Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Rebirth

It’s been a good long while since I’ve published anything to this journal. Not long after my last post, there was a pandemic followed by the very real separation from my ex husband. And to be honest, a year ago this time, I was NOT doing well.

A year ago this time, I was depressed, heart-broken, apathetic. I wasn’t eating, drinking a bit too much to escape the long hours of the night, knowing full well The Dread would still be there when I awoke, sober and unwell. I cried a lot, face splotched, eyes red and swollen, stopping only to start again. Screamed into the gaping maw of the abyss, wishing I could vanish into The Aether, disintegrate into the culminated quintessence of the outer realms.

And then there were the moments of passivity. The lethargy keeping me in bed, unbathed and indifferent to the outside world.

At those junctures, I sat with the grief. It was uncomfortable. It was loathsome. It broke me in new ways which I had not before encountered. Were it not for the care and compassion of my roommate, I probably would have made some decisions of the Not-So-Great variety.

Time trudged. Wounds bled. Sleep rarely came.

Currently, I write this feeling quite disconnected from that place I was in a year ago. Though it didn’t originally feel like it, it didn’t take too long for the clock to pick up the pace. Hours turned into days, days into weeks, etc., etc. I eventually came to accept that what I was mourning was The Potential of What Could Have Been, not What Was. And that no matter what I did, no matter how much work I put in, no matter what I would sacrifice – it would simply never Be. We were two diametrically opposed people when it came to what was necessary for us to thrive in a relationship, let alone a marriage. And I could only be responsible for my part, not his.

I threw myself into work, art, pool. Finding things to fill the empty spaces in my schedule. Soon, solitude seemed like this girl’s new best friend. I could not and would not be emotionally available for anyone. I was an island. A Remote, smack dab in the middle of treacherous waters, guarded by jagged rocks, full of poisonous fruit and wildly violent animals, Island.

To say I was at peace with this would be a marked understatement.

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Over the summer, I slowly dipped my toes back into the dating pool. I went out for dinners. Multiples were duds. I questioned my worth. I considered a nunnery. I did manage to find a couple people I liked and were all around decent humans, but there still seemed to be an emptiness within. I was content with this, though. My Island approach was perfect in keeping myself a safe distance from any usurpers to my Peace.

During this time, I reconnected with an old acquaintance whom I hadn’t really spoken to in years. We always had a mutual respect for each other and genuinely found one another pleasant to be around in group settings, but nothing truly out of the ordinary. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t always felt drawn to his energy and person, but I knew nothing would ever come of that. A harmless personality crush of which I shoved to the back of my mind. And I knew nothing would come of it now as I was enjoying my life with zero romantic commitments or things of that nature. Bit by bit, we began to a build a real friendship which never had a chance to get off the ground because of life in general. There was an immediate comfortability, an unabashed openness in conversation, an exchange of the ups and downs we had both gone through in our lives.

A mutual understanding, empathy, and compassion for the traumas we suffered but survived. Devoid of pity or condescension. It was refreshing and ultimately freeing. No pretense, no facades, just two adults being straightforwardly earnest.

One day I woke up realizing… I had been usurped.

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It’s been a couple months now. I feel things with him that I never thought possible. A warmth, a genuine understanding of why I am who I am. We share knowledge of each other which has not been outwardly exchanged. Simply an unspoken comprehension of where we’ve been, what we’ve gone through, who we are at this very moment. I have never been as emotionally available and vulnerable as I am with him. Communication is constant and key. Neither one us has ever had the idealistic idiocy to believe in the romantic notion of “Love of My Life” but we cannot shake the kismet of our being together, considering the impressions we have made upon one another and all the ways we have come in and out of each other’s lives over the past decade.

“It was never the right time” is a phrase which comes and goes. We joke about the Universe and how we had to experience the things we did in order to find our way to This Place, where we both reside. We talk for hours and hours, late into the night, fighting through the bleary eyed arrival of sleepiness just to get in one last sentence. We are happy together, sad and “homesick” when we are apart.

It is all so vomit-inducing sappy.

