men

Laughter is the Best Medicine

September 12, 2016

I haven’t been writing much lately. The book is stuck in a weird spot, my hero and antihero took themselves a walk ages ago and took my motivation and outdated muses with them.

I am also scared of manifesting what I’m writing about. I don’t want my book love anymore.

I found something better. Safe, sane.

The kind no one wants to read about, and the kind I don’t feel compelled to write about or share.

My girls tried to pry my phone from my hands last night to read what he’d said that was making me smile.

Nope, nuh uh. This is mine, besides, they would need a decoder ring and I am not sharing that either.

It doesn’t look like anything spectacular on paper.

I have had ‘spectacular on paper’. Boys and men who wrote so eloquently, words dripping with love and intention and promise. Then nothing… and the silence was deafening.

Magic words, conjuring spells and beautiful illusions.

That is the thing about loving these magic men, the final act is always the same.

Puff of smoke and they disappear.

Or they are just a man behind a curtain. Looking and sounding bigger than they are.

It wasn’t the talking wolf in Red Riding Hood that saved her, it was just a lumberjack who happened nearby.

Truth be told, I’d already killed the wolf. I don’t need saving, I just want some snuggles.

I was talking to a darling friend of mine. She is a writer and she loves my writing.

She sent me this.

https://www.facebook.com/MonikaCarlessAuthor/photos/a.808458765894457.1073741828.807727775967556/1175781619162168/?type=3&theater

With the message “I feel like this is about you and one of yours. Past love maybe?”

T’was.

He was my poison, and my remedy. For a while I had more of him in my veins than my own blood.

I had to keep him on a low dose, metered IV drip, the withdrawal was too much. Then slowly but surely I started weaning myself off. But every now and again, there would be a puff of smoke in the air, a turn of phrase and I would be back at square one, tremors, shakes, tears and a craving I couldn’t control.

I am feeling better now.

My cells regenerated, triggers lessened.

Time heals even the deepest wounds.

I called him by his real name for the 3^rd time ever.

Rumpelstiltskin Rumpelstiltskin Rumpelstiltskin

She got a little starstruck and curious, asked if her impressions of him were true.

They were, so I let her keep them.
Spoke only of his talent and intelligence.
His passion, intensity and wisdom.
How he motivated me to be better, at everything.

But one story slipped out and it made me sigh with a rather huge twinge of nostalgia.
Twinge is an understatement, this memory grabbed my arm, wrenched it behind my back and wouldn’t let go even after a 1000 cries of uncle.

He more than once said I was guarded, because I was. After a few scoldings I stopped talking too loud or too much. Kept my swearing to a bare minimum, tried to conduct myself with dignity and composure. Failed miserably, I am not a composed girl. But I tried. Only told stories upon request, kept my answers short, like I was on the stand, on trial. And I was. Left as much emotion at the door as I could. Held my dorky self down until she passed out from lack of oxygen.

Except this one time.

We were talking about the weather of all things, he was perplexed by how hot/cold my part of Canada gets. There were metric conversions and I said something ridiculously stupid and I started laughing. Hard. At myself. I had to put in Herculean effort to stop. When I get the giggles, there is no ending them, but I managed.

You must understand I have the derpiest laugh ever. It’s this low ridiculous chuckle better suited to an old black woman in a rocker on a porch in the bayou, with a slight case of dementia. My friends mock me as they laugh along with me, which makes me laugh even harder and derpier.

I love letting go, but in that moment (with him) I was scared.

That laugh was capable of crushing the eggshells I walked on with him.

I waited for him to make a thinly veiled excuse to quit the conversation.

Instead, he took a deep breath and told me a pirate joke. Even did a rather convincing pirates ‘Arrrr’ at the end for effect.

And I laughed my strange dorky laugh some more, and he joined me.

For a minute there I thought everything was going to be okay. With him.

I wasn’t wrong, everything is okay. It always is, at varying levels.

I hope he is okay wherever he is.

I learned something from all of this.

It feels so much better to be unedited.

Yes, there are things I can always change, tone down, turn up, learn, etc…
Life is a natural progression of refining who I am as a person as I experience the world. Seeing some of my behavior in others and using them as a mirror to reflect on what works and what doesn’t.

