One more year

Of your towering smiles, your warm arms,

Of lumbering voice that could shake the windowsills

And terrorize the birds outside

If you were less gentle.

One more year

Of tucking feathers in each other’s messy hair

When the trail calls our names

And we wander farther than our eyes think,

Our feet carrying us as our hearts hold one another.

The sense of adventure sparked wild from birth

Born again in you from me.

One more year of sneaking glances at you when I tell a silly joke,

Enduring my playfulness with an embarrassed grin

How I love to make you smile.

One more year of learning new surprises about you

That echoed in me before, making my very bones ring out in laughter.

There’s a simmering beneath the surface of you, close to the brim,

Making your own mind, while so many cannot.

You dance the edges of propriety and “acceptance”,

The same waltz as your mother, though your feet are steadier than mine ever were.

We’ve had one more year than we thought we would.

And I’ll always be asking for one year more.

Thank you for choosing me to be your mother, you are the most beautiful human I’ve ever known ❤️

When a woman spends time cutting a sailboat into pieces, under the tallest pecans for 100 miles…

Well.

About 15 years ago my ever adventurous dad parked his 30 foot sailboat in their backyard down by the creek lining the bottom of the property. It sat there for a while, under the towering pecans, until a storm made the creek flood and picked the boat clean off the trailer, spun it, and laid it back down in the yard.

It made me chuckle for years, seeing her just perched there under the trees. Dad never got a company to come move it, was far too expensive, so there she was. And she was HEAVY.

Snakes and other critters moved in, it got overgrown, there were more important things.

It sat there until this summer when my dad, who has Parkinson’s and just had his 69th birthday, decided he wanted to cut it up himself and remove it that way. It’s taken months of him cutting her up with an electric saw and lifting pieces with his big cast iron cherry picker. He’d then back the trailer under the piece and let it down.

So yeah. He’s moved thousands of pounds of fiberglass hull and hardware and mast and all kinds of inner workings. For months.

He did most of it on his own, even after I’ve offered my help many times over. Until Mom let’s me know that he needs help with the last bits.

I headed over as I was off for the day. First thing I helped get the heavy duty cherry picker up off the ground, it had fallen apparently at some point. I thought nothing of it. The three of us moved parts of the hull of the boat and I cut them with a reciprocating saw, so we could wrestle them onto the trailer.

Dad’s balance has been getting worse, his stiffness makes it really hard to move around. And so he fell, twice, hard. Got really dizzy where he couldn’t get up quickly. I wouldn’t let him help after that.

It’s so fucking frustrating to see him stop fighting. And it feels like he has. Mom said he’s changed in the past two weeks.

Then she tells me when he was working on the boat two weeks ago he nearly got crushed by the heavy trailer. She wasn’t home and the trailer wasn’t hooked to the truck. He was trying to put pieces on the trailer when he lost his balance and rolled under it. He didn’t have his phone on him and he could barely move but he got out somehow and survived.

When I look at him I expect to see the vital, strong, terrifying man I grew up with, who terrorized us as kids. His temper rages even worse too, apparently. She won’t fuss about it but she admitted when I asked.

But when I see him now he’s barely interactive because he can’t hear much. And this mobility shock today.

Made even more odd with the fact I wasn’t ever supposed to see my folks get here. Being raised a Jehovah’s Witness from birth I was told I’d never see my parents grow old, get sick, and die. I was never supposed to graduate high school. Armageddon was supposed to have come and gone, and we be living forever in a paradise earth in perfect health.

So it’s weird to see Dad here. And I’m so fucking insanely angry he’s having to deal with this. Mortality sucks enough but it’s even worse when you grew up thinking you were immortal and would never die. And then you’re stuck in a body that isn’t YOU anymore.

We came inside the house slowly, dad thankfully could drive the truck and trailer up so he didn’t have to walk up the lawn.

We had no choice but to leave the lead keel where it is, as it’s several hundred pounds. That thing isn’t moving.

Dad stood still for us to brush the stickers off him and took off his socks before he went inside, then sat in his recliner and fell asleep sitting straight up. Mom and I chatted a while after and I headed home.

And damn if my cheeks weren’t wet the whole ride.

Flits

Time does, it flits and wobbles around and changes on a whim. I’ve thought for days and days now that I need to post to my blog, then get stuck on what to write about.

Most evenings during the work week I’m worn out after the day of peopleing and move across the room to my sleeping area, just to spend a few hours watching a show or reading. It’s quiet. I’m content. But doesn’t make for incredible experiences to write about, unfortunately.

