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Author’s note:

I wrote this a year ago tomorrow, with the intention of pulling out my laptop and publishing it. i am navigating the twists and turns of a new laptop, bought last May and not cracked open until December.

It isn’t a diamond. I suspect there will be a lack of those until I figure out a new routine.

But I am trying.

________________________________________________________________

Well.

It seems I have hit an interesting point in my life.

I just stopped dealing with trauma.

I once wrote, and still believe, that I will always come to a point in the future where I have accepted the traumatic events in my life and learned how to work around them. I can choose when that is for myself.

Apparently, that process is now as instant as Nescafe.

I don’t believe we should examine our kinks and fetishes too deeply. Sure, scratch the surface a bit but no vivisections allowed. I mean you can if you want. I prefer not to. For the same reason my level of sex work always stopped at stripping, I love sex, I don’t want to do it for a living, nor do I want an in-depth analysis as to why being degraded in bed makes me into a happy little wet puddle of a girl shaking from multiple orgasms. Too much of a good thing and it stops being good, this includes information. I don’t want a why, I just want him to choke me and love me.

Which begs the question, should I really take a deep dive into why I, the girl who is/was known for crying way too much and being super emotional suddenly just accepts change, death and loss as a part of life?

I can cross reference almost anything at the drop of a hat and predict future behavior patterns. It’s a trauma response to unpredictability and abandonment. The abandonment also lends itself to hyper independence, and I feel like this is a layer of that.

Then we add the plague and minus the man I believed to be the love of my life and here we are. Nothing fucking phases me. It feels both like a superpower and a double-edged sword. I am waiting for the alternate article of footwear to succumb to gravity. Like is this gonna hit me all at once and put me into an emotional coma? Am I already in an emotional coma?

Who am I and what is happening?

I remember the girl I was like a character from a comforting TV show that I watched endlessly before bed until I didn’t.

She cried a LOT. Like to the point where my roommate/bartender/DJ in Newfoundland would call out loudly, “somebody grab Sarah, she is going to cry” every time he played a sad/triggering song. Which begs the question why did he play those ones?

That is another story for another day, or never. It is done.

But how did I get here?

I haven’t felt the “same” since the DMT. I had to rebuild myself from the rubble of an earth-shattering ego death. Did I leave out the part where I react to things when I put myself back together? I still feel overwhelming comfort and joy, often actually. I remember the day of a million rainbows, a day where I had to drive to the city from the farm and I followed the tail end of a storm front and there were too many rainbows to count over lush farmer’s fields and winding roads and my heart swelled with the beauty of it and my soul felt relieved after 72 days of rain. I remember feeling profoundly grateful to be alive in that moment, grateful for my car and my license which were still relatively new. Grateful for the task at hand which had gotten me out of the house and out on the road to bear witness to something so magnificent as the juxtaposition of black rainclouds, sundrenched wheat fields and prisms in the sky.

That was my first lesson in core memories and living in the moment.

Have I perfected this?

I mean, I know all we have is now. I suspect that time is an illusion, and everything is happening all at once. I stopped being a prisoner of my past simply by recognizing that I don’t live there anymore. Memories are not tangible, they don’t have words that hurt, they don’t throw keys or punches, they only exist in my mind and that belongs to me and me alone, so why would I hurt myself.

When I speak on past trauma, historically, I have always done so in a rote, even manner, no emotion to it, just an itemized list of facts and events laid out with the dashes in the point form audible in my voice as I start at the beginning and end at the ending. There are no pregnant pauses where I collect myself, I am collected. I am a collection. But as the curator of the museum that is me, I keep what I want and footnote/archive the rest.

I still don’t know how all of this adds up.

I recalled, earlier, the story of Giant and how I was so enamored of him that for several visits to a diner called Big Top, I failed to notice the mural of a circus on the wall. I remember being the girl who was vexed and hurt when he chose someone that wasn’t me, then validated when he came back, crushed when he left again etc. etc. ad nauseum. It wasn’t an overly dramatic period in my life, more inquisitive if anything. He left and I summoned the courage to ask why. Which lead to continued communication, a solid friendship peppered with sex and a pot rack both made with love. But what I am questioning now, and cannot for the life of me remember, is why I got so worked up about it. And why, in the time since then I stopped getting worked up about things.

Newfoundland tides were higher from the tears I cried. I was depressed and drunk, and I had outstayed when I was supposed to be there. The place that made my soul feel good, stopped doing that thing and nevertheless the girl I was, persisted. I get that now. When something stops bringing you peace, get out, get rid of it, it isn’t going to get any better. You can still visit, but pull up your roots and boogie.

Then there is the matter of Wolf. I think I started mourning him before that first fateful text message a month and a half after our fateful meeting.

Maybe the girl I am who can predict the future, somehow already knew it wasn’t going to work.

I still had hope. Hope can be a beautiful thing, but like all good things, in small doses.

Parts of me absolutely mourned versions of a future that I created in my mind that never came to fruition.

But when I boil it down and distill it, our entire relationship was 100, 000 amazing emails and a few good days in the Palisades. He was there, who he always wanted to be, and it was glorious. Now he is who he is. They are not the same person, we both know this.

But let us backtrack a paragraph.

I mourned versions of a future that I created in my mind that never came to fruition.

I stopped doing this.

This might be a eureka moment, in real time.

I started this article as I have started 90% of every article I have ever written. With zero clue as to how it was going to turn out. I just let it flow, type as fast as I can and try to stay on some kind of track, but anyone who has been with me for long enough knows that never happens. And anyone (talking about me right now) can attest to the fact that life is exactly the same way.

I always assumed I had to keep breaking my heart until it opened, and maybe that is a part of it.

Total loss of my self, and total loss of what I had curated to be the epitome of love.

But it wasn’t, or it would still exist.

That is as broken as I have ever been.

I was wrong.

About both things, and also creating versions of the future in my mind and attaching hope to them.

The future doesn’t exist anymore than the past does.

I think that is it. I don’t play out fantasies of how I want things to go, I just let them unfold as they will.

I am still here.

I love. I am loved.

Had you asked me in 2019 where I would be right now, I would have given you some hopeful romantic story about a trailer on a cliff overlooking the ocean or a condo in Texas.

Had you asked me in 2020 how long I was going to stay in my attic, I could not have given you an answer exactly, but I could not have predicted traveling here there and everywhere all of 2020 and 2021. It was illogical. Still is. But I have plane ticket stubs to show, yes, I was there, I did those things. And as weird as it feels to type this, I am still in the attic.

A year ago, this past Christmas would I have said I’ll have a straight job, won’t write much anymore and Darkling Daddy will still be around?

Nope.

But here I am typing this out on my work laptop because mine needs repair (again) and in 5 minutes when I wrap this up I’ll go back to doing laundry and sending him memes.

And I think the Zen of it is just succumbing to the mindset that I have no idea what is going to happen next. This is the same idea that kept me alive all those years of misery on the farm, that there had to be something better, or even just different if I could just hold on long enough. Or in my teenage years where everything was dark and terrible all of the time until it wasn’t.

I held on long enough.

I have a life now that I don’t feel the need to avoid or escape from.
Spent years building it all by myself. I have done brave things, and foolish things, survived all of them.

I don’t know what is going to happen with Darkling Daddy, I can make a couple of educated guesses based on past experiences, but why bother. I have cherry picked the extra good memories, posted a few pics on Instagram to remind me of moments, and he has blessed me with a folder full of homemade porn.

The thing is, I have never wanted to know what is going to happen with him. I have attained the ability to just enjoy what is. Instead of cultivating some fictional future with him in it. And so far, the truth has been better than anything I could have imagined.

I am comfortable and I am calm.

I like feeling like this.

There is a deep, soul soothing satisfaction in knowing that the bad days end and another one starts.

Today is not the best of days. PMDD is hitting hard, cramping, bleeding, sad and mad in unpredictable intervals. But I have this calm detachment about it, I know this won’t last. Better days will come and I’ll probably fall on my face again at some point.

Is my life perfect? No, but nothing ever is.

But this is pretty fucking close.

I wrote this long winded article about how I am hurt because I didn’t mean as much to someone as

1. I thought I did
2. As they said I did

Thing is, it doesn’t hurt. Am I annoyed? Yes, sometimes. Confused? Definitely.

But just like every other thing I cannot fathom doing to another human being, this will just have to be something I never really understand.

I have a layover in Houston. I am not looking forward to it.

I know the airport fairly well, but I have less than 20 minutes to get from gate to gate and while I do know the airport, I doubt myself.

I also know that if I miss the flight I am meant to be on, there will be another, and I can deal with it. This isn’t a metaphor, just experience and logic.

