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

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Wave Goodbye to Daddy

August 17, 2016

Here comes another Mercury retrograde.

Daddy is leaving us for a bit.

He is going to pull way back and prepare for launch.

Life is one big amusement park. And Mercury retrograde is the long, sweaty maddening line before the ride.

At Universal Studios they try to make the lines interesting, the same storylines getting played on repeat on multiple screens at certain points while you wait, they glitch and loop until you think you might go a little nuts. The closer you get to the ride the more they make you panic the story and instructions become more intense.

I’ve ridden this before, not panicking this time.

Also, akin to Universal, you can play with your phone at certain points but sometimes it needs to get tucked away or it worked in this corner but won’t work in that one.

I am trying to figure out my best course of action based on past events.

I have had some colossal fuck ups and meltdowns during retrogrades past. I thought I could use my platinum “daughter of Hermes” card with my sun sign being ruled by this giant hunk of iron and my house of communication and my house of house and home, yep. Mercurial.

I think I just made things worse thinking I could bend the quicksilver rules. That shit is poison when handled incorrectly. Things I held sacred that I dropped (Audioslave)

I will try to abide my father’s voice in absentia as he wanders backwards in the sky and fucks shit up by leaving.

How am I going to be an optimist about this? B^STILLE.

Better yet how do I not fuck shit up?

First and foremost, it’s only 22 days. They seemingly stretch on for years as piece after piece of the puzzle goes missing and messages get sent out and never returned. That’s the hard part for me. The lack of communication. See above where my Mercury is in Gemini, twice as chatty. Fucking answer me already. “I’ve said my piece/peace and counted to 3” (Oh Brother, Where art Thou?)

I swear there is actually a shadow phase pre-retrograde and my phone is already chillin in the darkness. Almost missed a night out because my phone was being a withholding prick with messages. Chatting away with the Giant about his triumphant return from Scotland, totally taking advantage of his jet lag and belly full of scotch to extract truth out of him like pulling lilies out of the dirt, and yet the viable plans I had?
Nothing came through.

It worked itself out, down to the wire, but we got it and it was good amen.

The world wouldn’t have ended if I didn’t go out last night.

The world doesn’t end even when I wish it would or believe with all my might that it’s HAPPENING AGAIN. Versions of it collapse in on themselves and birth new ones just like I collapse in on myself get up with my skinned knees and gravel filled palms and keep going somehow. Things that were paramount once upon a time have become hiccups and bumps in the road.

Now is a time to re-examine, re-read old lessons and learn. This is the one time nostalgia and memory lane are the best places to visit.

No big travel plans. We are already in line, no line jumping.

Finish up old projects and do not start new. Just wait, use this time to reflect and finish your shit.

Back everything up.

Then really all there is to do is sit back and accept the crazy.

Everyone is going to feel a little off, things will go missing, texts won’t go through. Just roll with it baby.

In the amusement park of life, I chose the rollercoaster.
Got stuck on a less than merry-go-round for a bit but I jumped off, of course I skinned my fucking knees, but I heal.
I keep going back to that exhilarating ride of higher than fuck highs, crazy drops, twists that rattle my bones and sometimes the long arduous climb that proceeds one of those falls that wakes the butterflies in my belly.

Look Ma, I am climbing.

Sometimes the ride gets stuck. The world doesn’t end, we just wait.

Time passes whether we are worried about it or not.

Nothing is on my timeline. I don’t get to dictate the when. Just the what.

I prayed for rain. Thunder and lightning specifically and it started the day the Lumberjack left the province, the weatherman is calling for 5 more days of sky tantrums. It stops the day he comes back into my time zone.

I got my rain.

A praying mantis lit upon the porch today. My son found it and called me in that voice where I dropped everything and ran to him. I saw her and smiled, he named her Sally, said she guarded our house now.

I realized something…I can abide the rules.

My book starts with a praying mantis landing on a girl on a porch. It is time to revisit this and finish the thing. That chapter of my life needs to be finished, sent to an editor and closed.

I don’t have to start anything new. I’m already in line for what I want.

I did get a new job, like a big girl grown up job, but under the wire on starting new adventures.