I’ve started walking again, getting up at 5:45am so I can walk at least 30 minutes before the sun rises. It’s the same routine, Lil Miss Squish the house panthers comes to walk back and forth by my shoulder until I wake, bumping my hand or chin and doing her chirpy chirps. She’s gotten really affectionate finally, well a lot for her. She still is a cat and only allows it if she thinks of it first.

I wake giggling at her and rush through waking and pinning my hair up and getting dressed to sweat in 82F 99% humidity grossness. It’s like trying to breathe a wet wool blanket.

But it’s freeing to crunch my sneakers across the driveway and smile and greet the bats in the morning before humanity stirs much. It’s the city so there is human noise all the time, but right before sunrise it’s as if the world allows herself to rest just a bit. So she takes deep breaths and the bats whir overhead with their chirrups at one another and I stride down the sleepy road.

So I’m glad my walks are back, I’d missed them. Not sure why I stopped other than laziness and my usual aversion to crossing paths with other people. It disturbs my peace. I’m most at peace when I’m not being looked at, and before the sun rises I can feel invisible, unless I pass another walker. Which ruins everything for a few moments, admittedly. But not so much I’d stop walking.

Started cutting out animal products, following a more whole foods vegetarian diet. My usual diet had me at a standstill with getting healthier and this so far has been a positive change. I feel lighter in so many ways, less bloated all over, almost like my soul is lighter even if the scale is the same. Mind clearer, more energy, all positive changes so far. Will stick with it. Avoiding sugar, processed foods as well. Every meal has a really nice balance, for instance tonight was a bowl of fresh kale, slow cooked red beans, quinoa, and half an avocado. Followed with fresh strawberries and frozen grapes. I’m stuffed and happy.

Life of a woodworker…drove two hours to cut up a fallen branch of 300 year old pecan so that I can turn it into beautiful things. Fallen from one of my absolute favorite trees for over half of my life. The wood smelled of summers growing up on the quiet small town roads of Stephenville, Tx. Sweat buckets, dirtied my car again, and now am on the way home to read a book I’ve been waiting for over a month.

The Texas summers have changed from when I was little, drinking from the hot water hose in the backyard. When you had to let the water run to cool down from the hose sitting in the sun. When the water tasted of hot rubber and usually had grass cuttings or mud around the rim of the opening. I smelled the pecan wood today and could smell the hot rubber of the hose again as well.

Thank goodness I don’t have to rely on hose water these days, am spoiled with apple cider vinegar lemonades with ice.

The summers are more brutal now, and veggie gardens get so stressed they don’t produce. This year we’ve finally had a good soak before the heat became intolerable, so the ground is more hospitable, but the plants still suffer. I’m convinced the environment is hit harder by humanity than the authorities are telling us.

I haven’t written in so long. Not even sure if life has been busy or if I’ve been neglectful. Well I have been neglectful of this blog. Not in my head as much as usual, not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

The man child is spending the summer with me which definitely means my mind is occupied elsewhere or distracted 99% of the time. Family and kids are wonderful, but also quite diverting from any writing. I’ve been reading less of late as well but you’d never know it looking at the bookcases. Been acquiring titles from the local library bookshop like mad. Drat having such a good one close by. Surrounded by a wealthier area where people donate their books to the library to sell, such a hardship. last time I took the teenager there we both walked away with stacks, his bigger than mine.

Work has been more intense, busier. It’s making me a better manager but wipes me so completely that I’ve not much left by the end of the week. Autistic burnout is a thing. Today I got quite irritable driving home with the teen in the car, being our DJ. It was probably the first time I realized where the irritability was coming from, too much loud music and talking over the music, and the bright sun blinding me and making my eyes burn and water, and the heat advisory warning us of 112 degree air just waiting to make me feel like I’m walking in a warm stuffy wet blanket. Just everything on top of the noise made me unable to mask and it was miserable. Thankfully when we got home and I was in out of the bright and heat and noise I realized what had happened. I apologized for being short with him and he absolutely got it, knew what was happening before I did. I swear the world is going to be saved by this generation. Hopefully.

Life is mellow, with moments of joy in a great cup of coffee or book or kitty cuddle. Now has come the time when it’s painful to be outside, so I must make do indoors. It’s infuriating. Even working in my little home woodshop is a painful joke, as it’s a small metal building with no shade or air movement. But I can do small things.