I laugh at older outdated versions of me. The girl who cared too much, who was scared too much.

Belly laughs are now (and always have been) important to me. They are my joyous noise unto the lord, my unabashed moments of bliss at being alive, they are a spontaneous explosion of gratitude for this one perfect moment. It is my brain mixing up a superb cocktail of happy chemicals and me getting tipsy on it.

Laying on the couch with the new boy the other night, he grabbed my hip in a ticklish spot, squeezed and I giggled. I apologized for immediately, saying I knew I had an annoying laugh, which is my knee jerk Pavlovian ingrained response. He proceeded to pause the movie and tell me funny stories in funny voices and tickle me until I forgot I wasn’t supposed to be laughing.

gypsy travels

My Lake

September 6, 2016

Driving home I could still hear the waves crashing in my head. I still can now actually. My lake was in fine, angry exhibition this time home. I felt proud, oddly. Standing in front of her, introducing my girls. Have you met the undertow? Do you know what to do if she catches you?

I call Lake Huron my lake, but really I am hers. She soothes me, soaks my sins away, batters me with waves until my soul comes out clean. And I don’t know what she does to my hair, but damn. I didn’t want to/have to wash it for days after I’ve been in.

I don’t have a God per say. I have a moral compass of my own. I do what feels good and light and right.

We 4 girls spoke on the way home about religion and its purpose. Sacrificing virgins came up. I said “well this one time somebody killed a girl and it rained the next day, so they kept doing it for 1000’s of years.” And sometimes the rains came shortly after, because of weather patterns, not virgins.

That’s what it felt like in the lake that night. God’s marionettes. Tossed and tumbled. Thrown out, knocked over all the while blissed out beyond words. With moments of fear.

She deserves respect.

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.” Ezekiel 25:17

The line I was going for when I looked that up was ‘you will know my name is the Lord’ spoken in Samuel L Jackson’s specific cadence.

Lake isn’t evil, she might be God, or the closest thing I have to it. I crave her when I am lost, think of her often, bring home rocks, set up little altars, palm them when I am stressed out. I hear her echoes in my ears when I am homesick. I love her on the days I am up to my ribs and it’s so clear I can see my toes and I revere her on the days that she rages and churns.

I think she is just trying to wash us clean. Like when 6 of us went in naked, played and fought waves, riptide and undertow and laughed with delight. We all made it out, but there were a few waves, ocean sized, that had me sucked under talking myself out of that panic that will kill you. Ass over teakettle into the dark oblivion, no air, no idea which way was up. Then finding my feet, standing in awe and humbled as I coughed, sputtered and spit water back where it came from.

I am grateful for the reminder that she can get in anywhere she pleases. That water is relentless, changes shape, form, and eventually washes everything away.

I am water, I am her daughter, I can do the same.

Uncategorized

What if her Name is Actually Becky?

August 24, 2016

Mama Susan (My Queen Bee) said to me when I posted this meme…

“The day is coming when you’ll realize that your pussy is humble and you are magic.”

“Soon” she said.

I already have. He’ll probably see it too. Pray he don’t call me when he notices.

So what are you gonna say at my funeral, now that you’ve killed me? Here lies the body of the love ~~of my life~~, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother ~~of my children~~, both living and dead. Rest in peace, my ~~true~~ love, who I took for granted. Most bomb pussy who, because of me, sleep evaded. Her god listening. Her heaven will be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks…

I’ll drink to that eulogy.

Pray I don’t die here.

I’m not dead yet.

Once upon a time Sunshine said she was going to finish her water and get into the wine.

I said “baby please, drink that Ménage a Trois the Giant left here, get it out of my life.”

Rolled my eyes.

Middle fingers up.

She said she wasn’t going to get turnt, and I laughed, “How can you baby girl? It ain’t even a full bottle”.

She said ‘say goodbye to boys that don’t pick you & show up half-drunk with half-drunk bottles of wine’.

The biggest grin pulled up the corners of my mouth and I spit ‘tell him boy bye.’

Gift me liquor, tell me to keep drinking, then dismiss me for what you coaxed me to do?

no no HELL NAH

And I don’t feel bad about it
It’s exactly what you get
Stop interrupting my grinding
(You’re interrupting my grinding)

Middle fingers up.

