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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

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.

the poet

Harley and the Joker

September 5, 2016

I wrote this whole article and I was looking for a pic to go with it, found this.

Sucker punch of truth right to the throat.

He did this to me. And I did that thing that I do where I tried to understand it, tried to be a better girl for him.

I watched Suicide Squad and saw myself in there. Just a ‘lil bit. But even a little of that is too much.

Apparently in a parallel Marvel universe Joker and Harley fell in love before he was damaged.

But not in this one.

I don’t want a life that resembles movies or comic books. I don’t want to jump into vats of acid to prove my love for someone. I don’t want my brain shocked and rewired to fit someone else’s ideal of what a woman should be. I have been a woman for 42 years and seriously, I got this.

There are spoilers in here.

You have been warned.

My dad’s middle name is Harley. Always thought that was so cool.

My dad is awesome.

The bar should be sofa king high for the men I date. And it ain’t. Couldn’t tell you why that is, probably best to ask my therapist. See if we can work that out before I date again.

I shouldn’t stand here and say that none of the men I have dated have cleared the bar. A few of them have, raised it a bit, right before they left. So, does that even count?

I don’t know what counts anymore. 1+1 should equal 2 but somehow it keeps coming out to 3 or more or negative one. There are variables and percentages and none of them add up to much of anything all things considered.

I saw Suicide Squad 1.5 times.

The first time didn’t really count as we went to the drive-in, pulled up at the wrong screen waited way to long in line for popcorn that wasn’t there and missed the first 10 minutes, and the screen was way too dark. Went back again to a small theater with reclining seats and took kiddo 1 and 2 with me this time. Saw the whole thing.

I braced myself the second time around.

I worried myself with my reactions to the relationship between Joker and Harley Quinn. I was secretly rooting for them somewhere down in my damaged little heart, and I didn’t like it.

When he tried to pass her off to someone else, I felt ridiculously ill. It wasn’t the concession stand hot dog neither. It was flashbacks, I had someone claim to love me and still try to do that very thing. Didn’t set my mind at any kind of ease when Joker shot the guy after. It felt like he killed the other guy for refusing her. Nope, nuh-uh. Not okay.

I have, in the past, fairly recent actually, fooled myself into thinking that was an expression of love. I was shocked and damaged into believing it was the ultimate in trust and choosing one another. It ain’t. Honestly…I don’t even think the joker in question was buying what he was selling either. Add him to the list of those who left.

I have balked at the idea of monogamy and marriage for years. I was tortured, manipulated and brainwashed into thinking that wasn’t the way.

Been out of captivity for almost 4 years now and starting to get used to it, comfortable in all this space to move around in, explore, try this or that. Red pills, blue pills, drink me, eat me, see if I learn, grow or shrink.

Back in my mid-twenties, high school sweetheart was on the phone, and the subject of my ex-girlfriend came up. “So I know you like women” he said. During the long pause while he gathered his thoughts and balls I braced for impact, waiting for him to ask for a threesome.

Maybe it’s my period, or the memory or both, but I am tearing up at his 15-20 year old response.

“I don’t want to share you” he said. “Is that okay? Would you feel like you were missing something?”

That sigh of relief came straight from my soul.

It was more than okay.

My whole life up ‘til then and since then has always been guys finding out I had a girlfriend (or 6) and deciding I owed them a threesome.
Because? I slept with women once upon a time?

YA, UM…I DON’T DO THAT ANYMORE.

Bisexual never meant promiscuous regardless.

I love who I love. I want who I want, and if I want you, you don’t have to worry about who wants me. My body has ways of shutting that down, so does my mouth.

Once upon a time I had a Joker & Harley Quinn kinda love. A couple of times if I am being totally honest.

Intellectually I know better, but my heart gets so confused and easily swayed. Fucking movie love, has us believing, sadists, psychos and stalkers are capable of love.

When I took my son to see it we had a rousing conversation about how Harley had Stockholm Syndrome, had been driven mad by torture and captivity and it wasn’t love, it was madness and psychopathy. What good is being the Queen of anything if the King of the kingdom passes you around to his friends? That isn’t royalty, loyalty or love.

Then I saw something.

Joker’s right hand man comes into the room to tell Joker where his girl is. Joker is laying on the floor in a pattern of weapons, knives and roses. Top right there is a set of baby clothes.

In Harley’s ideal delusion, “he married me.” Heart sighed again. Stupid heart.
For a minute there I thought ‘maybe he did love her’, in his own twisted way. But that does not negate the fact that he first had to lock her away and drive her insane to force compatibility. I have been there, locked away for months at a time, drips of Chinese water torture wearing away at my self-esteem and my own morals until I was a bleached out crazy version of my former self.

“Will you live for me?” right before he had her swan dive into a vat of industrial chemical waste.

