The Florida sunrise painted the water & trees
at around forty three degrees
as I drove from tiny little Ocean Breeze
to The Mansion at Tuckahoe and my heart it did please
…seriously, look at the beautiful lighting!
Look at the way the light plays on the ground and trees
Overheard in a bar:
” There was a time, in about my mid-thirties when I thought ‘God damn when are these manic phases gonna just stop so that I can live a consistent grown up life?’ That shit is exhausting and disruptive. Now in my mid-forties there are still shorter manic-like times but more times when I am barely able to get up everyday and I have to force myself to participate in life. I put other people before me and that at least gives me some purpose and some motivation. I don’t like to disappoint people in my life so I do make that effort for everything to remain normal for them. Putting other people first really does help but sometimes the only thing keeping me going is the thought that a manic spike will eventually come my way. As I watch my waistline soften and my arms and face get that slightly plump look to them I long for the return of burning 1200 calories a day in the gym because that’s so much better then barely burning 1200 calories a week at the gym. When I’m depressed and getting pudgy I look in the mirror and I don’t see me. I see someone that looks similar to me. It looks like someone related to me but I don’t see me in my body and I don’t see me when I’m looking into my eyes. When I am in my manic phase I look in the mirror and it’s all me. I like what I see which is nice. As I get older I’m having shorter less intense manic phases like I was told would happen but when I’m having a depressed phase I can have manic spikes. It’s like I’ll have a trigger and feel like my normal excited self again. Not actually manic but happy and motivated. Really good sex can sometimes keep me on a high for 2 days and that’s the real me. That’s when I feel like I’m me.
All of these ups and downs are hormonally influenced. If my hormones could just stay balanced I think I would stay balanced. But would I be in a low spot or a high spot? Could I luck out and stay on a nice even keel in a happy motivated place that has me doing the proper amount of exercise and proper amount of eating and drinking and sex? These manic spikes during my depression are new. Maybe they are a part of perimenopause like hot flashes and being sentimental. Sometimes a manic spikes lasts 2 hours. Sometimes a spike lasts 2 days and then I am back in my rut. I used to think I was so weak for not being able to just pull myself out of my funk but now I know I can just keep trying and doing what I can while I wait for my mojo to return. When I’m depressed my motivational playlist does the opposite of what is intended. Even though it contains the music that I really love and that I normally love to listen to when I run and when I’m driving all of a sudden I realize every single song on the playlist is pissing me off. The music is not making me feel motivated it’s making me mad. It is so stupid to feel this way.
So stupid and I tell myself this is all just chemicals and that my body is great and it really is a beautiful day and the songs really are amazing and I really am awesome and life is WONDERFUL…but I don’t feel it and I don’t believe myself. It’s times like this that I really wish I had a significant other and at the same time I am SO THANKFUL that I don’t have a significant other to deal with and no one that has to try to deal with my mess.
It seems stupid but it also seems kind of magic because I’ll be depressed and depressed and depressed for days and everything seems to go slower and I cannot make myself get up in the morning to go workout so I just get up in time to go to work and then try to hit the gym after work but am easily persuaded to skip it. I do less but I am tired more. Soooo tired. I get to the point where I am pudgy and I don’t see myself in me anymore and then I’ll just get to the place where I start spiraling in my mind. My thoughts get random and disconnected like when I am in an actual full fledged manic phase BUT they aren’t happy excited thoughts. I am spiraling DOWN in my mind. Then I start writing or posting or talking like stupid crazy stuff and somehow that spiraling down ends up sucking me back up. I get bottomed out and then the spiraling flings me out and up. Sometimes I try to hold on and ride out the spin like I am on a Tilt a Whirl with the safety bar broken off of my seat. You know how a tornado or vortex grabs things that are down and sends them flying out of control? That’s how this downward spiral is. It will eventually sling me back up again and then I’ll feel kind of dizzy and then I will start feeling like me again. Instead of sleeping all the way until I have to get up in the morning I’ll be waking up again at 4 a.m. with no alarm and jumping out of bed, putting my sneakers on and going for a 5 mile run on the elliptical in the morning and another 5 mile run in the evening and just be so jazzed on life.