The last thing I wrote about this (2 days ago) had no direction or clarity. I struggled to find the lesson.

Then my dude sent me a meme which stated the following…

“You feel bored because you are safe. For the first time in your life, you have no problem to solve. You are addicted to the chaos.”

Um, excuse me…sir…Sir, I feel a little called out here.

Thing is, I admit freely and openly that I definitely was addicted to the chaos. The drama was life. The ups and downs of a “passionate” relationship. Love must be work to work. If it wasn’t crazy love, it wasn’t love.

To be fair, the last thing I wrote stated that I took responsibility for looking too far ahead in my previous relationships. Planning ahead. But can you really blame me? Ex husband said ‘you never have to move again’, I have lived in 2 different provinces and half a dozen places if not more since I left him. I moved out several times during the relationship for fuck sakes.

The kid in Newfoundland who said we could start looking for places as soon as I got there vanished before I got there, but the wheels were already in motion. (Bullet dodged, but still that was a long way from home.)

I do wonder what that path would have looked like, had I stayed.

Wolf who asked me to move to Texas 9 times because I said I needed to be invited more than once. He finally left and left his wife. I wish him well in his future endeavors. But I am still here, confused and annoyed.

Still, I will take blame for believing their words and not watching their actions. For making gargantuan life changes for someone other than myself. And for not listening to my gut.

But that all leads back to this chaos theory.

I thought I left that all behind at the farm, but I didn’t.

I know I am getting better.

There was a quote from Michelangelo in his 80’s I believe that stated he was still learning. 

I believe with my whole heart that this is the only way to truly live.

But what about unlearning?

I think I am getting better at that too.

My life doesn’t look like it did way back when. When I was juggling farm and mistress and all the other crazy. It doesn’t look like Newfoundland either in the girl’s house which was the epitome of chaos nor when I got my own space in my friend’s house. But there was a lot of crazy there too. Some of the roommates were amazing, some were not. Plus I was drunk and disorderly every night. Even if I had a routine, it was full of fuckery. Dating a drug dealer who was in jail = chaotic and he wasn’t the worst of the dudes I crushed on. 

Then landing here in this house I am about to leave after 4 years. Covid should have kept things sane, but I decided dating a married guy in Texas was the right way to go so I traveled extensively during a global pandemic and here we are, coming around full circle.

So maybe it isn’t that he made promises he didn’t keep. Which was never where I placed the blame anyways. Maybe it wasn’t that I planned too far ahead with him…that was a bad idea for sure, not saying it wasn’t. Maybe I was/am a chaos addict. I mean in a few short yet rambling paragraphs here I have laid out quite a bit of clusterfuckery and I barely scratched the surface. Planning ahead with a married guy is kinda the dictionary definition of insanity isn’t it?

Even after Covid, I had a revolving door of people staying with me and still somehow felt justified in my annoyance of not having the peace I both wanted and needed. I have never lived alone here. I haven’t lived alone since Milton and even then, a few friends here and there needed a place to stay and who was I (with my 4 extra bedrooms) to say no to them?

And wasn’t the Milton house, in all that time alone, where I first found myself?

Well ya. That is when I started talking to you fine folks. I had so many plans. Monetize this blog, renovate an RV, travel. None of those dreams have died, but they did go on the backburner.

And those are the things I constantly crave and return to. Somewhere deep down, I crave peace and independence. Having something no one can take away from me. Anti chaotic. And, now with this move, I have made decisions that will ensure that, as long as I am mindful and do not open the door to any mayhem that may come a knockin’, I should be okay.

Even with a straight job, I can carve out time to write even if it is in the darkest hours of the dawn. I did it before.

One thing I am not is bored. 

All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never ever be boring.
Chuck Palahniuk.

I will add to that and say I believe being bored on this planet in this time of human existence is a sin.

I am not worried about being boring, nor being bored. There are too many miracles and delights in the minutiae of living. I love the small things.

I might appear boring to some. I prefer to be at home than out in social settings and that is okay. I spent most of my life working in bars, the shine came off of that decades ago. Give me a good pub and some good company if we have to go out at all. 

Even when I managed to attain some kind of inner peace and a lack of discord in my life I would always gravitate towards helping friends in need or rescuing stray boys. And then making mountains out of the molehills of feeling they had for me. And then falling down the mountain and describing every bump. scrape and broken limb on here for all y’all.

I am in love, have been for quite some time. And it is anything but boring.

It is calm love, peaceful love, trusting love.

I cannot foresee a future where the novelty of that wears off. All this time spent searching for love, looking so hard and seeing it in every kind gesture and word then being shocked when it dissipated. Constantly making something out of nothing and the nothing always showed through.

This is better.

I don’t plan anything at all, not even the next visit.

Felt strange at first. Awkward goodbyes with no “see you on Tuesday” to hold onto.

The goodbyes still feel awkward, but in a playful way.

Without planning ahead we still manage to see each other often. He has his life and I have mine, sometimes we go a week or 2, sometimes as long a month. But it doesn’t matter. I will see him when I see him. I make the effort, he makes the effort and no one keeps score.

I do realize that I built this blog on chaos. The thrill of the crushes, the despair of rejection, the internal dissection of everything that went wrong.

I think that is a huge part of the reason i haven’t written in the past couple years.

Not the entirety of it, but a good chunk.

I don’t know if anyone would want to hear about how I am at peace with another person.

About how crazy it isn’t.

I think the juxtaposition of having such utter comfort with another human being, in a situation that has always been my main source of drama and discord has made me realize, there is no reason why the rest of my life shouldn’t feel that way too. My job (which is beginning to feel like a career) is stressful at times, but not when I keep it in perspective. My home is about to be somewhere totally new. I did truly miss the catharsis of purging and the exhilaration of setting up my sanctuary in a new space. I am looking forward to being alone, starting over and challenging myself to invite as much tranquility into my life as possible.

I haven’t used my personal laptop in so long that it took me almost half an hour to get everything set up and running. Totally lost all my documents, then found them again. Forgot passwords. Forgot where things were.
Once upon a time that would have sent me into a panic spiral rivaling a black hole of despair. But it is what it is. And I am where I am and that is here, talking to you fine folks.

The last tab I had open was Netflix, couldn’t tell you when or where I had it last. Like zero recall. I must have been away somewhere, but where?

I suppose it doesn’t matter. Past has passed.

And, very unlike most posts upon ye olde bloggarino, that is exactly what I wanted to talk about. I didn’t meander off the path for a few paragraphs and then go through a bumpy transition. 

I must be changing.

I mean I know I am. We all are. Everything is. The only constant is change.

I still see Darkling Daddy on a regular basis. And it is good.

It is actually better than good, but I am saving the good stuff for my equally neglected Patreon account.

I usually need to know why I do things. Or in this case, didn’t do the things.

I didn’t tell him what I have been through.
Not in my usual avalanche of words and phrases, peppered with eyerolls and clichés, delivered quickly in a chilled monotone. If I speak in a flat voice, without inflection, it keeps the emotions out of it and I am just recalling facts. I suppose it is disconcerting to whomever I am speaking to. But I have no desire to relive those things.
Which is EXACTLY why I tell the new ones what the old ones did, in hopes hey won’t be a little bit of history repeating.

I never had a negative experience regaling new boys with old stories.
Quite the opposite actually. Young Un the First treated me tenderly and with kindness after I told him why I needed the bedroom door open a crack.
Wolf almost snapped a chair in half, but no anger was directed at me about it.

Not pity, only protectiveness.

All of them did. They claimed to understand at least.

But they aren’t here.
I was clear about my abandonment issues, and they left anyways.

I am fine now, I see that all of that was for the best. I like where I am and I regret very few of the people I have shared my time and body with.

I would like to believe that is why I kept everything to myself this time.
That the past has passed and has no power or weight here, now.

Yes, I lived through the things. I performed autopsies, sometimes from an emotional state, but eventually the post mortems became clinical and professional. I learned what I was meant to learn, my path changed in the way it was meant to, no harm (well some harm) but no foul. and I had stuff to write about.

Maybe that explains the lack of words flowing out of me and onto here. I don’t need to write about my life because I am living it.

That’s totally not it but it sounds better than the truth which is my new job is taxing as fuuuuuuuck.

My body is here and now, and while we might argue from time to time, my brain follows.
I have learned to be present.

I have so many concrete and horrific examples of what happens when people wear their past as a mask, or a cloak or a ball and chain. So many chains.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to forget. I mean I need things to write about. I use past experiences to navigate the here and now, like a filing cabinet. Just pieces of old documents, photos and plane tickets, and beyond the occasional papercut, they can’t hurt me.

