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men, Uncategorized

You Had Time

March 14, 2017

I can’t publish this until I talk to Cruz about it.

I owe him that.

I owe him a lot actually.

He sat next to me in a sports bar, talking to his best friend about me and said ‘she is really hard on herself’.

This little lightbulb went on in my head…

I am.

Panda joined the party and the subject of Black 19 was raised and I had to confess what happened there. He sold the rights to be with me for 300 bucks.

I almost cried at the table. I carry a lot of shame about that. All of it. Letting him near me in the first place and the money thing. Grosses me out.

Cruz looked right at me and said it wasn’t my fault. So matter of fact that I couldn’t argue.

I believed him.

Just like I believed the psychic who said Black 19 was a liar. Saw her the day after I loaned him the money. Whoops. At least I was mentally prepared. Still stung though. Always does.

She also said that an ex was going to make an appearance soon.

Wolfling messaged the next day. Thought that was that.

Nope, nuh uh, I should be so lucky.

Actually I am lucky but we will get to that in a minute.

Ladies and gentlemen, for an encore performance, would you please welcome, the freshly divorced High School Sweetheart.

(crickets)

Are ya fucking kidding me right now?

I am currently working with a strategy manager, he is an awesome dude and believes in my ability to make money with writing etc. He messaged in the middle of everything.

Conversations with Clifford

Me: I was in love with the same boy from age 13 to 40

Clifford: You told me about him

Me: He just got divorced

Clifford: WOAH

Me: He messaged me yesterday

Clifford: And he’s interested in you again? But you got a good thing with Cruz right?

Me: He never stopped being interested. We talked on and off his whole marriage, my whole marriage, but I let him go in December 2014. I did always wonder how I would react if he came back.

Clifford: What do you feel?

Me: nothing

Clifford: Maybe that ship has sailed

Me: It sunk I think, watery grave, no survivors.

Clifford: There a girl in my life where the timing was just never right and the stars were never going to align and we just accepted that for what it was.

Me: That is exactly it. He messaged yesterday and told me what happened, Cruz asked me to be his girlfriend last night. I said yes to Cruz with zero hesitation.

Clifford: Boom! Congrats to you and Cruz

Me: He is super sweet to me and just lets me be myself. This is pretty epic for me.

Clifford: Trust your gut right

Me: Oh honey, All my body parts are super happy with Cruz.

And there it is.

For the first time in a long time everything about me is content with one person who wants me back, like right now, not later after we split and I am missed.

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of my exes, I shall not want.

Something in me changed, right before he got here. I did a massive letting go of everything from the time called ‘before’.

The same psychic that predicted the other two events told me to try and figure out the kind of relationship I want, instead of thinking about the man I want.

I did that.

And now I have it.

He is my fuck monster. Bangs me the minute I walk in the door then we hang out like normal people for a few hours till he gets lusty eyes and we drop what we’re doing and have more sex.

It isn’t just that.

It’s the forehead kisses and the opening of doors. It’s him calling me out on my emotional shit. Its Panda saying “I really like him and I want him to stay in our lives for a long time”. It’s his stories from traveling and him spontaneously picking up a guitar and playing my favorite songs. It’s his lack of filter and zero shame. There is no game playing here, he just is what he is and does what he does. Just like me.

I said the other day that it takes me a long time to get over things, but once I am, they are done.

It tasted like truth because it is.

I don’t want what could have been, I want what is.

Truth is, we all have a past.

But there is no future in it.

Uncategorized

The Blame Game

March 11, 2017

Serendipitously, as I was writing this, my Facebook notifications were binging like fucking mad.

I stopped what I was doing and looked to see what the ruckus was all about.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1786802551638950/permalink/1792364367749435/?pnref=story

My friend John asked me to be involved in a project he was working on a few weeks ago. #theloveproject.
The video is up, or a sneak peek at least. I am in it. At 1:28, saying “Maybe if I am good enough, someone will love me.” Cue the tears.

I had this discussion with my new friend Clifford Myers http://www.cliffordmyers.ca/ the other day wherein we were talking about enlightenment. I expressed my irritation with people who attain a certain level of awareness and then stop, thinking they know everything. Arrested development.

The things we despise in others are the things we feel shame or guilt about in ourselves.

I do that shit too. I plateau, I back pedal and I fall apart.

I yammer on and on about how everything changes, life itself is in a state of constant flux, preach on and on about unconditional love and being unapologetically yourself yada yada, blah blah blah.

And what did I do?

Yesterday I ran away from my perfectly amazing Fuck Monster at 8 in the morning.
Why?
Because 12 hours before he said he didn’t like my hat which somehow became this avalanche of negativity that I got buried under, even though I was tucked safely in the cocoon of his bed, under his duvet and he had his arms around me.
(He is a cuddle monster too.)