At least when I’m depressed and slightly pudgy I don’t have sharp shooting bunion pains because I haven’t been running as much and my knees will feel better, my back feels a little better and my hemorrhoids don’t bother me as much because I’m not punishing my body burning 1200 calories a day. Then again when I am burning 1200 calories a day and my bunion hurts and my knee is hurting and my back hurts I don’t really care as much because I feel amazing inside. I feel pumped. I feel excited and I feel like me because I’m a naturally excited naturally uptimistic, naturally energetic person who loves life. So I feel like me even with the aches and pains. Of course in this stage in life with titanium screws in my spine and myriad physical limitations I never completely get rid of the aches and pains and self-medicating fluctuates with my phase. When I’m depressed do I want to drink and eat fattening foods? Yes I do! Alcohol and easy delicious foods comfort me and I don’t have to expend much energy to consume them. When I am excited and manic do I drink and eat delicious foods? Yes I do because life is wonderful and everything tastes delicious. I spend a lot of time on food prep and healthy meals when I am feeling more motivated. Currently, I have been eating easier meals and haven’t been burning off those easy calories so right now I feel kind of like I am preparing for my winter hibernation. Being middle-aged and bipolar is not for pussies. I get my hot flashes and sentimental moments from my perimenopause and also have my downward spirals that turn into tornadoes that launch me into who knows what but life is always an adventure on the Bi-Polar Express.”
#bipolarexpress #olderpolar #overheardinabar #seemslikeeveryoneisbipolarthesedays
I have been feeling ranty lately. I swear if you talk to me for more than 10mins on any subject I am going to go off on a related rant. Possibly even an unrelated one. I DON”T LIKE THAT. I don’t want to be a ranter. I like being the joker, the problem solver, the nurturer, the encourager. I am the one that points out the POSITIVE!! I am about to go off on a rant about what’s wrong with ME! no, I will spare you. I have just been feeling frustrated and tired from trying to figure everything out on my own for lo, these many years and my list of things that need replacing in my household or on my car keeps getting longer. I even need a few things fixed on my body!! I guess ranting is more acceptable than weeping these days. I’m a natural frustrated weeper but that is more annoying to others than ranting. I am trying to catch myself pre-rant. Do yourself a favor and just don’t get me started.
Good talk ~Kiddo
FINALLY, after days and days and DAYS of nearly constant rain, the sun is shining! Don’t get me wrong I dearly love rain and thunderstorms, clouds and dimly lit days but I was definitely missing the sunshine. I have had to commute through flooded roadways, potholed streets and downpours with maniac drivers. Some people drive like it isn’t raining at all and some people drive like they have NEVER seen water fall from the sky. It is not a safe mix for interstate travel.
Last week during a deluge I watched from an intersection of two major roadways as a northbound vehicle drove through the flooded street and then over the median that was underwater and into southbound lanes. Fortunately, the southbound traffic lights were red so there wasn’t a collision. The driver stopped momentarily and I assumed they were going to turn so that they were headed south too. Not the case. The driver proceeded to drive northward as the traffic got the green light and headed toward them. It was crazy. I couldn’t believe my eyes as vehicles started to stream around the car as if it were a stone in a river. Moments later I had to pull off of the road and wait the flood out. My car was stalling and other vehicles that were larger than mine were creating wakes that had the water up to my doors.
I have been informed by the weather forecasters that this morning’s sunshine will not last and that my Memorial Day weekend plans will be soggy as the rain comes back for another week of Florida fun but I dearly hope that they are wrong. I don’t want to travel with the holiday travelers through more of that mess. I have my fingers crossed and my vibes set to ‘Sunshine” so I’m doing all that I can do to ensure that my trip to Saint Augustine will have dry weather.
I haven’t had a chance to stop by the beach on the way to work for the last couple of weeks but decided to celebrate this morning by stopping by for a few minutes to breath in the salty air and experience the freshly washed shoreline. There were many people out despite the early hour and everyone was friendly and smiling. There was a festive feel to the scene and I lingered as long as I could before heading to work. Life is good in sunshine AND in rain but for this morning I am soaking in the sun.