Leave unfinished business in my house?

Tell him boy bye

Make me apologize?

Tell him boy bye

Text me while you’re with her?

Tell him boy bye

I ain’t sorry

I’d only heard snippets of Sorry by the Queen B. flipping through radio stations.

“… Her shroud is loneliness. Her god was listening. Her heaven will be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks.”

Heard it full through the other night and everything came rushing back. Broke my heart and filled it up simultaneously.

I love it when women get strong.

She was then I was the fucking side chick. I was ashes. The fire went out.

He poured ¾ of a bottle of wine on it after I doused it with 3oz of vodka in a wine cooler.

I ain’t sorry

Let’s have a toast to the good life

My therapist told me I am allowed to have more than one emotion at a time. I laughed so hard I cried.

I told Giant I had run the gambit of feels and landed on shame.

But there was more, there is always more…until there isn’t.

I am shocked anyone found my off switch as I am forever turned up and on.
I am pissed.
I carry with me the tiniest bit of uncharacteristic hope that he will wake up one day and he’ll realize what I am* and what he’s lost.
Beyond Most Bomb Pussy…

He always got them fucking excuses
I pray to the lord you reveal what his truth is.

Yes Queen B, she said it better than me. And those Beyoncelogues, damn woman. Preach.

Intuition, I knew this was coming.

Denial, I pretended it wasn’t.

Anger, I was venomous.

Apathy, now I don’t care.

Loss, his.

Emptiness, I found room to move in this space.

Accountability, I own what I did.

Reformation, I don’t want to be loved by halves, I’m whole on my own.

Forgiveness, I forgive, until I can’t anymore, and then I forgive myself.

Resurrection, I deserve better.

Hope, I am better.

and I can do better.

Redemption makes him look small.

He only want me when I’m not there

You better Becky with the good hair.

Sorry, I ain’t sorry

No no hell nah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxsmWxxouIM

http://www.bustle.com/articles/156559-transcript-of-beyonces-lemonade-because-the-words-are-just-as-important-as-the-music

lost boys

No Funeral Required

August 20, 2016

The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.
Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Sometimes that is the truth.
I have shit days, we all do.
The ones where we just want it to end, whatever mask ‘it’ is wearing that day.
Good news?
Masks don’t last, wounds heal and eventually things get better.

Hot Neighbor is always asking me if whatever is vexing me in that moment is going to bother me in a year. My answers vary from a ‘Probably not’ to a chuckling ‘nope’. Then he hugs me and I feel less busted than I did before I said the thing out loud. He is leveling up at lightning speed and keeps asking me to join him. With his gentle nudges and check-ins that all sound like “Sarah, evolve, its time now.”

I ask after his Russian nesting doll and he shows up when I need him.

So there is that then.

The hardest thing I ever had to do was forgive someone who wasn’t sorry.
Unknown

It’s actually not that bad. You should try it sometime.

Once you have done it, it gets really easy.

I’ve done it and I’ll do it again a few dozen times before my life ends.

Here’s how, in one easy step.

Realize that…

Everyone has their own perception and reality.
Matter changes when observed, so me being near you will alter your behavior to a degree, but the microcosm that is you, is still you. We have this immediate second that we live in and everything else is just stored data. As creatures with active imaginations and sometimes/often corrupt filing systems for memories, sometimes the data gets distorted and no amount of arguing or worry on my part is going to allow me to change your mind. Whatever you think happened is your hardwired reality. So be it.

So that isn’t it either.

I think the hardest part of the human condition is saying good bye to someone who is still alive.

I avoid it like the plague.

‘Cause when you’re done with this world
You know the next is up to you
John Mayer

shit.

It IS up to me, and for a long time I didn’t know what world I wanted to live in.

The fear of the great unknown keeping me tethered to the Walking Dead. Just like Michonne and her walkers on leashes, no arms to hold me, no teeth to bite me neither, but damn they smelled bad and held me back.

The severance becomes exponentially harder when there are invisible threads and entangled particles.

I went to a funeral once and a Buddhist monk came with a ball of string. I am not sure what the purpose was but when he cut it I felt a palpable release, like she was free.

I have been wrong this whole time, I don’t need an exorcism with an old priest and a young priest, I need a monk with scissors and a ball of string

I wrote a thing once and now it’s making me cringe. That happens a lot.

