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.

Lets all go to The Basement, shall we?

Hey! Remember the other day when I got all excited in comments about the idea of starting an Anonymous Blog so that all of us could always have somewhere to go to blog about whatever we want to? Really, I was very excited about it. And so were you guys. I wanted to make a safe place where anything was okay. A place where comments were moderated, and nothing ugly ever got back to the author. A place where people could go and read real, piece of your heart posts by wonderful people who need an outlet for their work.

I was in the process of making that place, when I found out that there are a few similar places… like Blog Share and Post Secret. But those are different! So I kept working.

Then I found out that someone was already way ahead of me.

I like to call her ‘Catherine the Great’ in my mind, but her official screen moniker is Her Bad Mother. You may have heard of her?

The point of “AnonyBlog” as I was calling it, was to give us all a place to go. It wasn’t to duplicate one that already existed.

So, friends, I have wonderful news. We already have somewhere to go! It’s called, “The Basement” and it’s there for us to write about anything our hearts desire. No names (unless we want to give them) and no pain. Just catharsis. Just freedom. Release. So think of it as AnonyBlog, and please go. I know I’m going to. And if you feel more comfortable submitting your post to me in email, I’ll be happy to pass it on to The Basement for you.

I asked Catherine to tell you about it herself, and she most graciously obliged. In her words…

Once upon a time, I needed somewhere to write freely, anonymously. So I set up this secret clubhouse, in which secrets would be shared and virtual cigarettes and liquor sneaked. A safe place to tell stories that I couldn’t share publicly. But then I went and left a trail of wine bottles for everyone to follow – I wrote about it and promoted it and basically said to the world oh hai I can has super secret blog space and tell u all about it?

I discovered very quickly that I can’t divulge my own secrets in my basement lair – everyone who reads me knows that it’s there. But you can divulge yours there. If you want to. If you need to.

When I posted, once upon a time, about wanting to write freely – to get the shit out, to get the shit figured out, to get support – so many people responded with resounding ‘OMG, me toos.’ So many of you said, in comments or in e-mails, that you’ve struggled with the desire and/or need to tell stories that you were reluctant or afraid to tell on your blogs (the very same things that so many of you, recently, have been saying to dear Lotus, too.) For the same reasons that I’ve been reluctant: because it would expose too much. Because the wrong person might read it. Because it would darken up an otherwise light and cheery space. Because you just don’t feel comfortable saying whatever it is that you’re yearning to say on the front porch of your blog home.

So the Basement is for you. For you to tell your stories, the ones that you can’t, for whatever reason, tell on your own blog. It’s for you to tell your secrets or your scary stories or the feelings that you just haven’t worked out fully enough to blog publicly about. Maybe you’ve got some funny stories that you just don’t want everyone to hear. Or maybe you just want to solicit feedback or support on something that is just too weird/icky/loaded to put on your blog (was anyone else afraid of shitting after giving birth? Of sex? Anyone else bleed for 6 weeks? Anyone else forget to buckle baby into car seat? Watch baby fall off bed? Anyone convinced that they’re irretrievably physically/emotionally/mentally messed up? The worst mother ever?)

Maybe you just want to chatter nonsensically about the latest gossip without cluttering up your own blog. Or maybe there’s something more serious that you want/need to work out on the page, something too dark or touchy or weird for public airing (I’m scared to take meds/not take meds/have another baby/not have another baby/think about my miscarriage/not think about my miscarriage/yell at my mother/not yell at my mother.) Or maybe you just want to bitch about your in-laws. (Which you of course would never do, because they are all delightful.)

The Basement is open to one and all. Anyone who wants to talk/share/story-tell/rant off-blog, this is the place. Come on in.

So, let’s all go to The Basement together, shall we? It will be like a party where we can hear each other with perfect clarity, but no one has to see each other. (So you don’t have to worry about fixing your hair or what you’re wearing.)

I’m going to go in my underwear, just in case you were wondering. Just cause I can.

Hope I read you there.