Make your hay people. The sun is shining
When I was a child my ears stuck through my hair and so I was made fun of for looking like a Mon chi chi. I thought Mon chi chi were adorable so I had one….but I thought I was ugly. I began to wear a cloth headband wide enough to cover my ears. I wore a giant rubber band at night to keep my ears flat while I slept hoping they would just stay flat. I had my mom buy freckle eraser from Avon and prayed and really believed it would work. I still have freckles to this day. When I was 14 I was permitted to get a haircut that allowed my hair to be feathered over my ears. I look back at photos I hated my entire childhood and realize that I believed what people told me rather than believing what I saw with my own eyes. When I looked in the mirror I did not see this adorable face. It is so hard for me to believe that these are the same photos I have known my entire life. I recognize the pictures but they never looked cute to me before. I was always self conscious of my looks because I never saw the truth. I walked around FEELING GROTESQUE like I should be hiding somewhere. That feeling persisted for much of my adulthood. I look back at photos from the last 45 years and can’t find an ugly one in the pile. I was 35 years old before I actually felt like I wasn’t disgusting to look at. I will be 45 years old in 1 week and sometimes wish that I could go back and live a life feeling like I wasn’t horrible to look at BUT I compensated for my looks by being clever, funny, and athletic and who knows what kind of personality I would have if I had always thought I was as adorable as I see that little girl now.
This is my yoga space that I have been using at work as I began my slow journey back to some sort of fitness. I have just enough room, a window and a fire extinguisher just in case I get really overheated. This space is one of the advantages to working alone.
This week I have been feeling great emotionally and feeling better physically and I have hope that I will get back to feeling greatish physically.
I have only had my cervical correction/stabilization surgery and don’t know when or IF I will actually go through with lumbar correction/stabilization surgery so therefore I am literally practicing with a broken (in a couple of places) back. If I do opt to have the lumbar surgery it will be at least 10 months from now.
I am being pretty careful and modifying even though that has always been hard for me even with a solitary practice. It is easier to do NO BACK BENDS and NO INVERSIONS (other than forward folds and such) now that I have vivid pictures of my spinal Xrays and MRIs to remind me that ignoring what my body is telling me does NOT necessarily make me stronger. I am physically heavier and weaker than I have EVER been because I pushed myself physically in the wrong ways for decades. PLUS in the past year or so I have had to modify not only how I workout and do cardio but also how I sleep, get out of bed, sit on a toilet, use a chair, drive a car, ride a bike, walk, “run” and even BREATHE.
Pain has never been enough to make me really listen to my body even when the pain was significant. If I could keep moving I did….so eventually my body simply QUIT allowing me to ignore it. Proof that as I have always said: Your body is smarter than your brain 🙂 ….Okay I haven’t always said that but in this case it is true.
I HAVE always said that life is about the journey not the destination (I didn’t make it up but I do SAY it) and I know that journeys have setbacks and detours that make the journey more memorable and allow for more growth. Life is beautiful, so very beautiful, even with hard lessons and one day this life will be over so I plan to appreciate as much of it as I can while I am still here.
I don’t want to be forty four, I don’t want to be a hundred and sixty five pounds, I don’t want to work fifty hours a week just to barely make ends meet and I don’t want to have a very fucked up spine. I don’t want to. If I had a time machine I could go back and make different decisions that would not result in my current situation. I COULD make different decisions but you know what? I probably wouldn’t. I could have easily avoided becoming forty four, or becoming one hundred and sixty five pounds, I could have avoided every situation that led up to me just getting back into the workforce after 15 years. I could’ve chosen to sit on the sidelines in sports and life therefore not destroying my spine. I could have punked out. I made decisions every day that cultivated this. I tended the garden that produced this. I own this. I have lived every single one of my 16,252 days. I chose this.
Need an interesting hobby that will not only exercise your body but also your mind? Not everyone is familiar with Geocaching but it’s a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. Participants come up with a cool or clever profile name and register at https://www.geocaching.com then begin their hide and seek adventures. Our FLorida4ce started out Geocaching in October 2005 because my parents got us into it. I homeschooled our kids and felt like this was an excellent way to learn so many things about problem solving, navigation, teamwork, determination and disappointment as well as learning about nature and enjoying all that the outdoors gives us. Our team was my husband, myself and our two sons, hence the “4 ” in FLorida4ce. We really had a LOT of fun especially in 2009 when we all had a lot of time to find caches as a family.
