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Trusting Junkies

March 19, 2017

I can’t stay on your life support,
There’s a shortage in the switch,
I can’t stay on your morphine,
‘Cause it’s making me itch
I said I tried to call the nurse again
But she’s being a little bitch,
I think I’ll get outta here, where I can

Run just as fast as I can
To the middle of nowhere
To the middle of my frustrated fears
And I swear you’re just like a pill
Instead of makin’ me better,
You keep makin’ me ill

Pink

Ex hubby and I agreed on a few things.

Very few, but a few nonetheless.

He’d had a bad habit of dating opioid addicted strippers. My problem was I dated alcoholics. Mean ones.

We kinda bonded over this. Surviving it, the horror stories of relationships turned wars. Battle of us versus the pill or bottle depending.

He barely drank, cheated an awful lot though. Not sure if that was a step up or a shimmy sideways.

Survey says shimmy.

I was a step up for him, I was clean and a waitress at the time, an EX stripper.

I wasn’t a saint, more of a ‘been there done that, I’m a good girl now’.

Until I wasn’t.

I have never done heroin. Hillbilly heroin yes, morphine and its derivatives and that is where it ended. I could not even begin to imagine how sweet that high would have been to a girl like me whose head is rarely quiet. I can imagine the oblivion. Loved the tingling sensation on my skin, I fuck a lot to get that feeling. I fuss sometimes about how people can condemn some things without trying them, but I knew that white horse would drag me to my death so I stayed away.

It’s so funny. My stubbornness has saved me from and condemned me to hell depending on the day and the circumstance.

I was so committed to not being like his other girls that I refused pain medication after my accident, you know, the one that left me unable to think or walk right.

I had to get rushed in for an MRI and they asked me what I was taking for pain, I said nothing and immediately got a shot of morphine in my IV drip. They wanted to make sure it wasn’t the pain making me unable to remember anything. My threshold had been breached and I was going crazy from trying to manage.

But I was stubborn and I was careful and above all respectful.

I got through it with some Tylenol 3’s.

Sometime in the beginning of our relationship, really early on, we discussed how dating an addict is akin to dating a chronic cheater.

Stay with me here.

Someone or something is always more important than the person they are with.

I watched a woman I know, drive away and leave a girl to get beaten by her ex because said ex was a coke dealer and the one driving away didn’t want to disrupt her supply of drugs.

That shit changes you. Priorities become skewed and nothing else matters.

There is no Dana only Zuul. (Ghostbusters)

I am about to contradict the ever loving shit out of myself but bear with me here.

I still do not believe that a healthy relationship is comprised of two people who are so into each other that nothing else matters, that in itself is an addiction and not advised.

Love yourself, have your own life and then invite someone in who can work with you and not make a mess of this thing you have built for yourself, then you can build together.

But when you have to take a back seat to heroin, cocaine, work, alcohol whatever form their escapism takes you start to question your own worth. Is your life so bad that you have to drown yourself in other things? Am I not enough to compensate for how shit life can be? I strive to be sanctuary and a warm safe place. If you have to look elsewhere for comfort and joy, I end up feeling like shit about myself by proxy.

Can’t be helped.

Case and point. The guy I dated for 5 years before ex hubby, ex hubby the first I guess. Worked Monday to Friday. As the weekend approached he’d stop at the beer store, 6 beers after work Thursday, Friday? Hammered to the point of incoherency by 9 or 10 pm. Saturday day drinking to kill Friday’s hangover so Sunday was a write off too.

Let me get this straight…I couldn’t be a waitress because it kept me out nights and we didn’t get to see each other but he could drink himself blind on the two days we did get to hang out?

Shoulda left way before I did.

History repeated.

Same with the farm life. Shoulda woulda coulda left, but I didn’t.

I responded to his actual cheating with some actual cheating of my own, and some leaving and some more cheating.

Then I got my boobs done and my hands on some opiates.

For 90 days I didn’t feel a thing.

Sisterwife was a junkie in her own right, I watched her eyes glaze over, I watched her health deteriorate as she assaulted her one, working, donated kidney with wave after wave of whatever drugs she could get her hands on.

And no one but me seemed to see it. I got tired of yelling ‘are you blind, she’s not docile, she’s fucking high.’

I couldn’t beat them, so I joined her. Spring 2011 is a blur. Pretty sure nothing good happened anyways. How could it?

