No Goodbyes For Spooky Oats

Someday, a few years down the line, I'm going to cross your mind and you're going to try to convince yourself it's too late and it may be for some things, but it isn't for everything. It isn't for things like Hawaiian flowers and serendipity and believing in seagulls of light. It isn't for little boy dreams and Peter Pan and Wendy and swanky hotels in Prague where you take notes while I talk to geniuses after massages that you normally hate because you don't like to be kneaded.

I never told you I had a crooked tailbone too. I thought your head might implode with all the synchronicities that were flying around while you were ducking and I was laughing because you got bitchslapped and rightly so. I understand now. It's okay.

When I was lost and alone, you kept reaching out to me and offering your hand like in the painting of the little boy and girl crossing a broken bridge with a guardian angel standing behind them and you wore me down until I couldn't help but love you no matter how much I fought it. I fought it because I didn't believe I had anything to offer you and I was so stuck in my circumstances and then I said oh fuck it and asked you and you said no and I loved you anyway and in any capacity but then you came back and said fuck it and my heart soared and so did yours too, at least for a moment. I believed that we could work and beat the odds but I couldn't believe enough for both of us. I can only be a lucky charm if you believe, Sparky.  How could I not keep trying in the end, if you kept trying with me in the beginning? What you taught me about unconditional love when I was too blind to see it, I learned it all from you and could give it back freely. You eat my peppers; I eat your cheese.

I don't know how you feel right now and I'm not going to guess. I've been so sick, literally, agonizing over all of this that I had to accept it. Aggie still roots for you, you know. She says to leave a little window open for you but she put away the little wooden clogs that used to be on the bench outside the waiting room because I ask her not to teach me any more words because it hurts too much. Words I will never be able to appalling try out on you, and songs you will never let me hear. No road trip together. No elephant pics. No more song links or short stories or fairy tales or love letters. Yours is the last fairy tale, so treasure it. It might be worth something when I'm famous. I proved myself with the loveletters, though, didn't I? I thought I found a loophole but I fucked myself over big time. You always said I was so strong but did you ever think that you had the power to almost break me?

No laying on a crappy motel room bed talking about Nairobi or beating up spiders in bathrooms with tennis rackets. Not ever hearing you say, Snoes. But whenever I see a tiny deer I will think of you. Whenever I get a butterfly in my stomach, I will think of you. Whenever my tongue gets burnt on hot bacon or pork belly, I'll think of you and whenever I see that seagull on the ceiling, I will think of you. I will ever imagine the hug at the airport that doesn't exist because you're as embedded in my soul as my own name. No matter what you've done, or what you think, you are still a giver of light.

We are all damaged, just by different degrees so I won't condemn you but I have to move on. No, there isn't anyone else but I want there to be because I can't live in a void and I need to be needed and loved.  My love, no matter how unconditional or perfect, can't make you accept it or believe it, so I have to accept your choices. Right now I can't see your name or your picture anywhere because it keeps me suspended in a limbo of pain that my body and my heart just can't deal with and that's not good for me because I'm in it all alone. I used to feel you everywhere with me but you severed that silver thread.

Every good thing I said to you, I meant and still do. Every dream I had about you, I still dream for you. I wish you love. I wish you undiluted bliss. I wish your every passion be ignited and fulfilled and that you remember that someone adored you exactly as you were and believed in you. You will always be Sparky and Spooky Oats and the door will always be open a little bit for you. My friendship never ever dies. Ever. That's just how I am and you know that.

I know you may not be reading these anymore, but I know some friend of yours will so I hope they pass this on to you with love because it's written with more love than any words can ever convey.

Take good care of yourself, please...please... and when it's fucking cold out, don't forget to put on a sweater.

Spirit and Fire

My sister used to wear a shirt that made me both cringe and howl laughing. It was a wifebeater (charming) and she ironed on the words FUCKING WHORE and it was deliberately two sizes too small and she'd wear it whenever she'd go out for the mail or answer the door for a package. Sometimes no panties. She was a free spirit. My brother David, a mailman, got lots of reports from his coworkers on what my sister would or wouldn't wear when she'd answer the door. She wouldn't be shamed. God I loved that nerve, that screw you attitude. She said I was her hero, but she was mine too.

