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Not a huge fan of the word ‘should’. As in ‘you should be doing x, y or z’.

I lived my life in the land of should for far too long. 2 failed common law marriages with less than compatible partners because I thought I should be in a relationship, any relationship.

Nuh uh.

I know why. I was a single mom and a stripper so I felt lucky that anyone would want me at all, so I had to stay. Wow my stomach just rolled bad typing that. That is one loaded sentence full of yuck.

I knew I wasn’t happy; I knew I didn’t want to stay. But I was compelled by the power of ‘should’.

Why should I be? Who says?

I feel like that I am going to need a few blog posts and therapy sessions to clear out that muck and forgive myself.

But ‘I should’ has an evil-er twin.

I shouldn’t have.

I have a planet of regret sitting on my chest and I wish I could go back to that morning we made love and do things differently. A line from Reality Bites that is burned into my brain. Reality does indeed, bite.

Fucking Mercury Gatorade man.

Papa Mercury is my sky daddy.

 I should know better.

See how gross that word is?

I fucked up.

Don’t make big purchases or plans, understand that communication will suffer, technology will fail.
Just hang out in the upside down for 22 days and hang on.

That is what we are supposed to do.

I did not do those things.

I thought I could cheat the cosmos. I have been this bold before. This entire blog is filled with the lessons I have learned, and I listened to exactly none of them.

5 years ago there was a retrograde incident with Gelfling, and I swear I watched myself doing the same thing again, with infinitely bigger stakes and I couldn’t stop myself. I even made a meme about it.

There was a good plan in place and the plan fell apart and I did a bad job of holding it together.

The ramifications are huge.

Like an earthquake in the ocean. Happens far, far away from the eyes of man, and hours later, small villages get washed out to sea.

Tsunami time and the landscape altering aftermath.

We had a plan. Not a should be doing x or a have to do y…but a good idea based on previous attempts and the dissections of what went wrong and how to fix it. It was a lovely plan.
A 5 minute walk in the park.

The plan centered around a ‘where’.

The where was key.

The key got lost and I broke the door down anyways. I really wish I wouldn’t have.

The place ceased to exist, and I had every opportunity to stop the plan altogether, and I didn’t.
I plowed ahead with all the grace of a bull crashing through the front door of a china shop.

I shouldn’t have.

The earth shook and it wasn’t good.

The ‘when’ wasn’t so shit hot either, but I was impatient and didn’t want to wait.

The ‘how’ was a lil sketchy too.

The only thing with any integrity was the ‘why’.

Everyone knows I make decisions based on love.

And the Beatles said, love is all you need.

Yaaaaaa, no. Sorry John, Paul, Ringo and George, hate to say it but you need a little logic too and planning, and understanding and flexibility.

Otherwise the earth shakes, and levees break, and you just have to hope the foundation holds.

Foresight too, foresight is good. Love and foresight.

I am now in the midst of the consequences for the things I did that I should have know better about and should not have done.

As it stands, I am in place and limbo for 2 weeks and 3 respectively.

Booking a ticket today to go see my people and get my tings. Make some money and maybe have a hard reset in the process. But I have to wait out mandatory lockdown now.

Time to return to perdition.

I had a man tell me (upon offering me a job in Calgary) “you need to make sure you are truly finished with this place before you commit to leaving.”

And at the time I was fucking done. I kinda laughed at him, I had been trying to run for a while by the time I met him. But he said it was such wisdom and conviction, he might as well have been a caterpillar smoking a hookah on a mushroom in Wonderland.

Who

Are

You

Alice didn’t have such a good time there either really. She always felt too big or too small, creatures speaking in riddles, crazy tea parties and murderous queens.

I’m wondering why I was there again, why I am here now, and I wonder what I am supposed to be learning. Did I miss something? I feel a pull to go back.

But honestly, all pandemics considered I am in a really good, safe place. I don’t regret anything exactly. Well a couple things, but it’s time to go back and finish leaving.

I quote the Princess Bride a lot. Especially about going back to the beginning.

And maybe I wasn’t done. There is the obvious car, stuff, dog and friends. I promised to spring Attica from perdition months ago and have been stuck in a holding pattern ever since. I didn’t mean to leave my second exit as long as it has gone. But maybe there is some karmic fulfilment that I am missing too. Maybe I left some of my juju in a Rubbermaid along with the statue of the white girl who can’t even.

All I know is I have to go back, and I shouldn’t have gone, respectively.

I feel like half of me got washed out to sea and I am standing on a beach trying to figure out how to salvage what’s left.

I stole the title from a Peter Gabriel Lyric.

I tried posting how I was feeling in real time the other day and it went badly. I just really thought I was having a ridiculous Chicken Little moment and I could use it to look back and see where I was and what not to do.

I wrote a postmortem before death. That’s just weird.

And like the Oracle from the Matrix stated, “would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?”

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK

Noodle is officially cooked.

Good Karen messaged me after and said I write very well when I am in distress. She was one of 4 people who read if before I pulled it down.

To me its just looked like the same building blocks stacked into a different configuration.

46^th verse the same as the first.

The sky fell.

How many times have I fallen apart and how many different ways can I really rearrange the pieces and get back to myself, is myself anything worth rebuilding or do I throw everything out and start over?

I pulled that post and I am mid edit/purge of the entire blog right now. It isn’t easy.

What is really strange, lately I have been talking about everything but what I am to scrub from the web.

I guess I hit the mute button a while ago, until I didn’t.

Maybe I am psychic, but I don’t trust myself as much as I do others.

Talking to my witchy Viking rune girl from Colorado.

I was drowning and called all the witches for help.

They are rallying, slowly. Time and reality have this very thick feeling right now. Like the universe is viscous. Trying to walk through water and there is a wicked undertow. I am fighting the urge to stop fighting. Oh succumbing sounds so good right now. The plane didn’t crash as I had hoped, instead we were locked in our seats for 2+ hours of turbulence. You get to decide if that is a metaphor or not.

All I want to do is sleep.

I am worried about a couple of my best witchy bitches. They just not sleeping, vibrating at some other frequency instead. I am almost jealous, I want to feel connected to the ether again like that, but sleep is my only escape from life right now.

I feel like a ghost. Like I am not real and that is with a good 8 hours a night. I dread being awake. I have said some really fucked up shit when sleep deprived. I have no idea what my excuse is now. Punch drunk?

It is not a good thing for me. Once upon a time sleep deprivation or odd sleep cycles were supposed to make you feel closer to the divine, but whatever god of mine lives there is a screeching angry god of panic.

I trust my tongue more when it is coated with whiskey than I do when I am physically exhausted. But what about mental exhaustion? What about mental exhaustion in a retrograde during a pandemic?

I used to fast to tap into my daemons to write, fun excuse for lingering anorexia. But it worked. It might be what Good Karen said, I write better when I am in distress and my stomach has been rolling too hard for a week to really eat much.

