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.)

The one where I talk about how I get VD. No, wait, not like that…

I get it.

I get the pain that you feel when you don’t have a special love.

I get the way it seems you’re being left out when so many are celebrating.

I get it.

I get the disgust over commercialized love and tricking the masses into feeling good about handing over money for silliness.

I get it.

I get that we shouldn’t need a day assigned to loving on the people who mean the most to us, because we should be doing that anyway.

I get it.

I get all of that, and more.

And still?

I don’t mind it. I’m not a Valentine’s Day Hater.

I don’t mind one more chance, reminder, reason, excuse or moment set aside to celebrate, support, love, admire, lift up, and cherish those who make me smile, float, spin, swell, beam, and love.

{i love you!}

My husband, son, mother, father, sister, brother, extended family members, best friends, neighbors, and all of my in-person and online buddies of all kinds… I am sending love and joy to you all today.

I get it.

And I hope you have a wonderful day, no matter how you feel about it.

Happy Valentines Day.

“Where life exists, love exists.”

~source unknown

Why flinging yourself off the ledge is a good thing.

I have written, in the past, about how I truly enjoy spending time alone.

This is not to say that I don’t enjoy the company of others, or that I don’t have genuine interest in people. I thoroughly enjoy time with friends and acquaintances alike, and I’d say that other human beings interest me more than almost anything else.

These things, enjoying time with others as well as time alone, are not mutually exclusive. While I like people, I need a considerable amount of time to myself. I always have, and I always will. There is a sense of overload if I’m around too many people at once or for too long. I literally require the decompression that being alone brings.

I revel in being isolated in quiet, adore to be wrapped in nothing but my thoughts. There is a level of reflection and philosophy that I am incapable of reaching in any way other than alone in stillness. On the other hand, I delight in pounding my brain with loud music and smiling at a room that holds only me while I assault my surroundings with my interpretations of the lyrics and melodies. This is like medicine for my soul. I need it as much as I regularly need to feel sunshine on my skin.

So yes, I like to be alone. I like to have my thoughts to myself, to be able to control my environment, to be the master of my domain at any given moment. I am a hair away from saying that my sanity actually hinges on my having time alone regularly.

And so it feels odd to say that I’m horribly afraid of being alone.

I don’t think I’ve ever really admitted that. I’m afraid to truly stand on my own.  Confessing that is difficult for me. I have always valued strength and independence, wanted those qualities for myself. Yet I feel as if I hold my head high on the outside, while in reality, I often tremble and cower inside myself.

Many years ago, fearing that he would never marry me, I suggested to my long time boyfriend that we part ways.  He had given me some ominous answers to some very pointed questions, and my heart was registering some unwelcome and heartbreaking truths.

I told him that I felt I had lost myself in him. It would have been unfair of me to blame him for that, and I most certainly didn’t, but I had allowed myself to be dependent on him for so much, practical as well as emotional, for so long. I’d poured myself into him. I always knew I shouldn’t but I felt powerless to stop doing it.

When I realized that he would likely one day need to flee the suffocation of my pressing need, that he would surely turn and walk from me eventually, I panicked. I felt the crushing fear of falling alone on that impending day.  How could I protect myself?  How could I learn to be stronger?

I had to force a situation that would make me let go and step away. Inside, I knew I had to take a leap, to make myself learn how to stand alone. Jumping, after all, always seems easier than falling.
It is not. Falling happens. Jumping takes courage.

He did not disagree with me that we should part ways. Even though it was my suggestion, I have always been pained by that.

And so, what happened then, after separating myself painfully from my best friend of 7 years?  Did I spend a good deal of time alone afterwards, learning to trust my ability to be an independent person? No. I lacked the courage to jump.

I am so ashamed of that.

I immediately started dating the man who would later become my husband. I leaned on him as hard as he would let me. He let me lean in all the way. My ex told me in a sad tone, after learning I was seeing someone else so soon, “You are dependent. You just go from one man to the next, always looking for someone to take care of you because you’re afraid.”

I was stung by his words, angered. I dismissed them as jealousy.

The kicker was that I secretly knew he was right.

I held my head high and moved on. I said to myself that I couldn’t walk from the love John was offering me, that I couldn’t allow myself to pass up a chance at happiness. I told myself I’d regret it mightily one day if I did.