I am okay with this. I am not who I was a year ago. I am new, I am open, I am reborn with all the enthusiasm and faith of someone who believes in Santa Clause and making wishes upon falling stars. I look forward to the future and whatever it may hold. I am in love with a person who loves Me. The Real Me, not the idea of or a projection of what they think I should be.

And it’s fucking beautiful.

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Miscarriage of Marriage

A year ago, I lost a baby.

Now, almost exactly to the date, I lost my marriage.

One could make the assumption the former might have something to do with the latter, and they’d be partially correct. But not even close to completely.

The longer I’ve dwelled on our past, as I cycle through the years we’ve spent together, I am seeing here and there, the spots we needed to nurture. The moments we had a chance to love and support one another, but instead shut down into silence and resentment. We should have… We could have… but all too cognizent of the We Didn’ts.

When I lost what would have been our third child, I did what I always do. I shrugged it off and continued on. Because that’s what Strong Women Do, right? We keep going. We shake that shit off. We straighten our backs, square our shoulders and with a head held high, just keep fucking moving. Time stand stills for no one, for no thing, especially the loss of life.

I kept the house. I minded our other two children, who were oblivious to the fact that they were swindled out of a third partner in crime. I had moments of severe heart-wrenching grief when the tears would just tumble out unannounced and unwanted and my sobbing became desperate gasps for air. They’d run to hug me causing my body to shake and convulse, for their love and concern was too much for my already broken heart to handle. Of course, this all happened when he wasn’t around. He was a hard-working man, already stressed about so many other things. There was no way he’d be able to handle this.

And the divide grew.  What was once a ravine, became a valley.

We were well on our way to becoming the Grand Canyon.

The disconnect had always been there. He equated love with sex. I equated sex with the previous abuse and long term wear of being a woman. I wanted kind words. Appreciation. Tenderness. He wanted physical touch. Blowjobs. Wild fucks.

I wanted to feel loved as a person.

He wanted to feel loved by being considered desirable.

And we never found a way to intersect. So, we drifted. And drifted. Until we were both two people who loved the idea of who we thought the other person was when we first met. But we obviously weren’t.

I felt he didn’t love me.

He felt I didn’t love him.

We both gave up.

Losing the baby was just the impetus towards the downward spiral. If there had been any chance for saving what was left our union, it was now gone. Yet, we went through the motions. After all, we had a new house needing attention. Two little boys we loved and were trying our best to parent without letting them see our lack of care for the other. I reverted to my failsafe shell of apathy. He started drinking more and staying out and away from our crap existence.

But eventually, it was me. I was the one who put the nail in the coffin. Self-preservation is cold. Heartless. Indifferent. Self-preservation is a wounded wild beast with only one directive.

Survive. It didn’t matter who got hurt or how, but survive. Get out, Get out alive and with what you have left.

I sit here writing this, the unfaithful wife. The woman who strayed. The disloyal. The selfish. The fork-tongued Jezebel. I blink away the wetness gathering at my eyes. Did I get out alive? Yes. Unscathed? No.

But what exactly do I have left.

The scraps and remains of something which was never real to begin with.

 

 

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Lately

It is May 21 and the weather outside could have me fooled into thinking it is October. I don’t mind it. I’ve always loved the damp and chill, an opportunity for big thick comfy sweaters, many mugs of steaming beverages brimming with warmth and the excuse for not having to travel out into world unless absolutely necessary.

Though, it would still please me if I had to.

The light drizzle dampening denim covered legs, sliding off muddy soled, screaming red red rain boots, misting my hair like tiny beads of early morning dew on wispy blades of grass… I enjoy these small details. I don’t even mind the cold which comes with it. There is a freshness, an awakening, something which just shouts in your face, “HEY! You’re Fucking Alive!” Nothing like the burning, lazy, heat soaked days which leave you sticky and stagnant. A sweaty mess of discomfort. No. Days like these, I cherish.