I was trying to eat yesterday and it just felt strange, like I didn’t remember the mechanics of food consumption.

I think that was just a few hundred words of stating I am not okay.

The closest I can get to an explanation is  feel like I died at some point and this is just some weird limbo simulator and I am getting punished like Sisyphus, just on this loop and I want off this ride now please. This rock is too heavy and Albert as wrong, I am not happy.
I felt like this in Newfoundland too. I remember saying it out loud and it seems just as ‘real’ right now as it did then, maybe more so. Maybe I got to visit heaven for a minute and was deemed unworthy, so I was cast out back into whatever this is.

Hulk and Giant saw the bat signal that is my Stella Polaris self, flickering in a weakened state but they are both a mess too. I can’t ask for much. But it was nice to know they still care. Still part of the same weird loop though.

I think everyone is struggling now, we are all exhausted. Being held in siege by the media and the dangling fear of what panic button is going to get pushed today. Rehashing the old with a twist or is it going to be some new toxic cocktail of crazy.

I got an email today from a girl who follows my page. She had messaged me last week and asked for help getting a racist fired. She gave me shit for a curt response.
It wasn’t curt.
I was upset that I couldn’t do something, I don’t have that kind of power.
I wish I did.
I wish I had a magic eraser or even some magic words to right all of these wrongs, but I don’t.
How do you convince someone that something they believe isn’t necessarily the truth, or it doesn’t have to be.
How do you undo damage that was done in childhood?
I am still trying to undo my own and that ain’t going so great.

Every example that could have been made, every metaphor, analogy or suggestion has been meme’ed and people are just comfortable and stubborn in their own antiquated beliefs.

And sis? I am just one person. If I had any kind of influence, I would have sold enough books to buy a truck and trailer by now. But I don’t and I haven’t.

Mother Teresa said if you want to save the world start with the people closest to you.

Stabbing Westward said I cannot save you I can’t even save myself.

I thought the full moon and eclipse were last night. I was wrong. But I laid in bed feeling nothing, disconnected and it hurt me. I didn’t want to go through this again, that is why I left that island. The Weigh Station. The void, the nothing, the lack of magic.

At least now I have a shot at redemption.

Tonight I am going to sit in the backyard and give my fears to the moon.

And tomorrow I am going to figure out how to bring the rest of me back from Newfoundland, and start walking into the unknown.

Angel, angel or devil, I was thirsty, and you wet my lips.
U2, Trip Through Your Wires

This meme really pissed me off.

For a myriad of reasons.

The obvious… ‘a right woman’. Should have read ‘a good woman’ or ‘the right woman’, but alas, grammatically correcting memes is a task without purpose or end.

But seriously.

The concept of a ‘good woman’ is open to interpretation. What is good for some is bad for others. I should know. I am for all intents and purposes a good woman. I don’t nag, cheat, steal or lie. I am supportive and loving, forgiving and accommodating. I also exhibit devilish behavior. I am wanton, I don’t bow down to rules written by men on behalf of an imaginary sky daddy. I used to smoke and drink. I still cuss and I love to fuck.

Just as the concept of ‘good man’ or devil is relative. I prefer horns, to me those are the good men.

I also believe that ‘right’ is a malleable term that can change and warp over time. Yes, that was the right outfit to wear in 2002, but I no longer have the fashion sense of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in her cardigans and chunky heels.

I also think that change is good, just not forced change, or denial of who someone is at their core for our own comfort.

I am really sick and tired of the idea that we need to find one human in our 20’s that we don’t mind fucking, and then just fuck them until we die.

I realize monogamy was not mentioned in the offensive meme of offensiveness. But hear me out.

Let’s say you actually find a devil and that is not what you want.

Hell is empty (after all) and the devils are all here.

There are 7.7 billion people on the planet. Why pick one that is not exactly what you are looking for and then try to bend them and break them into a shape you like better? Why grind their horns down until their magic and power are lost?

If someone made a meme about ripping the wings off angels to suit our purposes, there would be a mighty ruckus. But from all accounts I have read, angels are subservient, sycophantic and pretty boring. Vanilla really.

Speaking of angels, Mister Rogers said that love is the action of loving someone as they are moment to moment as they are, not how you want them to be. I am paraphrasing but I think he would forgive me.

He acknowledged that people change in a good way.

Change is great, I love change. But forcing someone to deny who they really are and change to suit your agenda is wrong.

Devils aren’t for everyone, I get that. They run hot and passionate, there is a bit of underlying evil that can be misconstrued as cruelty if you don’t know what you are looking at. But the original Lucifer was God’s favorite and the most beautiful among the angels, he was cast out of heaven for arguing with god. Personally, none of that sounds bad to me.

I usually love a good devil and a good debate. But I am not omnipotent, and I understand that I have been wrong, I will be wrong again and it isn’t the end of the world if I am.

And for the record…the Satanic bible has thou shall not rape in it’s commandments, actually goes so far as to say thou shall not even hit on a woman who is not interested in you so, ya…god dropped the ball on that one.

I just don’t think the devil is as bad as he has been made out to be.

This meme reminds me of the one that says women are not rehabilitation centers for badly raised men. It’s my blog, I can go adjacent to topic for a minute. Hush now.

I mean really, someone is raising them. They exist, these bad men. Brock Turner had a mom. I have met horrible men, dated a couple. They scare and infuriate me. But I wouldn’t call them devils, they aren’t that cool. Demons are fallen angels and these incels have no soul at all. I wouldn’t imbue them with supernatural qualities, they are trolls if anything. Angry misshapen men who lurk in the darkness and fantasize about taking what they haven’t earned. Who raised them?

I have a devil child, I do. He is a giant pain in my ass. He is passionate and strong. He doesn’t just blindly follow rules, which is great now, but was a little tricksy when he was 5.

Did I raise him as well as I could have?

No, see above where I am not infallible.

However. He is a good man. And for that I am grateful. I will take a small bit of credit for this. I raised him without shame and fear.

He fucked up, I fucked up and we talked about it. He knows it isn’t the end of the world. And he is stronger for it. He also knows he doesn’t have to be strong 24/7. He has the seemingly rare ability to express his feelings and not worry about this being construed as weakness.

I say rare, but I see it a lot with is generation, especially among his friends and it gives me hope.

Repressed emotion begets violence, either against oneself or others.

Shame is a spiral that only goes down.

But my point is someone is raising these badly raised men who are so caught up in their idea of masculinity that they cease to be human. Generational curses are hard to break, I know this. I broke them.

And sometimes it’s not just the mamas. Sometimes it’s the world or other women.

I have met some very broken men with good mamas and bad exes.

Now the therapy part.

I fucking love therapy, everyone should go. Everyone should always have access to a trained, non-biased individual whose only goal is your improved mental health and general contentment. Somewhere safe to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth it is a gift from god. And we should be able to try on therapists like shoes until we find one that fits and have different shoes for different occasions.

