Dysmorphia

Nails, uneven

From tearing- cuticles gone

Some are still long enough to break the skin

On my face, my arms

Picking at myself

The inside-out methor, or

A bastardization

Numbness, everywhere

Except for my fingertips

Mean to reach, to touch

Misused so often

Sacrificed to those remaining nails

In the name of  “sanity”

The space, any space, to breathe

 

I destroy myself in pieces

Such tiny pieces

No one will notice

I dig at myself

Searching

Groping

Fingers slick in my own vermillion

Reaching to prise free

A bullet that was never there

Just a bit more

A touch more

I will find it.

That broken piece of me

That creeping cancer that takes my eyes

Warps my vision and repaints me

A Dali

Too warped to recognize twice

 

I will find it.

That sickness

If I cut a little deeper

Stretch a little farther

Until the tendons roll

Snapping against my stubborn skeleton

I will find it

I will

And rend it from me

I just need a little more

To gouge and pick

A little more

To be a little less.

The Grudge I Can’t Let Go Of.

September 30, 2019 [CW: Rape, Assault, Victim Blaming/Disbelief]

Once upon a time (in high school) I dated this guy from out of town. I went to prom with him. He actually went to the high school both of my parents had graduated from. He was a track & field star who spent all his free time training and was essentially a 6’3″ Adonis in a button-up.

I was on the swim team and the dance team, excelling at both, and my body was AMAZING. We looked great together. We had sports in common. When you’re 17-18 that’s all that really matters. You’ll give a lot of people a try, whether or not it’s a good fit.

He couldn’t hold a conversation outside of sports for very long and any time we finally found something to talk about, 5 minutes in, everything I was saying would go over his head and I’d have to steer back to familiar territory.

But he was pretty.

And his best friend was dating one of my best friends. Her boyfriend attended all of our dance competitions, and we met when he brought a friend along to keep him company at one of the bigger competitions.

There were warning signs.

I found out my boyfriend was into huffing at parties (mind you, I was straight edge and a very conservative Christian back then) and juicing for “gains”. He was massive and liked to pick me up or tickle me or just generally manhandle/muscle me around and thought it was funny when I’d beg him to put me down or stop. He always liked to ignore my requests, my gentle or joking protestation, and usually my first serious protest. Generally when I actually got mad and DEMANDED he stop what he was doing, he would.

But prom night he disappeared with a group of friends for a bathroom break (the ringleader of which, upon being introduced to me stated loudly and for my benefit “Damn ______! You didn’t tell me you had this smokin’ hot bitch. What a smokin’ hot bitch!”). When the group returned, my date was kind of out of it. I’ll always wonder if they’d been drinking, or doing drugs. It didn’t occur to be until years later that this could have been a factor. Hindsight’s 20/20.

When we stopped his truck just down the street from my house, after prom, to kiss goodnight, he grabbed me. He clawed at my underwear, and tried to force himself into me. I kept saying stop, no, I remember struggling to get away from him but he kept grabbing me. My wrists, my upper arms, my buttocks, my hip, my waist, my thigh. It was just this long struggle of freeing one limb only to have him grab another.

I’ve had nightmares of this quicksand routine more times than I can count.

I bore the bruises for weeks. Clear impressions of his fingers all over me.

When he partially penetrated me through my thin, seamless, pale blue, microfiber panties it hurt bad enough that I…. squealed, I guess, is the best word for it. And I hit him, hard in the chest, where I’d just been bracing before. I screamed his name and “STOP!” and finally he did but only because he wanted me to suck him off.

Which I did.

The kid could fit both my wrists in one fist, and already had me pinned once. I just wanted to preserve whatever was left of my “purity.”

I can still remember the sound of my own voice echoing back in the enclosed space of that truck’s cab. I can hear the edge of terror, even through that blurry “underwater” quality things get when filtered through panic.

But the rape, as I now recognize it, is not the point.

Nor is the stalking that happened after I finally broke up with him.

The grudge I carry, that weighs heavy in my chest to this day is with my friend. The one that introduced us.

Not FOR introducing us.

But for her response when I finally “‘fessed up” in the locker room after dance class the following week and explained where all those bruises came from.

I told her first.

I told her because she was one of my closest friends and I was reeling from what had happened.

I told her because I was afraid for her, more than any other reason.

She spent a good amount of time with him because of her boyfriend.

The first words out of her mouth were “are you sure?”

“Whoah, are you sure? That really doesn’t sound like him!”

She referred to it on multiple occasions as a “misunderstanding”. That was her favorite phrase for it once we’d broken up “the misunderstanding.”

She invited him to our next dance show, without telling me to try and get us back together. He turned up with a dozen red roses and he and my friend teamed up to try and get me to “double date” with her and her boyfriend for a post-show snack.

He’d drive me home after, so we could “make up”.

I called my parents and instead of asking for permission, I asked them to come get me and tell anyone who asked that I was grounded. I will FOREVER be grateful that they did just that.

I accepted his bouquet and stomached his goodbye kiss, then climbed into the car.

I didn’t put the roses in water and instead watched them wither in a vase by my window.

When I later texted him in no uncertain terms that I never wanted to see him again, he started stalking me. He eventually lost interest, but the damage was done.

I still have residual PTSD from parts of it.

And I will forever hate red roses.

 

For all of that, though. I’ve let go of HIM. I don’t think I’ve forgiven him, but he’s just so far beneath me and in such a different part of my life, it’s like I’ve dissociated. Compartmentalized so completely it’s like another person interacted with him.

The grudge I hold is with her.

