Swan Song:Final Post for Kindness in Giving

All good things must come to end, right? Don't get me wrong, I really, really, really, enjoy writing and this blog has been a nice outlet. It's not where I need to be though. It's lost focus, direction, that joie de vivre. It's much less than I ever wanted it to be but it has brought me more joy that I could have imagined when I started it. September seems to be my transition time because it occurred to me that it was ten years ago (almost to the day which is coincidental) that I closed up my Chisel Point for Deeper Penetration Blog. Lots of turning point for me have happened in September. I believe this is because my birthday is in October and I am one of those people who is prone to self-assessment, self-reflection, probably entirely too self-aware.

I have been rattling certain plans around in my head for far too long. I have been accepting what is much more than I should, like in a death to my soul kind of way. My good friend stopped by this morning and I posed a question to her. I asked, do you think it is my own obsessiveness and penchant for rumination that keeps bringing me back to the creativity thing and all that goes with it or does it all keep turning up because it is some integral part of my destiny. She answered, yes. I had told her last week of several things I wanted to do: a book, a better blog, all the creative stuff I used to do, a shop, action, adventure, swashbuckling.

There is a definite lack of swashbuckling in my life.

There is also a lack of focus. There are unmedicated manics with ADHD that have more focus than I do at the moment. The disintegration of the relationship with the artist formerly known as my husband has been a wave of chaos and survival mode. Retail life is not helping matters. My schedule has all the regularity of a long-term opioid user. Two nights ago, I hit that point where I totally felt as if my life has become unmanageable. I do not accept this as the way life has to be because how things are right now in this moment negates all the good I have done in my life thus far.

I am currently not aware of what my next move should be. I am tying off the knot that is this blog because me writing under this title, this apparent theme, is constricting and not allowing me to bloom. It's not an easy decision. It's not like I woke up this morning and decided it. I decided it weeks ago but I just haven't taken the steps to do it. It's the whole one door closes thing. I need to close this door, so that I can move on. I need to close doors with the artist formerly known as my husband. I need to close doors with my own perceptions of failure that stem from the last decade of my life. I need to close doors on all this negativity and freaking bullshit that I have allowed to diminish me.

Some doors fling shut pretty easily. Others, though, other I am going to need some help with because they a big and heavy and have been open longer than they should have. Closing all the easy doors helps me get my focus.

Be well, my friends! It's been fun.

Merely A Flesh Wound, I Am Alright

Yes, it's Monty Python reference. Possibly paraphrased or not exact, I don't really care but some people have nothing better to do than be pedantic. Merely a flesh wound, it's a humorous, easy way to defer conversation about things that have happened since October 2013.  Although, these days, I am more alright than hemorrhaging so that's something, right? I made this mix of songs that make me happy and remind me that I am better than the circumstances that rained down on me the other day. 

I am alright and getting better all the time. I still think "One Flesh Amputation" is a great name for a band but it doesn't describe the state of my heart and soul these days. I have days. I have some exceedingly awesome days. I have some excruciatingly hard days. I have some terribly icy numb days. I still deal with seething rage and abysmal brokenness. I still struggle to trust people, myself included. I still hurt but not nearly as much as I used to hurt. 

I am a mixtape maker from way back. I have made plenty of playlists during these choppy waters to divert my attention or exploit the depth of my emotions. I don't share everything I make publicly nor do I make all my creations on YouTube. It helps most days even if only because it forced my focus onto something other than the darkness. I haven't made very many self-indulgent, wallowing in darkness playlists which is a bit of a victory considering. I really enjoyed the way I worked the post and playlist thing the other day so I thought I would give it a whirl again. 

The playlist came first. Several days ago, actually. I had some downtime after a string of remarkably normal, uplifting days. I created the Burn List playlist and then this one. The Burn post and playlist were actually a bit cathartic and well-received according to the stats so it's win-win. I work through my stuff, you get entertained. You're welcome. Anyhow, when I created the flesh wound playlist, I didn't intend to wrap a post around it. The post has been born out of the past several days.

 

I can't seem to get my head out of certain spaces the past week or so. Or is it an undertow? At any rate, I have felt myself in ruminating on my love life for the past 25 years. (Yes, it spawned a playlist. No, you can't see it yet.) There is a growing faction of people in my life suggesting that I should start dating again. Sure, I have had one or two close people poking me that direction but I am talking people who are practically strangers. It's annoying. Partially it's my fault for giving the illusion that I haven't been entertaining the idea and yeah, I have kept a rather in-depth relationship as much off the radar as I possibly could. (I may be a jerk for that, not sure yet.) But it leads me to more confidently question why everyone seems to think that time and signing up for more torture is going to heal all wounds. 

Sigh. See. This space I am in now. I am good. Sure, every once in awhile I miss the benefits and perks of an intimate relationship but I have changed so much in the past ten years that those benefits don't tip the scale toward playing the field. It's an incredibly interesting insight I have gained having the first man I opened my heart to post-marriage be the last man I swore off prior to meeting my husband. I know it doesn't always show but I am such a better version of me these days. In some ways, I am sure it's annoying to others. But I know much more clearly who I am and what I want and what I can tolerate, and why shouldn't I? I am older and much definitely wiser. This play list, well, it's a bit of a love letter to myself, to remind me that I am every bit as fabulous as I remember myself to be.

I am alright...and getting better every day.

Burning Bridges: Letting Go Means Not Saving Them A Seat For Later

Blogger's rendition of the current state of the bridges in her life

Some mornings, some afternoons, some moments, some weeks, there is just a resounding theme. Burn, baby, burn, it's a blogging inferno. Okay, not really, but burn has been on my mind, in my vocabulary and in my idle esoteric and existential wanderings. Reading my email this morning, really seared this theme into my firing synapses.

First, I have had a burning desire to pray for and request prayer for several people that keep smoldering in my mind. It's been a covert op as I already know that a number of people in my life would be inflamed that I would be so bold as to bring people who have hurt me to the throne of grace. I think in keeping it all as embers, it manifested into the most bizarre dream last night. It is what it is I suppose but it set a tone for my day.

Reading my email, there was one from the person in my life who is equivalent to the paperboy in "Better Off Dead" and like clockwork, this person asks for their two dollars and I sigh, verbally respond and move on. I have to be an adult because it's a bridge I can't burn (or won't burn, some days it goes both ways.) It got me to reflecting on the past several days, weeks, and months. It has me wondering if society has made me overly caution about setting fire to paths that no longer serve my good, just because one day, in some page of this choose your adventure, I might need the connection.

Most people come and go gracefully in and out of life.Ebb and flow or some shit like that. I can only speak for myself when I say the problem seems very much being me not going with that flow and trying to orchestrate things under the delusion that I am some sort of skilled puppetmaster. There may be some hoarding issues in my family tree and I think emotions and memories and other weirdness are part of that oddity.

What am I trying to say? I very clearly know how I feel about people, places and things right now. I have ignored the still small voice because of history or guilt or regret or plain foolishness. Sentimentality side-swipes sanity sometimes and then it's all down hill. So many visions, so many previous blueprints, so many previous maps, I don't know why I still have them hanging around. Fear maybe, or mostly, I don't know for sure.

The Information Society song "Burning Bridges" puts it best with the lyrics:

Yesterday I said goodbye
To all my old loves and some new ones
Hanging 'round my window whispering
There are things that can't be undone
Yesterday I threw away those treasures
That I kept for so long
Treasures only weigh you down
So I'm burning all the bridges of my memory

Those treasures do weigh you down. They clog up the shelf. They take up space. The limit your ability to allow new things into your life.  That crazy dream I mentioned? The character list was me, the artist formerly known as my husband, 2 ex-boyfriends (and I use that term very loosely with one of them), 2 crushes and a dude that keeps popping up. That's five people clogging up space in my head. That's five seats I am saving, possibly shooing away the person who is actually supposed to sit next to me. I don't even realize I am doing it sometimes but thank God my sleeping brain processes things in such a way I take notice.

You can't hold onto everyone or everything forever. Life is not static. I could (and probably should) take this down a whole scriptural road but I don't want to lose anyone tonight. Some people are saving seats for ideas that no longer serve them and refuse to let new ideas sit down with them. I hate seeing people become caricatures of themselves because they keep insisting on towing a line that is wrapped to a noose around their neck. Trust me, I am by no means perfect in any regard but I am at least aware of my imperfections and open to the idea that may how I operate isn't the best course of action for me. 