Like literally put my pants on and bolted out the door with this loop in my head that said ‘run’.

I’m over simplifying. It didn’t just say ‘run’. ‘It’s going to hurt when he leaves, he is gonna leave, they all leave.’ And some more screeching panicked noises that sounded a rabbit caught in a snare. It was hard to make all of it out, but you get the gist.

Now, this is the point where the others would say ‘this isn’t my problem’, ‘you are crazy’ or my personal favorite, the anthem of the fuck boy ‘think whatever you want.’

He didn’t do that.

Had he said ‘this is not my problem/fault’, he would have been bang on.

It really isn’t. I knew the hat looked bad and I wore it anyways, I was cold.

So whose fault is it?

I hate playing the blame game. I truly do.

I internalize every fucking thing ever. It’s all my fault.

Sure I have read the memes that say
You are not responsible for how other people treat you.
Hurt people hurt people.
Real human beings don’t go around destroying people.
You are not what they did to you.
etc…
And for a minute I believe them.
Then I go right back to trying to figure out what I did wrong.

I’ve made bad choices…that might be where my responsibility ends.

I was conditioned, from a very young age, that my behavior dictated the amount of affection I earned.

Not okay for a girl like me.

Never enough unless I was too much.

I was never told I was attractive or overly intelligent. I have no idea what I look like to other people.

At age 40, I started figuring out how to forgive and accept myself, love myself even. I don’t apologize, I own my shit, I am loud and proud, loving, funny, sweet and smart.
I am also fallible. I fuck up, and it’s okay.

Add a boy.

All that shit goes out the window. I second guess myself, tone myself down, worry, fuss, cry. Yuck.

I stop evolving.

I become that thing I don’t like.

“Whatever I think” is negative.

I bolted because I knew I was going to cry. I knew it was hormones. I knew I was scared. I knew I didn’t have enough control to get through the morning without turning into a puddle. So I bailed.

Most guys would have been relieved and grateful not to be stuck with a crying girl on their couch.

He didn’t like that.

I told him I panicked, I told him it was irrational and I couldn’t explain it.

He said “it’s anxiety from something that’s happened to you in the past, hurt you, so now you assume something bad is gunna happen because you’re vulnerable and so familiar with the feeling.”

Damn baby. Fucking nailed it.

He also said it sounded like I had “been with a bunch of dickheads”.

Yep, I really have.

Guys who say they want a girl with a high sex drive then shame me for the amount of sex I actually want.
(He gets hard being near me and follows through every single time)

Guys who are stingy with affection and compliments.
(His eyes light up when I walk in the door and I never have to reach very far to grab his hand)

I took a deep breath and went back over last night.
His eyes lit up when I walked in the door.
He fucked me 3 times in 18 hours.
We smiled and touched and talked.

As much as people can be a reflection of the things we don’t like about ourselves, I think if we are really lucky, we can find someone that reflects back all the good things we are too.

lost boys

Raising the Dead

March 10, 2017

Poor Panda.

I rolled in way too early this morning.
There was a hungover girl on our couch.
I tried to be quiet.
I failed.
Woke ‘em both up.

She had been up drinking last night and did leg day at the gym yesterday.

Shoulda been the good roommate/hostess and made them coffee, fetched them Advil, listened to their misadventures from last night.

Well, I did do those things.

Then Panda asked how I was doing and I couldn’t hold back that high-pitched, keening wail that I do when I go full white girl and cannot even.
I know it scares the shit out of her and I couldn’t stop.

Funny enough, I was speaking completely rationally through the sobs.

I am being emotionally blackmailed by my uterus right now and it is making me feel like a crazy person.

Rational me knows this.

Irrational me is imagining Doomsday scenarios.

The trip switch has been flipped and I just gotta ride it out.

I realized something, and articulated it through my hiccupping crying jag.

I write shit down in here to bury it.

I make it into a story so it doesn’t hurt me anymore.

Until…

Remember that scene in the Mummy where the expedition guide dude yells out “You must not read from the book!”

He is not wrong. Bad idea.

The seas are about to run red anyways and I went and triggered the other 6 plagues of Egypt.

I have called this blog a giant coffin, named my heart a graveyard, I admit that I am haunted.

I am the white people in the horror movie that hear ghosts whisper ‘get out’ and I stay anyways.

I opened the Necronomicon. For reasons unknown I thought it was safe to say shit out loud.

It ain’t.

“Oh for a moment of forgetting, is a moment of bliss.” Peter Gabriel

I got 11 days of forgetting and it was bliss.

I was so scared that I had hurt someone that I went and ripped all my bandages off, showed all my scars, explained how I had been hurt…and fuck, it hurt.

“I had feelings for them and they left me and it really sucked.”

And just like that, inner peace shattered.

90% of the time I have a handle on all this.
Everything is temporary, everything is as it should be blah blah Buddha blah.