The summer came, I got a job and straightened myself out. By the fall I left.

I stayed straight, until 2 years later, I found myself dating yet another douchebag who couldn’t even change a tire or keep a job. Got my hands on some Percocet and started checking out every night so I didn’t have to acknowledge this piece of shit taking up half of my bed.

You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave. (The Eagles)

I thought I couldn’t leave, felt trapped, tried to escape anyway I could. And in effect I was cheating. Mentally leaving the relationship before I tossed his freeloading body out the door.

Now?

I know better.

The concept of “alone” is not some terrifying foreign concept.

If I start getting the itch to check out, I’ll just leave.

unable to even

Under Pressure (more trigger warnings)

March 17, 2017

It is so bittersweet to me when I post about the bad things we must endure as women and those are the articles that go viral.

https://www.ourladyoflustandgrace.com/pressure-sex-trigger-warning.html

Pressure Sex, an article about how sometimes/often it’s safer just to give in than fight back when some man friend thinks he has earned the right to your body. About lying there light as a feather, stiff as a board and dry as a bone just waiting for it to be over so you can go home.

Sometimes home isn’t safe either.

3000 views in 48 hours. Hundreds of comments breaking my heart.

I relate. How can I live this life? A constant fuck hole for a man who doesn’t notice my obvious repulsion.
I do it, I lay there because he is a good father to our child. I don’t know what else to do. (Anonymous)
All I could say is I hope things get better for you.

I can’t say ‘run’. If she thought she could, she would have. All I can do is hope that by me saying something, by Jen saying something, by the hundreds saying ‘me too’ that she knows she isn’t alone.

Getting groped in the night just trying to get through it.

How many times? Too many.

How many women? Seemingly all of us.

How can this be?

And the question remains…what do we tell our daughters? That ‘no is a complete sentence’. But what about when it isn’t. When some men get hard ‘no’ just sounds like a challenge. Then what do we do?

Get through the night, please don’t die and then come to me and I’ll tell you that whatever you had to do to survive was okay. But it ain’t.

I can’t go get a coffee unprotested, can’t do laundry unmolested unless I have a man with me.

“It can’t be that bad” they say. But the second they drop 10 feet behind me they hear what I hear.

“Hey baby nice tattoos”, “smile beautiful” and “I just want to talk to you”. What about what I want?

What about the other avenues by which we get violated?

Another rant about dick pics. Accompanied by the usual jokes.

How is this funny?

Imagine your wife, mother, sister, daughter opening a seemingly innocent door and having some creep whip his dick out on the other side and slap her with it.

Triggers the same fight or flight response, the same amount of fear.

I didn’t ask for this.

This is daily social media harassment for women.

My girl said “I’ve never gotten one”

I asked if she had ever opened her requested messages folder.

She hasn’t, she won’t. One more girl pulled out of the fire.

So many suggestions on how I should modify my behavior.

I was born a woman so I must hide myself away or suffer the consequences?

I am exhausted.

“If I have to listen to one more grey-faced man with a $2 haircut explain to me what rape is, I’m going to lose my mind.” Tina Fey

Then there are these odd moments of hope wherein I say “no, this isn’t funny, it happens and it sucks” and someone listens.

One man out of thousands.

The rest?

These are the men we know and love, the ones we trusted, until we didn’t.

It got worse you know.

That girl who got assaulted, once in the flesh and once shortly after via social media.

I didn’t know when I wrote the article that it wasn’t a couple of ill-timed dick pics that ended up in her inbox. It was videos, fully nude, jerking off with a come-fuck-me face on top. This was his response to her assault. Like some poisoned cherry on a shit covered sundae.

Like what happened to her was a source of arousal for him.

Too many men thinking women are just toys, vehicles for their orgasms.

He sent them on Snap Chat, all evidence of his vile behavior burned into her brain but disappearing leaving no proof.

Why does it make you hard when I cry? (Boss Hog)

Good God make it stop.

I am wondering if maybe there is a God and he is still pissed about Eden. Seems like a man, not able to let things go.

They think that women are insane but have you ever seen a man go from “Hey gorgeous” to “fucking bitch, I’ll kill you” in under a minute for refusing to reply?

I told one I was leaving and had my mouth punched into oblivion for saying something he didn’t want to hear.

The last one called me a whore for saying I was done.

I am a whore, just not yours anymore.

