men

Swimming without the Sharks

August 23, 2016

I notice patterns, it’s a thing I do.

Not quite Rain Man, although I do agree K-Mart sucks and hot water does burn babies.
I count crows, not cards.

I write things and other writers write things. We send our words out in little bottles to float through the flotsam and jetsam on the vast stormy waters of the internet ocean. Some are valuable and need to be caught, remembered and released. Some are like Wilson in Cast Away and provide company and comfort. And there is a lot of trash. This metaphorical ocean is polluted with bad metaphors.

I’ve been on this island of mine for over a year. I see trends in the things the currents bring. It’s probably just algorithms, but still. The internet is my ocean, I shall not want for things to read.

One week eeeeerrrrrbody is talking about wolves. Then they morph into monsters. Full moon comes and, moon things. There is weeks of goddesses and then masks floating ashore.

I have used poetic memes to weigh what sits with me like truth and what makes me roll my eyes.

Everyone has their own ideas, ideals, wishes and wants.

Anything that says things like “I am a queen bow down to me.” Makes me think (nay, KNOW) you aren’t a queen, you are an asshole.

All this talk of wolves is mostly done by sheep who have stolen real wolf’s clothes.
The real wolves are naked and don’t give a fuck…because they are wolves howling with laughter at the fucking sheep playing dress-up.

This week it’s about love, this year really or if I am going to be totally honest, this life.
I am still learning what it is to love and be loved.

Correction, this week it is about equating love with the ocean.

There it is, that is better.

“My soul is so deep I want a deep love” rhetoric is right up there with the kings and queens of sheepland. Not buying it.

Turkeys often drown in puddles because they don’t have the common sense to get out of the rain.

But “I want a love so deep you need James Cameron to find it”. It’s really cold out there kids.

There was room for 2 on the headboard. Fuck that love.

I am tired of drifting, tired of drowning. I’d rather float.

I wrote this ages ago. Paraphrased the idea really.

It’s true.

I needed to stand up. I like knowing where the bottom is. Fuck, I love knowing where the land is. I like that stability of knowing where I stand. May not be as deep as the ocean but I have found these abysmal poets are all talk and no action anyways so I am drifting in a lifeboat interpreting Morse code, waiting for someone to come get me? Nah. I can swim. I’ll be on the beach with a bonfire, blanket and snacks getting wet and overwhelmed by the waves when I feel like getting wet and overwhelmed.

They weren’t wrong when they said salt water heals. It does, but it can suck you down in its depths too when the boys you cross oceans for make you cry the seven seas and liquefy into a puddle of tears.

I prefer waterfalls, flowing rivers and days at the beach.

No more perfect storms.

men

Red Riding Hood Escapes Neverland

August 22, 2016

One of my favorite books as a kid was The Ordinary Princess by MM Kaye.

A pragmatic fairy godmother ‘curses’ a princess with being ordinary. But in reality, it’s actually a gift.
Said Princess happens to be Sleeping Beauty’s great-great-great granddaughter. She finds herself a King dressed in rags (without amnesia) and after a little misunderstanding everything works out.

7 year old me was onto something. Good girl.

17 year old me got sucked into romance novels. The fairy tales for adults. Way too much conflict, but the sex was good.

https://www.facebook.com/KingsPoetry1/photos/a.1723946661175572.1073741829.1723932144510357/1802633866640184/?type=3&theater

I’m going to use one of my 3 wishes to pass on extraordinary, that apple is definitely tainted. Or just rotten.

I wish instead for a calm, peaceful love that nobody wants to read about and I don’t feel compelled to write about.

Once upon a time me telling tales about my dating history sounded a lot like “I met this guy we went on a few dates then suddenly its 5 years later we aren’t fucking anymore and we’re arguing because he can’t find the socks I just washed and I realize I never want to wash his socks again or fuck him ever. The end.”

That is how it went. I didn’t actively participate in choosing a partner or even dictating the relationship.
Someone found me and I just stayed, way past when I ought to have stayed. Lost my 20’s and my 30’s like that.

Fairy tale princesses that get rescued from whatever (usually in my case the previous bad relationship) end up just blindly loving the next prince.
For what? Showing up? What is he bringing to the table?
My princes became assholes that couldn’t do their own laundry and Cinderella is back in domestic servitude.

Happily never after that. Fairy godmama showed up late to the ball and she was a little drunk.

