Open

“We must be willing to give up the life we planned for the one that is waiting for us.”
(Joseph Campbell)

I had plans. Big Bad Wolf plans.

Poet popped by again after yet another agonizing absence.

He said repeatedly during this latest apology “Don’t say anything.”

I is getting mighty tired of this irony.

I bit my tongue until it bled.

I sat quietly and listened as he said I made him feel like I was always in a rush to get off the phone, I wasn’t attentive enough. Jesus wept boy, I sat on my porch in -20 February weather because that is where I get the best phone reception, we talked for 40 minutes until my hands were frozen arthritic claws and my battery died.

I’d sent a story and a message … nothing. Not even dancing dots.

For 6 weeks this time.

Came back and asked me why I disappear? (Eyeroll)

He stayed a whole week almost. Filled in the absence of the Giant quite nicely. Had me thinking ‘alright, things make sense again’.

I wanted to go to California. I wanted to be with him. I had nothing holding me here. I was waiting for him to call me home.

Instead he called me a conundrum, “Sarah you are Everything I have ever wanted and everything I have ever run from.”

These are all the things I wasn’t allowed to say during his apology/mansplaining.

He doesn’t like me dancing, I don’t either and I can provide written testimonial from dozens of dancers that prove I am not a typical stripper. But what is the point? He wouldn’t believe them anyways.

Good god I look bad on paper.

Chain smoking, whiskey drinking, single mom, stripper. With a bad habit of sitting in the same sweats for days on end writing feverishly, forgetting to eat and shower and function beyond getting the words out. Then stilettos and thigh highs, painted up like a geisha. Crippling self-doubt monthly and sometimes I am the queen of the world, usually on Wednesdays. Consistently inconsistent. Yuck.

He says I say ‘fuck’ too much, and that I am not used to anyone listening to me so I’m too loud. He isn’t wrong.

I love loud too. I have a handful of people I would take a bullet for. If I ever loved you I still do but I spent a few decades not knowing what love was. I am getting there, still clumsy and learning to walk.

When I was 5 months pregnant I got into a relationship thinking that is what I should be doing. Monkey-barred through 18 years and 5 more failed relationships. So many years being someone’s mom, daughter, sister, wife I never had time to figure out who I was.

Been working on myself for the last 3 years and I know I look a mess. Pulling everything apart, trying to find the ‘why’. Under constant renovations but my foundation stands.

I have lavished love on the wrong people, those who take without giving, expect acceptance but only give attention conditionally.
Ownership is not love, it is belonging with someone and giving yourself freely.

I am more terrified of forgetting than I am of being forgotten. Social media is a touchstone for me, all these markers saying ‘you were here’. Good or bad, yes, there I was. On the bad days I can scroll back and remind myself, this too shall pass, in a while you will not feel like an unlovable monster. My phone is full of videos chronicling belly laughs with my girls. Selfies that trigger the feelings I was feeling that day. A virtual diary full of words and 3×5’s.

Again, I look a mess.

Because I am a mess, and I know it. I try to tidy up the edges, tuck my crazy and my heart back in, but they escape.

Poet said he didn’t know who I was.  I was allowed an explanation for that…neither do I.

He took it upon himself to read parts of the blog and scrolled through my Facebook looking for clues.
I let him in, I let everyone in.

I am left wondering if he managed to find all the posts that were about him, and there are many.

Shame is a Prison
Condolences and Gratitude
His
The Little Known Plague of Male Poets
Minefield
Temple
Necromancy
Precious
Building an Empire
Whores, Housewives and Paper Handcuffs
Because of You
The Other Kind of Apocalypse 
Five Guys
Honorable mention in Bridges and Tightropes, not to mention volumes of explicit porn written just for him and sent directly to his inbox.

I think I have written more for and about him than anyone else.

And it’s still not enough or too much.

Left a post on my wall saying ‘remember darling, it’s a status update, not a diary’. It’s both honey.

He called me and rambled on about how freaked out he was. How he didn’t understand how I could be so open. When I write for him I have structure and discipline. He didn’t understand my mess. Easy enough to explain, I am both of those things.

He said he would call me after he had more coffee and could articulate. Then bolted in the night, again.

There is the irony folks, he ran from my open, which was the quality that he claimed to love the most about me.

I do.

He thinks I do these things for attention.

I don’t.

I AM happy when someone comes forward and says I helped them in some way. But numbers mean nothing to me.

I am doing this for me. As far as I know I have this one life and I want to experience it and remember it in all of its messed up glory. Whether it be the continuing saga of Young Un, or how I loved the Hulk or that time I was laughing so hard on the change room floor I couldn’t stand up much less dress myself.

Poet says he hates bloggers for how they have to document every time they stub a toe.
Broke my toe two weeks ago, been dancing with my toes taped together, like lotus foot-binding, agony in every step, didn’t mention it until now.
But every time he has broken my heart open, I have to put myself back together, I archive it here.

Ex-hubby told me, after he read the blog and realized I wasn’t the thing he had built me up to be in his mind, that I would die alone with nothing but memories.

Aye, I have those. In written words and photographs.

I have asked repeatedly ‘who is going to love me with my guts splattered all over the internet.’
Not the Poet apparently.

I had a little tantrum upon the Facebook. Answered by the usual rousing chorus of “fuck that guy, you are amazing and we all love you as is” with a ‘nice ass’ thrown in for good measure and comic relief.

This has happened so many times, I have become comfortably numb. (Pink Floyd)

What hurts me now is watching him sabotage his own happiness.
But I think it’s his way, creating pain out of nothing.

I was as wide open with him as I ever have been. I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.