He looked me in the face and said, “I had fun with you but there’s girls you fuck and there’s girls you take home to mom.”

He started dating a girl he could take home to mom. I can see her face, she actually had really nice hair (don’t they all), but her name escapes me. A year younger than me and one of the popular girls. I was never popular, and I didn’t know if I was good amongst the moms, no one ever took me home to meet one.

I spun around again, probably 9 months to the day we met, and I walked away.

I was pretty upset. It was a shitty thing to do and say.

His roommates didn’t like me.

He rented a house with a bunch of dudes and they all worked shift work at the nuclear power plant.
They would sneer while he and I were snuggled on a scratchy, plaid, hand-me-down couch in the living room and listening to oldies.
He loved Janis Joplin. I loved all of it. The cuddles, the company.
The sneering and shitty commentary not so much.

His house was down the street from mine. And every Friday and Saturday night (prior to the aforementioned conversation) for months on end I would go dance with my friends until he was done drinking with his and we would go home together. In the morning I would walk the short walk home, shower and go about my week. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I was happy.

His bedroom had knock off Holly Hobbie wallpaper and we would giggle about the big headed kids. We fucked of course, a lot, but we talked a lot too. I remember waking up and telling him about a dreams I had while the moon glow came through the window and covered the bed in this beautiful blue light.

He always held me while we were sleeping. He always listened when I spoke.

He was the closest I had ever gotten to having a boyfriend. And even though there was no label on it, it felt good and real.

I didn’t know at the time that he would stay awake and watch me sleep too.

He didn’t just apologize back in the myspace days. He said I was the one who got away.

That he had massive regrets.

I saw him 8 or 9 years ago. I have a weird feeling it was the weekend that I went to another ex’s wedding, the one who kept saying my name instead of his bride to be’s. Whoops. Must have been another vortex of cosmic madness.

After a nice lunch and catch up session at the very bar we used to hook up at, he walked me to my car and stole a kiss. Said something about not wanting to add one more regret about me to his life.

And I talked to him last night.

He was just checking on me. He used to do that a lot.

He disappeared a couple years ago, off my friends list.

I finally asked him why last night.

He said he was jealous, and he didn’t like seeing me get hurt.

I didn’t dig any deeper. I honestly don’t know which part of the parade, in the festival of pain that is my dating life, was the trigger there. I don’t need to know.

My need to archive and be historically accurate all the time is waning these days.
Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. (Steve Miller Band)
I just know history repeats itself.

Just like I knew Solo’s birthday even before I checked, August 4^th, of course it fucking is.

I asked permission to write this so I could try to sort through everything.
He said okay.

Me: You unfriended me a long while back Can you please tell me why?

Him: Basically, I was an idiot. I think I was jealous.

Me: Okay, I didn’t understand

Him: I didn’t like that you kept getting hurt and knowing you didn’t deserve it

Me: It seems like that’s just my life
Actually 90% of my relationships have been like ours was. Like disturbingly eerily similar

Him: Ya?

Me: Guys get really excited about me and then bolt.
You used to watch me sleep (and you left anyways)

Him: Ya, it was cute.

(it was)

Me:Was that a ‘me’ thing or is that a thing you do with women?

Him: I didn’t do it before you, or since

Me:I was 19 ______. 27 years of living the same relationship
What voodoo did you do?
Maybe you could write a letter on my behalf advising them not to run

(pause)

Me: Do you still have regrets?

Him: With you? Definitely.
I should have listened with my heart instead of my ears.

Me: Your friends were pretty douchey
Or is there more to the story?

Him: No, that’s the story. It never ends with me not being an idiot.

Me: I’m sorry
I wasn’t very brave either

Him: Don’t be sorry. I could have fixed it and I didn’t. That’s on me.

Me: I could’ve said “um no, you’re not dumping me”
I’ve heard that is a thing
Instead of just walking home a crying about it

Him: Ya, but I should have realized what I did to you. Youth is wasted on the young.

It truly is.