I realize that is unrealistic, but it shouldn’t be.

If I could, I’d be like Oprah in this.

YOU get a therapist, and YOU get a therapist, EVERYBODY GETS A FUCKING THERAPIST.

But mental health is a fairly new idea. And the toxic idea that we should just be able to handle whatever life throws at us is forced upon men a thousand times over. They are never allowed to be not okay. Asking for help is, again, construed as weakness.

Then you get a meme like this, which agrees with my above statements, but says it in a really bitchy way. We can drop the eye rolling any time now.

Everyone has their own path and they might be tiptoeing or striding along it. Or even standing still. It’s their path. Stop yelling at other people and work on your damned self. Grow your own horns or find someone without if that suits you better. More devils for me. Win win.

I am sick of people judging people really.

Why keep people in your life just to make them feel bad about themselves because they aren’t what you imagined them to be.

Rude.

The takeaway from all this?

Shame is bad.

Therapy is good.

And a devil without his horns is just a dude with a bumpy forehead, crippling anxiety and a lost sense of self.

“If I don’t come out of this better, the plane should have crashed.”

I went a long, long time in my life feeling like such nothing that I didn’t realize I had an effect on people at all, like not one bit. Like I could disappear, and no one would really notice.

I remember when that changed too. 6 years ago, a phone conversation with a girl I have known since I was 7 years old. She said her mother always asked about me and worried about me. I figured Mama Plowright had heard tales of my self-destruction through the rumor mill that is the main industry in all small towns and was just being kind. She is a kind woman. But it wasn’t pity, it was because she actively cares about me, even now almost 40 years later.
Another high school friend’s parents saw me at a concert later that year, and I dreaded seeing them. My best friend from back in the day had wreaked havoc on their family and I could only assume they found me guilty by association. But they didn’t. They showered me with the same love they had given me pre havoc and before I divorced the shitty friend and ran away from that town and didn’t go back for 20 years. They hugged me while I cried tears of relief and consoled me in thick Scottish accents. Told me they always knew it wasn’t my fault, that they always thought I was a good girl. I was happy to be thought of at all.

Then Good Karen came along and told me she found me a few hours after she came out of a coma and this blog helped her recover. My Colorado Viking Witch said the same, not including the coma.

I suppose I never really made the extrapolation that I affect people who I have never met or spent limited time with. The concept is foreign to me.

I am still trying to figure out why I have to fill buckets with love and favors before I can ask for an eyedropper in return. I have a therapy session this week. I suppose we will find out then. I asked her and then stopped thinking about it.

But that is really neither here nor there.

I touched on feeling helpless to stop anything that is happening in the world right now, mine or otherwise. And then I stumbled on a Mother Teresa quote about saving people close to me.
But they are pretty okay, all things considered.

So I decided something.

I am 46 years old and I am going back to school. Seems ridiculous I know. But if I don’t do it now, I’ll be 50 and borrowing money off my kid to get by because some bar just cut my waitressing shifts.

I’d rather be 50 with a degree.

I had a few things in mind. I do love writing but if the last few months have taught me anything its that my muse wanders off often and I have a hard time managing too much free time. I want a job. I like the structure and discipline of having a schedule.

So I rewind in my head. When was I happy and productive?

Milton, after the ex moved out. I worked Monday to Friday. Got up early every morning to write. Up at 6 like a rocket, dogs out, coffee on, scribble scribble scribble, shower and off to work. A thousand words a day. Probably a thousand dollars a week too, maybe more. Saturday was housework and visitors and Sunday was city visits. I remember amusing myself weekly by forgetting that I had made my bed with clean sheets Sunday morning and I was always so pleased climbing into bed Sunday night. I liked my little life.
The bar I worked at then is closed now, before the plague sadly. I miss it. Those were the good old days and I didn’t know it at the time. And now earth is closed.

But I kept that routine into the next house, and the one after. When I worked at the brewery and the stadium. It was a good life.

Then I turned into a very drunk Bill Murray circa Groundhog Day on the island of fuckboys and never got my shit together. I stopped writing, I had no time, no clarity and nothing good to say.

Then this last phase of prolific word smithery on the island and off which I am currently hiding away and a book that I can’t write the next chapter to. And honestly? Even if the stadium was open, or the brewery hiring, or the bar open. It’s not enough. They were disposable jobs and I am tired of temporary.

So what do I want to do…

Honestly? I would like to be a staff writer for a tv show. But I have no idea how to break into that business. Set decorator for movies would be fun too, but I would want everything to be pretty and perfect and they would inevitably be torn down and I would be sad. See above where I am trying to shed temporary.

I could decorate houses for rich bitches with too much money and no soul, but…see the problem there? I wouldn’t like my clientele and my face is incapable of lying, they’d know. Plus I suck at selling myself. Apparently, every space I make is Pinterest worthy, but I wouldn’t know. I use it for quotes, if ever.

Those are practical/non practical things. The general consensus amongst my tribe is I would have made an amazing lawyer, but…that is a lot of school, like a lot. I helped a buddy study for the bar in my 20’s. So that ship has sailed.

Hmmmm

Ships, sailing, harbors, lighthouses…

No, I don’t want to build boats or work on the docks.

Newfoundland.

When was I my happy, powerful self there?

Rarely really.

But

The only thing I miss about Newfoundland is stepping in between big mad drunk dudes bent on destruction and having them stop because I said so.
I was never afraid, not even the first time.
Because ever other time they were a mess it was my belly the cried into while I held them and coo’ed and they trusted me and respected me.

And I trusted them and respected them.

Drug dealers and delinquents sure, but I treated them like friends because they were.

There is something about me that inspires honesty from the dishonest, growth from the stagnant. I have long been a rehabilitation center for lost boys. I am a walking safe place. I was a really good lighthouse in a really bad harbor.

I remember feeling satisfied, loved even.

The only fights I failed to stop were always when I was on stage. Couldn’t help them and I felt bad. Yelling accomplishes nothing, dulcet tones and a well placed hand soothes beasts.
And once I was outside smoking during a fight, and I felt bad that I chose to walk away even though I saw the signs and knew it was coming.  The shitty baby bouncer we had wasn’t listening and I secretly hoped he’d get popped in the mouth for mouthing off to me.
I asked the guy who started that fight “would you have stopped if I asked you to?”
He screwed his face up funny as he gave it some thought. “For you? If you asked me in the same voice you just used asking me now? Ya, I would have.”

We weren’t even super close; he knew me more by proxy than anything. But that made me feel good.
I miss feeling that satisfaction of being the virgin sacrificed to stop the volcano from erupting; and emerging unscathed to stop more volcanoes and other natural disasters another day.

Since I am too small to be a bouncer and there is no actual job for professional soother of angry men, she who gets lions to calm the fuck down or she who magically stops bar fights before they happen with one hand and a word. Why not criminals? I already know how to handle them outside in an uncontrolled environment, in stilettos no less…

I have been preaching till I lost my voice about how the system is fucking broken.
And I don’t think I can fix the whole thing, but what about one small corner.