My friend.

That girl I trusted is now a woman.

And she got married this weekend.

And it’s fucking me up.

 

The inside of my head is a mess of jealous, spiteful, angry, ugly thoughts and ill-will towards her and I DON’T WANT ANY OF IT. I want to dig the hatred out of that place in my chest where it’s lodged and throw it on a burning pyre, to combust and scatter to the winds.

I want to be free.

I want to heal.

I want to forgive her.

She was a silly little girl and she said and did a stupid thing. She couldn’t have known how it would affect me.

But it kills me that she has grown up to find love and happiness and acceptance while I’ve been through trauma after trauma and still struggle daily to be whole enough, communicative enough, brave enough for a healthy, lasting relationship.

I’m only still friends with her on social media because I keep trying to think of ways to confront her. There’s a part of me that desperately wants to start a conversation and get closure.

There’s another part that wants to post this blog, names included, on her wall and let the world see her shame.

But I don’t want some sort of sick revenge.

I want peace.

I want to let go.

It’s been just shy of 10 years.

Maybe now’s the time.

—

Update: I have removed this person from my social media all but one place and in that place I have locked her account so we can message if the time becomes right, but I do not see her posts. I feel good about this. I feel more closure than before. 

They Love Me

I have given them my name (my true name),

Entrusted them my body

We share

 

I am so terrified by this and yet so sure in turns.

 

They love me.

And I love them.

 

How is it that they know all the things I had intended to keep for myself?

How is it that I still feel them in my hands when they have gone?

Why do they smell of my favorite tea and how is it that my scent is always sweet, sugared, to them?

 

By what happy accident do we fit so well?

And by what tragedy should I remain apart

Always?

And yet so many times as they remind me,

For every line that rends the sand

I find myself whole.

 

I do not seek beyond my need

Nor beyond what they would give

 

This is new,

Strange.

Contentedness.

Solitary and yet so irrevocably ‘twined

Through that single red thread drawn taught

Connecting me

And them.

A Work in Progress

Six years ago, I wrote a short story for a writing workshop in college.

 

It was gorgeous and I was proud of it and wanted to expand it into a novel, but it was also SO fluffy.

 

The prettier, more experimental literary manipulations were empty. They didn’t draw attention to any sort of theme or deeper meaning. It also didn’t have much of a plot. It was just this snapshot of a cute couple moving into their first house.

 

Since moving into a space that is completely my own for the first time back in summer, I’ve been channeling a lot of creative energy and my mind keeps coming back to this piece.

Maybe it’s because it’s International Women’s Day and for the first time in a long time I have TONS of FANTASTIC women in my life/support system that have helped me get back to channeling my own uniquely feminine resonance.  Maybe it’s because things are so fucked up in US Politics and we’re gearing up for another election and I’m looking for some way ANY way my skills can make things better for marginalized groups. Maybe it’s because I’m opening myself up to experiences I’d never thought possible. Maybe it’s because I’ve been making better decisions about who I give my time to, and what activities I allocate my energy towards. Maybe it’s because I’ve had all my external needs met and exceeded so thoroughly that my cup is finally not only full, but GUSHING outwards.  Whatever the reason, I was driving home, tonight when an idea started to take shape.

 

Once I arrive home, I upended my entire apartment searching for the hard copy of the story I’d saved from the workshop. I broke out a pen, and have since been scribbling MADLY.

 

Just like the last time, the inspiration came from a fantasy. A flash of what could be.

Unlike the last time, the inspiration comes not from a need to ESCAPE my situation and convince myself to move forward, but from a place of contentment and fulfillment that has overflowed so completely that I cannot wait for what comes next and a need to offer hope to those who might previously have been trapped in as dark a place as I once was. 

 

Reworked, this piece has taken on solid form.

It has meaning.

 

If it pans out, this downy fairytale I concocted as a sort of “safe space” for myself during one of the harder moments of my life could take on a completely new shape and potentially serve a real PURPOSE.

 

It is very early on, and my writers block may very well not stay at bay but I am on FIRE for this idea like I have not been in over half a decade. 

I feel like I have purpose.

I am excited for the future.

I am excited to write and create.

I am so ready to finally have the excess love and passion to pour into my work that it might reach and warm the hearts and enrich the lives, of others.

The Time I Called the Suicide Prevention Hotline [Backdated]

[Backdated Draft- July 19, 2019. Needless to say, CW/TW- suicide, high levels of distress/compulsive behavior, and it’s just sad in parts]

Not clickbait. Go figure.

A lot can happen in two years. That guy I met through dancing turned out to be toxic (and yet still somehow he was the one that dumped ME after a year and change). That poem/song? About him and one of his friends who I now have an extremely complicated relationship with. I lost the deposit on two apartments when the breakup with “Unicorn” convinced me to put my long distance, potentially isolating, move on hold. One of my brothers sexually victimized me, so I rushed moving back out of my parents’ house and in with a dance acquaintance who turned out to have anger management issues which led to us getting a cease and desist from management for a list of complaints against her. Our lease is up in a couple weeks and since we’re one complaint away from eviction, we can’t stay, and I obviously can’t stay with her.

Given my tract record with flaky roommates (and my trust issues) and my lack of single friends to cohabitate with, I have to find something that my underpaying (but high level, high-stress, professional corporate management) job will support in an area that will afford me better job opportunities.

This all sounded fine and doable 3 months ago. But 90 days and countless fruitless efforts later and its getting down to the wire. I don’t make enough to live alone. And I don’t have other viable long-term options.