Something along the lines of ‘when given the choice between the devil you know and the devil you don’t stick with the familiar, he will probably hurt you like he has before, but at least you know how to tend to your wounds.’

That is a shitty philosophy. The girl who wrote that is dead to me now. I have no problem burying older outdated versions of me, I don’t even bother with flowers on their graves anymore, just smile wistfully now and again, thinking ‘you silly bitch, thanks for the lessons on what we ought not to do again ever.’

Catharsis is easier when there is a cataclysmic event to accompany it.

“Traitor child. I must despise you now”
Queen Bavmorda, Willow

But what happens when there is no blow out.

What if you just drift apart slowly?

What if you really like being near that person because your soul feels good but because of circumstances beyond your control (see above where their reality is different than yours) it ain’t working anymore.

What then?

That my friends, is the heaviest door to close.

There is no fanfare or funeral or closing ceremony.

It just is, becomes it just isn’t.

I think that’s why the easy way out is what everyone else seems to do which is flip the switch between I have you to I hate you.

I don’t hate anyone because a huge part of what I am is understanding. So it’s hard for me.

Damn near impossible.

Probably because I see walls where there are actually doors and vice versa. I have bloodied my knuckles knocking on doors that once were opened to me but have now been locked/bricked over.

Watching through my fingers, watching through my fingers
Caught off guard by your favorite song
Oh I’ll be dancing at a funeral, dancing at a funeral
Sleeping in the clothes you love
It’s such a shame we had to see them burn, shame we had to see them burn

What’s gonna be left of the world if you’re not in it?
What’s gonna be left of the world, oh

Every minute and every hour
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more
Every stumble and each misfire
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more
Bastille

What is going to be left of this world without them in it?

Me.

I am all I ever had anyways.

All the things they left behind, all the things I became when my particles met theirs and my atoms changed and transformed from being tangled up with them.

This I get to keep.

I’m gonna go ahead and do what Joseph Campbell suggested and cleanse my doors of perception and wander out into the infinite.

They can stay in that graveyard where I buried all the previous versions of me. Keeping each other company.

No funeral required.

…and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand
Sanober Khan

Uncategorized

Wave Goodbye to Daddy

August 17, 2016

Here comes another Mercury retrograde.

Daddy is leaving us for a bit.

He is going to pull way back and prepare for launch.

Life is one big amusement park. And Mercury retrograde is the long, sweaty maddening line before the ride.

At Universal Studios they try to make the lines interesting, the same storylines getting played on repeat on multiple screens at certain points while you wait, they glitch and loop until you think you might go a little nuts. The closer you get to the ride the more they make you panic the story and instructions become more intense.

I’ve ridden this before, not panicking this time.

Also, akin to Universal, you can play with your phone at certain points but sometimes it needs to get tucked away or it worked in this corner but won’t work in that one.

I am trying to figure out my best course of action based on past events.

I have had some colossal fuck ups and meltdowns during retrogrades past. I thought I could use my platinum “daughter of Hermes” card with my sun sign being ruled by this giant hunk of iron and my house of communication and my house of house and home, yep. Mercurial.

I think I just made things worse thinking I could bend the quicksilver rules. That shit is poison when handled incorrectly. Things I held sacred that I dropped (Audioslave)

I will try to abide my father’s voice in absentia as he wanders backwards in the sky and fucks shit up by leaving.

How am I going to be an optimist about this? B^STILLE.

Better yet how do I not fuck shit up?

First and foremost, it’s only 22 days. They seemingly stretch on for years as piece after piece of the puzzle goes missing and messages get sent out and never returned. That’s the hard part for me. The lack of communication. See above where my Mercury is in Gemini, twice as chatty. Fucking answer me already. “I’ve said my piece/peace and counted to 3” (Oh Brother, Where art Thou?)

I swear there is actually a shadow phase pre-retrograde and my phone is already chillin in the darkness. Almost missed a night out because my phone was being a withholding prick with messages. Chatting away with the Giant about his triumphant return from Scotland, totally taking advantage of his jet lag and belly full of scotch to extract truth out of him like pulling lilies out of the dirt, and yet the viable plans I had?
Nothing came through.