Today I try to figure out how to get Alice back from Newfoundland, file for travel exemption so I can go get her, reclaim my car and whatever other juju and tings I left there. And apply for a grant to go back to school for social work with a focus on prisons.

I think it would be very satisfying to make someone’s sentence a little easier while they are stuck inside and try to make sure they don’t fall back into old habits once they’re out.

(*title by Hozier)

I feel like I already wrote this.

There is a part one and I haven’t looked at it. I will. But in my continuing stubbornness of doing everything backwards, after I post this.

Today might end up being a two-fer.

Nope, it’s just really long. 1979. My usual is 1000 to 1500.

I promised my therapist I would write 1000 words a day. Fell a little short yesterday if you don’t include emails. And I would bet the farm that is not what she meant. Even if I do some of my better writings in there.

I managed to tap out 900 words in the new book. The 2 main characters have finally gotten together in the same room and I am struggling to make them struggle. They can’t just fall in love and live happily ever after on page 46. In my post-apocalyptic world marriage doesn’t exist, happily ever after sure. But ever after what?

Fucking minutiae and misunderstandings. I wrote a post way back when about that too. Novel Romance. Wherein my early ideas about love were tainted by pages and pages of struggle just to have it all work out at the end. I still do that a bit I guess.

As with rom-coms and romance novels and life in general, there is always some yuck to get through. And I have about 350 pages to go. They will get there.

I am doing this newish thing in real life, wherein I don’t skip over the yuck and just see what I want to see.

I have said ad nauseum to all the women in my life (and in here), when they come to me with man troubles, asking me ‘well what did he mean by that?’
My first query is always “Well what words did he say?”
And my unwavering response is “He meant the words he said, no subtext. Just the words.”

Most women are lucky, we have our own language and a chosen few friends with whom we can be ridiculous, emotional, illogical and just spin like whirling dervishes until we come to rest. We are privy to the luxury of not knowing how we are feeling about something and working through it in a safe place with our friends.

Men, not so much. They are expected to get from problem A to solution B with no stopovers.

And I know, I know, broad generalizations and gender specificity. But for the purpose of this post let’s just say there is an allowance made for women to be emotional and an expectation for men to be logical.

I have also said, repeatedly, if you have a problem and want to vent, find a girlfriend. If you want it solved, start planting logic trees with men. I have a deep-rooted respect for the fundamental differences between the sexes and I genuinely believe we are designed to work harmoniously, but modern society got in the way. We can have this discussion at great length until the end of time some other day.

It would be nice if women decided en mass to be safe spaces for men to explore the emotional illogical sides of themselves. That would be a lovely new normal.

Oh, I just rambled there.

What was I talking about?

Oh ya. Men say what they mean. Most of the time. Boys lie to get you in bed, sure; but men tend to speak true. It is less about gender and more about maturity.

I have gotten into a lot of trouble skipping over the blatantly obvious statements made to me by men because I didn’t want to hear them. And believing the lies of boys because I wanted to.
Sometimes they are both in one body.

Perfect example.

After 11 months or so, I slipped and said the word love to Lumberjack.

His response?

“You aren’t allowed to do that.”

It took about 6 weeks after that statement and an Instagram message from his actual girlfriend to fully disengage from that shell of a relationship. But that simple declaration he made that day made it so easy for me to cease and desist a month and a half later. I already had one foot out the door.

He was a lying boy but that one crystal clear assertion was him acting as an honest man, if that makes sense.

And same as with every other situation ever, it is one thing to kinda already know and another to hear it/read it in its full unadulterated truth.

I have this fun game I play with myself wherein after a relationship dissolves, I decide to make it ‘easier’ on myself and I decide I made the gravity of it up in my head. Like they really weren’t that into me, I just misread the situation.

Have…had. I am trying not to do this anymore. And I will tell you why.

Because, invariably without fucking fail, on some sunny day months or years later, I will be sitting somewhere, minding my own business, rifling through the archives for looking for this thing or that completely unrelated thing and I will stumble on some fucking message from one of my exes and instead of the lump of coal I fooled myself into thinking it was, it’s a fucking diamond.

And then I get to go through the trauma of ‘well I guess I am not crazy after all’. And this flimsy excuse I made for the end of things, falls apart in my hands, and I along with it.

I have to deal with the confrontation of the reality wherein they did actually love me, and they left anyways, and I wasn’t crazy I was just stupid because I didn’t see it coming.

I believed the good and ignored the bad. Then I focused solely on the bad and negated the good.

So, moving forward, I am trying not to do that.

Trying not to bend and fold myself into another person. Trying to take things at face value. Listen to all of the words, not just what I want to hear.

And it’s working.

Besides, I was never the little girl who dreamed of my wedding day.

I find weddings to be a colossal waste of money. Thousands of dollars for what? One day of revelry that never quite goes as planned even with the months of stress and planning expended beforehand, and a 50/50 shot of making it?

And what does ‘making it’ constitute? Forced monogamy? The division of shit if you do opt out?

Is it a financial agreement? The giving up or amalgamation of your last names? I have had my last name for 46 years as of tomorrow, no one can pronounce it and it’s fine. It’s weird, it’s mine and I love it.
What is so exciting and important about marriage?

Back in the caves when women were pregnant or had babies to look after, they needed a provider. Genetics took care of that and traditionally speaking, the firstborn usually favors the father’s looks. Makes them more emotionally compelled to take care of their offspring and the mother of said offspring.
Then women became property, something to be owned, so marriage made sense.
But all of this is outdated.
We don’t need that now. We good. Well, 77 cents to the dollar good. But still.

Monogamy has never been a natural human attribute. We aren’t designed for it. So forcing it is a recipe for disaster. Then there’s the governmental and financial aspects. I don’t need the government in my relationship thanks, nor the bank.

I have had a few men propose to me.

And I can now see it for what it was. They wanted to keep me. One was in love with me, but we were young and dumb, and he was drunk most of the time including when he proposed. One was afraid of being alone, one ran out of other ways to make me stay.

I shudder to think of what my life would be like if I had stayed with any of them. I am no longer the girl they knew and bent a knee for.

And therein lies another reason not to get married, or why marriage kinda sucks.

I am not who I was at 24. I am not who I was at 29 and I am really not who I was when ex hubby proposed 3 times.

Marriage is the only contract we are expected to enter into with no fixed term reassessment period. How can the version of myself I am now, know what I want 10 years from now, or forever?

There needs to be an escape clause written in. Every 7 years one or both are allowed to opt out without consequences.

I know people exist who refuse to evolve, grow and change. Carousel people, round and round and they are happy with that.

Do you boo.

They probably see my life as a curse; or would if they bothered to look at it.
I don’t.
I am happy changing. I get excited about it now. What can I learn today?

