2022 Numbers

Spent over 350 hours outside with the kiddos after we started counting.

Ran over 200 miles (which I’m happy with because several months were 0 miles.)

Read 26 books.

Ordered 37 Venti black teas from Starbucks.

Traveled to 4 different beaches (2 of them new destinations.)

Cried thousands upon thousands of tears.

Acquired 1 new pet.

Attended approximately 103 dance classes.

Got sick one time (pneumonia) with a highest fever of 104.8.

Got 2 haircuts each (me and boys.)

Tried one new recipe each month.

Fasted 90 total days.

Threw out 13 tarot decks.

Kept 5 coyote bones and 3 teeth.

Made new friends. Lost old friends. Took a gajillion pictures. Smiled. Laughed. Cried. Mourned. Wailed. Wallowed. Hiked. Skateboarded. Ate. Cooked. Served. Visited. Made up rhymes and limericks. Painted. Discovered. Hugged. Loved. Hurt. Healed. Stumbled. Kept going.

There’s an apple in my purse.

I was compared to Snow White today.

Not an hour later, I was asked if I am a witch.

It’s an intriguing thought – that Snow White and the Evil Queen could be the same person. Could be seen and perceived in the very same woman by different people.

Not outlandish, though.

Something to explore at a later time.

123 don’t say it to me

“Not everyone who loves you will leave.”

I have one hard and fast rule for humans who want to be around me. Don’t say dumb shit to me. That’s it, that’s all.

“Dumb shit” is reductive, and when I say it I am really saying don’t be obnoxious, or flippant, or quote stupid Instagram things that aren’t the least bit profound but they sound that way to a generation who doesn’t read books.

Everyone who loves me, leaves. Everyone.

Admittedly, I am probably a lot. I am a complicated mess of a person. My heart is open, I love to laugh and be infatuated and learn new things. I have no follow-through, I’m hyper-emotional sometimes and I feel everything really deeply. I am argumentative. I am shy. I am exhibitionist, voyeur, and hermit. Goddess, maiden, mother, crone, soldier.

They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me.

And I’m not Gilda. I’m not even Rita Hayworth. My “me” is some number of rungs down the ladder from hers, but I understand the sentiment. I am not a fantasy. I am a real, flesh-and-blood woman, who is angry and sad and curious and funny and a powerhouse and a little girl all at once. That’s hard to deal with, hard to love.

Vulnerability isn’t attractive. Bleeding and crying isn’t attractive. If you’re not attractive, you’re nothing.

And so they come, and they devote themselves, and they get to know me, and they leave. Mostly it isn’t love. It’s stupidity. My dad loved me. My dad left me.

So… you know… don’t say dumb shit to me. Don’t tell me it gets better, don’t tell me time heals, and please don’t tell me that people who love me don’t leave. I only know the opposite to be true.

gray…slip away…

It was gray outside this morning. All day, really.

Driving to work, half asleep, I thought about you. Were you real? Because I think you were real but now you don’t exist and I don’t know what to do with that. I have memories but I can’t hold on to them, can’t hug them. In my mind I try to squeeze the idea of you and it slowly dissipates until my thoughts are hazy nothings.

Other people are scattered in the parking lot, all walking towards the building, trying hard not to see each other. I wonder if they’re hurting like me. Chest on fire, eviscerating me from within, while my ignorant body sends tears down my face – my face! – to quench it. It doesn’t help, of course. It just makes my face wet.

I am in so much pain, it hurts to breathe and I marvel at my own movement – that one foot goes in front of the other, then the other, repeat ad infinitum until I am somehow in my office, saying words I can’t hear to co-workers who blow into their hot coffee and smile weakly at me.

Wearing a red sweater, I think how powerful red used to make me feel. Today this red sweater makes me think of my broken, shattered heart. Bleeding. Choking me. I’m showing the world with my wardrobe that I am a wound, raw and throbbing like an exposed nerve. They don’t notice.

Getting over an illness is funny in that, when I thought I was going to die I pleaded to live. Now that I have returned to my lukewarm half-life, I am reminded how nice it would be to die. To just slip away into the gray fog that surrounds me, quietly, and let go of all this pain.

You left me, and when you left you took me, and now nothing is here in any real way except I am the nothing now, and there is enough of me to feel the beating of losing you over and over and over again. Nothing means anything. Nothing means everything. I am tired.