Life's Bullshit

Sunday, May 4, 2014

naked / nude

Against all good and reasonable judgment, life happens, to all of us.
It is what it is folks....and writing is just that, a portrayal of all you know and all you see, then navigating that dark area in - between to unearth a deeper sense of clarity of it all.

Naked is to be oneself, nude is to be seen by others. Naked is always the self - portrait!...it is not you whom is crazy and tilted, but in fact, it is the rest of the world. 




Life's Bullshit





Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Packing for Life

Have you ever thought how desperately unprepared you packed for "life"? I know that I had much more room in my suitcase, and I should have used it, packed it to the maximum load permitted by airline standards....probably should have just gone to hell with myself, and overloaded it as well, and just paid the extra $25 surcharge someone would have charged me.......because I for one, am desperately under packed for life's journey. Take it from me.......stuff that suitcase.....until you have to sit on it to zip it shut....don't be caught off guard, be a prepared traveler!!!!















 What The F*** is The Blog About

Yes, this is another one of those blogs that chronicles a life, apparently, "my life" as a women, as a married women whom was living within a marriage of twenty - five years, riddled (yes, I finally let the cat out of the proverbial bag) with domestic violence "issues", to living on my own, to feeling sorry for this man (mostly pity, and the fact that he was / is my children's father), to feeling even more sorry for me, to getting divorced (finally),

 to healing (I think that on most days anyway), to meeting someone new, to trusting someone new (enough to marry him June 2013), to dealing with the issues of combined families (on both sides our children are all grown, but,you would not think so, with some of their petty behavior towards us), to being madly in - love (finally), to tears, to meltdowns, to smiles,

 to my bad days, to my good days, my daily running, my eternal yoga practice, my sad description of what was my childhood, my insane dysfunctional bloodline family, and how none of us really like each other enough to be involved in each other's lives (I blame my parents equally for that one), to how I hate the snow, the cold, and the winter,

 to how I love the sunshine and warmth of summer, to fears, to offsets, to an accident that knocked the bee - jee - bees out of me for a good three years a few years back (still feeling the audacity of that one), to life's everyday blunders and bullshit, to hot marital sex (oh yes, do not seem so shocked, if you are truly paired and trusting with each other, the intimacy can be amazing), to finally finding my many new beginnings.......

YUP, this is a blog about ALL OF THAT......turns out, life can really FUCK with you, and not many of us survive.......EXCEPT FOR ME !

Inequality of Parental Love
Just for the record, my mother loved my brother, and, sometimes, she loved me...but I suppose there are many of you out there that also grew up as "second class citizens." See, my mother hated ALL children, even her own children (a fact she will tell you herself if given the chance) except for, you guessed it, my brother. My brother died June 2006 at age 45 of Ewing’s Sarcoma, a cancer he was diagnosed with only eight months prior to his death.

 When he died, my brother's amount of love, well, it was transferred over to my youngest "unexpected" sister. The sister who was born out of a need to try to keep my parent's marriage together (it failed, by the way, anyway, a very nasty long divorce followed) She was number two on my mother's love list, as she rose quickly to number "one and only" after June 2006. The other three of us, well, the same reserve that was never there for us, still wasn't there for us, but now we were adults, and as such, got real love from other adults. Pathetic isn't it, how your childhood haunts and theatrics are carried into your adult life, nestled right there on your shoulder, in the invisible backpack you carry with all of your bricks in it. 

We were starved, but mostly for love and attention, as dad didn't have much too offer us either. It is often stunningly amazing how we even function as a part of society at all, given our lack of good breeding. Not all women make good drivers, or, apparently, good moms. The mom part is more surely the one that should come with a required needed pass or fail license attached to it. I blame a lot of this on the teachings of the Catholic Church, in particular, the Old World Irish Stoic Catholic Church ways...where birth control is forbidden, and if by god, god gives you five kids, or twenty, it is a blessing. (It was never a blessing in our family) It was an epic failed life plan as far as my mother was concerned. My dad just went along for the ride I think. When it got bumpy, so did he. Children should be seen but never heard hung like a banner in our home from as young as I can remember. 

