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lost boys

Erasing My Fault Lines

April 11, 2017

Um, all of them Rob
ALL. OF. THEM.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Now is an excellent time to FREE YOUR MEMORIES. What comes to mind when I suggest that? Here are my thoughts on the subject. To FREE YOUR MEMORIES, you could change the way you talk and feel about your past. Re-examine your assumptions about your old stories, and dream up fresh interpretations to explain how and why they happened. Here’s another way to FREE YOUR MEMORIES: If you’re holding on to an insult someone hurled at you once upon a time, let it go. In fact, declare a general amnesty for everyone who ever did you wrong. By the way, the coming weeks will also be a favorable phase to FREE YOURSELF OF MEMORIES that hold you back. Are there any tales you tell yourself about the past that undermine your dreams about the future? Stop telling yourself those tales.

https://www.facebook.com/Rob-Brezsnys-Free-Will-Astrology-133041234078/

But that is what I do. Isn’t it? Post-game analysis, see where I went wrong…

I was wrong…right?

Rob says stop, so stop I must.

This is the end, my only friend the end. The Doors

I haven’t been that emotionally down in a long time.

How about ‘every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end’ (Semi Sonic)

That works.

I never write about endings on here, or very rarely I guess.
Sometimes it’s because…’and then he never called me again and I have no idea why’ doesn’t really make for a gripping story.
Sometimes it’s because things just faded into a friendship, or with the ones wherein I had the revelation that I was 7 of 9 and not ‘his girl’ like they had promised.

Why would I want to archive that? I pick up the pieces and move on, sometimes slowly… then all at once.

I’ve been left and I have been hurt and I refuse to visit pain on others.

I am rarely the one to leave. End of story.

In the interest of clean breaks and tidy endings…

On a long enough timeline the truth always comes out. Still waiting on a couple but I know they’ll come.

My first foray into dating ended after 3 months of happy when I asked if we could be boyfriend/girlfriend, him saying he ‘wasn’t ready for a relationship’ and me waking from a midsummer night’s dream with a very loud voice echoing in my ear stating “her name is Kayla and she has cotton candy hair.”

It was actually K___ and her hair has been baby blue, baby pink and lilac respectively in the months and years that have passed since then.

18 months later, when she was mean to him, I consoled him. Not like that, just said nice things.

The next one fell into a deep chasm of depression and had to move away atop a mountain.
No great mystery there.
He is as happy on his side of the country as I am on mine.

There was a patented Fuckboi in there, again nothing to be solved, he just was what he was. Well, is what he is. He still pops into my inboxes from time to time. I say hello and deliberately leave it up to him to plan something, knowing he won’t. He never calls back until the amnesia wears off again and he wonders what I am doing or runs out of other girls to fuck. He has abandonment issues the reasons for and the likes of which I have never seen so I refuse to be cruel. Ain’t waiting around neither.

Thai Fighter was engaged the whole time.

Black 19 was incarcerated, again.

The mystery of Lumberjack may well remain unsolved. He blocked me from everything ever and it’s not like I ever saw him. The only thing I was good at was living without him, so that’s a freebie.

Gelfling…well that is a whole other tale along the riverbank. I met his new girl recently and everything suddenly made sense, twice actually, once for him and once for another. A two-fer if you will. A perfect balance of me being too much and them feeling not enough. Can’t be helped I supposed. I refuse to shed my muchyness and they have yet to grow up. The hazards of young un’s I suppose. No great loss in retrospect. Like setting down the Holy Grail and deciding on a sippy cup instead. Better call not-Becky with the red hair.

There is a footnote here.

I am hard to explain to people. I am older and strange. By vocation I am a writer of truths and porn, plus the stripper thing. I am not not-Becky, red headed or otherwise.

To be with me, to claim me in public you have to be pretty brave. You have to give fewer fucks than most about what other people think.

Am I worth it?

I think so.

Nevertheless she persisted.

I cook, I clean, I fuck and I love. I clean up nice and can carry a conversation.

I don’t bitch, steal or lie.

I am already way ahead of most.

I know this now.

Took me a while.

I was mired down in the idea that I had to take some responsibility. But it isn’t mine. I did my part. I showed up and I cared. I contributed to their happiness and well-being. I asked for very little in return.

I’ve long held the belief that I as the common denominator must be part of the problem, even if it was so basic as ‘I felt bad about myself and thereby made bad decisions’. At least I made a god damned decision.

