Who would have ever knew (Oh, may the grammar Gods smite thee with a vengeance.)
That we would ever be more than friends
We’re real worldwide, breakin all the rules (um…wha? what exactly was yo doing wit yo friends at da mall?)
She like a song played again and again (she sho are)

That girl, like somethin off a poster

That girl, is a dime they say (translate, please!)
That girl, is a gun to my holster
She’s runnin through my mind all day, ay

Shawty’s like a melody in my head
That I can’t keep out
Got me singin’ like
Na na na na everyday
It’s like my iPod stuck on replay, replay-ay-ay-ay

See you been all around the globe
Not once did you leave my mind
We talk on the phone, from night til the morn
Girl you really change my life
Doin things I never do
I’m in the kitchin cookin things she like (usually I am a total asshole who will only cook shit you hate)

We’re real worldwide, breakin all the rules
Someday I wanna make you my wife (maybe we can get married at the mall, wit my friend)
That girl, like somethin off a poster

That girl, is a dime they say (yeah, I don’t know)
That girl, is the gun to my holster
She’s runnin through my mind all day, ay

Shawty’s like a melody in my head (do people SAY Shawty anymore? and wtf? I am 5′10″. Clearly not the target audience)
That I can’t keep out
Got me singin’ like
Na na na na everyday (neener neener neener!)
It’s like my ipod stuck on replay (you should get that fixed), replay-ay-ay-ay (ay ay ay is right. )

Ay (and forsooth!), I can be your melody

girl I could write you a symphony (but instead I wrote you THIS!)
The one that could fill your fantasies
So come baby girl let’s sing with me (what? let’s sing with me?)

Ay, na na na na na na na
Na na na na na na
Shawty got me singin
Na na na na na na na (also see: la la la or no no no no)
Na na na na na na na (yep, clearly a mind capable of a symphony)
Now she got me singin

Now, I can handle this level of craptastic, because at least it isn’t totally fucking offensive liiiiiike ohhhhhh, I don’t know, THIS LITTLE DIDDY:

Sexy Bitch

Yes, I can see her
’cause every girl in here wanna be her
Oh! She’s a Diva…
I feel the same, (wait, you feel like a Diva? Or you feel like you want to be her? Either way, not particularly masculine)
And I wanna meet her

They say: “She low down…” (…?)
It’s just a rumour I don’t believe ‘em!
They say: “She needs to slow down…” (…!?)
The “baddest” thing around town! (this is just screaming to be on this blog)

She’s nothing like a girl you’ve ever seen before!
Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood whore! (not just a whore, but a whore! Because really, what’s a neighborhood without one? Whores. They are the new Applebees)
I’m tryinna (I call bullshit. This isn’t a word found in nature) find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful!

The way, that booty movin’ – I can’t take no more
Have to stop what I’m doin’, so I can pull up her close
I’m tryinna find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful

Damn Girl!!!

Damn, you’s a sexy bitch, sexy bitch! (See? that wasn’t so hard! Totally respectful!)
Damn, you’s a sexy bitch!

Damn Girl!!!

Damn, you’s a sexy bitch, sexy bitch!
Damn, you’s a sexy bitch!

Damn Girl!!!

Yes, I can see her
’cause every girl in here wanna be her
Oh! She’s a Diva…
I feel the same,
And I wanna meet her

They say: “She low down…”
It’s just a rumour I don’t believe ‘em!
They say: “She needs to slow down…”
The *baddest* thing around town!

She’s nothing like a girl you’ve ever seen before!
Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood whore!
I’m tryinna find the words to describe this girl without being

disrespectful!!!

The way, that booty movin’ – I can’t take no more
Have to stop what I’m doin’, so I can pull up her close
I’m tryinna find the words to describe this girl without being

disrespectful

Damn Girl!!!

Damn, you’s a sexy bitch, sexy bitch!
Damn, you’s a sexy bitch!

Damn Girl!!!

Damn, you’s a sexy bitch, sexy bitch!
Damn, you’s a sexy bitch!

Damn Girl!!!

Damn, you’s a sexy bitch, sexy bitch!
Damn, you’s a sexy bitch!

Damn Girl!!!

