And the Void Stares Back
This is good. I keep repeating that as my mantra. I love change. I thrive on change, so this is good. It does not feel very fucking good. It feels lonely though I'm not alone. I got the confirmation for my UHaul this morning. I move out of that gilded cage in two days. I have a terrible cold. I have a full heart. I found my tribe a while back and we really are quite the crew. I'll post this up and share with them because they see me. Not over me or past me or through me, but me. All of me. The me who drinks too much at a Friday night concert and the me who has a total fangirl moment over a signed poster and the me who loves our little music family all the way down into my bones, despite my nearest and dearest telling me that I must be crazy for it. They see me and they hear me in every note and every word of that music we share in our hearts.
He did finally let me have a cat. We got the cat at the end of June. He was a big, quiet Maine Coon we named Oliver. Eleven pounds of deep old soul. I would call his name "Ollie wollie wollie" and he would run from any corner of the house. He loved me especially. I jokingly called him "the symbolic cat of commitment." It took him less than a month to start getting sick. He lasted three months and he was paralyzed so that he could not even lift his head to drink water. We put him to sleep on a Tuesday and I built him a nice black rock cairn that was later modified because it "didn't blend in with the surroundings." Like a grave should. We couldn't even manage to keep a symbol alive. That one hurt. It hurt bad. Still hurts. Can't even type "Ollie wollie wollie" without getting choked up. I don't even like cats. He wormed his way into my heart by being the perfect cat and then just as I fell madly in love, he died. Just like a fucking cat. Assholes.
A few weeks ago, I began packing. My best friend and I (who has a birthday today Happy-Cake Day, bubb) pulled box after box down from the attic, stacking them neatly in the garage higher than our heads. I realized with a sort of aggressive sharpness that I'd been right. Most of my life never got unpacked. The only inconvenience I will offer is that he will have to remove his flatscreen television (in the bonus room man cave) from my painstakingly hand-painted coffee table and his remote and wireless speaker from the matching end tables. He may miss a cutting board or a dish here and there, but that's all. That's all he allowed into his life. My $5,000 front loading washer and dryer have sat in the garage for a year and a half because moving them into the living space would signify something.
He made me sign a document saying I'd be moved out by October 22nd. He's tired of me yanking him around. I don't even have the spirit to argue with him anymore. He stood in the kitchen yelling at me a few weekends ago over a house project (in a house that I'm leaving) in front of my best friend. All I did was hang my head and cry. I didn't even fight back. Where did the fight in me go? I used to be all fire and fury. Now I don't feel like much of anything. I've never been so tired in my life. I used to say I was tired in my bones. That's not even enough now. My soul and my heart and all of my fire are tired. And it's made me a little mean. But that's a good thing too. I don't abide a drunk guy at a concert who thinks that women are the root of all evil anymore and I certainly won't give him the time of day. And if you say "pussy" to mean weak, soft, or incapable one more time, I will knock your teeth out. I happen to have a pussy and I'm strong and smart and tough as nails and just as capable, if honestly not more capable than any man.
So I reflect on the me I've been for the past almost three years and I realize that it's not me. It's a shadow. A faint apparition of the real me. I faded into the background so that he could feel like a man. I never again asked him if I could help him do something that required physical strength after he said I emasculated him doing that. I realize now that it was never my job to make him feel like a man. And if he didn't feel like a man, that was his fault. No, I will not feign the small, fragile, delicate, weak, pretty thing to bolster a man's ego ever again. I will never make myself invisible because a man feels like I'm too... fill in the blank. I was never that. I was never small enough or dumb enough or quiet enough or pretty enough to be considered feminine enough. But after these years, I realize that I don't want to be those things. I want to be me. Me is big and loud and strong and has a huge presence in the room. Me is brave and smart and canny. Me is everything my father believed I was. And he would be ashamed of me for letting anyone take that away. Not that I haven't got any weaknesses. I am stubborn and naive and sometimes I'm bitter and snippish. I'm so independent that sometimes I forget we all need a little help from our friends.