After all of the construction stopped in our area my husband had to switch careers and out of necessity changed from running a land survey crew to being an over the road truck driver. With my husband out of town a lot we didn’t get to cache much because we wanted to stay a team. Eventually we stopped caching at all. In 2013 my husband left us without much of a warning and as you can imagine that was a huge disruption in our lives. I went from being a stay at home mom to working 3rd shift in an industrial laundry and teaching yoga and fitness classes mornings and evenings in a few local gyms and studios. I didn’t have much free time. Anytime we would think about Geocaching we just didn’t do it because I was either too tired or didn’t have time to sync the cache locations from the website to our GPS. We were also reminded of all the good times we had as a four person team. Even our caching handle reminded us that someone was missing.
Currently I am gone for work about 60 hours a week and do not have a lot of time for family or anything else. My sons are now 18 and 21 and I try to come up with activities to do together since we’re all busy a lot. For two years I’ve gotten us annual passes to Universal and that’s a blast but I also wanted to have a less expensive activity that we could do without having to drive for hours. We just recently got back into Geocaching and it is so much easier now because of smart phones and the app to follow instead of loading a few caches into a GPS from the desktop computer. Now there is no need to go back to the computer to log our finds either. Everything can be done on the go.
In the past several weeks we decided to take the leap from just finding to HIDING! We have gotten great responses from the people that are finding our caches. We try to make caches that we would’ve loved to come across when the kids were younger. We try to make sure the hides are in places with terrific views in areas that have parks or picnic areas so that other cachers can not only find a cache but also a new place to enjoy even when they’re not on the hunt! WE LOVE the logs that other participants post when they find our caches and really love the photos that they are sharing!
I am having a good time Geocaching even with all of the changes in my personal life. We don’t have our original team anymore and my older son hasn’t gone out with us yet since we got back into it but he is still part of the team as a consultant until he gets time to join in. My younger son often goes along with me and usually my girlfriend and her super sweet dog Lady comes along with us too. Even if I go it alone I have a feeling that this hobby is going to be part of what keeps me active as I deal with this aging broken body. I adore weather and the sky and scenery and geocaching takes me right out into it.
Check it out, you don’t have to become a part of the geocaching community but if you choose to you can communicate with other cachers on the site and nowadays they even have geocaching events and gatherings. We haven’t gone to any of the events but we’re thinking about it – HAPPY GEOCACHING!!
Boardwalk where one of our caches is hidden
Jetty nearby one of our caches
View from one of our caches
The treasure map I created for participants to follow
I’ve lost every passion I’ve ever had and I’d still fuck you better than fate.
Sometimes trying is more depressing than giving up.
Since I was 14yrs old I’ve shaved my legs in the shower by putting my foot chest high on the tile wall. The past few years when I shave my legs while standing in the shower I’ve started to think that one day I won’t be able to do this anymore. To me that is the beginning of the end. Eventually I will only be able to shave my legs while sitting in a bubble bath. Damn good thing I love bubble baths.
Drinking cheap, HARSH vodka (straight) because rent was due and I’m the head of a single income household. $1,000 doesn’t grow on trees.
Sometimes I mistakenly think something is “real” because I’m always real on my end. I don’t know how or why to be any other way. Turns out no matter how real I am if the other person is less than real then nothing about us is really real. Phoney baloney isn’t bolgna. Both are gross. Reality is gross. Oh well, I guess that means that I’m gross but that doesn’t change the fact that life is beautiful or that Unis can kiss my aged ass.
Today my virtual relationship with the Dr. I have met online reached the critical “Set The 1st Actual Meeting” stage. I have never pursued a relationship like this but I am sure that in this day and age of online dating many of you are familiar with it. I had been looking forward to the invite for the face to face get together until I recently lost my job. If I had known that unemployment was imminent I would never have posted my 1st dating profile to begin with. I wonder if my feelings would be different if I were in the market for a man to date but I think not considering that I do not ever wish to appear to be a gold digger. I’m sure that there are plenty of single mothers out there looking for someone to support them and their children but I will do my best to never be mistaken for one of those. I’ll take care of my own life thank you very much. I would like to find someone that can provide everything EXCEPT financial support for me because that’s just the way I am. For better or for worse, my responsibilities are my own.