I am not holding seats anymore. If you want to show up to life with me, show up. On time. Appropriately attired. Ready for the show. I have front-row, ring-side, VIP seats to a show that has every element of an edge of your seat, award-winning production. There are people lining up for seats to this show, so why am I holding seats for people who are outside talking to scalpers, looking for a better deal? Shrug. I don't have a good answer for that but I do have a new question.

Anyone got a light?

The Value of Getting By With Help From Your Friends

With Help From My Friends
Again, a little something I whipped up.

What would you do if I had bad grammar?
Would you close tab and walk out on me?
Lend me your eyes and I'll write you a blog,
and I'll try to use correct hyperbole.
Oh, I get by with some help from my friends. 

The Quite Bearable Lightness of Being Sparkly seems to have stoked my smoldering embers. It's not as naughty as it sounds. (Or maybe it is, the night is young.) I wrote in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Ever since, it's been like large chunks of gray matter have thawed and revitalized. It's been me with this silly grin. I have been in keen awareness of all the bucket fillers in my life and just how connected I am these days. But mostly, it's been me thinking about my re-work of Proverbs 27:17: As glitter sharpens glitter, so a man polishes the sparkle of his friend.

I could write for days about all the lovely women and the few good men I count among my friends. (And the few good men is not a jab, it's a reflection of my change in attitude about men and women being friends, and so I do not have many close male friends anymore.) I would like to write a post about each and everyone of them and how beautiful and witty and wise and cherished they are, I really would. But they are all so humble and so busy that I wouldn't want to push them into anything. 

I have learned that adult friendships are not quite like they are portrayed in movies or media or whereever it was we all got this idea that as our responsibilities grew that we would still have these tight cliques of party girls who would lounge around drinking wine with us on any given night. I used to mistakenly leave people alone because I thought they were too busy or that we wouldn't click or whatever. Or worse, my own personal shame cloud would convince me that there is no way someone so (insert superlative here) would ever want to be friends with me. 

I have been so wrong and I have thoroughly enjoyed being proven as such. I have been grateful for grace from old friends who got thrown under the bus of my marriage being there to dust off the debris when my husband decided to throw me under the bus as well. I am grateful for all the different sizes and shapes and opinions and ideas that I have call, a click, a text, a car trip away. I have found the friends that I can text at 4 in the morning and the ones that I could if it wouldn't disturb their whole household and put their routine into a whirlwind. I have solid sisterhoods with women I may never meet through the beauty of online groups. I have it all. I truly do. I never have to each lunch by myself (but prefer to most days because it's my recharge time.) I am grateful that when everything fell apart that I didn't collapse into the vacuum of myself and my despair.I haven't been this social in so many circles since my freshman year of college. The energy, the love is more intoxicating than drinking week-old Hairy Buffalo.

I have that Lao Tzu quote in the sidebar:

Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.

Without the kind words of my friends, especially when I didn't deserve them, I would not have hurdled situations. No joke, I would have given up completely a longtime ago and caved in and started dating dregs with money. Adultery created a void in me that I wasn't prepared for and left me with questions that I will never have answered. God brought alongside of me all the right women who have spoken truth and grace and love and kindness. My girlfriends loved me when I couldn't love myself and that love was infectious.

I have previously mentioned or written about or maybe I haven't about my change in attitude over the past several years. Being well-versed in snark and sarcasm and the dark humor arts, I could have so easily slid down that slope and never looked back. I had already been making positive changes before the bullet of infidelity hit my heart. It must have been what has kept the wound from being fatal. Being nicer to myself and others has expanded my consciousness in ways I could have never imagined. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong about this because I very well could be but I feel like I have become a kinder, more compassionate person over the last three years. I feel more approachable and less critical.

Kindness in giving creates love. It's what I named this blog. My intentions at the time were not at all high-minded or entirely altruistic. Yet here I am, telling you that I know that this is a truth. The time, the money, the clothes, the casseroles, the texts, the memes, the wine, the whiskey, the cake, the prayers, I can never in this lifetime repay everyone for all their kindness toward me but you best believe that I am going to give it a shot.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who polishes my spark. I love you.

The Quite Bearable Lightness of Being Sparkly

Just a little something I threw together for this post.

I just posted this on Facebook:
Wide awake with insomnia of contentment and too much iced tea...thinking about how much has changed since last year and getting another glass of tea and staying up to write all night. Couldn't tell you off hand the last time that happened but suffice it to say that it's been awhile.

It's true. I want to start writing a book. I still have some things to research so that I can tie all my little ideas together but I have officially put this book thing on my bucket list. I used to write a lot more than I do. Mostly for personal enjoyment but every little tiptoe into something more in-depth with it was generally met with positive feedback. I figure, if I get cracking at it now it could be released just in time for the 2017 holiday shopping season with the blockbuster movie released the next year.

I am quite content today. I wish I had really truly embraced the whole attitude is everything mantra earlier in life. I wish I had really fathomed once upon a time what it really mean to trust God and God's plan. I really wish I could bottle this and sell it. I suppose my second book could be how I got to here from where I was. I mean, to some degree, my core has always been sparkly I just could never sustain it for long because I was relying much too much on myself. Took a lot of dusting and polishing to get it where it is right now.

There were multiple moments today that showed me that I am different than I used to be and I am grateful for those moments. The one that most sticks out is the moment a co-worker walked by and exasperatedly said,"Is it time to go home yet?" I didn't step on the downward spiral and add weight to ride it down. I smiled and replied that is wasn't but it was a minute closer than it had been so that was something, right? I know it seems insignificant but once upon a time someone told me that if I was a Care Bear my name would be "Black Sunshine" because my sarcasm was hilarious and made people laugh but it wasn't necessarily motivating.

I see it too. The first time was about a month ago. I could see light in my eyes again. Other people are seeing now too. Not that I need the validation but the fact that others notice means that I am being consistent enough in the care and feeding of Jenny to produce results. I like that.

I can't sit here and say it's an easy task. Making the conscious decision to be the light, be positive, that's easy enough but once you make the statement to your soul you have to commit to the work. You have to be willing to sift through yourself, although some days it will feel more like a cut-and-burn operation. Proverbs 27:17 says in the I just adapted this to fit this blog version of the verse: As glitter sharpens glitter, so a man polishes the sparkle of his friend. (Probably upset the Baptist and the feminist with that one because I am just that awesome. But anyway...) I have been blessed to have some first-class glitter polishers and light shiners in my life. It helps. It helps a whole lot. In the process, I have found that am highly allergic to negativity and some days people's countenance, comments and crassness pierces me like nails on a chalkboard. Change begets change I guess. 

I am so much better than I was a year ago and you know what? That just makes me that much more excited for tomorrow but not to the expense of the best thing I have learned on this leg of my journey. One. Day. At. A. Time. Don't worry about tomorrow. Again, there is a learning curve there, but I am so one day at a time right now I expect Schneider to walk through my door to fix something. It doesn't mean you don't plan. It doesn't mean you don't dream. It doesn't mean you stop living. I have big plans and big dreams and I am living better than I have in years. It mean you change your focus. It means you identify what you truly want and have the boldness to walk away from things that are outside of that. 


I genuinely love my job. I genuinely enjoy the people I work with and the people I come in contact with through work. I have a nice apartment overlooking the courtyard. I can get everywhere in five or ten minutes. I have two wonderful children. I have a family that loves me and friends that do as well. I have more time for personal pursuits that I have in years. I get to wake up every morning and see what new adventure awaits me. I can choose to focus on the dark, shadowy parts of life or I can look for the beauty in every moment, the lesson in every letdown.

I think the pinball guy in "Waking Life" put it best when he said,"There's only one instance, and it's right now. And it's eternity." You can spend eternity in heaven or hell, purgatory or paradise. That's what free will is all about, you get to make the choices. You can choose to try and piss on my parade and beat me down with matters of consequence or you can come with me to buy and umbrella and a latte. Regardless of what you believe right in this moment in time, you still have a choice on how you are going to respond.