That scene in Good Will Hunting at the end. Robin Williams looks through Matt Damon’s file, sees the abuse and says “It’s not your fault” until Matt Damon breaks down and sobs from his core.

It’s not my fault, these things that have been done to me. It’s truly not on me that they left. I did what I was supposed to, I came all the way forward and stayed.

It’s not my fault at all.

men

Mountains, Monsters and Men

April 6, 2017

I wanted to write something.

I had it in my head and it was a good idea but…

I am on day one of flipping my schedule from days back to nights and I was up, bleary eyed at 6 this morning.

Logical me wanted to go back to bed.

Smitten kitten me wanted 5 more minutes with Mister.

I saw a thing once or a million times, in movies or on TV where the man cups his hand around the back of a girls neck, with his fingers lightly tangled in her hair and he pulls her ever so gently towards him and kisses her forehead.

Ya, that happened this morning.

I floated home.

Felt as good as it looked and seemed to me it would.

It’s funny, after everything…there are still new things that haven’t happened yet.

It’s the little things.

Always the little things for me.

Big romantic gestures make me squirm. Flowers, although lovely, end up dying. Gifts are just things, words are just words but a kiss on the forehead can feel like the whole world, when the whole world is still dark and he climbs back in bed for one more minute with me.

He pulls choice phrases and words from old posts on here.

One of them claimed that I had ‘copious amounts of sex’.

I thought I did.

Seemed like a lot at the time…but anything compared to nothing is something.

He is something else.

Copious has found new meaning.

Many things have found new meaning.

I wrote once that the only trouble with making something out of nothing is when the nothing starts to show through.

I had a whole lotta nothin’.

I used to make mountains out of molehills and monsters out of men.

“I only date beasts” I said.
“Tell the wolves I am home” I cried.
“Fairy tales and parables about monsters” I wrote.

But what kind of creatures aren’t brave enough to stick around?

Beasts, wolves and monsters don’t run. Well they do, when a hero shows up with a magic sword. And that is exactly what happened here.

These boys I made out to be something they weren’t, weren’t nothing per say…but they weren’t what I made them out to be.

Little did I know that eventually even the heaviest gilding fades, the nothing would show through.

Me and Jon Snow, still don’t know nothing.

Except now I have an inkling.

It was like when Buffalo Bill has Catherin Martell down the well, she’s snagged Precious in the fucking basket and says “I think she broke her leg on the way down…I think she’s in a lot of pain mister.” And he yells back “you don’t know what pain is.”

I used to know exactly what pain was. I also knew a hit could feel like a kiss when the body is starved for attention. (Unknown)

I used to starve.

I was Catherine Martell, living on scraps, down in a hole, in a madman’s basement just trying to find a way out. Rubbing the lotion on my skin when told to do so. Attempting to communicate and negotiate with varying someone’s who mocked my pain and dehumanized me to justify what they were doing.

Now I am out.

Been out for a while now.

But like most prisoners, I kept reoffending so I could go back to the “comfort” of what I knew. Yep, you guessed it…nothing. Or very little at least. Another word for a hole in a crazy man’s basement is oubliette, somewhere you put things you want to forget.

And there I sat, remembering them.

I suppose it makes sense, all I had for company was memories. Little moments and snippets of happiness stitched into a quilt to keep me warm.

Now the quilt is threadbare, slowly becoming the nothing it was made from. Pretty soon just my own indestructible, red thread will be all that’s left. As it should be.

It was a security blanket and I don’t need it anymore. I have a good man to keep me warm.

regular lust

I Only Date Beasts

March 21, 2017

Bittersweet and strange
Finding you can change
Learning you were wrong
Tale as old as time
Beauty and the Beast

He fucked me 6 times yesterday and still thought I was hot enough to mention it at 6am, on our way to MacDonald’s drive thru on his way to drop me off on his way to work.

He called me beautiful and he is a beast.

Been looking for one of those for a long time and up until now they have been weighed, measured and I was left wanting.

Not anymore.

I thought I had one once, upon a time not that long ago, but he was all talk and no time for me.

So I left.

Why does it always have to be ‘I have you or I hate you.’???

Weren’t we just friends? Didn’t we trust each other a few weeks ago? We talked every day. Now I have to walk around this hole in my life. It’s just a puddle not a crater. I’ll live.

I was just one girl out of several on his roster.

I never understood the phenomenon of “You aren’t behaving the way I expect you too so I shall name thee whore, cast you out and never talk to you again.”

But honey…

I am a whore and damned proud of it. He was proud of me once. Showed me off to his friends with pics, but I never met them. Apparently I was the hottest of the girlfriends.

