Author: Admin

The “she” is both me and all the other women I have running through my veins.

I look so much like my Great Grandmother here. She had huge blue eyes and a kind smile that whispered “everything will be ok” and sometimes, “I know what you did but I’ll let you tell your story nonetheless”.

It’s almost December and the last couple of months have been a blur of school and work and family and projects and all the usual stuff that both invigorates me and wrings me out like a dishrag. I thrive on it and loathe it at the same time. Like cocaine. I remember those days.

I’m done with school for about a month and then she starts right back up again and still those visions of bopping into this office and sitting down and banging out a masterpiece won’t let me sleep at night. The stories I want to tell. The poems that I want to write. The tears and knees I want to jerk out of people. I’ve always loved helping other people find their feelings, and most deeply loved helping people find those hidden hurt places that still breathe hope and fierce living even if they think their life has devolved to canned soup and Dr. appointments. I need it for myself too: the magic. The creativity. The adventure. The “more than this” even if the “this” is pretty magical.

I am absolutely fucking exhausted most days and my last appointment with that handsome, bald doctor who also happens to be a naturopath and a vegetarian confirmed what I already knew: that my chronic pain is not going away and that I am now going to be one of those people who sometimes have to chose between doing things and resting. Seems that my body has finally won the battle of “you will learn to relax if it kills you”. I smirk thinking about that one because bitch, I’ll rest when I feel like it and not a moment before.

My Mother runs through me too. That hard and fast woman who is street-smart, streetwise, and toothy as fuck. I’ve always admired how scrappy she is, how eat up with the wild boundary of “you will not run over me and if you try I will eat your fucking liver”. And she is beautiful and doesn’t know it. She’s never known it. She’s always chased it as if it wasn’t sitting right there in her lap and that makes her both tragic and beautiful with the authenticity of a woman raises up on “not good enough”. My family has always sucked at saying, “Hey woman, you wild beautiful thing, I think you are magical and don’t you dare talk yourself out of believing it because the sun and stars applaud when you enter the sky every night…”

My Momma wants a Louis Vuitton purse. I think they are hideous but it’s what she has her heart set on so I am going to get it for her for Christmas. It’s extravagant and ridiculous but I want her to have it if it’s the last thing I do. I had dreams of bringing her here to Atlanta and letting her pick it out but I’m afraid to wait. Afraid. More than I’d like to admit. She’s busting her ass so hard these days and I can see it draining her. All the way down.

That purse is happening. Come hell or high water.

And where is my Aunt Nonie when I need her? That woman always looked like Mae West in a bullet bra and bright red hair and she had the fanciest fingernails and long legs. So elegant and sassy and I want to live like her. Get up every morning and paint myself and feel fabulous and lounge like a kitty admiring myself all day and take my shit off with cold cream at night.

But here I sit in yoga pants and no bra. Face half painted but hair wadded in that bun I always do. Red hair from a bottle. Legs like stumps.

Still me. Still all of them.

Different package.

Warm Fuzzies:

My Brother. I made a cannonball run trip back home last week to help him get through some tough life stuff and I might have to go again at any time. Arkansas holds some definite warm fuzzies for me when it comes to family and familiarity but my Brother, in particular, is the warm place in the nest. We are trauma-bonded and used to talk about it a lot more but we have both moved into this place of adult understanding that the shit that happened to us as children is not only long gone but has somehow become part of the fabric that we are made of…and that fabric is the nubby quilt of “Yes, that.”

Healing. Everything. Everywhere. Slow syrup of process mixed with warmth of sun and mind delicious with earthy goodness.

Body. She and I are becoming friends again. It’s a slow, imperfect process but the conversations are good and she’s feeling sexy and round and full and curvy and loved and ready to dance naked and open wide to the world.

