Why write at 4am?

 This is NOW.  This is me, always the way I am.... guilty, ashamed, sorry, desperate.

So I am awake at a stupid hour wishing I could fix everything that makes me feel guily

stupid

sorry

desperate

 and... inspired.

I have been reading the autobiography of a successful man.  I wondered why he wrote and why I want to write as well.  As it turns out, I want to be successful too.  Maybe telling the stories will make the guilt, shame, and sorrow go away.  Maybe someone will read what I write and I will feel worthy, important, or forgiven. Maybe my kids will read it and understand that I am the complete mess that they know but also something more.  Maybe it will help someone else, just like all of the things that I read seem to help me in just the way I need helping even though I haven't known I needed.

But how can I do it when the editing will never get done?  The post never gets posted.  The passwords are forgotten and everything has to be started and restarted.  How?  NO CLUE But here we go anyway.

If you are reading this, know that I was thinking of you when I wrote it.  If you know about this it is because I miss you and wish we could talk face to face.  If you are reading this you are a friend.

I don't do friendship well.  But it really is ME, not you.  I am selfish and inconsistent and spend too much time talking and not enough listening. or being quiet.  So, those are some of the reasons I feel guilt, shame, and failed.  But there is more.  There has to be.

Maybe I am just talking to myself, but I am glad you are with me. 

Woke

I’ve been asleep.  That’s a metaphor- but it’s 2am, so it’s also a lie.

It’s funny, not "ha ha" funny but “gotdammit, how could this be?!” funny.

I’m trying to do just what I am teaching one of my customers (a heroin addict) to do.  Be like a baby.  Learn to sleep and night and be awake most of the daytime. Stay clean and dry.  Watch Mr. Rogers and chill TF out.  Also, be an adult. Make a list, get shit done, vacuum the rug, walk the dogs.  Be nice to your family.  Repeat.

When things are going wrong it can feel like nothing will ever be right again.  Things change.  Feelings lie.  Time marches on.  That's what keeps me going sometimes, just knowing it won't always be like it is right now.  Even if things aren’t going to be alright soon, they will be and you will be.  It's what I tell the addict who is trying to get her shit together and it's what I tell myself. 

I am a mess too.  I can hardly keep straight the days the week sometimes. Ask me when my last doctors appointment was, go ahead, ask-  I DON’T KNOW. Maybe a month ago maybe a year ago… I’m not quite sure.  Do NOT ask me when the next one is… that’s like trying to remember to refill the Adderall.  Let’s not diagnose me though, I’m just messy. And so are you.

How do I know that?  Because you are reading this.  (or maybe you’re just reading this because I asked you to read this.)

So, don’t judge me and I won’t judge you. ...unless you write blogs in the middle of the night instead of doing what you tell addicts to do.  In that case I will judge the shit out of you.  But not here.  Not now. 

I’m awake.  I’ve been dreaming all of these wonderful things that I want to share with you.  Sometimes it may sound like the falling-from-an-airplane-in-a-car-then-I-turned-into-a-butterfly dream.  Sometimes it might sound like the same dreams you have had.  Fair Warning; it might be a few nightmares…  but we will be ok.   

Imma do what I was made to do.  Sit alone in the dark and type furiously at a keyboard until one of us feels better.  And sleep at night.  Most of the time.

Dead Tired

There are so many reasons to hurt. 

So many different ways people hurt and ache and suffer. 

So many different kinds of pain. 
This isn’t about the pain of injury. Or tragedy. Disability. Inequality. 
This is just a plain every day ordinary hurt that is common to all of us.

Living is deadly. 
The million little tragedies of a day bring a slow death. 
The big ones, the ones others see and fight through with us… Those aren’t the ones. 
Those make us stronger somehow.
We rally and find strength and grow. 
Others cheer us on. 
It’s the lonely battles that wear us down.

They wear me down.
 I am so worn down and weary. 
This battle is one I can’t put my finger on.  It’s something deep down. 
Something I’ve ignored for a long time.
 I’ve pushed it away for so long I’m not sure I even remember what it is. 
But it’s there, nagging.

Like a dead body it is decomposed beyond recognition.
But the stench is there. 
It won’t go away until I dredge it up, identify it, figure it out.

And only then I can bury it for good and put it to rest.

 It won’t go away; it will always have been. 

But it won’t be rotting anymore and stinking up the rest of my life.

Not good enough

I realize this isn't really worth publishing.  I just need to put something down and hit the button.