Those things are true, I was not lying to myself.

But the other truth, the one I’ve never admitted outside my own head is that I was also afraid to do what I had set out to do. I was frightened to stand completely alone in the world, daring it to knock me down.

“What if it really does?” I thought. I wasn’t confident enough in myself to believe I could get back up.

Was it a mistake that I did not take that time and learn the value of being strong in myself? In a way, yes, very much.

You see, it is not so much that I am truly weak, or unable to stand on my own, to be a strong person and take care of myself. Even through my fear there is a knowledge in my core that I am strong enough. Fear has a way of making you near-sighted, though. I am often unable to see my core. I believe the lies that my insecurity whispers so close to my trembling ears in moments of doubt.

I do not regret loving my husband.  And how could I regret a union that brought me the joy that is my son?  I do not.  This is my life.  I take my past and wrap it like a bow around the person I have become.  I cannot change my past, but I can most certainly examine it, always reflecting on where I have been, learning, and watching where I am headed.  I am the constant analyzer, if you will.

The mistake was not that I allowed myself to love and be loved. That is never a mistake.

The harm was in not allowing myself a chance to see the living proof of my own strength. If I had jumped, I’d know for sure that I can fly, and that would have banished my fear of falling infinitely.

Today’s post is my answer to Broccoli, a writing challenge at {W}rite-of-Passage.

The following people took the challenge, too.

A transformation.

It’s a ring.

When I’m asked what Christmas gift I remember the most, this ring is the first image that surfaces in my mind. One of the most beautiful opals I have ever seen sits like a regal queen atop a shining, golden band. On each side of her, like ladies in waiting, is a tiny diamond, twinkling playfully.

I am not obsessive about jewelry. I appreciate things of beauty, and with these types of decoration I tend to gravitate towards simplicity.

I had never before received expensive jewelry from a lover. I had never really desired it, to be honest. Regardless of that, I found this piece perfect. When I opened the box, I was floored and pleased.

It is beauty, basic and true. I loved it immediately, and still do.

A person special to me worried over the selection of this ring. He had labored over this choice, and this ring had spoken to him.

While it is certainly true that the ring is stunning, that is not why it is my most memorable gift. There is magic in my memory of this gift, but it is not because I received the ring on Christmas day.

The real magic lies in what it later became – an engagement ring. The man who painstakingly chose that gift for me did not know that later I would switch the hand on which the Queen Opal rode, as promise to marry him.

My most memorable Christmas gift was a pretty, shiny adornment that later transformed into a symbol of love, basic and true.

Beautiful.

******

Today’s post is my answer to The Gift, a writing challenge at {W}rite-of-Passage.

The following people took the challenge, too.

The stuff that gets in the way.

So, I have a confession: I have been having a hard time keeping my shit together lately.  See also: Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (fatigue, joint pain, muscle weakness, hair loss, and more!), See also: Miscarriage Anniversary Looming, See also: Financial Distress, See also: Marital Issues, See also: I’m a headcase.

And it is true that I have had something like Writer’s Block for some time.  I have long spaces of time when I believe I have nothing to say that you will be interested in reading.  I sit down and think, “Surely I can come up with something!” And I open a text file and I stare at it, thinking.  Nothing comes.  Nothing is worth coming.

Then, other nights, I write things, posts, in text files and then I do not publish them.  Because they suck.  You would think they are stupid. (So I tell myself.) This would be more like Sharer’s Block? Blogging Anxiety? I Suckaphobia?

And then there are all the things that won’t come when I sit down to write them to you because there are other things that block them – things I can’t talk to you about.  What I mean by that is I have issues I WANT to share with you, but it feels weird to talk about this thing when I know I haven’t told you about thoooose things.

Do I write about those things?  Hell yes I do.  Is the writing good?  I think so.  Will I share it with you?

I can’t.

Some things you just can’t post to the world because they aren’t only yours to post, does that make sense?

But the more of those things that I have, the harder it gets for me to come here and talk to you about everything else, like my friends.  That’s kind of how I’ve always felt when writing these posts.  I know it’s somewhat silly to think that way, and I’m not trying to be mushy and sentimental to win you over.  It’s just the tone I always feel inside when I write to YOU.