My roommate signed her new lease yesterday and has been excitedly regaling me with her high hopes and plans for the new place and the move and trying to make celebratory plans. I don’t know how to say “My hair is falling out, I’m literally picking chunks out of my skin with my own finger nails, and can’t sleep from stress over exactly the OPPOSITE experience from that which you’d like to celebrate, kindly F___ off!” in a way that won’t encourage her to bump our moveout date to HER moveout date.

Driving home from last night’s failed showing (read: bait-n-switch), I chewed all ten of my (VERY long, VERY sturdy) fingernails down to the quick, one by one. When the 150 minute drive came to a close, safely back in what will only be my parking space for another few weeks, and I shut the engine off I opened my mouth and screamed as loudly as my vocal chords and lung capacity allowed.

The sound made my ears ring in the enclosed space of the car whose grill is still missing 5 years after a poor driver’s gigantic trailer hitch punched through and then ripped it off because I’ve never had enough money to fix it.

The apartment was not only NOT the unit pictured in the listing I’d responded to, it was in the sketchiest of sketchy neighborhoods with no on-site parking and no overnight street parking for the surrounding 10 miles.To get to the building from the metered space I found after circling the block for 37 minutes, I had to walk through a long alleyway where a man smoking a skunky, cheap cigar catcalled me and proceeded to follow me until a younger guy on a bike entering the alley from the other direction approached us. Then I had to wade through a mixture of garbage and the excrement of the local homeless population to get to the informal mexican market blocking the only sidewalk that led to the building.

Normally, the sight and smell of such a gathering would make me smile and look for the kindly abuelita sure to be there selling the tamales of my childhood- aromatic and heavy with lard, lovingly molded by honest hands. Instead, the crush of people on an already narrow sidewalk made it hard for me to breathe as I wove through the crowd. Just before I reached the entrance, hot oil from a portable deep fryer splashed onto my arm as a woman dumped a fresh batch of something I couldn’t see into the scalding vat.

Then, potential trauma and physical injury aside, the apartment was completely different than the two pictured in the listing- which explained why the owner stammered something like “w-wha uh oh, yeah…”  when I referenced the features I most liked from the photos on our call setting up the tour, and probably why he wouldn’t answer the office girl’s phone calls when I double checked that I was in the right place upon entering the unit.

I have a spreadsheet of all the places I’ve contacted with space for notes, date viewed, whether I applied, etc. I’ve printed it and fill out the blank spaces post-tour or cross off listings that get leased to other people, or that contain dealbreakers.

Adding notes in my car after the doomed tour I realized I have two pages of crossed-off listings and a handful of places left to view, despite scouring rental sites and message boards daily for new opportunities.

I’m running out of options.

I’m running out of time.

I’m already out of fingernails.

I haven’t slept more than 3 hours strung together since mid-June.

 

This morning, three more emails appeared in my inbox notifying me that listings I’d saved had been pulled from the market.

I have 6 tours set up this weekend and all of them are backups to my backups and about $150/month more than I can afford without extreme caution. I’ll probably still need a side-job and will live hand-to-mouth at best.

My anxiety is so high that I’m having trouble staying focused at work. I’m rereading call logs 4 and 5 times without absorbing the meaning. Missing Slack pings. Forgetting internal abbreviations and where to find necessary items. I manage a team of engagement specialists, I can’t be DOING that. I’m responsible for other people’s ability to operate effectively.

I know full well I’m overexercising in an attempt to get my head straight. I lifted heavy, full body today on my lunch break. Deadlifting my own weight loaded onto a bar. Squatting more than that. Lat pulldowns so heavy that without the padded knee-bar locking my legs down snug, I’d come off the seat. After work I ran 3 miles, then walked two more. A couple nights I’ve gone to my complex’s fitness center after midnight for a 2nd or third workout. Anything to exhaust me enough for some shuteye.

My left knee is protesting. Every muscle aches to some extent. I’m fatigued. Covered in scrapes, bruises, blood blisters and other marks of my overexertion.

My roommate came home, tonight and started grilling me about whether I’d gone to the front office to sign our intent to vacate form (I had), whether I was really attached to some of the stuff I’d loaned her over the last year, when I thought I’d be free for initial inspection, if I wanted to hire cleaners once our furniture is out, and when I’d have a weekend to come see her new place (I HAVE to see the view and the pool is AWESOME). Then she wanted me to help her choose an outfit and help with hair and makeup decisions for date-night.

She left and I knew it was time to organize my list. Check the sites. Write names and numbers to call tomorrow morning on yet another green sticky-note for when this weekend’s tours don’t pan out.

It was like the ringing in my ears was back from last night’s scream and like I was under water all at once. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hit something, or I wanted someone to hit me. I wanted to sleep. I wanted nothing. I wanted silence. I wanted to not have to think. To not have to move. To not have to do anything.

There’s this voice in my head. It’s been there since I was 14. It comes and goes and it’s just been so very loud lately. Sometimes it whispers, sometimes it mentions casually in passing, and sometimes it grows limbs and hands and digs its fingers into me, screaming so loudly I can almost feel its hot breath in my face: WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS??? JUST FUCKING LEAVE ALREADY!

It’s always there, reminding me that if I just ended it, I wouldn’t have to do this. I wouldn’t have to struggle. I wouldn’t have to hurt. I wouldn’t have to worry or shake or stay up at night or be disappointed or brave dangerous neighborhoods or make long drives or pack up all the things I never completely unpacked.

I’ve been through worse things than this. Much worse.

I’ve had to move and had limited options before. More than once. 