I change ringtones and playlists, I archive emails so they are not in plain sight. I move on.

I am detached I suppose.And to tell you the truth I don’t hate it.

I used to cry constantly. Forever in a state of mourning what was, especially what wasn’t anymore.

But I think when you survive the cataclysm that is the love of your life becoming a stranger, nothing else matters.

Akin to reading a book about someone who resembles me, finding some comfort there in the familiarity of it.

They left, she lived. And sometimes they come back. 

The guy who wrote Fight Club said “Your past is just a story”.

Until it isn’t.

Until the giant from Twin Peaks takes up residence in my head and just keeps repeating “it’s happening again” in his unique timber and strange accent. Ad nauseum until I can’t hear anything but that, or worse, the vacuous thrumming of dead silence and nothingness.

The above was sent in an Instagram message to a friend yesterday. I was stuck at work and doing anything but actual work work on my designated work laptop is forbidden. I don’t even play solitaire.

But the words felt like flowing, so I let them.

It did happen again.

An abrupt disappearance. And I did not handle it great.

Not as bad as before. I didn’t disappear into a deep depression which ultimately led to me moving 5000 km away from home and subsequently drinking and making bad choices for 3 years. I still make bad choices, who I am tryna fool? (smirk)

I vacuumed, did the dishes, cleaned my room, folded laundry and acknowledged that I was very very frightened and not processing things well. I decided I should probably go back to therapy, or in my case, writing about things.

You see dear readers. I did something kinda brave and foolish. I had to.

I drove 3800 km in just over 60 hours to go get my dog, Alice. We were separated during Covid and I selfishly decided that it would be easier to travel and figure my shit out without her. I regretted this, but it was too late. Until it wasn’t.

I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, except kidlet, work and Darkling.

On the third day, I spoke to him in the morning.Drove for 12 hours to get home.
Told him I was home, safe.

Nothing.

Nothing the next day.

And on the third day I started to panic.

I should pad that. I had a friend in from out of town, I did say to her “he probably went last minute camping and has no wifi”.

That was the pervasive thought. Camping or broken phone or both.

But the rowdy unreasonable and quite frankly ugly explanations showed up.

Anyone who has been following this blog knows that once upon a time I was dating a boy and he ghosted as hard as any ghost has ever ghosted. ‘Good night I love you, see you in a few days’ on a Tuesday, to blocked on everything Wednesday morning. I waited from Thanksgiving until Christmas for an explanation. And by the following February, as I drove across the country to start over, he messaged me and asked me if we could start over. I can, I AM, and no you can’t come with me.

I was catapulted back to the first few days of confusion, self doubt and pain of that incident.

It fucking hurt. He talked about marrying me and then poof.

There is a line from a song I cannot recall the title of that says “live through this, and you won’t look back.”

I did live through it, and I found myself looking back.

Theoretically if I had spoken to a therapist in those moments they would have assured me that it is understandable that a sudden disappearance by someone I have physical and emotional attachment to would freak me the fuck out. I have muscle memory for this. I still have cells in my body that recall this happening. It was only 5 years ago. But, I am over it. I think. The last time he messaged, I just didn’t answer. Ah, there it is. I am over HIM, not IT. 

That is a massive and paramount distinction.

When I thought “oh shit, here we go again”, I also thought, “okay, how do we navigate this, we have a map.”
Last time the girls took me to Ikea and I cried on my meatballs, not the best idea. I also had an impending move shortly after he disappeared, so the colossal amount of work that I put into that house was a physical outlet. But, I made my space in his image, the things we had spoken about, pushed my bed up against the wall because that was what he liked, found the most soothing teal blue because he liked water colors.
I remember I had a sign across from my bed that simply said “there will be an answer, let it be”. There was, eventually. It just wasn’t good enough.

But I am already in my house, I like my house, I can’t move and change things. Not doing the best financially right now and have never been able to get in and out of Ikea for less than a couple hundred bucks. So that’s not it.

It took me months, 2 moves and a trip to Disneyland to get through that. And even Disney was tainted because we had spoken of going, and I wanted him there with me.

The map was no good, outdated. The landscape has changed because I have changed. And because of earthquakes and life experiences.

I still have the sign though.

There was an answer.

He went last minute camping.

I have decided, and rightly so, not to visit the mistakes of those that came before, nor the ramifications thereof, on anyone new.

I never mentioned to Darkling anything about that. Nor the Giant and his string of Becky’s and girls who ski. Nor Lumberjack or Muay Thai Fighter and their secret wives. Nor Wolf and his not at all secret wife. 

Darkling and I do joke that he has a secret wife and kids, which again, if you have ever read the blog, you know is a thing I was duped into once and also willingly walked into.  

It might not be a joke.

I have decided that I don’t care.

I don’t care where he is or who he is with as long as he continues to treat me as well as he does when I am with him. And it is very well. Jesus Christ it’s good, amen.

“I don’t care” is an overstatement. I hope he is happy, healthy and safe always. I care about him immensely. I actually think I love him but it is a foreign kind of love. Very calm, very comfortable, I might have finally found that “just is” that I was searching for all these years. And while I acknowledge that is has to be temporary, I am grateful that I am experiencing it.

I am a culmination of everything I have ever been through.

This current experience will be added to who I am at some point and this pleases me.

The Potato man I dated who told me he didn’t like hugging me or touching me because he felt like I was taking something from him scarred me for a while. Until I met Gelfling who thought it was ludicrous that I asked permission to touch him and said that I was allowed whenever I wanted, forever. Both of these things just make me appreciate the exorbitant amount of touching that occurs with Darkling.

I have ‘shared’ men before. Sometimes horribly, like when I was married, and sometimes willingly.

Darkling is 29. He wants kids eventually. I am not his forever person. I knew that going in and I have never once forgotten it. What I have chosen to do is spend the time I have with him enjoying him. His house has become sanctuary and it is delightful. His love language is touch and acts of service, exactly the same as mine, which has taken some adjusting to, being cared for in the manner I have cared for others. Just makes me realize how valuable I am and that I am worth being around.

The only constant is change. At some point this will end and it will suck, and I will cry.
But I am not going to waste the time given dreading the future, nor living in the past.

I know I will live.

But that is later.

I am just going to be here now.

It’s 6am.

I have been up since 4:44.

There are singing bowls on the Spotify right now and oddly that didn’t help lull me back to sleep either.
Almost time to switch over to something a little more lyrical.

I tried to quiet my mind and get back to sleep, but instead I changed a light bulb and made myself a cup of my precious Texas coffee. I have a bag and a half left so I am rationing it. But my boss is going to Austin and she said she would bring me some, I just have to make it to the end of March. This is every Canadian, every winter, in a nutshell, just gotta make it to March.

Last year I had just fled Mexico ahead of travel restrictions on the last flight out of Acapulco, so I didn’t have to wait too long before winter loosened her grip. Although my snapchat memories from today stated I had just dug my car out of 3 feet of snow. Today everything is melting and it is supposed to be warm and raining tomorrow. Sucks for my walk to the bus stop, but it is better than freezing to death.

Fuck, a lot can change in a year.

I used to get up at 6am at the beginning of the plague to write.
I guess that was 2 years minus 3 weeks ago.
Ex hubby gave me the mushroom capsules on March 2nd 2020 and I started writing that other book that I haven’t been able to get back to since I gave the mushrooms away, mind you I haven’t tried in a while. It was supposed to be about Wolf and I don’t know what to say about that anymore.
March 4th 2020 I was on a plane to Texas because tickets were insanely cheap and I sent a snapchat with panda eyes saying “I fucking miss you”. It is not hard to be nostalgic for those days, but fuck everything that came after.

I am actually happy to be awake. Technically, I wanted this. I have skipped too many morning work outs and lost too much writing time to the siren’s song of the snooze button. Mind you, I have been taking (non hallucinogenic) mushroom capsules and my dreams have been EPIC. Fucked Thor and Loki yesterday morning in the wee hours, and god bless my psyche, I remembered it vividly after I woke up. It’s the little things.

It was congruent sex, not simultaneous. Not that that matters, but Loki talked me into playing while Thor was away, we got caught and Thor wasn’t mad about it. I also was making cheese sauce on a rocky boat and spilled it. I was cleaning it up when I woke up. Not sure what that was all about but hey…I am not complaining.

My real life sex life has been…non existent. The Darkling still exists, but only in my phone.

Been down this road too many times already.
29th verse, same as…well same as the other ones who only lived in my phone.