 I only remember grandmother hugs, and, only, from one of my two grandmother's. Turns out my other grandmother had the same disease my mother did when it came to children. It is surprising in fact that I remain as well balanced an adult as I have turned out to be, given the bump -  jerk ride of my childhood. So people, love your children like its no one’s business, or they will carry the haunt of it forever, and then some. I still wake at night from the chill of it all...


Love Can FUCK With You
Human relating is sloppy and the sad fact is that much of it never ultimately makes sense. Whether relationships are historic or enduring; whether they are romantic, family, familiar or with friends . . . chances are you might never totally get what they were as you look back or how to operate successfully within them moving forward. And this, I have found, can actually be good news, OR, it can fuck with you, for a longer period of time then you had ever thought possible.











The simple truth is, there are things you never get over. Things that break you to pieces, that reshape you, you are never again, the original shape you once were, and so you grieve your own death with the sum of all of your losses. You bottle them up inside yourself, placing a cork firmly into your neck to keep them all from resurfacing, as they sometimes do, at the most inopportune moments of your days, for all of us. 

I think yes, we do survive breakups and divorces, and friendship melt downs. Among the most important things we endeavor to do over the course of our lives is love other people, and so it follows that what can fuck us up the most is whether those fucks actually love us back. This drama is far more likely to shape you, fuck with you, keep you up at night howling at the moon, keep you in bed in the morning without any more tears left to cry, make you damn right crazy, rock your world, devastate you and spur you to do some of the greatest / worst things you'll ever do, more than most anything else you will ever experience in life. It's true, so very, very true! I have tried and tested this quandry, and it is the most unbelievably truest statement of command there is.
When you endeavor to love someone, anyone, and they do not love you back, it fucks with you, plain and simple, no other way to be said.









To My Stepchildren,
You all grew up, moved out, moved onward, got married, (got divorced), had children, moved to different states, and succumbed to very content and financial well accumulated and advantageous lives.........why, of why, oh why........can't he? (your dad that is) I am not your mother's replacement, I am your father's second wife and joy. I am your father's chance of a life that he had been stripped of. I am his ability to smile, to laugh, to appreciate, to love, all over again. Yes, people can fall in love again, without ever tainting a past love. I did not take your mother from you, life did.....when will I ever be relieved of paying for that sin, that old debt? Please someone notify me when that day will arrive, if ever? In the meantime, I will continue to love your dad, as he will continue to love me, as we both, will continue to love all of you.














To My Own Children
You all grew up, finished college, married, moved (on and upward), borrowed money (failed to ever pay it back), asked for favors (had them all fulfilled in the end by me), bartered and borrowed your individual selfs through relationships with me, asked of me to support your efforts with your own dad ( the abusive one to me), and, yet, you still feel the need to judge my life and decisions, by your strict moral codes of conduct (not quite the same ones I recall you adhered to in your college days, hhmmm, the ones I bailed you out of more times than I care to remember). At my age, I knew what I wanted, what I was doing, and to finally run the hell away from the haunts of my old marriage ( yes, the one I lived in with your dad, one riddled with  twenty five years of abuse). Seems it was finally time to let me out of the prison, give myself some needed air, to breath, to run, to jump, to yell from mountain- tops. When will you all realize, you have no right to judge what you did not live? That right is solely owned by me. You all got out, got away, and that was always my shared right too. A right to begin new, fresh, to take care of me, (after all, I took care of all of you for years, that's what moms do). I had a right to fall in love and get remarried, to feel alive for the first time in as many years as I can count. I had the same right to happiness, as you all did, and do. I had a right to follow through with it, and find peace with someone new.

So, please, would all of you please educate me, as to when you all felt the entitlement and privilege to wave a magical wand, and dictate to us how our life should be handled and carried on? 