I am smitten with someone I met way before Mercury even thought about spinning backwards into the cold dark night. So I am good there.

The big move is out of the way, house settled into.

Life is good.

Now is a time for finishing things, polishing the silver and hoping the Titanic doesn’t go down. I know where the life rafts are and there is room for 2 on the headboard.

It may not be my magnetically propelled launch preference when it comes to rollercoasters, but I think this climb around I will just sit back relax and enjoy the view, I know the fall is coming and it is going to be spectacular.

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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.

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.

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Firewalking

August 7, 2016

The neighbors are fighting again.

At least she is fighting back this time. She sounds like a different woman when she sticks up for herself.

It’s not going to last long, she is going to crumble, I give it 15 minutes.

I have heard their soundtrack before, played it too.

I relocated to a bigger apartment in the same building and now I have front row, balcony seats.

It hurts me.

Mostly it’s him calling her names and smashing shit and then this shrill wail, like a banshee comes out of her mouth.

It is echoes of my own.

I used to be her.

I dated a him.

And another him with another face, and probably a few more.

I want to reach out and down from my balcony and pull her up to mine. Show her what it looks like when women make it on their own. How nice it can be, how clean and quiet. How we laugh. How we swap stories saying ‘yes honey, I’ve been there too’ over coffee.

One of my best girlfriends is in the shit right now.

She said “I know you are getting sick of me.”

I replied “I got 9+ years of being in those relationships, my patience for you is nowhere near ending. However, please don’t take that long.”

It seems to be some rite of passage. Like some phoenix from the ash bullshit but the fire has fists and a drinking problem.
And what happens if you don’t rise? You have to pack so much ice around you, you freeze to death.

Mental abuse is still abuse and she has suffered with the rest of us.
And she is in it again.

Different man, different face, different way of cheating on her.

He is an addict and his mistress is drugs.

“But he has demons”

Honey we all do, he just chooses to feed his.

He would rather risk another psychotic break than stay clean.

The core 4 friends I have are all strippers, or were until recently. Myself included. We’ve all seen drugs change people we knew and loved into strangers and we have all watched as years have gone by and somehow some of them stay intact.

There is a spectrum. On one end is the unfortunate kid that smokes one crack rock and dies of a heart attack at age 16 and there is Keith Richards. Everyone else falls somewhere in between.

I have watched people succumb to cocaine psychosis and it made me quit. I didn’t love myself but I didn’t want to give myself a chemical lobotomy either.

I have watched girls end up on the street from bad boyfriends and bad drugs. Took a few into my house and gave them a shot at getting clean. They took it.

I wish we had some kind of hive mind collective we could tap into, project our experiences into the minds of our friends. So they could feel what we felt, the fear, the knuckle that left me with a scar on my lip. The warm arms of those who loved me taking care of me and now…the men who defend me, protect me, love me, take up arms against those who even look at me the wrong way.

The ones that love to watch me belly laugh and squeal, not scream. The ones I can melt into because I trust them.

They are what is waiting on the other side of that firewalk.

This is the “warmth that can only come from a burning”. (SK)

I know you are tired, but come, this is the way. Rumi

The neighbors got evicted, too many noise complaints. I hear him blaming her for it and my eyes roll so bad they get stuck and my blood boils. But that is the way it is, I can see it from one floor up and across the way, she is in it and can’t see what he is. I wish she would just realize he ain’t nothing but a wet paper bag and fight her way out.

I don’t know how old the neighbor is 25-30 if I had to guess, the years haven’t been too hard or too kind, she wears her sadness like a mask that only the rest of us who have shed one just like it can see. The fake smile that never reaches her eyes that dart in fear lest she get caught talking to me.

I am the enemy. I am a walking example of what she could be if she left him.

And I called the cops on him one night when I heard the sickening sounds of a well landed punch and the air leaving her body for a minute. Nothing happened, cops came and left, she stayed. I’ll call them again.

I’ll go get my girl again and bring her somewhere safe. My house is safe, we built it that way.

My Sunshine went through some shit too, an addict witnessed the whole thing left her to get beat. So I rolled up with my kid and a baseball bat. Still regret not running that waste of skin down with my car.