I didn’t win anything.

One would think that if a guy has a hot girlfriend said friends would hound him to do something about it. But what do I know?

His business partner managed to drive to Milton nightly, in the dead of winter to bang some random flavor of the month chick, repeatedly and raw.
I lived a lot closer and I got ignored so hard that I questioned my own existence.

When I said I couldn’t wait anymore Lumberjack said ‘You knew what you were getting into. I’m over it. You wasted my time.’

Wait…what?

You plucked a nympho out of thin air, basically winning the lottery and fucked me…4 times in 9 months? With 2 blowies and a finger bang thrown in, for what?

To be blocked on everything?

His last one left him because they never went out. So I never asked to go out.

I didn’t ask for much.

I tried to be understanding. I waited and waited and waited.

“She didn’t understand I work so much so I can have this house, she can come over any time.”
But I wasn’t allowed in that very same house after he moved upstairs.

It was over then and I hung on for 5 more months.

He stopped trying as soon as I put out.

That’s the norm.

Or it was…

Ever just the same
Ever a surprise

From trashed to treasured.

My ex-husband called me a turboslut after he read the blog. Said he was ashamed he’d ever known me and touched me. You and me both buddy. I shudder and long for the day that my skin cells have regenerated enough times that they never knew you existed. Not long now.

We waited 3 months to sleep together and I went to prison for 7 years for honoring that probationary period.

Besides, I kinda am all those names I’ve been called.

I am not ashamed of it anymore.

Thought I had found someone who thought it was great too, but he never showed up to claim his prize.

Fuck him.

Over it.

Something wonderful happened the other day.

Something wonderful has been happening for 3 weeks now.

I told y’all I slept with a young Scorpio on the first date.

We went to see Get Out and we decided we weren’t done hanging out yet.

I was so fucking frustrated and he is so fucking hot I caved, maybe 20 minutes after I said I wasn’t gonna.

It was worth it.

I had joked that we wouldn’t last long enough to see Beauty and the Beast.
One of the previews we agreed on seeing whilst sitting in the theater. It wasn’t a joke. I figured he’d bail sooner than later. Why wouldn’t I?

They all do.

I fucked him, put my clothes on and he drove me home, all the while me thinking “that was really good, too bad I’ll never see him again.”

I even said it out loud before I shut the car door.

He came over the next night.

Not the one after that because I was working, but the next night.

Probably 15/20 days we’ve seen each other, at least for a few hours.

On the 14^th day he asked me to be his girlfriend, even though he thought I’d say no. He wanted it enough that he took a chance. Of course I said yes.

When it’s been more than 24 hours since we’ve fucked he gets these lusty eyes. Or when he looks at me really. We’ve joked about fucking in bar bathrooms, it’s really only a matter of time.

I told him what ex hubby said, the turboslut thing.

He did something I wasn’t expecting, he took back the nickname and made it into a good thing.

He makes a lot of things into good things.

He said last night while we were lying in bed, pretty much out of nowhere, “I don’t know why these guys all left you.”

Honestly babe, I don’t know why they left either, but I am glad they did.

Beauty and her beast? He surprised me with tickets on Saturday. Walked nostalgically back through our first date. (You shushed me here)

The Adventures of Turboslut and her Fuck Monster.

My kind of fairy tale.

unable to even

Pressure Sex (trigger warning)

March 15, 2017

My girl, oh my feisty awesome girl, got sexually assaulted last year.

What do you say?

“I’ve been there, I love you, be brave, you got this.”

It’s almost a rote response at this point.

One in four one in four one in four.

Seems like more than one in four.

Seems like my answers and condolences are automated. “Welcome to the club sounds” awful.
But it’s astute.
There are so many of us and no one seems to know how to stop it.

I can tell you what you don’t do, for all the men out there.

What a male friend of hers did when she opened up about what happened a few days later.

He sent her full frontal nudes and dick pics.

She is still reeling and dealing. The betrayal of the supposed friend worse than the assault by the other.

I get it.

She did something decidedly brave in my opinion, she called him out. Not the first but the second, the shitty full frontal friend. Called him by name.

There is fallout, there always is.

She popped her head into my inbox last night, so I stopped what I was doing and said the things I have been programmed to say. The things I wanted to hear after I was assaulted, after dick pics, after men behaved badly.

I had posted yesterday that maybe we should start naming them, these men who do these things to us. The ones we called friends or lovers who don’t understand the words hurt or no.