Next chapter.

Once upon a time I had my one true love. He was on his way to save me once when I was trapped in Mordor, or Forks.
He was living in Mexico, looking for work in Ontario so he could rescue me.
But then the girl he’d been banging told him she was both 20 and pregnant.
And then they lived happily ever after. Just had another kid too.
Kinda grossed me out that he messaged me a few days before she gave birth to tell me he loved me.

Fairy godmama got back into the schnapps.

We are all inundated with fairy tale love from such a young age.
I taught myself to read using Disney read-a-long records.
Someday my prince will come huh?

My best friend in grade two used to read a battered copy of Grimm’s Brothers to me every day on our way to school. I would help her with the words she didn’t know. I was never good at reading aloud but my vocabulary was strong and I won a spelling bee or two. We made a good pair. Still do.

My alone time at home was spent with my mother’s collection of My Book House Books. They were hers when she was little. I still have them. I escaped in there, tucked in my closet with a reading lamp and a bowl of Cheerios reading about the Snow Queen.

My parents love the fuck out of each other and always have. I don’t ever recall seeing them fight. That is part of it too. Imagine hearing as a child that your dad saw your mom and knew she was the one he was going to marry. There were no talking mice or magical lions or witches or poisoned apples or unicorns, those are really my folks, folks.

So ya. I thought it would happen for me.

I still do.

So, after my 20’s and 30’s came my 40’s and I turned a lot of pages. Sat back, spent some quality time alone out in Narnia, met some wolves who spoke in tongues. I figured out how I love and I started liking myself and being me. And lo there were others like me and I dated some of them and then…

And no and then.

Problem is I’d left a trail of breadcrumbs that led me back to the same type of men I equated with home.
Those houses were built with hay and sticks and were not meant to last.
I was hungry. There was cake.

The last handful of times I have tried to date anyone in the last few years read like fables about what not to do.

The Young Un took his (then) new girl on a road trip in my chariot that I had loaned him while he ignored me.
So Cinderella couldn’t get to the ball.

The Hulk found his way out of the woods of his depression and now lives with his love in the mountains on the other side of the country.
(I like that happy ending)

The Poet debacle reads like the Sleeping Beauty trilogy but when Anne Rice tells it. The one where Sleeping Beauty is raped, kidnapped and gets Stockholm syndrome until she thinks the prince’s fucked up kinks are all fine and good.

And the Giant. I don’t have the time for magic beans, he doesn’t water his plants anyways. I’m seriously exhausted trying to talk him down out of the sky. He is gonna fall and it’s gonna hurt.

Sunshine reminded me of the fake tin soldier. I don’t even know what happened there, I don’t even know his real name. Rumpelstiltskin? That was just some next level psycho shit. Thankfully that was a short story. David Lynch wrote it.

I am sick of all the grand adventure in the middle with trials and ugly plot twists…

And no and then.

I hate having to end recollections by saying “I can’t make this shit up.”

Calm is the new novel romance.

I fucked myself writing this book ‘o’ mine, rookie mistake I put too much of my life in it and my 2 knights have proven themselves idiots dressed in tinfoil. I just want it to end.

I don’t want to write about the person I am with.
Sure I spin straw into gold, but I am tired.
All my girls are single now, let them tell me stories for once while I sit back in a comfy relationship full of actions and less empty words. Something pragmatic and simple.

Once upon a time Red Riding Hood saved herself and then a lumberjack showed up with his calloused fingers that knew how to text her and hold her hand. They went fishing, had lots of amazing sex and snuggles. They both smiled a lot. The end

unable to even

Pussy, Liquor and Boy Strippers

August 22, 2016

I bet you think strippers like you too. (Forgetting Sarah Marshall)

Last night was the night to pop my girls ‘never been to male strippers before’ cherry.

She’s just been through a break-up and is coming out the other side.
I had to be the one to take her.
Strippers do like me.
Way back in the day I may have dated one or two.

We were talking on the drive about working, clubs, stripper boys, she didn’t know what to expect and I wasn’t sure either.
I had a moment of Zen in NOLA in April with the sweetest stripper, we still check in from time to time. He is doing well and this pleases me. He is a good story. But the rules down there are different.
The boys I dated danced for men and I rarely went to see them at work and that was a decade ago or even longer.

Things change.

And they stay the same.