I don’t know why the voice was so loud tonight. It is the worst it’s ever been and I was terrified. 

I’ve been so good about my self-care. I’ve been doing such a good job of taking care of myself, investing in myself. I simultaneously wanted out and didn’t want all my hard work to go to waste. The confusion just made me founder more.

So I called the hotline. 

I’ve never done that before.  

The thought of saying “I want to end it” to a stranger, when I can’t even ask for help from my own friends and family had never made sense to me. Too much loss of control. Too much openness.

The more I think about it, the more I think it’s more specific than that:

Asking for help from someone that I will never be able to repay just rubs me the wrong way.

But I called.

And spoke with a woman who- as every therapist I’ve ever been open with has- struggled audibly to absorb the thoughts transcribed above and the laundry list of traumas littering my past.

But she pulled me back.

She pointed out all the tiny blessings I’d been missing.

But she did it in a way where it was really ME doing the pointing.

I lied a lot in the beginning.

I didn’t want to get carted away on a psyche hold, but once I got through the mandatory and “survey” type questions at the beginning, I had already calmed a bit. As she asked me about my night, my day, my week, backtracked my month, my year, my life in summary, I spoke.

I told this woman, Naomi, more than I’d ever told any living person about me in a single sitting.

And it sounded awful. Really awful.

I don’t think that I’d ever truly allowed myself to feel like I’d gone through anything serious.

I never accepted the depth and severity of the trauma and hardship I’d experienced- and there’s been a lot.

“There’s always someone who has it worse.”

It’s a trite cliché but I’d worn it like a badge of… not exactly honor, but I never let myself truly feel bad for myself.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s not that bad.”

It is. Or it was.

Being able to let myself feel bad, acknowledging my own feelings, allowed me to let them go. Or at least work through them.

This woman got me to let everything out. She helped me itemize my support system, and see a practical course of action forward.

Towards the end she even made me laugh. I don’t remember what about, but I remember the laughter, thick through the remnants of ugly tears. I remember the sound startled me. It sounded out of place.

But it felt good to laugh for a moment.

 

[Afterword]

I felt embarrassed and wound up rushing off the line once I realized I was feeling better.

And I will never be able to repay Naomi or the Suicide Prevention line for that night.

They did what they are there to do. They saved me that night.

More than that, though, something shifted after that conversation.

My life wasn’t just spared, it was altered.

Accepting the kindness of strangers, accepting and really facing the fact that I am/was in so much more pain than I’d allowed myself to realized allowed me to move forward in a more honest mindfulness and find more targeted solutions and self care.

I found my current home 3 days later.

I live 20 minutes from my best friend and goddaughters. I live about the same distance from the dance venue I frequent most often. My neighbors are the best I’ve had throughout my adult life.

I’ve gotten the right kind of help and started doing the right things to help myself.

A lot of the good in my life I can take credit for on my own but a large majority of it comes from my community. My neighborhood. The dance community. A number of new friends. A lot of those things wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t realized it’s okay to not be okay, it’s okay to ask for help, it’s okay to feel embarassed afterwards as long as you get the help you need and continue to soldier on. You can’t get help if you pretend your invulnerable.

The Suicide Prevention hotline helped me make a hard left towards being okay with being vulnerable.

…

 

If you’re struggling: Hold on. Just a little bit more. Just a couple more minutes.

Long enough for a phone line to connect:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Call 1-800-273-8255

Available 24 hours everyday

I’m Back (filler post)

I…… have no excuses, really, other than to say I’ve been in a bad way for a couple years. This really is just a filler post and if you’re not interested in a bulleted overview of my last few years of drama, go ahead and click away.  I hope to have much more entertaining posts in store in the future.

I never really had many regular readers on this blog (if you are/were one of them you get all the virtual hugs for sticking around despite how depression-spirally my posts got followed by this huge lag) but I feel bad having left things the way I did.

I do have 16 mostly complete drafts that I never posted for… basically the reasons I covered back in my Agoraphobia post.

They’re also just all…. very dark. Full of trigger warnings and really, really traumatic, dramatic, and just plain sad content that I couldn’t bring myself to share.

Admittedly, this probably meant that I held onto a lot of things a lot longer than I would have otherwise but can’t change things now. We can only move forward, and that’s what I intend to do.

So, I may rework and post some of those stories as we go, but in general- I want to move forward and try to be more positive. I’m still here for “finding beauty in negative spaces” and sharing my uncanny ability to fall into awkward situations (and down stairs, into holes, etc) but I’m in a GREAT place compared to where I was, probably along the same lines as where I was when I started this blog, and started social dancing all those years ago.

So I will recap major points, and then jump into what brings me back:

-The Unicorn did some really crappy things to me, and involved the out of state “ex” gf he never really broke things off with.

-My youngest brother did some crappy things to me which led to me needing to move out of my parents’ house for my own safety and wellbeing ASAP

-Unicorn dumped me with less than a week before I was scheduled to fly out, and sign papers on one of the two places I’d finally found and put deposits down on

-Did not move to San Francisco. Defaulted on 2 deposits.

-Somehow became VERY CLOSE to The Unicorn’s ex.

-Went to Pride for the first time. I’m not “out” but I’m also no longer 100% closeted. Validated my own sexuality and shut down the internal monologue of “it doesn’t matter” that comes with “passing”.

-Moved in with a dance acquaintance a month or two later. My “room” was a doorless den off the front room but rent was CHEAP.

-Took a trip to Minnesota for a dance exchange and to hang out with a childhood friend, (and Unicorn’s ex), made new dance friends, and what was once a “closeness” with the Unicorns Ex turned into a very sweet crushey/snuggly/romancey thing.