But what if we aren’t young anymore and what if there is some cosmic fuckery pulling off old bandages and showing me this is just the same thing that happens to me over and over. I’m finding no comfort here.

I don’t want to be a regret any more than I want regrets of my own.

How do I stop this?

I don’t know what I am supposed to do.

It isn’t even new information.
He was the first to do the thing, and the first to admit regret.

But there have been so many others.

Am I supposed to dig my heels in and refuse to go when I am being exchanged for ‘wifey material’?

Had I found the brave to say “No, this is good and we both know it now shut up and fuck me.” Instead of returning his hoodie when asked to do so, cheeks aflame with shame and cocooning in my room would it have made a difference?

I’ve never actually tried that.

The closest I ever got was asking Giant ‘why’ and continuing to sleep with Final Boss after the fact. I slept with both of them after the fact.

No.

What’s past has passed.

Everything went the way it was supposed to.

I just wish I knew what I was supposed to take from this before I launch into the unknown yet again.

And maybe this is it.

Maybe I never asked them if they were really truly sure that they really truly wanted me to leave was because I didn’t feel worthy of being there in the first place.

And a big part of me still doesn’t.

I just accept what is given instead of asking for what I want.

Cosmic energy like what we just experienced is manic, like the worm at the end of a bottle of tequila. We were already drunk and this took it next level.
Euphoric and intoxicating and absolutely leaves all emotions raw and exposed.
Then there is the hangover.

I have an eclipse hangover.

We were told to dig back through 2017 for lessons between the darkening of the moon and the sun.
But my lessons are always the same.

I do the same shit over and over.

Make someone into something they are not, and I end up like Ke$ha at the beginning of Prayin.

“Am I dead? Or is this one of those dreams? Those horrible dreams that seem like they last forever? If I am alive, why? Why? If there is a God or whatever, something, somewhere, why have I been abandoned by everyone and everything I’ve ever known? I’ve ever loved? Stranded. What is the lesson? What is the point? God, give me a sign, or I have to give up. I can’t do this anymore. Please just let me die. Being alive hurts too much.”

To clarify. I don’t want to die. But I don’t really want to live either.

My life is just a void now. Return of the Haboob.

I get up. I feel like shit. I try to keep going. But going to what? Back to the attic? Then what?

At least my sweatpants are there.

There are so many unknowns. More than those the plague has created, which was already a fucking lot.

At least in 2017 I was brave. Not anymore. Punch drunk and hand shy.

Frozen in fear now.

I wasn’t really dealing with what was vexing me.

I thought I was.

But the other day I had a 2 hour long text conversation with someone I have known since I was 14.
And some extra truth came busting out like the silicone in my tit.

It’s leeching into my body and making me hurt. Bad.

He originally messaged me regarding writing erotica. Then we spoke of his divorce and finally my tits.

I can’t imagine how that one simple seemingly insignificant thing could have such a staggeringly significant effect on a young girl’s psyche, and the ripple effects that could cause.

Ripples became waves and I am drowning here.

That is what is bothering me. And now my good tit hath betrayed me.
Et tu good tit?

Something is wrong with the other one too. Feels like an air bubble trapped behind it.

I have been dealing with this since before he and I met. I started seeing my reconstructive surgeon in the 8^th grade. I met Scott in grade 9 or 10.

My first surgery was a disaster, second also went badly.

3rd was great.

This was the 4th and they’re making me too sick to move.

It doesn’t matter if time has passed or the situation is different. 

I am still that girl.

I’m 15 years old waking up from surgery, in pain, hopes crushed, a more deformed tit than the nothing that I started with, bawling while my mother screams at me. I am giving myself pneumonia at Christmas because I didn’t want to go home and be resented or pitied.

Or I am 18 going through the same shit that happened at 15. With the same ugly results. T’was a blessing when that one broke.

Or I’m 35 sitting in a freezing barn 3 days after surgery. Crying and getting screamed at, then abandoned so my husband could go fuck someone else in my house. An hour later I have a coat full of baby goat. The goat’s foot hooked into the binding holding my boobs into place and pulled it loose. I didn’t care. I got the goat fed and settled in for the night and collapsed into a depression sleep without fixing my bandages and they have been crooked since. Her name is Layla and she still lives.