I will do it again for anyone in harm’s way.

I escaped death by the kindness of strangers and the patience of friends.

Someone has to help. I am someone.

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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.

men

Of Course You can Touch my Butt

August 3, 2016

Oh honey, you had a bad day?
Come over here, tuck yourself into me.
And of course you can touch my butt.
Do you need a sandwich?

Oh honey, you’re still at work 16 hours into the day and you can’t come over?
Here is a picture of my butt to remind you that it is here waiting for you to touch it.

The word document file name for this article is ‘actually touch my butt’.

I was sitting on the porch last night and the neighbors were fighting and my heart got heavy and I’d just made a new Word document called ‘touch my butt’, it was open so I vented there.

This is why I lose things. I give them obscure names, my laptop reboots without my permission and poof.

Buh-bye now, see you next year when I’m cleaning and organizing.

It’s the morning after the new moon.

Save one bill, everything is paid. I’ll get to it today.

The house is spotless, like “It’d be okay if Queen Elizabeth popped over for tea” clean.

Burned some candles and some sage last night.

We are only letting love into this house. So mote it be.

I feel clean, calm and I keep smirking.

Doesn’t hurt a bit that the Lumberjack messages me intermittently throughout the day, every day.

He’s working way too hard right now and I haven’t seen him in…I don’t know how many days.

Huh, funny, I usually count these things.

He said his last girlfriend and he broke up because she was constantly fussing about him working too much.

So she spent the time she did get with you bitching about not seeing you so now she never gets to see you?

That makes no sense.

A lot of things women do when it comes to men make no sense to me.

There are a bazillion people on the planet, if the one you have isn’t working for you do not play blacksmith and try to heat them and hammer them into something that is not their original shape. Go find another one that fits your shape.

Don’t get me wrong. In the folly of my youth (which really only ended 3-4 years ago) I thought if I just tried hard enough ‘I could change him’.

I’ll tell all y’all a secret. No, you can’t. And really? You shouldn’t want to.

How hard that must be on a person you (profess to) love or care about to constantly feel like they have to adapt to please you, like they are not enough as is.
Pretty sure that isn’t love.
I am quite sure that is how the bulk of my exes made me feel. If I just behaved a little better, or was a little quieter, less aggressive, less sassy, less needy/slutty/chatty/sleepy/sneezy/bashful/dopey/grumpy etc. etc. but then I am not me. So why’d you pick me again? And why won’t you touch my butt?

I still have men in my life that make me feel this way. But not for long. We are only letting love into this house.

This is the problem with the neighbors, they fuck and fight and that isn’t love. It’s just a loud, screaming, sobbing mess.

Women are not put on this earth to fix men. They aren’t broken.
Men are not put on this earth to lord over women. We got this.
We’re two separate yet compatible halves of one whole.
Men don’t need to be fixed, they need to be loved and nurtured and left to go build things.
Women do not need to be ruled, we need to be left to be creative and kind and loving.

I’m about to get called out for being anti-feminist.

I could give a fuck.

I do not believe that men and women are equal. I believe we are symbiotic.
And by sucking the life out of the opposite gender trying to get them to submit, we are actually hurting ourselves.

Women have access to this powerful, protective, productive male energy and we harness it to
…
hold our purses at Bed Bath and Beyond?
That doesn’t seem right.

When did we trade nurturing for nagging? And can I please take my nurturing back?
Nagging feels shitty, both to give and receive.

By denying a man his masculinity you are denying your divine feminine self.
Um, what’s not to love about being a woman, we are soft, mystical creatures that create things out of nothing, capable of abstract thought, we feel things on these deep emotional levels and have multiple orgasms.

I jiggle when I walk. He likes that, as do I, I hate doing squats. I am soft. I do not consider this to be a weakness, but strength instead. I am not hard and rigid like him. I flow. I adapt. I soothe myself and others.
Put me against a wall and things change a bit. I have a vicious mouth on me and for the most part I can hold my own physically. But when there is a good man around, I don’t have to do those things. I can build things, fix things and I can appreciate having a man around to open that jar.

Lumberjack is having a stressful time at work right now. He talks to me about it, I make suggestions and ask questions and he comes to his own conclusions. I do not presume to know what is best for him or even exactly how his business works, I have an idea because I listen when he speaks and I ask questions.