Contentment has nothing to do with belongings or status. It just has to do with you and your decisions. And this my friends is not a new or a New Age idea. One merely has to flip their Bible app to Philippians 4:11-13:

I am not saying this out of need, for I have learned to be content regardless of my circumstances. I know how to live humbly, and I know how to abound. I am accustomed to any and every situation — to being filled and being hungry, to having plenty and having need. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

Do one thing today, my friend, that polishes your sparkliness, makes your heart happy, puts a smile on your face. Going forward, it is my prayer that we all find the joy of contentment in the rest of our lives.  

#BookReview "Healing from Hidden Abuse: A Journey Through the Stages of Recovery from Psychological Abuse" by Shannon Thomas

Release date August 30, 2016.
Available on Amazon:
http://amzn.to/2bahcRr

If you have been following the blog, you are aware that I am just about two months out of my divorce being final. If you know me outside the blogosphere, you know a bit about how all that shook out from start to finish. But only if you are my kids do you know the width and height and depth and breadth and everything in between of the last ten years of life. There are knots I have yet to untie and this book has certainly been a dose of cornstarch to those knots.

I first became aware of the author, Shannon Thomas, and Southlake Christian Counseling when a friend of mine shared something from the Southlake Christian Counseling page in their feed. At the time, it was nearly two years after my husband had first said he didn't want to be married. It was two counselors and numerous doctor's appointments later. It was the cops telling me there was nothing they could do later. It was a chain of completely futile calls to the domestic violence line later. It was me on the verge of accepting that maybe I was, in fact, crazy later. I don't remember the post but it was the first time in two years something emanated from a credible source later. 

I don't remember the post. I only remember that I cried when I read it and felt this huge wave of relief. Relief that I was not losing my mind. Relief that my feelings that this situation was is abusive were not wrong. Relief that I was not alone. Relief that there was hope.When the opportunity arose to be a part of Ms. Thomas' book launch, I seized the opportunity that has been set before me. In full disclosure, I got an advanced copy and a significant portion of my swagger back.

I believe that Ms. Thomas' book will do for victims and survivors of psychological abuse what the AA Big Book does for alcoholics. This book succinctly and compassionately not only outlines the what, where, when, who, why and hows of psychological abuse, it also provides practical, meaningful guidance for recovery and maintenance. 

This book is like tightly packed dynamite. 

Or perhaps small but mighty is a better description. 

What I had expected to knock out in a weekend took me two weeks to complete. It is a concise, clearly written book that sometimes, as a survivor, requires a bit of extra processing and breathing room. I recommend this book for the general public as much as I would recommend it to someone hoping to heal from the invisible scars of psychological abuse. Ms. Thomas does an excellent job of detailing the pains and solutions to this insidious problem.  I sincerely hope that this book opens a dialogue about psychological abuse that blows away the carpets that society has been sweeping all of this under. 

The book is complete with a guided personal reflection journal intended to facilitate the healing process. I have not yet completed it because I am waiting to pick my own hard copy for continued personal reference. It is my understanding that the intention is in place to build a network as well of resources and reliable helpers for navigating the healing process as well as the possibility of a more in-depth workbook. (Understanding, wishful thinking, I don't know.) 

This book is a life raft for those of us who have been floating in the shark-infested waters of psychological abuse  but it is also an invaluable tool for professionals and laypersons who need to learn more about the the damaging effects of psychological abuse and the stages that one goes through on the road to recovery. 

I thank God that Shannon Thomas was inspired to write this book and I highly encourage you all to pick up a copy for learning and/or healing purposes.

As of 8/8/2016 this book is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats:

A Portrait of Me Drowning in My Own Thoughts

Press play. Really, it's what you should do anytime you read something I wrote that has a song attached but who am I to tell you how to live your life when I am not quite living my own. Jesus, that was a little over-dramatic. I am fine. I just worry that I don't remember what that really looks like or feels like so I question whether I really am or not.

The other night I randomly clicked around YouTube, saving songs that might make good future posts. This one started it. I don't know if you know or if you even care but YouTube will create mix suggestions based on your watch history. I enjoy it most days. Lately, there are a few that just keep turning up and it makes no sense really. This is one of them. I would understand if it were one of the songs that play over and over and over again. I would understand if I had huge Smashing Pumpkins-themed playlist. I would understand if YouTube knew that this song is someone's ringtone (and wouldn't it be creepy as hell if YouTube knew that!)

The thing about me being who I am and where I am and the realizations about my broken bits and wanting to be better... know I said I am fine and I really am, but I am not better. I am having enormous trust issues and to be fair maybe a little bit of paranoia. Working through shit makes you seem and feel legitimately crazy sometimes and maybe I am hyper-cautious, overly vigilant. I don't know. I have no good adjectives to describe how I feel my trajectory through life is going.

Spinning. Unsure. Unmotivated.

I floated about the pool this evening. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed that. No raft or device or such nonsense, just me and the water. The sound of my own breathing drowning the muffled voices of the kids playing. The clouds are particularly wispy tonight. Yesterday the sky was you, and I still feel the same. Nothing left for me to do, and I still feel the same. I just kept drifting about the deep end wondering if I were really drowning would the sound of my breathing be so pronounced to me.

I don't know what to do about anything. I am so far from overwhelm lately but truth be told, it is possible to drown on teaspoon of water.

Behold A New Thing:When All That Is In Me Is Dry

I find myself meditating on, thinking on Isaiah 43:19 a lot lately. It's a verse I seem to go to when I need to get myself over obstacles or somehow unstuck. From memory though, for some reason I almost always make streams in the wilderness and ways in the desert. But anyway:

Behold, I will do a new thing,
Now it shall spring forth;
Shall you not know it?
I will even make a road in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert. (NKJV)

It has been a go to verse, a reminder to myself that in the midst of all this wilderness and desert and whatever and whatnot this all is that God will make ways. I don't think that "Desert Song" is at all based on this scripture and it's irrelevant anyway. I chose this song to go with the post for a couple of different reasons. The first time I ever heard any version of this song was three years ago. It was a Wednesday. I had been served divorce papers earlier in the afternoon and I was at house church trying to keep my shit together. By the end of the second line, my head was buried in my friend's shoulder and I was sobbing in tones too deep for words. I am still waiting to be able to sing the last verse with as much gusto as the rest of the song.

No part of this post will have me queuing up a long list of complaints and confusions. I am learning to make peace with the process. One of the books that practically fell into my Kindle has been a huge blessing in that it has opened my eyes to the grace I need to give myself as all the pieces get back together. It is in that space where I am learning to let go that I keep finding myself reminding myself that my life going forward is going to be a new thing. Change doesn't happen without some sort of reaction.

I am not sure where to take this concept of a new thing. Certainly, tonight when I was at church to help pack lunches for tomorrow I could see the new thing there. For all the memories in that preschool hallway, I am glad it doesn't look as it did. Grateful for the amazing renovations of the Kids Zone and anxious to see how it all turns out. I am not so easily sold when it comes to myself. It seems like a dance I am doing and as of late feel as if I am in a strange forward moving holding pattern. Again, it's an observation, not a complaint. My only complaint right now is that the dumpster is so far away from my apartment.

Wilderness. Desert. Ways. Streams. Something has got to give, right?

What does the new thing look like? Is it going to be like a spin-off with some of the same characters that you have come to know and love? Or is it going to be a whole new franchise with a whole new marketing campaign? These things have been tugging at me the past couple of days. I believe part of it is fear. I am at some moments afraid to let go of certain things, people, whatever. But how can something new have all the same ol' stuff in it. How can I find the ways in the wilderness if the same naysaying backseat drivers are trudging along with me?

As for the streams in the desert, as of late, I have only seen mirages. I have to be getting close though. I can see the birds circling and I am sure they wouldn't be circling, if they didn't see some sort of signs of life or some sort of provision. I am sure they aren't vultures, ready to feast on my death. I am grateful that I haven't completely lost it to believe the mirages to be real. I am sure if I keep moving forward that I will find the stream, the way.

I am learning a lot right now and when I am ready I am certain that the question, what does the new thing look like, will be answered exceedingly and abundantly beyond my wildest imagination. I am looking forward to the day I can give my prayers in the harvest. Anxiously awaiting and anticipating the springing forth of whatever this new thing is, this healed life, this getting unstuck, this life worth living.

