I'm Not Surprised...

But I never feel quite prepared.

When I was a very small child, I lived my whole life. By which I mean that my childbrain crafted the most fantastic dream spanning a lifetime. Full of color and depth, characters and emotions. Accomplishments. Failures. I grew and dreamed and cried and loved. And hated. Everything so vivid, everything real the way breathing is real. Then I woke up. More accurately, my mother woke me up because it was time for preschool.

My entire life I have felt the vestiges of that dreamlife resonating somewhere beneath the surface of my reality. I’ve always felt like this existence was a puzzle I’d put together once already. Some cosmic hand had scrambled the pieces, put them back in the box and asked me to start over. The picture would always be the same; the sequence would eventually unfold even if the pieces came back together in a different order.

I was 26 years old when I woke from the dreamlife as a child again. And part of me, sometimes conscious sometimes not, has always expected that would be the end of this assumed waking life.  

Three (nearly four) years ago I ran away from the home I’d burned down, every single lie I’d ever told nipping at my heels. I started b Honest with the intention of just that: to BE HONEST. With the new people I met. With the people I’d left behind. But most especially with myself. I wanted a public forum to hold myself accountable, somewhere to reflect openly and genuinely on my thoughts, observations, and feelings. What I found is that honesty is hard. Wherever you go, there you are, and here I am with all the lies I didn’t know I was telling starting to salivate offscreen. If time is in fact cyclical and unchangeable, this is the point in the story where I start drinking gasoline and swallowing other people like lit matches, trying to set myself on fire.

Or.

I can claw through the charred rubble of my own history and show you this vulnerable, beating heart beneath it all. This sounds hyperbolic because it has to be. It has to be steeped in metaphor because everything I’m feeling is too real, and I’m so very scared of you all.

Today I turned 27 years old. I outlived the dreamlife. And I wish I could tell you my first response was relief, because it wasn’t. Isn’t. It’s so much more complex than that. There are so many good things in this life. Good people, good experiences. But I am tired, and I thought I was nearly finished running. I’m staggering over the perceived finish line while the universe whispers in my ear that I have to keep going, and I’m not allowed to know how far or how long. And I’m tired. I’m running beyond the estimation of my capabilities and I’m tired. Terrified.

I’m not writing this so you can feel sorry for me. I’m not writing it so you can try to fix or reassure me. I’m just trying to get back to the original mission of this blog: a space to examine my thoughts and feelings. A space to be vulnerable and hold myself accountable. I didn’t die. I didn’t wake up. I have to/get to keep running this race. So here I go. Plunging into the next year of my life; this year I never expected to have. I am so thankful for the love and support you’ve all shown today. Every day.

I love you.

-b

Open Your Eyes

Tonight, I was standing in line at Trader Joe’s waiting to checkout with my customary Friday-night champagne and salami. I’d gambled on a particular clerk’s bagging skills. I felt confident he could load up one person’s items and blow through another before I’d been standing long enough to get bored. I was wrong. I’d overestimated my attention span. I let my gaze wander over the usual display rack of chocolate bars, mints, and seasonal oddities. Shifting from one foot to another, I happened to glance to my right.

There, perched in the middle of the store in a modified walker/crib were three pomeranian dogs. They wore tiny jackets with color-coordinated bows tucked behind each ear. Little blinking red lights were affixed to each of their collars, for safety I presume. Attached to the front of the cart with white zip ties, the hand-painted sign read: Caution! Guard Pomeranians. Next to the words, a fluffy painted pomeranian looking like a modified ball of sunshine, red tongue lolling from its black-lined mouth. Pictured alongside the guard pomeranian were the Mother Mary, and a uniformed man toting a rifle.

The trio were keeping a close eye on everybody passing their cart while their mother fastidiously examined each bottle of wine on the shelf. She would select a bottle, peer closely at the label, lean in to see the price tag, and frowning return it to the shelf. All the while those little dogs, poised in their cart, keeping an eye on things.

