One dimensional

I like to put everything in a one dimensional field. Like plastic magnetic letters on a refrigerator. Take all my problems and lay them out smoothly to fit all my rules and not so much theirs. Then have myself walk around this one dimensional world with me being the only three dimensional being thing in it. So that I don't touch anything at all.

Reality

There use to be this tree house on a path I use to bike, as a teen. When I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, until I left for college. I loved this path. It couldn't have been more than a mile long. It was deserted, next to a housing development but carved out a forest. On the other side, a restricted access reservoir, my friends and I, of course, peeked into once in a awhile. I use to ride that path on weekends and sometimes weekdays, thinking of nothing at all. There was a pond half way through the path we use to cool ourselves off in it in the summer.
That tree house fell over, fell after a wind storm. We never did have the guts to traverse those rickety wooden boards and man it's bow. It lay there a treasure untook. Some place wondered upon and guessed at. Our parents thoughts keeping us out, though they weren't there. "It'll break under your weight." "Better not go up, those are rusted nails and boards."
We longed for freedom from their dogma, searching for it, yearning for it, racing down long paths cut between a reservoir and a housing development for it. We foolishly believed that what confined our minds inside theirs were the four walls of that house that we bravely ventured out of one or two days a week down a dirt path with a too often visited pond a never entered tree house.

It's just a washing machine

The humming of the bathroom light, the laundry going into rinse cycle. They are the choruses of life. They are the rhythms that sustains us, bind us, keep us subconsciously aware monotony abounds when nothing inside us feels normal anymore. Humming and swooshing goes on and on without our discretion, concern or involvement. Nobody asks the laundry to make a new noise or to improve its performance, to improvise. Nobody asks the bathroom light to hum harmoniously. we just hope all our machines work in the morning. But that humming so constant, so bland, so dependable, mimics the very livelihood we wish to emulate. Dependability, strength during turmoil. The ability to shoulder the burdens of others, consistently and without need for reprieve. It's just a washing machine but I'm jealous.

hahahahahaha

I'm drinking

We've (Sorta) made it

We're still together.
I know there's a of of excuses I have to come up with, at this moment. That I couldn't live without him (I could.) It's my religion (partially... in a sense the whole reason.) I couldn't pull it off (I could, and nearly did.) I know I should say something to sum this all up. make a pretty picture out of it all to make it all make sense.
But I'm not.
I'm simply saying we're here. I'm here. We're happy. I'm happy. I hope you're happy. Because I know in the end, that's all I owe the world. I know in the end, the world wanted me to either shut it or do something about my unhappiness. And, (lets face it) it was easiest for us all to pin in on him. 'Cept it was me. And I know what I did. And what I did wasn't exactly right. I listened to a whole hell of a lot of people who weren't me. I don't blame anyone or am mad. I'll just do what I know is right. And honestly, what was right, is for me to stay with him. And what is also right, was for me to finally realize that life is just that, a series of right decisions.
But oh how I'll be gone if harm ever comes my way.

I Realize Now I was Brave

I realize now I was brave. I didn't always know this. I didn't always realize this. I left my home town. I left for school. I left for good. I didn't look back. I worked hard. I excelled. I did all I could. I went to Hawaii and back. I worked and worked and worked and worked. And I don't regret that I worked. I don't regret that working became my way of living. The way I breathed.
I didn't realize always what a brave spirit I had. That I could have just laid it in the laps of my parents. Left the living of my life to them. Let them control me 'til their demise. Lapped up into the shores of a mans misery and abuse and called that status qua. Called that just Tuesday.
I realize now that I was brave.