Apparently some subjects have no accompanying song

As I get further away from where I had been, I can see...sometimes too clearly...how I may have been wrong...acted badly...oh who am I kidding...I feel like a dirty, dirty accomplice and I don't like it. It is interesting how in the moment you don't question the integrity of something. Somethings just seem like whatever, then boom here I am feeling like a huge schmuck. I had an opportunity to say I am sorry. Just two people though, I am sure there are more.

Some day, I will write so much more on this particular topic. It's not straightforward by any means and that's no excuse but I don't think I have enough in me tonight to do it justice.

I am sorry.

I am sorry and sitting in here unable to distract myself or redirect with any sort of appropriate song.

Quiet contemplation and remorse that I am guilty by association and by deed of being a huge jerk.

'Cause we all know art is hard When we don't know who we are

I am sharing this today mostly because I like the lyric I used as the title of this post. I concurrently swear that I have never heard this band until recently and I have always known them. They feel familiar, like they soundtracked hazy memories of time passed in ethereal post-Civil War crackerboxes and late model cars. For as much as I can relate to these lyrics, I could go either way as to if it is reflective of a piece of my soul or exactly what I would write to a certain musician in my life.

Musicians. It's the STD they don't tell you about in health class but that's a topic for a different post.

This post...this post is about me randomly sharing that my renewed creativity is a sign to me that I am on the right path. There's volumes I could write and will write someday about all the twists and turns and whatnot that lead me to letting it all go for lack of a better word. I have struggled with a life-long lack of confidence that kept me from fully sharing what I was fully expressing. When I went off to college once upon a time, in a galaxy oh so far away, I didn't appreciate what it meant to be one of 6 chosen to be in the incoming design/tech class nor did I quite fathom what the financial backing behind that meant.

As of late, when I ponder with friends what I should be  when I grow up and everyone points to some sort of path with a creative tinge. Ffs, I had a random encounter with my 10th grade English teacher, whom I adored, who after all these years made the comment that she was surprised that I wasn't writing and getting paid for it.

Art is hard when you don't know who you are. Or perhaps better stated, art is hard when you think your voice doesn't matter. Art is hard when so many voices keep asking you how you are going to take care of your kid. Art is hard when it's the mortar filling the cracks of your day as an office flunky. Art is hard when you have dealt with continual rejection. Art is hard when you feel like you can't be who you really are, can't use your authentic voice. Art is hard when you and your husband have "Voices Carry" moments about your self-expression.

Well, art was hard because I made it that way. I listened to voices that weren't mine and took paths I was never meant to take. I tried to shy away and defer comment but those who know me and even people I meet, they keep seeing the spark. I am funny. I am thoughtful. I am creative. Sorry, I forgot about that. Sorry, I got swallowed by the sea of misguided adulting.

Sorry I have to go to work because I really want to write today. I want to write in a manic, frenetic state of scribble I haven't felt in a long time. God help my co-workers today, I am a artist in need of an audience and I will give six shows an hour today because it mother fucking makes me happy.

The Start of My Healing Journey:Trigger Happy Jack

Maybe "Trigger Happy Jack" is not a song that some people would pick for a post about healing but I find it pair well. I mean, I guess, I could have picked The Carpenters "We've Only Just Begun" or that wore out, played old disco song that everyone latches onto after a bad break up. Nope. This song by Poe is the one I want to write to tonight.

Although I have made some effort in the last three years to get closure, mend the broken bits and arrange the pieces in the right order, it didn't really start to happen in any meaningful way until a few weeks ago. Counseling helped but the focus was all wrong. I am not a person who likes or even clings to labels, except maybe for mom, I pretty fond of that one but other wise I would prefer not to cling to a label or whatever, so that being said I guess I kept tightening my bootstraps and marching on.

I am okay. I am fine. There's nothing wrong with me. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I am as okay as woman living in southwestern Ohio who has a trigger of overweight, unfortunately featured blondes can be. I am sure it's perfectly normal for any sort of colored paper attached to my front door or car to incite a complete loss of all sympathetic functions. And dude, it's totally funny, it's part of my schtick that I can't remember shit from the moment I walk from one room to the next. I am okay. I am okay.

I am not okay. (Yes, I thought about MCR but it was entirely too obvious a song.)

When I read that Sparkle book, my jaw dropped for real and not in some underhanded click-bait sort of way when I read about what trauma is by definition in the mental health community. It's not just my divorce that needs triaged. What I have called life for most of the last seven years has been acute trauma wrapped in upheaval, and I am sure that it leaves you wondering how I didn't realize sooner. Shrug. I didn't. I deal with life and I keep moving forward and THAT, my friends, is a bit of a character defect. I wasn't admitting the pain so rather than healing I just got a seriously of poorly healed scabs.

I have been picking at them. A few of them need to be opened up by a professional and properly repacked but I am not there yet. I have had amazing synchronicities happen with resources coming along and that has been tremendously helpful. I am learning to look out for me in a way that I probably (honestly) never have. I have spent an inordinately dreadful amount of time operating at less than. It's time to get up to speed.

Not too quickly though because as much as I want to be on the top of my game, I am seeing the value in being still in this space and taking the time to have a proper cry (literally and figuratively).  I can appreciate the concerns that I may be isolating myself. Boundaries need to be drawn. I am in regular contact with my own personal Justice League and yes, we are considering costumes. I have skipped over proper healing at so many other points in my life that I thought that maybe it was time to make time to be fully better.

This book I am reading as part of the book launch is phenomenal and I am only 30% in to it. Thank God that the Kindle highlighter will never run dry. It's nice to have some validation that I am not losing my mind or otherwise crazy. While I am finding that I do have to digest this slowly because some sentences bring a flood of memories, I am eager to finish the book and take positive steps forward. I am praying that this book continues to be a positive and pertinent tool for my healing journey.

So, tonight I raise my glass of water and propose a toast: here's to the end of Jedi mind tricks and all the other bullshit I have let drag me down for 25 years. 25 years based on having my first date at 15. Totally sure there is older drama but Jesus, I am not going to for sainthood...just sanity.

Timeless Classics: Sade - No Ordindary Love

There is no substance to tonight's post. It's just a memory wrapped in a daydream sprinkled with dreams. For whatever reason, this song is bouncing around my head. I could post some deep and exposing speculation about why it is this song is looping but it is merely speculation. It's only ever fully applied to one person at this point and you know it's whatever.

Whenever I hear this...suddenly, I am 17 again, visiting my friend during her freshman year at Wright State. Someone played this somewhere on her floor while I was there, I am sure of it. I let life soundtrack itself whenever possible and it being such a strong association with the visit I know, knowing me that I had to have heard it. My memory is just someone on the floor jamming it with their door open. Such a good weekend. I do have fond memories of it...and pictures to fill in the blanks.

This song, such a hauntingly fucking awesome song, that I can't even fathom why it is choosing to haunt me now.   Like I said, only one person ever in the history of my life of affections and affectations has ever been worthy of Sade. One. A perfectly good waste of Sade considering where he stands on the matter.To some degree it's just my subconscious picking brutally truthful lyrics to wrap around things I am pretending I am okay with, not that it really matters. It is what it is, right?  Stupid heart, stupid subconscious.

It's so awkward to have a stalkerish song on my mind when I haven't the least bit of energy to stalk anyone. I have spent a lot of time the past week or so verbally and mentally and every other way letting go of everyone who needs let go of and clearing my mind of any and all intent relationship-wise. I am notoriously bad for overactive romantic rumination which really isn't that great when I have marginal self-love and penchant for self-deprecation.

Somebody got Sade and it is so akin to setting a table with Wedgwood for a dude who could hardly appreciate paper plates. How does that happen? (Rhetorical question. I don't have the professional or libational support to write that paragraph right now.)

I don't know what the point of all this is except to work this particular Sade song into a post. Everything else is irrelevant. I seriously misjudged someone in a seriously fatal way. Merely a flesh wound but early 90s trip hop soul, that's forever.

People Are Strange When You're A Stranger:Thoughts on "Finding Dory"

I realize it's been out a month. I only saw it the other night at my daughter's suggestion. People are strange is a good overall theme (and I am going to go with the Echo and the Bunnymen version because it's my blog.) 

So, I read nothing, watched no previews, had no opinions other than my daughter's going into the movie. Truthfully, I didn't care for "Finding Nemo." I strongly dislike Marlon and I kind of felt like the Nemo movie had this undertone that broken people should settle for dysfunctional relationships. (Roll your eyes if you want but you tell me that if Marlon and Dory were in human form and in your circle that you wouldn't find their relationship in the first movie a bit offputting.) 