Creatrix. Josephine lives again. Stories swirling all tornado-like in my head whispering things like, “what if you had to live there…” and “what would she do if she were the brave heroine you dream of…” and “maybe there are sick people lurking in the hallways…”. Stories and books needing to be written and things already written that need to be edited and people saying such uplifting things about my writing like “concise but packs a hard punch” and “tell me more” and “I cannot fucking wait to read this” and “talented and raw”. I’m a storyteller at heart but I doubt it’s talent…more like a finely-honed skill of survival and a need to remember it all. Feeding the movie, one frame at a time, with the help of a very toothy, very demanding bitch like the great Josephine, my red-haired, fanged, mad mermaid of a muse for 30 years now. I hope she stays awhile this time.

Skinned Knees:

Covid 19 and now, Delta. Like, what the fuck. What the fuck is wrong with people. Yes, that’s a period because it’s not even a question anymore. We are STILL in this fucking pandemic and people STILL won’t wear a fucking mask and the vaccines can’t keep up with these dumbasses. People have fatigue from being in their homes for the last 18 months and they are just out of fucks so there they are, at ballgames, at the Mall, and out in public. Someone I used to work with was on a vent in Florida for two solid months because she got Covid while taking her kids to Disneyworld. She may never be right again, but I guess that goes for all of us too.

That girl. I’m so sick of thinking about her. Wondering if she knows people know she’s full of shit. Wondering if she’s just mentally ill or something more nefarious. I’m sick of my internal reaction when I see her lying or pretending to be someone else and so I am choosing to relegate her to the place in my ether where people like her belong: the waste can of “you’re boring and unimportant and nothing you say or do matters”. Because really, fucking YAWN. Imagine being a full-grown adult and actually putting energy into lying about who you are. Still, not my shit and not my business to fix and not my business to balance the truth for others. If it isn’t obvious to them, that’s on them.

Quiet Repose in the Morning Light:

Sometimes I exhale and realize how content I am and I don’t quite know if it’s ok. I know that’s trauma talking. So here I am to tell you, self, that it IS ok to be content. So feel it. Every minute, every feeling, every morsel. Feel it and believe that you deserve it because you do.

Bella. Her face is so white. She’s turned into one of those Goldens with a white mask on her face and a sleepy, wet-eyed constant smile. She’s almost exactly the age Gracie was when I lost her and I have so many feelings but for now, I pet her and love her and hug her as much as I want and she allows me to gorge myself on her presence.

So there you go. My blurbs. Short and sweet.

Signed,

Wild soul who is sometimes calm. Girl with legs swinging wildly from tree swing up above. Sometimes unabashed maiden running through the forest. Machine for the muse.

For someone who loves people as much as I do, I really don’t like people lately. I’ve asked myself if I’m making my world smaller on purpose or if it’s just happening because I’m getting better about where I put my time.

We finally finished moving out of our THREE storage units and I’ve got at least one of those units loaded into my car and part of the garage to get rid of in the estate sale. Funny how things meant a lot at one point, enough to pay to store them, and now they are all, “Meh, let it go…”. Most of it is absolute junk. Books we’ve already read. Furniture that doesn’t make sense. Clothes and shoes for a girl who is older and wiser now.

I’m going back to school. At least I think I am. In 3 weeks. I’ve said this before but I’m actually in the process now because I can’t not go back to school any longer. I want to be there, learning. So I’m going.

We booked a trip to Alaska next year. Seven days on a cruise ship in a suite with a hot tub and a butler. I don’t know who the fuck we think we are but it feels decadent and crazy and exactly correct given that the last year has been a big tangle of WTF.

My Dad’s birthday was last Sunday. I did not call him.

There are 3 books growing in my head right now and if I don’t pluck at least one of them out, they are all going to rot under fuzzy black mold. The one that wants written is violent and awful and ugly and full of the pus of angry, wronged women. I like her the best so maybe I’ll fuck with her for awhile.