Damn, you’s a sexy bitch, sexy bitch!
Damn, you’s a sexy bitch!

Damn! You’s a Sexy Bitch!

What a mother’s dream. An entire song dedicated to her daughter’s ass, wherein the word “whore” and “bitch” are used no fewer than 400 times. He’s a keeper! Maybe, in a different context  this song is totally acceptable. Maybe, if we set it into another genre? The flutter society for the classupafication of popular music would like to present…..

Damn, You’se a Sexy Bitch: The Aria

Nope. That didn’t work either. Shawty is going to be so disappointed.

* edited to add: I did a perfect take of the aria, the first time only to realize that I had a piece of cheese hanging from my lip. I looked like I had a dairy goiter

I know a lot of people don’t. A lot of people freak out at the time-sucking nature of it or that they don’t want everyone to know their biz. It appeals phenomenally to my twisted inner voyeur. I love seeing photos of people looking gorgeous with their families. I love seeing the successes. But really?

I can be one snarky fucking bitch and Facebook is the ultimate in jerk-hiding-behind-a-keyboard equality.

I have found my high school best friend, who is a gorgeous, successful attorney. I have found a dear friend of our family, whose children encompass some of my very favorite childhood memories. My dear friend from Junior High is on Facebook.  My mom is on Facebook. My sister, my brother, my cousins, my fiance.

Then I got a friend request from a dude I knew in high school. He told me, back then that he thought I was pretty. Then he proceeded to piss all over my locker. Therapy has taught me that this is the equivalent of his pulling my pigtails in the third grade. Common sense has taught me that this is the equivalent of him pissing all over my locker. I clicked over to his profile, noting that he has gone into the ministry.

Clearly his guilt over defiling my locker changed his entire life. HIS ENTIRE LIFE. I mean clearly, he was so bereft at the act of using my locker as a urinal, he turned to God to make it right.  Well look,  locker pisser; God may have forgiven you, but I don’t. Friend request, DENIED. It tickled me to no end to be so utterly passive aggressive. Therapy has taught me that this is my way of avoiding a conflict with someone who intimidated me. Common sense has taught me that Monsignor McPissalot can kiss my ass. God bless you.

He and I share many common “friends” one of whom asked me to spy on her boyfriend while we were in Spanish class. She was remarkably popular, incredibly beautiful and terminally stupid. I was not popular, not beautiful and not stupid. Her terrible idea became my mission in life, lest she make my day to day school going completely miserable. I watched her boyfriend like a hawk in our common classes, watching for the slightest hint of his infidelity. There were none. Like all of the teenage guys on campus, he was completely cock blinded to what an insecure psychopath she was. I summoned up my balls one day and decided to put a stop to my subterfuge.

I walked right up to him  and said “Hey, your girlfriend has little minions all over campus watching your every move to make sure you don’t cheat. So, either you want to reassure her that you’re into her, or you need to tell her to get some meds. She’s being crazy.”

I watched his face change in light of this information. Wow, I thought, I am really making a difference here. I started to feel smug in my morality, I was saving him untold heartache. Yes, she was going to make me suffer for it, but wow, he really got it. I watched the rage, then fear, then sadness and finally confusion settle over his handsome face.

Then he said, “Wait, what’s a minion?”

Fuck.

His girlfriend socked me in the cheek in the girl’s locker room and flushed my gym shorts down the toilet that same afternoon. So, imagine my surprise when she found me on Facebook and sent me the following message:

Chris,

I totally forgive you for trying to destroy my relationship with [redacted]. I know it’s because you were pathetic in high school, but it’s totally cool now. No worries. We’ve been married since 1993 and have 3 kids. [redacted] who is 16, [redacted] who is 13 and [redacted jr] who is 12.

Isn’t it funny how life works out? [redacted] and I send our love.

XOXO sweetie,

Scary-ass-psycho-bitch-who-clearly-topped-out-at-17

Emboldened by my laptop screen, the fortress of my keyboard and a healthy sense of outrage, I replied the following:

Dear SAPBWCTOA17,

You’re married! To [redacted]! That’s awesome. Doing simple math, I’ve surmised by the ages of your children that your wedding was either outfitted by Vera Wang maternity, or you used your first born as your ring bearer. Either way, I am sure the affair was lovely, even with the visible presence of a shot gun.