Well, what I learned is that love to me, is not paper handcuffs or betting half my shit that I will want to be with someone a decade from now. It never was.

I also accidentally stumbled on the idea that we don’t have enough words in our language to define love and relationships.

I use the words dated, boyfriend and even marriage with boatloads of salt.

I was common law married twice, but I just say ex hubby. The last 6 years I say I ‘dated’ so and so, but there were no technically definable relationships in there, maybe one or two. The rest of the time it was just sex and suppers and some decent conversations. And even then, I might have been ‘theirs’ for a time, but they were never mine, I stopped asking remember?

I never dreamed of being married.

I might someday, decide to change my mind about that.

There will be no paperwork involved and that is a blessing in itself. Handcuffs? Oh yes. Paper ones, no thanks.

Love, to me, is choosing someone over and over. Not out of obligation but freewill.

Not because of who you thought they were or who you want them to be but because of who they are in the here and now.

Apparently, I had opened a document and forgotten what I was going to say.

It’s been an interesting few days and after a brief brain cramp, I do know what I was going to write. The Giant, Mandy and the quarry trip that didn’t happen.

But I don’t want to talk about that right now.

I don’t want to talk about what I am about to talk about either.

I make jokes about the writers for this season of ‘earth’ and how they are grasping for audience retention with increasingly absurd plotlines. I think I went numb from it.

The Sirius portal opened last night and I just wanted to go home. I just wanted the plane to crash too. But I don’t think there is an easy way out of this.

Kanye just announced he is running for president. The murder hornet thing, SOS from space that no one seems to be talking about. People fighting over pancake syrup and burning masks while the body counts climb and no real progress is made. I had to step away from the internet. It isn’t safe for me right now. I am not even running my page. I gave it to a girl I met while traveling this last time. I knew her for 2 days, but she seems to be a really good fit. I don’t know if I am passing the torch for good or just taking a rest.

I used to be the girl who drank and knew things. Well, sometimes I was Jon Snow and knew nothing, but there was some balance. Not anymore. I don’t drink and I feel like a ghost passing through. I am not sure if I even exist.

Nothing has felt real in a long time to be perfectly honest.
I left Newfoundland on November 21^st 2019 and got on a plane. I didn’t sleep in the same bed for more than 11 days until lockdown happened. After literally living the same night and day over and over with slightly different faces for 2 years in that bar, the sudden leap to constantly changing scenery and pure joy and excitement when my phone would bing instead of being filled with existential dread seemed amazingly surreal. 
I had never had back to back adventures before, I got really good at packing and getting on planes and navigating strange cities, then all the sudden…the nothing. In Arabic, this is the haboob. I wrote about it before.

Considering we are mid apocalypse with no end in sight, I haven’t really cried much.

I haven’t felt the soul crushing anguish one would expect. I was mildly concerned about myself to be perfectly honest. I had a conversation with the new page runner the other day about crying when Trump was elected, and I do recall sobbing, heavily and often. I cried a lot in 2016 and looking back now, that year felt kinda like a cake walk, even with the gorilla and the creepy clowns everywhere, including in the white house.

I think the last soul sob I had was leaving the fucking Starbucks in March. The pandemic was just starting and the air was thick with panic. I cried the second I got into the uber and I didn’t stop until my 18-hour travel day had come to a close and I was climbing into bed in my attic. It really felt like the end of the world. And in a way, it was. I just didn’t know it yet.

I must have cried since. I hit and 8.6 on the period pain scale a few times. But I honestly cannot remember. Everything is kinda bleeding together. I know I was so messed up at one point I called my therapist from 8 years ago and we picked up where we left off. She was so instrumental in prying me loose from my terrible marriage we never got to the why I got myself into that in the first place. I was slipping and I reached for support. It worked.

My normally weepy, panicking self has been dry eyed and able to accomplish tasks.

To the point that I received a congratulatory message from someone telling me he was proud I didn’t meltdown right before shark week this month. Truth be told, I was proud too.

This too shall pass. All things must end.

I have spent the bulk of this week crying. And as much as I don’t want to talk about it, this is my therapy for now.

My baby cousin passed away. I found out a week ago today as I was antique shopping with my girlfriend. An unsaved number rang, and I thought it was my mom, but her voice sounded young somehow and very far away.

“Sarah? It’s your mother.”

We don’t talk a lot, and she usually calls me from her cell. For some reason their house phone number didn’t transfer to this phone when I got it. And honestly? She didn’t sound like herself, she sounded small. But it was her.

She made a bitter joke about only calling with bad news, and as I heard the following words coming through the phone, I was confused.
“Cousin Emily died last night.”

I have 2 cousins named Emily, one first cousin, one second cousin. Doesn’t matter, either would have been a tragedy. I haven’t seen my second cousin since we were kids. It was my first cousin. I remember her being in my aunt’s belly and feeling her kick 31 years ago. I haven’t seen her since her wedding two years ago wherein she made a huge effort to make sure I was there and felt included and welcome. Even though her birth heralded the beginning of my estrangement from my family. I was 15 and I left home shortly thereafter.

I wasn’t there as she grew up. But she insisted I be there for her wedding and I am grateful.

She was a beautiful wonderful woman. And I remember finally feeling like I got to go home, surrounded by aunts, uncles and cousins. Holding their babies I had never met and meeting the cousins anew, as the adults they had become. I remember feeling so happy and included. Like I got let back into a house I had been locked out of for decades.

I had a long moment where I just decided this wasn’t happening, I was having a really vivid dream or hallucination. I forgot where I was and how I had gotten there. I forgot everything except for my mother’s strained voice coming through the phone. She was trying not to cry, so was I.
But as the reality that this was actually happening and I wasn’t having a weird dream, I sat down hard in a random dining room chair in the antique market I was in, clutching the pillow cases I had found tightly in my hand and I just kept saying no over and over. This isn’t real. I know the responsibility of having to be the bearer of bad news. It always fills me with angst and more sadness, having to relive your own trauma over the event and then spread it to others. I tried so hard not to make it harder on my mom, but seriously no, this can’t be happening. She just got married to her absolute soulmate, they weren’t a couple, they were two incarnations of one entity. They were in love and happy beyond happy. She turned 31 a few days ago.

I will always remember her birthday; she was born the day after our grandmother died. In the same hospital. The first time I saw her was at the funeral.

I spoke to my mom again today and we surmised that there are different kinds of grieving over different kinds of death. My maternal aunt passed away in May, other side of the family. I loved her so much. I have nothing but good memories of her. She was 88 and had a wonderful life. I think because of the numbness and lack of closure I hadn’t grieved her really either. I haven’t seen her since my sister’s wedding 3 years ago.