-Back home got a promotion at work, bought an Annual Pass to Disneyland

-Abused a LOT of substances to avoid the fact that my roommate was a very needy person with poor boundaries and I am a person who needs a lot of alone time and my own space.

-Positively ruined 3 romantic relationships.

-Took up aerial silks

-Roommate has anger management issues (and others) that were kept under wraps early on. Had a fight with our neighbor that resulted in us receiving a cease and desist threatening eviction and itemizing every complaint against roommate&her temper the duration of her tenancy.

-Lived in constant fear of what roommate would do/say/cause & eviction because I didn’t have a lot of options.

-Managed to rekindle a previous romantic relationship

-Lease renewal notice came up, decided continuing to live next to problematic neighbors in a complex that had already threatened eviction was not a good plan.

-Finally got up the guts to tell roommate I didn’t think living together was a good idea.

-Guy I was dating was also looking for a place. Asked if wanted to look together. Then when options were found, backed out so he could open a dance studio out of his own space.

-Had a VERY DIFFICULT TIME finding a new place

-Called the suicide hotline for the first time in my life (I have a draft on the experience and might post it- it was a very helpful experience)

-A back up to my back ups, studio apartment in a 100+ year old building turned out to be in a beautiful neighborhood, near my best friend/goddaughters, bigger than expected, and all-inclusive utilities and my application was accepted JUST UNDER THE WIRE.

-Pretty consistent physical discomfort turned into pain as I was packing. Turned out I’d been injured for a long time and it was getting worse. Not allowed to lift more than 20 lbs at a time.

-Quit silks.

-I moved. Focused on getting healthy/pain-free, turning this space into a home, and prioritizing building/strengthening a real relationship.

-Neglected friendships, withdrew from just about everything, sank ever deeper into growing depression, and continued to succumb to eating disorder that flared back when things started going south with Unicorn.

-Was asked to DJ a Fusion event and played a KILLER set.

-The Guy I was dating turned out to be emotionally unavailable and withheld his feelings until after things came to an (unnecessarily dramatic and childish) end. But ummmmmm we’re rooming on the Blues Cruise in a month, so stay tuned for THAT debacle.

-For some reason, finally breaking things off with that guy I’d dated for over a year (while excruciatingly painful for a few weeks) left me with more relief than misery and seems to have marked the beginning of my rise from the mire of my own depression.

-Started reading instead of netflixing at night, listening to insightful podcasts instead of rewatching youtube videos while doing chores, and listening to music during workouts or while doing “nothing”.

-Started doing one “creative” thing a day.

-Started working a 12 step program for some of my more codependent tendencies

-Cut all substances for 3 months, stone cold sobriety. I stay away from binge drinking, now and mainly contain my use of cannabis to nights of rampant insomnia.

-Stopped tracking macros and only checking calories at end of day for more intuitive eating.

-Prioritized friends and family time and schedule 1-1 time with at least one person I care about at least every other week.

-Prioritized dance again and joined a “program” offered by a local studio to improve community and make vast improvements to ability and styling in hopes of making up for time lost by living far away from the dance scene and miring myself in toxic relationships and my own misery.

-I put a chorus and a blues progression (chords) to “Id” and have written my first song in close to 10 years. It’s coming along nicely and if it continues I intend to look for opportunities to share/perform it in a blues/dance setting. The experience has been really therapeutic.

And that’s where I’m at. I’m feeling good again and hope to be able to share some of that here.

If you’ve read all of this- sorry! It is just kind of a catchup filler post. HOWEVER I intend to begin a thread here under the working title of “Cult Chronicles” because that group I joined starts meeting this weekend and I’ve recently come into some, we’ll call it INTERESTING information about it and the people running it.

So stay tuned!

ID

My body took a walk the other night.

Without me.

By all accounts she meant no harm

And demonstrated wit and charm

Enough

To convince all parties

She was me

My body had something she wanted

Without me

She didn’t mince a single word

Or I guess it’s what I’ve heard

Since

She took my eyes when she was

Being me

My body swam in anesthetic

Without me

Numb she laughed for more abuse

But now the pain of every bruise

Each tear and consequence

Belong to me

My body took a lover

Without me

She used my face, my lips, my smile

And MY lover so beguiled

That now he keeps comparing her

To me

 

Talking to Strangers

When you’re a kid, they tell you not to talk to strangers.

It seems like these days I do exactly the opposite of that. I talk to strangers. I go out, drive long distances by myself at night, and then dance with strangers.

Recently I went on a blues event on a cruise ship and I roomed with a stranger. We slept in the same room having only just met that day.

I took an acro-yoga class from a stranger. I then joined a group led by this same stranger to go wander around a strange country for the first time. On that excursion, I had lunch sitting beside that stranger. I ate the organs of a strange animal (I don’t speak Spanish, the natives tried to warn me, it smelled good, it was good, I ate it) on a taco.

I went to a tequila shop and a bar, and I drank a good quantity of liquor with that same stranger. When we kept accidentally uttering the same phrases as each other or finishing the other’s sentences; I stopped speaking my thoughts out loud because it was eerie.

That stranger asked me to dance that night (if you’re not familiar, I do Blues dancing, it wasn’t some seedy cruise ship club grind) and then spent a good amount of time sitting and talking with me in a dimly lit corner. We danced again.

And again.

And the last song.

It was the last night of the cruise and we took a “survivors photo” of everyone who made it to the end of late night dancing at nearly 5 am. The stranger tucked me in next to him and smiled.