Your love astounds us all and is something to which I, personally, aspire. Tell [redacted] to look up that word, you know, in a dictionary. I remember that big words make his head hurt and clearly that brain is something to be protected.  I would hate to think of him taking a sharp blow and all of the sudden having had some sense knocked in.

Pathetic is all relative, I suppose. I realize I was quite nearly voted “Most Likely To Trip Over Herself While Watching A Bird”, but I am engaged to someone who was voted “Capitalist Most Likely To Own Your Ass” and we have managed to do fairly well. Without the use of outside private investigators in the form of teenage girls. Will the accomplishments never end?

I do hope you’ve managed to instill in your children a sense of self esteem, which prevents them from using people to make themselves feel better.  I would hate to see your ugly cycle continue. But, I am certain you’ve done the necessary work to ensure that this won’t happen.

Hugs and smooches, cupcake. My totally stable, able to complete full sentences and has never suffered from premature ejaculation unlike someone’s husband I know, fiance and I send our best regards.

Actually, no we don’t.

Christine

Strange, she didn’t friend request me. Hmm.  I was so hoping I’d be invited to her daughter’s sure to be upcoming baby shower.

I like Twitter as well. But, there is no chance that my mother will ever “accidentally” see me call someone a shitninja, or a douchejelly, because she doesn’t Twitter. I had to admit that even though I am 34 and I adore my mother, I do sometimes love to shock her. Facebook is such a delightful tool to use to this end.

Facebook is like a pixelated reality TV show. There is drama. Bad behavior. Terrible hair. Moments of poignancy. There is also me laughing hysterically at the friend request sent by the company mattress that I used to work with at the Not-t0-be-named retail establishment. The one who came up with thinly veiled ways of calling me fat. “Sturdy”, “Statuesque”, “Bigger” and my personal favorite “Zaftig”. Except, she pronounced it “Zatfig”. I asked her if that was Zaftig’s illiterate cousin. She stomped off on her little pencil legs, her flouncy skirt bouncing off behind her.

So, no, you twig legged, lemur-eyed nasally voiced little troll. I will not be your friend. Not on Facebook, not in life. I shall make fun of you, and your rat’s nest hair and your yellow fingernails and your teeth that are 5 times too big for your chinless face. I will politely hand you back your friend request with a polite suggestion that you may shove it up your ass. Except, I know that you are currently using that orifice to entertain three quarters of the straight men who work in the company. So, keep my suggestion for when you have a vacancy.

I will, however, look through all of your photos and marvel at the feat of physics which keeps your giant head balanced on your tiny body. Because that is what Facebook is for.

Somewhere along the line of childhood, I became convinced that my parents were going to stop feeding me. This was never threatened or implied. It was never even mentioned. But somewhere in the fray of growing, my fear grew in my fibers, a panic which has never left me. I remember my mother asking me if I knew where the peanut butter was. I remember the way the light slanted in through our 1940’s windows, into our drab yellow kitchen. I remember looking at her painted toenails against the dingy, but clean floor. I remember looking her right in the eye and lying.

“No, Mom, I don’t.”

All the while, the entire family’s Skippy was hiding in my underwear drawer with a sleeve of saltine crackers. Just in case. A nuclear holocaust nor irrational fear of parental neglect could touch me with a stash of snacks mingled amongst my “Tuesday” panties.  I would sit in the crowded closet I shared with my sister and eat stale crackers, spread with the thinnest layer of peanut butter, hidden behind a napkin.

Yesterday, I noticed as Clay and I sat in our living room, I ate carrot sticks in small bites, keeping the rest hidden away from him. Not for fear that he would take them from me or that there wouldn’t be more. Simply the act of putting food in my mouth in the presence of other people causes a panic in me, which takes every shred of my resolve to overcome. I hide things in napkins and bags and behind my cupped fingers. The shame of my need, of my fear almost overwhelming. Food is a comfort that cannot be treated like a drug addiction. I will always need to eat. I will always need to fight the shame that accompanies every bite.

I know what you think of me.