This afternoon while I was online submitting applications to every single available nearby job I could find I recieved a message from the good doctor. After a month of correspondence the doctor wanted to know when I could get together for lunch or for dinner. I responded with as much tact as I could because I realllly didn’t want her to think that I was just blowing her off but I had to let her know that currently I am an unemployed, single, middle-aged mother and couldn’t pay my own way during a lunch or dinner date and wasn’t inclined to allow a new acquaintance to foot my bill. Ughhhh, sometimes I’m too honest but I’d feel better about spending my life alone than ever for one minute decieving anyone even by omission. I’m currently a loser when it comes to dating if only in the sense that if I had a close friend that was involved in a virtual relationship tell me that the person they were interested in seeing face to face was an unemployed middle-aged single parent with an online dating account I would tell them to run. It’s only fair for me to give the good Dr. the same advice. I told her that I was recently unemployed without notice or severance pay because the owner of the company had a friend that needed a job and that I couldn’t pursue a “dating relationship” until my situation was straightened out. I have yet to receive a response. Damn the timing but it is what it is.
Wishing that you had never been born is NOT the same as wishing that you were dead
“When the moisture on my face is a mixture of sweat, raindrops from the literal storm that I am running through, tears of pain and doubt that I refuse to hold back and tears of pure joy at the beauty of my life that’s when I know that I have lived. I am in this moment truly ALIVE!”
~ Kiddo (6-10-15)
I have been a runner my entire life. I have been running since before running was “cool”. In the 70’s I didn’t need a cool head band, sneakers and jogging shorts. All I needed was my barefeet and ground to cover. I didn’t wear hairbands and ponytail holders because I had a sensitive scalp and was prone to headaches so I tended to run against the wind when I could. The wind not only kept my straggly hair out of my face allowing me to see where I was going but it also made me earn every inch of ground that I crossed. Sometimes I would run against wind so STRONG that it seemed like I was running in place. To me this was a good time. I never looked for the path of least resistance and I felt like the more challenging something was to do the more it was worth doing. I didn’t run for financial gain or for health or for the recognition of others. I RAN FOR THE PURE JOY OF IT.
In the 80’s I was encouraged to join the track team at school and since I loved running and jumping I did. I was one of the best on the team and my biggest problem (as well as my coach’s ) was that I could only participate in three events per track meet. I ran the mile run every single meet but I also ran the mile relay (as the anchor or catch up runner) and did the long jump and the high jump depending on where I was needed most for a particular event. One thing that allowed me to really shine was when the runners would have to run against the wind. Most of the runners in Jr high and high school hated running against the wind and were very discouraged by it. Not me. I would tuck my chin, fold my lips in to keep them from drying out and slow my breath to avoid flaring my nostrils. My hair would fly out behind me and I would be a kid again running for the pure joy of it like my Creek ancestors did generations ago.
Even as someone that truly loves running there would be times as a teenager that I would want to quit. Training to run sometimes took some of the fun out it. Occasionally, I would rather be doing something other than running and I would MAKE myself run at least 5 miles. When my dad got in on my training and would have me drink 5 raw eggs before running 5 miles every morning no matter what the weather I started to lose my joy. I truly hated running in the cold. When I found myself focusing on how far I would still have to go I would make myself stop thinking like that. I trained myself to look back on how far I had gone. The truth is that just running ONE mile was an accomplishment. There was no failure. At first I would have to make myself flip my perspective from one of dreading the distance yet to go to appreciating how far I had gone. The higher the number of laps or miles I had ran grew the more I would feel like I could quit at anytime and still have won. Even giving myself permission to quit I wouldn’t quit because the pressure was off and it was basically a game to see how far I could push myself.