I thought the same thing about myself earlier today.  Not good enough.  Just get something done.

This is not a ploy for pity, it's simply where I am at the moment.
And that's what this is all about.  For reals; it's about capturing what is REALLY going on inside my head.  Too many people tell me their own head is just like mine.  Thoughts are killing them.  Regrets and shame and just plain lack of meaning and purpose is a slow and painful death.
It's not talented writing or earthshaking info, it's just the facts- man.

The fact is, most people aren't willing to speak up.  Most suicides happen when someone thinks there is nobody listening, nobody that can understand, no way out.  So many relationships end because talking (and fighting) is just too hard.  Lots of lonely nights and lives are wasted because people think they aren't good enough.  Or important enough.  Or worth the energy it will take to make a change.

Well, here I am- living proof that something that's not good enough still has worth.
You're here.  That makes it worth it.
That gives me the stamina to write again and to keep trying and to not give up.

Go and do whatever it is that gives you what you need to take the next step.  It doesn't have to be a big deal.  Go for a walk, call or text a friend, color a picture, go for a run, post something, paint something, throw some rocks or pots or sick beats.  Just keep going.
You'll realize, just like I did, that whatever keeps you going is good enough.

super pissed about the beach

My kids are super pissed at me right now.  I wouldn't let them come along to the beach for the weekend.  Just the fact that I made that statement blows my mind.  Sounds like a real first world problem, right?  But then I had a revelation about "millennials".  It baked my noodle - and pretty well done too. 

That Guy and I needed to get away- alone and together.  There are lots of reasons (Christmas shopping for our kids, mental health vacay, separation from our jobs -so that we can't be reached or called in to help, and so we can have hot monkey sex without the teenagers hearing us. Important stuff, ya'll.)  We don't feel we need to give our daughters excuses, so I said- "Nope".  When that set off the alarms and a poutfest I decided I must've failed as a parent.

How spoiled do these kids have to be to think that they have the "right" to go to the beach? Just because we CAN go they believe we all MUST go!  Well, as it turns out, they're not spoiled, just disappointed.  And pretty smart.

My knee jerk reaction is to be mad at them for being mad at me.  That's not fair; everybody gets to be mad.  

If everybody doesn't get to be mad then nobody gets to be.  In families where nobody gets to be mad feelings aren't felt and dysfunction is forced to flourish.  In those where only SOME of the members get to be mad, resentment is built, respect is impossible, and rebellion is certain and severe.

So, surfer girls DEFINITELY get to be disappointed that they didn't get to come to the beach.  It isn't just luxury; it's medicine.  The ocean is a source of healing.  If you don't believe that, you've never been.

When I was 19, I hadn't.  After my first summer of college I hopped in a pickup and headed for the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.  Having grown up in the midwest I hadn't ever been and had no idea what I was missing.  

The first time in the water I made the ridiculous statement, "It really does taste like SALT!!"  Anyone who hasn't tasted the ocean prior to adulthood will understand the intense salty saltiness cannot be duplicated with table salt.  It's it's own thing; warming and comforting and slightly disgusting at the same time.  My surfer girls don't understand my naivete of ocean salinity- they have tasted it from their very first summers.

There was another new experience during that trip.  I knew the salt water would heal cuts and sores.  I'd even worked with a Marine Biologist who'd taught me what he'd learned while working in a coastal area.  There are tips and tricks related to marine injuries and treatments of which the rest of us Landlubber medical staff were unawares.  That was the sum total of cool information about the ocean I'd been exposed to.  While it was impressive and fascinating, it wasn't experiential.  Actually seeing the ocean water heal up a cut AMAZED me.  Like, stupid about it, showing everyone what it had done in just a day or two.  Relentless jabber about salt water like it was "maaaagic".   

But it was much more than that.  The salt water seemed somehow to soothe something in me that I didn't even know needed soothing.  It might have been the waves or the sunshine or the comfort of the tides, whose rhythm I could never quite calculate.  Maybe it was the waves, whose sets I couldn't predict no matter how many times I've counted them.  Catching and riding waves still escapes me but letting them crash over me seems to work just fine to fix what's broken inside.

