Work. Pray. Breath.

This is where I ask the universe some stuff.

I need some help. I need you to come through me now. Now is the time. I feel the creation inside of me and I need your help to give it form. 

Universe, Gods and Goddesses, please help me find the divine and pull it out to see the light of day.


Focus.
(that's the word I heard)

That Day I Moved In With the Greek

I'm at my old home, my matrimonial home. I come here a couple of days a week to be able to visit/live with my youngest. I come here to create some level of mom/daughter normalcy in her last years of living at home.

Her dad and I live our day to day lives so differently. The home he creates by way of not creating anything is cold and lonely for her. I don't want that for her. I'm happy to have this time with her when I come up. I'm happy to remind my former life partner that life can be a little bit more warm and inviting, too.

This trip up has been a little different. I've been here for a week while he's away. I'm really living in my hold home. I cleaned up some stuff that was beginning to border an echoing, dirty state of neglect. I made it clean and loved until it sang (this is the stuff my daughter is used to living in. I get that she feels like she went from a garden to a grave). And boy did it sing. It felt nice. For a moment.

My last day here and my daughter has been a way at a concert. My kids are growing up and they are off living their lives most of the time. My last day here and I remembered how lonely I was when I lived in this house and in this town.

I made a house sing with love and joy and shared it with someone who wanted to be no one, and then with no one at all.

I'm here and I'm alone - most of the time.

In the other half of my life, I've moved in with the Greek. The road just naturally curved that way.

I'm going to take the dog for a walk.

Day 13660

Well, when you put it like that, it doesn't seem that long.  Which, for me, begs the question, what was I thinking that made me see that my age in days seems positively small or early... or something.

I just couldn't come up with a title and was going for Sol 42 kinda sci fi feel. Suddenly, I'm perked up because 13 660 days seems like nothin. Forty-seven years apparently comes with a lot more stigma - that I am laying on thick while being in total denial that I am.

My body... hurts. I can't remember it hurting this much, this consistently in my thirties. And apparently, I'm still really young so it sucks to have this much discomfort - upon wakening.

I'm noticing that I'm doing that thing lately, where I never feel like I can get a full breath. Which means, I'm stressing out and not telling myself that I am. I'm watching my life from the sidelines because I can't believe that what's happening is not weird. But my body self seems to be okay with all. As if it knows the future of "it's gonna be fine" and I don't.

The people that live above me, the woman, when she's home, what the fuck is she doing? It sounds like she's arranging rocks, and then, oh I don't know, shredding small shrubs in a industrial blender? She's fucking loud.

Right, and her walking about the house: it seems to me that she walks about, from room to room, repeating to herself, single-mindedly, "I'm as heavy as an ox, I'm as heavy as an ox, I'm as heavy as..."

Luckily, she  travels a lot for work and is gone for long stretches of time. When she is gone, her husband-dude-guy is as quiet as mouse. It's like he's not even home. That must be why they got the Roomba, so that he would remember her and feel comforted by the noise. Fucking Roomba.

I remember what I wanted to write about: I'm sick of myself. Also, I'm sick of myself being sick of myself.  Enter Dissonance.

I want to write but I hate who I look like as a writer. I don't like how my words sound, they sound like I'm trying to be someone other than who I am and I can't seem to locate true north. OR... or, I'm not accepting who I am as a writer. I suppose my first exercise can be "accept yourself as the writer you are today."

I can't change those things if I don't get them out of me enough so that I can see the pieces and then rearrange them. I need to shut the fuck up.  All this languishing on what a douche bag I am is simply self indulgent. Write and re-write.

And every time I have a thought, I must acknowledge it as what it is, a thought, and return the goal of true north.

This morning, I opened a link from Bored Panda, some look at these every day photos that make you think twice accidental optical illusions post. I anticipated seeing 7-10 images but there was 17 pages of images, 5-7 images a page - a fucking forever of fucking cool, weird images - and I could not stop going to the next page EVEN THOUGH I WANTED TO STOP.  Just one more page I could hear my brain say.

It was like gum. The way I feel when gum is in my mouth and it demands I chew it.

It's like cigarettes when they're close to me, dancing about saying "smoke me, smoke me."

It's that feeling of doing things when I really, really don't want to do them.

These actions feel like little sandpaper razor blades cutting the skin above my heart. I can't stop cutting. And then I look up and am confronted with the house plants I refuse to water.

I am unhappy with my un-doing. Although, as far as the house plants are considered, perhaps I no longer want to have the responsibility of those - that's fair.

There is nothing else to be done but to get out my compass, find true north, and not be pulled from the path by thoughts (or stupid Bored Panda posts) that only offer blackholes of brain gum and cigarettes.

And bad feelings are often only negative thoughts masquerading as truth.

STOP YELLING!

actual cartoon version of me

Who do I present to the internet? The fun me, the intellectual me, the spiritual me, the I'm-all-those-things-at-once me? Who is the cartoon version of me and why do I need that?

The internet you is a cartoon version of you. Maybe your cartoon is a New Yorker kind of cartoon or maybe it's a Anime/pop culture super hero cartoon. Or, a Ready Player One video game avatar cartoon (also, if anyone wants to make a grown up version of that book into a movie, please call me). OR... or a Andy Warhol painting cartoon.  Whatever your genre, the internet highlights reel version of you is a fucking cartoon.