I had that thought as I sat in San Francisco in the summer of 2008, with four beautiful women who write. We were in one of the city’s 9.7 million Thai establishments. I watched orders being placed and I ordered my own. Heaping plates of steaming rice and fragrant sauces were placed down in front of them and 6 pieces of cubed tofu in front of me. I ate slowly, judging myself through their eyes. They never said I should only eat tofu. They all tried to offer me food from their own generous plates, from their own generous hearts. I chewed slowly and willed myself smaller in my own skin. The process was repeated at breakfast, at dinner, at lunch. I drank large glasses of water and diet coke and ignored my dizziness. My blood sugar was at 67 when I went on my panel to speak.

This is simply one of the least entertaining of all the things I hate about myself. The extremes of gorge and deny.

I saw my therapist today, for the first time in almost 3 months. I wondered last night, as I tried to fall asleep, how it would feel to see him again. To see his name in my check registry. To admit that I need him. There is a daft shame that accompanies needing anyone, all while just being desperate to feel needed. To admit needing the work to be well enough to love your soul mate in the way they deserve to be loved. Not the sick love of a sick person, the healthy love of a well person. I know I have the ability to give that to Clay. That I have denied it this long is the thing I hate about myself the most.

Clay deserves me. So do I.

paper thin conviction,
Turning another page,
Plotting how to build myself to be
Everything that I am not at all.

I’m one of them.

(sung to the tune of “O Holy Night”. My apologies to the hymn writer and all those who love “O Holy Night” and also, Jesus.)

(further, this isn’t actually my neighbor’s house….but trust me, it isn’t far off)

Oh, Holy Crap

the neighbor’s lights are blinding

the only lights Hubble can see on Earth

Long lay the elf

in the garage deflating

til pumps appeared

and then air filled his girth

the lighted reindeer

in their front yard glowing

as Santa rides a Harley

on the roof

Fall, on your knees!

your retinas are burning

Oh, for the love of God

where did they get all of this crap?

Oh why? Oh why?

Oh why, please tell me why

Fall on your knees

Spongebob is on the front lawn

Oh, Holy crap.

I view my life in two very distinct chapters. Before my rape and after. But lately, it feels as though a third, unfamiliar chapter is beginning to take shape. It is begging for my attention. Pulling, pushing, challenging.  It seems to be demanding that I graduate from this long-fought  period of pain and emerge into my birthright. Below is the commencement speech to the girl I am becoming.

Go, with passion. Ever forward progressing with the fire of things which bring you joy, go. In the morning, after your blackest dreams, leave them waiting and fight them again later, with your sleeping mind. They have no place in your waking life, go.

Go, with boldness. You are a shining creature of light. Hiding it serves you no purpose and denies those around you the opportunity to soak up your glow, go.  Write your words and sing your songs. Paint your world with your own perspective. Your brushstrokes are a living legacy to more than just your survival. They are a sequined walkway to your success, go.

Go, attack those things you think you cannot do with the same fearlessness you attack the things you know you can do. Your only failure is when you are too afraid to go.  Go.

Go, love with the fullness of your heart and count on it to be broken. But dance, in the glory of love for whatever time it lasts. When you find it in its permanence, prepare for it not to be easy. But rather to be worth it. So know that you will carry battle scars, but you are a warrior. Go.

Go with confidence. Your past is not your future and is merely a shadow in your present. It is left to you to forgive. Forgiveness is not for the one who is wrong. It is for the peace of the one who is right. Act with mercy, go.

There are absolutes. There are grays. There is a world of absolute balance and chaos. It is not for you to fix, or even understand. It is for you to navigate with grace, with humility. With kindness. You are all of these things and more that are yet to be named, go.

Our smell has left. No scent of spicy candles or the expressly masculine notes of Clay’s cologne. Although we still have things left within those walls, our presence is notably absent. The laughter that we share so quickly with each other seems as though it has never touched that place. The calcium of its structure seems to be leeching away, still standing, but hollow as a dead saguaro.

When we walked into our house the first time, I felt a gravitational pull. The floors of this beautiful home pulled at my marrow, begging me. I could feel the absence of life here, amidst the green plants. Amidst the dust floating across the surface. This house begged for life as if  dying. Our decision to be here grafted the bone. We give this place life.