I’m playing around with the idea of making beautiful ribbon skirts and dresses with the new sewing machine my mother gave me today. May even see if I can find a way of designing something I don’t feel weird gender dysphoria in. I want to remain true to tradition, but also know my ancient ancestors wouldn’t care as much as the more recent ones. Perhaps ribbon shirts that are long and tunic-like, with leggings and a belt. I will dream on it and see where it leads me.

As I do with many things these days.

Punishment

“It is a mourning, to be broken for one we love. And it doesn’t heal easily or quickly. I’m over three years now from walking away from who I thought was the love of my life and still not the same. It is unfair how we punish ourselves.”

I wrote this today to my longest love, my first heartbreak. The one who knew me the best, and I him. Who ruins himself with guilt for someone he couldn’t save.

We wrack ourselves so when we open to love. Hang our hearts from a red string hoping when it breaks we fall into one another in a way that doesn’t cut like a bed of straight razors.

And we do it until our souls can’t take it anymore and we have to choose to live, to walk away, to survive, because we are worth it.

But, oh the guilt. From walking away. Choosing our Self, or our child, or our shortened breaths for once for good for something other than the abuse that snuck in like a whisper of campfire in the spring, when I didn’t believe my senses because it couldn’t be true.

The one who we handed our shattered crumbs of a hope to in the dish of our heart and trusted them to hold it safe.

The one who held us in ways that could never bleed us until they said those cruel words, spitting them in my face, until my tears mixed with her saliva and I could see a loathing in her eyes, smell regret in her breath.

And it isn’t fair. How choosing our Self breaks us too. So we are punished a dozen times over each day we open eyes without her. How we miss the peaks and ridges of our roller coaster torment ride because it felt, it FELT so essential as the rings of the earth, the bedrock that always was. And now it’s gone and contentment should be enough but it never is. Because it’s not FEELing like I did with her in our wild places.

So we punish our Self for losing her once to her anger, we couldn’t save her from it though we tried, for years. And we punish our Self for walking away. Every day a ritual of grief, each season one of mourning.

I Never Slept Well

Sincerely, I never have. Well, in the past year or so I have, better than ever in my life but that’s not the point. Neither is the fact I’ve finally found a medication balance that helps me sleep. Definitely not the point.

The point is that I should have seen it sooner. I’ve had so many “I should have seen it coming” moments in the past three years it’s truly baffling sometimes. Was having a conversation recently about sleep versus sex and which I prefer (obviously sleep). How the other person implied that they understood old people now, that sleep is more important these days.

It took me aback because sleep has always been my number one priority to a point that it’s confusing to think that anything would surpass it. Sex certainly didn’t. But that means that most people feel the opposite. And how odd an idea that is. That I’m the aberration for thinking in the way that makes the most sense.

Even at the depths of unbearable truest love I’ve always known I slept better alone, been more at peace alone, more content, more able to focus, more creative. Everything that makes me Me requires oodles of alone time and yet when people love you they want all your time with them which of course renders me mute.

I always wrote my best and expressed myself most beautifully when I’ve had my needed solitude. Writing more made them want me around more which took away my voice. Every time.

And I’d want time with them. I needed it desperately, more than they could have imagined. My time with them was full so quickly though, after a date night or a weekend I’d be sated and ready for time alone to recover. But they always wanted more which stole the essence of myself, and I’d have to steal my days alone back. And they’d hate me for it, thinking I didn’t love them as deeply as I truly did, and I couldn’t show it to them because to them it was avoidance and loneliness. Not solitude sweet and pure but an act of repulsion or rejection.

So it was always a choice. And I chose them first again and again, chose them over my Me, and stopped writing as I had before. Not as often, not as essentially myself.

And that’s the way they, being everyone, thinks it should be. That love is sacrifice. But my love isn’t a sacrifice and never needs to be.

I’ll say it again. My love is not a sacrifice.

It’s amazing how the normativity of being in a romantic relationship is just shoved down our throats. And I know why. It keeps commerce going. Keeps putting money in the pockets of the rich. Because romantic relationships equal buying homes and making a family and buying holiday gifts and big weddings and traditions. For making us all spend money. So businesses push romantic norms on us and we push it on one another because we think it’s normal.

And because of that “normal” I still question myself in blips of half moments and think I could be in a traditional romantic partnership. Or several.

Blips of half moments though of course, for as I mentioned before I should have known because I was always happiest in solitude. I knew it. I just didn’t give myself credit because I’m just a weird girl with weird ideas in a brain that makes connections across gaps not many do.

