January 2021

I went my entire life without a decent nickname. I hand them out like candy. Well thought out, not always flattering, but to the point that if I said Mike, or Joe or Bob, literally no one knows who I am talking about.

Once upon and Annex 20 years ago, I was Sarah with the long hair. It was long, down past my ass. The other Sarah had a bob. Made sense. Lacked imagination, but it made sense.

In perdition I dated a guy, very briefly, we called him White Hat. He told me he had me saved in his phone as the Good Witch.

Things ended badly, then I got over it. But I shirked the nickname because of where it came from. And then I really got over it.

It has never mattered where or how things happen to us, it is what we do with the gifts we are given.

I am what I am.

He saw it.

And I see it too.

I’m seeing a lot of things lately.

---

I have done myself a disservice with my hyper independence and my free giving of love and support while asking for nothing in return.

It is near impossible for me to ask for help.

I pushed away a man I love because it took me over a year to wrap my head around the idea that he liked being needed, that it satisfied him. It doesn’t matter anymore. Just another lesson.

I have started reparations with my family, but after 32 years of not being around, it is difficult.

And now with the pandemic, physical closeness is an impossibility.

I am having surgery sometime soon. Don’t know exactly when.

And by leaving perdition, I have left behind all of the people who could physically care for me.

I used to have 5 besties in the town I live in, that’s why I moved there.
One is gone forever, one heading to perdition herself, the other one just can’t, and two moved away while I was gone.

My son has really left the nest this time. Lives 2 hours away with a union protected job and is now enjoying his first apartment of his very own.

Attica is 3 provinces over nesting in her own way.

Most of my friends exist only online.

I could ask a few other people for help, but I haven’t really maintained any relationships since I left 3 years ago.

I feel like I went home, shoulders slumped in defeat. And it isn’t even home anymore. Just where my stuff is. It’s the roof I have been given and it is a good roof, but it isn’t mine. I never planned on staying, one perdition straight into another. But I am lonely here and I don’t have a job to go to anymore.

When I thought I had Lyme Disease at least I thought, “Okay, I take the meds, get rid of this bacteria in my system and then my body can start healing. Might not be the day I take my last pill, might even be a couple years from then, but I will heal.”

And because I had been quasi functioning with it for x amount of time, we figured about 2 years, I thought I could keep going.

But it wasn’t that. And even as I sit here typing this, more silicone is leaking from my stupid implant and wandering around my body causing havoc.

Take them out, sure, easy answer…but what about the rest of it? How do I get it out of me?

I honestly don’t know what to do and I am scared.

Flashbacks of pneumonia in Milton. 7 days of fever and delirium. Alone.

Well, I had the dogs, Nina nine times, Alice and Mika.

Never underestimate the healing power of 3 dogs refusing to leave your side.

Alice is gone, Mika too. Nina lives with her daddy a million miles away.

Kidlet has the kittens.

It’s just me and my attic and my house plants, and a car that won’t start.

And this is going to be 3 times that 7 days, bare minimum.

I could ask Giant; I might have to. The first 72 hours is going to be near impossible to survive alone. But that runs the risk of forever altering our relationship.

The impending vulnerability is almost as terrifying as the aftermath.

There is a distinct possibility of permanent, life altering mutilation to get these things out.

I am Tobias Funke in Arrested Development, graft versus host. Desperately trying to justify keeping my implants even as I get sicker and sicker every day.

I have headaches, debilitating hip pain that stops my legs from working, lethargy, numbness, inflammation literally everywhere, shooting random pain, dizziness, and vertigo with the occasional fainting spell. I used to drink 4 or 5 times a week to function and that was not sustainable.

I have always had stripping to fall back on and the ability to use my body to support me.

Even with missing one third of the things that make a woman a woman, don’t get at me about this, I am judging myself and no one else. I have a birth defect and it has colored my entire existence.

I have been a dancer on and off for over half my life.

It has saved me from every disaster that has befallen me.

It is an integral part of my identity and my livelihood.

I have always handled everything life has thrown at me. Always survived, but this feels like too much.

Every shake up and loss of this last year and I am not close to being out of the mess.