I got an inkling mid January that he had started up something with someone else. I didn’t say anything, because honestly, I didn’t really want to know, plus retrograde was still happening. These are lessons I have learned and refuse to repeat. I think it was still the trifecta of Venus, Mercury and one of our more distant cosmic dads spinning backwards and causing discord. Uranus or Neptune. Not really sure. Doesn’t matter. The universe, or our corner of it, is spinning the way it ought to be until April. And I know, non believers will say it’s silly, but I have felt a lightness of being for the last lil bit. I am going to enjoy this while it lasts.

I enjoyed Darkling while that lasted too.
And I could be totally wrong here and just tainted by the ones who came before. But my gut is a pretty highly tuned instrument at this point and he just kinda changed, less attention and I haven’t seen him. I would prefer this conversation be face to face as opposed to our normal gif filled meme exchanges.

I am gearing up to ask the question I don’t really want the answer to. It isn’t exactly over yet, mostly because I haven’t decided that it is, but I am getting there. Too bad really. The sex was pretty fucking fantastic.

He was really good at giving me attention too. I needed that, still do really. I was weaning myself off Wolf. I guess that mission has been accomplished, somewhat.

The fact remains, I have a high IQ and an even higher sex drive and only one of those things is currently being sated. I am mildly astonished at how lackadaisical I am feeling about all this. I cannot tell if I am broken or fixed. That is a topic for another day.

I wandered off tik tok and fell into reels on Instagram. I don’t hate it. If I click on a plant reel I can fall into a rabbithole of monstrous monsteras and prolific pothos and propagation videos. If I look at yoga, same same. Meditation and manifestations galore. But somehow the other day, I ended up watching a reel about how for every 16 points above 100 a woman’s IQ is, she is some huge percentage less likely to get married, and the men that I am attracted to and would be content with only make up 1% of the population.

Awesome.

I am royally screwed. But not in the literal sense.

I mean, I am 47, almost 48. If it was gonna happen, it would have happened already and my two forays into common law marriage sucked so badly. The idea of getting married was never in the forefront of my mind. I remember watching Charles and Di’s marriage and the part I liked the most was the hats.

But, having not been laid in a month now…I dunno, I lost track, and my track record of the last 4 or 5 years of intermittent sex with a married dude from far far away and before that the jail bae being in jail for half of our time together, then more recently the fisherman who was away 3 weeks at a time and now this traveling salesman…just ugh.

It would be nice to have a person.

Maybe I will still get a repeat of 2017 as far as my sex life goes. That would be nice.

I probably have to go back on tinder. Although I would rather not. I kept Wolfling and Big Spoon on the backburner too long and they have slipped back into whatever part of the ether my lost boys go when they aren’t scratching at my door.

In the meantime, I have to buy a new car, one of my least favorite things to do. Horrible timing really. I am having massive financial insecurity with this new job. I know if I stick it out there will be a promotion and a pay raise, but the current pay decrease to half of what I am used to making continues to be jarring. I might need a second job. Unless all y’all want to subscribe for a dollar a month. Please?

At least my house is in order, for now.
I had to put a plant back at the store yesterday.
I wasn’t happy about it.
There is also a shelf I keep visiting to house all of my plant babies but it’s $300 and it is just not in the budget I now have.

I missed buying the giant bamboo during Lunar new year. By the time it got warm enough to carry it home, they were all sold out. I regret not driving there when I had a car to drive, but I despise underground parking and I am trying to get my steps in when I can, even if it means braving the arctic tundra of Canada in February. 15 years I have wanted that bamboo, and I finally found it, just to lose out due to a polar vortex that wouldn’t let go, and my own stubbornness. 

I am stubborn man. Like too stubborn for my own good. That is why I stuck it out with jail bae, married guy…why I moved to Newfoundland in the first place, stayed trapped at the farm, all of it.

Retrospect and her sister Hindsight are bitches man. 

The last 2 years I spent galavanting around North America I also spent a lot of money. 

And I don’t have regrets exactly, but I am shaking my head at myself.

Two grand on 2 rooms in Newfoundland that I will never go back to kinda sting a bit.

I will make it work, I always do.
Do what you can with what you have where you are. Theodore Roosevelt.

Life does have a way of working out for me. I always have what I need, I just have to work on getting what I want as well.

At least I am no longer wasting time. I am doing all the things I meant to do before, and they are working. My abs are starting to show through. I slipped and had a burger the other day and I will tell you with my usual blatant honesty, I didn’t enjoy it. It’s fine, I tried and now I know.

That is my life in a nutshell…I tried.

I don’t regret the burger, I just won’t do it again.

The last few years? No regrets. And again with the blatant honesty, I would do it again. Mayhap smarter, but I would rather live a life of trying and failing than just staying safe and wishing I had done something.

And hand to god, money issues aside, I fucking tried. My intentions were pure and my actions were profound. 

In the immortal words of Ani Difranco I never tried to give my life meaning by demeaning you, but I would like to state for the record, I did everything I could do.

Tomorrow is a day of magic. A cosmic palindrome. A mirror. Everything I put out there is destined to come back to me. Seems like a good day to reset and start over.

I have a new instagram account that I can’t seem to link to here.
bluecollarballerina2.oh if you’re interested.

It’s mostly food pics and memes and me documenting my life, same as it ever was really.

I decided in this last leg of the plague to do the things I hadn’t managed to do for the past 2 years. I used to do this all through school too, leave a project to the last minute, rush through it at the end and get an A. Nothing changes. This newest thing is ‘getting in shape’. It’s working.

We’re in the endgame now

I had a friend DM me and ask how I am losing weight.

Diet tips from an anorexic are probably as useful as travel tips from a shut in…am I right?

I don’t have a good relationship with food. Or maybe I do.

I see food as a necessity, as fuel. I have to eat if I want to move and live.

I want to do those things.

So I eat. Begrudgingly, mostly, but I am also a really good cook so that helps.
Funny enough, I absolutely love to cook, Always have.

I also don’t put gas in my car when it is already full, but I am not comfortable running on empty either. Especially since in my car, a quarter tank is actually empty. Found that out the hard way.

I like the act of going out to eat as well, but that is more about the pomp and circumstance.
I like getting dressed up and trying new things, or getting dressed up and revisiting my favorite things. I will go back to NOLA one day and eat that shrimp and grits again before I die.

When I was young, eating anywhere but home was a very rare occurrence and a welcomed change of pace, it denoted a trip or a celebration, so dining out has positive connotations in my head. Now it means brunches with the girls, road trips and dates. Still good things.
God I cannot wait to go out on a date again. Plague be gone already.
I wasn’t privy to fast food very often as a kid and I have been known to binge from time to time, or most recently, Newfoundland and the lack of time to prep and eat meals at home which had me skipping the dishes often and grabbing a Big Mary combo 3 nights a week for 2 years.

But going back to childhood…my mom is a spectacular cook, so is my dad. We ate very experimentally back in the 80’s even before watching Wok with Yan. My folks brought dishes from their childhoods into mine and we were friends with people from a myriad of cultures so my palate was pretty sophisticated, even when I was little. We had a respectable spice cupboard, I knew the difference between good feta and what we get at the grocery store here. My favorite thing about Christmas was the Welsh neighbor’s boozy traditional pudding with hard sauce. We stashed stacks of corn tortillas for tacos in the freezer on our trips to the states because we couldn’t get them here. And most of our pizza nights were both homemade and still unrivaled.

But there were things I couldn’t stand as a kid and still don’t like as an adult. Ground beef for one. I will devour a burger from A&W or Whattabuger without a second thought, but homemade hamburgers, nope. Meatloaf is just a huge no. I make amazing meatloaf, I just won’t eat it. Even something so humble and apparently delicious as a meatball, nuh uh. Cabbage rolls and shepherd’s pie too, I can make them and they’ll  knock your socks off, but I will not partake.

These were all staples when I was a kid, ground beef is cheap and feeding a family of 5 on a budget means ground beef. And growing up in the 70’s and 80’s (and probably before) you ate what was on your plate, all of it or you didn’t leave the table. 

It was a constant source of conflict and I think it coloured the way I view food. As a have to instead of a want to. I never want to eat, and I don’t ever feel ‘hungry’, more of an internal timer that says “too long since last time we had sustenance. Do the thing”

In my teenage years, after a decade of fighting to get me to eat and stay at the table, the option was given for me to make my own food and/or graze as I wanted. It was better for everyone really. A lot of the time I would just not eat and lie about it. Preferring the sanctuary of my room and my music to the traditional family suppers. It worked out, my sisters had tons of extra curriculars after school so meals became sporadic and I spent 90% of my time on the phone or brooding over some boy that I was too scared to call.