I didn’t want the night to end.

Neither did he.

We had to be out of our rooms in 3 hours for checkout.

The stranger asked if I’d be up for roaming the ship instead of sleeping.

The stranger’s hair was purple, blue, teal, just a touch pink, and tied away from his face in a long unicorn tail down his back. His coat was gold brocade. His smile was soft and warm and I wanted to wrap myself in it. He didn’t feel so strange.

I said yes.

He followed me to my room so I could get a jacket. My dress was short, and thin, black linen with delicate puffed sleeves in lace.

I tucked my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and followed him back up the winding stairs. We glided along the empty, silent hallways of the ship together. For once there was no ambient noise. No frat boys falling off of deck chairs. No one smoking. No music.

We found our way into the balcony of the theater. There was large high-backed, circular booths overlooking a stage hung in gaudy glittering gold curtains that blazed appallingly in full light, but in the quiet hours, under the dimmed chandeliers, merely twinkled softly. We slipped into a center booth and sat side by side.

He tucked me under an arm and I leaned in, comfortable, tired, eyes still aglow. The day had been so full and lovely. I peeked at his face and our eyes met. There was no pressure in his gaze. Everything was soft, neutral.

I knew from our conversation at that dance that we had a good amount in common. I also knew this was the last night of a cruise in an event that drew people from all over the country and while he lives in the same state I do, he’s pretty far away. If he was looking for something in me, logic dictates that it probably wasn’t the start of something serious.

When I looked in his face, I saw no expectation but I also knew he was going to kiss me at some point. I looked away quickly and said something vague. I felt like the situation should scare me. I felt like I should distance myself. I felt like I should feel something other than the utter calm and peace I felt sitting so close to him.

He’s a stranger. He was a stranger.

I have a good amount of guilt in me. It follows me. It dictates a lot of what I do. For some reason, I felt like I should feel guilty or ashamed. I felt like I should feel that I was doing something wrong.

For the life of me, though, I couldn’t muster the guilt.

He read my palm.

This may seem like nothing to some people. Or hokey. Or occult. To me, it felt like home.

My childhood best friend used to read my palm. The library of our Junior High had a selection of nonfiction on fortune telling. We read palms and tarot. She bought me my first set of tarot cards and used to swear “Goddess!” instead of “God!”

As readings go, the one that took place in the theatre wasn’t anything to write home about, but when he finished with the love line and the markings of old loves that he said on my palm were thin and “fading away” (and indeed they are), I realized I wanted him to kiss me, just like I’d wanted him to ask me to dance,  and that if he didn’t do it soon, I was going to kiss him.

I just wanted a kiss. It didn’t have to mean anything.

I liked him, and I wanted to kiss him.

There’s this dumb quote I had on a piece of “room decor” in college which I secretly hold a firm belief in- the soul can be seen through the eyes and felt with a kiss.

I wanted to sip ever so slightly from his soul.

If we’re being honest, at this point in the night, I knew I wanted to know more about him. He’s too fascinating and too similar to me not to draw me in. The more we talked the less “strange” he became to me.

He did kiss me.

He leaned in slowly. That same soft, smile on his face. No expectation. No force. His movements were very clearly defined and so, so very slow. He gave me every opportunity to move away, give him my cheek for the friendly Europeanesque greeting that had become so commonplace on the ship among the dancers that weekend, or otherwise decline the advance.

I leaned in ever so slightly and my eyes drifted shut just as his lips touched mine for perhaps (not exaggerating) the softest, lightest kiss I’ve ever had. It was just a soft, drawn out, lingering brush of lips. Think of how you’d kiss something incredibly valuable but made of spun sugar.

I caught my breath and he backed up just enough to give me space to initiate the next kiss. When I leaned in, his hand came up and tangled in my hair.

We kissed for a while and traced each other’s hands. He traced the line of my cheek with his nose and traded me Eskimo kisses. It was peculiar and perfect.

The rest of the night (wee hours of the morning as it were) is a blur of talking, kissing, joking, lips brushing throats, laughing, kissing, his nails trailing over my calves, watching the light play through the ocean of colors in his hair, and kiss after kiss after kiss.

We were interrupted when the staff started walking in through the doors downstairs on their way to other parts of the ship. Music came back on through the speakers. We ducked lower in our booth and listened to the ship coming back to life.

We eventually decided we should leave the theater. It wasn’t that we weren’t supposed to be there, but it also wasn’t that we were allowed to be there. “American Pie” came on over the speakers and he offered me a hand to dance. We did until another staff member burst through a door and we guiltily broke apart giggling and ran for the doors.

I’m almost certain we weren’t supposed to be in the room overnight because only one of about 10 doors was unlocked. We’d been sealed in and hadn’t noticed.

The magic was over. If ever I understood how Cinderella felt at midnight it was that night. We walked apart from each other and I felt the distance. There had been enough talking and laughing through the night that I didn’t want it to be all there was.

I began steeling myself for it being a “cruise fling”.

He kissed me quite passionately in the elevator but stopped when the doors opened.

He said “see you at breakfast” and I agreed but only half believed it.

Oddly (and nerve-wrackingly) enough, I was wrong.

When the ship officially came into port and the wifi came back on, I was seated across from the man we’re now going to refer to as The Unicorn because (spoilers) he is very much not a stranger to me any longer. Our shoes were tucked under our seats and we each had a foot resting on the other’s thigh.

He watched me sleepily push scrambled eggs around my plate and winked or blew me a kiss each time I met his eyes.

