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Who is this Masked Man?

August 4, 2016

Who is he really? I have no idea.

There exists a meme that makes the rounds about forgiving someone who isn’t sorry and how that’s strength.

It is.

I should know, I just did the thing.

It’s going to take longer for me to forgive myself. But only by a lil bit.

2 years it took me to come to the realization that I fell in love with a masked man.

And only the mask.

He’s kinda an asshole without it.

He is not the Batman, beyond the rich/hermit thing. He can’t even save himself.

The lightbulb that went off burned my retinas.

Sitting in therapist’s office, she was questioning why I even come to her at all.

“Sarah, you seem to be able to figure things out rather well on your own, why are you here…am I actually doing anything for you?”

She is, but I have to stop with the day-to-day and resurrect my past. I am afraid I did that thing that I warned her I would do which was twist the conversation into a new direction to get away from what I don’t want to deal with.

Recent past? I got this.

The time called ‘before’ like when I was married? I am actually alright with all of that too. I learned a lot, mostly what not to do. I shed skin that didn’t fit and itched something awful. I have already danced naked on that grave enough. I can’t even remember where I buried them.

Way back when I was a little girl with glasses, a huge vocabulary and skinned knees?
She needs some love and attention and then I think we are going to be okay.

Someday soon I will reach back and pull her out and tell her everything is going to be better than fine. It is going to be spectacular.

I hold onto ghosts, lawd knows I do. I feed them, water them and give them a place to manifest. My bedroom is a Ouija board and I commune with the dead on soft sheets, my hands are wandering planchettes that move with psychic, spiritual guidance and spell out sweet things on their skin or trace the constellations in their freckles trying to decipher maps to home or both.

At least when they appear I can recognize them, they remain true to the men I knew, and their newfound transparency is pretty sweet.

The golden rule with the dead is ask them what they want.

I said to the Giant “When I start to develop genuine feelings for someone it’s like a bell gets rung in my heart’s graveyard and all my skeletons get up and ask me to dance.” Via text the morning after we slow danced in my dining room.

Happened when I loved him, Jason too and the Hulk. Young Un the first was the first so he got immunity and I recovered alone.

I am doing that thing again. Talking (non)sensical nonsense in avoidance.

What of this masked man…

Well shit.

I can see it with abundant clarity now.

Flowed off my tongue as the truth tends to do.

I said

“The first night, the night we talked for 12 hours he was this attentive, excited, vulnerable man with this unyielding strength. I fell in love. I did. I fell in it and stayed there, wet up to my waist and waiting for his return.

But the man that called me the next day and every subsequent day or night after that, wasn’t him.”

Maybe the stars were aligned a certain way that first night, or it was the Fireball, blame it on the alcohol. Or maybe the doors of perception were either cleansed or filthy…filthy sounds more astute.

Or it could have been prima nocta. I was taken away and mindfucked by a man that wasn’t mine.

There it is.

Whatever happened, he never came back. Except to lord over me a bit.

I wanted that back so badly I couldn’t see the truth. I just wanted My Poet back. But My Poet didn’t actually exist outside of that time and place.

It was a well-constructed mask that fell away over the next two weeks and then he fell away too.

I did the same thing in my marriage. Fell for him in the first 3 months when it was summertime and we were new and life wasn’t hard. Then he turned into a video game playing couch-potato and I became a Fallout widow. But dammit I hung on to those 90 days for dear life and wasted my dear life for the next 2556.69539 days.

Until I landed in therapy.

I’ve worn masks too.

I wasn’t exactly myself when I’d go to work, but that veil was a fake name and more make up than I wear on a day to day basis. Geisha-face with stilettos basically. Salome in her war paint. Call it what you will but I was only selling the skin my soul came in, not my soul itself.

I’ve spent a lot of time teaching and training myself not to lie, I can happily say ‘what you see is what you get.’ I’m mutable and I have my moods, but I am always myself.

I wandered off again.

He claimed to be one of 4% of men who derive pleasure from sharing his woman with other men. We talked about it at great length, I sent stories and started a book about it.

I had yet another moment of clarity. They have been coming down from heaven like lightning strikes in the heat of July.

He’s never had what he wanted. What if the reality of it is actually more than he could bear?

That too feels like truth as it rolls off my tongue. It’s my truth as well. I am not sure I could be that girl/his girl, but I was willing to try.

I am all the things all these men ever wanted until they are confronted with the reality of it.

Be careful what you wish for.

This is my one true face.

lost boys

All the Damned Vampires

August 2, 2016

“That’s what this place is. One Giant Coffin.”

I have never thought of a more apt description for my website than this.

So many dead things.

Wrote it on the back of my hand whilst driving down the highway late last night.
As if I could forget.
As if I get the luxury of forgetting anything at all.

I’m an old hotel that fell into a fault line. And now monsters live here amongst the dripping candles and canopied beds and obscure artwork.

I wait in my little magpie nest for the sun to go down, for the dead to awaken, for the second star to the right to appear…anything…then straight on till morning.

I’m just going to roll with this glorious fucking metaphor.

I dress like her. Star. Arms stacked with beaded bracelets. Layers of colorful silk, belts that make noise, and tiny lacy camisoles with messy long hair and smudgy black eyeliner. And I love like Wendy, darling.