We were also talking about drinking. I’d stood in my dining room before we got in her truck and vowed to only have a drink or two.
“I don’t want to get drunk.” I said, and I meant it. I never want to get drunk. I like drunky better. Just that happy, bubbly, tipsy before you shed all reason and self-control. Half naked, half in the bag.

The best laid plans of mice and white girls.

I didn’t get white girl wasted.

In the sea of little black dresses on little white girls there were varying levels of ‘oh honey you shouldn’t be in public right now’.

I confessed to being a geographical alcoholic. I am.

I have 8 bottles of booze less than 8 feet away, half a bottle of wine in the fridge and a few beers brought home from work, untouched since Wednesday.

I’ll probably go another month or 3 and have a dozen drinks, maybe.

Unless I go back to a strip club.

I ended up getting drunk last night and am writing this with a righteous hangover. As I was saying ‘I don’t want to get drunk’ , I said “I can’t not drink at strip clubs”. I had a moment of clarity wherein my inner voice said ‘who do you think you’re fooling?’

Something about those places ignites my inner booze hound.

Every strip club I have ever worked at or walked into, I drank at. Sometimes to the point of blacking out.

Even when I was really just a waitress in said clubs I was adored by my co-workers for somehow being able to cajole multiple shots from customers for after work. 16-20 stacked shots waiting at 2:45 am wasn’t rare. Enough for me to get lit and share.
And even when I was really a waitress and drinking responsibly, there were a couple nights where I really should have been fired or videotaped or both.

The story of one night in particular came out.

Years ago I’d had beef with my bartender for a week. We were not playing nicely. It hadn’t come to blows but we were slamming things down on the bar and shit was ready to break. He brought a bottle of tequila and slammed that down on the bar after work one night, looked at me and said “we’re going to drink this and work it out.”

Half a bottle later I was on stage with 2 new strippers dancing away in my street clothes, doing the splits like I had never quit and making out with the tiny girl whose name I cannot recall. The bottle of really good tequila migrated over to the stage with us and the shots kept coming. It got a little heated and I ended up making her squirt on stage in front of half the staff and a few leftover dancers. There was more to the night but we’ll just leave it there.

The end of the story is I threw up outside my building, staggered up the stairs and collapsed, clothed, in bed next to my boyfriend at the time. I had ejaculate from my chin to my belly button and up to my elbow, I reeked of sex, puke and alcohol and I was a disheveled mess. He got out of bed an hour later, kissed my forehead and went off to work. Didn’t notice a thing or never mentioned it if he did.

Never underestimate the power of denial. (American Beauty)

Now before all y’all go thinking I am the worst girlfriend ever, there is a little more to the story. He had gotten black out drunk a few weeks prior and smashed me in the mouth for not fucking him.

I had mentally checked out of the relationship, my body had yet to follow.

I didn’t fuck her for revenge, but I got drunk to deal*.

I made it into work the next night and there were no consequences there either except a raging hangover and they had all placed bets on what time I would try to bail. I didn’t, I stayed. I am stubborn like that.

Took me a year and another beating to leave that boyfriend too.

Same club, different time, I got drunk with the man who would become my farm husband. He was on a date of sorts, with a large group of cool kids, they got me smashed and I kissed him as he walked out the door, I didn’t know one of the girls was his not quite girlfriend. She became the mistress, our sisterwife and is now his common-law wife.

That time there were consequences.

But whatevs.

*It’s never a good idea for me to get drunk when I have something to deal with.

I posted once to Facebook “For the next few hours all statuses will be brought to you by whiskey, lots and lots of whiskey”. 100 likes. Seriously guys? Someone switch off the Wi-Fi and hold my hair back.

We need to introduce breathalyzers for phones. Blow over and you can only call for pizza, cab or 911.

I almost died one night fairly early in my marriage when I was waitressing at a strip club, did a day shift on a Friday and proceeded to slam 6 Jack’s in 20 minutes before leaving work followed by half a mickey at home. I hadn’t eaten since Monday. I did however break into his Facebook account and I wish I was drunk enough to forget what I found there…but that would have meant alcohol poisoning and possible death.

I stayed in the marriage a year for every shot of Jack I took to erase that one fight we had.

Stubborn and drunk on what I thought was love.

unable to even

Fortunate Cookie

August 21, 2016

Everyone this is Sally.

Sally this is…everyone.

Angel came down from heaven yesterday, she stayed just long enough to rescue me.
Jimi Hendrix

Sally isn’t an angel, but she has wings, close e-fucking-nuff.