And at 15 or 16 I landed in the hospital because I fainted. I fainted because I hadn’t eaten in days.
I played dumb. Didn’t tell anyone what I had done and let them run in circles trying to figure out what was wrong. Plus I got out of school, so triple win really.

Unfortunately the connection was made that this
1. Got me attention that wasn’t negative attention
2. Was something I could control in a life full of things I could not

Number 2 is still a problem.

I know a lot of people who equate feeling full with comfort. I don’t, never have.

I know people who grew up with food insecurity and are the opposite of me.

I made sure my son didn’t have to deal with either. Never force fed, always given options and never being hungry. From the time he could walk and talk, the bottom crisper in the fridge always had healthy snacks he could access whenever he wanted. He has a good relationship with food. Parenting win.

Speaking of, I heard something once that makes a lot of sense so I am gonna drop it in here. If you feel hungry, eat an apple, if you don’t want an apple, you aren’t hungry.
There, that’s my pearl of wisdom. That’s all I got.

My roommate and I were having a conversation regarding my current war on carbs wherein she was saying I could cheat. I don’t want to. I retorted with the infamous Kate Moss quote “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Sadly this is still true, although I had a dream about an english muffin the other night.

I didn’t start my anorexic journey in my teens because I didn’t like my body, I mean I didn’t but I was missing a tit at the time, so that kinda overshadowed everything. I had a good body back then, no appreciation for it, but I was definitely very attractive. Still blinded by the lack of boob, but I can see clearly now.

Back then, and when my anorexia came back with a vengeance 20 years later, it was always about control. And coveting that empty feeling. It isn’t how skinny feels, so much as the power that comes with feeling clean and empty and in control. On the rare occasion that I do over eat, like a steak dinner or thanksgiving I literally cannot stand the way my organs rearrange and my stomach distends. I feel like a stranger in my body.

Which is how I started feeling lately.

Most of my friends struggle with weight, I never have. I don’t really engage in their conversations about it because I honestly couldn’t relate and they made a HUGE point of telling me how skinny I am.

But, the last couple years I have developed a pouch. Like a little pot belly that now lives where my flat stomach used to be. AND I FUCKING HATE IT. I can’t dress myself, I fixate on it, it makes me cry. It is not a cute pot belly and contrary to what she said in Pulp Fiction, it doesn’t feel good to the touch. Probably because it isn’t so much of a pot as it is a pouch. I am not a kangaroo ffs.

When it first appeared a couple years ago I just thought okay this is a “Newfoundland drinking a few bottles of whiskey a week and eating like shit” kinda thing. I can undo this.

And for a brief period, I did. The timing was immaculate. I was going to Florida for a month and vowed sobriety and no fast food or meat for 30 days. I did the thing. I ate beautifully and healthy, no red meat, one piece of chicken one time, no soft drinks and no booze. And I wore crop tops with low skirts, I walked 4 miles to town a couple times a week, I swam, I wandered theme parks and felt lovely.

Then I went back to St. John’s ate steak, got black out drunk and threw a huge sobbing tantrum because I was too inebriated to get my pink butt plug in and ya, that ended well. I did throw up the entirety of a $200 meal and $200 bar tab, so bye bye calories and dignity really.

We learned a valuable lesson about consent. Fun times.

I had to fly the next day with borderline alcohol poisoning.
Not the fondest of memories.

But it should be noted that I despise throwing up, bulimia, while popular in my high school was never my thing. Denoted a lack of control for me.

Then covid happened and life became both scary and sedentary, but I kept up with the healthy eating, long bouts of sobriety and for a while I was walking constantly. But…here we are 2 years later and my man pants don’t fit and I have a handful of fat where my waistbands used to sit, justy above where my hip bones used to protrude just a lil bit in the most delightful way. And 30 some odd years later my brain is wrestling with an eating disorder again. 

Eating disorders and addictions are never really gone, they just hibernate until we get thrust into survival mode and we revert and regress…or until we learn new coping mechanisms.
I am still learning.
Stress puts me in a cocoon goo state. Not much going on outside, but inside I am becoming.
It should be noted that my throat still closes up when I am stressed, I can’t even begin to navigate the mechanics of chewing and swallowing. They become foriegn things that I used to know but have lost.  But my old crutches of coffee and cigarettes don’t really exist anymore. I used to drink a pot a day, but now it’s a cup, maybe 2.
2 years of ‘nowhere to be’ kinda quelled my coffee addiction. Didn’t need an energetic boost to sit around and wait for the plague to end. I used to get hyper caffeinated and write, but I stopped doing that too.

It should also be noted that covid did give me a respectable booty. On my last voyage to the island, I showed up at Final Boss’s house and he had me spin around a few times and made good grunting noises about said booty and grabbed it often. Dat ass, I shall keep, and I never minded doing squats.100 a day lately.

I am going to skip over the part where 15 years ago I  dropped to 95 pounds during my marriage. I have seen the pictures, now you have too, I know what happened and I know my boss was the only one who said something and that is what stopped me. I needed someone to see what I was doing. I was fitting into child sized sweatpants ffs. No one said anything. 
I have better people in my life now and a better life. So there’s that then.

This trip on the skinny merry-go-round, instead of skipping meals completely which was so tempting, I cut out carbs.
I love carbs. Back in the day, if I ate anything in a day it was usually one piece of toast with butter. Or if they were around, one english muffin. I wasn’t counting calories, carbs weren’t the enemy. It was a volume thing. As little as possible to keep going.
This is still a control thing and a self denial thing, but at least I am eating.

I also added chia seed and lemon water to get rid of anything that wants to linger. Makes me feel cleaned out, so that is probably healthy/unhealthy, I never did get into laxatives, too scared of shitting my pants. And I started working out a lil bit. Just in my attic with my mat and free weights, I now have a bosu, like a half yoga ball thing that saves my spine during crunches. I went from 10 minutes a day 3 weeks ago to 30. 15 reps up to 25×3. I haven’t done it today but I will, then shower, then I get to go buy some plants. I need my dangling carrots.

When I don’t feel like working out, I shop online and see how I want clothes to hang off my frame again. And when I want a carb, I roast or mash some cauliflower. I am getting to the point where I might need a gym membership and a trainer because I have no idea what I am doing physically, just going off tik toks and memories of the time I dated a trainer and he had me working out 4 mornings a week, but he would fuck me right after, I am telling you, I need those carrots. We all do.

I also think some of us need to reevaluate our relationship with food and our bodies.

My body hurts more often than not. But it still gets me places. My step counter on the first game day at my new job had me clocked at 35000 steps in one shift. I had to really assess whether or not my legs were going to work enough to operate the gas and brake on my drive home, and I hobbled that night, badly, but I got up in the morning and I worked out. I also had a butter tart at work that night that tasted like a religious experience, but I also walked 9.7 kilometers fueled by nothing but a bento box of veggies and cheese so there is that then. I didn’t feel bad about the butter tart.

I don’t feel bad about any of it. Mostly because I don’t cheat. No one is holding a gun to my head saying I can’t have an english muffin. There’s actually carbs all over the kitchen. I just don’t want them. And when I do, I envision that flowy white skirt I found at a thrift shop in Texas paired with one of my plethora of cute crop tops and a sunny warm day wandering through Kensington market and skipping past the bakery.

I have comfort movies like other people have comfort foods.

Cold Mountain and Garden State got me through 4 months of severe depression after a mid term miscarriage.

Silver Linings Playbook and Beautiful Creatures always flood me with this fervent hope and contentment in the last 90 seconds. 90 minutes of build to a satisfying crescendo.

I say this next part without irony, and I have admitted it before, but the Twilight movies are among them.

This is not a source of pride or the opening for an argument. 

I know the implications and the anti feminist under and overtones.
It just is what it is.

Is Edward creepy af? Oh ya.

Do I want to taste/experience an iota of that steadfast decisiveness and commitment. Also, ya. 

She is so awkward and weird, and he wants her anyways.

He just decides she is his human and that is that., no waffling, no bullshit. I mean he leaves in the next movie and gets all broody while she engages in risky behavior, but it works out in the end and for 3 more movies and another book series.

No one ever decides on me and it fucking sucks. Or they do decide on me and they change their mind, which sucks so much harder.

I am left remembering unbridled enthusiasm and 9 invitations to move. And my heart makes Bella’s New Moon nightmare noises in my chest.

New moon in a few days.

I blew the full moon.

Whoops. 

I woke up with determination and a lot of venom. By the end of a very long day, it had waned. I wasn’t even mad anymore, nor sad, just numb.

