Grace

I was reading a blog written by a woman with cancer, the big bad kind. And I was awed by her ability to just not be okay sometimes, and to celebrate other times, bringing joy to everyone at her chemo center.  We all have these times when we are struggling, when we are sick, or lonely, or grinding out day after exhausting day of a huge work project, or grad school, or a rambunctious child. And some people seem to do it with so much grace.

I think it’s because some people can accept their dark and their light. They can be not-okay and be okay with that. I think maybe grace doesn’t come from sailing through everything unaffected and vulcan. I think maybe it’s letting the feelings come, letting them go, and the freedom in the in between spots to just enjoy the light, not shaming ourselves for what we feel and think, not apologizing again and again and again for having a time we were weak or wrong.

He's Getting Remarried

Okay.. so.. I had the 5 year anniversary of my father passing, which was the same day as my old wedding anniversary to my now ex-husband.  If you are just joining this or don’t know the history, my ex and I were together for 13 years, married 11 of it and monogamous about 11 of it. We opened up and became poly, and he left me for his girlfriend that I had also been dating until he was too jealous of her and I to continue. He told me he couldn’t be poly, and then that he could, and again that he couldn’t. He began dating our old dog walker in secret while we were separated but talking about working it out.  We have been apart about 3 years now and are divorced.

I did pretty well this anniversary and thought mostly of my father. I miss him, but it was somehow sweet this year to think of him, and not the aching pain of other times in my grief over him. It was good.

I messaged him and learned that he’d proposed to the dog walker and they were engaged. (He and the girl he left me for broke up in October of the year we separated and after we’d decided to divorce, and he’s monogamous with the dog walker since then).

Stir that Lemonade

Sometimes a thing just resonates with you, like a sounding rod, like a shot right to the core.  It’s the weirdest thing, but I am there with Lemonade, by Beyonce.  It’s her new visual album.  I watched it the other night when I desperately needed a break from school and zing.. it just struck a cord.  I can’t stop thinking about the ideas and the things in it.  It stirred up some shit in me.

gorgeous underwater surface image found at https://sandroworrell.wordpress.com/. Check them out. GREAT stuff.

The other night I just kept thinking about lies and lying and the dishonesty with those we love. I thought about my mother’s lies, the root of my hatred of lies.  I thought about lovers and friends and my chosen family and the lies.  I keep thinking about other things in the video.  I thought about love and redemption and trust and healing.  She just went there, like for real.  And she came out of it too, and I thought of my own times recently when I’m remembering who I am.  I’m remembering what I am.  I got a little lost there for a while, hurting, healing, reeling maybe.  But I’m not that girl.  I stayed there a long time maybe, but I can’t live in self pity or fear.  I’m not that girl.

I am my father’s daughter.  I am resilient and forgiving and strong and tenacious.  I feel deeply and widely and strongly but never easily.  I don’t like being vulnerable, but I’m learning to be okay with my capacity to do so.

It still bothers me, this way I need people.  But I know that the fact this bothers me is the real bother.  People need people and I am not immune.  It’s the weird thing about vulnerablity being a strength.  My love can wear it down.  I’m remembering that I love me too, just not more than I love you.  I am remembering that I make plans and dream and actually make some of it happen.  I’m remembering that there is a long line of times in this world that you love someone as trully as you can and maybe they just can’t go there.  But it says nothing about you.  It’s about them.  And no.. this isn’t remotely about Traveler.

Traveler can go there.  He’s learned to speak and I’m learning to listen more and more and more.  He says the stuff because I love it, but I’m seeing it too.

And family.. well.. that one’s hard.  but isn’t it always?  Family is loving people beyond the parts of them that make you crazy.  I chose my family, but that doesn’t mean they don’t make me nuts.  Love them anyway.

I don’t know.  I just feel a lot of things popping up to the surface that have maybe been down under the waves for a while.  I feel myself rising to the shimmering surface there.  I can see the bubbles and feel the pressure of my breath held so long, but I feel it faster and faster.. I’m coming up.

And Then It Was Just Us Now

I’m still processing some stuff, but for now the storm has passed with Traveler and I.  I didn’t resolve my future tripping and I don’t have it all ironed, but I decided that right now I just need to love and be loved.

This is from Worst Cat Tumbler. It’s funny. Check it out if you haven’t seen it. 🙂

So we had a wonderful mid-week date.  He helped me bring home groceries and then talked with me while I made dinner and cleaned up my kitchen.  We talked about Clash of Clans and World of Warcraft and Halloween parties.  We laughed and ate my delicious chili.  Afterwards I was hot and went to change and called him in to lay on the bed with me.  I asked what he wanted to do tonight and he said “I really don’t care at all what we do.  I just want to be with you and spend time with you”.  Of course I kissed him for that.