For someone who references Lost Boys so much, both the group of boys/men I surround myself with who disappear from bedrooms in the night and go to some place unbeknownst to me where time doesn’t seem to exist or the only clock that hasn’t been smashed got swallowed by a crocodile or some such shit, and the 1987 horror movie. You think I would’ve clued in before now.

I don’t know what’s worse. A tribe of gorgeous wayward boys that literally live in a place called Neverland. As in nuh uh no never gonna happen. Or the ones with beautiful faces, no heartbeat that walk the boardwalk at night eating people and fucking shit up.

They’re all beautiful and none of them are here.

I stopped inviting them in.

One of my lost boys said that he can’t ‘drop everything, come over and make me ‘a happy Sarah.’

Wait now, back up there sparky.

I didn’t ask for that. It is no one’s job to make me a happy Sarah. I don’t outsource/subcontract. That work is internal and mine alone.

Besides, you already came over, added to my pre-existing happiness, asked to come back and sit on my porch glowing in the star lights and fairy lights and my attention.

I think I just stumbled on some of the ‘why they leave me’.
Other than their predisposition to do so because they are lost boys who get lost.

If you place the source of your happiness in another human being, that happiness can be taken from you.
People leave.
I’ve been a lost girl from time to time. Both akin to the television show full of fae folk and just by base description.
Treat me badly and I wander off eventually.
But it’s like they are all trying to beat me to the punch and I’m content meandering. Looking at flowers, feeling the sunshine and enjoying the journey until I look up and they have either gone to ground or flown away using my pixie dust or blood, depending.

Then I feel lonely, lost, abandoned and drained. I question myself/my worth. I can’t help it.

So I’d leave my window wide open at night and invariably the come back to get their shadow stitched back on or snack on me, or both.

I think the one might have likened me to some kind of drug that he is denying an addiction to. I am an opiate I know this. But he keeps calling me cake.

“You’ll never grow old, you’ll never die, but you must feed.”

And I kinda am the girl with the most cake (Hole)

And he fights it. He’s only half, “like Laddie and me.” But the hunger is there.

I’m done being ego food, Mama Wendy, having my life shaken up to harvest my pixie dust.

“These creatures do not die like the bee after the first sting, but instead grow strong and become immortal once infected by another nosferatu. So, my friends we fight not one beast but legions that go on age after age after age, feeding on the blood of the living.” Bram Stoker’s Dracula

So what to do? WWVHD?

Van Helsing: Yeah, she was in great pain. Then we cut off her head, and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then she found peace.

Take all the emotion out of it and do what needs to be done.

I know who the head vampire is, I know where this stems from. Kill him and everything goes back to normal.

I am nailing my window shut.

“That’s the one thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damned vampires.”

Italics = The Lost Boys

unable to even

Medusa’s Other Curse

August 1, 2016

On a long enough timeline everyone settles into the boxes I put them in.
He’ll stop blowing the lid off eventually or so help me I will get out the duct tape.

Or the coconut oil.

Once I’ve compartmentalized them and figured out the lessons they were sent to teach me I still get nostalgic twinges from time to time. I cared for them, still do when they let me. I saw different versions of different futures with them.

As of late, it has become abundantly clear that when I feel like I could actually end up in a viable relationship with someone new, them old ghosts all come a knockin’. Like I have to run the gauntlet of temptation and answer the Sphinx’s riddles to come out the other side clean.

It has happened before, it will probably happen again. It is history repeating on repeat, just with a few new players.

I also have to remember everything they taught me, pop quiz tomorrow or the next day. Every day.

I see your patterns and raise you a ‘if you wanted me you would be here’.

The gargantuan moral in all of this is no matter what I saw happening, or the promises they made…none of them are here with me now.
I went to bed alone last night and for as many nights as I can rightly remember in the recent past. Unsustainable. The center does not hold (Yeats)

Viable.

That’s the million dollar word.

Spoke to Jason last night. At least he acknowledges what a big deal it is for me to use that term to describe a man.

Basically translates to ‘I haven’t fucked this up yet’. Don’t plan on it neither. There is no angst here. Just so far, so fun. And due to circumstances beyond my control I haven’t slept with him yet, but we keep talking. It’s like accidentally dating. Probably a good chance to get it right all things considered.

The last few times I tried to date someone it went bad. I stumbled and fumbled, said things when I ought not to have, kept my mouth shut when I ought to have been saying something. The usual.

But I learned.

Hulk taught me that I didn’t have to settle to settle down with someone. That all the qualities I admire in a man can be found in one body. Just not his or with him. He had his dream life waiting and I stepped aside gladly.

Young Un taught me that 20somethings are plausible, possible options. And that friendships can grow from the bones of old not-quite relationships…on that long enough timeline I speak of with fondness and regularity.

And now the Giant.

He said he was riding his bike over, I knew it meant he was planning on drinking. I had no plans to stop him. A few beers tends to flush his cheeks and loosen his lips a bit. Look, don’t touch was my mantra, might as well feed my eyes if that is all that can be fed. Ears too. He says nice things. Enigmatic things, prophetic things. I swear he is the only exception to my rule of men where the words they say are the words they mean. He speaks in riddles and rhymes sometimes. Not sure if I like when he does it as I have grown so accustomed to the other and found peace there.

Working on peace. Draping myself in white flags trying to keep both the sexier and more vulnerable pieces of me covered, but he is a snake charmer and sometime I cannot help but wiggle and dance this way or that, then the music stops and I am not sure how I ended up tucked into the space we should have left for the Lord.