And that scares me beyond reason and explanation, but I am kinda numb about that too. What the actual fuckity fuck.

Full wolf moon in cancer. 3 planets in retrograde including my papa mercury, patron saint of love mama venus and neptune god of all things salty, including the tears i cannot seem to muster.

Praying by Ke$sha came on my spotify list this morning.

Poignant song. Most likely from 2017 because this is all just a little bit of history repeating.
(yep, I checked)

It’s a good song, don’t get me wrong. But I remember all the basic sheeple people just gushing about how deep it was, how emotional, how brave. Yes, it was those things but have you ever heard 10 000 Days by Tool? Probably not.

And of course I put it on, I don’t know why I thought I could get through it without bawling. I didn’t. 

I digress.

They’re both break up songs for me.

I remember going out into the backyard of my Margueretta Street house on a snowy New Year’s eve and burning a 2007 calendar. The entire year was absolute shit. I remember the power welling up from inside of me, as kidlet and I both let out primal screams in the dark. I felt like very bit of angst, panic and sadness exited my body and dissipated in the smoke and flames

For 11 days I was as light as a feather. I really felt like I was going to be okay.

Please sir, can I have some more? 1000 days in the fire was more than enough. I want to go home.

Everything would have been fine. I was healing and dealing. The shooting happened at the club I worked at. We weren’t allowed to leave until the wee hours of the morning. I was tired and sad and I let ex hubby back in the house which led to 3 more years in perdition.

That is the history I would like to not repeat, the things I want to learn from.

If it is done, let it be done. Don’t linger.

I need a good epic scream and cry, but I can’t seem to muster it. Me, the girl who cries. Did I leave my tears in Newfoundland, I cried so often there it became notable when I didn’t. Even at Hamilton Strip a couple of girls woul;d do a mental health check before dancing to songs they knew might trigger me.
And Brian, also in NL, would tell someone to grab me and hug me when he played “The Funeral” by Band of Horses. I always thought that was sweet. It didn’t occur to me until much later that he could have just skipped the fucking song.

I started writing this article the morning of the full moon. We had an epic snowstorm and I had to modify my ritual. Well, that is an excuse. All the anger and angst I had u[pon waking up dissipated throughout the day. Roommate took the day off work and we did a boudoir photo shoot for her and she was so giddy, it rubbed off on me a bit and all the venom I had just went away.

I ended up asking for broken chains and peace instead of emphatically cutting the cord like I meant to. 

There will be other moons.

I have watched New Moon enough times that I am immune. She wails and I don’t anymore.

But, I watched Silver Linings Playbook the other day and…nothing. That scared me. Scared me enough that I almost want to see what happens with The Notebook and Cold Mountain.

Who am I now? What the fuck happened?

I broke, not in a cute submissive way, and I didn’t get put back together this time.

I think all of the old hurts prepared me somewhat for this one. I know I have survived everything that was meant to kill me before. I was heart broken before I even knew my heart or what love really was. I think the shredded brokenness of  losing Giant and Hulk a couple years apart and being able to maintain friendships with them were crucial in surviving this. We were kindred after all, still are. I learned how to love without possession and ego, the hard way.

Am I crying now, not really. But I have cried before, and this is the third or 4th time this has ended in a less than spectacular manor. At least I am home this time, instead of in another country sequestered in a shitty hotel room processing the death of a family member and the cruel words of someone who was supposed to love me. The only person who ever really loved me. Or at least that is what I thought.

Well, shit…

The venom is back and I have no waning moon to give it to.

I have been meditating for 7 minutes every morning. Well 7 minutes and 11 seconds. I use Panoramic from the Book of Eli by Atticus Ross to time myself and breathe. And it isn’t meditating so much as trying to sit still and not think as much as usual. I tried using Ma Ma’s Requiem from DREDD but I had to restart it, it’s only 3 minutes and change. I also had a day where the only thing playing upstairs was those healthy hertz playlists. I wasn’t in my room much, but they were pretty when I caught snatches of the notes and I actually managed to meditate for 11 minutes, well my version of it anyways..

I am super bad at meditating for the record, however, I skipped it the other day and wandered aimlessly around my room for about a half an hour before I realized I needed to plunk my ass down, put on Panoramic and chill Winston. I was mega productive after that.
You may recall such spectacular posts such as https://www.ourladyoflustandgrace.com/adulting-acceptance-and-the-drama-of-dress-pants.html

Where I regaled you with tales of unpacking boxes.

To be fair, I am still rusty as fuuuuuck and I learned things, and I made a pact with myself that the juicy stuff would go on Patreon.
Plus, we are in year two and version 8 point oh my god stahhhpppp of lockdown, so it isn’t exactly Adventuretime over here.
They can’t all be diamonds.

Maybe all the posts I had to set to private can go over to Patreon. But not today, I have shit to do.

I did do my attempt at meditating this morning, my mind races too hard to really silence it for more than a few seconds at a time, but the stretches are getting longer, and I did my squats last night before bed.

Which is probably why my man pants don’t fit anymore.

I have been doing a massive purge and reorganization during the last leg of the plague, see article above. I feel like I fucked up and wasted other varying downtimes the plague has given us, so in my way I am doing ALL THE THINGS RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Just like I redecorated the downstairs a week before I left for Texas and barely got to enjoy it because I came home, went straight back to work and then left for Newfoundland 3 weeks later and hung around there way longer than intended.  

I have bruises I can’t explain, some that I can explain and the broken soaker tub became the ‘don’t want’ pile. Donated 8 bags of stuff, brought home 3 more but shhhhh, that’s my business. 

I know why I hoard clothing as an adult. It’s because I didn’t have a lot of clothes as a kid and I got teased for the things I did wear. In my mind, and sometimes in real life, I put together these stunning outfits. Not to attract men, I don’t dress for men, but so the townsfolk know I am a witch.

I do recall times in my life when we were allowed to go outside and I actually wanted to go outside, specifically when I used to walk around Kensington market on Sundays or when I was daing Cruz and we had real date nights. But I haven’t had more than a few of those since…well Cruz really. And earth is closed. So it’s been sweatpants and sloth. At one point, early in the pandemic, I was getting dressed up to go to the grocery store. But that time has passed.

Before that I was managing Sirens and I  was relegated to all black at work, but I made it work. Stripping in Newfoundland is just ‘nicer’ track pants because there is an 89% chance I will be drunk and fall asleep in my clothes. And when I work here in Ontario, I stay in the girl’s house, so more track pants.

I never wore sweats until 2014. And even then I only had one pair. But I must have gotten them wet after midnight and they multiplied. I had this massive walk-in closet in Milton, I had 17 white tank tops, now I have 2 and I am not overly fond of either of them. Panda left my favorite one at the laundromat 4 years ago and I still haven’t forgiven her for that. My Milton closet was color coded and loaded, and I wore none of it. That’s a lie, I wore my man pants and I loved them.

I had my first date with Young Un the First in those pants in May 2015. I got tattooed that day too, my wings and the word Hush on my wrist. I remember thinking ‘there is no way to dress myself for all the things I have to do today’. But I managed. I always managed when I had those pants. And it was a good date. Went to Hulk’s birthday dinner in those pants and a backless shirt. He liked the ensemble and so did I. I liked going out with him, I could wear whatever I wanted and not worry about getting harassed.

That was my awesome year in Milton. Free from mid January 2015 until now really. The year of 3 Michael’s, Sunday and the same year I got on Instagram. The first week of the last retrograde of 2021, that account and all of it’s glorious memories got suspended.

On the second day of the first Retrograde of 2022 the universe gave to me…my old Instagram account back after a really long ban. I had stopped checking it and just did it on a whim, et voila there it was. I cried a bit.

I guess that is the way things work. Lose one thing from 8 years ago, get another one back. 

If this past year has taught me anything…I am getting really good at losing things.

Now I am faced with a dilemma. 

Well 2 really.

Do I hang onto the man pants and try to lose weight or alternatively alter them to fit me?

Or do I just let them go.

And, do I move back to my old Instagram, my home and happy place?

One would think the answer is an easy and emphatic yes, but the last few months have been really good. Do I let that go to salvage the past?

I mean, no one is forcing me to do anything. I can keep the pants and both accounts, and considering it is day 659 of retrograde, that is the safest, sanest course of action. 

My room and the house that it is in are looking pretty fucking respectable. As am I. It’s my second day of my adult job and I got up, did all the things, dressed myself well and now I am talking to you fine folks about a pair of pants and the nostalgia they carry in their pockets.