I’ve been so estranged from my family, both blood and otherwise for so long. I feel like an asteroid or a comet cutting through their solar systems and orbits. I’m only ever around for weddings and funerals.
I think I had left home a year before a family friend of ours passed away, almost 30 years ago and I am feeling now what I felt then. She was 9 years old, I was 16.
I don’t know how to grieve for them or with them, like I am outside of the house looking in, and I hurt but my hurt and loss are less than everyone else’s because I haven’t been around for decades now…and I have to tread lightly. But it still hurts.
I can’t explain it better than that. My Aunt passed away and I feel like I was lucky in a way because the last time I saw her she was happy and healthy, and I get to remember her like that. But then I feel like a selfish outsider and interloper. I haven’t been able to process her being gone and everything is hitting all at once.

Now my mind keeps refreshing hourly, I keep remembering they are gone. I keep thinking about my cousin’s new husband, they were soulmates, I saw it and my heart breaks fresh every time. And even that is a selfish hurt, because I am scared that I will die alone, unloved. I don’t belong anywhere to anyone. And my heart breaks for my uncle who only ever loved my aunt with his whole heart for his whole life and now he has to keep going without her. They both do these men that were happy, loving and loved. And I just think that is so fucking unfair.

I am in this orbit of my own, at the far reaches of the cosmos. Sending out distress signals that go unheard because I don’t speak the language and I have no one to send them to.

(Author’s note. Original publishing date was June 2020)

“It’s happening again.”

The Giant from Twin Peaks is on a loop in my head with the same angst and urgency as when Maddie died.

I do not feel good.

I got a courtesy email from Kijiji yesterday, addressed to Final Boss. No idea why it didn’t go to the junk folder, but it didn’t.

51 weeks ago he was laying in my bed, in the room I made for his comfort asking for help looking for an apartment. I did it. I helped, and he ended up in a trap house anyways.

And it’s happening again.

I do this every fucking time without fail.

I don’t see reality.

I really gotta talk to my therapist about this.

I only see potential, never who they really are. Then the truth comes out and I am blindsided. Devastated. And I get to play a fun game over months called ‘what did I do wrong this time.’ And you dear readers get to walk along beside me on my quest to be a better girlfriend/partner by dissecting myself until there is nothing left of me. Followed by a soft delete wherein I decide I made everything up in my head and they didn’t really say or do those things, they didn’t really love me it was just me seeing things that weren’t there.

But invariably a memory or an email from Kijiji shows up and I am right back where I started and faced with the truth that no, it was real and it doesn’t matter anyways because it’s over regardless.

Nina Simone said, “you have to learn to get up from the table when love is no longer being served.”

I never do.

I buy the food, cook a beautiful meal full of love and exotic delicacies, set the table, serve, maybe take a couple quick bites for myself, dish out seconds, then dessert, then clear everything, wash all the dishes and wipe it all down and wait for scraps. Meanwhile they are off eating junk food burgers served up by plastic girls in polyester uniforms.

This time I saw the signs a little.

Still ignored them.

The one thing that keeps looping in my head is when he said that I shouldn’t deny myself the now discontinued vape pods that we both love so much, that I shouldn’t save them for when I see him. My brain whimpered “donuts”.

I don’t know why that is the thing my mind is latching onto; I know my gut rolled when he said it a month or so ago. Maybe I did really know then, what I am about to find out now.

I got the ‘we have to talk’ message earlier today.

This is me in real time, trying to calm down, to not vomit, not cry.

I write things down to get my head on straight, it is what I do.

And I plant flowers in graveyards and sing songs about the ghosts who haunt here.

He seemed real. Like really real.

And it isn’t like I didn’t know what I was getting into.

There have never been lies here.

I don’t think Final Boss or any of the other ones ever lied outright either. Not on purpose.

I seriously think I am going to throw up.

I was talking to my girl earlier.

With much bitterness in my voice I said I am used to this.

And I am.

I show up. A ball of unconditional love and support. And they bask in it for a while.

Then, invariably end up leaving to go back to mediocrity.

Is it more comfortable? Do they need the nagging?

I don’t understand.

I tried reading that book, Why Men Love Bitches. Some of it made sense. I liked the first few chapters about being your own person and having your own life. It’s important. But then it bled into manipulation and lying and I can’t. I want to be loved as is. Freewill, not by force or obligation or false pretenses.

Maybe I set the bar too high.

And I can’t bring myself to be a bitch.

I don’t want to be worshiped for something I am not, I want to be loved for what I am. It took me a long time to get here.

I am friends with an amazing mega dominatrix online and I adore her. But I know I can never be like her, or the majority of my friends. None of whom are like me.

I listen to their advice about what I should do with my life, but I know. I will always be ruled by my vulnerable heart with my vagina cheering her on from the sidelines and my logic just rolling her eyes and prepping for the worst.

I actually really believed everything I have been through and everything I have learned finally had a purpose.

Truth be told, I have toyed with that idea before, but this time it felt real.

The stove is always hot, even if it’s a different stove.

I keep thinking if I stay true to myself and fine tune things and continue on my quest to figure out how to love that someday someone will see me and know I am the one they have been looking for.

And, they have.

Problem is to be with me they have to be a little better and do a little better and get used to new things. Unlearn old ideas of what relationships look like, and I get the fear of the unknown, the unstructured, the new.

And some of them have tried, bless their hearts.

But invariably it becomes too much so I am too much, and they settle back into the muck of old routine masking as comfort.

There is a huge re-offense rate with criminals, life out of prison is scary and hard when that’s all you know.

I know I can’t expect or ask anyone to change any more than I can magically turn into a bitch.

If I was going to, I would have by now.

But this is the 46^th verse, same as the first.

I suppose now the silver lining is that I don’t beat myself up quite as bad as I used to about it.

I would rather be too much than not enough.

It will be a month tomorrow since George Floyd died.

White privilege is real, all lives matter was stolen by white people to undermine black lives matter and those hangings were not suicides.

We all caught up now?

Once upon a time I had the luxury of thinking that racism existed behind closed doors with elderly family members sprung from the old folk’s home for Thanksgiving dinner, saying inappropriate shit while the younger generation rolled their eyes. Or in little pockets of humanity buried in the deep south, or northern Georgia where white boys wouldn’t go to That gas station because it was for the others. They used that word that makes my mouth taste like soap liberally, sprinkling it in with fuck, as a curse and a slur.

But that was just Rome, Georgia right? And Alabama. I went to a flea market and it was peppered with wooden signage praising the lord and flags praising confederacy.

I grew up watching Dukes of Hazard every Friday night at 8pm. We sat on the popcorn blanket and watched the General Lee drive recklessly when Daisy Duke was a character on a show, not the shorts she wore.

I was 5. I didn’t know.

I remember wanting a cabbage patch kid doll so badly when I was 8. My mom asked my step grandma to bring us the dolls up from the states because our tiny town couldn’t keep them in stock. I was so excited for them to visit. They came empty handed because the only ones she could find were black. I remember how she spit the word out of her mouth like a curse word, and I remember thinking “but it’s still a baby and I want one.”