I found it among her things after she'd died. Of everything she had, all the boxes full of shit, nothing made me cry more than that shirt. I remember the last time I saw her wearing it, I was probably still living in the area, and was picking something up from her apartment and waiting outside for her, and she came out with some new guy. She was barefoot and wearing leggings and that godawful shirt and she pointed her chin in his direction and said, 'That's Brian', and he said to me, 'I'ma gon' marry your sister. I keep telling her', and I met her eyes and said to him ruefully,  'Brother, you got delusions of grandeur. You're just a flavor of the month', and she burst out laughing and I drove off. Nobody told Lisa what to do. Nobody ever would. She died with fire inside her.

I couldn't fit into that shirt when I found it so I'd wrap it around a pillow and cry all night, many nights missing her. Missing her power and her fire and spirit. And today I found it. I forgot that I'd grabbed it and stuffed it in a bag with the few meager things I took when I left the asshole. I put it on and it fit perfectly. Yes, she died with fire inside her, but she left her spirit for me.

For Myself

I read somewhere that the last emotion for anyone to hold onto is hope.
and I know for myself that's true.
every relationship...it was down to an atom of hope. Even after the love had gone. It was hope.
and now I hope for myself. Me.
and my friends.
and tomorrow.

Giving Up the Ghost

I don't have an impressive chain of iniquities growing heavier each day with new links, at least as far as I know. I do, however, have a bracelet that has taken on more and more symbolism as time (and life) passes by and with these thoughts, I drove down the hill and slowed as I usually do to see if you were outside. You were but your back was turned to the road and you didn't see me, which is good. I know you're angry and you need to work it off. You're also wearing that orange sweatshirt that you  keep insisting you don't own. I got your message and thank you for at least responding and for not saying what you could have. We go back a long way and I need you. I need all my friends but I need you because you're real in my life and not some phantom on the other side of a screen.

You told me to go to that jeweler so I did and he fixed the clasp beautifully. There was a screw-up because the clerk forgot to write down 'written appraisal' so of course there was none although I'd asked her three times if she wrote it down. I thought it odd that it would cost so little for an appraisal but I did ask and when I showed up today, I should have known.

The owner himself slipped it on my wrist and as he walked away I asked about the appraisal and he was mortified about the mix-up and I took the bracelet off again and told him I needed it anyway and would come back for it. He gave me a price, told me how long it would take and turned away but then turned back to me and said, You know, I can give you a ballpark of how much the diamonds are worth, how much the gold is worth, how much the resale is if you sold it privately and how much it would cost to buy retail--but ballpark only, and I shrugged and said, Okay but I will bring it back because I intend to sell it. My eyes filled with tears but he didn't see it because he'd already turned toward a light and had the loupe up to his eye, examining the stones. He called back to me asking if it was one or two carats, explaining a real appraisal would involve actually weighing each stone and I told him it was absolutely two carats and after a few minutes he gave me the figures and also waived the repair fee because of the snafu. The value of the bracelet was more than I imagined (should I sell it privately) and I thought of the person who was so totally worth selling it for so we could spend a month driving around the south seeing friends and giant balls of lint and waterfalls inside caverns. I thought of ghosts.

I passed the entrance to the security gate of the community I live in and instead drove on to the state park nearby. I was listening to sad soft music and felt exactly that, sad and soft and lost and vulnerable and plaintive and pathetic and I pulled up to the lake and stared out at the water. I'd brought my Kindle in case I felt like stopping at an overlook or sitting outside and getting some air but I didn't even bother taking it out of its slipcase.

Alone in the parking lot, I leaned back and realized I really had to adjust the seat because I had gotten smaller and farther away from the wheel and would ask you, if you ever talked to me again, to help adjust it, just as you programmed the GPS for me, just as you popped the hood of my car, and demanded I go to this mechanic and that pizzaria, just as you always called me every morning so you could hear my 'sexy sleepy voice' and thought, you may never talk to me again. You're that mad. I've never seen you so mad, so quietly seething. I always said you were cute when you were mad but I knew that was just temper and irritation and it was true anyway but this was different and I didn't know how to make amends. I still don't. I think because I can't. Because you want something you can't have that I won't give and you know it, you know it and you can't have everything and I won't let you make a choice even if you wanted to. I'm not a dessert or a side dish. I'm not an indiscretion and you were right the last time, that we would both want more and I deserve more and I didn't start this again! I stayed away for ten fucking years to give both of us a chance BECAUSE of how I felt, because I didn't want you to feel you had to choose and nothing would ever be legitimate between us if you did and part of what I loved was your loyalty to her and I'm sorry you can't understand that.