On days like this, I am reminded of Lancaster. And Bristol. And almost all of the rest of England and of the love at that time which took me there. I am brought back to a period of adventure and curiosity. Of passion for Life and Living. And while that former version of self has long since grown and become something other, there had long been many instances where I missed that part of Me. I had chalked it up to furthering myself into adulthood. Into a new 2.0 representative of who I had become. I was fairly certain that the Woman of the past was no longer in existence.

Yet, not long ago on a colder Saturday night, I found myself free of immediate obligations. No husband. No small children. I was able to just go out and wander a bit, if I wanted to. I, naturally, didn’t feel the urge. I wanted to drown in streaming programming while I knit and kept the company of my cats. Yet, appealing to the logic of when was the next time I’d have this kind of freedom, I headed out.

Deciding to meet up with some friends, I spent a half hour looking for parking in a part of town booming with Trend and Cool. I hated it. I was already rueing my decision to make the trip into the city. After that battle, I found them in the bar, already filling up with people. And I hated that, too. But I was determined to see through the evening, if anything for the novelty of something different. Oh but wait – there’s a band playing and you know the guys and we should go check them out? At this point, I was considering calling it a night, but no. I agreed.

Here’s where my heart had a change. Three of us, walking to the next place, and my two friends stop to talk to a guitar player and his girlfriend with the ukelele, both sitting on the sidewalk, guitar case open for monetary gifts. They have a dog and he looks sleepy, but loved. They offer up a song and my friends say, Sure.

It’s about 40 degrees out, give or take. And this thin, scraggly looking guy starts playing one of the sweetest songs I’ve ever heard. His girlfriend, reminiscent of free love and hippies, joins in with her ukelele and soft fairy-like harmonic voice. My friends begin to dance and I am moved to take some record of this occurence.

And I realized I was smiling. Happy. Relishing this presence of spontaniety and True Beauty. I held up my phone to capture the best I could what was transpiring before my eyes… I didn’t do too well because I, also, was wrapped up in the vibrancy of the moment. I was vaguely aware of cars driving by, everyone walking past rapidly, in a hurry to get to the next bar/club/whathaveyou. For a brief interlude in time, I felt like all 5 of us were in a bubble, some magical window into a mirrored dimension of being able to experience and enjoy the Here and Now with no outside interruption.

Nothing lasts forever. The song ended, my friends gave them some cigarettes and cash, we kept going to the next place – but my heart felt lighter.

Joyous.

Alive.

So.

Lately, this has been on my mind. Of course, days like these… Days which remind me of previous excursions, long past days of foolhardy carefree whimsy, days which bring to mind bits and pieces of  the romantic and idealist I used to be… I am encouraged to once again find the magic and wonder of Living as opposed to simply Existing. I know now that those fanciful qualities I thought I lost to youth have only been shoved aside, forgotten and unused. The older a person becomes, the harder that feat. With age also comes some cynicism. Some convenience. Comfortablilty. All things which would hinder the search and stunt the growth of a curious soul. However, nothing which has been worth having has ever come easy, or so I’ve been told.

*shrugs*

I guess I’ll see.

 

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

The Human Condition (pt. 112)

I sipped my bourbon. I was tired, I didn’t want to be out. In fact, I wanted to be home, in bed, surrounded by my cats, drifting into a comfortably uncomfortable sleep. I wanted my worn-in sweats, with the loosened waistband, saggy bottom, pilled fabric throughout, softened through multiple washes…  I lapped the Bulleit lightly wishing I was already under the fat knit blankets in my bedroom, falling away into unconsciousness.

Instead, here I was, listening to a man drone on about the artistic condition.

The Artistic Condition, the grueling self-doubt, the striving to be at least an equal to their peers in that specific field, the 24/7 struggle to be recognized – noticed, the sleepless 2 a.m. tossing and turning anxiety ridden nights, the booze and the drugs and the men and the women and some more of the booze with a side of drugs… just to take the edge off.