I forgot myself after 2 beers myself and bent over in front of him trying to find a song. I know what I must have looked like in that moment. Blissed out, swaying a little to this random piece of music I found with baroque guitar and Uilleann pipes. Smiling, eyes half closed. Hot Neighbor was here too (oh ya, that happened) and him being near me is akin to being in water (I float), Sunshine was in fine drunk form too and we had all been belly laughing. I am pretty when I am happy and I was.

Or maybe I just moved in that mythical way he has accused me of, the one that flips his switch. He hasn’t explained it to me, just acknowledged it. He has explained nothing. Or quite possibly everything, who knows at this point.

It was probably just the Coronas.

And the mood lighting, and the good moods, and the food and the whole night.

He kissed me on the porch in the fairy lights. And there may have been some territorial pissings in the dining room prior, as I said Hot Neighbor came by.

I told Jason this and he asked if that was when the orgy started. No habibi. No orgy, and not stress either oddly. Everything just flowed, as it should be.

Giant thanked me profusely for not letting things get out of hand. As if I had a choice. As if any of them give me choices. “Jumping takes strength of will”* and I don’t want him by halves.

I think he sees me as Medusa, too scared to look right at me so he just sees my reflection.

And therein lies the lesson. The Giant, the Poet and Gelfling. All left because of preconceived notions about what I am and what I want.

None of them thought to ask me. None of them took the time to learn me.

Giant says he will one day finish the book of me.

Jokes on you darling.

For one, you never looked past the cover.

I am an open book. Rare and valuable.

And two…

I plan on dying with a pen in my hand.

Rewriting until I get my happy ending just right.

(*Dead Like Me)

lost boys

The Graveyard of Almost

July 31, 2016

My ex-husband sent me to therapy. Told me I couldn’t come home until I saw someone to ‘tame my crazy’ and ‘manage my anger’.
He stayed home with sisterwife while I walked into strange women’s houses, sat on their couches and spilled my guts into their loving laps.

Oh honey. What did you think was going to happen?

Did you really believe they would tell me to stay in the toxic waste dump of our marriage?

Seriously?

I had been drinking the poison Kool-Aid for so long I didn’t even notice I was dying until they showed me what happy tastes like.
Freedom and unconditional love are far sweeter elixirs than a man who forced me to share him and called me crazy for not eating his shit with a smile.

Funny enough, my “crazy” became quirky and cute and my “anger” no longer existed at all, thereby negating the need to be managed. I completely stopped panicking when I wasn’t being attacked.

You don’t try to ‘manage’ a tumor, you cut the fucking thing out and let the body heal.

I healed.

I was speaking to the Lumberjack the other day, sitting in Sunshine’s truck, we had just hit the garden center and everything smelled like basil and bougainvillea.

I was that girl. No, not Team Compromise. The other one.

I was a whiny weak little bitch that clung onto a shams of relationships like I belonged there.

I didn’t belong there.

I am ashamed to say I have been back visiting the graveyard as of late.

Saw Giant and Gelfling, been peeking at the Poet’s page when I ought not to be. Had a lovely conversation with the Hulk recently. I wish them well, I truly do. But they do tend to make me question my worth.

Do I have a sign on me that says ‘hey let’s play a rousing game of come here/go away’?

I am tired of trying to figure out what is wrong with me and starting to see what is right with me.

I am a really good girl.

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadows of my exes…

I can’t even call them exes. All they are is ‘almosts’, as in we almost dated. I was poised and ready to put on my monogamy pants and be with them, and they bailed.

The Poet sent me to therapy right before he jumped ship.

Said he was done trying to love broken girls like me.

My therapist asks after him from time to time.

To which I reply “No word, still blocked, just posts photos of his words on my body.”

She has yet to ask me how that makes me feel.

(Comfortably numb for the record.)

She accused me of only being in her office For him.

I corrected her, quickly.

It was his idea, yes. But did I do it because I thought somehow it would make him love me back?

Nope.

During our 2 year on-again-mostly-off-again-whatever-it-is-we-have-been-doing/not doing, I’ve realized that although his delivery sucks, hes often right.
I tasted the idea of therapy that he handed me, and found it delicious. So I ate it. Every Tuesday and I wash it down with coffee.

Oh honey. What did you think was going to happen?

Did you think she was going to tell me to stick around for someone who can’t even pick up the phone yet passive-aggressively posts to Facebook?

That is some teenage drama queen bullshit, and I ought to know. I was one.

On our way back from the garden center/amazing lunch I found myself briefly contemplating Gelfling for a moment.
I looked up and saw a solitary raven outside of a cemetery.
Biggest one I have ever seen this far south.
One for sorrow. Two for joy.
I think I’m getting the message.
Unrequited love isn’t cute or romantic.
It’s ridiculous.
I’m not a ridiculous girl.

My Pixie girl Ciara said, “Sorrow is still a valid emotion. Feel it when it comes, let it pass.”
To which I replied…
Nope.
My brain is my brain, my life is my life. It’s as simple as deciding I don’t want to be somewhere anymore and walking away.

I must again reiterate the Matthew Hussey idea of unrequited love being ugly.

It’s truly a colossal waste of time.

Channel your inner Luda and tell them fence-sittin’ boys to “MOVE BITCH GET OUT THE WAY.”