You said you had to be crazy because you keep coming back like a bad penny over and over again and you couldn't stop and I said that's one of the many things I loved about you, to calm you down but I didn't expect the anguish in your voice saying I didn't love you, didn't love anything about you, it wasn't true but it WAS and is and you were so angry I had to hang up and now you brood and sulk.

How could I tell you how much I felt when I know that whenever I tell ANYONE how much I feel they get overwhelmed and run and then you say that's because they're asses even though I know I'm the common denominator and you say it's not true because of you and you're right but that doesn't make it any better. It will never make it any better. We can never begin what you want again.

There are leaves that still cling to the birches around my car and spring hangs in the air, expectant and fresh and clean and I see one leaf finally give up the ghost and let go and float away on the water. It  makes way for new buds, new growth, new life and I wonder if it still clung to only what it knew, would the new grow around the old or did the old need to go for the new to arrive? I drifted with that leaf and thought of another.

You are a changeling that occupies the body of the man who stood at the altar with tears in his eyes promising me forever. The most gentle man I ever knew became the cruelest and I never knew why or how I became the object of your hatred the more I loved you and begged you to love me. I clung to the skeleton of our marriage and lived with this ephemeral effigy and punishing poltergeist and fled that tomb that reeked of desolation and never let the sun in, the sun I craved and would die without. I left in the middle of a storm but your name haunts me though I never have to go there again but I lived with your ghost for so long that with one swallow I almost became one myself. You are cut off and cast out. You are the ghost that I left behind and exorcised from my life forever.

Then there is you, the second ghost, the one I knew least but loved most. I wrote about you all over this place and have notebooks full of scribbles and journals filled with screams of impotence because I am no more to you. Meaningless and invisible. I have been erased from your life for whatever reason, no goodbye, like a death, no final words, not even a fuck you, just dead air and me screaming in my own head. I hate myself for every single tear and curse every reminder of you and they are everywhere because you are embedded in my life now, engraved like a tattoo and everyone knows it. People want me to hate you and I could never hate you and though you used to pore over every word I wrote, you don't anymore and will likely not read this so I can safely say no matter what, I will never hate you. I will never forget you. I may curse you to the end of time but I will still love you and you owe me a song you fucker. It's my goddamn song. If you ever change a word of it, if you ever give it to someone else I will haunt you from the grave because it's mine and for a few months, so were you and no one loved you more and that's why you ran. I will never forgive you for taking your friendship away. A love might not have worked but you promised we'd be friends always and you lied and I would never have done to you what you did to me. To hurt you this much is incomprehensible; I would injure myself first. Live with remorse and regret rather than fix what you know you can, when you know I believed in your brilliance, your light, your beauty and you threw me away like a rag and like the dead you won't talk to me. You are the ghost I pray will still appear.

Last but really the first ghost. You gave me the kiss that ignited something so tangible others could see it. The fire I had to run from, because I knew you could consume me but give me nothing in return. I make you miserable because you feel it too but you will only get lost and the deeper you get the harder it will be to find your way out. We both know this. We both know this is why you're angry. I won't give you what you want because you won't give me what I need and I won't let you anyway but don't you ever doubt that I loved you. Don't ever tell me what I felt because you lived in my heart longer than anyone. You are the ghost that wants to be free but won't release yourself.

At the end of December, I spent a weekend with a friend and her family and I was sick the whole night. I sent my last communication to Spooky Oats and after the ball dropped in Times Square, I excused myself. I tossed and turned in bed, and had the chills and my friend's dog even lay on top of me, seemingly knowing that I wasn't well. My friend came up to check on me and I ran past her to the bathroom and was sick again and again. I lay down again in misery and counted the hours. I prayed for everyone I knew. I used guided imagery to try to sleep. I meditated. And when I heard birdsong and saw the sun creeping up from the big bay window, I felt someone slip into bed beside me, weight push the bed down on that side, the covers pulled up and something brush against my leg. I wasn't afraid, more perplexed, and half knowing what I wouldn't find, I still turned saying the dog's name and there was no one beside me. It was then I fell into a deep sleep until I was awakened by conversation in the hallway and got up and did my usual morning routine.

I made my way downstairs and nearly all the guests had gone home. I sat in the den on a loveseat across from my friend and I studied her face. She stopped talking and looked back at me. I asked her if 'things' ever happened in the house and she froze and asked why. I told her what happened and she called out, 'MAAAAAAA !!!!' and her mother came running and my friend told me to tell her mother what I just said. Her mother listened and smiled. She said, 'You know C's father died here, on a New Years Eve, just like last night. The room you slept in was her and her sister's room when they were small and before he went to bed every night, he would check on them, sometimes several times. Were you afraid?' I told her no, in fact, that after that I was able to sleep after being sick all night. Since then, a flicker of his shadow which appeared only to them, appears to me now, regularly, and I feel safe and protected. This is the ghost that gives me sleep and peace.

