once upon a time (there was a douchebag)

Okay, so maybe I got a leetle bit pissed off when I saw this image on Pinterest tonight.

And maybe I went a leetle bit overboard on the “description” when I repinned it.

and the princess didn’t have her heart broken by a man who couldn’t keep his dick to himself for more than five seconds because she was smart enough to say no to the pretty face that was hiding the vile creature behind it. And she had all the time in the world to then pursue her own interests and be the person she was meant to be, reveling in her identity and fulfilling her aspirations fully. She spent as much time as she wanted with the best girlfriends who always built her up and cared about what she was saying rather than pretending to listen and hoping she was soon done. And she hand selected the finest young men to keep her company (and then sent them on their way when she was bored with them) and she read books and made beautiful art and sun bathed and nobody ever left the fucking toilet seat up or made her have to drag their feelings out of them like driving nails into brick because they were such poor communicators that she just wanted to scream into infinity in those miserable moments of complete relationship hell when she would rather be twirling through the living room, singing her favorite song at top volume. She didn’t have to share the remote or watch any sports she didn’t want to, and she only got foot rubs with her pedicures and nobody expected her to have sex with them just for doing it. She smiled every day because she wanted to, not because she was pretending she was happy, and nobody needed her to fetch them a beer or make their food first so that by the time she ate hers it was cold. She played with lady bugs and stopped to smell the flowers every day. Her friends and family thought she was fucking awesome because she was able to live her life to her full potential instead of for some loser who resented her for not wanting him to drink jack daniels every fucking night. And she never had to sleep in the goddamned wet spot. THE END.

Yeah, maybe a little too far.

Maybe.

(Who am I kidding?! That shit had it coming.)

mapping the vault of memories

Children laugh a lot. It is a beautiful thing.

A few nights ago, I heard my son laugh from upstairs. The laughter tinkled merrily down the stairs from up high to down where I was standing in the kitchen. It was the laugh of a four year old – giddy, unrestrained, and in those chucklesome, high-pitched, and somehow fairy-like tones that only children that young can achieve.

That night I heard the free, sincere, heartfelt laughter of my son, and I had a thought, suddenly. It hit me without consideration and washed over me harshly. It did not care what I was doing when it came on, or where it would leave me after it fled into the night beyond me.

And the thought was this:

There will come a day when I will not be so privileged as to hear that sound anymore as a common occurrence in my life, my day to day What Is, my moments possible to take for granted (even though I don’t want to). There will come a time when that laugh does not even exist anymore.

There will be a day when forever more I will not be able to hear that sound. His laughter will still be accessible to me (sometimes) but it will never sound that way again. It will become lost forever in the vault, deep and wide and sometimes difficult to navigate, that contains my lifetime of memories.

And memories have this awful way of fading and being so hard to recall in a tangible way, so hard to truly feel in the same way as they were once experienced.

I stood there, at the foot of the stairs, frozen in that moment. I stood there, playing that brief sound over and over in my head, savoring it. I was all alone, and may have nearly appeared catatonic in that moment of true consideration and revelation.

Braden may never know that he’s ever done something so simple but so incredibly and effortlessly meaningful that it captivated his mother so greatly. He might not realize that she once stood quietly relishing the joyous beauty of a 3 second laugh he uttered about a little bit of something more than nothing that faded into the night without him giving it another passing thought.

When I write these moments, it is like I’m drawing a map to put up on the inside of that vault, so that when I dive into it later, so much later, maybe I can find these most important of thoughts and feelings, these memories of the most golden days, and hold them near me again for a few moments.

And I will know.

And now you do, too.

Weekly Winners, June 5-11

June 5th – 11th

These photos taken with a Canon EOS 7D
Photos prepared using Lightroom 3

you got your mint all over my lime, baby

Sake Champagne Mojitos Recipe

what color should we paint the world today?

she wants to be held under the moon

And they all say to pour it has to rain, so don’t complain if we get wet in the deep end.

~Ben Lee (Love Me Like the World is Ending)

and her world became brighter

To view all my photos, visit my Flickr Photostream
Photo Projects at Everyday Lotus
Lotus’s Instagram Web Viewer
Lotus Carroll on 500px

Wanna Know More?
Weekly Winners Information
All My Past WW Posts