I should have seen it coming that I’d find it to be my chosen state of being. Being alone. And it’s just as comforting and satisfying as it was being alone during lunch in high school, reading in the quiet library rather than in the unbearable echoing cafeteria.

Hell is other people. And sleep is more important than sex, always.

Random thoughts

After watching the series Ancient Apocalypse I had some thoughts I just want to get down before they drive me mad.

A friend commented in a group online that their entire school district’s internet has been knocked out by an 18-wheeler hitting the source. I joked that they’d have to do analog teaching as we did when I was a kid/teen. Internet became widely available when I was about 14/15, and even in the last few years of schooling I didn’t use it much. Definitely not for schooling. I finished at home, actually, as my introverted (and very autistic, though not recognized yet) self was having a very hard time dealing with being in such an enclosed environment with my peers. I finished the last 1.5 years at home via correspondence, having to do the schoolwork on paper and send it via snail mail for evaluation. Schooling wasn’t online, it was all in books and on true paper.

When the internet goes down, as it has several times in Texas in the past few years due to ice storms our grid isn’t equipped to handle, I have had no struggle whatsoever as I’ve hundreds of books in my home just waiting to be devoured. Going “analog” or back to paper hasn’t been an issue. But we store SO VERY MUCH in the good ol’ cloud that is all digital now. Important documents, entire jobs are based online, our communication with others all depends on having the internet at the ready. Hardly anyone has a true home phone anymore, and rely on their pocket devices. If everything crashed for weeks people would be stranded and hopeless.

The online maps people depend on solely, Ebooks, travel, communication, all of it would be down, and anyone who relies on digital information to get about their daily lives would be completely without resources. I collect books, I collect paper maps, I collect paper and pens and stamps for this very reason. Most people wouldn’t even know how to send a letter these days without looking up online how to send one.

What if there WAS another highly developed society in the past before the last ice age ended? What if they all had a similar system and depended only on similarly “online” documents, communication, etc? What if it all crashed irrevocably and there was no recovery? Could that contribute to the fact there is very little evidence that they existed? How much evidence would there be that we existed if the same happened and our society had developed to the stage where they no longer used paper or tangible documents at all? When it went down what would be out there to prove that we even existed in a few thousand years?

So very many interesting questions…and it only contributes highly to my determination to ensure my writings all exist somewhere on paper and not solely digitally. So I shall continue to write and journal and ensure there is some evidence I even existed, instead of it disappearing completely when the internet goes down.

Well that makes sense

Had an epiphany in the past day or two. How older ladies become cat ladies. I know why it happens now.

Because as women get older their level of “I don’t give a fuck” increases. This isn’t just because they’re older but because of getting to a hormonal maturity does change women’s personalities to where they 1. Have a different sense of the expectation from society, i.e. aren’t young and attractive therefore of no further use, 2. Just tired of taking shit from anyone.

We all know who is more demanding, dogs or cats? Well cats of course. So it makes perfect sense that as women’s levels of toleration of stupidity levels go down that their love of an undemanding companion goes up.

So therefore, women of COURSE become crazy old cat ladies as they grow older. They are tired of spending their entire existences only to be used and depended on and worked to death by others. They prefer a more independent sidekick (or five of them).

And because they’re no longer demanded upon to look a certain way because women over 50 are pretty damned invisible to society, they can relax and be themselves and have as many cats as they want to.

Music

Is still so hard for me. It was our love language, how we ached for one another, how we wooed, preened one another’s feathers. My eyes flutter shut when I remember the smell and taste of her under me while we listened to our love story playlist. How she would call me “Grasshopper”. How it made me blush every time.

Music was our love language in how we’d sway in tune with each other in the kitchen, touching each other’s hair in passing, our hips brushing each other until electricity sizzled between us. How she’d pull me in for a kiss. How I’d rest my head on her shoulder. How safe I felt closing my eyes with her.

I’d pore over new music releases and send her my favorites from that day. She’d play them for me again when we rode in her truck together, singing them to me. I’d know then she listened to them over and over again, that they belonged to “Us” now, that we’d never hear them again without feeling that exact moment. The fresh breeze scented with hay as we sailed down the highway. The way she’d catch me watching her. How I loved to make her feel beautiful. Handsome. How it felt my heart was out there, walking on two legs beside me.

