Pretty Good Year

 

It is a little early for a retrospective, but I don’t care. Nostalgia hit me like a freight train today and I let it.

Hold onto nothing
As fast as you can
Well still pretty good year

Maybe a bright sandy beach
Is going to bring you back
May not so now you’re off
You’re gonna see America

Tori Amos ~ Pretty Good Year

I do hold onto nothing. Scraps, memories, t shirts in Ziplocs, screenshots and echoes.

But I am getting better at letting go. Better than nothing is still something.

I am on my way back to the ocean, but far enough south that I can touch it without freezing.

I am going to see America, the Motherland. It’s on fire and I don’t even care, I just want to be warm again.

I need in the water. I have to remember how to float. Been sinking for a week now. Longer really.

I have been sleeping under the blanket we took to the beach and quarry  all summer.

One would think this would be a good thing. That it somehow absorbed the sunshine and happiness I experienced this year.

But in this new house, this new room, in my old bed. I can’t sleep right. Something isn’t right.

Stumbled on an old post I wrote last year. Random suggestion, of course I peeked. I always do. These are my archives after all. My pushpins on a map to show me I have been here.

https://www.ourladyoflustandgrace.com/sleeping-sickness.html

It’s been a year right about now. My new bedroom looks an awful lot like this picture I randomly pulled off the internet to go with this thing I wrote, and now I am thinking about how much has changed in a year.

A fucking lot.

Still miss this one, hope he is well wherever he is.
He was a good boy. My Moonface, my Black 19.

It’s been 12ish months since we met and 10 since he left, give or take.

He was 19 years old and he lied about it, by the time he did tell me the truth, I pretended to be offended but really, I didn’t mind. I am beginning to actually believe age doesn’t matter and everyone who comes into our lives is supposed to be there, in whatever way for as long as they stay.

Ya, I fucked a 19 year old. Aaaaaaand I kept doing it after I found out. The lineup for the lynch mob is over there, plenty of pitchforks and torches for all. Or you could just let me be happy, in these little stolen moments where I am.

That ain’t even the worst of it.

I was still ‘with’ Lumberjack at the time. But I was starting to atrophy from the lack of actually seeing him. As far as I can tell he and his actual girlfriend had a lovely Christmas together, when he wasn’t sending me selfies and dirty memes/messages from the basement he was posing in front of the tree with her while I was begging to see him for 5 minutes before I left.

He didn’t acquiesce to my request and I left him when I got home.

Then he came back and was nice for a time.

Until it turned back into the thing it never stopped being and I left again.

Then I dated a boy, like a real boy/boyfriend. That was nice too, until it wasn’t.

Had to stop myself from calling him just to get laid last night. I am hungry. But that dog is sleeping and I must let it lie.

I am packing for Florida on the heels of just unpacking from Newfoundland. I feel better with this suitcase at the end of my bed. Packed my favorite things, all of them almost. And I realized, I can do without almost everything I own. I could, in reality pack a couple big suitcases and be happy where I land.

I did a righteous purge of everything I had been carrying since the farm. I sent the poet’s ‘gifts’ to a witch and she burned them and buried the ashes by a stream, I can feel that flowing away from me with every minute, every drop of rain. Away away away.

I have visited islands and realized how good I feel completely surrounded by water.

Must get back to the water.

This trip, this pilgrimage to the ocean I have done almost 5 years running is early this year, and honestly, my brain doesn’t have a clue as to what time it is or where we are or what in the actual fuck is happening. I am scattered right now, but this weather and countdown to ocean has me reminiscing about last year something fierce.

Not this fall but the one before I was dealing with chronic, cystic ingrown hairs on my most holiest of holies. I had been burnt and scarred by a woman during a routine wax. I was gunning to get stateside where this magical cream was supposed to fix me, but it didn’t. Spent 500 bucks on varying creams and medications, specialist appointments and nothing really worked.

I think that is why I stayed in the nothing of Lumberjack. I felt like a monster. He always fucked me in the dark. I didn’t want to present my fucked up self to anyone new. Lest I be judged.

It has been a calendar year since the worst of it and I am better now, still have 2 scars to remind me wax is bad.

And the only real cure was time.

It always is. Everything spirals in and out, wounds heal and eventually everything is alright.

I can tell you that things changed after the eclipse.

I reunited with the Giant, fell in love with someone that wasn’t him but was kindred, same kind. And I now know that lightning can strike in the same place twice.

It’s been a calendar year since I heard the Lumineers Angela, and my ears have finally began to hear it the way it was meant to be Home at last, not Hope it lasts.

It’s been a calendar year since I said to Moonface/Black 19 “I promise to come back from the ocean happy” and a year less a day since I decided I could just decide to be happy on my own, without waiting.

I am waiting though.

I don’t know what’s coming. This year has been a lot of coasting, maddening build, mediocre lovers, let downs. I think every year is.

But this year I had cosmic love.

Vacancy, hotel room, lost in me, lost in you
Angela, on my knees, I belong, I believe

Home at last

 

Still, pretty good year.