Now, let’s be real. I’ve worked in a veterinary clinic for nearly four years. I’ve seen plenty of dogs in strollers. I’ve even seen trios of dogs in clothes before (though the last one was yorkies in dresses). And while these guys were pretty adorable, all fluffy bundled up, I’ve seen cuter dogs in stranger places.

What surprised me was how many people walked right past those dogs. How many people nearly walked into those dogs, and their cart. Or their mother where she was examining wines. And they didn’t miss a beat. They didn’t look up, or say hello, or say sorry. Like some kind of autopilot allowed them to swerve around [unimportant object] on their way to the chocolate-covered almonds, or next open sales clerk.

It made me wonder how much more we’re missing. How many things do I nearly collide with without every knowing? I mean this literally and figuratively, of course. Maybe it’s time to look up a little more often. Maybe it’s time to open our eyes.

I don’t know if that woman ever settled on a bottle. When I left, a man had slowed in front of the cart, looked up from his phone, and was raising a tentative hand for examination by one of the dogs. When I left, those pomeranians were guarding nothing more than the fact that they weren’t guarding anything at all.

Happy Friday, boo faces.

-b

Don't Let It Get You, and I....

Won't let it get to me.

Tonight and a dark bar where you can't hardly see the company unless you’re looking hard enough. $5 glasses of Merlot and $1 off whiskey because Wednesday. Because the girl you know is leaving and the bar didn’t know but they seem to sympathize anyways. Jubelale tells you the season has changed, winter on a summer-drunk tongue. Your focus funneled into pool cues and angles and an impossible shot made possible by the sheer physics of luck.

Every time I tell the story it becomes more true. The crying. The leaving. Even in this place where past and future chafe against the thin membrane of memory. I don't remember the sloped parking lot. The bar where I handed the waitress my phone, asked her to call us a cab because even my monocular vision couldn’t procure us a ride home. Here is what I remember: the parking lot like a ski slope for beginners, no rope to guide us home. The Christmas tree refuses to grow in the corner you’ve allotted, and I think that must be a metaphor,

In the parking lot where we stumbled and weaved the dark-haired memory tells me I was never meant to follow. Tells me I was born to have dreams. And I laugh, say the parts of myself still connected to you feel bruised. Tell her some day I’ll heal, but tonight I feel like an open wound. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for but it’s more than this. Hours ago, an impossible angle and a reckless shot, the 8-ball sinking into the corner pocket and even strangers have to sigh for the luck of it all. Perhaps these hands are more skilled than they know. Perhaps these hands know the path they are supposed to follow.

My therapist says it’s time to let go, says she can help me through alone but hope is a dangerous emotion. She can’t navigate the breadth of this emptiness, You. Do you know I still think of you at night? Wish the smell of you had stained my pillows, spoiled me to any future suitors' advances. There are times I feel like my sadness has chummed the waters of their affections, caused these hapless heartbreaks to rise to the challenge, hell bent on erasing this you that I still cling to. Is tragedy a thing, or its absence? I’m never quite sure.

I fear the morning, that still, quiet gray. My breath unfolding around me like a whisper. Like an apology. Everything is so different than I’d hoped everything might be. Even the feel of you against my bare feet: foreign like the countries we’ll never see together. Imagine Spain. Australia. Scotland. These places our breath has never mingled in dark alleys or hostels. Never risen off of each other's skin to be born again.

The dark parking lot where I’m buying cigarettes and the olive green shirt in dark-rimmed glasses asks how my day is. I say Can’t hardly complain and he laughs so soft his shoulders don’t move. See, he’s been having the same day too. As soon as I leave he’ll crawl back into the store, prop an elbow on the counter like the memory of a bar, and spill his stories. But I will be too far gone to hear. I watch my breath puddle around the cold.

I am too far gone to hear. I am too far. I am gone.

-b