The fact that I can not escape this is driving me nuts. And that people are wholly blind and/or absorbed by this is freaking me out.

I don't want to be the cartoon version of me, but I still want to exist in this new world.

Everything internet is about manipulating the user down a path. Glitz and glam. Pretty magazines of information everywhere, connecting you to everything. Scroll! Scroll, SCROLL BITCH, SCROLL. Muhahahahah.

No, I didn't just figure this out. Until now, I accepted it, enjoyed it even. Then, I decided to accept it 150%: yes, market to me, listen to everything I say, because maybe you can curate decent content to me. Maybe you can show me local businesses that I, in return, feel self-righteous about supporting. Great! Feeling superior is exactly what I wanted.

Only, it ends up feeling like I'm wearing jeans that are way too fucking tight.

Because the fucking internet tells you what a super mo fo you are if you support local businesses. Now my super power is being a comfortable do-gooder... of shopping? 

It's all so painfully vacuous.

And every time I open my browser and visit a page that I think is going to entertain me - it feels like walking down a very noisy street of venders, artists, intellectuals, journalists, "stupid" people shouting their opinions and making me judge them,  screaming at me.

They're all fucking screaming.

My computer and phone have become a portal into a vortex of screaming animals. All foaming at the mouth mad to get my attention. That's all I see and I can't un-see it.

I don't want to be political, intellectual, or beautiful. The internet is killing my desire.

Perhaps it's simply the difference of living in the city and then deciding the city is just too fast and too loud, so you move out to the country.

But if you don't know that your suffering from living in the city every time you open your fucking computer or phone then maybe you feel like you're going crazy and have lost control of your insides. And then cartoon version of you is always attempting a take-over so that you can keep up the pace.

It's telling you that if you post a quote about being quiet and moving to the country, everything will be okay. Just make a country bumpkin cartoon version of you and everything. will. be. okay.

Reject progress and chill

When I searched for my bitmoji for country or bumpkin, there was no match. Cartoon me apologizes for this inadequacy.

Side note (because I'm totally judging my own drivel and want to beat you to the punch): Yeah, I know that a lot of people just aren't affected by this and simply turn off the internet. I guess, right now, I wish I was a bit more like them.

And! I know a million people have written the exact same bullshit as this and I'm late to this party. I'm just taking my turn. Okay?

Did you catch that that was cartoon me admonishing me-me for being a late blooming internet hater? It never ends.

The Struggle

Two lives that, in fact, are one. FUUUUUUCCCKCKKKKKKKK. YOU.

I'm sick of myself. I truly am. I'm sick of thinking. I don't want to do it anymore. Contemplating can fuck itself.

Sometimes I smoke, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'm a mom, sometimes I'm relieved of that duty. Sometimes I am upstanding employee that gives 100+%, sometimes I'm a woman. Sometimes I'm a woman with a lover, sometimes  I'm a woman wearing her flesh inside out.

Why must I think about any of those things?

I don't want to think about meditating and the benefits of being a more present version of me.
I don't want to think about how I can change the world from the inside out.
I don't want to think about wearing my flesh inside out.
I don't want to think about the weight I'm gaining.
I don't want to think about who the cartoon version of me is.

Thinking is hurting me.

Devil-May-Care

I used to wake up, get coffee, and then come to my blog and write. Until Facebook's feed changed that? I was, of course, an early adopter of Facebook - eager to get a glimpse of all my old classmates. I remember it being just that, search for old friends, look at them, get bored, move on.

I don't recall when the feed came in; it was apparently 2006. So, whatever, I lied. I would probably would have probably would have also looked at the feed. However, I'm pretty sure I didn't spend the hour+ that I spend now. I would come to my blog to write, because I had so much drama to say.

I don't have much to say today, but I've throttled my feed using News Feed Eradicator for Facebook and I just don't feel like undoing that action - so I came here instead. I should be writing. I enjoy writing. I don't have to publish it.

Oh right, I'm shackin' up. For at least 5 months. With the Greek. We're going to go to Italy. ...the fuck?! So, there is that.

I am surprisingly relaxed about all of this, even though the move is happening within the next two weeks. I have a bit of a devil-may-care attitude. It's refreshing.

I'm at this place where I decided, fuck it. Que sear sera. It could be a big mistake, but if it is, I'm the only one it's affecting. It's a miracle, I am not directly affecting the lives of little humans. Well, at least not with this action.

My momness overall is a thing still. The guilt and pain of having abandoned my youngest too soon is prevalent in my dreams. Ugh. Make it stop. It rips at my heart.

I'm throwing a bunch of shit in storage and moving into his place (staying part of the week there and part of the week with my child - because !I'M A MOM, DAMNIT!). We're saving by sharing his rent and then we're going to Italy in Sept.

So, we'll see how that goes.

Oh, ps: my body seems to be refusing to poop regular like, even though I be eatin' my flax. It seemed imperative to share that here, as if I'm calling my bowels out, publicly shaming them. That'll get them working, right?

There's your cliff hanger. You're welcome. Tune in next week!

Goals.

Breath, stay focused on the heart. Find the quiet.