I drive down different streets, eyes taking in the signs of houses, bursting with energy. People and animals and memories wrapping themselves around the walls. These things are load bearing. I drive down these streets and feel a longing that is being fulfilled. From our house, to us. From us to our home. From me, years of sadness becoming driftwood as I press that gas pedal and proceed forward. To him. To this life we’ve created. To home.

`

Enjoy

1) When you envisioned your blog, in the beginning, what purpose did you think it would serve?

My blogging has no deliberate purpose but in spite of that I plan to blather on and on about this question.

Blogging is often ridiculed as useless and narcissistic because people assume that the primary purpose would be self-display–the blogger is some ordinary person (i.e., not a ‘real’ writer)  who is vain enough to suppose that other people are interested in the mundane and ordinary details of their life. That should be no big deal–there’s a lot of writing that is of this type. Why is blogging illegitimized as writing? And conversation itself often has the purpose of discussing one’s life because many conversations are about people saying what they have been thinking and doing. Do those people have a problem with conversation? That would be absurd.

What is it about writing something that’s more narcissistic than discussing your life in ordinary conversation? I suppose it is that there is a monologue quality about blogging. It’s like writing a diary and then inviting other people to read your diary. So that assumes there is something inherently interesting about your own internal life. Is that vain? Perhaps it is sometimes. There is a narcissistic strain in blogging that one notices after awhile. But let’s face it–other people’s private lives are interesting to us, if they can be presented in an interesting way.  Alas, I don’t bother to present my internal life in an interesting way most of the time.

Long story short, I don’t have a good reason for blogging.  I always kept journals. (I destroyed them all one crazy day many years ago.) I think blogging for me is much more like journal-writing. And what’s ridiculous about that is that the public nature of blogging changes the content of what I write, and I sort of resent this. So why don’t I just keep a written, private journal? I don’t know. Maybe the internet has simply made it very hard to keep a journal, just like email has made it hard to write letters.

I guess I’d have to say, when it comes to personal purposes, that the blog serves the same purpose as a journal. I suppose those purposes are usually (a) a record for the future self to contemplate the past self’s states of mind and (b) self-understanding. And, very imperfectly, it does serve these purposes.

So 2) Do you feel like you’ve accomplished that goal? If no, or if you didn’t have a clear goal, how would you describe your blog to someone who couldn’t read?

I think I’ve accomplished whatever goals one could have in keeping a journal. But another goal is that I’ve also linked up with this very tiny community of people. Most of them are other women, and other mothers. This is a little bit by happenstance. I think my interest in other bloggers is probably what got me back to blogging after I ditched my first blog. It was harder to really get to know other bloggers in the way that I like doing this without a blog of my own. I liked having some kind of online persona to engage with people. I actually care more about writing comments than I do about blogging. I don’t care so much if anyone reads my blog, although I appreciate comments. I care much more that my comments on other people’s blog are good ones and that I am being a good conversationalist in that sense. But a blog helps make that interchange a bit more real.

To someone who couldn’t read, I would say that what makes my blog slightly different than other peoples’ is that I’m not very interested in everyday life. I’m much more interested in the problem about how to survive being me and I tend to generalize this into bigger human problems. But my blog is horribly solipsistic and about my inner mental life. What I usually write tries to be funny but I notice that only certain people get the black humor in the stories I tell. My blog is definitely not for everyone.

Conflicted, compassionate, disorganized, driven, dissatisfied.   I also like alliteration but that’s more than five.

I think my perfect life is impossible since it would involve not being me, at least not entirely. I am the thing that would make a perfect life impossible, as it seems unlikely that I am capable of living a life that is not full of inner turmoil, worry and dissatisfaction.

I would love to be one of those people that doesn’t worry about the fact we are all doomed. “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” don’t seem to worry about that. They don’t seem very happy, either. So I guess I’d either be me without the downside of freaking out about the human condition or I’d be a Real Housewife who was non-materialistic and helping people in the slums of India.