I didn’t understand then.

I am 46 now and I know. I also know there is more to learn. And I also know no matter how much I read or watch or listen I will never really know. I had to accept this.

I did the hiring for a strip club for a year. First question every fucking time I brought up a new girl was, “is she black”. What bearing does that have on how beautiful she is, how sexy she is, whether or not she does a good stage show, whether or not she shows up for shifts or how she is with customers? None that I could think of, but I kept my mouth shut and hired her anyways.

I worked at another club where the black girls were limited to 5 a night, so they were there before the club opened to secure a spot, while white girls like me could waltz in 6 hours later and pay the same amount of money while being spared the half a shift of dead time. I quit working there. Not because of that, although in retrospect I wish it was. Too many fights, young blond strippers pulling each other’s extensions out and dudes in affliction shirts smelling like whatever new stink Axe body spray had come up with this month. Spray tanned and greasy looking, all of them.

I have concluded, over the last 3 terms of American presidents, that racism is alive and well.

My white skin gave me the luxury of not noticing. That is white privilege.

You know, language is so important.

Scientists fucked the planet in the 90’s by calling climate change ‘global warming’. Every fucking winter it’s the same thing. Global warming isn’t real, it’s snowing. We are an ignorant and shortsighted species.

Racism has become for me, like the blue car phenomenon. Start noticing blue cars and suddenly they are everywhere.

I joined a few Facebook groups for outing racists with the intent of having them fired for racist behavior. I scroll through my feed now and every 4th post makes me sick to my stomach. I can’t look away. This is real… and honey, you gon lose yo job.

It isn’t just blatant dudes hiding under bedsheets anymore. It’s the ‘colorblind’ folks, the ‘all lives matter’ peeps. Well ya, all lives are supposed to matter, that is the ideal, but we don’t live in the ideal and here is a thousand examples, charts, videos facts and figures as to why we aren’t there yet, so please stop saying it.

The collective hive mind got together and decided it was a form of racism. Catch up buttercup.

There are 2 sides to history right now. We’re in it, and the only way out is through.
Racists have had their day and their way for far to long.

Its rampant, its a disease and its debilitating to all women, minorities, anyone who isn’t a straight white male…and ESPECIALLY to BIPOC.
The police are killing black people for sport.
People are getting lynched

Basic human rights are being denied and violated.

The veil is torn, there is no more hiding from this.

I’m terrified. I’m angry. I’m confronting a lot of unpleasant things about myself and the horrific state of our countries.
But I am glad to be alive now.

I’m fighting for my god children and all the other children who are going to benefit from this chaos now.

Something happened yesterday.

I read something and it took the air out of my lungs from the sheer truth of it.

I posted the most dumbed down version of an explanation for white privilege I could find.

“White privilege doesn’t mean you have an easy life it means it isn’t harder because of your skin color.”

This is as non-debatable to me as 2+2=4

But…

Every time I post about white privilege all the white people start screaming “my life is hard too”.

Ya and?

All I hear is global warming isn’t real because it snowed.

Social scientists should have called it something else.

All comes back to snowflakes though, doesn’t it.

I’m doing mental gymnastics trying to figure out ‘why’ white people are racist.

Came up with a few things.
Sports
Porn
Spices
and this

Jade is my superhero

White people (in general) need someone to oppress so they feel superior. There is no such thing as white culture. We are parasitic. We are Borg. We invade other countries and insist they assimilate to be more like us, but what are we really bringing to the table? Mayonnaise?

But what happens when we are presented with glaring, undeniable proof that we have every advantage…

Well, we have to confront our own shortcomings with the added caveat that we had less hurdles in the first place. The monopoly board was stacked 400 years in our favor. So, if you didn’t accomplish anything not only is that all on you, you started ahead in the race and you still failed.

If your life sucks it’s beyond your fault and if it doesn’t suck, you still aren’t as accomplished as you thought you were there sugar.

Mind boggling isn’t it.

But it’s true.

I have to sit in that reality and deal with my own inadequacies. Been doing a lot of that lately. Reading disturbing history that we were never taught in school. Filtering through and deleting 1000’s of racist comments on my page.

I hear the phrase ‘make racists afraid again’ thrown around often.

I think they are already afraid. Just like incels want to blame women for their own failures and sexual insecurities. Racists are afraid of things they don’t understand, and that they may have to take some responsibilities for their own lives.

Small dick energy either way.

They’re terrified.

Most everything I have posted lately I use a very white tone, speak only to white people. I can only speak from my own experience and to my own people. I don’t get to tell oppressed people how to react to what they have been through, I haven’t been through it. All I can do is reach in and pull as many white people to the right side of the fence as I can and stop giving a public platform to the ones who want to remain on the wrong side of history.

I repeatedly use the phrase ‘do better’.

And that is what it is.

We have to do better.

I have hesitated to write anything, and this one won’t be long.

It’s not my turn to speak.

I usually write about sex, love and relationships. But that seems trite and unimportant in the wake of everything that is happening. I usually post about those things too plus poetry, astrology, witchy shit.
And lately I have stopped. I no longer feel comfortable being complacent.

Being non complacent is not comfortable either.

I am trite and unimportant, and I am okay with that.

It isn’t my turn to speak.

I went back and read an old post I had written when Roy Moore almost got elected.

63% of white women who voted decided a pedophile was better than a democrat.

Wow sis.

I hesitated to go back and look at the article I wrote in the time called before.
It was 2017 and I did not know then what I know now.
I was worried I had been offensive towards POC.

Dear White Women

I stand by every word and I have a few to add.

I have banned and deleted over 800 people since I watched George Floyd being murdered.
Here is why.
He was murdered, by a stone faced racist police officer who believed in that moment, for 11 minutes worth of moments and for 4 days after the fact, that he would get away with it.
This is a fucking problem.
Nothing that has transpired after is as important as the series of events that lead us to a viral snuff film of a cold blooded murder.

All lives matter was created AFTER Black lives matter to undermine their issues.
I get that a few people are mistaking it for love and light, but I am telling you right now, it fucking isn’t. There have been 100’s of analogies as to why it is bad, and if you ignore that and continue to preach this, you are part of the problem.

Same with the not all cops are bad. Enough of them are, and the good ones don’t stop the bad ones. Guilt by association.

I just keep thinking back to #metoo and seeing my mom post it, and the little girls I used to babysit and every one of my friends.

And the seething shrieking rage I would feel when some douchey dude (who you know full fucking well has done some questionable shit) piped up with not all men.

Like fuck off and let us talk.

IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO LISTEN… FINE, SHITTY AND ARROGANT BUT FINE.

DO NOT TRY AND MAKE THIS ABOUT YOU.

I can imagine it feels something like that for POC, but times a thousand.