Then I remember.

I wrote an article called “Open Letter to my Exes” and I fucking thanked them.

Seriously?

Admittedly I am really happy with who and where I am, but come on. I am not a Saint nor a martyr.

So on that note…

Seriously, fuck you guys.

Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

I am so fucking hand-shy now I start waiting for them to leave before the second date.

Fuck you.

Every plan beyond a day or two later makes my stomach roll with fear. I should have butterflies dammit. But nope. My hopes go up for a split second and I have to smash them down. I’ve heard that before. I have heard all of it before.

Fuck you.

This uterus of mine has me feeling ugly and worthless a few days a month. These exes of mine have me feeling ugly and worthless every time I think about when they left.

I know this will pass but for now I’ll write it out and bury it.

Maybe this time it won’t come back to haunt and hurt.

men

From Neverland to Maybesomedayland

December 4, 2016

Shit shit shit.

Daddy’s little secret, don’t you know what you came for?
And you notice where you are ~ Daniel Wesley (Ooo Oh)

Just noticed where I are. And kinda what I am.

We don’t have a ddlg relationship per say.
(Dominant daddy/little girl)
I follow a few people on Instagram and Facebook that participate in said relationships. Some of it makes my heart happy and my princess parts tingle and some of it I just don’t get.
I am a submissive because I like the lack of control, I crave it really. I love how the world just shuts up and goes away when I am with him. For a few hours I don’t think about adulting, I can just get lost in him and just…be.

The rest of it?
I can think of better things to put in my mouth than a pacifier, don’t want any stuffies, toys yes but the kind that fill me up, not teddy bears. I am grown.

I do call him Daddy when the moment calls for it, he call me good girl, I like that. I like a lot of things he says, does and is. I have rediscovered things with him that I liked before that were lost with shitty partners. I trust him implicitly with my body. My heart? I thought I did, I want to.

Fuck, I am feeling like a secret.

I do not want to feed the fears. I do not want to bring them to life. But I need them out of the dark places they dwell so I can identify them, assess and possibly kill them before they do harm.

I walked into a tattoo shop last week with my Sunshine. We both wanted little quotes, hers took so long I didn’t end up getting one but I had 2 things in mind.

Virtues grow on the graves of our sins by Matthew D Eayre

And a Michael Xavier snippet to round out the holy trinity, I already have two.

What I should have gotten (and most likely will get soon) is the one thing that has gotten me through everything since I decided to wake up and not live in my head.

Everything is as it should be. The Dalai Lama

Logically I know that all my doubts are coming from my past.
That time that my ex-husband had a whole other relationship outside of ours and did a bad job of hiding it. At the same time a girl I worked with had to survive the horror of losing her boyfriend in the most freakish of accidents and also finding out hours after his death that he had a whole other family with another woman and had for 4 years. He was better at hiding it. I don’t know how she got through it. But I guess when it comes down to it you either deal or die trying.

In the grand scheme of things I have been through shit that would have killed other people, or turned them bitter, and I am still here. Clumsy heart on my sleeve, trying one more time. And everything is really as it should be.

I know why I started feeling squirrely this time around. I did that thing again that I ought not to do, I started thinking ahead. I imagined snowy Sunday mornings making pancakes in pajamas before we made a pilgrimage to Home Depot. I envisioned waking up at 4am for some stolen snuggles before making us coffee, him leaving for work and me writing before I had to head out. Then coming home for couch snuggles and a quickie before bed.

It’s not the reality of the situation that hurts, it is always the fantasy of how we want things to be.

I want him more than I have him. I feel like with our schedules the way they are the only way to see him more than a couple times a month is to live together. I have no idea if that is in the realm of possibilities. Haven’t talked to him about it and I can’t see us having that discussion for a while.

Having never experienced anything close to a normal relationship I can only pontificate that this slow progression is actually what is supposed to be happening. I have no frame of reference for such things, but I have heard rumors. Some people actually get to know each other before they rush into things like ‘I love yous’ and co habitation.

I may yet get my wish, who knows. He is the first person in a long time, since I woke up really that I have actually wanted to be domestic with. Even ‘he who inspired the book’ had his own place in my Fantasyland. I liked sleeping over at the Giant’s house but I never wanted to live there. Gelfling talked about getting in my trailer with me and parking it on some secluded beach somewhere where we could “fuck and make art”, I smirked at the idea but it never felt quite right.

In the past these things have always been rushed, too soon and or been done for the wrong reasons. I moved in with guys in my 20’s because one or both of us had been evicted. It wasn’t out of love, but necessity. Same when I moved to the farm, to be perfectly honest it was a full on territorial pissing. Mine mine mine. I didn’t love it there and I didn’t really love him. Sure there were moments, but as a whole it was never okay.

I think I would rather be alone than trapped in another house/life with the wrong person.