Even better, realize they’re not listening anyways, and go around.

The important thing is to keep moving.

I was in my car and that Frank Turner song came on.

Because I know you are a cynic but I think I can convince you.
Yeah, cause broken people can get better if they really want to.
Or at least that’s what I have to tell myself if I am hoping to survive!

It’s a long road up to recovery from here, a long way back to the light.
A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right.

So darling, sweet lover, won’t you help me to recover…

He isn’t going to help and the road is not long.

Besides, I know a shortcut.

It is called ‘I have a nice life and if you aren’t making it better you can’t come in’.

I don’t even like Kool-Aid.

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Enough Buddhas

July 28, 2016

Roommate (aka my Sunshine) says “We have enough Buddhas.”

Considering the size of our apartment, she is probably right. Considering who I am as a person, I have since bought one more Kuan Yin and will probably sneak another Buddha into my room.

We have one in the sanctuary we call ‘porch’ and he is the only one facing the right way. Funny if you think about it. Does Buddha really care? He might have a preference for early morning sunlight on his face, I do too. But he doesn’t actually give a shit where you put him. He is not an overly thin skinned prophet.

The emotional freedom I gained when I finally internalized the words “Everything is as it should be” was…all. I immediately stopped fighting. I couldn’t argue and I stopped wanting to.

I probably don’t have quite enough Buddhas. I still forget. I lose time thinking about what almost was.

So I am talking to my other girl. My North Carolina Mawmawolf. It’s killing me in small increments. She is my mirror image from my sad days on the farm. I want her outta there. Trying to rig up a tough love catapult to launch her out of the past.

She said she wrote something and confessed to attempted murder.

A) It was 17 years ago
B) She wrote an article about an ‘almost’.
Ergo…
C) All it is now is a really riveting story.

Sucks that it happened, awesome that she wrote about it so well.

https://letspretendblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/if-i-had/

I can’t find the words to get her to let go.

Closest I got was “BUT DID YOU DIE?”

There is an alternate reality where I have a crippling opioid addiction and I am still sitting on the stinky farm couch with an equally addicted sisterwife.

But it ain’t this reality.

Currently I am sitting in a house full of Buddhas, music and sunshine. And it’s clean and it smells good. I am only here because I changed how I think about things.

I wrote an article, feels like forever ago, about the times I almost died. It’s been a lot. Enough to write an article about it. I also wrote in “Regeneration, After the Fire” about how imagining what could have been worse about something that was already bad enough was a misuse of time, energy and imagination. Because it fucking is.

But did you die?

Nope.

Carry on then.

Why are we so addicted to drama and worst case scenarios? I know I used to be that girl but I have no interest in digging her up to glean the why. She smells like desperation and monkey shit from running around circus tents that weren’t hers.

Time is too precious.

I lost 3 days fussing over a move that didn’t go my way. I lost nothing but 3 jars and 3 days. Can’t get it back so…moving on.

I could very well have been raped on a Tinder date. But I wasn’t. Not dwelling on what happened other than fine tuning my collection of red flags and adding a few.
The Poet posted some poem about loose women looking for trouble in bars and getting what they deserved right after I posted what happened. Little lemon juice in a wound that was barely closed, but whatever. Chased it with a shot of tequila, had a chuckle and got on with my day.
(Hi honey. I’m fine thanks, and you?)

I saw this lovely British man do a short excerpt/talk about unrequited love.

https://www.facebook.com/CoachMatthewHussey/videos

I watched it until my eyes bled and it became my marrow.

Been turning that grain of sand over in my head like an oyster and I came up with this little pearl…

If he wanted me he would be here.
If any of them were supposed to stay and love me, they would be, right here right now.
Jason has been trying to get me to accept this for a while now. And I always came back with a “But, but, I understand why he is doing what he is doing.” Which translates to a very meek “I’m not worthy.”

Um, ya, I am.

I am a kind, funny, sweet, loving, understanding, talented woman who loves sex and values men as men. Plus I make killer sammiches.
And I am wicked smart.
Me hanging onto a future I manufactured in my own head is not sexy, is not romantic.
I hate martyrs and I am not going to be one. I have shit to do.
I am a good girl, I’m human and I make mistakes and sometimes I have to play dead to get out of bad situations. So be it. No harm no foul, I washed it off.

Poet bailed on me shortly after my birthday citing that I embarrassed him, no explanation, just a block.
Some harm, some foul.
But I don’t have a time machine and if I did I wouldn’t use it to go back and edit a 20 minute conversation I had with a strange woman about coffee cups. Again, I have better shit to do.

Like write a book inspired by my fantasy life that I made up in my head and is going rather nicely actually. Someone once told me sex sells on the internet, and he wasn’t wrong.

Shoulda done this years ago…tee hee.

Everything is as it should be and everything went the way it went.
No amount of fussing or self-flagellation over imaginary sins is going to change that.

You made it, here, to this moment. Enjoy.

I can play the coulda woulda shoulda game like a gold medalist, but it gets me nowhere. I should never have dated that psycho-wannabe-soldja-boy. I had the Giant. But who says if I had done anything any differently that Giant wouldn’t have left me for his safe traveling waitress anyways?

I did what I did. I am what I am and I own it.

I don’t have time to figure out what other people want me to be, I’m way too busy enjoying being myself.