I have a new one now. A good man and a chaperone. For the foreseeable future I don’t have to worry about walking alone, and if for some reason I say no, I know he’ll listen.

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.

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

Longer for Less

October 16, 2016

I have held on longer for less I have held on longer for less I have held on longer for less

Really Brain, this is our mantra?

-Yes.

Ego?

-I’m out (sips whiskey from her tea cup and smirks a bit around the rim)

Heart? Vagina? You listening to this?

-Yep. Mmmmm hmmmm.

Heart feels safe enough to come out of her blanket fort and Vagina has been smiling and singing softly to herself for a while now.

Ego is appeased somehow, or unnecessary here. Either way, if she say she good, she good. Just leave her be.

The rowdy tea party in my head hasn’t been so rowdy lately. Errrbody is just sitting around in agreeance, keeping busy, being happy.
Tatting lace, sipping oolong or scotch depending, and sighing a lot. Like a lot a lot. Heart gets cognac in a sippy cup, but still.

Faith joined in, Sass and Swagger showed up after a long absence.

And then that text tone goes off and errrbody snaps to attention.

Lord help you if you message and you aren’t the chosen one.

It’s been about 100 days. It isn’t actually that long.

90 days in he called me his girl.

I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted to hear it until he said it.
I was too busy over here being me. Working, writing, hanging out with my girls.

I’ve had relationships rise and fall in less time than this.

I have heard the words ‘love’ and ‘forever’ within days/weeks of meeting someone.
It never worked out.
How could it?
Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Besides, to quote the Biebs…where are you now that I need you.

(see also) I was on my knees when nobody else was prayin’, oh lord.

I have prayed and I have waited longer for less, and I take to my knees often.

It’s what I do.

And I’ll do it again.

Often times I’m left like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, having to one-inch-punch my way out of a wooden box having been buried unceremoniously in the middle of the night in another girl’s grave.

I know why I wait.

2 reasons.

How many times have I been left?
So many.
It hurts like my knuckles after freeing myself from the weight of 6 feet of dirt crushing me. (Give or take an inch or two.)
I stay just in case, so I don’t inadvertently visit that pain on someone else. Or bury them alive.

That hasn’t happened.

Once upon a time I said to the Giant that there must be monks somewhere that visited brothels to test their piousness, it was in the context of me inviting him over for beers. His piousness was mostly intact when he left.

My faith gets tested. I too am weighed, measured and sometimes found wanting.

I want him now.

I do need to humble myself before God now and again.
Prove that I can behave and stay loyal in a world where it is easier not to.
Yea thou I walk through the Garden of Tinder, beset by temptation on all sides, I shall fear no evil.

I’ve had enough of snakes in the grass and poisoned apples. And Tinder for that matter.

An orgasm a day keeps the fuckbois away. I have my toys and I know how to use them.

I shall not want.

I feel very much like my sassy self…with a little extra sass and swagger on top.

Second reason?

It’s in my DNA.

I am hard wired for obstinacy.

Sisterwife called me perseverant once. She wasn’t wrong.

I should’ve left. I was stubborn in all the right ways, just in the wrong place.

My mother and grandmother waited. There were wars, the men in my family fought them and the women in my family waited. Great-great grandmother on my mama’s side too. Her husband sent her to northern Canada to hold down the family homestead. She was high born and had never even started a fire before, but she managed, they all managed and here I am. The result of the love, stamina and tenacity of good women and the good men who loved them.

This is my legacy. Be a good woman and wait.

Like I said, I’ve waited a lot longer for so much less.

I don’t mind. If that was just practice, then it was worth every godforsaken minute.

My sass and swagger came back because they felt welcome. My heart feels safe. My ego dropped her guard. I don’t feel like I have to hold on so tight.

I never did learn how to give up, and right now, I feel like I don’t have to.

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.

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)

men

Sleepovers

September 14, 2016

“You can stay the night if you want you know.”

I wanted to scream with joy.

Deep breath. Calm down.

“No honey, I didn’t know that.”

Me and Jon Snow go waaay back.

I know nothing.

I presume nothing.

I demand nothing.

I ask very little.

I lie, never.

I came as close as I have to lying in a good long while. T’was a half-truth.

I filled in the other 50% the next day.

What I said was “I don’t want to bleed on your sheets.”

“You didn’t come prepared?” he said.