I moved into the Milton house in 2013 with nothing and I built a life there. I moved into this attic in 2020 with less than nothing and built a life here too. Part of the reason I wanted to hold onto my old Instagram account. I need tangible reminders of where I was so I can appreciate where I am.

This is how I am, months of inaction followed by weeks of hyperdrive. And I can’t even appreciate what I have accomplished. Just like I didn’t notice I was getting too thicc for my man pants.

I am looking at my unmade bed and my pooch that stubbornly stays, even though I have been eating carefully and working out every day for over a week now. 

I always regret not starting sooner, but we can’t change the past, we can only move forward, hope for the best and prepare for the worst…and hang on to our man pants.

Faithful readers will remember the 5 myths.

Never
Forever
Right
Wrong 
&
Perfect

I forgot them. Which is some bullshit, because I wrote them in the first place to try and deal with my anxiety, attachment issues and perfectionism.

Ah the lingering effects of a gifted childhood peppered with abandonment.

But that isn’t what this is about.

When do I ever start an article with what I intend to talk about?

Almost never. Myth #1, never. Specifically “that will never happen.” Or in this case, never again.

When Wolf left I just figured I would never go back to subspace. I assumed it was a one off combination of dynamic, chemistry and trust that was hitherto undreamt of (thanks Dr. Strange)

And it was. 45 years on the planet, 30 of those sexually active and I had never felt anything like that before. It was logical to assume it would never happen again.

Right? 

Fortunately, no.

Somedays I love being wrong.

There are days when I realize how backwards I have lived my life.

I grew up between the eras of go to school, go to college, specifically to meet a man and have his babies and “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me.”

I left home at 15 and was busy paying rent while my peers were dating, going to prom, backpacking through Europe and other such rites of passage. I missed them. Then 5 years later I was a mom, still paying rent and just trying to keep the person I made, alive. Didn’t leave a lot of room for self exploration or growth or adventure really. My life, before, was a series of accepting whatever reality I found myself in and being terribly afraid of the unknown. And until the person I made was self-sufficient and then some, I never really got to explore anything, much less myself.

Always surviving, never thriving.

It’s kinda cool now though. I am 47 years old and still get to experience new things and miracles on occasion. Then the word ‘never’ becomes acceptable. As in “I have never done THAT before.” For all my years on the planet, the bulk of them were spent sequestered and unsated.

I became sexually active at 15, had my first and last orgasm in a sleeping bag on the back lawn of a shitty motel. I didn’t have another one until I turned 20.

I had sex, some of it was even pretty good, but I just couldn’t get there, ya know? And in the way of teenage girls and even grown women, I lied about it to spare the feelings of the dude I was with, thereby guaranteeing the lack of orgasms for the next batch of women said dude slept with.

Please stop doing that. 

We have done ourselves, and each other a grave disservice.

For some reason, probably because touch is my love language, the lack of reaching climax didn’t bother me and I still enjoyed sex most of the time. I would almost prefer non climactic sex with someone good to the orgasms I give myself when I am alone with my toys.

Then I started dating a woman who was older and wiser than me and one dude away from being a gold star lesbian. And I learned how to orgasm. After we split up I was with 2 very accommodating men who listened to what I wanted and needed and also what I wanted to try.
God I miss my 20’s for a myriad of reasons, but this was definitely one of them. Not the dudes specifically, but just having the boldness to not settle and to say ‘hey, I want to try _____.” and being met with enthusiasm or at least accommodations. But, I was a serial monogamist and sometimes it would be years where I felt like I couldn’t ask for what I wanted. 

Knowing what I know now I would never entertain a dude that I was afraid of being myself around. But as a single mom stripper in the 90’s, I didn’t feel like I had a lot of options.

I used to be scared of being single. Not because I was afraid of being alone, I liked that part, I actually loved that part. But I was terrified of who I was when I didn’t have a boyfriend keeping me in check. I drank, I fucked, I went out and enjoyed life untethered.

Sitting here 20 some odd years later I know what the problem was. I was terribly concerned about what others would think of me. I wish I knew then what I know now…that it’s none of my business. People talk and will invent things if they want to bad mouth you bad enough. The secret of life is enjoying it without the confines of others’ opinions. This is my journey. The happiest people I know give the least fucks.

But I grew up in a small town and had battled a bad reputation my entire waking existence. I got called a ‘slut’ a year before I lost my virginity ferfucksakes. And in a town of 6000 people, it was a scarlet letter and a heavy cross for a sensitive 14 year old girl to bear. But this was also in the world before internet and pornhub and I still had that small town slut moniker that sat like a choke chain around my neck, and there were things I hadn’t even dreamt of. See above where I didn’t even orgasm for 5 years. The bar was on the floor.

I moved to Toronto and unfortunately my mind did not expand in accordance with my surroundings. I always had that fear and it dictated my behavior to the point that I was a serial monogamist for 20 years. One long term relationship into the next. And those nice 20 something boyfriends who thought my weird was cute and listened to me became bitter, jaded older men with enough baggage to sink the Titanic.

And then somehow we got here.

And I am still struggling. 

But, for a couple of years, and a handful of times I got to visit subspace and I thought I could live there forever.

Which brings us to myth #2. Forever.

I am not going to go too deep into this one. Nothing lasts forever. I was in love with the same boy from high school for 26 years, that felt close enough to forever for me. I became so many different versions of myself in those 26 years and I always brought him with me, until I didn’t. I have never felt more liberated than I did at that moment I let go.

As for the rest of ‘forever’ I know what pillow talk is, I try to not get caught up in the moment and the lies, but sometimes boys and men say the magic words and I can’t help it. I try to see into the future. Less so recently, but not when it mattered.

I have gotten myself out of situations that seemed like they would never end. And as I move forward into this new chapter of adulting with a real job, I know I can quit if I want to.
Farm life was prison and I lied to myself for years. “If I can just save money I can leave”, “if I just do this or that I can finally be free.” All I had to do was just walk out the door, everything else sorted itself out afterwards. And here I be, happily living and shit.

I think it is a very natural and human trait to suffer. We must fight this.
I also think it is very basic human behavior to stick with the familiar even if it is awful. We must also fight this.
Change is scary. I am no exception to feeling like this. I lived in fear my whole life. But that part of my life is over.
I also think because of this predilection towards misery that when we do find something good in this miserable life, we want more of it and start dreaming of forevers, this can also lead to misery. 

It is a delicate balance to plan ahead but stay in the moment. I am still learning.

When I moved to the farm all those years ago, ex hubby said “you never need to move again” and I swear to god my internal dialog said “well, that’s the worst lie he’s ever told”. And he told some seriously shitty lies over the years. Even as I was standing in the driveway with a u-haul chock full of all of my worldly possessions I knew it wasn’t forever.

I do wish I hadn’t let it drag on for 4 more years, but we can’t get that time back. I made it through, it’s over. Nothing else matters.

And maybe that is how I got where I am now. I survived things I thought would be the end of me. I went so long living unsatisfied that I finally made myself a priority. And I just don’t care anymore.
I used to worry about what I looked like during sex, which could also explain the lack of orgasms early on. Too busy thinking about angles and worried about belly rolls to be in the moment. I am still learning to let go, but I am getting really good at it.

Chemistry is a big part of it. I am way more fussy about the energy I let near me. Sex is an energetic exchange after all. Trust plays a huge factor and the more honest I am about who I am upfront the easier it is to find viable partners. And I think, this time, maybe the universe just gave me what I wanted and needed. A nerdy soft Dom with a wicked sense of humor and big dick energy.

Apparently sub space has a crazy underground garage of extra cosmos and floating, and Darkling took me there. Orgasm so intense I felt like I was gone for hours, in my haze he and I had a whole conversation (that wasn’t real) and wherever I was it was sunny and warm, we were laughing and happy. It was a profound experience. Like finally walking into Disneyland after chilling in the parking lot.

That has never happened before, it might never happen again and I highly doubt Darkling is forever. But it happened once and that is something.

I think it is mildly hilarious that I am the age I am and there are still things I haven’t done and felt before. I also think it is spectacular.

2000 years and I can still be surprised, in this I see God.

Godric, True Blood

O sinnerman, where you gonna run to?

I finally worked out this morning. Nina Simone was there while I kicked my own ass. This lil pooch isn’t going anywhere unless I starve myself or start doing crunches, and starving myself is so 10 years ago.

But (allow me this one Carrie Bradshaw moment.) It got me thinking…where are you gonna run to?

The penitent man is humble before god. We all know this, Indiana Jones taught us that if you don’t kneel you’ll  lose your head in the temple of the grail.

Something magical happens when our knees hit the floor. 

We stop running for one, sometimes we crawl a while along rock bottom, I have the scars on my knees to prove this.