Here and now.

unable to even

Tinder and the No Good Very Bad Date

July 27, 2016

And this little masochist is lifting up her dress.

I put up a status about feeling like shit upon the Facebook. I didn’t go into detail.

I have a bad feeling that as this was happening to me it was going way worse for thousands of girls around the world and maybe I can get some good from this. Or at lease draw the poison out.

I said I joined Tinder. I did.

After a year or two of inside jokes and me not doing it.
*Say Tinder 3X and a cute boy appears.
*Sarah, you can’t go on Tinder, you will break the internet.
* Q: Is there a Tinder for cougars?
A: No that’s just regular Tinder

All of these were funny to me because they’re true.

That whole retrospective thing? Half-funny.

I have a date tonight with the very first man I right swiped on.

This will be date number 3. He is a literal giant and an arborist. He is funny, sweet, gorgeous and kind.

I call him the Lumberjack. He calls me Sweetcheeks.

I had other Tinder dates. 2 before and one in the middle. This is where it stops being funny ha-ha and starts being funny as in ‘okay universe I got it thanks’.

What happened is this. I temporarily forgot how my life works. And that OF COURSE the first one would be the best one.

I kept going.

And now for our regularly scheduled metaphor…
I felt like I’d been living in Africa, in one of the famine-stricken countries, mostly eating bowls of rice but on occasion getting fed really good snacks by UNICEF. Then suddenly someone put me on a plane and flew me to the nearest Mandarin Buffet.

So I loaded my table to the breaking point with everything I could carry and I just looked at it, overwhelmed. Tasting this or that. Spitting some out immediately (yet discreetly) into a napkin. But nothing topped that first bite I had. It was/is delicious.

I mentioned in my last post that I felt like I was doing something wrong, and I was.
I forgot about eating the elephant. One bite at a time.

I did that thing I promised I wouldn’t do.
I won the lottery and kept buying more lottery tickets.

Universe said “NO dummy, STAAAAAAP”.

I don’t need to hedge my bets. I like this guy. I want to see what happens.
I know where the Mandarin is, and if this one leaves and I get hungry again I can always go back.

I digress.

I’m stalling.

It’s time to talk about the bad date.

I haven’t told my therapist yet. I almost told the Friendly Giant.

I told my roommate last night by saying “I’m not sure if you still read what I write but I think I should tell you about my bad date before you read about it.”

There is yet another Tinder guy who I have struck up a conversational friendship with, I told him. We were discussing Catholicism and I realized I really needed a priest in a box.

And this little masochist is ready to confess.

I was late for the bad date. I got lost as I tend to do going up the mountain. I picked a pub close to where bad date was doing a radio interview to save him navigating downtown.

This was my first mistake. The pub was almost empty. I was on my own and out of my element.

I walked in flustered and stayed that way throughout dinner. He had the power position and kept it.

I felt like I was sitting across from Sigmund Freud when he was in a particularly vicious, misogynistic mood. Or like I was with a hyper-intelligent toddler asking why why why over and over. I felt ripped apart, like a vivisection with salad.

He sent a dick pic AT the dinner table. I already knew I wanted out, but this cinched it. Things went from being mildly entertaining to yuck with a hot fudge brownie on top.

I was scared of him. I see that clearly now. I didn’t then.

So unlike me, I’ve put a man up against a wall by his throat, while I was naked, in stilettos for behaving this way. I got grabbed on a patio once and stopped 2 inches short of breaking his nose. I don’t know where that girl went. I lost her in the move maybe.

The closest I can figure is I was sitting across from some kind of super predator, real life Christian Grey/American Pyscho, and I froze.

I agreed to continue the date as we walked outside to our cars. I would have said the sky was green with conviction just to open my car door and climb inside. All the while I was turning excuses over in my mind trying to find one that would be bulletproof.

We started driving, I was following him. I called to say my kid was locked out of the house and I had to go.

Here is where it gets weird. He said “pull over here so I can say goodbye”. Empty parking lot.

AND I FUCKING DID. I could’ve kept driving. I felt the stranger-danger, I was still in freeze mode when I should have been in full flight.

The point I am at in my novel, our heroine gets drugged and almost raped in a parking lot. Life is imitating art. And I am the idiot holding the pen. But in real life, no one came to save me.

Here is where I start blaming myself, my dress was short enough that he easily reached in a groped my vagina with me in the driver’s seat of my car. And I didn’t hit the gas and rip his arm off. I just sat still until I could get away.

I’m more disgusted with my behavior than his. I never said no. My mind was screaming it and my mouth stayed silent. I put myself into a bad situation. I felt like I regressed to high school and had that ‘just tune out until it’s over and then get far way and stay there.’

Roommate says I did the best I could given the circumstances. Tinder buddy said it wasn’t my fault.

But I still somehow feel like it’s my fault.

I’d already found a really nice guy and I went on another date because…I could? Lame.

Karma came down and bitch-slapped me for my stupidity.
I sat in my car crying because I was scared he had followed me so I drove way past my house.

Lessons learned. Learn with me girls.

* Tori Amos, Hey Jupiter

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Digging in the Dirt

July 8, 2016

Every harlot was a virgin once. ~ William Blake

Everything changes, letting go is the only way.

I’ve been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could’ve been.
I’ve been wallowing in my own chaotic
And insecure delusions.

I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
Cleansing I’ve endured within
~ Tool 46 &2

I can feel it. Mostly in the lack of things that were here before…and in the warmth that has replaced them.