Dory hit me right in the feels. It hit me in the place that still feels weird and awkward after all these years, sure. Oh, but the place in my existence that so deeply identified with Dory's parents, I can't even type the sentence without welling up. Without giving too much away, although the reasons all that resonates with me are different from Dory's parents, the emotions and reactions are the same.

Life feels hard when you feel like you don't belong or that you are somewhat less than because you are differently abled. My friend, Statler, and I were talking about it last night. We have this pervasive feeling that awareness as it manifest itself these days does more to divide than include. It is almost as if people become some obsessed with their label that they champion it to the exclusion of any sort of meaningful relationships. Also, it seems that if there isn't a ribbon or celebrity endorsement for whatever makes you an alleged outlier in society, then you slip further in the cracks.

All this from a fish movie...a fish movie that made me cry and secretly want to the space in the hall by my door with shells. I hope that I am not the only one who sees it who gives pause. Faces do look ugly when you are alone and what sort of cruelty is it to ostracize or ignore because lack of understanding or egocentric perfectionism. If I have learned nothing from scrolling through Facebook, I have learned this...

Be kind. Everyone is facing a hard battle.

Oh, and JUST KEEP SWIMMING!

Can't Write Too Busy Enjoying "Beyond Control" by Kings Kaleidoscope

Seriously, I had a head full of words tonight. Multiple tabs open, trying to decide what which topic would be tonight's winner. Turns out tonight is not a night to write but to listen. Kings Kaleidoscope is one of my favorite bands that you maybe never heard of and a few weeks ago they released "Beyond Control".


The first track I heard was "A Prayer", the explicit version, an awesomely powerful piece that is causing a bit of controversy amongst the Pharisees and those with stones still cocked between there thumb and forefinger. I have been in that place where the fear is exactly as described in the song. Everything you know to be true challenged by some dark night of the soul. An agonizingly lonely place where people throw you platitudes or dismiss your pain as silliness or overindulgence. A space where the bridge of this song was my prayer because I was definitely getting more than I could handle and life felt more like incineration than a refining process.


But I am not in that place. I am in a place where I am going to drop all my plans and listen to this album. (That would be Proverbs 16:9 from the New Jenny Abridged and Implied Modern. Haha.) This Vevo playlist does not contain the explicit version and I don't want to tell you how to live your life but I'd listen to that first and then dig into the album.

Insert wistful, peaceful sighs here. 

Inspiring, positive, awesome...

Those were the three words I used last night to look at content suggestions on Hootsuite for my Facebook page. I was not sure what my next post was going to be about so I decided to choose fill-in content based on those three words. Well, there must have been some magic in that Hootsuite planning round because if I had to pick three words to describe my day today I believe I would pick those three words.

I am going to bed with a warm glow and a contented heart. I would write more but my eyelids are so heavy.

It is going to be okay.

Everything is okay and getting better all the time!

Sweet dreams my friends!

Take Rest, A Field That Has Rested Gives A Bountiful Crop - Ovid

Friday night has me kicked back and mellowed out, even with having a Mountain Dew about an hour ago. I am sitting here in my living room, feet up, jammies on, Soundscapes playing on the TV, totally in the moment with myself, yet talking to you all in this blog.

Rest. Beautiful rest. So neglected, so misunderstood. We live in a society that demands that we must always be on the go or something is wrong with us. There is the pervasive idea to be still is too be weak or lazy or wildly unsuccessful. I have live a large portion of my life burning the candle at both ends, trying to light the middle. I have lost peace and piece of mind wrapped up in some crazy tornado of insistence that "things" must get done. I have driven myself crazy overextending my boundaries as if people genuinely needed to have Kwik-E-Mart access to me for reasons I am still untying.

Untying. It seems to be a bit of theme in my brain tonight. I originally thought I might use a lyric from the Micheal Penn song,"No Myth" but I couldn't pare it down enough. Besides my time would probably be better spent learning to pray the Rosary so that I can fully pray the Our Lady Undoer of Knots novena. (Before you go there, I like to say I am Catholic on my dad's side. It's a trick I learned from some Baptists friends who called themselves as such despite never setting foot in church. Neither here nor there so anyway.) I think it's years of running around half cocked at full throttle that account for a lot of the knots but not all. I have some knots that I should have promptly untied but did not so the little knots caused a lot more knots.

That brings me back to rest. There is no healing without rest Rest is vital. I am so seeing it clearly the past few days. Turning the engines off and drifting a bit doesn't mean your journey stops, it only changes the journey. When I was a kid my grandparents moved to a lake and whenever we visited my brothers and I would spend a lot of time on the lake in the pontoon. Tooling around the lake on a pleasure cruise was always a lot of fun but so were the times that we would just float, or drop anchor. It's the same with life.

I am very glad that I have reclaimed this space in time for myself. Always doing and never living I was. Spinning my wheels and burning daylight because of all the shoulds and need tos. Drowning in a sea of escalated commitments, then a few weeks ago I just stopped. I had a rare weekend day off with no plans and very briefly contemplated the laundry, the dishes, and every particle of dust in my tiny apartment. I opted instead to cocoon myself in my bed with a soda, jelly beans and Bad Grandpa.

I couldn't remember the last time I laughed so hard or felt so relaxed.

Since then I have been taking more time for myself. I have learned to use all the fancy tools on my phone that allow me to limit incoming calls and texts. I have taken luxurious tub soak in lieu of pushing my tired body to complete household chores. I just finished a book and am actively involved with several others with a stack on deck, something that I haven't enjoyed in sometime. I went to The Greene tonight with the sole intention of unwinding with window shopping and people watching. I am finding I have more energy and focus now, and I promise you it isn't the Mountain Dew talking. I am slowly starting to feel human again. I am learning to like myself again. I was genuinely worried that I had lost my center and going to spend the next 60 years off-kilter and wore out.

A field that rest gives beautiful crops because the soil is given time to heal, replenish. I forget who said it but there is a meme that surfaces all the time that  reads,"You only live once and if you do it right it's enough." We are all running around like overwrought toddlers at a Chuck E Cheese birthday party. So many of us so scattered that we make Waffle House hashbrowns look orderly. Rest with me friends, so that we can get back to giving our own beautiful crops. Clear your calendar, your heart, your head and believe with me that, indeed, the best is yet to come.

#BookReview of Don't Let Anything Dull Your Sparkle:How to Break Free of Negativity And Drama by Doreen Virtue

If you know me, you definitely know. If you follow me, you have probably figured it out. I am a sucker for sparkle. So, it should be no surprise that when the opportunity presented itself for me to read "Don't Let Anything Dull Your Sparkle" I judged a book by its cover and dove right in.

Written by Doreen Virtue, author of the best-selling book Assertiveness for Earth Angels, this 248 page book is broken into three parts. Part one deals with the science, part two offers practical suggestions about how to regain your sparkle with part three helps you to sparkle around others. I found this book to be insightful, well-researched and genuine. I never felt that regaining my sparkle was unattainable nor at any point in the reading did I sense that I was not worthy of sparkle.

Admittedly, I did have difficulty with some of the science portion as well as some of the remedies. Although, I fully understand the chapter on "Histamine Addiction and Intolerance" and why some of the related remedies are what they, I guess I just don't know if I am quite sold on the validity of it all. Perhaps it's my own ego talking, perhaps it's just hard for me to wrap my head around why I have all these patterns and habits and food propensities am not necessarily as physically unhealthy as the science chapters lead me to believe I should be.

Overall, though, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Ms. Virtue has a warm, engaging style that lends itself to discussing the darker sides of negativity and drama without leaving you feeling bogged down. With the ink barely, dry on my divorce papers, I am looking forward to utilizing the tools and methods outlined in the book to detox from the drama of the last three years of my life. This book really empowered me to continue to remain sensitive to my intuition and hopefully navigate or eliminate the unhealthy relationships in my life.

This book is currently available on Amazon in hard, soft and Kindle formats. Follow the link to pick up your copy today and get your sparkle back: http://amzn.to/29ZacC5

For once, for once, for once I get the feeling that I'm right where I belong Why am I the one always packing up my stuff?