We used to ride through the hayfields on the tractor. The mantises would whir up out of the grass dancing in the motes from the hay we were cutting. The golden glory when the sun was going down made it look like fairies and heaven to me.

She came in from the less than heavenly porch and landed on my desk lamp the next morning.

My son anointed her with the name Sally and the working title “Guardian of the House.”

I moved her to the golden glorious morning glory porch, lest she starve, and there she stays. Guarding my house.

Thanks Sally.

The book I am writing starts out with a girl, much like me, who is a writer, much like me, sitting outside and a mantis lands on her startling her out of a daydream.

The pic in the background was a gift from the man that inspired the book.

Now, I am not saying it’s a sign from god, but it’s a sign from god.

A few things happened that keep pushing me back to the book that I don’t want to write because my muses are treating me like dirt and leaving me in the lion’s den then pointing and laughing when I got bit.

There was this fortunate fortune cookie.

And then Rob Breszny said things. A lot of things.

And then the moon was full and I was left unsupervised.

The theme of this full moon?
Leave your comfort zone and go explore the dark, your magic is in there.

I did that.

and this…

The theme of every full moon ever?

Let it fucking go.

“The mantis comes to us when we need peace, quiet and calm in our lives. Usually making an appearance when we’ve flooded our lives with so much chaos that we can no longer hear the still small voice within us because of the external din we’ve created.”

I have to return to therapy next Tuesday and she is invariably going to ask me if I worked on the book and I am out of excuses as to why I haven’t.

For a while there I didn’t know what to write.

I get it now.

I have to finish the thing.

I have plans and the book being done and sold is part of my future.

I have encouragement from other published writers that it is good and I should keep going.

So what of my fortunate cookie?

Double entendre.

My favorite.

I am writing my literal financial fortune.

I can finish this thing any way I want.

I got stuck on the book during the part where our dear heroine gets assaulted in a parking lot
Life imitated art and I was scorned by the hero and anti-hero because of it.

“Well what did you think was going to happen?”

Um, not that and definitely not this.

They left me to my own devices, laughed when I got hurt. Made me feel dumb and small. An insignificant speck floating around in a huge sea of blue.

“Enlightenment is when a wave realizes it is the ocean.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

I’ve always been able to write the story of my life.
I just forgot for a bit and handed my pen to others.

The ending has always been up to me.

Now I know what I don’t want.

I love the ocean, god knows I do. But that doesn’t mean I want to go ass over teakettle off the side of a boat in the middle of nowhere breathing canned air with no idea where the land is.

I am content playing in the surf near the shore. I can go under, get wet and stand up when I am feeling overwhelmed and catch my breath.

I just want to play in the waves, I am done drowning and choking.

Neil Gaiman said his favorite stories were the ones where women saved themselves.

I am swimming to shore.

So now I know what I want because I know who makes me cry when I look at my phone and I know who makes me smile.

It ends like this…I get loved as is. By someone who doesn’t make me feel like I am gasping for air, grasping at straws or unworthy.

He isn’t a poet, but neither am I.

He calls me a ‘dork’.
I know it means that I am adored.
It’s not everyone’s happy ending, but it works for me.
I’d rather that than be someone’s sexual soulmate and never hear a word.
Or someone else’s Lady of Stars, but we have to end this gracefully.

Fuck that fuck this fuck them.

I want peace and quiet. I want a relationship that doesn’t have me posting to this blog every 5 minutes trying to work shit out because I am not getting any help and I can’t breathe.

I am a good girl, I just needed a good man to see it.

I’ve done my PhD. in Fuckboi Languages, Variations and Interpretations, I have the Scorpio decoder ring, learning how to speak pragmatic lumberjack is going to be a cakewalk.

Or a cookie walk.

lost boys

No Funeral Required

August 20, 2016

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

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

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

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

So there is that then.

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

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

Once you have done it, it gets really easy.

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

Here’s how, in one easy step.

Realize that…

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

So that isn’t it either.

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

I avoid it like the plague.

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

shit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what happens when there is no blow out.

What if you just drift apart slowly?

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

What then?

That my friends, is the heaviest door to close.

There is no fanfare or funeral or closing ceremony.

It just is, becomes it just isn’t.

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

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

Damn near impossible.

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

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

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

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

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

Me.