“The one thing that isn’t served to you on a silver platter is humility” Harriet Hayes, Studio 60

I have enough humility for a busload of nuns. I can barely take credit for anything I do, constantly berating and second guessing myself and I’ve had many experiences losing literally everything. Material things, love, friends, my child twice and even myself.

It’s been a year and 11 days since I did DMT and experienced a full death of ego and self. After that there isn’t much more to lose. The feeling of isolation, complete and utter abandonment and just wandering around in a void for months afterwards still haunts me, as it should.

No one is coming to save me, I knew that already and I had to rebuild everything once the ground stopped shaking and swallowing me. Everything I ever was, felt like a lie.

Tonight there is a full Wolf Moon in Cancer and thereby incredibly emotional, and we are in our first Mercury retrograde of 2022.
I wrote these things down and sent them to someone as a reason to delay an important discussion and somehow they still felt false in my mouth even though these are the things that have been the cornerstone of my belief structure for my entire adult life. Moon phases, astrology and planets dammit. My new thing is karmic cycles, as in breaking them.

I went from thinking everything is magic, to literally nothing is magic and now I sit somewhere in between. Even if it looks, tastes and smells like magic, ima double check that shit.

Like any belief system, mine is fallible. However, it does rely pretty heavily on quantum physics. I absolutely doubt my own power, see 5 paragraphs back. But then I remember torn ACL’s, broken windows from 500 miles away and the fact that I am still here and I am alright. I also remember using other people’s majicks and having it backfire in a spectacular manner. Tonight is the night to undo this.

Tonight is a purging moon, a severing moon and I am cutting the ties that bind me.
Apologies in advance, but I renounce any further responsibility for your ego.
I can no longer protect you forever.
Time for someone else’s knees to hit the floor for once.

SET IT ALL ON FIRE CHILD.

I have a terrible habit of revisiting old hurts to see if they still bleed. The answer is yes, yes they fucking do. Cauterize that shit and move on.

I’m trying to be better, trying to move forward. I tripped and fell into a couple of job opportunities and I managed to make it part of the dance. But as with every retrograde Papa Mercury tests us by dangling past carrots a little too close to the precipice.

I am doing what I can, with what I have where I are.
After spending a couple of years not knowing where I should be, I am just here. And honestly? I should’ve always been where I am, seems simple enough now but the call of the void had such a nice timber to his voice even if they were just empty echoes.

This round of lockdown, of which I truly have lost count (I wasn’t here) I don’t know how many times my corner of  earth has been closed. I just know a few lockdowns ago, I stopped getting dressed up for groceries.
The first one, I nested. I didn’t know how long I was going to be here, no one did. So I made my space cozier.
Then we all took our tentative steps back out into the world and things felt better, kinda.
I bought a couple plants, went back to work, went away to places where life was almost normal.
And in between I came back here with my hoarded treasure from ‘not here’. 

Now this room is an amalgam of what I was, where I was and who I am now.

Cue this lockdown. This one, this is the one where I really tried to make it count.
Because I finally know it is going to end.
I set goals and smashed a few. Still haven’t put the pot rack up, but maybe today.

2 years ago today I think I was either heading to or just leaving New York, with a brief stopover back in Texas before I came back here. Covid was a rumor and I was watching the Witcher on repeat. The room had been cleared of rubbermaids, but all I had was a bed, a desk and an altar. I did admire the simplicity of that space and the freedom of owning very little.

I left Newfoundland with barely anything, including my sanity, but I rebuilt. That is what I do, with the grace and ease of someone who isn’t afraid of loss. I worry sometimes that I’ve become too fond of starting over and I won’t know when to settle or when it’s time to stop moving. Maybe it never will be. Maybe my time on this earth is just perpetual change and metamorphosis.

The flaw in this plan/not a plan is that I forget to step back and look at the things I’ve accomplished and instead concentrate on the things I didn’t do or haven’t done yet.

I’ve had 3 weeks between catching the Christmas covid and this shiny new lockdown. I spent a week up north with kiddo’s kittens. Before that I had 17 days between Newfoundland and going back to work. I did things, I accomplished shit. The living room is splendid, 90% of my plants are happy, I reorganized my room including a rather difficult furniture shuffle. I put money away, did my tri-annual epic purge and this morning, I did an ab routine that kicked my abs. It’s gonna hurt tomorrow and I am going to do it again anyways. 

I cannot save you, but I am (going to try and) save myself.
Stabbing Westward

I absolutely, totally did that.
I called him Daddy mid fuck.
Well, closer to the end.

In my defense, I have only ever been with 4 “doms” in my life.
And that isn’t entirely true either. Hence the quotation marks. I think being a true Dom with a capital D is inherent, it is not something learned, but rather earned by trust, poise and behavior outside of the bedroom.

You are or you aren’t. There are no grey areas, 50 shades or otherwise.

One of them never called himself that, but he just was. I don’t think I really thought about it at the time, kinda just occurred to me as I started writing this. He just naturally dominated and I simply submitted.
We didn’t have a safe word or anything. Didn’t need one, I felt safe…enough.

I have only had three safe words in my entire life.

Baseball
Donuts

And now pineapple

Ex hubby aka baseball, had a ddlg kink…at least I think he did. He never told me about it, and no part of me wanted to submit to him sexually. Both of those things would explain a whole fucking lot.
Looking back, he is the one who broke trust and kinda broke me when he ignored the safe word he gave me to use and fingered me so violently on the porch that I wet myself. Fucking asshole made me feel bad about it after, I couldn’t squirt for years after that. He was a fake dom. The worst.

I didn’t know any better, and I think a lot of submissives are like me. Takes a few bad doms to find a good one. Luckily I just had the one bad one. But when we do find a good one, it’s fucking magic.

And anyone who plays at things outside of the realm of vanilla knows, things get messy sometimes. That is what showers and towels are for. And sometimes, you just sleep in the wet spot because the bed is the wet spot.

I didn’t know anything about ddlg at the time, and now that I do…I cherry picked a few phrases and kinks from that scene. I get it, some of the aesthetics are awesome and I wish I would have known about it years ago, but it’s not entirely me.I still kinda want fox ears and a tail attached to a princess plug.

But this isn’t about that. And we’re gonna skip over the donuts and head straight for the pineapples, with a slight detour because my mind wanders.

I also went to bdsm dungeons and fetish nights in my 20’s. They were very gothic and dark…and not really my thing. I liked watching, but that put me in the category of all the old dudes who lurked in the corners in tighty whities doing the same thing. I never found my niche, because I think sneaky public sex is great, but showing off in front of a group, not as much.

Never been to a regular people sex club. It isn’t a bucket list thing, but if it happened, I’d go just to say I went. And it might be fun, I still like to watch.

I had a couple boyfriends in my 20’s who were super supportive of me trying to figure out what I liked when I was naked. Good dudes really. I don’t know what happened to that girl I used to be, but she was missing for a long time. My first forays into sex were quiet acceptance of what was happening, then I got curious and vocal and then back to the quiet acceptance but with me jerking myself off in the shower after instead of making a point that I didn’t come yet, fix this.
At some point I got scared of being myself and being honest about what I like. Probably when I kept saying baseball and ended up in a puddle of pee.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the time I spent married was dry as a desert as far as sex goes.
I used to say I lost my dirty 30’s so I was making up for it in my 40’s. It’s not a joke, it’s true.

I stayed vehemently single for a long time, dated a bit then ended up back in monogamous situations where the sex was sporadic, and infrequent. One in jail and one in the States. Months and months of nothing but toys and hentai. When the sex did happen, it was good though. No real regrets there. It is what it is.

I think I just got tired of waiting. That explains fucking the Darkling on the first date. Kinda, I really just wanted to. 

The one good thing about the time I spent super staunchly single was I learned how to read vibes. Darkling has strong masculine energy and I like it. It was abundant and clear from the minute we sat down for tacos and if I am being completely honest, it came through in his texts somehow.
He decides what we’re doing in a way that I like. Firm but gentle, confident and I know if I said ‘no’ or ‘not now’, he would stop or wait.

We never had a conversation about any of this beyond ‘the safe word is pineapples’. Except maybe when we emphatically agreed good sex is expolring and figuring each other out but nothing overly kink specific. Wait, when I brought it up he said he doesn’t do consensual non consent. Fair. No means no.

So how did I end up naked on a fur throw on his living room floor saying “Daddy it hurts” with his cock up my ass on the second date?

Well, I will tell you. That is what this website is for right?

(the rest of the article is on Patreon)

https://www.patreon.com/sarahthegoodwitch