I don't know why he chose to make himself known to me. Maybe because I was lonely. Maybe because I mourn over ghosts living and dead. Maybe because I had lost all hope with Spooky Oats when I needed him more than ever. I have learned, through loss, that we don't always get a reason. We live and die with questions on our lips and in our hearts. Maybe Joe wanted me to know I wasn't as alone as I thought or maybe he thought I was a little girl who just needed someone to tuck her in and check in on her one last time. Whatever the reason, it was enough to give this leaf the courage to take hold of the breeze and trust that the coming spring would bring new life. 

Prism

We sit together near the wall of windows that overlooks a life-size standing terracotta Buddha at the foot of a pristine pine staircase which begins at French doors filled with light and mesmerizing prisms producing magical rainbows all over the walls and across our faces.

The stream behind the statue has rocks scattered all across the shallow surface and there's a diminutive whirlpool effect created by the random placement of rocks, and I can observe from the well-worn well-loved leather couch, clockwise and counterclockwise infinite circles and the music the stream makes casts a spell of serenity and she speaks.

'How has your week been?'  We skipped a week, so it's been two but I know the rote, let's get business out of the way, so, as she says, we can work together and have fun. So I tell her about my dad putting down my favorite top and my telling him that I wished he were as generous with his compliments as he was with his insults and his telling me to get off my high-horse, y'know, our usual schtick. I can't ask him to change behavior that's been routed through his neural pathways for the past 70 years but I can control how I respond and I'm human AND my father's daughter so I do make the occasional potshot and zinger. I've been conditioned too, it's part of my wiring as well.

 She rolls her eyes. I can't fool her. Which is good. I'd been told I'd have to find a therapist I couldn't outsmart and it'd be a bitch to find one but I found her and now we've become more than doctor/patient. We giggle and conspire like little girls and she often says, 'Oh we're not getting any work done AGAIN, Elaine' and I nearly always forget to give her my copay although I never fail to remember that she's made a big sacrifice for me by taking less than half her usual fee so we won't lose each other. I tell her that I don't want to lose her because of money and she says, 'Sweetie, you won't.'

 I believe her. I don't know why. Everyone who promises me they will stay leaves so why should I trust her, even when those who said they wouldn't leave either, did and yet I still do.

I think of a prayer I wrote down about being open and choosing to remain vulnerable after suffering and how forgiveness has so much power and she smiles and asks me what I'm thinking of at that moment.

I tell her that he's dead to me, yet....I still pray for him. He viciously injured me, yet I have so much gratitude that he took care of me when I was sick and he loves and cares for Nacho who I ache for and I know Wonton misses...still. She still recognizes his name when I mention it and she cries when I leave because she thinks I'm leaving her forever and my grandmother spends twenty minutes consoling and cajoling and she lets her great-nana be a surrogate til Mama gets home and I think, I left them. I left him and I left Nacho and my heart breaks because I love the cat more than the man and how did it get to this point?

When she and I first began to talk, I was so heartsick because it wasn't just abuse that I was dealing with, but incredible guilt that I could have done more couldn't I have, although she assured me I did so much more than 'more' and I cry so hard over Spooky Oats snatching his friendship away that she gets on her knees and wraps her arms around me and says let it out let it out and the grief is so suffocating that I can't make a sound so we rock until I hiccup and she excuses herself to get me a glass of water and I wipe my face with a tissue from one of the twenty ever present boxes of Kleenex and I think of all the people who have baptized this couch with their sorrow and how many she's consoled, and held on to and helped them in their recovery, some beginning to feel for the first time in years and sobbing in the waiting room in anticipation of the safe place with a spectrum of color and light dancing across the walls and the sound of the water burbling as if to say, 'It's okay, it's okay, it's okay to cry, baby. You're safe. You're loved. You're worth it all.'

I tell her that he did love me at first. I remember moments more and more as time passes by and the daze of fear and dread turns to clarity. He will never be blessed with my presence again. He's been banned from the garden of my love forever and angels do stand at the gates, forbidding entrance. Of this I know within my deepest heart. 