These aren’t strange perverts in alleyways and parking garages waiting to victimize women, these are men we know. Men we felt safe with until we didn’t.

For every serial killer there is a chorus of neighbors saying ‘we didn’t know, he seemed like such a nice guy.’

Whisperings of abusive and perverted men passed around like dirty currency in the dark where they won’t make a scene ~ J.U.

I am wondering if we should all stand together as women and start naming names.
Not scratching them into the backs of bathroom stalls and hoping someone will heed our warning, but actually naming names.

I tried to call someone out, on that very status, that sparked a war. And I couldn’t.

Me, the girl who speaks her mind, who doesn’t lie, who found her voice and screams from the treetops. Good bad ugly…I am the one to say it. But I can’t.

I can’t say that 2 years ago I had too much to eat at a dinner he bought for me. We went back to his house, like we always did. He wanted to fuck like we always did, but I didn’t. I was feeling tired and sick and stressed and all I wanted to do was lay down for a minute and muster the energy to drive home. But instead I got fucked, rather roughly and unceremoniously while I was mentally disconnected from my body just waiting for it to be over. And that it might have been okay except for the text the next day that said something like “the sex last night was amazing”.

Was it now? Because to me it felt like you were using my body like you would a doll, just something to get you off in a pinch. Using my body like my soul wasn’t in there, that I didn’t matter. Not noticing that I didn’t make a sound or much movement at all, not noticing I was dry as a bone.

I never went back.

He still tries to talk to me and I say hi back politely, curtly or ignore it if I feel like I can get away with it.

Therein lies the problem.

I’m still scared.

A few months later I was lying in bed with Biker Body Pillow. We never fucked, just spooned when we were both broken up about someone else. He got hard in the middle of the night. I was the little spoon so I noticed.

I ignored it, braced for impact in the morning.

I have already written about this. About how a 6’5” heavily tattooed biker stood in my kitchen almost in tears when I explained how I had been programmed to deal with unwanted sexual advances from male friends. When he asked how many times and I couldn’t count. When he asked why and I explained because saying no is sometimes a dangerous thing to do. Which basically boils down to ‘blow them if you have to, it’s safer that way.’

Safer than saying no, safer than trying to leave. Diffusing bombs with your mouth and tongue, but not by talking yourself out of it. Because at some point you already know, they stopped listening.

I have saved a handful of women and girls by drilling into my son’s head, that “even if she stops right in the god damned middle, you stop. Cover her up and wait. Go if she tells you to go, stay if she tells you to stay.” It happened to him, with a girl and he told me he was grateful that he knew what to do.

This is what we need all men to do.

Stop. Cover. Wait and fucking listen.

But what do we tell women and girls?

Fight back, name names and in the morning, we rally.

lost boys

Raising the Dead

March 10, 2017

Poor Panda.

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

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

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

Well, I did do those things.

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

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

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

Rational me knows this.

Irrational me is imagining Doomsday scenarios.

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

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

I write shit down in here to bury it.

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

Until…

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

He is not wrong. Bad idea.

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

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

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

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

It ain’t.

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

I got 11 days of forgetting and it was bliss.

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

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

And just like that, inner peace shattered.

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

Then I remember.

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

Seriously?

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

So on that note…

Seriously, fuck you guys.

Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

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

Fuck you.

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

Fuck you.

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

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

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

unable to even

Wedding Rings and Other Things

October 6, 2016

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

Me: (oh Jesus no)

Random wedding guest: “Who?”

Him: “Sarah’s parents”

Me: “Sean, what did you just say?”

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

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

Him: “Oh, ya. Erin’s parents. Sorry.”

Coulda stabbed him in the heart with his boutonniere pin.

Coulda woulda shoulda.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve never been a bridesmaid nor a bride.

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

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

I didn’t keep the rings.

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

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

I was Hugh Grant. Until recently.

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

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

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

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

Survey says, whatev’s.

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

Ew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like that ending.

I do.

Uncategorized

I Love Lamp

August 14, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

“Without lamps there would be no light.”

Breakfast Club.

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

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

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

I feel lighter.

I haven’t seen him in 22 years.

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

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

Kinda like the damned lamp.

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

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

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

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

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

I am loved.

Things get done and get better. Eventually and always.

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

unable to even

Medusa’s Other Curse

August 1, 2016

On a long enough timeline everyone settles into the boxes I put them in.
He’ll stop blowing the lid off eventually or so help me I will get out the duct tape.

Or the coconut oil.