I have to get through this, there are no other options besides giving up and dying.

And as I looked into my future and saw nothing but blackness, I wondered if that was possible.

Is that what is going to happen? Is my heart going to give out? Has the silicone leeching through my body damaged me in an irreparable way?

Am I always going to feel like this?

I remembered being on a plane last year and hoping to god it would just crash because I couldn’t keep going like this.

I did keep going.

That’s what we do.

Other than once before in my life I never really wanted to give up.

Mid farm fuckery I had a handful of pills ready to swallow and just check out for good.

High school sweetheart called me out of the blue, after 5 years of no contact. He kept me on the phone til the battery died. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone. I kept taking the pills instead two at a time, numbing out instead of checking out.

Eventually I left and things got better. Then worse, then better again.

I always had this tenacity masquerading as optimism, that things might not get better exactly, but they would be different, and I wanted to know what that would feel like.

I don’t have that this time.

I am flip flopping between Eeyore and Chicken Little.

I already know this year is going to be hard, call it a self-fulfilling prophecy if you want, I am past caring.

I am pre-tired.

I am literally always tired.

And I am really scared.

I am okay being alone, but this loneliness and forced isolation is too much.

I know what Chuck Palahniuk said, and I am holding onto that as much as I can.

It is only after we have lost everything that we are free to do anything.

But this is a lot to lose. I feel like everything good and stable in my life is being ripped away from me violently.

I can’t see the other side and my Pollyanna optimism is gone.

My Kittenface girl helped me make a Patreon account.

And this is as close as I can get to asking for help.

Help.

Please.

https://www.patreon.com/sarahthegoodwitch

If it was real, it won’t matter. If it wasn’t real, it doesn’t matter.

I miss knowing what was real.

New moon next Tuesday.

I have Ruby Thewes in my head yelling, “shut that door, it’s freezing, and shut this door it’s freezing.”

Aye Ruby, it is.

Finally shutting that Sagittarian new moon eclipse portal from last month. Dummy me didn’t realize it was still open. I need to pay better attention.

The universe is a big water park apparently, miles and miles of tunnels and slides and long lines.

I hate water parks.

Which is weird because I love water.

I think I took a wrong turn down a portal and I can’t get back to where I was.

We really aren’t supposed to stay in one place forever, I know that. But the loss is so fresh I have barely been able to accept it, much less grieve.

I have no idea where to go. I don’t know where I am.

I have this laundry list of shit I gotta do.

Covid test, quarantine, surgery consultation, Patreon account, see if I can get back to my old Milton routine where I actually did stuff in some semblance of order. I used to get up early, write, schedule posts for the day and then go to work. I need some structure and discipline.
2020 turned into this phenomenon of too much free time and I squandered it.
I’ll go back to work IF it opens, more content and promotion if it doesn’t.
I want to work so bad.
Almost a calendar year of ‘meantime’.
I’ll keep plugging away at the new book and try harder to sell the others. Maybe do part 2 and 3 of Wolf and Witch and get that over with.

I need some closure. I need a map out of here.

I am the Gunslinger slowly going insane because I once existed in a parallel paradigm and it is no longer real, but it was, he was, but he wasn’t and it isn’t.

Apparently Mars started doing a thing last July and it was bad juju, conflicts and skirmishes, cosmic fuckery most foul. It ends today but that is cold comfort, damage is done. Would I have done anything any differently if I knew that before? Maybe, but I didn’t.

Can’t be helped now.

Live through this and you won’t look back ~ Stars

Brian used to make fun of me about knowing where the planets were and attributing anything to them at all really, then he would ask me what the moon was doing. I found that island to be quite backwards though. Full moons were peaceful, new moons were tangly as fuck. So much blood.

January 14^th to 30^th we get a tiny wee retrograde reprieve. Then Papa Mercury does his first backwards dance of 2021. Again for 3 outta 4 weeks during Gemini season. I had a nuclear meltdown over Gelfling last time that happened. June 7^th 2015. I wrote about it so I wouldn’t forget. Irrevocable damage. We are still pleasant to each other, but truth be told, I haven’t thought about him in months, until yesterday’s uncontained explosion. He was supposed to tattoo my stomach last year, I know it won’t hurt if he does it.
Maybe this year or the one after. Time is not a linear thing for him. He lives in the portals I trip through. It is his state of existence.