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Moving can be bittersweet. Especially in moments of true terror that I'm leaving. No matter who the person is you're leaving, a lot of times it's the stuff you worry about securing and taking with you and the stuff you're concerned with going through and leaving behind. And the going through of the stuff is what brings you to moments of we did that, then. Finding evidence of the trails of feats and failures. You find yourself in the midst of an unannounced photo album in the form of old receipts, mailed materials, cards et etc. In the midst of my bittersweet dash to rummage through and destroy the evidence, before my eyes, that this marriage even existed (honestly that's how I feel at this point,) is the below.
A phoenix of a moment in time ten years ago in the backyard of my house at 17 years of age. A time when my mother was still alive, my father was not, in fact, the man of the house (my aunt truly was) and in defiance, planted emasculating roses gardens one after another. It's a sink in the middle of a raspberry garden. I  took this photo as a part of my high school photography class. I took it, in reality because I was amazed at the whys of anyone putting a porcelain sink in their backyard, in the middle of an overgrown raspberry garden, kept there for years. This was my first attempt at developing my own images, and I used too much of a chemical in the development process (fixer I think,) and that's why it's so yellow, not because of age. In fact, it looked like that two days after development. I'm grateful that I found this, out of all of this....

Things I really do have to remind myself of at times

I want to get something off my chest. You're a guy. I'm a girl. There is a thing called sexual attraction between us, possibly. This could happen because you have a penis and I have a vagina. Big, nasty words mom and dad forbade us from saying at a young age. Thing is, we're no longer that young anymore. We're us. We're twenty, thirty, forty, etc. And we have a brain that works for us now, not some sub servant bystander that takes the hits because in the end of the day someone else pays our bills. No, we're our responsibility now.
But lets get back to us having vaginas and penises. It's straight up biology. We own them. They're ours. They may or may not be the culprit to many of the crimes that have been committed against our hearts and the crimes we have committed against the hearts of others. But what it all comes down to is  what differentiates us from apes, the ability for us to think these things through. The ability for us to have the knowledge that things may or may not be right when working strictly with a primordial mind.
Things may become ugly, in fact. Things may turn out for the worse. Things may feel good. Oh yes! Things may feel good! But what happens in the end of the day is what every other part of our body has to live with after. Our liver, our kidneys, our lungs and our brains. They're the ones that matter in all this, not our respective reproductive anatomy. They're the surviving members that reach out to us to tell us whether or not we've done wrong or right by last nights 3AM binge and later.. fun.... So it may be fine and dandy to make fun of  the ability to use these pieces of anatomy to make decisions for us .. but we all know that the deer in the headlights became they least attractive look after the age of say... yeah... eighteen.

Smile

I listen to people and their lives everyday. And it gets to me. I think to myself far too often, are their lives becoming my lives? Is the state of their being threatening my own? It's strange, yes, but I think these very thoughts everyday. I sit and think to myself too often God!That's what life could be like? I hear the hurt, I hear the pain, I hear the suffering. And most importantly I hear the "I'm taking it"
And I think to myself, I'm not. I'm not taking it. I'm not taking it at all. I'm sitting in a room full of knives pointed at my head and I'm screaming. I'm absolutely going berserk. Whilst they walk up and down that room like it's just another Go*% #$%^ Tuesday.
What makes them so different than me? I'm suffering a divorce only.
I'm constantly having to remind myself I still have two feet. Two arms. Two legs. I have a working brain that functions--in a mediocre way--but functions. And yet I still sit in a sun lit room full of things I could be reading, watching, listening to and I'm crying! Why do I do this to myself? I look at two pictures of myself taken on the same day and I see one person smiling and other in direct agony. A griminess. A sneer. Coolness in her eyes.
Too often, lately, I've been thinking about the end. The final days. The finality of our days. We're going to die. I'm very sorry to bring in the bad news, of course you know, but these days be numbered.
I've lost two family members, in a short time period, to obesity and watched them both die--I didn't just get the memo, no, I was there, no telegraph needed, I was there to witness my next of kin pass on. And it killed me too, obviously. It killed me too. A very big part of me died. The part of me that said tomorrow and the next day is assured. no. You're assured this second. The second that you just breathed in and out and that's the only promise God, Buddha, Satan, Bob Marley is going to promise you today. So you take it or leave it. And I guess what I'm trying to say is I look a lot more attractive happier when I smile. When I choose to smile instead of fear.