I remember the moment when we were talking in bed and he looked up at me and gasped and I whispered, 'What's wrong, Baby?' and his eyes filled with tears and he choked and said, 'You're so beautiful in the moonlight.' and how it took me by surprise and nothing ever took me by surprise and I loved those rare good good precious unforgettable surprises like, 'I'm coming to see YOU, Silly,' and 'I couldn't stay away from you no matter how much I tried', and, 'I couldn't sleep all night, thinking of you, please....' and taking my hand and asking me to trust once again. And I did and I did and I did and every time I did my heart broke yet I did it again and again because of hope and forgiveness and faith and that love that surpasses understanding.....all logic and reason goes out the window.....with the moonlight and the music that lulls and soars in my soul takes over.

I would look up from a book, or a bubbling pot, or my laptop and find him studying me with a silly smile playing across his lips, lips that I begged to kiss tenderly I remember now and wonder if the joy will ever be separate from the sorrow and undiluted and as light and effortless as a handful of feathers drifting through the air, and more precious than a pound of glittering gold. Not with him, but with another. He was not The One. He knew it himself. He always knew it even before I did. He knew he could never be enough and that I was a force he couldn't even begin to comprehend so he didn't want to try and instead withdrew, disappeared and became a ghost. All I had to talk to were mirrors and cats that would pile up on me and purr melodies almost by design as if to sooth my aching heart and overwhelming loneliness. My marriage was dead but there had been life, so I grieved long after the love was gone.

And upon finding my voice again, I lost another, with no reason, no warning and I wondered about cosmic jokes and karmic agreements made when souls were birthed, how could we know what we were agreeing to? How could we say, 'I will' or 'Never' or 'No matter what' when there is no guarantee of anything no matter the intent, no matter the consequence and I sit here with eyes filled with tears and with light and she says, 'Your eyes sparkle,  did anyone ever tell you that?' and I say, 'Yes. But oh what a price I've paid for it.' and sigh.

She Knows About Storms

This afternoon, out with a friend, we watched from a nearby window, snow falling down steadily. It was quite 'fluffy' and fell in bunches of flakes and at times the sun broke through but it continued to snow for quite a while. We wondered aloud if it would 'stick'. We got lost in conversation for several hours as we tend to do and didn't give it another thought, until she excused herself and I asked people at the next table who'd just arrived, if it did indeed stick and they assured me it hadn't but it was quite a squall wasn't it and I had to agree. Looking back, it was really lovely. Here, and then gone.

My friend and I said our goodbyes and we hugged and 'I love you'd' at our cars and I waved as I passed her pulling into the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru hoping that she'd get her mint hot chocolate as she'd planned. She had a long drive home.

I had a short drive and passed the homes and businesses of several friends, noting the lights and signs of life in what often feels to me, a native city girl, a very remote isolated area, at least this time of year, off-season for 'summer people' and made it to the security gate and was astonished to see several inches of snow on the ground. It was less than three miles away but then again, as one of my friends reminds me, mountains and elevation can make a very big difference. The accumulation crunched in the driveway as I pulled in and I thanked the universe that I'd decided on sneakers rather than the flats I intended to wear. Nice way to destroy brand new gold linen shows that were such a good deal too.

The snow was soft and light and no problem to walk around the house and up the stairs. I saw deer tracks in it and realized that one had walked right up to the deck and always see that as a sign of my sister, and said, as I usually do, 'Hey Boo', and walked inside and stomped on the mat and said hello and goodnight to my grandmother and offered my leftovers to my dad and told him a little story about some adorable girls at the restaurant and I felt good. Really good. It had been a while.

When I'm low I reach out to my friends and sometimes it's for an ear to bend, a hug and embrace, and various and sundry opinions I can consider to help fill in blanks and sometimes, more often than not, I seek out friends who aren't doing so hot themselves and show them some love. We are all damaged, just in different degrees.

I often say, 'Your happy is my happy' and it's true. Their sadness is mine too, but I like and believe in the adage that when sharing with friends, our joy is doubled and our grief is divided.

Thinking on this, I thought about the conversation during dinner and and it reminded me of another friend, who lives in another state who I am determined to meet and although we have never met, I love with all my heart because her own is solid gold. She is sassy and spicy and sexy and reminds me of everything so good about 'southern hospitality' and generosity and, like me, she isn't perfect and doesn't pretend to be. In fact, both of us would probably qualify more as horrible warnings than shining examples, but still, we manage to sparkle.