In the past year, I have extracted some people from my life like impacted wisdom teeth. I am tired of your hate. I am tired of seeing people I love lump other people into groups as if they somehow are superior. I will no longer turn a blind eye to your prejudice. I am quite well sick as shit of that. It does not matter if you are my family, my friend, my lover or whatever else. If you are a horrible person, I will dig you out like an infected splinter. I am so sick of racism and hypocrisy I could throw up. I don't care if I do live in the south, I do not have to listen to you tell me that because my neighborhood is predominantly black, it must not be a good neighborhood. I do not have to listen to one more joke about my hair and "one in the woodshed" you racist piece of shit. I do not have to listen to you call another man a "pussy" when he doesn't fit your standard of manliness. I do not have to listen to you talk about how a woman is a whore because she is a sexual being. She may be a horrible human being, but save your judgmental bullshit. I don't have to listen to you talk about Muslims as if their extremist terrorism is any worse than your pale, Christian, bullshit variety. I do not have to listen to you talk about how I will burn in Hell because the Jews invented that notion. Hell was a pit outside of town that burned detritus from the city. If you were a shitty person, they'd wait for you to die and roll you into the pit of ever-burning trash. The Jews are way smarter than you. You are an idiot and if you are so sure of hell, you can have and you can burn in it. I just want us all to be kind to each other and take care of each other and get along.
To that end, I will not be dating for a very long time. I'm okay with that. I don't feel like I'm looking for the rest of me anymore. I feel like I found it and it's not in another person. I have friends who love me, an awesome cat named Blanche, and a kid who is growing up to be an incredible human being. He is wise and gentle and good. He is the best parts of me and I have some pretty good parts.
For now, I'll live in the music. It loves me back too. Sounds crazy to say that I've found the voice I want to be mine and there are so many more of us out there. I'll make cookies and run and breathe in my thirty-one years as slowly as I can. I'll finish my turntable cabinet and devour delicious books and go to work and just be. I'll take my kid to the movies and teach him to be a good human. I'll decorate my apartment with music memorabilia and shades of teal and marigold and green and no one will say a bad word about it. I will be me again. That sounds pretty damn nice.
He did finally let me have a cat. We got the cat at the end of June. He was a big, quiet Maine Coon we named Oliver. Eleven pounds of deep old soul. I would call his name "Ollie wollie wollie" and he would run from any corner of the house. He loved me especially. I jokingly called him "the symbolic cat of commitment." It took him less than a month to start getting sick. He lasted three months and he was paralyzed so that he could not even lift his head to drink water. We put him to sleep on a Tuesday and I built him a nice black rock cairn that was later modified because it "didn't blend in with the surroundings." Like a grave should. We couldn't even manage to keep a symbol alive. That one hurt. It hurt bad. Still hurts. Can't even type "Ollie wollie wollie" without getting choked up. I don't even like cats. He wormed his way into my heart by being the perfect cat and then just as I fell madly in love, he died. Just like a fucking cat. Assholes.
A few weeks ago, I began packing. My best friend and I (who has a birthday today Happy-Cake Day, bubb) pulled box after box down from the attic, stacking them neatly in the garage higher than our heads. I realized with a sort of aggressive sharpness that I'd been right. Most of my life never got unpacked. The only inconvenience I will offer is that he will have to remove his flatscreen television (in the bonus room man cave) from my painstakingly hand-painted coffee table and his remote and wireless speaker from the matching end tables. He may miss a cutting board or a dish here and there, but that's all. That's all he allowed into his life. My $5,000 front loading washer and dryer have sat in the garage for a year and a half because moving them into the living space would signify something.
He made me sign a document saying I'd be moved out by October 22nd. He's tired of me yanking him around. I don't even have the spirit to argue with him anymore. He stood in the kitchen yelling at me a few weekends ago over a house project (in a house that I'm leaving) in front of my best friend. All I did was hang my head and cry. I didn't even fight back. Where did the fight in me go? I used to be all fire and fury. Now I don't feel like much of anything. I've never been so tired in my life. I used to say I was tired in my bones. That's not even enough now. My soul and my heart and all of my fire are tired. And it's made me a little mean. But that's a good thing too. I don't abide a drunk guy at a concert who thinks that women are the root of all evil anymore and I certainly won't give him the time of day. And if you say "pussy" to mean weak, soft, or incapable one more time, I will knock your teeth out. I happen to have a pussy and I'm strong and smart and tough as nails and just as capable, if honestly not more capable than any man.