Everything is actually as it should be, or it would be some other way.

Whatever happens, happens.

If it stops being good for either one of us, it will be time to let it all go.

Turn the key and engine over.
Let her go
Let somebody else lay at her feet.

Gaslight Anthem 45

Till then I’ll see what stays. Hopefully him.

men

Open Letter to my Exes

October 29, 2016

I opened an old blog post this morning called “Not Forgotten”.
I read the words, knowing that I had written them, they sounded like mine, the subject matter familiar etc…but I swear I forgot I had published it.

I am not sure if that is literal irony or just the way Alanis Morrisette uses it, which, in itself is ironic.

I think I’m at 300+ posts by now. Sometimes they get lost, then remembered.

I found another called “Rainbows and Unicorns” about finding a lovely tattooed Scorpio surfer boy on the beach the day after I’d asked for a summer fling.
He didn’t last the summer.
But I was monkey-barring, hanging on to one and reached for another.
Once I let go I fell in the nicest of ways and was caught so there is that then.

Not sure what happened. Thai Fighter went ghost. Maybe his best friend saw me on Tinder, maybe he met another girl…it’s all part of the great unknown at this point. It’s okay. I wish him well wherever he is.

I think/hope he is back in the Philippines, his happy place with his baby boy changing nappies.
We had a good run.

No harm no foul, I knew exactly what he was when I found him. I didn’t get attached. Just enjoyed the ride.

I have been turning this over in my mind a lot lately.

All of my exes have been immortalized in one way or another up in here. Some more than others.

But titling something open letter to my exes is click bait extraordinaire.

And lately I have been grateful as fuck for all of them, all things considered, so here goes…

Open letter to my exes,

Thank you. All of you.

I wouldn’t be where or who I am now without you, and I love this house and this self/life I have now.

Love,

Sarah

I know it would probably be a more popular post if I ripped into them, one by one said horrible shit, personal things, gossip and drama.

But I am not that girl.

I sat on the porch last night, drinking wine with my Sunshine and I said “Men are my drugs, doesn’t matter how bad they are for me, I do them anyways.”

It’s true.

I also said, I’ve never had a good relationship.

This is also true.

And yet, here I am, trying again.

There are no good drugs, sure they can soothe and balm for a time, but in the end, you are alone on the bathroom floor with your addiction and the drugs are gone.

We were originally speaking of addiction, and how I came to date my rapist and how she ended up with the one who hit her. We were both a little out of control with the partying with the actual drugs before we met these men who had a PhD in control, just not in a good way. But they served their purpose.

We decided to be grateful for them and I felt lighter.

I stumbled on this a while ago, touched on it lightly.

Rumi said ‘you have to keep breaking your heart until it opens’.

And I have.

I don’t know if I’m done yet, but I know I am more open than I have ever been.

I spent 4 years not being in a relationship. I was still with men, but one of us always had our arm out holding the other away.

Sometimes I made bad choices. Often I made bad choices. On occasion I would try to summon my inner girlfriend. When they were over 22 at least or not raging manwhores or admitted fuckbois they didn’t seem unattainable, until they were. But then I held on anyways.

I pretended I didn’t want to be in a relationship, but deep down I did.

What was that movie where the girl made a wish for an impossible man, one brown eye one blue, rides horses, flips pancakes?

Ah yes, Practical Magic.

I can’t remember why she didn’t want to get married, but I understand it.
Once again, never been a priority for me, we’ve talked about this.

I think my wish was a little more practical, I just wanted to be someone’s first choice, see subtext wherein I wanted them to be my first choice too.

I had that dream October 8^th 2015 about finding my perfect man in a communist dystopia, all concrete, grey and right angles. I wrote about it in a post called “Dream Love”.

Not perfect, I believe in the concept of perfect like I believe in marriage. Unlikely, but possible. Compatible with me. The two sides of his body distinctly different, giant sized tall, lounging on a couch watching movies and laughing and keeping me safe. Just being happy we found each other at all.

I think I found him, finally. He is 6’ 5” half covered in tattoos, each side of his body distinctly different.

He is away right now and I feel like I am in a relationship with my phone. But god knows I have been through worse.

I saw a meme today.
I see memes every day.
This one said ‘god heard you, be patient’.
I’m fucking trying I really am.
Huge shout out to all the boys I’ve waited for before now.
Thanks for the practice in perseverance.

men

Soulmates and Cicadas

October 9, 2016

I think I finally have an answer to that age old debate.

Not the chickens.

Soulmates.

Whether they come into your life like a tsunami and fuck shit up or like a gentle rain that washes the old away and nurtures the ground you walk on.

Western philosophy says natural disaster. Eastern says just naturally.

For the longest time I longed for the west, I went there and it felt exciting yet familiar.
I am now leaning to the east. I have never gone that way before.
That is where the sun comes up and everything starts over again.