Or I’m 40 away from the farm, sitting in another surgeon’s office getting poked and prodded while he draws incision lines on my skin. He proposed a lot of incisions. I didn’t go back.

I’m not creating scenarios. I’m remembering what happened. 

The good news is, my friend is an incredible tattooer and if I cannot accept the scars that will come from getting these hideous things out and amended, there is another option.

I had another surgery when I was 19.

It went well. Like super awesome, non traumatic day surgery with really symmetrical results. It was the day before my birthday and I really pissed my parents off by going to the bar the next night.

Honestly? I felt fine. My pocket was well established, I had 3 stitches internal through an old scar. I didn’t drink at the time. I was sober from my 18^th Christmas until I was mid 20’s.

The same Christmas party that I learned I was a really good bartender, I also realized I was a really bad drunk. I threw up a lot, on my boss’s girlfriend’s shoes.

Out of all the things I had done drunk, and there were some stupid, violent, terrible things…that was the thing that stopped me. I loved my job, I needed it to exist. So, I quit doing the thing that might make me lose it.

Didn’t stop me from going to the bar.

I used to love to dance, on dance floors, at bars, sober even. I don’t anymore, the idea terrifies me, and I have no idea why.

Everything is terrifying me lately.

My girlfriend went online for me and looked at some reconstructive surgery results, post mastectomy etc. and said the results looked really promising.

I can’t look.

I have been under the knife and come out disappointed too many times. I can’t see myself in those women.

At least she acknowledged the difference between being excited about elective surgery and what I am going though now. Too many people think I should be happy, and I honestly can’t be.

Yes, there is a chance that everything will be great and obviously better than now.

But…

I am going on well over a year of sickness with no idea of the cause (until recently) and I have a 75% personal failure rate and the absolute bullshit clincher is, I didn’t even need these tits, all I really had to do was leave my shitty husband and put on a bit of weigh.

At least, after talking to Njava and Scott, I feel a little less alone. Mandabear is letting me stay with her while I recover. Giant will come check on me too. I have a contingency plan of sorts.

And the surgery itself and the physical part of the recovery isn’t even what is bothering me so much as who will I be if I can’t dance anymore?

What if I end up too scarred and hideous to work?

How will I get by without the job that has kept me safe and fed for 22 years?
Who will I even be?
Where will I go?

I already feel fundamentally unlovable, 36 years of tit issues and I have never figured it out.

None of this is getting answered any time soon. I won’t know until I know.

And I am guessing everything I ever wanted is on the other side of this fear.

---

Author’s note.
This is not a plastic surgery vanity thing and even if it was, that’s my business.
But, to clarify…
I have a congenital deformity called Poland’s Anomaly and have written several articles about it.
Just use the search bar at the top right of the blog’s main page or Google and type in Poland’s Anomaly.

With Saturn leaving Capricorn and joining up with Jupiter, I have been charged with reconciling and figuring out what lessons we have missed from December 2017 specifically.

Not just me, every fucking body.

Where were you? What were you doing? What have you failed to fix or accept? What did you do wrong?

Good thing I have this blog so I can go back and look and see exactly where I was and what I was doing.

At the beginning of December 2017 I was pontificating about how things weren’t so bad the year prior.

And they weren’t. Looks like I had Big Spoon and Giant keeping me company after the Last One left.

Cruz was the spring/summer, and that was a whole big lesson on not building a relationship on sex alone. And seeing who someone truly was the first time they showed you.

November was setting up the house I didn’t want to be in and soon after left. My first trip to Newfoundland to heal from the Last One in October.

It truly was one of the best spaces I have ever created. And I did it alone.

No regrets or unfinished business there except a dryer full of my favorite linens that disappeared.

New Year’s Eve was spent finishing up the final edit on Half Wild Thing, after 4 or 5 years of not doing that. So that was calm and nice. Cathartic and necessary.