We were our music. We were the swells and rolling melodies, we were the dancing with fire spinning under starlight to our favorite songs. We were the pounding of the beat as we drove to one another from our separate homes. We were the lyrics we got wrong and right again and sang wrong anyway. We were the pulsing throbbing of our heartbeats until we couldn’t hold them in anymore and they spilled out with the happiness of it all, wetting our cheeks. We were so lucky to have one another, the angels looked down at us and sighed “At last”.

The last time I drove away from her it took three days. I stopped listening to our music. I didn’t notice how silent the days were until my mind paused for a moment and let me breathe, and suddenly I couldn’t get enough air inside me. I gulped like I was famished, there wasn’t enough. If I stop to think I still can’t. When I listen to music I’m drowning. Leaning against a wall because I can’t hold myself up anymore I’m sinking standing straight remembering her shoulders and how they taste. How she’d hum beneath her breath without knowing. How her every movement was a song playing so I only could hear it.

I let myself listen to music today. I found a new artist, even. I got excited about her voice and her message. I listened and cried for the joy of it.

And I turned it off again.

Prime of My Life

My entire existence I’ve been told “a woman’s sexual prime is in her 40’s…I looked forward to feeling that rush, that high, of being there. Feeling more myself than ever. Having a confidence I couldn’t have imagined before. Of being seen by others in a light I never had.

In many ways most of those things have come to pass. Well, most. But what they don’t tell you is that you remain the same inside. Sort of. It’s really damn odd to know I’m the same person who needed to be liked so much that I lost myself for eleven years in a marriage I should never have been in. Who drank so much because I was miserable in the cult I was raised in. Who chose the marriage and cult over and over again until my body chose for me and said ENOUGH.

Similar to when my body chose sobriety after pouring my last drink and looking at it and knowing I could never swallow that poison again. I didn’t choose the struggle and I didn’t choose almost dying from withdrawals. My body did. It knew when to stop, and didn’t let me go further.

It’s doing it again. It’s choosing what it should have so long ago. As my concerns about the thoughts of others fall away my body is deciding what it really needs and wants, and after so many years of being over-sexualized it’s choosing the opposite.

Instead of falling into bed and having raucous tumbles a woman in her sexual prime should have I’m turning within. In the almost three years since leaving the woman I saw as my Stardust I’ve pulled farther and farther from desiring to be seen as someone highly sexual. Even being in the kink world doesn’t change things. For me kink has never had anything to do with sex anyway. My intimacy is of a different breed entirely.

This change of self stems, I think, from a lifetime of being nothing more than a plaything for men. Of dressing for the male gaze. Of keeping my hair long because I once overheard my father lamenting that “it’s so sad that women cut their hair when they grow older”. I had sworn to keep my hair long from that day and didn’t cut it until 30 years later. Then started to grow it back out the year I turned 40. Then shaved the sides again.

No longer do I wear shoes that kill my feet just because they’re high-heeled and elegant. The decades of wearing panty-hose to church meetings four days a week are far behind me. My bras aren’t the terribly uncomfortable lacy contraptions that make my breasts perky and unweildy and impossible to ignore.

Makeup has stuck with me, though. It’s my war paint of choosing and makes me feel powerful. I line my blue eyes with black and streak my lips and cheeks red because they make me feel strong and honor my grandmothers, many generations back. Red to remember my fallen and taken sisters. Red like the blood of the men whose necks I’d open if they ever laid hands on me again.

I dress as I please, in fabrics that don’t offend my skin and make me want to claw them away because they’re too bright and colorful and make it impossible to fade into the background. Wildcats don’t like to be seen.

I mark my skin with art and pierce it when and where I please because it is mine and mine alone. At last. And I don’t have to listen to anyone saying “men don’t like girls with lots of tattoos and piercings”, and if they dare say it I laugh with my eyes wide open and teeth bared to frighten them back into their shells because how dare they even pretend they are more than the snails I know them to be.

My body is my own and I will not share it with anyone again unless it is MY idea and MY desire and it all originates with ME, not someone else’s attraction telling me what I “should” do.

Instead of reaching out and having encounters with humans and the “best sex of my life” I’m reclaiming what envelops me and inspires me. This beautiful, odd, one-of-a-kind existence in this body that has never been and never will again, yet is made up of all the life that came before. The person my ancestors didn’t know to dream of because they simply couldn’t.

I am remarkable and I am mine and my body doesn’t exist to please others by doing what it “should do” in my 40’s, because I’m in the prime of my life and that means I am finally my own.