It worked itself out, down to the wire, but we got it and it was good amen.

The world wouldn’t have ended if I didn’t go out last night.

The world doesn’t end even when I wish it would or believe with all my might that it’s HAPPENING AGAIN. Versions of it collapse in on themselves and birth new ones just like I collapse in on myself get up with my skinned knees and gravel filled palms and keep going somehow. Things that were paramount once upon a time have become hiccups and bumps in the road.

Now is a time to re-examine, re-read old lessons and learn. This is the one time nostalgia and memory lane are the best places to visit.

No big travel plans. We are already in line, no line jumping.

Finish up old projects and do not start new. Just wait, use this time to reflect and finish your shit.

Back everything up.

Then really all there is to do is sit back and accept the crazy.

Everyone is going to feel a little off, things will go missing, texts won’t go through. Just roll with it baby.

In the amusement park of life, I chose the rollercoaster.
Got stuck on a less than merry-go-round for a bit but I jumped off, of course I skinned my fucking knees, but I heal.
I keep going back to that exhilarating ride of higher than fuck highs, crazy drops, twists that rattle my bones and sometimes the long arduous climb that proceeds one of those falls that wakes the butterflies in my belly.

Look Ma, I am climbing.

Sometimes the ride gets stuck. The world doesn’t end, we just wait.

Time passes whether we are worried about it or not.

Nothing is on my timeline. I don’t get to dictate the when. Just the what.

I prayed for rain. Thunder and lightning specifically and it started the day the Lumberjack left the province, the weatherman is calling for 5 more days of sky tantrums. It stops the day he comes back into my time zone.

I got my rain.

A praying mantis lit upon the porch today. My son found it and called me in that voice where I dropped everything and ran to him. I saw her and smiled, he named her Sally, said she guarded our house now.

I realized something…I can abide the rules.

My book starts with a praying mantis landing on a girl on a porch. It is time to revisit this and finish the thing. That chapter of my life needs to be finished, sent to an editor and closed.

I don’t have to start anything new. I’m already in line for what I want.

I did get a new job, like a big girl grown up job, but under the wire on starting new adventures.

I am smitten with someone I met way before Mercury even thought about spinning backwards into the cold dark night. So I am good there.

The big move is out of the way, house settled into.

Life is good.

Now is a time for finishing things, polishing the silver and hoping the Titanic doesn’t go down. I know where the life rafts are and there is room for 2 on the headboard.

It may not be my magnetically propelled launch preference when it comes to rollercoasters, but I think this climb around I will just sit back relax and enjoy the view, I know the fall is coming and it is going to be spectacular.

Uncategorized

I Love Lamp

August 14, 2016

Sunshine was in the shower and I scared the crap outta her by yelling very emphatically “I LOVE THIS FUCKING LAMP!”

I don’t love this lamp. It isn’t even a lamp really, it’s a retro, scrollwork chandelier hybrid thing with dangling sparkly bits. I wouldn’t have picked it. I love my chandeliers dripping crystals, diamond bright and throwing rainbows. But it’s cute and it matches what we’ve got going on in our living room.

I love that it is up and that when we flick the switch it comes on or turns off depending.

I have no words to describe the last 28 days of moving chaos and shit going right sideways.
This fucking chandelier was at the eye of the hurricane, the poster child for everything that was going wrong.

Put it back in the corner, put the tools back in the box and try again tomorrow.

Yesterday was the tomorrow that seemed like it would never come.

Out of the blue my dear friend Cory shows up, says, “looks like you have a light missing.” And voila. There was light and it was good.
Amen hallelujah and all that sparkling jazz.

It sat in various corners and spaces for 28 days. I held it over my head for about an hour all together until my shoulders burned and my forearms shook. Giant got it to light up once, but we needed a part that he had at home and we gave up because we wanted to look at each other and I was making funny little squeaks of protest awfully close to his crotch.

The wiring in this retro apartment we live in is…well fucked. The whole building is eccentric and adorable until it’s time to switch out a light fixture, then it becomes one of the 12 Herculean tasks and there are 5 wires all coated in white paint and no configuration of 3 to 5 makes the light turn on.

“We had to make a lamp that looked like an elephant and when you pulled the trunk the light was supposed to go on. My lamp didn’t go on.”