Originally written 7/5/16
Well. Yeah. So I think last I wrote I was going to do some major renovations, etcetra, etcetra

Tonight, in some strange full disclosure, I am lounging in my undies with all my jewelry still on. I have had a great day. Seriously. But 100% maybe because I am 100% focused on the positives. And I keep repeat playing this song. Oh, who are we both kidding, I am belting it out like I am some sort of diva. On a label like Fueled By Ramen, it HAS to be good. No joke. I find bands and then find they are on Fueled By Ramen and have a totally well duh moment.

Sooooo, yeah, no, seriously, repeat play.

I had something going on. A prospect, if you will. After a planning meeting, yeah, that a planning meeting, something felt off to me. I pushed it out of my head and the next day in not thinking about it, this song haunted me.

This. Yes, this. "For once, for once, for once I get the feeling that I'm right where I belong Why am I the one always packing up my stuff?"  It hit me like a huge load of bricks. And the question was, in fact begged, why am I the one always packing up my stuff?

I have been remiss with the play by play. Sorry. But know, friends, that the undercurrent has produced this wave where I find myself asking this question. Why? Why am I the one always packing up my stuff?

It's a shitty realization. That realization that..once again,,,you were more "all-in", more willing to make sacrifices. Why? Seriously, why am I the one who is always packing up my stuff?

No, really.

And I know I am the one because for 22 year I didn't drawn clear boundaries. So watch me as I get out my super broad Sharpie and go to town harder than Harold with that purple crayon of his.

Admittedly, where I am is not glamorous or red carpet but it is what it is and I know as of like five days ago I fully resent any person, place or thing that stands in judgement  again me and my Dayton.I have a long-standing love/hate relationship with the Gem City. I will fully admit that. Regardless, it is where I am at and the Eight Ball says that the outlook is hazy as to any future relocation.

Begin current commentary...

I didn't originally post this because I had gotten called away from posting and just didn't get back to it. It happens. A lot with me. I have a completely irregular work schedule, a scattered life, exhaustion and a myriad of other things keeping me from getting back on my A game.

I don't know why I am always the one packing up my stuff. Well, not anymore. If I go anywhere anytime soon it's going to be the much sought after Orchard Park neighborhood. (Really that should be in quotes because it was from a rental recording I had listened to once upon a time.) The town I grew up in a close second, but in the long run Orchard Park wins because it's kinda the same thing without having to relive childhood trauma. But I am getting off track here.

I have always been made fun of to some extent for my relying on gut feelings and intuition.

But...

Seriously...

I am right where I belong.

I am a piece in a rather mammoth Jenga puzzle. Pull me and other pieces aren't as supported and the whole deal crumbles.

Besides I no longer own a suitcase for all my stuff and I fully see that I can't go all in on anyone who isn't all it with God.

Here I Go Again On My Own...

Queue pyrotechnics.

Pyrotechnics go.

I have had a wonderful day and as I relax here at home, I find this song running through my head. Tonight, I feel like David Coverdale was given divine revelation when I was 7 that one day, I would come home from a wonderful day and need a song such as this to belt out as I watch my son play Minecraft.

This song is actually on my "Video Girls That I Aspired to Be" playlist on YouTube. Neither here nor there but it probably says more about me in nine songs than you might get out of me in nine days of interrogation. Although, it's by no means an exhaustive list. But like I said, neither here nor there....

So, here I go again. I have pretty much been on my own for three years but I am finally settling into it, I guess. I went to a food truck rally and bocce tournament tonight with my son and it just really solidified for me that I am perpetually a mom first and pretty much a drifter alone. (Fun fact: in the original recording of "Here I Go Again" the lyric was "Like a hobo, I was born to walk alone" but it was changed in the 1987 recorded lest people mishear it as "Like a homo.") Not at all unhappy with the evening. Ran into some acquaintances which was great because they were genuinely excited to see Wesley and I knew we were in for a long haul at the playground when after moments of being there a kid formally introduced himself.

Before I met my husband, I was on my own. I dated and what not but I was pretty much a free agent and pretty particular about the contracts I considered. I think up to the time I met him the closest I ever got to marriage was in French class in high school when we did mock weddings as an excuse to have a party in class. In that situation, mon mari promptly started exclaiming in French that he wanted a divorce and listed out a whole sordid list of reasons. It was probably the most mon ami studied for French the whole time we were in, proving that a well-timed gag requires careful planning.

 Alone is not a dirty word unless you're cheese, then it seems like a set up for some taunting. Shrug. I am not saying I am like 100% woohoo look at me this is awesome but I am sure fuck not going to die. Sure, I'd like a tighter, more cohesive tribe. We all do but getting pissy about it isn't going to make it happen. Single with kids is a weird, awkward place to be. You have to be more discerning because the people you bring around do affect your kid. Sometimes you get lucky and you find another single parent who is of a similar disposition and you can live happily ever after as wingman and homeslice but it is a hard place for me to find. Especially now. Not my first rodeo and I am older and wiser and certainly a harder match in this my second rodeo.

This is to a large degree the only road I have ever known. If we count 18 as the start of adulthood, I have spent 14 of the years since then as a single parent. That's 64% of my adult life so far as a single parent. I could make a case for that being bigger because of the way my husband sometimes operated. It's a well-worn groove. Sure, I have days I resent it but mostly, like tonight, I marvel at moments where we spend a little and have a lot of fun. The resentment would be better channeled into writing volumes about how horrible society as a whole treats a single parent...even in this day and age.

But just like the song,  sing stanzas like this all the time:

Tho' I keep searching for an answer
I never seem to find what I'm looking for
Oh Lord, I pray you give me strength to carry on
'Cause I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams
 

 My sailor mouth is a thorn in my side but trust me when I say I could give a fuck less about snark and sarcasm directed toward my faith. I wish that I had this level of faith 20 years ago, or even a fraction of it. Sure, there's the rub that I had to go through all, every last thing that I have gone through to get to this place. This strange and beautiful place where, although I do get temporarily ruffled, I always come to this kitty cat landing on my feet place where I remember all the amazing ways that God has shown Himself to me and ways where things that seems unfortunate, really did work out to my good.

It really does work that way. Too many Puritanically lineaged cooks spoiling the stew of life. We're all fearfully and wonderfully made and so flawfully human but God loves us nonetheless. And God is such a swell guy, He'll meet you where you are. He's meeting me tonight as I sit here overeating a bag of Beanitos, having a glass of wine, listening to Garbage (actually). As I have thought of my day and my alonenness, I have thought of a particular verse and it gives me comfort and the strength to carry on.

Learn to find the blessing in your singleness (or whatever other -ness you have that is weighing you down. Even awesomeness, because it's a terrible burden to be awesome all the time.) Queue the lights. Queue the pyrotechnics. Queue your own version of someone rolling on the hood of your car. Queue whatever you want my friend and hold your head high in whatever -ness this season of your life brings.

Being a drifter is not so bad.

Thinking that you are absolutely nothing because of where your life is at is.

Changes are taking the pace I'm going through

I know I keep saying this but this time is one step closer to success. I am going to change my blog. I have to do it.

Ugh. But change is so hard.

It's funny though, when everything that is happening is somehow exactly what we want or uncomplicated or easy or positive, we sing praises to change. Dance on tables and pop open champagne and embrace change. If it requires work, it scares us. We piss and moan and resist. Or at least I do. And in my defense, the last three years have been horrendously hard and mind blowing and a seeming torrential shitstorm.

But the sun does peek through those clouds. I may be don't share the good as much as I should. I have two terrific kids, a fantastic circle of friends and family. For all the unpleasantness of the past three years, I have grown. Maybe it doesn't always show, but I have and I know it and in some regards I can see how all of it fits together. Other times though, everything seems like a huge, hazy, jumbled, disambiguation of a mishmash of a tangle. Neither is 100% true.

I am not content with who I am right now because I know that I have so much more potential than I exude. The problem at the moment is that I don't know how to break free from the fear and doubt that keep me in chains. I know that I am playing small. So much fear. So much doubt.

One of the things that I am most grateful about that stemmed from the disintegration of my marriage is the opportunity to reconnect and make amends with old friends and the influx of wonderful new people in my life. I could write a weeks worth of material about that and why it happened but not this week. I am a work in progress and I have certainly been shown grace. And right now friends, I am sitting in a strange place of a bestie calling me on my bs and me actually taking it to heart.