And I fiddled with my drink, swishing the amber liquid lazily out of semi-boredom and resignation. Why was I here? Because while I wanted the cozy comfy security of my bed, I didn’t want to go to the home in which it was inhabited. Problems were at Home. Fights were at Home. Anger and 7 years of built up Frustration were at Home. Things I was not overly eager to deal with. Yet, these all seemed like better options compared to the incessant droning of the gentleman seated to my left.

Finally, I said, “So, Human. You’re bitching about being Human.” He doubled back and looked as though he was going to argue the point. But I excused myself before we could go down that (I could only assume) long and winding road.

A short tumbler with a couple swallows left of liquor remained on the polished bar top. A man kept an eye on it, waiting for its owner to return. And I walked out into the night, head full, heart empty.

 

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4/5/18 Maternal Guilt, In Short

Motherhood was never a driving goal of mine. Even as all my high school friends were off being impregnated by future absentee fathers, my only aspiration was to get out of my shitty poverty stricken neighborhood and maybe one day see the world.

Of course, youth + stupidity squashed those hopes fairly quick.

I wasn’t meant for motherhood. I knew it right away, although I couldn’t accept the bald truth of it. This is not to say that I did not love my first son – I have never loved any living human as much as I have my first child. Just looking at him every day broke my heart in different ways in which I had no idea how to handle. The overwhelming pain I felt in thinking that I wasn’t good enough to be the mother to this amazing tiny ball of perfection still lingers, 21 years later. Only in hindsight and more self-introspection that I care to admit, have I realized how much the absence of my own parents  affected my demeanor towards my son.  Of course, anyone on the outside looking in would say I’ve done a great job. How wonderful that he and I have such an amicable relationship.

They do not know that I walked away from him when he was 6 months old. That I thought he’d have a better life without me in it. They do not know that when he was a year old, I willingly handed over physical custody to his father and never legally fought for him because I was too scared that I would lose. The courts would see I wasn’t the right kind of “mom material” and I’d be deprived of any real communication or time spent with him. They do not know how much I drank (so much) while he was gone just to black out my guilt of not being the cookie cutter mold of what a “Good Mother” was supposed to be, that my status of Weekend Mom not only belittled my character in the eyes of others, but in my own as well.

But I loved him, albeit from a safe distance. In solitude, the ache of his absence would send me into fits of uncontrollable weeping. A handful of poems I wrote remain as a reminder of those times, but not one more than that because any attempt to  encapsulate my feelings about my life without his presence in it would spiral me further into a depression in which I was not keen to visit. Throughout the years, I never questioned that I still wasn’t worthy and constant arguments with his father (the “good” parent) didn’t help. The weight of my fears and doubts tempered any desire or attempt for the closeness I longed to have with my son.

However, as each year passed, as he grew into a young man and his childhood days receded as an ebbing tide, I accepted that imperfections and all, I was His Mother. I would like to say it was an overnight transformation in which I woke up and Voila, All Makes Sense and is Well and Good!, but that is not how life or personal growth works. I still wrestle with my guilty days, especially as I am now raising my two youngest in such a different manner. I find while I am spending time with them, running errands, singing songs, sewing up injured teddies – I am also ruing all of which I’ve missed from my first child’s formative years. However, I am also aware that even as just a weekend/summer mom, I tried the best I knew how to build a bond between the both of us. And as long as I am alive, there will always be room for improvement in that relationship.

We joke, we laugh, we text, we message.  We do have a better relationship than most. He has assured me time and again that he harbors no ill will towards me, that he never thought I was a “bad mom”. He has made it clear that I’ve always been Good Enough (and it makes him sad to know I felt any other way), which I still mostly struggle to believe. It is not something in which I’ve completely come to terms with, though little by little it sets in. He has grown into a man whom I am proud to call Son and I hope that one day I am the woman who he is proud to call Mom.

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1/25/16 Kindness

Today is one of those days in which I cannot turn off the introspection. I often become lost in revelries, unwanted reminiscences of the past lives I’ve lived. Of the countless mistakes of youth, poor life choices, of the ridiculous and often dangerous situations I had put myself in – note, I’ve not mentioned regret. Regret isn’t something I have very much of, at least not in the grand scheme of things. My regrets are minuscule, mostly petty and even then, taken with a grain of salt. But I digress. I suppose I must mention this because I know that Regret isn’t very useful since every crap decision and horrible thing I may have done, with or without malicious intent, has brought me to the place where I am at right now.