…

“Without lamps there would be no light.”

Breakfast Club.

Then God said, let there be light and there was light and it was good.

All of the mens that tried (4 for the record) balancing on chairs and then a step ladder, twice having sparks fly from the wires, many times having the light just not go on at all and then that one time where the safety wire snapped and it fell and Hot Neighbor caught it whilst balancing on a ladder…all channeled our inner Jane Says and decided to try again tomorrow.

Someone came waltzing out of my ancient history yesterday. And there was light. Well at first there was only light, it wouldn’t turn off…but he fixed it and leveled it and now we have light.

I feel lighter.

I haven’t seen him in 22 years.

He says he can’t read these stories because it gets his blood up. Reading what I go through and not being able to see that I’m okay. I told him I was alright and he believed me and there was more light and it was really good. Literally his face lit up.

It was hard when he left. He reminded me of all the good there was for me in my high school years. I tend to remember the shit, but there was so much good.

Kinda like the damned lamp.

It was nagging at me that it wasn’t up. It’s continued tenancy in the corner behind the door a constant reminder of the things that weren’t done yet. Ghostly marks of droplets of sweat on the living room floor from when Giant tried to get it working reminded me of the coldest night of the year when he fired up the charcoal barbecue to make me steak. He spent the hottest night of the year trying to get this fucking lamp up.

And I still have days where I question whether or not I am loved?

I focus on the bad and fail to see the good right in front of my eyes.

I live in this beautiful apartment with one of my best friends. I call her Sunshine because she lights up my life daily. And I let this lamp vex me?

The lesson here is twofold at least, quite possibly many folded, like an origami crane.

I am loved.

Things get done and get better. Eventually and always.

Not everything can be on my timeline, barely anything really, and the more time I spend worrying and focusing on what is not I miss out on the glory of what is.

Uncategorized

Yesterday is Where I Left it.

August 10, 2016

Yesterday I saw a soldier demon try and claw its way out of a little girl. Constantine

Yesterday, all my trouble seemed so far away. The Beatles

Wait, no yesterday was the trouble and I was the little girl with the demon in her, wanting out.

I live with chronic pain. I just do. I don’t talk about it often. I haven’t had more than a week below a 3/10 since Arizona, and that was 7 days out of 7 years. I miss that chiropractor like oxygen. I swear she had angel wings and a halo. Her hands were made of magic and she rearranged my bones into a less painful configuration for a time.

I don’t talk about it often because to speak of pain aloud gives it acknowledgment and thereby power over me.

I hurt, and that’s okay. I am used to it and most days it doesn’t bother me. And on the days it does, I either let it or I don’t. Some days I have no choice and it huffs and it puffs and it blows my house down. So I nap and cry and put ice packs in interesting places and wait it out. All storms pass.

I am in control over my own damned self.
I manufacture my own happiness and other emotions in my own mind.

Giant said something the other day and I was quick to correct him.
He said “I can’t come running over and make you a happy Sarah.”
No you can’t, you can add to it, but you can’t create it with your presence or take it away with your absence.
My sadness also belongs to me and me alone.
I cried rivers over him, which flowed into oceans, but they were my own.
I could have stopped at any time, but I chose to go with the flow and see where it took me. Which is here, and here is good. I float.

4-6 days a year I hit an 8.
10/10 being active labor or the first while after the car crash that started all of this.

Yesterday was an 8.5

When I say I live with chronic pain I mean she sleeps with me every night, I try to roll over and ignore her, but she wakes me up sometimes. She sits with me in the car and I avoid acknowledgement until about hour four then she sits in my lap and weighs heavy on my legs and lower back.

I made a decision upon a farm couch 7 years ago.

There is no parallel universe with any version of me who would not have stubborned herself up off that couch. There is no doppelganger of mine that convalesced and died there. Sisterwife lays there dying now, her choice, not mine.

There are days where I hurt so bad that I cry hysterically and this opens me up to emotional outbursts that I cannot control. But there are days when I don’t. I live for those. I love being in the water because I float myself down to a 2.5. The stretching and cardio I get on the pole and the endorphins released during sex lessens the pain as well, or distracts me the same way opioids do. The pain is there and I simply don’t care.

Apparently poles of all kinds are good things for me.