To who may never read this

Thank you for the time we spent together. I liked what one guy had to say about us, after my repeated complaints at it not being enough.
"You're making something beautiful... out to be something ugly."
Because it was beautiful.
Thank you for steering me towards sincerity, honesty, humility as well as a sense of calm.
I cherish every moment that we had together, honestly  I do.
Thank you for keeping me on track.
I loved so many things about you. But, no, I did not love you. So don't freak.
No matter how little time we spent together, I will not forget you. I hope to remember us, you really, fondly after many years.
You're an honest man.
I honestly wish you the best.

My favorite thing I wrote in that journal about him....

".....You walked through all the rooms inside me, and turned on every light as you went."

It was something like that. To this day, I still see his too skinny figure sitting on a bar stool, looking at me in a  too bright room.

Flour Tortillas

Where do my morals begin and my sanity, importance and social standing end? Why are my morals important? Are they important to me? Are they more important in the eyes of a stranger that sees me do the right things? Are they important to my family? Are they important to my self identity as a person trying to remain in a semblance of reality here? Who are my morals really important to, really? Because the beginning and end of my morals seems to be mixed up in many different things, when, in the beginning, when I set forth on this journey called whatever it is today, it was God. It was my quest for spirituality. It was the quest to find myself and simply do the right thing. When lately, doing the right thing can be amended and comprised by the whim of someone else's  idea of right and wrong to avoid a conflict. I am who I am or is it that 'am' can be whomever you want her to be to survive another second unscathed? Because, you know, I thought that 'am' was meant for something more.

Expectations and Realities of a Second Childhood:

Expectations: I'm going to have a romping romance with the very first man I meet!

Reality: The first man you meet, post divorce or any other time in your life, is going to be a highly flawed individual such as yourself. He'll have good qualities and bad, but mostly he'll be human and it may not be so harlequin romance but more national geographic mixed with a bit of Nancy drew and Dr. Phil. Sorry.

Expectations: I'm going to come out of my skin and do lots of crazy things!!!! Like finally sky dive! Surfing! Skiing maybe!

Reality:

I'm going jay walk! I'm going to wear deodorant made for men! I'm going to eat all his girl scout cookies! I'm going sleep on the bus to work! I'm going to make my music slightly loud at twelve o'clock at night but then feel really guilty and read a book on cognitive behavior therapy, the one on the book shelf next to how to free yourself of co dependency. Yeah. That book. Pathetic excuse for a second childhood, really.

Expectation: Every man I look at seems to want me, oh la la! I'm finally going to have that emotional and passionate relationship, come easily! And the kissing will be awesome, too!

Reality: Many men you date had that one thing in mind with little to no emotional connection to you. Though many men wanted both. Many deeply wanted both. But, no, the emotional and physical connection often does not balance out easily at all.

In the end, it's all called life and we try to deal as best we possible can with or without that nice big, shiny, cool, neat, gigantic, floppy, motorized without batteries, cereal box toy we were all expecting to be there in the bottom of the box in the end of the day.

Word up

Cognitive dissonance: A discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognition (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously.

Unadulterated: Not mixed or diluted with any different or extra elements; complete and absolute.

Should I add disillusionment? I should add disillusionment.

Disillusionment: The condition or fact of being disenchanted.

Duplication theory.

Very likely you'll be able to find another 'me' out there. In so much you'll be able to find yourself, your beliefs, your values, your personality in another. But think about it this way, are you  the you you want to duplicate? Are you the kind of person now that you want to be able to find in someone else? Because I know this--there is another me out there--right now--but God help their soul.

Girl at the pool

Her eyes were too much like my older sisters. Full of questions, but mostly bitterness and blame for a life I had no part in creating and of pain I had no part in giving. But she blames me just the same for being there and not being there at the same time and furthermore trying to get out of my our station in life.