Once I’ve compartmentalized them and figured out the lessons they were sent to teach me I still get nostalgic twinges from time to time. I cared for them, still do when they let me. I saw different versions of different futures with them.

As of late, it has become abundantly clear that when I feel like I could actually end up in a viable relationship with someone new, them old ghosts all come a knockin’. Like I have to run the gauntlet of temptation and answer the Sphinx’s riddles to come out the other side clean.

It has happened before, it will probably happen again. It is history repeating on repeat, just with a few new players.

I also have to remember everything they taught me, pop quiz tomorrow or the next day. Every day.

I see your patterns and raise you a ‘if you wanted me you would be here’.

The gargantuan moral in all of this is no matter what I saw happening, or the promises they made…none of them are here with me now.
I went to bed alone last night and for as many nights as I can rightly remember in the recent past. Unsustainable. The center does not hold (Yeats)

Viable.

That’s the million dollar word.

Spoke to Jason last night. At least he acknowledges what a big deal it is for me to use that term to describe a man.

Basically translates to ‘I haven’t fucked this up yet’. Don’t plan on it neither. There is no angst here. Just so far, so fun. And due to circumstances beyond my control I haven’t slept with him yet, but we keep talking. It’s like accidentally dating. Probably a good chance to get it right all things considered.

The last few times I tried to date someone it went bad. I stumbled and fumbled, said things when I ought not to have, kept my mouth shut when I ought to have been saying something. The usual.

But I learned.

Hulk taught me that I didn’t have to settle to settle down with someone. That all the qualities I admire in a man can be found in one body. Just not his or with him. He had his dream life waiting and I stepped aside gladly.

Young Un taught me that 20somethings are plausible, possible options. And that friendships can grow from the bones of old not-quite relationships…on that long enough timeline I speak of with fondness and regularity.

And now the Giant.

He said he was riding his bike over, I knew it meant he was planning on drinking. I had no plans to stop him. A few beers tends to flush his cheeks and loosen his lips a bit. Look, don’t touch was my mantra, might as well feed my eyes if that is all that can be fed. Ears too. He says nice things. Enigmatic things, prophetic things. I swear he is the only exception to my rule of men where the words they say are the words they mean. He speaks in riddles and rhymes sometimes. Not sure if I like when he does it as I have grown so accustomed to the other and found peace there.

Working on peace. Draping myself in white flags trying to keep both the sexier and more vulnerable pieces of me covered, but he is a snake charmer and sometime I cannot help but wiggle and dance this way or that, then the music stops and I am not sure how I ended up tucked into the space we should have left for the Lord.

I forgot myself after 2 beers myself and bent over in front of him trying to find a song. I know what I must have looked like in that moment. Blissed out, swaying a little to this random piece of music I found with baroque guitar and Uilleann pipes. Smiling, eyes half closed. Hot Neighbor was here too (oh ya, that happened) and him being near me is akin to being in water (I float), Sunshine was in fine drunk form too and we had all been belly laughing. I am pretty when I am happy and I was.

Or maybe I just moved in that mythical way he has accused me of, the one that flips his switch. He hasn’t explained it to me, just acknowledged it. He has explained nothing. Or quite possibly everything, who knows at this point.

It was probably just the Coronas.

And the mood lighting, and the good moods, and the food and the whole night.

He kissed me on the porch in the fairy lights. And there may have been some territorial pissings in the dining room prior, as I said Hot Neighbor came by.

I told Jason this and he asked if that was when the orgy started. No habibi. No orgy, and not stress either oddly. Everything just flowed, as it should be.

Giant thanked me profusely for not letting things get out of hand. As if I had a choice. As if any of them give me choices. “Jumping takes strength of will”* and I don’t want him by halves.

I think he sees me as Medusa, too scared to look right at me so he just sees my reflection.

And therein lies the lesson. The Giant, the Poet and Gelfling. All left because of preconceived notions about what I am and what I want.

None of them thought to ask me. None of them took the time to learn me.

Giant says he will one day finish the book of me.

Jokes on you darling.

For one, you never looked past the cover.

I am an open book. Rare and valuable.

And two…

I plan on dying with a pen in my hand.

Rewriting until I get my happy ending just right.

(*Dead Like Me)

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…

Boys

Not Forgotten

July 4, 2016

So Gelfling, derived from “Ghel-lflainngk” roughly translates to “those who live without knowledge of the future.” (Grant Volker).

That was posted under an article from a year ago about a boy I called Gelfling, Ouf and Mind Fuck.