I really can’t talk about my worst day. I’ll tell you what I think the best days are like. The best days are ones where you become so caught up in what you are doing that you lose your sense of yourself and the sense of time passing. For me, they are usually when I am with the people I love. I guess the best and worst days have in common that something is all-consuming. On the worst days, it’s usually fear or something else that consumes you and the best days it is joy and love.

This is too big a question to answer here. Perhaps the most important thing blogging will do is create political venues for people. I think political blogging has the potential to be (for good and bad) the blogging with the greatest impact and importance. I do think some great writing could potentially be generated on blogs–even personal writing.

I blog for the hell of it.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/ I’ve been getting into Glenn Greenwald’s blog. As much as the left’s constant harping on Obama is starting to annoy (and concern) me, I learn so much from his blog. Ethically, he is correct most of the time but politically, I’m not sure he gets how representative politics works (e.g., it requires negotiation and compromise). Or maybe he doesn’t care about that.

http://www.schmutzie.com/ She’s simply an excellent writer with many amazing stories to tell. What I find amazing about her stories is that she does what I attempt to do–which is connect up the particular bits of life with the bigger more general problems of living–but she does it successfully. I always find myself thinking about her posts later. The internet is full of ephemera. I think it says something that I actually vividly remember Schmutzie’s posts a long time after I read them.

http://thebloggess.com/ I believe the bloggess is a genius in many different respects. She’s definitely a comic genius. She also reminds me of my best friend from college (who is also from Houston). I think many successful bloggers generate envy because it is easy to think that their little anecdotes about their lives are not more inherently interesting than your little anecdotes about your life. So why do they get all the attention. However, I don’t think anyone could think this about the bloggess because not a single one of us can do what she does.

http://www.fussy.org/ Like Schmutzie–like many bloggers!–Eden Kennedy is just one of those people who writes much better than I do and has mastered the form and content of blogging while always somehow conveying something meaningful and authentic. She’s a writer’s writer. So much so that her and Schmutzie have pretty much shown me why I can’t be writer–I’m all about the telling and never the showing.

I must admit that I find her very lovable, also. I can only love the blogs of those people I believe to be genuinely lovable. And she is extremely funny.

http://girlsareprettyforever.blogspot.com/ Girls Are Pretty. I guess I’m putting this because no one seems to read Girls Are Pretty that I know of and it’s completely brilliant. I’m not sure it qualifies as a blog. But I like the idea of a blog that is fairly divorced from reality and not personal. I imagine whoever writes this is basing it off of his life, in some totally tangential way.

http://iasshole.org/ I, Asshole is one of the first blogs I read. SJ has been blogging since forever, with some very unfortunate hiatuses. She’s one of a kind and does amazing things with words, including making up new ones.

I’m ashamed to say the songs would probably be full of pathos and the soundtrack would be a cliche. I once wrote a post about how I was listening to Mozart’s Requiem on a very high bridge on the way to Canada and realized that the Requiem was bridge-jumping-off-music. I can only think of cliched soundtracks but I would like some segment of my life to go perfectly with the first Velvet Underground record. Actually, between 18-21 my life probably did go well with this record. What I wish though was that my life was more like a Bollywood movie.

The other day my husband and I both started singing “Pinball Wizard” while on a walk with our daughter. But that would be incongruous as a soundtrack to my life. It’s a good soundtrack for “Tommy” though.

9) Chocolate or Vanilla? Depends. Cake, ice cream or pudding? Overall, probably vanilla. But this is only because I am absurdly picky about the quality of deserts.

10)  What do you find beautiful?  I’m not sure how to answer this. So many things in the world are beautiful. Of course, all the people I love are beautiful. I have moments where I am able to see almost every human being as beautiful in some way and I love those moments. When I can do that, I know I’m at my most sane.

It came at a time when my whole world was changing. We’d left Flagstaff, we were working out the future of our relationship. We lived separately for a couple of weeks while he finished his last college class and I started my new job. Weekends were spent with my driving up to our sleepy little mountain town, packing up the boxes of our apartment in the pines and getting ready to start our adult lives in this hot city.

I felt very alone in this apartment without him, our IM conversations a pixelated panorama of frustration, of anger, of pain. As long as my feet touch earth in this life I will forever remember something that he said:

When I need you the most, you aren’t here.