And I’m dreaming of making a lofty pause on social media for a week or a month or a quarter, I don’t know. Something along the lines of, “I might be here to sniff around every now and again but I have things that need doing and looking at your dinners and selfies isn’t part of those things. People often fascinate me or bore the shit out of me, and rarely is there an in between. Maybe I’m an asshole for that but I’m fine being an asshole.

If I do pause there, I am hoping the turbulent waters of writing and tea and laughing at my own jokes over an iMac screen let me go a little bit crazy for just a tiny bit of time. Like I was in my early twenties, all hell and heart as I often say. A little bit of fiery pit of burning rage and terror and the soft pillowy vanilla-ness of pure optimism and joy over small things. The girl can live in both worlds at the same time, you know. Both pessimist and optimist. Lover and fighter. Bright-eyed earlybird ready to face the day and weary dark lover of the night stabbing knives through yesterday’s unfulfilled desires.

I’ve always been a chasm of black and white. Two poles on opposite ends of this star-speckled universe, just trying to make sense of the gap.

<3

Seriously, I’ve been salivating for days now just thinking about coming in here and turning on my new little LED light, popping the top on a Diet Coke, and blasting some Sufjan Stevens (“Loverless Bed”, if you please) while I hammered out an update on this space…er, blog _psssstttt mind-trap…

And now here we are.

And it’s all syrup.

No…no..no. No. NO. Let’s keep this shit real. I’m tired. And someone else I love died. And the drive home hurts my body. And there is still so much to do here at the new house. And all hands are on deck. And resources are stretched thin. And this…is what you get.

This. THIS.

And it’s not nothing, this voice. This muse. This girl who’s always been here. This Josephine. This girlwoman ladychild who undulates in and out of the ether simultaneously old and brand new. This lover. This fighter. This burn-it-all-nighter.

I play Sufjan on repeat, but just that one song. That’s the one I lost my mind to while riding back and forth on airplanes to my ruination. And then again later when the airplanes reversed course back and forth to my redemption.

It’s not about the time period, or even the man’s voice (although I’m sure Sufjan is a delight!), it’s the motion of the lyric. That soothing, rocking, babybabybabybaby-of-mine feeling where your mind and heart sway in rhythm with the vibrations of your inner light. Where you transform and infiltrate every crevice of your desires or your fears and you roll around in that shit like finely-milled sugar all sweet and suffocating.

I got curious just now and had to go look up the date Sufjan’s loveletter to my spirit (my before-mentioned “Loverless Bed”) was written and was delighted (and unnerved) to see that it was released in 1999. While I shouldn’t be one bit surprised, I exhaled when I saw the date. You see, I don’t trust my music/date alignment for much of the late 90s/early 2000s because trauma has a way of erasing your time continuum, or at least making it streaky and blurry like you washed it with an oily rag.

In my mind, I discovered the song in 2003 or 2004 but it makes sense that it came out in 1999 because someone I loved died. And I was tired. And the drive home hurt my body. And there was still so much to do at the new house. And all hands were on deck. And resources were thin. And 2003 or 2004…is what I got.

So, I did what I wanted tonight and I came in here and turned on my new little LED light, and popped a Diet Coke, and blasted some Sufjan Stevens while I hammered out and update.

And yet I’ve told you nothing.

And that makes me smile just a tiny, tiny bit.

We’ve been in the new house for a couple of months now. The rooms are still filled with some boxes and things that need to be handled but there are also sweet new velvet dining chairs, a giant 9-foot-long leather couch, a sturdy Amish-made porch swing, new bookcases, and random wonderful moments of “us” everywhere.

The little house in Decatur sold on Monday and it was so bittersweet walking through one last time to inhale and exhale that space as we said our goodbyes to her. We spent 5 years dating and loving in that house and JD had another 20 years in that house before I came along with sweet memories and growth. The guy who bought the house is an amazing, bubbly little Gay man who will love it and fill it with magic and good feelings so we walked away from it feeling warmed and hopeful.