We planned to lay together for a minute and then go back out to the living room to play World of Warcraft together.  And we never left the bed.  We ended up in bed from about 630pm on.  We got utterly blissed out on touch, just petting each other and snuggling and kissing and saying sweet loving things.  We didn’t even really talk.  We smiled and kissed and petted and snuggled and writhed together.  We looked at each other and smiled.  We twined our limbs together like roots.  We rolled over.  We sighed happily.  We hummed pleasure.  And it was utterly and completely perfect.

It didn’t answer any future questions and it didn’t need to.  It made me feel loved.  It made me feel deeply and completely loved, and I told him that.  I also told him he was kinda crazy about me.  He agreed.

Did you know that snuggling releases oxytocin and that oxytocin is healing?  It’s true.

It's Just a Thing

Isn’t it funny the things you get attached to?  I teared up a bit bringing my car home from my friend’s house tonight.  It was just for a second, but still.

I have to sell the car because the repair bills when something breaks are difficult for me to pay, and I have to sell it now because it’s a stick shift and I broke my foot and can’t drive it.  I’m moving on and just bought a different automatic car that is really awesome and I love.. but still.

It’s the end of an era!  I bought my beautiful mini-cooper S in 2006.  If I could I’d keep it another 10 years.  I have considered learning how to work on it myself so it’d make more sense.  It’s the funnest car I’ve ever driven.  There are faster cars and bigger cars and cars with more utility or whatever.. but my sporty little gem is the funnest car ever.  It has toggle switches!  It has a super charger!  It has sport seats that hug your body while you drive it and it is so responsive it feels like you are WILLING it to go places.  Burning through the gears getting on the freeway feels like you have rockets.  You THINK about turning and it responds.  You feel the road and the panoramic glass and being low like that feels like you are with the road, part of the road.  That alone would make me miss my lovely Clara Bow.  (I named her after the sexy red-headed spit-fire actress from silent film).

But it’s also what she represents.

Relief!

There is an end in sight.  I will not need surgery they think, and they didn’t mess me up by not having fiberglass casting material, and it’s not in the Jones region as had been predicted, so it should heal pretty well.  Yay!!!

It’s still 4 more weeks of no weight bearing, but that beats the heck outta surgery.

And I’m having fun flirting with a new dude.  We’ll see rabbit.  We’ll see.  So often these things pan into nothing but there is a shocking large amount of overlapping interest.. so I kinda hope it does come to fruition.  He’s dragging his feet a little, balking that I told him my foot is broken I think.. or maybe something else.  He’s cagey and I don’t have it figured out yet.  Eh.  What can you do?  I’m enjoying the flirting.  It’s so much fun to imagine.

You can't keep a good slut down

(Skip this if for ANY reason descriptions of very graphic sex with one of my partners wouldn’t be welcome).

So.. things are looking up.  They pretty much had to.

Woman kneeling on a stool by Araks Johannes

Yesterday I got my period, which was a HUGE bummer because Traveler and I had hoped for some frisky fun.  We’d had a date the night before and spent most of it car shopping to replace the aging stick shift car I can’t drive and that is killing me when it has repairs.  We’d had dinner with Quinky Girl and chilled a bit at their house so she could see him too after he was gone all week, and she’d been thoughtful and cooked for everyone.  We got back home pretty late and fell into bed.  I felt sad and broken and sore.  It’d been a long crutching day and a lot of running around and even if it had been a good day, it had still left me sore and beaten. I broke down and cried in his arms.  It was just that when we’d finally crawled into bed and he’d held me, my guard dropped. It’s just so exhausting and difficult.  It’s a lot more life altering than I thought.  So there weren’t sexy times Thursday, but there were equally lovely things with our short time.  He talked to me.  He told about life and stuff with him and he talked to me about all the ways he needs me.

Traveler told me how much he needs me!!  I just filled with love, overflowed.  We held each other then like holding each other was the only thing stopping our death.  Snuggling and cuddling are not adequate to describe the intimate thing we did, the eye contact, the kisses and comfort and touch.  And after all the loving words and caresses I’d needed so badly, we fell asleep tangled together and slept like the dead.

So, as perfect as Thursday night had truly been, after a week away from Traveler and a week of healing I was really looking forward to some more carnal connections with my love the next night, Friday.

Being Broken is Exhausting

I think healing takes a lot of energy.  I KNOW crutches take a ton.  I smell like a trucker by the time I get to work.  I just need a minute here.. okay?

Art by dandude666 at Deviantart.com

My hands hurt.  They are bruised from the crutches.  My shoulders and arms ache and the skin where my crutches rub on my inner arms is swollen and angry.  My back hurts and everything is so.. fucking.. hard.  I can’t carry a drink.  I crawl on my knees putting things a few feet out in front of me.. crawling to them.. a few feet more.. crawling to them.. and this is how I get stuff.  I eat on a stool in my kitchen next to the microwave where I nuke stuff.  My knees are raw from the very minimal crawling in my apartment.  They are red and scaly.  I put some calendula on them.

