It's All About the Journey

 I have been awake since 5am. I got to bed about 10 last night, but by 10:30, my sister was up and trying to walk out some of her pain. I had just drifted off. I've been on the verge of tears for days. I can't do anything to help her pain. I'm doing all I can to help with everything including logging her meds because she's so high she can't remember what she took or when. This is not okay for someone struggling so hard with sobriety. I got up and got my nephew ready to go to school in record time. He is so much like my own child, heart of my heart, that I just do the same things that worked with him. He is absolutely exhausting.  I went out just before 6 this morning to move my car out of the way. I looked up at the sky the way I always have and always do. The moon was so big and bright, peeking through the clouds as if just for me. She's so round, she's got to be painfully close to full. My god, it was beautiful. So I stopped and snapped a shot, hoping it w...

Today, I drove from Huntsville back to my sister’s house after only having left here about 24 hours prior. She needs me. Between me and our baby brother, we managed to keep her covered though. And I will be here for at least two nights. She needs me.  I don’t really hate being needed. Yesterday before I left, I cleaned and washed and refilled the litter box, I did dishes, checked her mail, picked up her prescription from her orthopedist, made her the good coffee, and promised to come back as soon as I could. I almost didn’t go. The thought of leaving her alone didn’t make me feel guilty, I just felt really needed. She was fine. Today, I took her prescription to her work pharmacy, waited for them to fill it, drove back to her house, emptied the dishwasher, made cookies with the kids, having to produce a recipe with the few baking ingredients at hand, made dinner for the kids and then dinner for us because apparently the kids won’t eat what we eat. I’m glad I dodged that bullet, ...

 Some nights are like this in Suwanee, Georgia. I treat these as stream-of-consciousness rambles that are as much therapy as marking down the exact time and place. I ache in places I don't think lover or doctor could ever touch. I feel like a scar, not quite fully healed and raw and sensitive. You can ignore it, but you mostly know it's there and if you come across it too hard, you remember clearly what made it. I've been to the gym today, so my corporeal self is sore too. I think that is probably a little therapeutic in itself. Some people get a tattoo or a piercing or have sex with a stranger. I just challenge and test my own flesh. Though the stranger and the rest appeal. I guess it's like Lilly says. I'm lonely. It only takes someone shoving me away hard a couple times before I stop stepping into it. I'm a lover and I want to love everyone, but I'm at least a little pragmatic and after a while, I start holding the cards closer to my chest. I think the lo...

 None of us thinks there is anything remarkable about their lives, do we?  This all came to mind recalling a story to a friend last week.  I grew up on well water. I remember the well house out in the front yard by the flower garden Nanny always kept English garden-style, all a little wild and overgrown. I thought all gardens were that way and I've found them to be my favorite my whole life. It was made of two 8-foot by 4-foot slabs of plywood turned long-wise to the ground, probably 1/2-inch, then another cut in half for each end. It was roofed in shingles like a tiny little house. The end close to the house had a sort of door that swung down on hinges from the halfway point, with a little hasp to keep it closed when it was lifted up. It was always painted any time the house got a coat. A color I don't know the name of, a shade of slate blue leaning gray. The way Nanny tells it,  anything wrong with that house is because the architect thereof was drunk at the time o...

 I've heard men talk about the way women get hysterical in fear. That we overreact to threats. That we're too sensitive and too wary and too afraid. So tonight, I'll tell you about three such incidences for me. And y'all know, I'm no victim. God help the man who tries. I'm a big woman. I am a strong woman. I'm average size, for a man. I've had two separate men who know me well say "You're not the victim type" and "he had no idea who he was fucking with." That does not mean that I don't feel fear. In a fight, the smaller person always loses. And more often than not, that would be me. And that's what it's like to walk this world as a woman. We are afraid because we know what the dangers are. This is for the women who relate and for the men who cannot ever understand. The first time I was ever really afraid wasn't that long ago. I was in Milwaukee with my husband. He'd gotten a bad case of food poisoning and I had...

My friend started these little vignettes and I find them so inspiring, so I thought to do a few myself from time to time. Some nights are like this in Suwanee, Georgia. I have my feet up on that same ottoman I'll have to replace soon. I'm living on coffee, booze, the gym, not much else right now. I can't stop this damn cough that makes me wonder if I've got cancer or something. A coworker stopped me today, knowing nothing of the situation, to ask if I'd lost a bunch of weight. How good I look. My body feels like shit. My heart is happy for the most part. My soul feels like scorched earth. It's clean, but it's tender.   I'm gathering the people who love me and who have supported me close around. I'm getting back to the people I shut out. The good ones, anyhow. Not that the bad ones haven't tried. What surprises me these days is that I can tell the difference. I've learned to be more discriminating about who I let near me. Who I let hurt me. To...

 I hesitate to talk about cosmic, mystic stuff at all. I think more often than not, there are plenty of reasons for the way things happen. That said, I'm pretty sure the universe has just been handing me shit lately because my spiritual glow up makes me seem like I'm way better than the trembling mess I feel like on the inside. And I think that most times, these things all cluster together the way they do for a reason. I think with the divorce happening, I'm processing some of the trauma around Jay's death from fifteen years ago. I never talked to Nikola about it at all because he never wanted to hear it. He said every time I would try that he couldn't take how it hurt me. Well, that's part of being partners. You have to hold each other's sorrows sometimes. He was always like that though. He didn't want to hear about my pain or my joy. It always upset him. Then he was upset because he never knew me. In order to know someone, you have to give them space t...

 I don't think I realized how bad it's been really until this morning. I don't know if it's the light real close at hand or just the total weight of the years spent this way crushing back down. It's been a great weekend. I am having the worst anxiety right now. Nikola is on his way back from the airport after being gone all weekend and it's been so nice and peaceful without him that I just dread it. I did laundry. I washed, dried, folded, hung and put it all away. I cleaned the floors, including vacuuming the stairs because there was  no one to get mad if I made noise. I changed the sheets and washed all of the bedding like my allergist tells me to. I talked on the phone for about nine hours total in two days. And I really loved it. I didn't feel anxious or afraid to say the wrong thing. I wonder how much of that is me healing and how much of that is knowing that these people love me and will give me grace if I say the wrong thing and let me explain myself c...

 I'll miss the scent of coffee brewing at about 7:30 every evening. It's been a staple of my life for more than four years. Most nights, I've made it. One of the small acts that always have shown my love. I haven't made it in about a month, but there it is. He always said it tasted better when I made it. I believe that. Everything tastes better made by someone else's hand and more if it's from love. And it was. It really always was. I've been asked recently why I said yes. Why I went through with it. And I have struggled for the answer. But that's what all the experts say is harbinger of the end. When you can't remember the best parts. I have said too often "I don't know." And today, sorting through this chaos and clothes, I remembered. He used to look at me like stars were born in me. Like I breathed all the universe. I don't know when he stopped. But it didn't take long. All I ever really wanted was love. I wanted to be loved....