I am all I ever had anyways.

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

This I get to keep.

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

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

No funeral required.

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

lost boys

Tinder and the Really Big Fish

August 8, 2016

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

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

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

My arm is tired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the new ‘recruits’?

Ew, no.

I didn’t ask for this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you like someone, perceptions change.

Changing them back, now that is a bitch.

Establishing happy habits just to have them taken away?

Ain’t that the fucking truth.

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

I don’t want to go fishing again.

Uncategorized

Safety Joe and other Prophecies

August 6, 2016

Oh forfucksakes, goddammit.

It actually is.

Now what?

Can I evict them? Do they have somewhere to go? Will someone else look after them? Do they know how to get back if I let them out into the world? I gave them sandwiches, perhaps they will think to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Or more likely the will just get lost and stay there. Lost boys get lost. Its what they do.

Not hard to understand why they moved in huh? I am getting nothing from this and they still get my genuine concern, somewhat divided attention and some love.

It is as though they know my heart is a church and if they knock and cry Sanctuary, I gotta let em in, and they can stay, indefinitely.

I am not saying they are all cowards, these people I keep in my heart.

But if the running shoe fits…

Gelfling bolted saying he couldn’t give me what I wanted even though he never did ask me what that was (very little for the record).
Young Un the first didn’t want to be in a relationship until a month after he left me and then he tripped over untied shoelaces and fell into a relationship.
The Poet was so afraid he ran back to his castle too.

So if the meme fits…write an article about it.

Giant came over to hang a chandelier, it’s still not up. He got shocked twice and we were missing a piece. We were missing lots of proverbial pieces but he keeps leaving them here one by one. As well as other assorted odds and tangible ends. I giggled the other day when I found his volt meter. Said “it’s cute that we keep leaving bits of ourselves at the other’s house. I don’t think we can sever our invisible thread but it’s nice to have something to hold onto.” He agreed. The bigger picture is getting clearer and clearer. Knots in the thread not withstanding.

We also had a good giggle about him calling himself Safety Joe.

He’s not a coward, he is Safety Joe.

One more puzzle piece.

A stranger with your door key explaining that I am just visiting. And I am finally seeing. Why I was the one worth leaving.
~The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, Postal Service

We talk, it’s what we do. Over vodka tonics this time instead of beer. It’s usually me babbling a little more. Reiterating things that I’ve written or Eurekas from therapy or venting about dates gone wrong. But when he talks I listen.

I was rubbing the knots from his back and asked him if he had ever been in love before. He said yes. He met a girl at 13 and dated her from 17 to 22 and then they broke up.

Of course I asked why. I like to untangle things.

He said

“I didn’t want to be in love in my early 20’s.”

Mmm, what you say?
That you only meant well? Well, of course you did
What you say?
That it’s all for the best? Because it is
What you say?
That it’s just what we need? And you decided this?
What you say?

(WAIT …)
WHAT DID YOU SAY?

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs
Speak no fear, no I don’t believe you…
(Imogen Heap, Hide & Seek) very funny.

You decided this? How in the ever-loving-fuck does one wake up one morning and just decide this?

Can you teach me?

I too fell in love at 13. I couldn’t find the breaker. Finally did.

He does speak in ransom notes and newspaper word cut outs. Pretends he doesn’t fear, but he does.

I asked him that too. If he was scared of me, he said yes.

“But you love me, don’t you.”

He said “yes, I do.”

And herein lies the epiphany/eureka that illuminated the room in place of the chandelier with the missing piece.

I sent him this the day before he came over.

I don’t think I am all that, but maybe that is what he sees. I am more like this…

He has no idea what I see in him. Tells me again and again how plain he is.
Average Joe, Safety Joe, “I’m just some guy”.
His reality is that I could see his truth at any moment and burn it all to the ground like the mystic he believes me to be.
So it is safer for him to hide from me behind her and her behind me.
I’ve done that, it’s called a rousing game of Human Shield.
He cannot possibly fall in love with either one of us if the other exists and takes up space in his life/heart/home.
But not too much space.
Hes too pragmatic for that.
He loves his cozy little life, as he should, he built it with his own two giant hands.

He IS a King dressed in rags who has amnesia. Of this I have no doubt.

I doubted everything else, but I always somehow knew that he loved me, he made it very plain that he wanted me, that was not hard to decipher, that wasn’t a secret.