Yes, this.

I am not going to sit here and call a man my soulmate. It’s so overused, it doesn’t mean anything anymore.

I also take issue with the phrase ‘love of my life’. I will not know who that is until the end. I have loved with my whole heart, many versions of love by many versions of me and that is enough.

Not once did I not try.

I have soul sistas and funk soul bruthas galore, I know how that feels, to be completely and utterly yourself in a room full of people (or just with one person) who just get you and love you and cheer on your every move. And sometimes they have to shake the baby and say ‘snap out of it.’ depending. Tribe is overused too. They are just my people.

I have met men who knocked me over with a look. Others who created storms that raged in my body with a single touch. I have been torn apart and held together with their words and eventually their silences. And in all likelihood I have probably done the same to others.

I have had all manner of butterflies in my belly. Young innocent ones that woke up with some carnal need I had no understanding of and the excitement of the unknown caused them to flutter and flirt with disaster after disaster. I have had ones with razorblade wings, hard cutting things that threatened to tear through me responding to fear, words I wanted to believe but I knew deep down they weren’t true.

Or when I looked at one in a parking lot, moments after a first kiss and said “oh honey, you are going to shred me and I am going to let you” he tried to argue, tried to volunteer for the position of getting torn apart, but those weren’t my words, those were wings whispering the truth and they spilled off my tingling tongue before I could stop them.

The butterflies have spoken.

Can’t take it back now. It just is.

And it was.

And it was worth it.

Before that moment I had suffered a long absence, like my butterflies were really cicadas and went dormant for extended periods of time. About 17 years give or take. With the occasional one showing up out of time and place sang for a brief moment on some sticky summer night.

God I missed them.

And now these.

These are new.

Lepidopterists have yet to categorize these gossamer winged things.

Out of the blue my dearest Brother Matthew messaged me. Poetry of Monsters is his.

He said

“It’s right there, waiting. Hold true and it will be clear. Love you”

He wasn’t wrong. I was still smirking and smiling at my phone from being claimed moments earlier.

Two words.

My girl.

That I am.

With this new one came a new breed of butterflies.
Not nervous, not sharp or nauseating. Not beating warnings against my belly nor striving to be touched and being denied.

The opposite.

Strong, silken, languid caresses. Matching the ones he was writing on my skin while I sat in his lap.

Wings in the lower part of my belly whispering yes, this, here, him over and over.

Same thing murmured when I came around the corner at the restaurant and laid eyes on him the first time.

Something in me exhaled with relief.

I think it was my soul sighing.

The cicadas are awake.

unable to even

Wedding Rings and Other Things

October 6, 2016

Him: “We’re just waiting for Sarah’s family to arrive”

Me: (oh Jesus no)

Random wedding guest: “Who?”

Him: “Sarah’s parents”

Me: “Sean, what did you just say?”

Him: (one more time for the kids in the back) “Sarah’s parents aren’t here yet.”

Me: “No Sean, I’m Sarah, you are marrying Erin remember?”

Him: “Oh, ya. Erin’s parents. Sorry.”

Coulda stabbed him in the heart with his boutonniere pin.

Coulda woulda shoulda.

He wasn’t sorry enough to stop himself from doing it twice more.
Not during the ceremony though, small mercies.

I had enough before the sun went down and bailed. I should never have gone.

Don’t go to your exes weddings mmmm kay?
Even if they INSIST, just don’t go, chop a limb off if you have to but just don’t go.

I’ve been to a few weddings.
Twice as a flower girl, those marriages are still going after 30+ years.
The next marriage ended eventually.
The first one I went to wherein I was a friend of the bride…she’d pulled me into the bathroom a week before and said “I don’t want to do this.”

“You don’t have to, you can stop this, it’ll be okay.” I said.

She didn’t stop it, she left him 3 months later.

I’ve never been a bridesmaid nor a bride.

Went to 2 weddings last year, both beautiful and wonderful.
I went to both alone and left feeling really alone.

Been engaged a handful of times. If that hand had closed around a firecracker after lighting it and was missing a digit, which is kinda a metaphor for said relationships, dummy me didn’t know when to let go.

I didn’t keep the rings.

The kind of man I want works with his hands and couldn’t wear a ring anyways.

There is a scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral wherein Duckface is speaking to Hugh Grant and says something to the effect of “You don’t have to enter every relationship thinking ‘I must get married’, but you can’t be in them thinking I mustn’t get married either.”

I was Hugh Grant. Until recently.

My dad looked at my mom and said ‘that’s the girl I am going to marry’, and he did.

His parents met as teenagers, before the war. When he came back his family actually hid my grandpa from my grandmother saying “once Neva knows he’s home we’ll never see him again.” That lasted a week, and proved to be true. They loved each other so much. So do my folks.