So I reflect on the me I've been for the past almost three years and I realize that it's not me. It's a shadow. A faint apparition of the real me. I faded into the background so that he could feel like a man. I never again asked him if I could help him do something that required physical strength after he said I emasculated him doing that. I realize now that it was never my job to make him feel like a man. And if he didn't feel like a man, that was his fault. No, I will not feign the small, fragile, delicate, weak, pretty thing to bolster a man's ego ever again. I will never make myself invisible because a man feels like I'm too... fill in the blank. I was never that. I was never small enough or dumb enough or quiet enough or pretty enough to be considered feminine enough. But after these years, I realize that I don't want to be those things. I want to be me. Me is big and loud and strong and has a huge presence in the room. Me is brave and smart and canny. Me is everything my father believed I was. And he would be ashamed of me for letting anyone take that away. Not that I haven't got any weaknesses. I am stubborn and naive and sometimes I'm bitter and snippish. I'm so independent that sometimes I forget we all need a little help from our friends.
In the past year, I have extracted some people from my life like impacted wisdom teeth. I am tired of your hate. I am tired of seeing people I love lump other people into groups as if they somehow are superior. I will no longer turn a blind eye to your prejudice. I am quite well sick as shit of that. It does not matter if you are my family, my friend, my lover or whatever else. If you are a horrible person, I will dig you out like an infected splinter. I am so sick of racism and hypocrisy I could throw up. I don't care if I do live in the south, I do not have to listen to you tell me that because my neighborhood is predominantly black, it must not be a good neighborhood. I do not have to listen to one more joke about my hair and "one in the woodshed" you racist piece of shit. I do not have to listen to you call another man a "pussy" when he doesn't fit your standard of manliness. I do not have to listen to you talk about how a woman is a whore because she is a sexual being. She may be a horrible human being, but save your judgmental bullshit. I don't have to listen to you talk about Muslims as if their extremist terrorism is any worse than your pale, Christian, bullshit variety. I do not have to listen to you talk about how I will burn in Hell because the Jews invented that notion. Hell was a pit outside of town that burned detritus from the city. If you were a shitty person, they'd wait for you to die and roll you into the pit of ever-burning trash. The Jews are way smarter than you. You are an idiot and if you are so sure of hell, you can have and you can burn in it. I just want us all to be kind to each other and take care of each other and get along.
To that end, I will not be dating for a very long time. I'm okay with that. I don't feel like I'm looking for the rest of me anymore. I feel like I found it and it's not in another person. I have friends who love me, an awesome cat named Blanche, and a kid who is growing up to be an incredible human being. He is wise and gentle and good. He is the best parts of me and I have some pretty good parts.
For now, I'll live in the music. It loves me back too. Sounds crazy to say that I've found the voice I want to be mine and there are so many more of us out there. I'll make cookies and run and breathe in my thirty-one years as slowly as I can. I'll finish my turntable cabinet and devour delicious books and go to work and just be. I'll take my kid to the movies and teach him to be a good human. I'll decorate my apartment with music memorabilia and shades of teal and marigold and green and no one will say a bad word about it. I will be me again. That sounds pretty damn nice.
Strength and power, to you. Rise up! To be YOU is a glorious thing.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Trish. I'm working on it!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great piece Leanna. I am bawling and reminded of packing up my haul with an infant and having to leave my beloved Ga to keep myself sane and move back to NY so my kid would be safe from the sins of his father. Strong women are hard to handle but we are worth it. Hang in there girl, and keep putting it to paper.❤️
ReplyDeleteDon't cry. Be joyful. We have so much joy to give the world. Don't forget that.
DeleteThere can’t be more of them than us......Keep being Leanna because your tribe loves you!
ReplyDeleteThere can't be more. Thank you, Ricky.
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