I don’t care for it.

At least I get to turn 47 the day before that retrograde begins.

6 years of learning what not to do. I still do it anyways.

Yesterday even. No retrograde to blame, just insecure me.

Went too far, said too much, couldn’t shut up even though logic was screaming at me to just stop.
I vividly remembered breaking things with Gelfling, and I kept going.

Some things need to be broken.

I am tired of being good and being quiet and subservient.

Got me stuck here, in nowhere, with nothing.

Questioning my worth and my memories. Was it even real? Was this a game?

Standing in the desert with a mouthful of the things I wish I had said. No idea which way to go.

I know that if was supposed to be elsewhere without a heart full of regret, I would be. No going back now. But I really liked where I was.

And at some point, Brian is going to be right and I can’t gesture broadly at the universe and blame the planets or the moon. It just is what it is.

There are no mistakes, just things you do and things you don’t do. Olivier Martinez

2015 feels like a few months back, probably because the weather is the same now as it was then, and I just repeated a pattern.
I haven’t even been here a month and it feels like years.
2020 flew and stalled.
And none of it feels real.

I guess it wasn’t.

Or it isn’t now.

I will adjust, it’s what I do.

(Gunslinger reference, by Stephen King and Cold Mountain quote, by Charles Frazier)

I never wanted to conquer the world.

I can barely rule myself.

Constantly flying apart. Shattering.

I know the pieces fit because I watched them fall away. Tool Schism

Implosions where I turn to cocoon goo, other ones where I feel like a decanter of liquid dropped in front of a slow motion camera. Those are the worst, knowing it’s coming and having to watch it all fall.

Sarah, smash.

Either way, what’s left is me picking up the pieces, gluing them back together sometimes in haste sometimes meticulously, but I am not sure they are always my pieces.

I might be an amalgam of splinters of the things that broke me.

I have conquered falling apart, and rebuilding.

To the point I almost crave it now.

Things go too good for too long and I start itching for change.

That is usually when change walks into the bar.

Attica seems to think I will be heading back to Newfoundland after this last (contained) explosion.

I hope she is wrong.

I do tend to go back to the sites of detonation looking for pieces I missed.

As much as I love change, I crave consistency too.

I struggle with feeling disposable and impermanent.

It fucking hurts. But like the aching in my hips, I only really notice when it’s gone.

The excitement and palpable relief that occurred at midnight on New Year’s Eve was, well, palpable. I felt the earth breathe a deep sigh. It was enough to lighten the collective just a bit.

But then the next day or 3 we all had to get back to the business of living and nothing significant changed.

It happens every year.

I think the magic of new years and Christmas is reserved for children.

Tomorrow is Epiphany, and I prefer those and that.

But I already had mine.

2021 is just going to be 2012 over again. Without the added conundrum of Mars retrograde, or the tricksiness of a leap year.

And that is alright.

5 X 5 like Faith says.

The year of the Worst Christmas on record. I almost died.

The last time I went near ex hubby was that Valentine’s. By St. Paddy’s I was half tucked into a lackadaisical relationship. Lost my dog, got her back. Had a great job. Lost it. And in retrospect it was not great so that was okay. Pregnant in Parry Sound, fired and homeless by May.

Didn’t really have anywhere to live until November and man, it was overpriced, it leaked, and it sucked.

I worked a crappy job under the table for less than minimum wage and had to go on welfare to make rent. My jeep died and I ended up having to sell it for scrap.

But that was also the year my kid moved back in with me. I was making jewelry in my spare time just for fun. I launched a lawsuit against my old job and eventually won it. And everything lined up for me to move to Milton with my little fam.

2013 didn’t start out super awesome fantastico either, more of the same, but by July we had the Milton house. I was stripping and pretty happy. Money was coming. I got asked to do a guest spot bartending at one of my old bars, Alice had puppies. And in my son’s 18th year we finally did Florida ‘our’ way, with the help of Dave.