He eventually made a friend of his switch him places so he could sit with an arm around me in the booth.

Six of us napped in the booth, waiting to disembark. There are a couple photos of me sleeping tucked under his arm, head cradled on his chest.

He added me on Facebook.

His last name is my first name.

When we disembarked, I wanted to cry.

We didn’t find a moment alone for a goodbye kiss between the booth and customs and when we tried to kiss each other on the cheek at the same moment at breakfast resulted in an accidental and public peck on the lips, I didn’t think he’d kiss me goodbye in the group outside the port. In front of people.

He did.

Hugged me, then pulled my face close and kissed me soundly.

Smiled and said we should keep in touch.

…

Yesterday, I bought the plane ticket for my second trip out to see him. [The first trip is a fairy tale for another time]

We have 2-hour conversations about food and 6-8 hour conversations about everything into the wee hours of the morning. He still reads my mind, and I still accidentally finish his sentences.

It’s still a bit early to say, as it could still all go to Hell in a handbasket, but at this point, it’s looking like talking to strangers is something I could stand to do more often.

Occasionally you might find a Unicorn.

 

Dogs do it…

I’m very nervous this week. I’m going on a trip to spend time getting to know someone I don’t know well but like so far and while I’ve got a week and a day or two to go before I actually see him, so about a week before I should really be nervous, I am already working myself up into a nauseous ball of anxiety jusssssst about every morning.

And then a good 6-11 times throughout the day after that.

My parents (who I’m living with temporarily) have this rescue dog that was abused as a puppy and then turned out on the street. He was wild and absolutely TERRIFIED of people. As it turns out, that’s a horrible combo and he drove them nearly insane for the first year and a half or so of owning him.

He’s still difficult.

But he doesn’t cower when we pass strangers on the street anymore.

My mom doesn’t like walking him because he pulls, but I love running him around the block. He likes to stretch his legs and I like feeling safe in going outside with him by my side. We make a good team.

He wags his tail now. He never used to.

He’s also more receptive to my anxiety than any other animal I’ve every met.

Even when I’m outwardly perfectly fine. Even before the heart starts racing, and things start to feel off-kilter, he will come running and just delicately, like he’s afraid to touch me or doesn’t want to scare me off, leans in and sniffs my skin: in the bend of my arm, my wrist, behind my ears, along my hairline.

Then he’ll gently lick my face.

This is the only time this dog is slow or gentle about anything. He’s usually just a careening ball of energy.

Today I was starting to feel the nerves and he did this. When he licked my face I burst into tears (which he then licked up too).

He let me hug his neck for a bit (again, it’s rare to get him to hold still for a second, we can’t keep ANY weight on him at all).

He wagged his tail.

Without thinking I said, “How do you do it?”

And he looked at me because he doesn’t speak Human, and then ran to get his tennis ball.

I don’t understand. He had such a hard life before he came to live with us. His skull was fractured and he had stitches and scars when they adopted him.

Yet he wags his tail and loves on me and trusts me not to hurt him. I can’t do that.

I can’t do that.

I WANT that kind of starry-eyed cheer. I want to be able to look forward to spending time with someone great without automatically wondering how I’ll mess things up, or if they’ll hurt me.  Worrying I might be wasting time or doing something wrong.

My mom likes to watch The Dog Whisperer and after a bit, I remembered a segment of him saying that “dogs live in the now.”

That explains how Crazy (who I call Froedrick, or Frisky, or Friendly, or Dog-Dog because I find the name just a touch sad and offensive) lives the way he does.

I guess by that logic, he’s not living in the days his skull was fractured. He’s not worried about being on the street and finding food for himself. He’s not thinking about the man that hurt him whenever I pet his ears.

He’s thinking about the tennis ball in the yard waiting for him, how nice the sunshine feels at nap time on the porch, what I smell like and how it sounds when I say nice things to him.

I guess if I want to be like him, I need to stop dwelling on what could happen and what did happen and think about what is happening.

Which is really NOT going to help me when I get on a plane next week, but for the time being I guess I can think of the now instead of hyperventilating about “the next Friday.”

Return to Port

I am not happy with my life.

I haven’t touched this blog in ages. It seemed wrong to put the negativity and utter loneliness that’s been weighing me down these past months into these pages and out into the world. I may touch on it later, and catch any hangers on up to speed, but safe to say I have been living a life of quiet, alarming, desperation and it has been stamping out each breath of creativity that has managed to rise to the surface.

But despite exactly how bad THINGS got, somehow I didn’t realize that I, all-caps-I, I wasn’t happy until this morning, driving home from a weekend cruise and thinking about fast food.

I didn’t sleep much on the cruise. Maybe a few hours a night Thursday through Sunday. It was something like a dance exchange for Blues, so with activities in the day and dancing at night there just wasn’t time.

Last night after the dancing stopped and everyone started going back to their cabins to pack and cram in a few hours of shuteye, I was aglow with the bliss of a perfect evening and excellent dances. I didn’t want the night to end, so when a new friend asked if I wanted to just stay up the 2-3 hours until we needed to start vacating our rooms I dragged a hoodie on over my dress and together we wandered the empty corridors of the ship.

Finally, we tucked ourselves away in a balcony booth in the empty theatre. In the warm silence, dimmed chandeliers made the heavy gold curtain on the stage twinkle softly and he read my palm.

As readings go it was vague but entertaining, and his hand on mine was warm and heavy and pleasant in the wee hours of the morning. It wasn’t the palmistry that pierced me, but the plain questions he asked of me as we continued talking.