Such a strange space I am in.

If I could just get over myself, I am sure that everything would be okay. Life happens outside your comfort zone. At least, that's what people keep telling me and with the looming possibility of Hell freezing over I am inclined to agree. I thought the final ruling on the divorce would bring peace but several days later I can see how it had to be the harbinger of taking corners on two wheels and letting go of everything that no longer serves my unfolding good. I just got broke free from a cycle that was killing me. I don't think I have been this fully confused and cocksure in 20 years. The good news is I am better judge of who needs to be on my team and which bridges to set fire to and which ones need serious repair and the fact that nothing and everything is as wonderful as I think it is.

Bowie was right...

Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time


And I am okay with that because as my children have been apt to tell me, time is a human construct. Everything unfolds as it is supposed to and in the time it should. If I could get control of my kicking and screaming and reconnect with the lady who raised children who say shit like that, I just might get somewhere fantastically wonderful.

Here I go Playin' star again There I go Turn the page

So, my divorce was final yesterday.

Super digressing except to my inner sanctum, League of Justice friends.

This has been going on 2 1/2 years. I was super unprepared for how this was all going to hit me.

I nominate Bob Seger to speak on my behalf.

Super Perfundo on the Early Eve of My Divorce

I have court tomorrow.

I don't know why the man who screamed at me to just fucking sign the papers and move on pushed the process this far. To be fair, there never were any papers. He screamed and fussed and kicked and moaned for like six months about this but would never produce the papers. Then, one day, his mistress paid for him to file for divorce. She's a real unmensch, I hope you never have the misfortune to meet her. I did once it was the worst 30 seconds of my life but I digress.

It's been nearly three years since all of this started. Once it started so to speak, it just got worse. Hindsight is 20/20 and not worth digging up tonight but still all of this happened it's all a piece of my life I have had to deal with. I have learned a lot. About myself. About him. About what loyalty really looks like. About hope. About healing. About bass. Seriously. Music is my Prozac.

For what it's worth, I am still very much dealing with the struggle and guilt that is seeing and fully recognizing that mistakes were made and the full gravity of the situation that was our relationship. I would be lying if I said I didn't occasionally have a fanciful unicorn thought of some miraculous restoration. There are a lot of years and tears and hopes and cheers tied up in this one person. From my point of view, we were a like minded, passionately attracted, perfectly complimentary power couple of sorts. But it wasn't true. He had all the power and anything he gave me was an illusion conjured to serve his own self-centered destruction. (It's take me a longtime to admit that without crying.)

He is a textbook something. I won't say what lest his minion of ridiculously delusional mistress should be creeping here as she does. (Or maybe it's him. No matter.) He is a textbook something and it took me longer than most to see it because I was still useful to him so he wasn't showing his true face. I spent a long time and a lot of energy thinking I had finally found my "perfect" relationship (no such thing I know that but I don't know what other word to use). What I had found was a dirty, little, shape-shifting narcissist who honest to God would throw his own parents, his family, his wife, his children under the bus to serve his own needs. In hindsight, I can see how he became whoever to suit whatever, how the man I loved was merely an illusion and subject to change when something more codependent and gullible came along.

But whatever.

For the love of God, please no one hold their breath in anticipation about announcement about the final outcome of tomorrow's court date. I do not know CPR and I am have an intuitive sense that folie a deux that is my husband and his mistress plans a full three-ring circus complete with an outdoor carnival. Come one, come all, free pony rides for the kids, this decade only. It may seem glib but um, we aren't the A-list celebrities. There's no beach house. No offshore account to fight over. No squabbling over a multitude of shares of well performing stock. The only issues are custody and support and as expected, he pulled the unfit mother card.

In case you aren't exactly aware of what that it is, it is a card low-life degenerates pull when they have no legitimate argument available against their looming support payments. I have jumped, jumped so much when he has asked me to I seriously considered changing my name to Kriss Kross. I have rolled with every punch and misfire that he has aimed my direction. Then one day, he ran out of delay tactics and the court put formal orders in place. BOOM. We went from having a rough agreement in place to him pushing the divorce to trial. Getting formal orders pushed things from me and our son from being at his mercy in regards to the informal agreement where he wouldn't pay the utilities and admitted to purposely withholding the cash portion because he didn't "owe me shit" or I was a "loser who was just using him". McFly, McFly, none of that was about me and what you were paying is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less than what you should have been, but I am sure you have noticed that. Bet you kinda wish you had played nicer now, huh? But no, you chose to fight the double-digit percentage of your income that now deposits to my account but deciding after walking out, walking away. giving up, etcetra that you want custody because I am not fit to parent.

Not my first rodeo, this is exactly what my daughter's father said in court nearly 20 years ago. He threw out a million and two reasons that he shouldn't pay child support because I apparently made Joan Crawford look like Mary Poppins. He lost. He never paid much of any thing but he lost nonetheless.

It's not about the Benjamins. It's not at all, in any way, shape, or form about the Benjamins. It's so insulting that dudes have this mindset. Anyway. So, tomorrow, once again I get to face the gauntlet of lies that is discrediting the mother so one does not have to pay support. Not even worried. Not at all. Nothing in their arsenal even pertains to my parenting so yeah whatever. I have two wonderful kids who love me. They may not always agree with me or understand me and God knows I am not always the perfect parent but somewhere in all of that they know that I love them and that I do my best to help them to grow into the adults that they are destined to be.

It is what it is and it's all that it will ever be. I hold onto the good. I release all the bad. I give up trying to rationalize with the irrational. For all the darkness that my soul has seen in all this, I have at least recovered, and I can be thankful that my dark was never the abysmal sort of self-hatred that manifest the way it does in men who cheat and the women who think what they have with them is love. So my friends, super perfundo on the eve of my divorce, here's to getting on with life and enjoying the good and the bad with people who genuinely love me...and my kids.

I have court tomorrow. It's all good because I know it's all in God's hands and He didn't bring me this far to not show up and show out. The best is truly yet to come.

There was a verse that I was gonna write I haven't yet but there's still a chance I might

I felt ever so much more together at 14 than I do now at 40. I had it all together then. Okay, maybe not really but it seems recently that I am far more awkward and unsure now than I was then. I am in a bit of tailspin and I don't know how to correct course.

It's making me a bit difficult to deal with, I suppose. I have this whole midlife crisis, crisis of faith, shadow of fear, flood of disappointment, angst-ridden, I don't know what going on with me right now. I hear it gets better but I am honestly not sure. Not sure about that...or anything else for that matter.

Sigh.

A good friend of mine said that all this is just part of the healing process. She said that she thinks because I was so accepting of it all in the beginning and that because I vowed that I was going to stay positive that maybe I didn't fully process my anger and disappointment and it has now just all bubbled up to the surface because nothing is how I thought it would be at this point. I suppose there is something to all of that.

And that being said, it gives me an opportunity to explain my crisis of faith and why am I am where I am with all of that. A lot lately I am hearing that I need to lean in, pray, trust and what ruffles me there is that I want to scream at these people "WTF do you think I have been doing?!"  Then, we get into the whole "God's timing" conversation and a landslide of Bible verses to reinforce how wrong I am about things. And next thing you I have alienated friends and family because quite frankly the trip is turning out to be nothing like the brochure. NOTHING. I have been in such a dark place that I actually started reading the Book of Discipline the other night to see if there is a point where my very vocal disappointment and despair would be cause to revoke my membership. Turns out it all kind of falls under the category of me working out my own salvation with my own fear and trembling which is probably good for me in the long run but right now it's a little bit of a disappointment because being kicked out of church would totally fit in with the rest of the shitstorm around me.

Sigh.

Don't get me wrong. Life is not bad. I have a lot going for me but it doesn't feel like this is where I am supposed to be and it certainly isn't where I used to be. That's hard some days but on the other side of the token I can totally see where I needed to see what I am seeing and experiencing. One day I am going to write about post about my shower and how hard water makes it look like I don't wash my hair. I am also going to write about how keenly aware I have become washing laundry as a luxury item. It's the discontent of disconnect that has me so completely off-kilter.