This is not an academic essay I’m writing – though I can write those, I’ve completed tons of them in my time, and none too shabby, I’ll have you know.  It’s not a performance piece, where I just need to elicit emotion with whatever works.  It’s not fiction, where I can spin any tale just to delight.  It isn’t a review, where all I really have to do is lay out the way it works and what I think of it.

It’s an ongoing conversation I’m having with you about my life.

When there are bumps that invariably happen from my life intersecting with the lives of others, sometimes I can’t talk about those bumps.  Because it’s not my place to have the conversation that they might or might not want to have with you about THEIR lives.

So then, I guess I just have to say, Friends, there is(are) something(s) that is(are) affecting me in some way(s) that we can’t talk about.  And now I have to find a path around that(them) so I can keep talking to you about my other life stuff.

And that’s hard for me to do.  I’m emotional and the things I experience have a way of leaking and spilling out onto the rest of my life.  I should learn to compartmentalize more.  I don’t know.

And maybe this whole thing seems STUPID to you, because “DUH, LOTUS. We ALL have things we keep to ourselves.  We ALL have stories we don’t tell everyone.  Hell, most people don’t feel the need to tell everyone half the shit you think the world needs to know.  I mean, really, you tell us practically every time you have your period. GET A FILTER.”  And OKAY, FINE.  But the thing is, I’m still developing as a writer and a blogger.  This place defined itself to me from the start as My Blog: Where I Tell You What Runs Through My Head.  My idea of “what this is” has changed.  I can’t tell you what runs through my head when I’d have to tell you that Mr. C did horrible thing Y and I want to strangle his face until it turns blue and falls off.  Because you know, Mr. C has privacy rights.   I can’t tell you that I have a constant issue with Problem ABC and I think it’s because Mrs. W did batshit crazy thing X and it impacted me in a really profound way.

I can tell you about how I feel, but I can’t always tell you why. And that’s kind of douchey.  But Mr. C and Mrs. W own their own stuff, and I can’t tell it for them.

My family and friends have privacy rights.  Those assholes.

So let’s just say, that among other things, it’s taking me time, in fits and spurts to keep telling you my stories without telling you their stories.

Maybe one day there will be a time to talk about those things.  Perhaps there never will.  I’m trying to find a way to be okay with that and hoping I can just move past it.

I’m learning that it IS okay not to tell you everything (zomg) but I have to say it out loud for some reason.  I think, if I say this out loud right now, it’s going to help me move this block.

For now, maybe just saying to you that I’ll tell you most of everything, but not some stuff, will help me climb over this boulder, that mountain, and occasionally kick those rocks out of my way, so we can keep walking this path together.

I mean, it would be such a shame to miss the colors this season with you.  The foliage is so beautiful just up ahead.

I am a rock under the stars.

It is dark and warm.  The cool water shimmers and swirls in front of me, calling me to fall into it.  I close my eyes and imagine my body breaking the surface and sinking like a rock, cutting through with no resistance.  The soft, surging liquid would swallow me, and I’d be gone. Just a rock with no choice in which way to fall.

There’s a slight breeze, but it doesn’t quite push off the way it feels as though the air is actually touching me. It’s the perfect kind of warm; it is the kind of warm a girl who grew up in the country can appreciate. The kind of warm that used to waft through my screened windows and call me out onto the front porch to stare at the moon and dream with my eyes open.

I’m sitting on the back deck at my parents’ house. It is not the house I grew up in. That is about 2 miles from here. It sits, full of memories and cobwebs. It sits empty, dark, and somber.

I have not driven past it on this visit home. I haven’t driven by and seen the room off the front porch where I would sit and wait for him. The place he would often come to for me. Where I would sometimes sit alone, disappointed.

I did drive past a road I used to turn right on almost every day, literally for years. That road took me to his home and his family, of which I was made to feel a part, so many times. It took me sometimes alone, and sometimes with him. It took me.

Like he had.

Every ounce of my heart was siphoned away, every piece of my soul seemed to have been drawn out. I would say it was painless, because, after all, I wanted it that way. But it would be more truthful just to say I must have enjoyed the pain. Or at least, that I endured it because I knew the prize was worth it.

I wanted it to be.

I’m sitting out here with a chorus of crickets and other nighttime crawlies singing me the sweet song of the country on a soft, close summer night. I feel comfortable here. I can stretch out my legs and breathe in the scent of flowers growing nearby. In this moment, no one needs me. I’m at peace. Just myself, in the dark, alone. Comfortable.