Winter is Punishment (for something)
Wish I could sound off that warm brandy and warm covers both indulge and sooth me, but, alas, it would not be true, as I so favor the warmth of the sun on my skin, and the helpless, hapless, romanticism of long summer nights and beach breezes. If I could only jar that tonic for the duration of winter, life would be ever so perfect. 

I think the summer was invented to curate my own particular private universe, and that the winter was created just to teach me a lesson, one god awful lesson, about what, I haven't quite figured out yet, but something horrible I am sure. 

(Maybe it is for that horrendous childhood act of stuffing my peas into the grates of the kitchen radiator and then saying that I ate them all, I hated those damn peas even touching my plate, never mind haplessly falling into my mouth. They were GROSS, and were not going to pass through these lips!)













 (Maybe winter is punishment for telling my ex husband, NO, his extra marital affair is not working for me. Her firebird was not all that COOL either by the way. Nor the smell of alcohol on her breath every time she opened her mouth to tell me she was JUST a friend, and he was CRAZY. Just a friend my ass!

Maybe winter is the punishment that catholic priest warned me about when he found out I practiced yoga (a forbidden Hindu based practice by the catholic church apparently...who knew?), or maybe it is for the chastity I was told to live in, rather than my soon to be husband, but not quite there yet, second husband's bed at the time. My answer to the question of whether or not I was having premarital sex, at 50, was, hell yes, and actually, the best I have ever had in fact.

Maybe winter is for not answering the emails in my inbox, and, in fact, quickly moving most of them to my trash file. Maybe it is for my narcistic mother walking out of my life, after all, you can not possibly blame her for that, she is too perfect, so it must have been my fault.

Maybe it is for getting my college degree, but failing short to ever even begin to go for that Masters.

 Maybe it is for not being so accepting any longer of other people's bullshit.

Maybe it is for the day I walked into an Episcopalian church because I needed a change from all that damn Catholicism hypocrisy, or the day I did a ceremonial dance on the inking of my divorce papers, thus releasing me from the chokeholds of a very angry man.)
Maybe winter is for all of the reasons above, and summer is the real tease, with it’s short burst of tan lines and flipflops.













Barstools & Divorce
I can always tell at the bar by how stiffly they sit, the ones who are very uncomfortable with, well, sitting alone at a bar. Slowly, piece - by - piece, they begin to crumble, slump into their drink of choice, often attempting to flush their awkwardness away in one gulp. I am sitting on the side - of - my - bar - stool, willing to let most of them in, to conversation. Curling my legs around the arm legs of my bar - stool, directly talking to the olives in my drink, " I can do this." I take in a deep breath, with it, the spice of the calamari goes deeply further down, and then deeper still, until the nuances of it warms my internal cavity, dropping the cold of the air conditioning down to the floor.






There's my wallet, my cell phone, and my car keys, sitting placidly on the bar, nothing holds much connotation about my life to other bar suitors. One can surmise from what I display, that, I have some cash, drive a car, and have a phone number, nothing that would make vodka needing to fill a missing limb, or a void hole. My olives sway like weeping willows on the toothpick; I wipe the condensation from my glass, and politely ask for a second napkin. The uncomfortable ones sit more erect now, with their napkins crumbled tight between their fingertips. Their drinks do not hold four olives, the olive branch that gives to mine, the much - needed salt of life. The branch I fiddle with, and stir about the glass. 

The others are timid, awkward, caving into themselves the moment eye contact is made, and the sound of the music pauses long enough to let in the conversations around them. Laminating the fabric of emotion in thick sheets of plastic is the lack of confidence presented when at a bar, and sitting alone. This is the night I have set aside, to get past all of that. To allow my confidence to rise with the air temperature, to be newly divorced and single. This is the night I have set aside to rise above, to let confidence finally breach holes in the awkwardness of being alone, newly divorced, and immensely straighforwardly once again, single...as all things shall pass, this night did also, and I moved on.



No comments:

Post a Comment