He throws the word ‘perfect’ around a lot. I am not. What I am is compatible. The things about me that are feminine and good work with the things about him that are masculine and good.
And for once I feel appreciated, so I make sure he does too.

My job here is to see him when I can. Listen to him vent, rub his back and let him touch my butt. Because like the rest of me, it is soft and soothing and divine.

lost boys

All the Damned Vampires

August 2, 2016

“That’s what this place is. One Giant Coffin.”

I have never thought of a more apt description for my website than this.

So many dead things.

Wrote it on the back of my hand whilst driving down the highway late last night.
As if I could forget.
As if I get the luxury of forgetting anything at all.

I’m an old hotel that fell into a fault line. And now monsters live here amongst the dripping candles and canopied beds and obscure artwork.

I wait in my little magpie nest for the sun to go down, for the dead to awaken, for the second star to the right to appear…anything…then straight on till morning.

I’m just going to roll with this glorious fucking metaphor.

I dress like her. Star. Arms stacked with beaded bracelets. Layers of colorful silk, belts that make noise, and tiny lacy camisoles with messy long hair and smudgy black eyeliner. And I love like Wendy, darling.

For someone who references Lost Boys so much, both the group of boys/men I surround myself with who disappear from bedrooms in the night and go to some place unbeknownst to me where time doesn’t seem to exist or the only clock that hasn’t been smashed got swallowed by a crocodile or some such shit, and the 1987 horror movie. You think I would’ve clued in before now.

I don’t know what’s worse. A tribe of gorgeous wayward boys that literally live in a place called Neverland. As in nuh uh no never gonna happen. Or the ones with beautiful faces, no heartbeat that walk the boardwalk at night eating people and fucking shit up.

They’re all beautiful and none of them are here.

I stopped inviting them in.

One of my lost boys said that he can’t ‘drop everything, come over and make me ‘a happy Sarah.’

Wait now, back up there sparky.

I didn’t ask for that. It is no one’s job to make me a happy Sarah. I don’t outsource/subcontract. That work is internal and mine alone.

Besides, you already came over, added to my pre-existing happiness, asked to come back and sit on my porch glowing in the star lights and fairy lights and my attention.

I think I just stumbled on some of the ‘why they leave me’.
Other than their predisposition to do so because they are lost boys who get lost.

If you place the source of your happiness in another human being, that happiness can be taken from you.
People leave.
I’ve been a lost girl from time to time. Both akin to the television show full of fae folk and just by base description.
Treat me badly and I wander off eventually.
But it’s like they are all trying to beat me to the punch and I’m content meandering. Looking at flowers, feeling the sunshine and enjoying the journey until I look up and they have either gone to ground or flown away using my pixie dust or blood, depending.

Then I feel lonely, lost, abandoned and drained. I question myself/my worth. I can’t help it.

So I’d leave my window wide open at night and invariably the come back to get their shadow stitched back on or snack on me, or both.

I think the one might have likened me to some kind of drug that he is denying an addiction to. I am an opiate I know this. But he keeps calling me cake.

“You’ll never grow old, you’ll never die, but you must feed.”

And I kinda am the girl with the most cake (Hole)

And he fights it. He’s only half, “like Laddie and me.” But the hunger is there.

I’m done being ego food, Mama Wendy, having my life shaken up to harvest my pixie dust.

“These creatures do not die like the bee after the first sting, but instead grow strong and become immortal once infected by another nosferatu. So, my friends we fight not one beast but legions that go on age after age after age, feeding on the blood of the living.” Bram Stoker’s Dracula

So what to do? WWVHD?

Van Helsing: Yeah, she was in great pain. Then we cut off her head, and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then she found peace.

Take all the emotion out of it and do what needs to be done.

I know who the head vampire is, I know where this stems from. Kill him and everything goes back to normal.

I am nailing my window shut.

“That’s the one thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damned vampires.”

