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
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