Once again I have found myself in the position of being a single unemployed mother and I can’t help but feel the importance of the decisions I make in the near future. There’s WEIGHT to my choices simply because I am not the only one effected by them. Weight isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. It makes us see what we consider important. It makes us stop and truly think about our decisions. In fact, I have a few weights that I have been carrying around for the majority of my life that I hope to never lose. When I was seven years old running barefooted through a field near my home I was stopped short by something that looked like an egg. It was a blur beneath my feet as I zoomed past it but I came to a screeching halt and walked back about 10 yards to see this bird egg. When I got back to it I discovered that it wasn’t an egg at all. I had found a perfectly smooth, cool to the touch even in the mid-day sun, stone! I started calling it my pet rock because pet rocks had been really cool about 5 years before and this was the coolest natural rock I had ever seen. I had seen plenty of perfectly smooth rocks in rivers in the Carolinas and Tennessee but this was in the middle of a dry field in central Florida and nearly perfectly round. I thought it was amazing and I have carried that rock with me for about 35 years. In 1992 when I was 19yrs old I discovered another weight that I loved so much I had to have it. This discovery was a paper weight I unpacked at Cracker Barrel while I was stocking the gift shop with new items. It was just a glob of glass, with different coloured glass inside to look like two dolphins swimming in the ocean. I loved it and bought it with my employee discount. That was 23 years ago. I have kept both of my weights with me through thick and thin. Even when I didn’t have a place of my own and I was backpacking through the southeastern states I kept these two weights. I never even used them to hold down papers. I kept these items with me because they were beautiful to look at and felt great in my hands. One seemed to be shaped and smoothed by nature and the other was intentionally crafted my a human. Both of these weights were shaped by outside forces exerted on them but both of them were beautiful as a result and their form was even more impressive to me than their function. Everytime I had to sort through my belongings and choose necessities I kept both of these weights. I kept them through spring cleanings and chaff clearings and they have been with me for the good and the not so good. I’ve kept these weights through my ups and downs because I value what we’ve been through together and they’re lovely to behold.
This afternoon I went for my run and I have so much energy since I haven’t worked in four days. I’m like a cross between Sarah Connor and those treadmill dancers and I just enjoy myself as I cruise on down the road. I had a great playlist of songs that I totally enjoyed running to. The songs gave me an opportunity to change my pace and move to different rhythms. The wind was in my face and it started to rain and I was completely ALIVE.
I am NOT scared of the future. I know that even if I don’t find a job in time to keep our apartment that my heart will keep on beating and I will still live, laugh and love beneath the sun and the clouds and the beauty of the night sky. Life is about ups and downs and round and rounds. I truly love roller coasters and I will make the best of the ride.
When I think about the uncertainty of the future I remind myself that no one’s future is certain. Even people who think that their path is set and that they know where they’re going they are not CERTAIN of how things will turn out. If you’re under the illusion that your future is set I hope that you’re not proven wrong. I hope that you’re not caught off guard. If your life goes exactly according to plan then I am HAPPY for you. I also will feel a little bit sorry for you because you won’t know how you can roll with the changes. You won’t find out about your ability to go with the flow and learn to compromise without compromising your true self. I lost my job four days ago for being true to myself and I wouldn’t change that for the world. Life is beautiful even as it’s uncertain and I am happy with that. I look back on my life and see that I might’ve made different choices in retrospect but we don’t have the ability to go back and make changes. Even though there are a few things I would do differently if given the option to go back I am glad that I can’t. Every choice and every consequence that I lived through has shaped me and strengthened me to be what I am today. Every worry I have ever had has been pointless unless I see it as a learning experience. I worried about things that weren’t necessary because things work out one way or another and often times things that I worried about never came true. These things still teach me about the things that are important to me and give me an appreciation for how things turn out. When I had just given birth to my first child I was genuinely concerned that his tiny mouth couldn’t possibly latch onto my giant nipple but the nurse assured me that this wouldn’t be a problem. She had experience and she turned out to be right. Now that little baby is making his way through the world and driving himself around in his own car going about his business never knowing that at one time I was worried that he might not be able to nurse.
Life works out and life is beautiful. It’s all about the journey because the destination is the end of life and we will all get there eventually. If it were possible to stand before my ancestors and my posterity I would proudly say that I lived my life true to me. I’m a hedonist and enjoy life fully but I have made a positive difference in the lives that I have touched. I have made the world a better place and I have cooperated along the way but I never compromised. I have run with the wind at my back but I was truly alive when I ran against the wind with my straggly hair flying out behind me earning every inch of ground that I covered.
Hopefully I will find a good job soon that both pays the bills and allows me to be a service to others without being a disservice to myself. Until that time I will do my best to make it happen but I will not worry about the future. The future is uncertain but it will happen no matter what.