Swallow me, now

You know, I sewed up that bottom on the green flannel shirt, the one I'd been meaning to sew up forever, minutes before leaving to meet you. I was two hours early. I was just eager to meet someone new. Someone intellectually stimulating. Someone handsome. Someone you were. The you of possibilities that you'd held, as I held the Gelato I ate a few seats down from a mother and child thirty minutes before you called and showed. You were late. I wasn't disappointed. I was used to it. I answered the phone in a bar. You couldn't hear me. I walked out. We talked about how whether or not you knew where the bar was. You didn't quite grasp. I gave away a few nearby restaurant names. You caught on to the joint next door. You suggested sake. You raved about the warmth and flavor of the drinks. We agreed on sushi two doors down from the original bar we were going to go to.
The waitress was a bitch. You mentioned it. Twice, I'm not sure. You mentioned roman history. I'd never been captivated by a man's explicit soliloquy of intelligence. Until then. I couldn't stop listening, and only lightly intrigued by the subject. I wanted you to go on. The time came to leave. The waitress came in a huff. You mentioned her tattoos were nice. I mentioned her tattoos were nice. I mentioned she probable got that a lot. I mentioned I wanted to go into tattooing maybe. We left. You took me in front of a bar across the way. We didn't go in at all. Told me that was the place to go on the weekends, for good up and coming music, not well known, but always packed. We hummed and hawed at where to go next. You rested on an old reliable. Things got intimate. Alcohol poured more frequently. Topics became more explicit. Eye contact deeper. Bodies closer.
"I have a blender, a drink mix at my apartment, you have to try"
I thought of an ugly green couch for some reason, an open spaced apartment living room and a bay window overlooking the busy street below for some reason.
You thought about the check.
We left.
The apartment was dark.
The surroundings numerous.
Books lined both walls.
You said you would not admit to the percentage you had read. I thought to myself, that meant, like my own percentage, that it was small. But no it wasn't.
I asked where you bought the shelves. you said you had made them yourself. I was impressed. You said it came from working hard in the mountains of Oregon. I was looking deeper into your eyes by that time. Becoming unsettled for some reason. We sat in two adjacent chairs, terribly uncomfortable, camping chairs!
I fumbled.
I let go.
I let you in.
I warmed you up with  my cold exterior of the realities I had lived in, was living in, not a lie lay between us for a span of five minutes.
I looked darkly, intensely into your eyes and said what didn't need to be said "I don't think lightly of life"
You said your attraction by moving to the bedroom, soon after that.
I swear you picked up they most boring video game in the world, on purpose, an old detective game.
I thumbed the video game over in my hands, laying face down on your bed, you on the floor in front of the second TV in the house. Silver. I, we, things grew silent. Too silent. Too silent and you said "Do you just want to hold?" and I slid off the bed and into your arms without a word. It had been the first time in over four to five years I'd been held by a man, like that, four to five years!
You, I, we, took each other to the bed. We kissed. When it was "Do you want to just hold" when it was kissing and everything up to that point but not past. For hours. Until the next morning. I saw things light before my eyes I had not felt in... I saw life. I saw streets. I saw seats at restaurants. I saw birds. I saw sunrise at three am in the morning. I saw things I never knew touch could bring.
When things went too far I said "_____ what are you doing?" and you said "_________, what do you think I'm doing?" I'd like to say I moved off you at that point, but I don't know if it was that point that I did. I did at some point and we did not cross the line everyone would think we did.

Oh, yes, this is called regret

Insert nervous breakdown
Walk down memory lane
Build up depleted self confidence
Execute highly sophisticated emotional reaction with the social ability of a two year old
Lay down side by side with ambiguity and partial acceptance
Let down your morals and take in sewage.
But yes, as well as  everything beautiful that which was meant to be had, had not the last words here been committed
Show off a second childhood while ceaselessly accepting the realities of harsh... reality
Half bake a semblance of reality
Construct stamina from tears, pain, gluttony, alcohol, lust, anger, rage and regret
Leave him behind
Leave him behind too
Let yourself in
And do what is right, whole, sweet and go to help everyone else, including yourself, please


(If I ever have to think this hard about anything again, remind me of the possibility of that thing called a heart attack, stroke and cancer that are REAL things in life and could happen to me.)