We are still tying up a lot of loose ends with the other homes we own and various duties for probate and taxes and the endless stacks of papers. Somewhere in the middle of it all, we exhaust ourselves every day by listening to the loudest frogs on Earth having a fuckfest outside our bedroom window every night and doing random projects all over the house.

We’ve designated the basement space as our gym and have set about de-spidering and cleaning. It’s a fully functional finished room but it’s basement-y as basements tend to be.

The outside space calls me. I’ve got pots and plants lined up on the back deck nearly all the time in various states of needing to be planted or transferred and so far my fruit punch hibiscus are thriving. We have also discovered various treasures around the yard left by the children and pets who have lived here before us. I smell an art project brewing with that one.

I have decided that I am going to get rid of about half of the clothing and shoes that I currently own. Im working at home forever so what’s the need and honestly, I’m tired of being that woman. I just want my comfy skirts and funky shoes and a rotating wardrobe of well-loved, well-worn fabrics that make me feel witchy and amazing and free.

This house stirs things in me. Part Pioneer Woman, part Ina Garten. Party witchy Mother love, part Freida Fucking Kahlo. Part lounging kitty, part content napping puppy.

I’m happy.

In my bones.

In my spirit.

Exhale.

In the re-beginning, there were the heavens and the earth that had always been there and then there was the me that was becoming.

We are slowly moving into the house. Bit by back-breaking bit. Endless hours of throwing things into bags and boxes, cleaning, scrubbing, discovering, and promising ourselves that we will finally cut some of the things loose that we have moved.

The house is cavernous, yet cozy, and you will wear yourself completely out if you have to walk from the owner’s suit to the other end of the house where our sweet little media/party room sits on top of the basement. I am in love with every room, every inch of baseboard, every gold-flecked granite countertop, every sagging blind that will soon be replaced.

My body aches like never before and my knee is a steady scream of “get your fucking fat ass off of me or I’m going to buckle and tumble your big butt to the ground right where you stand”. And yet, I walk endlessly from room to room and I load my car over and over and I climb stairs and bend to shove boxes in and out and I dare my knee to go out now because baby, we are on a greased track of “get it done!”.

I feel weirdly motivated to get back to writing and have even listed out some chapters of that book that’s been bothering me in my head for the last few years. And this is where I tell myself that OF COURSE I feel motivated to write while being right in the middle of trying to combine 2 houses into one because that is my brain’s ADD way of saying, “hey, that thing is causing you some stress so why not look at that thing over there!”

I’ll write at some point. Like now. Deep into the night when my body can do no more walking. And do you read it? Whoever you are? Or is this just more musings into the midnight that nobody but me will ever see or read. Nonetheless, Josephine demands a sacrifice and tonight it is my sleep and hot bath time.

As the new house is becoming, so am I. Still Angie but more awake. Still Angie but more motivated. Still Angie but ready to shed some layers. There is growth here of some kind but I am still unsure what to call it. I’ve been an adult longer than I can remember – not in the “turned 18” way of being an adult, but in seeing and feeling the world more completely. Even now, I am seeing and feeling something more. Creativity starting to glow white and hot and weighing the restraints that Covid and depression and being tethered to projects or people that I don’t love. Weighing the restraints of all of that and realizing I can be free any time I want. So I am.

Free.

I’ll write and paint again. I’ll decorate my nest and make a nice home for JD and myself. I’ll eat healthier. I’ll let myself rest when I need to. I’ll be so goddamned grateful for all of it that I can’t even put it into words.

I really am the girl who had a script shoved into my hands at a very, very young age that mapped my life out in children I didn’t want and marriages that left me defeated and miserable and jobs that drained my soul of her lifeblood. I’ve never followed the script so is it any wonder that I still look around at my life and all that I have and can’t believe it’s all mine sometimes.

I’ve travelled the world, eaten in the finest restaurants, watched sunsets and sunrises that broke my heart wide open, and loved hard and been loved hard in return. And now, I own a home that is the kind of home that I was always too afraid to dream of owning.