The 2 weights that I choose to carryThe 2 weights that I choose to carry
My playlist for my run tonight My playlist for my run tonight My playlist for my run tonight
Lol Unis! I was in the shower and Pandora was playing and then the song changed and I sang along changing the “he’s” to “she’s” of course…
“Have you heard about the lonesome loser
Beaten by the queen of hearts every time
Have you heard about the lonesome loser
she’s a loser, but she still keeps on tryin’
Unlucky in love, least that’s what they say
She lost her head and she gambled her heart away
She still keeps searching though there’s nothing left
Staked her heart and lost, now she has to pay the cost”
..and then I said “yeah Beeyotch! Let me introduce myself” and laughed my carefree ‘I don’t give a damn’ laugh then shaved my legs even though no one will ever notice.
I half expected Alone Again, Naturally to come on next but Unis dropped that ball
I would like to remember our first kiss:
As we watch tv and talk about the slow movie our legs barely touch as if by accident , hands cautiously beginning to casually explore , until finally without permission we kiss. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation. The whole night had been leading to this.
It is our first kiss, and we make it last…
We kiss as if we’ve done this before but it is so new and I just want more of you. I gently kiss your mouth, and breathe along your neck. My hand in your heavenly scented delicious hair as I kiss your chin and your belly and your thighs . And we talk as we do this. We get to know each other as we slowly discover each other with our bodies. We communicate with and without words. It is intoxicating to change the way your mouth is moving by moving mine against it. And I lay you down and I lay beside you and over you and we look at each other with bright excited eyes. I hold your eyes with mine as I run my finger tips up your legs because I want you to watch me touch you and I want to feel it from your point of view. I want to touch you more and deeply. I slowly start to peel away your clothing to learn more of you , and I touch your breast, which is close to your heart. And you touch and kiss me, but I do not pay attention to me, I pay attention to you. I drown in the scent and taste and feel of you.
Time happens. We happen. It is amazing and indescribable so I won’t even try. You felt it too so you know what I mean.
You decide that I will leave so we won’t get caught. I want to stay but I look forward to the drive home. It is dark out and no one can see me doing my happy dance. Your scent is all over me and the car smells like heaven. I am effervescent with joy from the best first date ever. I know how the excitement of a night like this tries to hide the fact that connecting in such an intense way from the beginning will make the pain more intense if I return for more. I decide to never see you again so this will remain perfect yet I am greedy for that bonding that always seems to be temporary. So I decide to risk it. The thought of seeing you again is intoxicating
I may seem strong—but I wanted to ask you to be careful with my heart. My heart loves too deeply when at all. Instead I said this means nothing. It’s just fun. So fun. And you agree that night and the next day.
You did not see me as a fortress even though I put up my walls to protect myself. Walls to keep me safe from getting lost in you but you didn’t see them and eventually my walls became invisible even to me and I did not protect myself and I did get lost in you. I was kinder with your heart than you were with mine. But that was okay, it was worth it just to be around your excitement for life even if you weren’t excited to be with me anymore. So I stayed long after I knew you had forgotten that first kiss.
I stayed because I remembered those first three months when we spent so many nights dripping with joy. I tried to give you time to find us again. You’d be back to me soon you kept saying and I knew it would be totally worth the wait. I knew that if I waited until your passion for life included me again everything would be happiness. Until I realized that you wouldn’t be coming back to me and in fact I saw that you knew this too and the guilt you felt over that made me call it quits. Throwing in the towel rather than contending for your heart. I didn’t want you to feel bad for not being into us anymore.
And I thank you for this delicious privilege, which was to be part of your excitement for awhile. Your passion is amazing to witness and almost unbearable when your passion was for me. I ALMOST wish we had never kissed except for the fact that I know I will get over this stupid broken heart. Even though the brokenness makes my heart feel bigger than it is – it’s actually just the size of my little fist and not very big at all. In the beginning your love was just as big as my hurt is now but you got over it in a matter of months so I know that big things fade away into nothingness and I think that maybe we’re both better off for having the experience of the ups and downs of the roller coaster of our love. Thanks for the ride.
Now I am finding myself again.