That, and Kindness.

My brain has moments of elephantine recollection when it comes to people who have been genuinely good-hearted to me. The same with those who have abused my heart, soul, person, etc. I may forget birthdays, what I had for dinner last week and even plans I Just Made five minutes ago, but Kindness is something that has never gone unnoticed or forgotten.

I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped to look away from the screen because this is the hurdle. This is my mountain. To sit here and purposefully remember the less than ideal circumstances I either stumbled or boldly threw myself into, with little fear or concern of consequence or reprisal. It’s a bit more difficult than I had anticipated.

I remember being a teenage runaway and having the good fortune to not have to live on the streets when a girl I met and was briefly romantic with offered to let me stay with she and her mother, not just for a day or weeks, but months. I remember when at a party, my first girlfriend covered for my dandruff flakes as Dry Shampoo – “That happens to me, sometimes”, she smiled. The unspoken understanding and gratitude over escaping embarrassment is something that still sticks with me today. Another party, when the difference between the terms “pretty” and “attractive” were being discussed and I mentioned that my father said I was Attractive. I knew what my father had meant and I suppose the usually catty gay man involved in the conversation did as well. He leaned his body back, head tilted elegantly dramatic to one side, scrutinized me with his intensely blazing blues and said, “Mmm… I’ll give you pretty.” I abashedly took the compliment but I don’t think he’ll ever quite know just how much that meant to me at that time. Or maybe, he did. Maybe he saw the insecurity in my lowered gaze, the way I tried to hide my small underdeveloped body in giant thrift store flannels and oversized jeans. Maybe he knew how much I needed an assurance that I was of acceptable human stock.

Being laid up in bed not able to move, my boyfriend’s roommate coming in to talk to me, recommending books I’d like, pretending that I didn’t look like death warmed over. A mere acquaintance becoming one of my closest friends when he loaned me the money I needed to make rent. When I tried to pay him back, his smile and laugh damn near frightened me but he merely shook his head and pushed my hand holding the money away from him. “One day, someone might need a kind of help of their own. All I ask is that you return the favor.”

And maybe this won’t seem like an act of Kindness, but to me it was. A show of Mercy, after all, aren’t the two related? I was followed by a car on my walk home one night, far too many years and several lives ago. Two men jumped out, physically assaulted me, dragged me into the vehicle and I’m not sure what would have happened were it not for the driver. Was it my pleas for release? Did I remind him of a niece, a sister, a friend? I’m not sure, but he abruptly stopped the car and told my would be captors to let me out.

I ran… I ran to the first house I saw, crazed, crying, delirious. A couple, kind in their own way, let me in. Telling me it would be okay as they waited for the police to arrive. It hurts to revisit that particular memory. That was a day that shattered my remaining trust in humankind. But – BUT – Mercy. I was shown/given Mercy. And while it took me some time to feel safe again for something as simple as walking home, I still carry an appreciation for that man who told his cohorts, “Enough.” But do not mistake my gratitude for forgiveness. I do not nor will I ever free him of his guilt or culpability, but I suppose that’s a subject for another day.

But Kindness. This – each and every act, no matter how seemingly insignificant or of a grander scale, none of them are ever forgotten. Not a one is petty or trivial. From a stranger in front of me at the drive thru buying the coffee for the person behind them to an unexpected text from a friend reminding me that I’m loved, “You’re really kind of a bitchy pain in the ass, but I wouldn’t have you in my life any other way.” I hold all of these close to remind me that the smallest act of Kindness can carry a person who’s having a rough time of it just a bit further down the road. Every day, we run about minding our own business, barely thinking about the brief interactions we have with those bustling back and forth around us. It doesn’t hurt to put some good back in a world that so desperately needs it.  And of this I am ever mindful, especially on days like these where I am most pensive and somewhat blue.