We’d spent a good deal of the day together in a group, wandering the streets of Ensenada. I’d never been out of the country and the day couldn’t have been better. He led us away from the tourist traps and into a restaurant where weathered working men stood at the counter for a quick comida on their midday break. He brought us into a shop where the owners recognized him from years past and poured us samples of a more fantastic variety of tequila than you could imagine. We sat in a closet of a dive bar, discussed and sampled sweet bread from vendors in the street and wandered in to giggle at “SEX BOUTIQUE” like the adults we are. We had a good amount of information on each other but other than a few minutes alone at breakfast the morning before, and a chain of exquisitely slow and close and intricate dances at the end of the night, we hadn’t spent much time one on one.

He asked “If work goes wherever you go, why don’t you travel?”

I couldn’t answer. It hadn’t occurred to me to just up and do something like that. I’ll work from a friend’s house so I can hang out with them, but hadn’t thought to go to any of the places I want to visit.

He asked what my goals are for my dancing and again, I had to give serious thought.

Driving home once we got into port I turned off the radio and drove home rolling over the trip. It was light and happy. I felt good, more pondering than dwelling.

I hadn’t slept and my vision was getting a bit fuzzy as I drove. I was also hungry, since I’d only picked at my breakfast between a growing hangover and preferring to doze in a booth with about six other dancers in something of a “cuddle puddle”.

Traffic was bad and I started considering the onramps coming up to grab something to eat. After 3-4 days of just going, grabbing and eating quality food, perfectly ripe fruit, and piping hot coffee, nothing sounded good. All my go-tos also happen to be “mexican food” chains and after the handmade tortillas, rich organ meat, sweet molé, and the cold, sugary cola of Ensenada, there was no way a “classic Del Taco” was going to pass my lips. I passed exit after exit and didn’t pull off. I thought of getting sushi (always my favorite) and couldn’t bring myself to.

The magic had rubbed off of the edges. The trip had been everything I’d hoped for and more. I was so caught up in what I was doing and seeing and tasting and feeling that I only took about 60 photos all told.

I think it was in trying to console myself or find something to look forward to that I had the realization: I am not happy with my life.

Again, though it wasn’t a negative thought, despite the fact that it came from my day to day being so hollow that I couldn’t find something to keep me going. It was freeing in a way.

I keep turning the theatre over in my head: my legs in the lap of a man I’d really only just started getting to know, his hand on my knee, my head on his shoulder under the low shimmer of the gold curtain, talking about learning to say yes to things. It should have been as far out of my comfort zone as I could possible get, but somehow it was just like the warm comfort of resting with an old friend. It was what I wanted. I remember the moment I decided that my goal for the cruise was to dance with him. I remember the moment I knew he would kiss me, and the moment I decided I wanted him to. I got to that moment by saying yes to the experiences I wanted and not worrying that my friends didn’t want to do what I wanted to do, or that I might have to talk to strangers. I felt fulfilled.

I’m not happy with my life. I am very lucky in a lot of ways, I know that. I have my needs met and have time for leisure, surplus for luxuries, and it’s steady. I am very careful to count my blessings and I think that somewhere along the way that morphed into some fabricated love of my job, and my routine, and what I’m doing and creating (or not creating) and putting out in the world.

I’m not happy with it, though. I’m not fulfilled. I am thankful, but not happy.

I can fix it, though. The things that I want from life I can take. I am not helpless in this. One of the characteristics of depression is feelings of hopelessness or helplessness. There are similar triggers for my agoraphobia and anxiety. The awareness that for once I can fix what’s wrong has been not just the silver lining, but the ray of hot, hopeful sun breaking through the cloud.

I want to write so I opened this blog again to talk about my life. I will give that novel outline a new look, rework my characters. I want to create. I will write a song about the beautiful man I met at sea with blue hair and mischief in his eyes. I will move that harmonica out of the top drawer, and play with it now and again. I will start covering the songs I like again on guitar. I will choreograph dances, and learn those routines that make me feel something when I see them online.

I want to express through my dancing as easily as I breathe; that’s the goal. So I’ll keep working. I’ll go to exchanges. I won’t skip weekends. I’ll go to venues I don’t like. I’ll dance with strangers.

I want to travel and eat and see. I want to ride horses and do acro yoga and keep getting stronger and watch the muscles ripple and glide no matter what other people think it looks like. So I will keep up my new program and work another one after. Work on pull ups. Keep working on floating my handstands.

I’m tired of complicated relationships with men who can’t commit or are missing something. I want someone I can be passionate about. Who has time for me. Who wants to adventure. I don’t want to get so caught up in finding SOMEONE that I take ANYONE. I see friends doing this and I don’t want that. I’d rather wait for someone who takes my breath away.

My job is nothing close to what I want or have planned for myself. While I’m not going to run out and start looking for something new immediately, I will start to take a more active part in my professional development. Our company is innovative and I know that if I put in the effort I can at least change what I’m able to contribute and create through work.

 

Productive therapy. I’m going to DO something about this. I deserve to be happy.

 

This all seems cliché in a very “Eat, Pray, Love” kind of way, but it’s how it happened. I’ve always wanted to travel and this trip reminded me that while I am afraid of a lot of things, I am also an independent person, and capable, and I think I may have forgotten until I made some decisions purely for myself.

It was also just a lovely adventure and I’ll probably be talking more about that later, and maybe playing catchup. I have missed this.

I hope someone reads this. I hope this puts something good out for others to consume. THAT is the hope perching just inside my ribs and I can finally hear it singing clearly.