When my sons were young I never put them in timeout as punishment. I put them in timeout so that they could gather their composure and reclaim their self control. Timeout is a perfect opportunity to assess your situation and realize that it feels better to behave and stay composed and react appropriately to whatever got you upset or in trouble in the 1st place. When I used timeout with my children I never gave them a time limit. I would instruct them to go into their room and come out again whenever they could compose themselves and interact with others without being disruptive. They could rejoin the household whenever they could enjoy it but until then they could stay in their room and cry or shout or vent in whatever way they needed to. If we were at a park or a zoo I would send them to sit at a picnic table or a bench until they could realize that being unpleasant and unhappy was really a waste of a beautiful day. Sometimes my boys would be in timeout for less than a minute and sometimes half an hour but they almost always were happier when they rejoined us. Occasionally, they would come out too soon and have to go back into timeout but for the most part they used the time well and it was a useful tool. A few times over the years I had to put myself in timeout and the boys understood that I just needed some time in my room to compose myself and prepare to react to things appropriately.
I just realized today while soaking in my hot sudsy bath that no one ever interrupts my bath anymore. I don’t get knocks on the door, or texts or phone calls. I could sit in the tub for hours and no one would try to find me. No one would even notice that my skin was all pruney afterward. I started to think about how disconnected my life is from everyone else these days and thought that maybe Unis has put me in timeout. It’s been over two years since anyone has asked me how my day went or inquired about what I had for lunch. We all know that even when people ask these questions they’re usually just making conversation and don’t honestly care about how your day was. They do, however, care enough about you to seem interested and enough to make conversation with you. I used to complain when people invited themselves over and also when they invited me over. I just didn’t have time to do everything I needed to do and then do things that other people wanted me to do. I’m a ‘yes’ person so I almost always did whatever people asked me to do wether it was coming over for dinner or helping them paint their house. To me they were about the same and really only inconvenient because they had to be squeezed into my schedule. I always had phone calls to try to return and text messages to answer and dozens of voice mails I needed to at least erase if I wasn’t going to listen to them.
Now I have no interruptions. Not only does no one ask about my day but no one really interacts with me at all. The people I see the most are people at work that aren’t in my life except at work. The people that used to send me funny texts or call to make plans or update me on their daily lives aren’t part of my life at all since I started working full time. Not one single person cares about my weight, not one single person notices if I get enough sleep or enough to eat. Not one single person listens to me talk or tells me about anything that is happening with them. I am on my own. Every decision is mine and every burden is mine. I’m like a social hermit. I don’t even have small talk to pass the time. Not only does no one care how my life is going but not one single person notices.
Unis has put me in timeout and I suppose it’s up to me to come out and interact with people when I can do so happily and without disrupting others. I do see that it was a nice ‘problem’ to have to try and fit all of the people in my life into my schedule but I am also trying to enjoy this time to check in and get in touch with the real me.
Where am I going from here and how long will I take to figure out when to interact again? I don’t know. I feel lonely and uncared for a lot but there’s really nothing wrong with that. It’s a natural human response. I’ve always been happy on my own reading or watching clouds or simply observing the world and that’s still true. It’s just that before it was my choice and now it’s that my life isn’t connected with anyone else’s life except peripherally. I’m staying in timeout until I know what I want to do. That may take awhile but I’m willing to use this time away as long as it takes.
Right now I am like the 5 year old that goes off and pouts and pouts and realizes no one is going to come and talk them out of their self-imposed pouting corner and then realizes that no one has even noticed that they’re gone.
seeking solace in the horizon of life and beyond
Updates on current Projects at the Siena Art Institute in Siena, Italy. For more info visit our website www.sienaart.org
Poetry and words
Doing What Makes My Soul Shine
writing is sorrow; having had written is sublime
in search of a better us
Fighting Depression, Anxiety, and Self-Harm
Subtitles: Kiddo's Korner, Spinach in Your Mamma's Smile, Mutterings of a Mad Woman, Don't Mention It, Never Argue with an Idiot , Lord Beer Me Strength, Random Thoughts, You Don't Have To Thank Me (It's What I Do) and UNNECESSARY CAPITALIZATION.
MY TAKE ON LIFE.
Mind • Body • Life
A collection of nonsensical words thrown together
adventures of sadie and momma
A "How to Thrive" Guide After Divorce
A Hopefully Formerly Depressed Human Vows To Practice Self-Approval
Not That Anyone Asked Me... 