I can control time, speed it up to get through the unpleasant, slow it down to savor the bliss. I have the blessing of not noticing the unpleasantness around me until it is time to get out of harm’s way…or just not at all.

It has been years since I had soul crushing panic attacks that would rob my breath and sanity and cause me to feel as though I would never be happy again. My limbs used to solidify into deadwood. No more. I am rooted in the ground and branch out to the sky collecting sunshine and rain.

I have succumbed to baby backslides now and again, but I accept them…learn from them and find great satisfaction in conquering them.

I’ve looked inside myself and found grace, peace, strength, bravery and love.

I know I must allow the universe to unfold as it will.
My responsibility is to think happy thoughts, work hard and follow my gut towards my desires.

I know I can only control my actions and my reactions to the actions of others.

I no longer feel the need to cloister myself in the nunneries of dry, sexless, loveless, passionless relationships.
Hiding my potential behind men who were never worthy or enough, just to justify my feelings of being unworthy and never enough.

I have freed myself from those prisons and somehow I feel my eyes are still adjusting to the light.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell. ~ Buddha

I do revel and rejoice in my victories over myself, no matter how small.

I cannot seem to shake this feeling of unworthiness, but it is lighter than before.
I am no longer crushed under the weight of it but I am still dragging it around.
Still laying my boots to long expired equines on occasion.

Past dictates that no matter how hard a hold of my heart someone once had I can learn to let go, or at least adapt and maneuver in the parameters given.

My heart is currently bound to someone worthy. I am working at becoming worthy back.
And regardless of outcome, that will be mine to keep.

The relationships I find myself cultivating in my present life are passionate, lovely, satisfying and yet my past dictates that I still anticipate the alternate piece of footwear will succumb to gravity at some point. I’ll just go barefoot.

It’s true, everyone comes and goes. It’s my job to love them.

I am hand shy I have to stop flinching.

So shed your skin and let’s get started ~ Hunters & Collectors

I am working on it.

Digging in the dirt, find the places we got hurt. ~ Peter Gabriel

All due respect to the process, the earth has been turned enough now. Time to plant and start growing up.

Those who sow in sorrow, reap in joy. ~ William Blake

I sowed in sorrow for a long time.
Always pouring concrete over the gardens I had planted right before the seeds broke the soil, so they never saw light. Self-sabotage.

I constantly find myself marveling in how far I have come and reveling in how far I have to go.

Sometimes I wallow.

I have been alternately wallowing and skating by for years.

What have I done?

A much easier question to answer than ‘what do I do now?’

It is time to live, breathe, move and work with purpose.

I will suffer fools, gladly. But I can no longer beat them nor join them.

I have no enemies in this place. You are with me or you are inconsequential.

My past does not dictate my future. I have conquered everything that has happened to me up until now and I am still here, with more grace and strength because of my trials and tribulations. They haven’t made me what I am, I have.

The time has come to thrive instead of barely surviving.

I am no longer scared of my potential.

I suppose by sitting here waiting to find patience I am, in fact, being patient…

lost boys

Archives and Arenas

July 7, 2016

I am so understanding of others that I routinely fuck myself over to keep from inconveniencing anyone I care about. Or just anyone really.

I remember driving home from the vet with an emergency rescue pup. A recently fixed (hours earlier), very young /hyper husky singing the sad song of his people while my son and his buddy argued in the back seat. I was driving erratically due to the chaos contained within my SUV. I had a moment of clarity. Every car on the road is a microcosm. I have no idea what is happening to them at this moment, and I’ve been a more courteous driver ever since.

You cut me off in traffic? You must have had a reason, come on over, I will let you in.

This is both the truth and a metaphor.

I step out of myself often to try and see things from someone else’s perspective.
Sometimes I forget to come back.
Sometimes I forget I am someone too.

I rarely trespass, I can forgive those who trespass against us with grace and ease as long as I can wrap my head around the ‘why’.

Doesn’t mean it hurts any less. But I get it. I don’t value myself much either, why should anyone else.

I sent memoranda out onto the ocean of the internet or via text and my queries go unanswered.
I see that you have seen it, but you haven’t answered a message I sent you last night, last week, last year? I’m sure you’re just busy.

It takes herculean strength of will for me to reach out to anyone.

I am shy. I am scared of rejection and even more of imposing on someone. My greatest fear is realizing I wasn’t invited to, nor am I welcome at the proverbial party.

Triple that with whipped cream and a cherry on top when it comes to men I have a) slept with, b) I am currently sleeping with or c) want to sleep with.

I am too much Tate and not enough Violet.

I care about their feelings more than mine. I don’t know how to make demands without feeling bossy and selfish. Even the word ‘demands’ sounds too demanding. But I cannot even muster a ‘please sir, can I have some more’. I usually want more. I am pretty insatiable, but in a cute way.

I will have to check the cougar handbook but I think that might be the golden rule when you find a golden ticket in the form of a golden boy. Enjoy the candy, respect the process.

I have won gold at the cougar Olympics the last few years running. It’s not a competition though. Any time an older woman finds a younger man and they run off into the sunset to enjoy each other everyone wins.