I take the same attitude with my PTSD. I don’t have it. It has a key to my house and pops by now and again to remind me something bad happened years ago. But I have mentally put so much space between me and then, it’s like watching an old movie clip. If I put effort in I can remember the whole film, but why would I? I didn’t do that to me, someone else did and they are long gone and far, far away. I’m in no clear or present danger. Those little flashes are just warning lights when I veer down a familiar path. So I leave.

I do not understand why we would prolong our suffering. Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?

I didn’t do those thing to me, someone else did. Not my problem. I practice kindness not cruelty because I can. The only person I can control is myself, and these are my choices.

Let go and let god.

Everything is as it should be.

This too shall pass.

Laugh and smile as often as possible and pass it on to others.

I live for belly laughs, good food, better sex, writing, loving and learning.

Yesterday all of those things seemed really far away.

Yesterday don’t matter ‘cos it’s gone. Rolling Stones

Today is a whole new glorious day.

lost boys

Tinder and the Really Big Fish

August 8, 2016

I shut that shit down 2-3 weeks ago now?
I don’t know exactly, just more time has passed that I have not been on it than I was actually on it.

The first guy I pulled out of the water is the one I want. He’s huge.

But the fuckbois just keep on coming. And I keep throwing them back.

My arm is tired.

Bad date messaged yesterday asking if I wanted to see him again. I did not engage.

‘He who bailed’ keeps checking in on that weird timeline I only associate with my lost boys who don’t have access to clocks or any concept of time.

I am totally out of get out jail free cards, must have lost them in the move.

I told him that I already have amassed a fuckboi army with those from my past and I wasn’t looking to add to it. They are enough trouble as is. I have already established patterns and relationships with them. They are not ideal but they are familiar, and as much as a fuckboi can belong to anyone, they are mine. And I have the anti-venom for when they bite me in the ass.

The problem with a fuckboi army? They don’t show up when I need them, they just show up, fully armed and ready to take over whenever it suits them. ‘I wonder what Sarah is doing, she was really nice.’

See also “when I am happy a bell gets rung in the graveyard of my heart and all my skeletons get up and ask me to dance.”

And the new ‘recruits’?

Ew, no.

I didn’t ask for this.

My tinder window is closed so they are finding me on instagram and messaging me there. Delete/block/repeat.

I had tentative plans with one or two, but that was July and you are just messaging me yesterday?

‘He who bailed’ said he was trying not to message me so he didn’t appear desperate. He’s a nice enough fellow so I gave him the following advice.

“If you are interested in women my age I will tell you a secret. Good morning texts are good, good night texts are good. Shoot a message out during the day and we might not answer because we are busy, so don’t double up. Don’t listen to your cock or your brain, go with your gut, your gut won’t lie.”

I didn’t want someone who was going to message me every day. Until He did. And I liked it. And then he stopped, and here I sit. Feeling like shit, wondering what happened.

A month, a full calendar month of checking in here and there daily. I didn’t feel overwhelmed and I didn’t feel neglected. Now I do.

I really did try to keep feelings out of it, just breathe and see where it goes. But that is the thing about being in the ocean. You are bound to get wet.

Sunshine and I noticed a strange category of men on tinder who had a profile pic of them holding a fish.
(See also men holding gators and goats, a bizarre sub-species)

“Is this fish for me? Am I supposed to be impressed with the size of the fish? Do you need me to cook it for you? Did you wash your hands? What do I do with this fish?”

I like fish and I like fishing, it just seemed odd, like a cat proudly yowling after the gift of a dead thing.

Then I looked on my guy’s Instagram and there he was, grinning and holding a huge pike.
And I thought it was adorable.

If you like someone, perceptions change.

Changing them back, now that is a bitch.

Establishing happy habits just to have them taken away?

Ain’t that the fucking truth.

This would be a good time to call in the army, but they don’t come when I call, they only come when I’m happy and I ain’t.

I don’t want to go fishing again.

Uncategorized

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.

men

Of Course You can Touch my Butt

August 3, 2016

Oh honey, you had a bad day?
Come over here, tuck yourself into me.
And of course you can touch my butt.
Do you need a sandwich?

Oh honey, you’re still at work 16 hours into the day and you can’t come over?
Here is a picture of my butt to remind you that it is here waiting for you to touch it.