Italics = The Lost Boys

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)

lost boys

The Graveyard of Almost

July 31, 2016

My ex-husband sent me to therapy. Told me I couldn’t come home until I saw someone to ‘tame my crazy’ and ‘manage my anger’.
He stayed home with sisterwife while I walked into strange women’s houses, sat on their couches and spilled my guts into their loving laps.

Oh honey. What did you think was going to happen?

Did you really believe they would tell me to stay in the toxic waste dump of our marriage?

Seriously?

I had been drinking the poison Kool-Aid for so long I didn’t even notice I was dying until they showed me what happy tastes like.
Freedom and unconditional love are far sweeter elixirs than a man who forced me to share him and called me crazy for not eating his shit with a smile.

Funny enough, my “crazy” became quirky and cute and my “anger” no longer existed at all, thereby negating the need to be managed. I completely stopped panicking when I wasn’t being attacked.

You don’t try to ‘manage’ a tumor, you cut the fucking thing out and let the body heal.

I healed.

I was speaking to the Lumberjack the other day, sitting in Sunshine’s truck, we had just hit the garden center and everything smelled like basil and bougainvillea.

I was that girl. No, not Team Compromise. The other one.

I was a whiny weak little bitch that clung onto a shams of relationships like I belonged there.

I didn’t belong there.

I am ashamed to say I have been back visiting the graveyard as of late.

Saw Giant and Gelfling, been peeking at the Poet’s page when I ought not to be. Had a lovely conversation with the Hulk recently. I wish them well, I truly do. But they do tend to make me question my worth.

Do I have a sign on me that says ‘hey let’s play a rousing game of come here/go away’?

I am tired of trying to figure out what is wrong with me and starting to see what is right with me.

I am a really good girl.

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadows of my exes…

I can’t even call them exes. All they are is ‘almosts’, as in we almost dated. I was poised and ready to put on my monogamy pants and be with them, and they bailed.

The Poet sent me to therapy right before he jumped ship.

Said he was done trying to love broken girls like me.

My therapist asks after him from time to time.

To which I reply “No word, still blocked, just posts photos of his words on my body.”

She has yet to ask me how that makes me feel.

(Comfortably numb for the record.)

She accused me of only being in her office For him.

I corrected her, quickly.

It was his idea, yes. But did I do it because I thought somehow it would make him love me back?

Nope.

During our 2 year on-again-mostly-off-again-whatever-it-is-we-have-been-doing/not doing, I’ve realized that although his delivery sucks, hes often right.
I tasted the idea of therapy that he handed me, and found it delicious. So I ate it. Every Tuesday and I wash it down with coffee.

Oh honey. What did you think was going to happen?

Did you think she was going to tell me to stick around for someone who can’t even pick up the phone yet passive-aggressively posts to Facebook?

That is some teenage drama queen bullshit, and I ought to know. I was one.

On our way back from the garden center/amazing lunch I found myself briefly contemplating Gelfling for a moment.
I looked up and saw a solitary raven outside of a cemetery.
Biggest one I have ever seen this far south.
One for sorrow. Two for joy.
I think I’m getting the message.
Unrequited love isn’t cute or romantic.
It’s ridiculous.
I’m not a ridiculous girl.

My Pixie girl Ciara said, “Sorrow is still a valid emotion. Feel it when it comes, let it pass.”
To which I replied…
Nope.
My brain is my brain, my life is my life. It’s as simple as deciding I don’t want to be somewhere anymore and walking away.

I must again reiterate the Matthew Hussey idea of unrequited love being ugly.

It’s truly a colossal waste of time.

Channel your inner Luda and tell them fence-sittin’ boys to “MOVE BITCH GET OUT THE WAY.”

Even better, realize they’re not listening anyways, and go around.

The important thing is to keep moving.

I was in my car and that Frank Turner song came on.

Because I know you are a cynic but I think I can convince you.
Yeah, cause broken people can get better if they really want to.
Or at least that’s what I have to tell myself if I am hoping to survive!

It’s a long road up to recovery from here, a long way back to the light.
A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right.

So darling, sweet lover, won’t you help me to recover…

He isn’t going to help and the road is not long.

Besides, I know a shortcut.

It is called ‘I have a nice life and if you aren’t making it better you can’t come in’.

I don’t even like Kool-Aid.

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the head and the heart

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

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