The ice storm was that Christmas and I handled it well, potato boyfriend did not.

I kicked him out in January and sometime in April I believe, I started living again. Authentically this time.

And here I is, in all my messy glory.

Glory, hallelujah.

I have spent the last week conquering fears. I did DMT a week ago today and yesterday my body was put into a sling and launched across a chasm on a cable. Walking up the steps to the platform was hard, I hate grates and open manmade structures where you can see down. On a grade 8 class trip we took the gondola across the Niagara gorge and I had my very first panic attack. I do not like being suspended, I especially do not like being dangled over water. Cable freak me out probably from too many movies and bad dreams. My phobias are very specific as I am also the girl who loves rollercoasters.

I am trying to change.

I spent this past year and a few before it trying to do different things.

I stumbled on something. Years repeat in varying ways and patterns. It’s what we learn from them that changes things. Just like rebuilding after a collapse.

2012 was a 5 numerologically speaking, as is this one, so I kinda know what to expect.

And so far, lost my love, job is maybe gone forever, car won’t start and I will be homeless again.

Check

Check

Check

Check.

But I have it handled in a way that I couldn’t mentally grasp 8 years ago.

Instead of “why is this happening to me?” I am wondering what it is trying to teach me and really looking to see what direction I should be headed in when the 18 months after this tumultuous 18 months is over.

I can create my reality and control at least the direction I am aiming myself in.

Those old shake ups had to happen. That job was toxic, and that dude was a potato.

Pray to god but row for shore.

Every 12 years it’s the return of your Chinese astrology sign. I was happy at 12 years old. 24 was awesome, 36 was a lil sketchy if memory serves but it was also smack dab in my Saturn return so that’s okay.

I have now noticed the unadulterated fuckery that accompanies leap years.

The bliss of the Lion’s Gate Portal and the hazards of eclipses.

From January 14^th to January 30^th, for the first time in 11 months nothing is in retrograde.

Time to breathe and assess.

Kate Bush once said, and Matt Good reiterated “I just know that something good is gonna happen, I don’t know when, but just saying it could even make it happen.” The song is called Cloudbusting and I love it.

It doesn’t matter if any of this is scientifically factual or not, it is my truth and it isn’t hurting anyone. it has given me some much needed strength, resolve and optimism when I really needed it.

I could be doomy gloomy Eeyore, and I am sure I will have my moments where I am. But there will be silver linings too and whatever happens now, whatever crumbles and launches me this way or that is just clearing the way and pushing me into a good year.

There is something really empowering about realizing this is probably gonna suck and I am definitely going to get through it.

There are no absolutes in life. good, bad, better, worse.
Just surviving or thriving.

As long as the good is just a bit more than the bad, or the bad is at least teaching us something then everything is worth it.

I wonder whatever happened to Koala Girl.

A year ago, right around now we had just started to hear about the wildfires in Australia.

A year ago, right around now we started hearing about a new virus in China.

A year ago, right around now we started watching the Witcher.

Just think about that for a minute.

Mind fuck and a half.

I was talking to my son about the passage of time and his touchstone to the past was he remembers things being somewhat normal the first time he ever paid for nudes. He bought the koala girl’s pics. I didn‘t and I wish I had.

10K in the first 24 hours. Bravo.

I have been sitting on this article and not working on it, and today this came up in my memories, so it is time.

She made a million dollars for the koalas and landed in a world of hurt and ostracism. Her boyfriend left her, parents angry, I think she lost her job and apartment too.

I loved the sentiment in this tweet. “We have no choice but love and protect her at all costs”

I wish we felt this way about all women.

I wish we felt this way about all sex workers.

I am getting ready to retire but those women will always be my family and I will defend them to the death.

We did not protect her. The backlash was immediate and intense.

I am realizing a lot of the negative things I feel and have felt about myself are as a result of the stigma around sex and sex workers.

I wouldn’t feel this way about myself if someone/everyone hadn’t told me to. Like fundamentally who is it reeeally hurting that I, Sarah, enjoy sex immensely and feel comfortable being naked in a room full of strangers.

No one.