I never

Walk away, in distress.
Look,
One more time,
Burst of tears, again, on the bus
My warm cheek
Laughing, at anything,
To get my mind, just for a second, off your name and face.
Because I loved you,
Every waking minute.
And denied you existed to nearly every person,

But those eyes. that last day.
Will always be in my head.
No matter how many times I shudder in the shower,
Or minutes before I go off to sleep,
Walk to the store,
Read a book,
Look into nowhere,
Anywhere,
And nearly blink away my eyes, furiously, convulsively, as the image finally fades.
Then the tears come,
When I see so much as a blue jacket, standing in line to get a mocha

And in the end, no one knows but me,
Whether I'm referring to my own mother
Father
Or lover that never was

Love is violence

Love is violence because it rips itself out of the heart, with no tears of remorse. It steals itself from a mind that is not ready to accept it. The body tells them both to shut it like two children in the back seat of a station wagon. The body goes on. The body survives. The body plunges onward. The body has no choice but to chose the first thing and last thing that will continue the human being. Breathing. Going to work. Jogging. Eating. Eating again. Sleeping occasionally. Sleeping a little more than occasionally. Above all, the body takes the havoc and headache of actual love and stuffs it down it's throat to move on. Love is a thing stuffed down a throat without exception in order for real people to live real lives and not have to be bothered with the gushy details of what ifs or maybes, whens or wheres of happy fairy tale lives that never stop crying in the middle where both parties become too old and depressed and despondent to each other because that is what age does to people. The body is to love what a walmart worker is to an actress. Some of us actually have to get up and go to a real job everyday.

Emery

I met an angel tonight
His name was Emery
He taught me that there was no plan
Only happiness
That no thing or person owned you
That you are worth something
Even if you are a homeless person
And that people can be trusted
And that I am smart
And pretty
And sane
To want happiness
He also told me that there is happiness to be found
If I just act out each day
As if I were dying
Because each day is just that
People walking around
as if they are zombies
Acting out
Trying to be happy
I want life
I don't want death.
He asked me what I would do if I thought I were going to die.
And I know what it is now
And I want to try.
I want to do what ever I can to do be just that.
Act as if my life where dependent on each day as if I were dying.
Because of Emery. Because he said that no matter what person comes into our lives, they're just the master Sculptor, chiseling away at what is there,
I want to build upon what I know I see.
Because he, because of what I believe in what I see, Beyond the bull shit of modern life, I am worth something, and that something is worth making something of herself.

A Non Up Lifting Poem

There's a black cork inside me,
That stops all I try to hold back
I'm tired of pushing my fingers
further and further
Into my middle
To keep that cork,
Firmly in place.
Let not one ounce, not one drop,
Out.
For if a flash flood were to occur,
Lies would have to be told,
Locations possible reestablished,
Something would have to be said,
With shifting eyes
To avoid the truth in them.
That black cork holds back air, in reality.
Because the liquid I held so long,
Has spilled through too small of cracks,
For me to see,
That now I'm a soaked, hollow, mess
Of the disaster I did not avoid.

Words That May Freak You Out Plus an Image That Won't

Erectile Dysfunction
Budget Deficit
Irreconcilable Differences
Non operable Malignant Mass
Am I pretty?
Plausible Deniability
Mortgage
Fiscal Responsibility
Politically Correct
You're the father
Type two diabetes

Happy New Years.

The problem with me is that I strongly believe I wasn't made for this ordinary stuff. I strongly believe that whatever happened to me, is happening, somehow means something. No matter how psychotic, no matter how egotistical, no matter how naive, I strongly believe I was meant for something. Something greater than just this. Something better... something... I feel like I'm playing Russian roulette with the days. As if, if I put this speed bullet into just one day, that one day, I'll be closer to that something. And yet you and I both know I'm still sitting here. Just getting older not something. And I hate myself for it. I want more I edge for better. I seek out goodness. I eat up positivity to get the end result of better.I know what it takes. I read books, blogs, news, flyers on the side of the road about how to get better. And yet here I stand. Nearly better but partially, really just the same. I try to scoop myself up into a good sized lump of better and I do it too quickly and with such haste that I get exhausted. I tear up. I throw up my hands and say "Okay you were right, whoever wants to say I couldn't do it today, you were right." When my real problem may live in the exact pattern that I am changing, but in miniscule results. I am getting better. I am becoming something. But not at the pace I set forth for. But just A pace that's okay for now. And that's okay. Because whatever I can do for now, if not just a small part of me that can change, is more than I could have ever hoped for in considering there may have never been improvement at all.