We had planned to visit for a bit of a spell when Spooky Oats and I were planning The Road Trip and besides my heart breaking about all that, my heart broke because those friends we conspired with were disappointed too and I felt guilty that I'd let them down. One said, (always sensible)  'You know, you could come yourself....', and I knew that but I couldn't wrap my mind around an epic road trip WITHOUT Spooky Oats so the seed of that idea needed some time to take root but it did, I think mainly because my own heart is quite fertile soil.

 Ever broken, there's always room for growth and rebuilding, and with that I decided to open a road trip savings account. I would not give up on the idea, just some of the details needed adjustment and I mentioned this to my friend while we enjoyed our pasta. I chattered on about these friends I'd never met and the snow outside reminded me of something about Babygirl, and I began to tell her how Babygirl works with FEMA when the tornadoes blow through her area, even when she's grieving for those she lost in those disasters, and how she makes sure everyone even now is fed, with sometimes the most simple ingredients and her descriptions of meals make my mouth water and I want nothing more than to pick okra in her garden and eat fried porkchops in her mama's kitchen and say yes, ma'am and  no, sir and just relax and I know I could and would so Babygirl had to had to HAD TO be a priority and my friend agreed, of course. Babygirl knows about storms.

I've seen her heart break. I could hear it beat and shatter clear across several states and she's felt mine as well. She posts specific and meaningful song links on my FB wall in our secret coded language that we dance around without actually speaking and sends me love notes when she's not feeling so shy. Although I might be considered a wordsmith by some, her own words render me speechless and I'm honored by her attention and affection. She teaches me lessons about storms.

My friend sitting before me, as we then ate dessert, talked about our own trials and tribulations (which are legion) and it hit me, like a bolt of lightening and I sat up straight and said, I know why this happened. There have been so many blanks that I've felt like I've been losing my mind and despite reassurances that my reaction is normal and it will all pass, I've been stuck. Unlike the snow.

I've learned through the last ten years how to survive, only survive, (forget flourish) and that wasn't living. I wasn't nurtured, and barely got any sunlight and it was a wonder I made it through the cracks but I did and I began to rebuild after the storm, just as Babygirl does, literally, for her friends and loved ones. I've learned over and over again how to regroup and organize (often pitiably) and stand, after the snow and rain and thunder and lightening and winds died down, and nurtured and nourished and got my own sunlight, but this time was different, this lesson.

 I needed to weather it while IN the midst of the storm and part of reaching that point was first making it through the aftermath. Not just picking up pieces and rebuilding but holding on and believing in myself and that I'd make it and I WOULD flourish and none of it was in vain, not one moment. Not one tear, not one disappointment, not one bewildered sleepless night, not even all the real physical pain that turned out to be a result of real emotional pain.

 There could be no regrets because all of it led to now. I am the best me I've ever been (battered and bruised but still standing) and that person from before is a barely discernible shadow. There is enough of her to remember and relate to and to also forgive and love and tell someone else, if I'm lucky, 'I was you', 'I am you', 'I know your pain' and we could both learn from it and they could pass that on and that could be my legacy or at least part of it and what is more gratifying than something like giving hope, compassion and love--it's inside us, as if they live and breathe and lead us out of the darkness and into the light. They give us the possibility of joy because we have known suffering.



Anne Morrow Lindbergh said, ' I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.'




The storm will pass. So will that one. And that one. Another one will come after, that's pretty much guaranteed, and sometimes, they come in punishing waves, like my past ten years. Sometimes they come and go, without a trace, or we find traces in the most unexpected places, that catch us by surprise, like when we're falling in love and are really really scared because we remember the last storm and are afraid to face it, or when we're sick, or feel abandoned or unwanted or unloved or when we lose absolutely everything and think there's nothing after but there is something after. There always is. The storms make us stronger, stronger than we ever imagined. And with it comes a blessing, if we take heed, like Babygirl, to help out those whose own storms hit hard. It IS a blessing because we see clearly who we were, and who we are now and we do have a future, in spite of any storm.

Dark and Far

Dark and Far

by castingpearls

I threw away the poison
I chose to be alive
I drove away from prison
I found the key inside
I lost my faith and found my way
And still I wish on stars
I'm not sure if I'm strong or crazed
That I believe through the dark and far

I can't make you not swallow poisonous doubt
Can't make you leave your prison cell
I can open the door and hold out my hand
Pick you up if you stumbled and fell
I remember being beaten and battered
And your voice pulled me out of the dark
I don't fucking care about the distance
And I defy all that it's just too far