This constant fight within me wherein I feel disposable. I mean that concept gets reinforced with every relationship gone awry.

It is hard not to internalize not being ‘worth it’, whatever it happens to be.

I understand monogamy and Christian heteronormative ideas, I just don’t see them as ideal.

For me.

I do not judge others. If being married and chaste and faithful floats your boat, float on.

Why does this world have such a huge issue with body autonomy?

Not your body, not your business.

You wanna keep your puss puss just for you, okay, no one is telling you otherwise, so why do you think its is okay to tell others what to do with their bits?

So much anger and venom aimed at women with Onlyfans accounts.

Why?

How is this affecting anyone in any way? How does a paramedic/nurse/lawyer/factory worker any fucking body being sexy and making some extra cash on the side affect her ability to do their jobs?

It fucking doesn’t.

Unless you are a preacher who comes down heavily on the side of celibacy, monogamy, chastity, purity and you go flaunting your va jay jay upon the interwebz, even then, it still doesn’t make you a bad person, it just makes you a hypocrite.

Okay so for creepy dudes it is harder to get free nudes.

It was always a commodity as there was a definite demand for it. You can’t hang out at Costco eating free samples for weeks on end, at some pint you have to buy something and go home.

And I must say I do love a good screenshot of a lurker trying to get something and the only response being a link to a girl’s onlyfans account.

Him: Sup

Her: <Link>

Him: Sup, send pics

Her: <Link>

Him: So you too good to talk to me? You think I want to look at your used pussy online.

Well ya, you do. You just don’t want to pay for it. It is an equalizer. And a damn fine way to shut down incels and creeps.

When other women rail against it all I see is internalized misogyny and misplaced jealousy born of the competition we never entered into but more was programmed into us since birth. Be prettier than her, whoever her is, find a man, trap a man, keep a man and be kept. And by all means fight all other women because if we ever got together and demanded better treatment, the world as we know it would collapse. The amount of money made just from tricking us into thinking we need longer lashes or to keep our boobs unnaturally up near out chins is insane.

Thankfully, the sex ndustry is becoming a little less taboo here and now.

I have been a stripper on and off for 20 some odd years now and I see the stigmas lessening.

But I have changed too.

The girl I was 22 years ago was turned away from renting an apartment because the owner didn’t want ‘my kind’ in her building and AFTER keeping my deposit. I put my head down in shame and walked away. I had no fight in me. No one would care even if I did try to stick up for myself, right?

I don’t feel that way about myself anymore. Thankfully, but it was a long road out of shame, filled with the pitfalls of the judgments of others.

Every new group of people I met, every straight job I got, I had to work harder, be better, be smarter just to prove all strippers weren’t awful people. And I did. One conversation at a time.

It isn’t terribly fair.

There is no one profession where everyone who does that job is some kind of saint.

There are bad doctors, lawyers, even evil priests and nuns and by default they are supposed to be holy and pure. But they ain’t. No one is. And having your kitty up on the internet does not automatically launch you into the category of deviant or evil. It just means you think you have a nice vagina, a vagina worth looking at, a vagina worth being paid for.

Honestly, I had thought about it long and hard. Having an Onlyfans I mean. Especially post pandemic. Stuck in the hose 24/7. I was making videos anyways, just not for public consumption. But I am bad at it. I don’t feel that great about myself. The bulk of the money I made stripping wasn’t because I was this sexy desirable thing, but because I was approachable, human, understanding and I listen. That just doesn’t translate to boomerangs and videos and snapchat filters.

My girl Kittenface approached me with the idea of a patreon account, and I think that suits me. I am still going to keep it sexy, sex sells, we all know this. And honestly, I don’t see the difference. I am still selling myself, my time, my thoughts. Same same.

If you think a stripper sells her body but a coal miner doesn’t, you have a morality problem.

I have no idea where I am gonna land.

I sat last in a circle in the sand. Looked up at the moon and just said thank you.

Felt the tide pull me as I walked through the water.

I am Ricky Fitz

I need structure and discipline.

I need something outside of myself to give me direction.

Have you met me? I am literally, geographically and cosmically all over the place.

There is a center to my universe. My child. And although I fucked up with him royally on several occasions, we made it.