I always felt like ‘ouf’ was an onomatopoeia for the sound of getting punched in the gut.

He said ouf like it was a good thing. To him it meant guttural/literal sex noises.

He did knock the wind out of me, both coming and going.

That is fucked up.

Seriously.

Both the Muppet and the boy have no knowledge of the future, by choice.
And I cannot shake the past, not by choice.

He did make a choice, they both did. To wander out of the safety of their cave dwellings out into the world for some greater purpose that has yet to be revealed.

So be it.

Oh Gelfling, my Gelflng.

He cannot possibly be my Gelfling.

If he was he would be here. With me, right now. Or at least message on occasion.

Giant messaged me recently and said “My dearest Sarah”. I opened my mouth to protest, but he wasn’t wrong. Part of me still lives in his head, his heart and his bed. I wouldn’t know how to take that back if I wanted to. And I don’t. There are threads that bind and alternate timelines that I somehow remember even though they didn’t happen here.

The only way I run is at something, not away.
Wait.
That isn’t exactly it. No straight lines, I spiral out and back in again.

That thing we had for the most fleeting of moments that defied logic and words and could only be described as a magical convergence of entangled particles.
Both of them.
“You tie my tongue. You make my fingers into these clumsy things on the keyboard, like trying to articulate the aurora borealis in a foreign language and the only word I know is ‘yes’.” (I wrote that)

Tangled in timelines that went awry and I still can’t figure out why.

I saw this and things started to make more sense. Think I might get this tattooed on me. My best girl calls me a vampire, she is wrong. I just see time moving in spirals instead of in a straight line and I spiral with it.

At this very moment, as I am writing this there is the clear and present danger that I may run into Gelfling tomorrow.

I kinda want to. Cosmic finger crossing for a cosmic path crossing.

(^that was Thursday)

I saw him.

Truth be told I was terrified. The butterflies in my stomach were worked into a frenzy and their wings felt like sharp cutting things, leaving me slightly shredded inside.

I knew he would be where I was going, because I asked. I needed and heeded the warning. I thought he had wandered off to Tibet, or maybe Sedona, called home by the ley lines and returned to the cave of mystics that he came from.

I was warned that he got exponentially hotter in the last year.

Good god damn. Somethings cannot be prepared for even when you think you know what is coming.

He came to mind every time the sky went red or there were fireworks, literal and sometimes proverbial. I dream about him often, sometimes when I’m awake.

I have the ability to compartmentalize almost everything and everyone.
He never fit into a box, kept slipping out.
Everyone else becomes, after enough time, a page or three in a scrapbook.
Mental photographs, scraps of paper, bits of music and candy wrappers pressed between pages in pretty little vignettes of the good stuff.

When triggered my mind flips to their page I sigh and smile because I have cut out the bad bits, the part where they left. Instead my mind sees a slideshow of their more redeeming moments.

I read an article about our brains having a delete button and I recoiled a bit.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3059634/your-most-productive-self/your-brain-has-a-delete-button-heres-how-to-use-it

I have yet to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I am scared of Jedi mind tricks, the red flashy thing and the glamouring by vampires in True Blood. When Lena tried to save Ethan by wiping herself from his memory my heart hurt and when he remembered anyways it soared.

I am more afraid of forgetting than being forgotten.

I suffered severe memory loss due to a concussion/brain injury from a car wreck that stole the month of December 2008. I also misplaced 35% of my vocabulary which came back with great effort, a giant red dictionary and about a thousand games of scrabble. The word ‘enough’ was the last to return. Still looks funny to me and cause a slight skip in my synapses. Gone also was my ability to make new memories for approximately 90 days (I can’t exactly remember). That was a blessing I believe my temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex were in cahoots, making it so I don’t have to recall that level of suffering.

You see dear readers, my life was shit before the car wreck. Being immobilized with physical pain matching my mental anguish just made it more vivid, or so I can only imagine and blissfully not recall.

I hold onto the memories I have left and the ones I make now pretty tightly, almost compulsively.
Hoarding them like a fat kid and Halloween candy MINE MINE MINE.
You can look but you can’t touch.

I was getting tattooed by Gelfling’s best friend who said something about ‘forgetting’ (meaning what happened between he and I) which, ironically I have forgotten the exact wording of.
But ‘oh honey no’, I said, ‘not remotely, not one tiny bit, not an iota‘. Nothing is forgotten.

I saw him.
I saw him and nothing happened except a few flashed smiles and a little banter. But that want that I had tried to quash or tame came rushing back.

If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are. (Zen koan)

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