I met my “one I want to marry” when I was 13 years old. For 26 years I didn’t want to marry anyone except him.
Yes, I agreed to marry 3 other people, but somehow I knew it was bullshit and that it wasn’t going to happen and it seemed rude to say no so…

Anthony proposed three times between 2006 and 2011, told sisterwife he had to because I found the ring in his pocket when I was gathering laundry. Not sure how explained asking me twice more after that, not sure I care.

Survey says, whatev’s.

It was because of the Black Wedding of Sean and Erin that I came to find out how I had been ousted from my farm life years prior.
I was sleeping with Sean you see, back in the days of being engaged and enraged with Anthony and our sisterwife.
Sean’s best friend told Anthony where I had been spending my nights.
Sean made sure Anthony found out so I would get thrown out and go back to him.
That same friend made sure Anthony found out I was at the wedding too.

Ew.

None of them loved, honored nor cherished me. And they did not forsake any others and want only me, so again whatev’s.

Made me feel like shit though. Probably the worst I had ever felt. To be betrayed like that under the guise of being loved. To be forced from my home, as shitty as it was, before I was ready to go.

I think that is part of the reason I value the free will of others so much. I know what force feels like, to be cornered, abandoned, manipulated, used and tossed away with no choice in the situation other than whatever notion brought me there is the first place.

Bob Marley said there is no bigger coward than a man who awakens the love in a woman with no intention of loving her back.

On this, and most things, Bob and I are in utter agreeance.

Whatever they awoke in me felt like love, until it didn’t.

“Her heaven will be a love without betrayal” (Beyonce)

Yes, this.

The night I met the Giant I read his palm in the blacklight. Saw him getting married, focused on his career, can’t remember much else, but he is going to have one serious accident or illness and smooth sailing from there.

I joked that he wasn’t the one for me because I was never getting married.
I’ve never been that little girl who plotted, planned and schemed about her wedding day. I just didn’t. My parents eloped. I was 6 when Charles and Di got married, watched some of it on TV. Looked like a long expensive mess to me.

I still see it as sacred. I still want to be chosen by someone that I love, who loves me and stays.

It hurt me that the Giant thought me a joke really. He said he would stay and was gone in a week.

Just because I don’t have my head full of flowers and rings and white dresses doesn’t mean the idea of loving someone for a really long time doesn’t appeal to me. It is in my DNA after all, this forsaking of all others. I was just handshy for all of the reasons listed above.

The end of Four Weddings and a Funeral is Hugh Grant saying to Andie McDowell, would you agree to not marry me and stay not married to me for a really long time.

I like that ending.

I do.

men

Just call me Angel of the Morning

September 21, 2016

Just call me angel of the morning, angel
Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby.
~Juice Newton

I just looked that song up and it is way more depressing than I remembered. It is absolutely about a one-sided one night stand. Nope nuh-uh. That is not what I want at all. I think my child’s mind mixed that one up with My baby takes the morning train (Sheena Easton)…I can get behind that sentiment, because he came home and she was waiting for him.

My child’s mind, constantly misunderstanding lyrics. Early memories of music and early mornings.

My alarm went off at the same time as the church bells. Chimed 6 times, and I was out from under the covers by the last bell.
It’s still dark. Wrapped myself in a blanket and sat on the porch sipping coffee, smoking and musing about my day. I had a letter to write, and a book idea that presented itself yesterday. Of course on a day where I slept in and I couldn’t do a damned thing about it, although for the first time since I started this new job I was tempted to call in sick.

I’ve had my alarm set for 6 for a while now and I don’t often get up. Preferring instead to stay in bed, force REM sleep and enjoy the strange dreams that occur in between 6 and 7:15.

(I was in prison, you came and I handed you a tiny precious snake to look after, you said you would)

Also, I have been getting into the wine and staying up later than I mean to.

There is something magical to me about being up in the darkness, just a little glow from one or two incandescent bulbs. The radio turned on low, hiss of the coffee maker, sleepy eyed and wrapped in blankets.
It meant something different when I was little. It was a break from our normal routine. It meant an event was occurring, like a trip to London, field trip at school. Excitement, different than trying to scarf down my cereal before it got soggy and the trek to the bus stop.

If I was exceptionally lucky two things would happen. I would get to watch cartoons until the bus came and even more important, I would get to see my dad. Standing in the glow of the stove light, sipping his coffee and I could hug him before he left for work. My dad worked a lot and those tiny extra moments were precious.

When I lived on the farm I used to catapult myself out of bed at 5 or 6. Not because I had chores to do, I had finely tuned my critters not to expect me till 8 or 9am. But for the stolen moments of peace. I don’t need both my hands to count the hours I was actually in that house alone over the course of 6 years, so I started carving out my own alone time. Occasionally jumping in my Jeep to catch the sunrise over the causeway.