I ‘sex-friend’ like a champion. I really do. It’s my wheelhouse. I built it that way and I know how it works. Been fine tuning the inner-workings, cogs and gears for years. If a friendship is established, I’m good. I got this. Put me into a situation where I start becoming emotionally attached and I go full retard. The wheels slip and I with them, usually ending up in a ditch somewhere wondering what the fuck I did wrong.

“Never go full retard. Just ask Sean Penn.” Tropic Thunder.

Me: I swear if I trip and fall into feelings for this one I am going to need a full frontal lobotomy.

(And a ticket to the Special Olympics, just make it a one way please.)

This is all tongue in cheek. They are not a sport and I am not a game. I am not even the colosseum. I am not worried about being forgotten and I have no desire to compete with anyone, I never have. It is my lot in life to learn and archive, I am the embodiment of the Nalanda University library in Ancient Rome. I like my nickname Dharmaganja Treasury of Truth. Suits me. I don’t know how to lie anymore.

That is how it goes. As a walking juxtaposition being both a sapiophile cougar one would think I would constantly be left hungry for intellectualism, good conversation, something to feed my mind as well as my body. But that hasn’t happened.

Somehow, as if by magic, the ones that gravitate to me are both beautiful and smart.

I can only assume it is because my body is a temple, an athenaeum. Not an arena. Worship and learn. No need to compete. Although playing is encouraged.

I was lying in bed with the new one last night. Enjoying how easy it was, the conversation I mean, everything else was hard, in that really good way. A little bit of downtime between round one and round two. But round two never came. We talked for the better part of an hour.

There is a scene in Lost Boys (the irony is not lost, especially when the boys are) wherein Sam says “They pulled a mind fuck on us and talked.”

It’s true. Were circumstances different and this one didn’t have a best before date in the form of a plane ticket home I could see wanting more than I have.

But for now, he is really good food and I am full.

Boys

Not Forgotten

July 4, 2016

So Gelfling, derived from “Ghel-lflainngk” roughly translates to “those who live without knowledge of the future.” (Grant Volker).

That was posted under an article from a year ago about a boy I called Gelfling, Ouf and Mind Fuck.

I always felt like ‘ouf’ was an onomatopoeia for the sound of getting punched in the gut.

He said ouf like it was a good thing. To him it meant guttural/literal sex noises.

He did knock the wind out of me, both coming and going.

That is fucked up.

Seriously.

Both the Muppet and the boy have no knowledge of the future, by choice.
And I cannot shake the past, not by choice.

He did make a choice, they both did. To wander out of the safety of their cave dwellings out into the world for some greater purpose that has yet to be revealed.

So be it.

Oh Gelfling, my Gelflng.

He cannot possibly be my Gelfling.

If he was he would be here. With me, right now. Or at least message on occasion.

Giant messaged me recently and said “My dearest Sarah”. I opened my mouth to protest, but he wasn’t wrong. Part of me still lives in his head, his heart and his bed. I wouldn’t know how to take that back if I wanted to. And I don’t. There are threads that bind and alternate timelines that I somehow remember even though they didn’t happen here.

The only way I run is at something, not away.
Wait.
That isn’t exactly it. No straight lines, I spiral out and back in again.

That thing we had for the most fleeting of moments that defied logic and words and could only be described as a magical convergence of entangled particles.
Both of them.
“You tie my tongue. You make my fingers into these clumsy things on the keyboard, like trying to articulate the aurora borealis in a foreign language and the only word I know is ‘yes’.” (I wrote that)

Tangled in timelines that went awry and I still can’t figure out why.

I saw this and things started to make more sense. Think I might get this tattooed on me. My best girl calls me a vampire, she is wrong. I just see time moving in spirals instead of in a straight line and I spiral with it.

At this very moment, as I am writing this there is the clear and present danger that I may run into Gelfling tomorrow.

I kinda want to. Cosmic finger crossing for a cosmic path crossing.

(^that was Thursday)

I saw him.

Truth be told I was terrified. The butterflies in my stomach were worked into a frenzy and their wings felt like sharp cutting things, leaving me slightly shredded inside.

I knew he would be where I was going, because I asked. I needed and heeded the warning. I thought he had wandered off to Tibet, or maybe Sedona, called home by the ley lines and returned to the cave of mystics that he came from.

I was warned that he got exponentially hotter in the last year.

Good god damn. Somethings cannot be prepared for even when you think you know what is coming.

He came to mind every time the sky went red or there were fireworks, literal and sometimes proverbial. I dream about him often, sometimes when I’m awake.

I have the ability to compartmentalize almost everything and everyone.
He never fit into a box, kept slipping out.
Everyone else becomes, after enough time, a page or three in a scrapbook.
Mental photographs, scraps of paper, bits of music and candy wrappers pressed between pages in pretty little vignettes of the good stuff.

When triggered my mind flips to their page I sigh and smile because I have cut out the bad bits, the part where they left. Instead my mind sees a slideshow of their more redeeming moments.

I read an article about our brains having a delete button and I recoiled a bit.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3059634/your-most-productive-self/your-brain-has-a-delete-button-heres-how-to-use-it

I have yet to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I am scared of Jedi mind tricks, the red flashy thing and the glamouring by vampires in True Blood. When Lena tried to save Ethan by wiping herself from his memory my heart hurt and when he remembered anyways it soared.

I am more afraid of forgetting than being forgotten.