Over and over again I had put all of myself into him, willing him to be more and to somehow make me whole, as such. I piled upon him expectations and needs. I was not perfect. He was not perfect. We were not perfect. We were just us and us was foolish.

He-I lost me-him and we were both abandoned by the ending we thought was in store for us. I wanted promises, he needed freedom and choices. I needed validation and hope, he demanded space and what ifs. I was incapable of giving him what he needed while still finding my own answer. I was incapable of just letting go and being me – instead I wanted to draw myself from him, control him, manipulate his choices.

If I lay my head back and stare up into the sky, I see a black canvas for miles, dotted with brilliant, shiny specks of electricity and power from so far away. They gleam and sparkle; a new one seems to pop into the tapestry after every few beats of my heart. If I just stare this way for awhile, what I think I see and know changes over and over again.

I expect it to look a certain way, but I can’t control what unfolds before me. I have ideas about what is out there in my view, but it is flowing and changing constantly, right in front of me, and there is nothing I can do about it. Some of the changes are noticeable, some are imperceptible to me. I sense that.

It would be foolish of me to try to force the stars to stand out in the sky in a specific order. They would call me mad and lock me in padded rooms.

I’ll never really know if it was right to part ways. I think of him from time to time and I wonder who he is now. Is he still that same person who was my best friend, or is the man he has become someone different entirely? I don’t regret those years, or the ones that have followed. I’m not sure if life has turned out exactly how I’d hoped it would after I kissed him that last time and he turned away. What I do hope now, however, is that he is happy. Because I love him in some way still, and that’s been true since the day I walked away. I hope he is happy with the way the sky looks when he lays his head back.

I can close my eyes and the reams of paper that the story of my life stands starkly on flow through my mind. I can slow it down and inspect this and that. I can speed it up to avoid things. I can ponder over the way the ink fell and what the story might be like if it had been different. I can even look at the pages that lie ahead, waiting for the stab of the pen, with concern. I guess I can worry about those pages. I guess I can be afraid. I could try to control the pen that wants to flow on its own with fancy strokes and flourishes.

It would be silly.

The way the stars in the sky arrange themselves in a predictable and yet uncontrollable fashion is a beautiful thing. Every night they show up just the way they are supposed to, and they don’t need me to worry about it, or wonder if they are doing it right.

They end up where their paths intend them to, and that is that.

Like a stone falling into cool, deep waters, effortlessly.

Like me.

With this ring, I thee wed.

Today’s Photohunt Theme is “Hands”

Photograph by Joan Williams, at our wedding. It is in my collection.


Today we have been married for five years.
I kind of like him.

He loves me for everything I am, and all the things I am not. He accepts me even though I show him my faults.

I am able to be at my very most “relaxed me,” in his presence.

One in the company of the other can do the most stupid things that come to mind.  The other not only does not mind, but most of the time thinks it’s pretty hilarious.

And he rubs my feet. Keeper.

Last Year’s Anniversary Post
The One About Our Wedding
When We Decided To Have Braden

Doppelgangers and other people you may want to kiss and/or kill

I’m going to tell you a secret.

This here lady you all admire so much? That one called Sarcastic Mom? Yeah, that one. She is to blame for so many of my misadventures in the computing world. And for that, my friends, I’m not sure whether to hug her and feel her sweet teets pushed against my own, or smack her around and box her about the ears and THEN feel up her lovely bosom.

It’s a toss up.

I’ve known Lotus for a long time. A long time in blogging years, which adds up to more than three real years. That’s, like, 50 blogging years, I think. Don’t quote me on that. I’m not a mathematician.

I met young Lotus (which she will always be to me since I have a few actual years on her in my undercarriage) on Myspace of all places. She was part of a circle of friends that I happened to be entangled with, and blah blah blah, we ended up becoming bosom chums for life. I remember when I asked her to be my friend (which sounds so 7^th grade, but you know, it’s Myspace). I said, “You amuse me. Let’s be chums. Shall we?” Sadly, I’ve never been in the same room as Lotus, but I’ve broken bread with her dear John several times and even enjoyed the comforts of his band’s tour bus, so that counts as being in a room with about one half of Lotus.