I have this kind of bone wearing fatigue.  I’m so tired.  I’m achingly tired by 1 or 2 pm.

I’m scared.  I’m scared about my money and how this will heal and what will need to happen.

I feel loved and lucky for the awesome people in my life.  I came home yesterday after breaking down TWICE in absolute frustration at the process of getting treatment.  I’m treated at the VA, and everything seems to be on the other side of the hospital and I painfully and wearily crutched to it.  X-rays.  Prosthetics to get the knee scooter they didn’t have.  Ortho to find they didn’t have my consult.  My main doc to get the consult.  Back to Ortho to find they now had the consult and would call me sometime.  Assholes.  They could have said that.  I kept promising myself I could come home and cry in my bath.  And I did.  I ran hot water, lowered most of my body into it and sobbed like a broken thing.

When I’d cried myself out Cleveland came over with a delicious meal, lovely wine, and even some snacks for me for later.  More than that, he brought his kisses, petting me and talking sweetly to me, holding me, telling me he loved me.  I lay on the floor while he cooked without the energy to even put my clothes on.  It’s very unlike me.  I lay there naked listening to him talk to me as I’d asked him to, feeling better and more human as the pain in my body eased a little with rest and his sweetness.  He was indeed a sight for sore eyes.  We watched goofy TV and snuggled and talked and played around.  We went to bed to listen to music and touch and just be.  And Cleveland being Cleveland.. he made my entire body feel better with wracking orgasms and our chemistry overtook us.  We hung out naked for a few hours playing around on our computers and joking about things.  (I wore a sheet.  I’m strangely modest).  And Cleveland got up eventually to go home and shower me off of him and crawl into his own bed.

I slept like the dead.  I got blurry talking to a cute guy from OKC that popped up.  I just ran completely out of gas and told him a gibberish sort of goodbye before falling dead asleep with my phone still in my hand.

I’m sitting at work typing this and trying to work up the energy to walk to the car.  It’s so far away.  And I’m so tired.  But it’s better than yesterday.  I don’t feel like I need to cry in my bath today.  I do still smell like a truck driver though.  I’m going to wash myself and eat my dinner and crawl a nice cold beverage to my couch.  And I’m going to watch mindless TV with my alarm set in case I wake up in the morning.  It’s better than yesterday.  Thank God.  Hopefully that’s a trend that continues.  Just a teeny bit better every day.

Proof In Pudding- Broken Bones

I broke my foot.  I was walking in these clogs, and turned my ankle and stumbled, and *snap*.  I had a jones fracture.  It’s a break of the 5th metatarsal, or basically the bone in the middle of your foot on the pinky side of your foot.  Fuck it sucks.  Just a quick little twist.. and bam.  I feel like an old woman.  Who breaks their foot walking?!?!

I cannot express to you enough how much this sucks and is affecting my life.  It’s very hard for me to walk far.  My one good leg gets so tired and sore.  If I move it the wrong way, put any weight on it.. anything.. bam.  When I did it I was walking into my house and stopped dead in my tracks and wretched.  It was so painful I hyperventilated a little and had to sit on the ground.  I was SHOCKED by how much it hurt.  I assumed it would stop, like a terrible pain of stubbing a toe or something.  Nope.  I was planning this wonderful weekend.. dinner and drinks with Quinky Girl and Bawdy Storytelling, Brick Con (the Lego Convention) a homeshow, and a long date with Traveler.  Dammmit! I was soooo excited.  I love that stuff.  I’ve been stoked about Traveler and Quinky Girl redoing their kitchen for months.  It is SO MUCH vicarious pleasure for me.  Nope. 

Dear-Bawdy God -YES

Today started out fine and turned into a bit of a cluster-fuck and let’s just say I’m super stoked it’s Friday and when I finish work I am out of here.  Yes.  I should be working at this moment, but I’m taking a second to say that I’m excited it’s the weekend because this proclimation will help me finish this God Forsaken Day.

Nothing actually super bad happened.  Just bureaucracy.  But yeah.  I wanna poke people’s eyes out anyway.  It’s like the Three Stooges.  But meaner.

Three Stooges eyejob from stiffjab.com.

Tonight I will decompress with my lovely Quinky Girl.  We’re having delicious eats and libations before heading off to join Jonah and Traveler and hear some funny, sexy, thrilling, interesting BAWDY STORIES!  It’s at a local place called Rebar, and we have free tickets.  Thank you Dixie!

I need me some Quinky time.  I need me some lovely dranks.  I need me some bawdy sexy storytelling fun.  I need some Traveler kisses and Jonah smiles.  Ah.  It’s the weekend!  (soon)