I suffered severe memory loss due to a concussion/brain injury from a car wreck that stole the month of December 2008. I also misplaced 35% of my vocabulary which came back with great effort, a giant red dictionary and about a thousand games of scrabble. The word ‘enough’ was the last to return. Still looks funny to me and cause a slight skip in my synapses. Gone also was my ability to make new memories for approximately 90 days (I can’t exactly remember). That was a blessing I believe my temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex were in cahoots, making it so I don’t have to recall that level of suffering.

You see dear readers, my life was shit before the car wreck. Being immobilized with physical pain matching my mental anguish just made it more vivid, or so I can only imagine and blissfully not recall.

I hold onto the memories I have left and the ones I make now pretty tightly, almost compulsively.
Hoarding them like a fat kid and Halloween candy MINE MINE MINE.
You can look but you can’t touch.

I was getting tattooed by Gelfling’s best friend who said something about ‘forgetting’ (meaning what happened between he and I) which, ironically I have forgotten the exact wording of.
But ‘oh honey no’, I said, ‘not remotely, not one tiny bit, not an iota‘. Nothing is forgotten.

I saw him.
I saw him and nothing happened except a few flashed smiles and a little banter. But that want that I had tried to quash or tame came rushing back.

If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are. (Zen koan)

men

Exes not Oh’s

June 28, 2016

I am friends with a substantial portion of my exes. Not all mind you, I am not going for sainthood here.

Seriously. Why is this a bad thing?

I am 50/50 with decent break ups.

I am 80/20 with salvaged friendships.

I go to their weddings and kid’s birthdays. Talk them off ledges, I have men from my past who care about me that I can ask for advice when the men in my present do things that make me feel uncared for. We celebrate each other’s victories and mourn losses together. This is what friends do.
I was with them for a reason, and I left them for a reason, those reasons still stand, there is no threat here.

Some of them have even met each other and been kind, and with a little gentle joking aside, kind to me as well. The bar has been set.

Just as I can glean a little of my future with you by how you speak of and treat your mama, you can tell a lot about how I will behave towards you by how I speak of and treat my exes. I am patient, kind, forgiving, honest, friendly and generous…
No not with that, that is yours, I gave it to you, now come play with it. Ahhhh, better.

I even managed to stay friends with the biggest and the baddest of the exes, until he read all of this and realized I was not the girl he tried to make me into.
And Not the rapist, he’s a fucking rapist.

No, the one who cheated, and on whom I cheated, a lot. We spent 6 years torturing each other, two years apart, and I realized I am a better person for knowing him. A lot of my life skills came from living, with him on that farm. I realized also, in retrospect most of the things I learned were because I had to, I was left alone to fix things and hold everything together on my own. I was angry for a while, now I am grateful.

But I digress.

There are some girls who line their exes up like Barbies in a dollhouse to be taken out played with on a whim and thrown back when she gets bored. I am not that girl.

You know what other girl I am not? Any of Your exes. Especially that one who did a number on you, now stop punishing me for what she did and just let me be me. I am good, I know this, and so do you. Or you wouldn’t be here.

The red flags in me honor the red flags in you. But I need you to set aside your crimson rage against your exes and see that the flag I fly is actually white. I come bearing peace and compromise. I have learned a lot from my past and if I forget, I have reminders, cliff notes or I can just call them and ask them.

If I wanted to be with any of the ones from before, I would be. My life, my choices.

Let’s put it this way. I was raped, by an ex that I had dumped. One ex. One man did this. I know hundreds of men. Only one of them hurt me that way. Ergo…Barbie was wrong yet again, math is not hard. What kind of life would I have if I judged all men on the actions of one? See what I am getting at here?

Imagine walking into McDonald’s, you order an iced coffee, the cashier says that will be $87.53.

You say “what the ever loving fuck?”

She says “that is for the soccer team that was here before you, see? They are over in the corner, just finishing up.”

This is the same logic. I don’t want to pay for those who came before me. All I have in common with her is you, and fun lady parts. Mine are better, because they are yours now.

Some people still think the word ‘divorce’ is a dirty word. Like jamming two people into a lifetime commitment has anymore likelihood of working out than winning the lottery.

Sure, people win the lottery all the time. I played the same free ticket for almost a year.

There should be no shame attached to two grown-ups looking at each other one morning and saying, ‘this is not working’. Those are the brave ones. I actually ended a 5 year relationship by using the words “I have not cheated on you yet, but I am about to. We have to break up now.” He punched me in the face until his brother pulled him off me, still felt better than cheating would have.

So many couples split and then turn on each other, on a dime, over a dime. Rammstein nailed it “du hast or du hasst.” YOU HAVE ME (or) YOU HATE ME.

I am ever evolving, I am not the girl I was 5, 10, 20 years ago. The fundamentals and foundations of who I was remain. I am still silly, nerdy and nurturing. But as I build myself up and get more comfortable in my skin I find the men that come around are better suited to this version of me. Challenging conversations, appreciation for how I am and the sex is exponentially better.

I was asked today where I see myself in 5 years.

I hope things change. I’ve had a taste of bravery and I’m hungry for more. I want to be living somewhere that the air doesn’t hurt my face for 2/3 of the year. I’d like to fall in love with someone who challenges me to do more, be better and work hard but I know I’m not ready yet. I want to keep living and writing and get paid for it.

People can come and go as they please, teach me what they can and I’ll keep refining my idea of what love is and who I am.

If I no longer have you I won’t hate you, that isn’t who I am.