The word document file name for this article is ‘actually touch my butt’.

I was sitting on the porch last night and the neighbors were fighting and my heart got heavy and I’d just made a new Word document called ‘touch my butt’, it was open so I vented there.

This is why I lose things. I give them obscure names, my laptop reboots without my permission and poof.

Buh-bye now, see you next year when I’m cleaning and organizing.

It’s the morning after the new moon.

Save one bill, everything is paid. I’ll get to it today.

The house is spotless, like “It’d be okay if Queen Elizabeth popped over for tea” clean.

Burned some candles and some sage last night.

We are only letting love into this house. So mote it be.

I feel clean, calm and I keep smirking.

Doesn’t hurt a bit that the Lumberjack messages me intermittently throughout the day, every day.

He’s working way too hard right now and I haven’t seen him in…I don’t know how many days.

Huh, funny, I usually count these things.

He said his last girlfriend and he broke up because she was constantly fussing about him working too much.

So she spent the time she did get with you bitching about not seeing you so now she never gets to see you?

That makes no sense.

A lot of things women do when it comes to men make no sense to me.

There are a bazillion people on the planet, if the one you have isn’t working for you do not play blacksmith and try to heat them and hammer them into something that is not their original shape. Go find another one that fits your shape.

Don’t get me wrong. In the folly of my youth (which really only ended 3-4 years ago) I thought if I just tried hard enough ‘I could change him’.

I’ll tell all y’all a secret. No, you can’t. And really? You shouldn’t want to.

How hard that must be on a person you (profess to) love or care about to constantly feel like they have to adapt to please you, like they are not enough as is.
Pretty sure that isn’t love.
I am quite sure that is how the bulk of my exes made me feel. If I just behaved a little better, or was a little quieter, less aggressive, less sassy, less needy/slutty/chatty/sleepy/sneezy/bashful/dopey/grumpy etc. etc. but then I am not me. So why’d you pick me again? And why won’t you touch my butt?

I still have men in my life that make me feel this way. But not for long. We are only letting love into this house.

This is the problem with the neighbors, they fuck and fight and that isn’t love. It’s just a loud, screaming, sobbing mess.

Women are not put on this earth to fix men. They aren’t broken.
Men are not put on this earth to lord over women. We got this.
We’re two separate yet compatible halves of one whole.
Men don’t need to be fixed, they need to be loved and nurtured and left to go build things.
Women do not need to be ruled, we need to be left to be creative and kind and loving.

I’m about to get called out for being anti-feminist.

I could give a fuck.

I do not believe that men and women are equal. I believe we are symbiotic.
And by sucking the life out of the opposite gender trying to get them to submit, we are actually hurting ourselves.

Women have access to this powerful, protective, productive male energy and we harness it to
…
hold our purses at Bed Bath and Beyond?
That doesn’t seem right.

When did we trade nurturing for nagging? And can I please take my nurturing back?
Nagging feels shitty, both to give and receive.

By denying a man his masculinity you are denying your divine feminine self.
Um, what’s not to love about being a woman, we are soft, mystical creatures that create things out of nothing, capable of abstract thought, we feel things on these deep emotional levels and have multiple orgasms.

I jiggle when I walk. He likes that, as do I, I hate doing squats. I am soft. I do not consider this to be a weakness, but strength instead. I am not hard and rigid like him. I flow. I adapt. I soothe myself and others.
Put me against a wall and things change a bit. I have a vicious mouth on me and for the most part I can hold my own physically. But when there is a good man around, I don’t have to do those things. I can build things, fix things and I can appreciate having a man around to open that jar.

Lumberjack is having a stressful time at work right now. He talks to me about it, I make suggestions and ask questions and he comes to his own conclusions. I do not presume to know what is best for him or even exactly how his business works, I have an idea because I listen when he speaks and I ask questions.

He throws the word ‘perfect’ around a lot. I am not. What I am is compatible. The things about me that are feminine and good work with the things about him that are masculine and good.
And for once I feel appreciated, so I make sure he does too.

My job here is to see him when I can. Listen to him vent, rub his back and let him touch my butt. Because like the rest of me, it is soft and soothing and divine.

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…and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand Sanober Khan

…and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand
Sanober Khan