There is a glaring difference, and an important one. I know, as a woman, the dread of being tipsy, leaving the bar and the danger that comes in that space between the bar and the cab. I know how terrifying it is to walk home after a late shift. BUT if I am with a group of other women, or escorted by male friends, the danger decreases exponentially. POC, don’t get that “luxury”. The danger never decreases.

The world is built for white male comfort, rallies around the ‘protection’ of white women and spreads fear of black men.

That woman who called the cops when she was the one breaking the law by having her dog off leash basically pulled a gun on that man.

We already have power, and this is how we choose to use it?

Nah sis. Do better.

Any time you hijack a BLM post you are diluting it to talk about your opinions and your problems and your life, you are part of the problem.

You are contributing to racism.

For the first time since my ancestors landed here I’m being asked to sit down and listen.
Not for the first time, but this seems to be the first time it really worked.
If you are not helping, you are in the way.

My decent or even not so good experiences with police officers do not fucking matter at all.
No one is talking to me or about me. And that is okay.

It is not my turn to speak.

It was a very strange sensation to realize that whether or not I had something to say, it didn’t fucking matter. I realized I am used to being heard. I realized I have benefited from a system designed to be comfortable for people with my skin tone and realizing that really fucking hurt. I felt shame and guilt and confusion.

But here’s the thing…

I struggled with this.
I felt like I needed to be different, special, forgiven.
Then I had a profound moment when I realized that this has absolutely nothing to do with me or how I feel.
And that my friends is the entirety of the point.

I have felt like I have been treading water for a while now.

I know I am not alone in this.

The work of keeping our heads above water. Pedaling the bicycle and waving our arms in the water just trying to breathe. No rest, not getting anywhere either. Sometimes we succumb and go under. Then kick and fight just to break the surface again.

I had a therapy appointment this morning.

Feels like a merry-go-round.

I didn’t talk about what I wanted to talk about. But we did have a good ride.

She has asked me to stop using the word ‘need’ and replace it with want. We have discussed mindful breathing, accepting what is and varying other things normal people discuss with therapists.

I understand I have a fear of completing projects because I am afraid the final product will no be good enough, so I just don’t start.

We have worked on working through that.

Be afraid, do it anyways.

Easy to see and say, harder to do.

I remembered that I started this blog for myself and myself only. I was living very alone and having rapid fire epiphanies and I needed to keep track of them. And I wanted to live in Georgia. I wanted to make money writing. I have never monetized the blog. A few attempts have been made and I never followed through.

We had some ideas.

I gotta do something. This nothing and treading water is not cutting it.

I remember getting ready to go to Florida last year.

Felt like a beautiful new beginning.

And it was.

No meat, no booze and a lot of writing and relaxing after I had been doing either too much or neither of those things for 2 years, respectively.

I started writing a book in the Jeep on the way to Disney.

Bad writer, I had no pen or paper, so I wrote it in email drafts to my boyfriend. Safest place I could think to put it.

Cut to January, 7 flights later a few chapters flushed out in airport terminals, at an Airbnb I finished it.

I also uprooted my life, moved back to Hamilton. Spent 5 days in that jeep. Traveled everywhere and kept writing everywhere I went.

The day after my birthday I get my first royalty cheque from sales.

It’s peanuts, but they are my peanuts.

Therapist had me talk through the things I have actually accomplished since lockdown started.

It is hard for me to see them. I just see a sad lonely girl in yesterday’s pajamas, dirty hair, 2 weeks worth of laundry, washed but still sitting in the basket. An unmade bed. A rug that doesn’t match anything else in my room because that stuff isn’t here yet.

I see a caterpillar in goo phase in a messy cocoon.

I have sketches for how to better arrange my room. I have sketches in my head and scribbled notes and 12 open tabs for new books. But I can’t write them. Or that is what I am telling myself.

Focus.

Focus.

Remember the things I did do.

I did attack and clean the hell closet, I did edit the big bad book and send that off for publishing. I did organize my room as it sits now and although it is not perfect, it is pretty good.
I had the kittens for a month and I cleaned up after them and I REALLY cleaned up after they left.
Repaired some damage between myself and my son.
Wrote some blog posts.
20 000 words of the new book that has nothing to do with the other books. I might actually put my real name on this new one.
I kept my plants alive and got some of my old plants back and I have done the bare minimum of existing. I drink a lot of water, take my vitamins, eat very well.

The new new book was started in this incredible influx of muses and inspiration. Then it turned into work. And this is when I get frustrated and avoid or ruin things.

I gotta remember that the first 5000 words were easy and beautiful sure, but the other ¾ were all being stubborn and working at it, slowly.

I think that is a metaphor for a lot of things. Including my life and relationship.

I found the perfect song to encapsulate how I am feeling in this moment.

Slip Slidin’ Away. Good ol’ Paul Simon.

Soundtrack to many, many things.

You know the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip slidin’ away.

Preach it Paul.

I do this and it vexes me, but I don’t know how to stop. I sound like a broken record. I know how the universe works better than most. You plant seeds of wishes and wants and goals, water those seeds with your thoughts and actions and then, usually when you least expect it, they bloom.

So why do I keep slip slidin’ away? Some kind of internal sabotage I suppose. That fear of not being good enough. The decision I made that I had to earn any happiness or love given or it wasn’t valid. Wolf would just call it corrupt data, and it is.

The exact reason I am in therapy. Trying to clear that or at least reroute my brain around it.

The problem is, in this moment, I don’t have a clear picture of what my destination is.

And then there’s this…

He said Dolores, I live in fear, my love for you is so overpowering I am afraid I will disappear.

I did disappear for a bit.

I got caught up in a future that is no longer viable and oh lord did I mourn.

And my love for him is really fucking overpowering.

We just went through what can gently be put as a rough patch. 70 some odd days apart. It was bound to happen. I tried to back off both for myself, to get some clarity and for him so he wasn’t sucked up in the constant tornado that is my thoughts.

I was afraid.

I still am.

But I remembered it’s okay to be afraid.

My therapist has horses. She used the metaphor of getting back on the horse after you get thrown and I chuckled. Remembering my second horseback ride, post car wreck on that huge Percheron cross I had. No saddle, and ya, he dropped me off in a pile of shit. But it didn’t make me scared of him. I was grateful he picked somewhere soft to put me down.
And I remembered the sheer strength of will it took to drive down the same highway my car wreck happened on, to get back and forth the physio I needed to get on that horse or even walk right. It was hard and I did it.

So the lessons I came away with today were, fear will always exist, be afraid and do things anyways.
Life will smash you up and slough you off into piles of shit and you just gotta ride or drive anyways.

Knowing these things and doing these things are different. With all the treading water I have been doing it’s hard to remember how to swim. And honestly…I don’t know which direction to go in. I can’t see the land from where I am.

But I have to pick a direction, pick a horse to ride, do something, anything. Even if it’s wrong or I get thrown.

I have had enough of days where I hit the snooze button and let it ruin my whole day.

So what if I didn’t do a thing yesterday. I can always start again.