But he doesn’t need me, like really really for reals. He has the permanence and goals that I was always lacking. Still am.

I will never take credit for the man he has become he did this. His accomplishments are his own.

I led only by bad examples. One big lesson on things not to do.

We had a conversation a week ago wherein he laid out how his life is going, and I teared up and thanked him for being my opposite.

Massive justification for my life full of fuck ups, he watched me and learned what not to do.

He has known what he wanted from a young age, something I supported of course, he has set goals and smashed them.

I float. Mostly without focus.

“I was like a lost moon―my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation―that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity.”

Oh Stephanie Meyers, if you sift through the shit, there are some diamonds in there.

I am currently without orbit.

The last time this happened I ended up in perdition drunk for 2 years.

He said the reason I chose to live without magic would become clear eventually.

I think I figured it out and you aren’t going to like it.

Attica said, ‘you are orbiting him’.

And so it was.

And so I stopped.

And as I drifted further and further into space, I became more and more scared and fucking miserable really.

Why was it bad to give into gravity again? I loved the ebb and flow of the tides. I was tethered sure, but I was also soothed, and happy, and able to make my own decisions within parameters that suited me just fine.

I have been sucked into force fields and tractor beams that were definitely detrimental. Death Stars bent on imprisonment, conquering and eventual destruction. Planet killers.

But let’s back this up a little and ponder grasshopper.

What is Attica (aka Moon Moon) doing right now?

Picking out wall sconces, paint colors and asking me what the best bed sheets are. She is nesting, with her dude, in his house. And while that might not be orbital, it is domestication. And it is okay. He is okay, I quite like him. He is the kind of strong, stoic and in charge she always needed and never had. And he orbits her. And honestly, it’s lovely.

Her and I had a life plan, together. And it’s gone. I was never mad, felt like that thing god does where he closes a door and throws open all the windows.

I had to remember something. I love Attica, I truly do. The two of us were told we probably wouldn’t be friends and became friends anyways, it happened very naturally and almost out of spite towards those who said we wouldn’t be, but it stuck. She is laid back and fun. Brave in ways I am not. I am the mom friend and her personal google.

Seriously, she asks me everything. My name is not Alexa, nor Siri, but she seems to think it is.

When I sent her the article* about my first DMT trip she saw it as scary and terrifying.

For a minute I thought I wrote it wrong. Did I not explain how liberating it was?

I didn’t have to reread it because I realized something, that was made clear to me on my second trip*, my reality is my own. What is good for me might not be good for others.

I realized something else too. More like remembered it. We should never take criticism from someone we wouldn’t go to for advice.
Of course I tell Attica things, we have long amazing talks about everything, but I never ever ask her what to do. She asks me what to do, how to do things, what sheets are good sheets, what day it is half the time. She is just beginning to recognize wording in news articles after hitting the panic button about a hundred times this year.
She is not my oracle, nor my prophet, she is my friend.

I doubt myself, often and sometimes the advice I take is not weighed nor measured properly against what is best for me. I forgot to consider the source.

So why did I get scared and break orbit when she told me to?

And why did it take me so long to recognize the dynamic she has with her dude as the thing she was telling me not to do but then did anyways?

Fear mostly. Insecurity.

Submission, and not the fun kind.

I have orbited lesser planets and stars and at some point my celestial body recognizes their gravity isn’t enough to keep me in place and I break free on my own, or the star collapses and I have to fight from falling into the black hole they leave behind.

But this wasn’t that.

He was the sun, good and warm. He made me glow. Nourished me, gave me light.

What I had was good enough for me, what I was doing is what I wanted to do.

It was enough because I decided this.

It was all my choice.

I have been lost and miserable free floating through space. I don’t like this.

The book I am working on has falling stars coming to earth, they forget who and what they are when dislodged from their home out in the universe. And although I never meant it as a metaphor for what I am feeling now, it is exactly a metaphor for what I am feeling now.

It is okay to have someone as my sun, I am the moon and stars.

Stella Polaris with amnesia.

But I am starting to remember.

(*exclusive patreon content, link will be provided shortly)