Life is not at all bad. I am doing well in a lot of ways. My kids are great. My friends and family, wonderful as ever. It's that verse I was gonna write. I think it haunts me. Writing has always been my outlet, my talent, my thing. Before all of this shook loose with my marriage and whatnot, I had been seriously outlining and business planning, trying to get myself on track to do more. I haven't yet. My life falling apart has been a bit of a distraction. I can't even focus my energies to write grocery list some days lately. The disconnect is within me. I have always put off what fed my soul in the name of pragmatism and practicality. I am truly my own worst enemy.

Past couple days, I have started to see how this whole midlife crisis, crisis of faith, shadow of fear, flood of disappointment, angst-ridden, I don't know what going on with me right now insanity has reconnected me with myself. I have been slowly admitting to myself and a few select others my truths and my misperceptions of others. Making friends with my powerlessness and buddying up with all my flaws. I am seeing now how different life would be had I got my way at each and every turn. No joke I have lived, laughed and love more in the three months since I moved than I had in the time since my husband left. I have also kicked, screamed and cussed but that's to be expected. This is not an easy time and mine is complicated by the egos and delusions of people I have no influence on. It is what it is and I really mean that this time.

While kicking and screaming and brooding and crying, the living, laughing and loving didn't stop. I have been an absolute black hole of delight and I have been surrounded by absolute angels of grace and mercy. I still have some kinks to work out and some chapters that need closed. I have become more fully aware of the parts of me that need healing and let go of my idea of how this is all gonna play out. After all, it is God's plan, and as point of clarification, I have never once during this recent storm said I didn't believe. So yeah, God's plan, not Jenny's plan and I'd be an absolute liar if I didn't admit just a tad that I am seeing evidence of the way He works things for the good. There's an entire novel to be written there.And still those verses, of course.

I haven't yet.

There's still a change I might.

I'll start today because someday has a funny way of slipping past and withering into regret.

And life's too short and too precious to squander it on speculation.

If I should fall from grace with god Where no doctor can relieve me If I'm buried 'neath the sod But the angels won't receive me

Let me go, boys
Let me go, boys
Let me go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry

 I know I don't write for weeks and then I pull out the Pogues. And really, who wouldn't? It's been almost a month since I posted and my last post I shared that I was feeling more than a little uncomfortable with my life. Not, of course, in any great detail but enough that you got a sense of where my head was at...kinda...sorta. 

Better, it seems, is a mythological construct like unicorns and dollar beer night. For all that I could say, I am content to say nothing right now except that individual results vary. Long before my husband decided he had a penchant for fat chicks with no morals, I had gone all in so to speak in my spiritual life. I trusted more than I had ever trusted before in the goodness of God. I believed more than I had ever believed before in the inerrant nature of scripture. And when the shit hit the fan, I leaned in and believed that all things WOULD  work for my good because I love Him. I could post an entire weeks worth of blogs on the things I have been relying on God for during this period.

Since I last wrote...nothing has gotten better for me despite my efforts to get up every morning and put on foot in front of the other and stay positive and believe that this is not where my story ends. Things are in such a state that even my youngest wants to know why our life is so horrible. Yeah, that moment, absolutely heartwrenching. I can't look either of my kids in the eye right now and with good conscious tell them that it is going to get better...

So, now here is the place where a bunch of people chime in with all the usual suspects of God's timing and God's plan and yada yada fucking yada. I am tired of hearing it. I am so so so done. I don't have it in me to believe anymore. And yes, the discovery that thunderslut's parent pastor a church really made me question God's wisdom.

What was the point of the last ten years? What was the point of getting married? Having another kid? Building a life? Building a dream? What was the point of believing anything? What purpose could this much pain possible serve in the Kingdom? And you can stop with that played out "Well, Jesus suffered" line. Jesus suffered to redeem me so that I didn't have to suffer. Allegedly.

My friend is always telling me we live in a fallen world. I don't even know why because I totally get that. I get that husband's can lie to you for years about how they really feel and then throw you under the bus for people whose only MO is fun and no responsibility and then shack up with some whore who claims to be a Christian but never apparently read the Ten Commandments and has her mommy and daddy turning a blind eye to her whole life of sin because fuck if I know but it's bloody annoying. So why am I even trying to  live in any sort of obedience or belief in anything if everyone can do whatever the fuck they want and live better than me and my kids?

So...if I should fall from the grace of God...and at this point I think I will have completed that by the end of the weekend...let me go. If He really wanted me in the fold anyway he would have answered, at the very least, the scriptural prayers because after all, isn't God's word supposed to not return void?

My relationship with Jesus is apparently just like my relationship with every other man in my life. I admire and respect him and trust him but all he does is lie and ignore me and rub up against fat ugly chicks ass deep in sin.

Just let me go because apparently God is too busy keeping Stephen Curry in sneakers to hear anyone else's prayers.

I Want To Be More Like The Ocean

Sitting here this morning and well friends, some mornings the still and the quiet is fantastic. This morning not so much. This morning I feel out of place in my own life. Just out of nowhere, this quiet still is thick and oppressive and I don't know what to do with it. Just sitting here being. No talking...but no action either.

Nothing like the ocean.

Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I

That is all. Drops mic. Walks off stage.

Kidding.

The line I used for the title could describe any of us really. As could this line from Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly":

A soul in tension that's learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try

I know that I certainly relate to that sentiment lately. Full of potential, yet somehow not quite moving forward. This is not acceptable to me. It hasn't been but now it's really getting annoying. Just past the horizon, I can see a bright future but I seem to get hung up by things on the horizon, like change. I need to make some changes that are much more profound than my hair color or my Facebook cover.

I realize that divorce is not known to be a positive energy generator but I never imagined that it would be the Azkaban prison experience that it has been. I certainly tried to make the most of the Dementor's kiss. I set intentions that I would remain positive, that I would do this or do that or the other. I did well to hang onto that trajectory for a long time. Then, one day, I couldn't.

The disconnect between what I wanted out of my life and what my life resembled was overwhelming. I didn't think that I had given up but then I met a new friend at work a few months ago. The more I hang with her, the more I see where I let the darkness dim my shine. She's an intuitive sort of gal who has made me grin like the Cheshire cat when she says things in conversation that are so dead on but not avenues of me I have shared with her.

I will fly. I have to fly because grounded for life is no life at all.
 

Look at the stars, Look how they shine for you, And all the things that you do.

Confession. I don't even really like Coldplay. I wanted to because everyone was all "OMG Coldplay!" when they first hit. I may own a copy of "Rush of Blood to the Head" but I also probably haven't listened to it since I bought it. None of this is pertinent to why I am on this yellow jag today. I just sometimes like to throw out something superfluous for no reason at all.

One, it's utterly gloomy in Ohio. I haven't seen the sun in days so I have been trying to surround myself with brightness. I should probably replace every light in my house with a full spectrum bulb...or move to Arizona. Neither of which is feasible so here I am with a bright yellow gif.
 
Two, last night I was thinking about Charles Filmore's, "The Twelve Powers of Man." I have not read that book but a redux of sorts called ,"Your God Given Potential." Filmore's premise was that these twelve spiritual powers were perfectly expressed in Jesus and are present in every single one of us. Long story short, each power has a corresponding disciple, color, and physical area of manifestation, like chakras in the Eastern traditions. 

So, thinking about that led to me Googling a bunch of stuff about a BUNCH of stuff, which led to me researching the twelve powers concept of elimination and the solar plexus (or third) chakra. Yellow is the color that brings that chakra in to balance. I like yellow so hey, why not. 

Okay, so there I am this morning, thinking about yellow (among other things). One of those being the current challenges a friend of mine is going through which is where Coldplay queued up in my head. I haven't had the words to say. As the I went about my morning, I thought about the line I used as a title. I thought about a lot of songs about sunshine and stars. I dressed in all the yellow that I had and sent a message to my friend. 

Sometimes, it's not about the exact right words. It's just about being there.  Ecclesiastes 1:5 says,"The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, And hastens to the place where it arose." The sun is a star that shines for you...and all the things that you do but it may set briefly but the darkness does not last forever. You may weep during the night, but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5b Jenny's Memory Abridged Version). 

So my friends, how much does this song change for you if you imagine it through the lens of God singing it to you? It's something I like to do and it completely changes the lyrics,"Turn into something beautiful, Do you know, For you I'd bleed myself dry, For you I'd bleed myself dry."
 
The stars do indeed shine for you my friend. Be someone's sunshine today.