January I went to Mexico, check, here again, likely leaving 3 years to the day I arrived.

But what about that cosmically important part in between when Cronos was handing out life lessons?

I have 21 articles to tell me all about it.

Roy Moore almost got elected, #metoo was happening, I wrote about my desire to have a gangbang or I got banned from Facebook and had to republish the article with a different title and featured image. I think the latter.

I went to the secret wedding.

Ben Howard took his place in the A-rotation on my speakers and the soundtrack to my life, alongside Lord Huron, which is aptly playing right now.

To the ends of the earth would you follow me?

And I think I figured it out. Fuck

December was Florida. The journey through the Sierra Madres this time made me extra reminiscent for those last 7 years of journeys to peace and waves and ocean.

West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home, country roads.

It did look and feel like that, just with unfamiliar palms and cacti and the mountains were higher.
The tunnels and bridges were different but beautiful. But still, take me home.

I don’t know if I had made the decision to move yet. I must have.

The clincher there was the disaster trip with Panda to Florida, after which she told me she had hated me for a while. Even though she spent 10 days being a parasite in my happy place. But I know things weren’t great leading up to that trip, because she apologized when she got there and took it back when we got home. 3 years of friendship gone in an instant.

I also finally acknowledged the existence of twin flames and renounced my interest in participating in such nonsense. I gravitated back to a soulmate instead. Giant and I were going through some shit separately and healing together. A girl, with really good hair, tried to trap him with a baby. Bullet dodged. We held each other a little tighter in the night after that.

But I would never trap or manipulate anyone. And we still love each other. That wasn’t the lesson.

Twin flames do exist and it’s not a choice to be made, just a reality to accept and adapt to or run from.

I think I figured it out.

I made that boy from Newfoundland into something he wasn’t. And I made a big life changing move after he showed me the truth of who he was… and I suffered for it. I held onto what was said at the beginning and ignored the rest.

I think I do that a lot.

I focus so hard on what they were, I can’t see what they are.

It is easy to be excited about me at the beginning, I am shiny and new. I am low maintenance and high sex drive. I am acceptance personified.

Then there is this…

Most men’s predecessors were not leaders. They were men who served under those leaders and as such could only emulate those men in hope of touching to some extent the divine masculine force. Consequently, it’s those impersonations that ended up being passed down, and that’s why there’s no real explanation for any of those behaviors. That’s what begets the innate frustration; a need to tow the party line with no understanding of why and no willingness among any in the party to question it.

Women teach about feminine power all the time, whether they realize it or not, in insults just as well as in instruction imparted as a rite of passage. So whether they use it or not, many are in possession of that power.

And men who lack their own will quickly latch onto women who possess it. Because women can confer power to an extent (consider the effect Erykah Badu is said to have on men) because she can force him to grow into a force to match her own. This is likewise why those same men later cut and run; the Work is too much for them and they couldn’t handle it.

Arias Ethaniel Ri’Chard

I do think there is something about me that forces men to grow or run.

I also think I have tainted the life experiences of a couple young ones wherein they have known me and can no longer settle for less than what I give. Maybe that’s a blessing, they don’t have to go through the mess of lesser love.

I know this endless search and how painful it is though, to be wrong over and over.

I’d spare us all if I could.

But maybe that is part of it.

I think the not knowing is worse than knowing. The atrophy of acceptance without the thrill of trying.

I tried.

12.12 portal is open, inside the eclipse portal that closes in 2 days, with the Great conjunction a week after that. And a new moon close to the new year.

It is a powerful time. The sun is going to go dark and so am I.

I was a-ready to die for you, baby
Doesn’t mean I’m ready to stay
What good is livin’ a life you’ve been given
If all you do is stand in one place

I’m on a river that winds on forever
Follow ’til I get where I’m goin’
Maybe I’m headin’ to die but I’m still gonna try
I guess I’m goin’ alone

Lord Huron, Ends of the Earth

fuck, i wrote this whole thing and forgot to go back far enough.

The Aftermath