What I almost did. What I am writing a book about.

Logically I know this is not okay.

And yet I sat in the theater and cheered them on in spite of myself.

My eyes welled up with tears when she said “I lost my puddin’.”

I’ve lost my puddin’ a few times, lost my mind too…but that’s okay, I’m finding myself.

Something loving, mutual, sane and easy, hold the puddin’.

regular lust

Boys Lie

September 2, 2016

Not poetry exactly. But pillow talk.

My girls wanted vacation dick and vacation dick they got.

I was the facilitator, I was the adulty adult, I was the common thread.

I drove us all back to the cottage, while they squealed and squirmed and talked much too loud. I woke up after 3 hours of broken sleep to drive the boys back to their trucks before the sun was up during what counts as rush hour in that tiny little town.

I used to be the girl getting driven home at dawn to make it to work, a lifetime ago.

As they were getting laid I laid in bed, worried at first for a myriad of reasons.
Are they safe? When 2 of them didn’t come back right away from the vicious lake I could not sleep. Then I heard a soft giggle through the window and relaxed a little until it quickly morphed into ‘what will the neighbours think?’

I only care what the neighbors think in said tiny town where I am from because that worry is in my marrow like a cancer I can’t shake, or a bone long ago broken that never mended quite right.

Then the soft gasping and moaning of sex came from inside the cottage and I relaxed a little into sleep. Had strange dreams.

The girl beside me on the other side of the locked door said she was a bit envious. I wasn’t.

Back in the days that I lived there I had no such friends, or very few. No one that wasn’t viciously jealous or angry when I got the attention, some attention, any attention. My ‘best friend’ would make sure there were days of consequences for minutes of pleasure. It was good to be home with my girls from the present hanging out in my past. It was cathartic. I got to see a very clear line between what was and what is.

I forwent the vacation dick. Joking that I couldn’t possibly sleep with anyone because I probably knew their brother/wife/girlfriend/parents etc. it’s a really tiny town.

Case and point, one vacation dick was my sister’s best friends little brother, born 4 years before I left that place so I didn’t even know he existed. He didn’t know about me either. The lake isn’t the only dangerous water. I am careful where I swim.

I found it odd and almost lovely to be sitting in the same place I had sat 23 years ago, at a table with a different incarnation of ‘my girls’ in the exact geographic location we used to.
Once upon a time it was almost always my job to get the girls and the car home. Some things stay the same.

Truth be told, I didn’t want anyone anyways. I am in the middle of sorting something out with someone and vagina has taken a rather high road about it. We begin to covet what we see every day, and what I see are texts from Lumberjack. I covet.

Mind you, I had a twinge of jealousy on the ride home. The two who got laid were speaking of pillow talk and snuggles.

Fuck I miss my lumberjack.

My kingdom for some snuggles, my kingdom to hear his actual voice again. See how closely my mina bird brain has mimicked his tone and cadence in the inner dialog when I am reading aloud the written reiterations I get from him daily. I heard a boy outside of a pizza place last week and my head whipped around, the voices were close, out east and steeped in honesty.

Then I wasn’t jealous anymore.

One of the bearers of vacation dick was actually a dick.

I sat quietly in the back seat as my 3 girls waxed poetic and got excited about how this one guy was such a good fit, the things he had said, he’d talked about trips to Bali. She was pontificating about how things might be.

I said nothing. But my mind was screaming no.

Just like every character ever in Star wars I had a bad feeling about this.

It was confirmed when we got home, found him on Facebook under a slightly different name than he had given, both profile pic and cover photo of he and his girlfriend.

There had been no mention of a girlfriend. Why say Bali? Overkill?

“Way to say everything I wanted to hear, asshole.” Was her message to him.

Here is what hurts me. And I will tell her this when I find the words.

Yes, it sucks balls that he didn’t tell you about the girlfriend so you could have made an educated decision. But all the things he did in the moment were good. They had prolific, great sex, we all went skinny dipping in crazy high waves and lived. We had a good night on the patio with an amazing dinner, laughs drinks, good times.

And now her memory of a lovely 2 day girl’s vacation is sullied not by a cute boy per say, but where her mind took him after the fact. She is mourning and angry about the things she wanted to see coming, not by what was.

When I lived in that town there was no Facebook to fact check. And I did have random sex with random boys who probably had girlfriends back home. It’s a cottage town and a risk you take for a night of fun.

I am not justifying his actions. They were shit. I just hope one day when she looks back on this she can appreciate the good times that were had and not the future she wanted that didn’t materialize.

I walked away from the weekend feeling clean and good and so very content with mylife exactly the way it is now.

Yes, I dream of Lumberjack and snuggles. But I am trying really hard to live in the moment and not look too far ahead.

Whatever will be will be. And what is…is good.

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