I come from a farming family.  We are generations of working the earth and the animals and most of us have never seen the ocean.   My kids have never worked the earth and wouldn't know a bull from a dairy cow.  Trying to explain the seasons or the birthing of a calf or the misery of detasseling corn is a waste of the breath I already can't hold long enough to wait for good sets.  Some things have to be felt; experienced.
The ocean; they know.  
They know the waves and the tides, marine life and sand in their sandwiches.  They are mermaids who recognize the sweep of the wave hitting shore with it's bubbling hiss that fades to a fizzle.  They can feel the waves and even surf them.  They have something I never had -not because they're spoiled millennials but because we were lucky enough to give them an awesome thing- beach memories.  That doesn't mean they get  a trip to the shore every time they long for fresh seafood but it doesn't either mean they're entitled or spoiled.  It means they're blessed- lucky, fortunate, and tan more of the year than not.

Friends with Spiders

One reason for a blog is that I'm chicken shit.  I don't have the guts to say things to some people's faces... or the wit to come back when the moment is right.  I'm not writing in cyberspace so that I can be a faceless irresponsible spewer of hypocrisy.  I just don't have that many friends and the few might scurry if I told the hard truth EVERY time.  Aaaand because I try my best not to use my "Pepper Words" in public.

 I was behaving like a normal neighbor and one of my favorite people came up to the porch.  We were talking about the pain she was reeling from because her brother was losing his marriage.  She was so angry at her young sister-in-law-soon-to-be-not.  Broken hearted and near tears she described the descent.  "She lied about who she was... covered it all up until after it was all too late".   This was particularly devastating because another member of her very tight knit family had also just lost a marriage because the partner turned out to be a crazy person.  That mistake didn't shine full strength until after the kids and a business venture and happy life and everything they'd built together wasn't enough for her.  She lost it- just broke down and went nuts.
I was very sad for her, my friend on the porch.  She has her own problems and quirks but also has the best, brightest, happiest, and most well adjusted family I know.  It's not perfect and she doesn't try to pretend that it is.  But nobody inside the door of their domicile is just plain bat shit crazy.  They've seen it from a distance and kindly reserve judgement.

 I was sad for her because the Kook came and Fooked with her life.  I don't think anyone keeps it away completely; but many people are able to adjust adapt and just act like sane folk most of the time.  Most people don't cover up who they know full well that they really are so they can work their way out of a ghetto of emotional dysfunction.  They lie in wait like spiders amid a web of lies they've delicately woven over years.  They wait for some unsuspecting prey to come along and get stuck in the web with them so that life won't be so lonely, frightening, and terrible.  A Blonde Recluse may even believe that if she can catch just one normal person she can become something other than a spider herself.  The intention was never malicious.  She wasn't looking to ruin his life; maybe just watch him, learn to mimic his movements, maybe even share some meals and some friends with him.  Once they made a connection he may have shown her some things about herself she never knew.  Having never seen her own web from a distance, she wasn't aware she was an artist until her prey pointed out his own reason for approaching her in the first place.  Hard to say.  Spider romance can be a tricky thing.

 That's what broken people do.  We know we are broken, so we cover it up and go out and try to find normal people who make us whole.  We play at life.  Dressing up like the smiling people we see with paying jobs and happy lives and we try to be something other than dirty spiders who have always known they didn't belong around people who look so shiny and clean.
So of course I hurt for the un-sisters-in-law.  They had both screwed up the only opportunity they may ever have to be a part of a family that loves one another.  They had lost this wonderful woman sitting on my porch who has great kids and a loving husband, an acerbic wit and uproarious sense of humor.
I smile every time I see her name pop up on my phone.  She is going to make my day- one way or another.  She is so much fun to be around; encouraging, loving, decent, generous.  I marvel at her constantly; her sense of style in home, beauty, and fashion.  Her ability to dress her children and get them all on the bus with shoes tied, hair combed, and shirts on right side out.
I know she knows I'm a screwball and there are lots of others out here like me.  We are having this conversation because we both live in the real world and know that everyone messes up and no marriage is perfect.  What I can't bring myself to tell her is that I have no idea why I haven't ended up just like these women we are talking about.  I cannot for the life of me imagine why I haven't spiraled out of control and screeched over the ledge.
I can't tell her that I'm just a spider too.

(BTW; fuck you in advance to those who will say, "if you can't 'say anything' to them then they aren't really your friends".  People who truly accept you for who you are and let you be a moron on occasion are few and far between.  Most of us only find a few of those in an entire lifetime.  Many people don't even know who they are or WHAT they think until they run it by their friends for approval.  And you don't say EVERYTHING to your friends or family either.  Most of us will lie to someone we love who needs a truth slap about her hair.  We turn the knives in their backs, don't we bitches?  Don't tell me what a friend is or isn't; I get to decide that.)