Good point…

I used to be. I used to have clothes, bathroom kit, with tampons and errrthing stashed in my trunk.

When did I stop doing that? And why?

Maybe because the circumstances that dictated I might need to bolt in the night are long over and I let it go.

I said “Honestly, it was 8 when you called, 9 when I got here, I figured I had an hour, two tops.”

That was the absolute truth.

He gets up well before the sun, his sister lives upstairs and shouldn’t be disturbed.
There were rules.
Or I thought there were.
I think he changed them, in my favor.

I guess enough time has passed, enough words spoken, enough exclamations of ‘go team’ for him to be comfortable.

He told me a story involving a few other women would come the night before, sleepover and still be there when he got home after a 10 hour shift. I recoiled in horror…how could anyone be so shameless, presumptuous and invasive? Bad manners.

I could never. Even if I tried, even if I wanted to.

Yes, I have allowed myself think about falling asleep after sex, waking him up with my mouth, how well he snuggles on the giant-sized couch and how it would translate to his giant-sized bed.

He fell asleep a few times that night, every time I wiggled or readjusted he would pull me back immediately and even closer than before.

I should’ve been happy, and I was. But I was terrified too. These are the kinds of things that would haunt me, I know my ghosts better than the living.

I hadn’t seen him in 6 weeks, and every ounce of my being wanted to stay, fall asleep next to him and draw the moment out as long as humanly possible and then make some sort of agreement with the gods to slow time down for me.

The one thing I DO know? Every moment could be the last one. So I make it count.

But I panicked.

I haven’t slept beside a boy in a good long while.
Last time I did, I was the interloper and I woke up not knowing how I got there, knowing I didn’t belong, that I had stolen time and sleep in a place I had no right to be in. Good thing I didn’t bleed on his sheets or she might have known I was there.

I never want to be the girl who leaves things behind. I won’t overstay my welcome or make excuses to come back. I abhor being where I am not welcome.

The girls my husband brought home loved leaving clues and excuses, both for them to come back and for me to leave. I didn’t listen.

This ‘one who said I could stay’ has been around for a good while. We talk every day, but schedules and vacations planned before we knew the other existed have made it so we haven’t physically seen each other in what felt like forever. But when I walked in, his sister said hello like I belonged there, the dog gave me a cold-nosed, warm greeting and he made space for me on the giant couch, pulled me right in and said I could stay.

I am sure that if my body functioned as bodies tend to do, at his house, he wouldn’t be disgusted and throw me out. He’d probably just say ew with a grin, kiss my forehead and point me towards the washing machine.

I know how to clean up my messes and leave no trace. Been doing it for years.

I have been trained that the best parts of me are the ones that don’t exist, just the spaces between. Between my legs where I let them in, between my ears when I pretend I’m not as smart as I am, between my words where I wait and listen, in the deep breaths where I gather myself enough that I can pretend my feelings weren’t just blown up by the bombs they just dropped. Ignoring the holes in the landscape of my psyche and acting like I was never there or hurt.

Until a boy I like asks me to sleep over and I have to pull off the highway because I am crying too hard to drive home.

Precedents.

-18 months with one and he begrudgingly said I could stay one night, so I fought exhaustion and risked falling asleep at the wheel to make it home. The relief on his face when I said ‘thanks, but no’ was all the answer I needed.

-3 months with another. He had such a bad sleep in my bed the first time I put him in the guest room and shut the door every other time he spent the night. Never did see his house from anywhere but the road.

-Another with preemptive, awkward excuses as to why I couldn’t possibly stay. I never asked.

*There was one good one in there, stayed at his house once before he fell apart and took any notion of ‘us’ with him.

It’s been 4 years.

I pretend these things don’t bother me, but they do.

I have this huge false bravado when it comes to men, dating and the things that have happened to me.
I never ever blame the new one for the ones who came before.

I’m too busy blaming me.

I was too loud, too much, said the wrong thing at the wrong time, expected too much, took up too much space, too much time.

So I keep them at arm’s length, pretend I don’t need anything beyond the slightest scraps of attention and affection and I starve just to make those spaces that were so coveted by the old ones that much bigger.

Truth is I am terrified.

I wasn’t ready yet.

To risk racoon eyes and morning breath, snoring.

What if I talk in my sleep and say half the things I am thinking?

At some point I am going to fill that space he makes for me, the one he pulls me back into and actually stay the night.

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