Sobering, hurtful, shocking. True. Absolutely true. Of the many mistakes I have made in life, this one has weighed the heaviest on my heart, because it is the one thing I have been party to that has been completely my fault. I had no excuse.

I turned to my little pink blog, with the cartoon butterflies  and the rambling about socks and wrote. The heaviness of my heart could not have been more absent from that space. I bled craft and frivolous words. I bled happy. HAPPY! HAPPY! But, knowing that even a stranger happening by on those words…made me feel real. Somehow, there would be some tangible record of my existence.  While I was away from my love, I sent tentacles out into the darkness. I hoped some kind soul would twine their fingers through mine, until I felt strong enough to stand and repair all of the things I’d done wrong.

One day, I wrote what was on my heart. The entire tone of this space changed. It has never reverted to the pink, fluffy craft blog. It became a lifeline. It became a necessity and an obsession and most importantly, it became a community. What it has never become, is comfortable. I have never laid down all of my swords and just let myself be open.

Which is not to say that I haven’t shared quite a bit. Quite a bit of personal, quite a bit of shocking, quite a bit of tragic. But, that precious balance that we all strive for, is always a shackle. There are stories that sit like smoke in my fingers. I cup my hands around them, knowing how I long to drag them into my lungs and blow them back out in smoke rings. I long to watch you all walk through the incense-like intensity of them and inhale them. All second hand and yet completely personal. But, as with all things, they are not just my story to tell. So, I tuck them away into my pouch, all marsupial. They make noise when I walk, like loose change in an old man’s pockets. You can hear me coming all the way down the hall.

click clack ching ching click clack ching ching

It is not a stealthy way to be.

So many real life eyes spy my words here. Most invited, some not. Some of you have gone from being words on a screen, to arms that have hugged me. Eyes that have seen me speak in the same room. Hands that have held mine, tears that have been shared. The responsibility grows. The wide brush I used to paint grows ever finer, controlling the artistry of my strokes into tight lines. There is so much that harnesses me, that isn’t just mine to share.

I’ve been not neglectful of this place lately, but tentative. I admit my own hypocrisy as I encourage everyone else.

Write what you want, when you want, how you want. Fuck us if we can’t take it.

Knowing, as I am firm that I will stand by people I have said that to, steadfast as a wall of brick….that the same does not apply to me, here. I consider that maybe I have put too much stock in this. Maybe I have put too much weight on it. Maybe I take myself too seriously.

Maybe, I don’t need to be here anymore. Maybe I was fooling myself, thinking I could write.

Maybe I do need to be here.

But my fingers stroke these quiet keys, in hopes of something new. In hopes of something more. In hopes of something. None of this can remain as it is, because I feel like I am supernova. Perhaps, if I am a dying star (in the celestial sense), maybe something new can be born of the black hole I am sure to leave in my wake.

He has impossibly long eyelashes, that catch the beauty of sleep with  a devastating beauty. His closed eyes, slightly swollen from the intensity of his rest, undisturbed and perfect. He sleeps.

I try not to wake him when I jolt myself awake. Dreams thick with oddly yellow eyes and fat, blunt fingertips bruising my skin. My heart hammers in its clumsy rhythm against my ribs, fragile with the weight of my breasts that shake when I cry. I turn into his back, or his shoulder, or close to his sleeping face and listen to the white noise of the air conditioner.

But, as I watch moonlight catch his fair lashes, long and colored with night shades I am almost overwhelmed to scream. I want to disturb his sleep. I want to shake him awake with my coward hands, clutch him to me like a blanket and worry my fingers across the softness of his skin. I want to share with him the vivid colors of my dreams. I want to open my dry mouth and let the fear and the weariness and the weakness fall out and over his perfect profile. I want to give it all to him so that for one day I can walk, unencumbered. I want to hand it all over so that for one night I can sleep, as open winged as a fresh butterfly.

Then I realize, as I turn away from him, that I would never do these things. I would never wish upon him what my eyes have seen. What my body has felt. I would rather him here, safe in this bed with me. I roll to lay on my back and wait for my heart to calm, watching the ceiling fan turn infinitely overhead.