Freedom is just chaos with better lighting. (Alan Dean Foster)

Another 5 year relationship, he was up at 5am and gone by 6. He’d let the dogs into the bedroom and I’d snuggle them for 20 minutes before I got up, again, just enjoy my alone time before getting myself off to work. Sadly, that man couldn’t be alone, so by default I wasn’t ‘allowed’.

Now that this second book idea has made itself known, 5:30 with a snooze it is. The muses have spoken.

I have to make time.

Life isn’t something I have. It’s not something that happens to me. It’s something I participate in, wander around with childlike wonderment at the beauty of, and something I create with my thoughts and actions. I want to be awake to enjoy it. My night dreams are mystical magical things that are fun to interpret. But my day dreams are infinitely better. I sat awake this morning in the dark and let my mind wander to a time and place that haven’t happened, yet.

It’s been over 3 decades since those frosty fall mornings as a child, waking up early just so I could have a few extra minutes with my dad.

I am 42 years old now. I don’t have to steal moments or feign sleep to get alone time. My life is my own and so is my time. And I cannot think of a better way to spend it than waking up before the sun, to the hiss of the coffee maker, wrapped in a blanket just to be awake enough to spend a few extra moments with a man of my choosing.

Uncategorized

Scars and Stars

September 18, 2016

Oh my god.

I am actually happy.

Cue the tears.
(They are currently cathartic, full of overwhelm and gratitude.)

This is the point where I would usually see something shiny, veer off the path, start falling for some fuckboi’s bullshit promises, slap on some Radiohead and sabotage the shit out of everything.

Fucking Postcards from 1952 history repeating and rereading old articles instead.

Radiohead would have been a safer, saner choice.

Forget about your house of cards and I’ll do mine

Not today Satan, not today.

(author’s note: of course 2 nope, now 3 of them showed up AS I was writing this)

I have this loop in my head right now. U2 song, Elvis Presley and America “you’re through with me but I know that you’ll be back for more.”

History dictates that if I build myself up, they will come. If I get happy it’s like turning on the porchlight and they use it as a beacon to find their way home. My porchlight shines like the sun apparently, or the Stella Polaris. I know this like I know the constellations in the freckles on the back of my hands. These same hands that were once held and then dropped without warning.

What if I decided not to be here when they came back?

What if I stopped living in the past and started being here and now?

I’m already doing better than before.

I’m fighting the good fight right now. Against doubt, fear and temptation.

I am almost strong enough to look the god’s in the eye and say ‘fuck it, go ahead and tempt me’.

I have been saying no like it’s my first language. But just to demi-gods. The titans remain blissfully quiet.

I can do this. Been practicing.

Something was planted in me when I was young and it gets watered when I am happy. But it is not a good thing that grows, it’s a vine that twists and turns and chokes the life out/blocks the light out.
It only recedes when I go back to being lost and alone wondering what the fuck just happened. Then I get to breathe and see clearly. As much oxygen as I can sneak in through the sobs and as clear as I can through tears anyways.

My natural state of being is to love and not to be loved back?

That can’t be right.

How did that switch get flipped from lovable to unlovable?

More importantly how do I switch it back?

It’s become pathological. I pick men and situations that feed this thing. The seeds I plant have come in these packets labeled temporary. Perennials. Nothing that comes back on its own accord. Just stuff that dies when its done and I have to start over. Or worse, I hand them salt and they sprinkle it on the earth before they go and nothing grows for a really long time.

I said to a trusted friend ‘I don’t even know how to move with this much space. I don’t know how to not cover my mouth when I laugh trying to hold myself in and back.’

He texted back two words make noise, and I have been. Joyous ones unto the lord. Derpy deep-throaty laughs. Moans of pleasure. Whatever feels like flying out of my mouth.

The moon was full last night as was I.

I read something it being a good time, astrologically speaking, to “use your wounds to learn and not worrying about healing them”.
Fuck, I wish I could find it, but I don’t want to get distracted by the shiny internet before I get this out.
I’ve lost my head, my hands, my legs and my heart and I am still standing, feeling, touching and seeing. Even the worst wounds heal on their own. This I know. Just like the earth reconciles itself, as do we.

But what have I learned?

I am trying so hard to be good. So hard to focus. So hard to just be okay being me. No edits, not hiding. It helps that he is unapologetically himself and doesn’t mind me being a dork, seems to prefer it actually.

I had a moment after, sitting in his lap and there was this feeling of butterflies, trying to beat their way out of my stomach, trying to reach his hands, his skin, his anything. And I had a fight or flight response. I remembered my third option and I froze. Just stayed in the moment. I stopped being scared and those troublesome butterflies started to feel nice, all flutters and caresses with gossamer wings. He touched us. Repeatedly.

I sat on his couch last night and I watched him. I watched him watching a movie, getting up naked to stretch after sex, heading to grab us another beer and over my shoulder as I walked out the door to go home.