What I didn’t understand is how he could love me/want me and not be with me.

Easy…

He made a choice. Not to fall in love.

Interesting use of a superpower. To plan your life out to the point that you can put a leash on your heart and tell it where to go.

15 days he leaves his early twenties.

I wonder what he has planned for himself then?

I could just ask him, I know he would tell me the truth, he is good like that. I think I already know.

Every prophet in her house, and he in his.

He has said many times that I will wander. I won’t stay.

He has made it near impossible for me to do so, maybe he is a prophet.
A self-fulfilling prophet.

I’ve done that. They’re going to leave so I am going to make sure of it.

I have memorized the lessons for loving a prophet* as well, someone has to, poor dears.
He speaks like one, like me. Creates reality with his thoughts and words.

The last prophecy I foretold was that one day soon I am going to figure him out and I am going to feel markedly better. That was 10 days ago.

Now if I can just get that chandelier up so I can have some actual/tangible illumination…but of course the missing piece is in a drawer in his house, he has been hanging onto it for a year, waiting to see where it fit.

Uncategorized

Who is this Masked Man?

August 4, 2016

Who is he really? I have no idea.

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

It is.

I should know, I just did the thing.

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

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

And only the mask.

He’s kinda an asshole without it.

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

The lightbulb that went off burned my retinas.

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

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

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

Recent past? I got this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What of this masked man…

Well shit.

I can see it with abundant clarity now.

Flowed off my tongue as the truth tends to do.

I said

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

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

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

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

There it is.

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

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

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

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

Until I landed in therapy.

I’ve worn masks too.

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

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

I wandered off again.

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

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

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

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

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

Be careful what you wish for.

This is my one true face.

Boys

2 Girls 1 Tinder and a Move

July 26, 2016

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been…hang on lemme check…10 days since I have written a word. The good word, any word at all that wasn’t a list of shit to pick up at IKEA or Home Depot.

I am still not fully settled. But roommate is sleeping and thou shalt not use the drill nor the hammer till both of us have some coffee.

I’ve realized that I am my mother’s daughter.

Not the dirty nasty bits, those are mine and mine alone. But I cannot function in a house of chaos.

I like things where I like them goddammit.

And where I like them is not in boxes and bags willy-nilly/errrwhere, mmmm kay?

For someone who drifts and wanders as often as I do, one would think I would have this all down to some kind of science. And I do. I know how it goes, I just plug away and try not to stop moving, not to waste my movements, there is an order to things.

My OCD kicked in, and my PMDD, as things went sideways and my brain turned to mush.

That was fun, a bout of crippling turbo-charged PMS right at the end.

I went on Tinder too, the Friday before the Friday we moved.

As if I didn’t have enough on my plate.

I have no idea what is wrong with me.

In my defense I didn’t understand how it worked exactly. But like I do with all things, I went overboard. Talked to too many people, got confused and overwhelmed. Ended up blocking almost everyone. It was boy chaos on top of life chaos.

And no fucking manners anywhere to be found.

I see your dick pic and raise you a dick video. At least his bathroom looked clean.

I love sex, lord knows I do.

I don’t want a relationship per say, lord knows I don’t…but can we maybe grab a coffee before you demand I meet you at a hotel room? Did you think you were on Backpages?

The shit show culminated in one less than glorious date that I bailed in the middle of, but a little too far past the stranger-danger portion of the evening. What happens when the person who follows you to your car and gropes you in a parking lot is the person you agreed to meet? Who do you call for help?

The Giant, but his girlfriend was on her way over, so no sanctuary for me. He did make me smile though. Bless him.

I regressed these past few weeks. I’ve had this nagging feeling like I’m back in public school and I don’t understand the lessons and everyone is whispering behind their hands about me and I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. My solution seems to be to pile more wrong on top.

I am stopping now.

I don’t know where my big girl panties are exactly, but I found my big girl voice and a few others things I thought were lost.

I also found someone who speaks to me nicely. Calls me sweetcheeks and asks before he touches my bum.

Uncategorized

Digging in the Dirt

July 8, 2016

Every harlot was a virgin once. ~ William Blake

Everything changes, letting go is the only way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am hand shy I have to stop flinching.

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

I am working on it.

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes I wallow.

I have been alternately wallowing and skating by for years.

What have I done?

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

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

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

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

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

The time has come to thrive instead of barely surviving.

I am no longer scared of my potential.

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

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

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