Again, I’m no mathematician.

I blame Lotus and our lovely mutual friend Amanda (who should be writing her own blog because of her genius, wit, and candor – do you hear me, Amanda?!) for immersing me into the world of online chat. For HOURS. And HOURS. Until the wee hours of the next day. Laughing and peeing ourselves over who comes up with the best insults or vulgarities. Sharing our souls and hearts and gut-wrenching agonies that we don’t dare utter to others, sometimes even the people who share our individual homes.

It’s a sisterhood that I’ve rarely found myself to be a part of.

I wrote endless tales of silliness and such on Myspace, and it didn’t occur to me for a very long time that I was writing something called a blog that other people outside of Myspace would enjoy. I was just delighted with the silly banter I exchanged with the people who dared to comment, which often included Lotus and her five thousand comments on the same entry. Around the same time, Lotus and I had come to the epiphany that we could branch out and unleash our madness unto the masses who may or may not think that we are far too old to be on Myspace.

Sarcastic Mom launched a month or two before my own blog. I watched how my incredible friend went from unsure blogger to overnight sensation in such a short amount of time. Her drive, her charisma, her wit… she won over the hearts and minds of the blogging world with her gorgeous pictures and tales of poop. She is real, and you can see that. I’m very proud to call Lotus my true friend, and I’m incredibly proud of what she has accomplished with her writing.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not all peaches and roses. This lady and I have had words. We’ve had throw-down, biting, harsh words with each other over the most ridiculous and sometimes very serious topics that have come between us every now and then. We make each other cry and yell. After that, we make up. We pet each other and drool and lick, and the world becomes whole again. It’s not often that I encounter someone who can make me so hot under the collar and then absolutely adore her the next day.

Over time, Lotus and I discovered that we have far too much in common. Like, SCARY amounts of things in common. Have you ever met your twin? That person living on the other side of the world who seems to think like you, move like you, and has been through all the ups and many downs that you felt were only your own? We freaked each other out with all of the confessions and stories that were so familiar. I won’t list them here, because my bond with Lotus is more sacred than confessing our similarities to the world. Suffice it to say, we’re both pretty f’ed up cookies.

It’s for that very reason that Lotus and I have such intense rows with each other. Imagine fighting with yourself. Who wins? Who loses? It’s maddening. What I’ve learned from these experiences is that it’s best to step back and see why I react that way to my friend. I’ve learned, the hard way, that most of the time it is because I don’t like what I’m seeing in myself reflecting in the eyes of someone who is so much like me. It’s all very cathartic and insane, but that’s how we work.

When I wasn’t looking, Lotus became one of my dearest friends in such a short amount of time. She is my therapy. She is my mirror.

Despite all of the incredible hardships that this lady has had to endure over the past few years, she built this blog to be one of the biggest in the mommy blogosphere. She started around the same time as I did, and I didn’t have the same drive to keep building and writing and working working working. That’s where the mirror image begins to separate. We both started out strong, and then I petered out. I let things like life and death, babies, miscarriages, finances, and procrastination get in the way of my goals.

Instead of being disappointed with myself, I try to look at Lotus as my inspiration. I can aspire to work as hard as she does in every aspect of my life, no matter how many parents die on me or how many financial disasters burn and singe my flesh. Just hold your giant chin up, Sarah, and follow Lotus’ lead. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and thrust your bust out far and wide.

And then take a picture of it.

So, no matter how far into the doldrums you fall, dear Lotus, I’ll always reach out from the mirror to hold on to you. I can’t thank you enough for the many nights when you signed on “just for a moment” and then saved my life. I was too stoic to tell you, but it’s true.

I hope that anyone who reads this will find their own Lotus, maybe even the very same one as mine (although, back off, bitch, I’m kind of possessive – and so is she… ha!). Look to your friends to inspire you, piss you off, and get you moving in the right direction. Lean on their shoulders but listen to their angst. Get over yourself and laugh. Talk about boobs.

And then take a picture of them.

________________________________________________________________________

When Sarah and I are not busy either engaging in a love fest or scratching out one another’s eyes, she can be found at Imaginary Binky.  She crafts posts of intelligence, honesty, humor, and wit.  Follow along as she takes you with her through the highs and lows of her life.  Think you can “suck on this?”