He doesn’t look like anyone or anything I have ever seen.
He doesn’t act that way or speak their words either.

He looks like nothing I have been through.

A huge part of life, and one that I tend to skip over, is going new places and trying new things.

I have to remember that once I landed in LA and after a day it felt more like home than anywhere I had ever been.

regular lust

My Bookhouse

September 17, 2016

I got tattooed in Arizona at a place called the The Bookhouse. By a man named Alex Empty. He runs a place called Copper State Tattoo now, I highly recommend looking him up.

It was my first sisterhood tattoo. T’is a crown, because we met in Ontario and she loved that we have crowns on our licence plates, and for fun and to commemorate our secret language, we put a bird on it*.

She is neither here nor there. I miss her, but sometimes we just have to miss people.

Different paths.

I remember sitting in the waiting room, seeing the name of the place and being filled with this uncontrollable mirth and bubbling joy.

I asked Alex in a hushed tone (just in case I was wrong) “is this place named after Twin Peaks?”

It was, and my happy cup runneth over.

I love those little moments of camaraderie shared with strangers, that light that goes on in their eyes, reflected in your own at the recognition of something relatively obscure. Like a tiny secret.

I loved Arizona for that. Everywhere I went, there were my people. But I couldn’t stay, and Sedona was on fire.

My boys are the bookhouse boys. There is evil out there and they stand against it and just do what needs to be done. Chivalry is paramount.

The card for that tattoo shop sits next to my desk on my bookshelf just to the far left of my peripheral vision. Nestled in with jars full of sage and rocks and a ceramic flower, with a bird on it.

3 shelves up lives my collection of old/vintage/antique books. 3 collections of fairy tales in varying states of decay. My prized first illustrated edition of The Water Babies. Not old but precious, a book that was given to me at age 13 by a slightly mad woman who has since passed away. A bible, The Handbook for Attendants of the Criminally Insane Copyright 1912, The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis, a pocket sized Iliad and my mother’s Bookhouse Books. A dozen of them, bound in navy and gold.

I wrote a long time ago in an article called “Not at all like the Movies” that I had heard certain phrases, song lyrics, passages from books and never knew why they pleased me so much until later in life.

A-ha moments.

It’s happening again, so sayeth the giant from Twin Peaks.

My Bookhouse.

Write the book, buy the house.

I christened my current apartment Equilibrium. It is where I decided I would try to stop swinging so far from one side to the other, and I have. I found a cozy little nook and instead of massive fluctuations full tilt to the far sides of content and discontent I gently sway from side to side.

Getting closer.

Hot Neighbor and I share a philosophy in that sometimes we hear things are read things or just have a thought and we immediately recognize this thing/thought/idea is THE truth. Not that it’s true, but that it is the truth. And how we have deciphered this certain phenomenon is that we are not learning something, we are remembering it.

I am remembering.

I want my bookhouse.

My psychiatrist is always asking me what I want. She recognizes what I have and had, knows I was in a state of discontent and tries to pry me open and revel the truth in there.

He asked me too. What do you want me to do to you?

It had been so long since someone asked me that, I didn’t know how to respond. Then slowly with great trust and effort I began naming things, remembering little pockets of bliss. Remembering what my body and psyche are capable of in a state of love and trust.

I wanted an answer too. I had to start somewhere, so I looked at what made me happiest of all.

I had a taste of happy healthy butterfly belly feels in the spring.

Then the exterminators came and left poison in my guts.

But in the way that nature goes and grows, taking back what is hers…the garden is once again full of butterflies. All blue and gold.

I have had many adventures, tried the red pill, the blue pill, both sides of the mushroom, tiny vials named drink me and cookies labeled eat me. Slept on the ground and in the most opulent of feather beds. Walked miles barefoot and leagues in stilettos and what makes me happiest of all is that sense of home I have felt from time to time. I love being home.

In all of my gypsy wanderings the happiest I have felt is being around those who accept me as is. No guards, no masks, no work needed on my part to be lovable. I am love. I love, it is just what the fuck I do.

I love sex. I realized the other night as his hands were wandering over my skin how starved I was for human contact. I made a game out of ‘can I kiss you here?’, “how about here?” and the answer was always yes. My lips are still bruised and I couldn’t be happier.

I love writing. Those books of my mothers have very little in the way of illustrations and I still read them ravenously as a child. Words have always been magic to me. I love creating visions out of nothing, I love exploring places I have made up in my head, when my muse sits on my shoulder and babbles faster than I can type.

I finally have an answer for them both.

I want a place I helped buy and build with the words I wrote, that I share with the one who always answers yes when I ask if I can kiss him here or there. I want to write books and do good work. Cook dinner, stack wood, rescue dogs, grow roses and just be happy and laugh with my people.

I want to come home and stay there.

(*Portlandia reference)

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