So I shall treat the home with love and reverence and hold hands with JD in our swing on the deck until we are old and even more deaf.

And I will never EVER stop being grateful.

<3

You know those times in life where you are depleted of every breath, every drop of blood, and every ounce of energy for pretty much anything? Yeah, I was there.

And then I wasnt.

Because we found a house and are closing on it on Wednesday.

Just like that.

I am still having so many random bursts of “whatthefuckandisthisreallyhappeninnnggggggg?” coupled with “holy shit this is happening!”.

The last month has been a whirlwind of visits to the home for the initial viewing, the various inspections, and even an impromptu open house that was pre-planned before we made our offer. There have been hours upon hours spend on the phone, scanning documents, tracking down random people at our brokerage to answer financial questions, and even random tears of exhaustion and joy.

The house…God, the HOUSE. It’s a huge fucking rambling sanctuary of windows and sunlight and nooks and built-in cabinets and tall ceilings and judges panelling (I’m a sucker, yanno), and just about the most perfect layout ever for entertaining or making noise or hell, just existing.

The outside is wrapped on 2 sides by decks and porches and lounging areas and there is a kidney-bean-shaped pool lazing in the middle of the back yard. There are huge pine trees and random decorative bushes and I cannot WAIT to get my hands on some seeds for my “black garden” that I intend to fill with black dahlias and black roses and black lilies.

The house feels like a dream right now and I am still afraid it’s going to be ripped away from us because it really is just too good to be true. We’ve been shoving random things in boxes but also having a weird inertia where everything feels stunted and cottony and thick with atrophy. We’ve cried so much the last year that we’ve gotten damned comfortable with just letting it flow whenever we feel it so there have been lots of funny moments of random tears the past couple of weeks where I just burst out crying over the house and how very much I wish my beloved Mother-in-Law could have seen the gardens and the decks. She would have loved it and immediately set about planting and planning. I sure do miss her.

There’s a huge formal office in the front of the house that’s about 150 square feet and it is absolutely covered floor to ceiling with the richest wooden judge’s paneling I’ve ever seen. It’s pretty much the creative and witching space I’ve always dreamed of and I have gone to be so many nights in a row now rearranging furniture in my head and deciding where the books and crystals and various animal parts will live in that glorious room.

The kitchen needs a little work because there are black marble countertops that were probably a good idea back in the early 2000s but coupled with the black appliances that are already there, just suck the life out of the room. We will be changing those and all the appliances slowly but surely.

Looks like I am also going to get my brand new Electrolux washer and dryer if JD has her way. I’ve never been a brand name person for much of anything but I know Electrolux are what my Mother coveted when I was growing up and it feels kinda perfect that I’ll have them now. JD seems to be on a mission to spoil me or maybe just have nice stuff that we don’t have to think about for awhile considering everything we’ve been through in the last year.

We are also getting a lot of new furniture because not much of what we have now are things we like or things we feel will hold up to a move. Besides, we both are ready to shed some old energies and want to enjoy picking out things that we love together. Nesting. Perfection.

So, as unexpected as finding this house was, it’s already such a beautiful reprieve from being so sad for the last few months. I feel like I can smile again. Like there will be room to spread out. Like there will be room to breathe. Room to create. Room to heal.

The house isn’t perfect and there will definitely be things we need to fix or address but for now, it’s about as close to Nirvana as I can imagine. The perfect space to grow old together.

I am physically tired most days because my body has a mind of its own lately but mentally and spiritually I am more energized than I’ve been in a year. So many ideas for decorating and creating and so many things I want to try to learn or do now that we have more space. Gardening and vegetables and stained glass and sewing and and and. All the most wonderful things.

So, dear ether or whoever is out there listening, THANK YOU for the reprieve. THANK YOU for the ray of sunshine that we are FINALLY able to feel through this pandemic and all the death and sadness.

We shall do our best to be worthy of all the gifts from the universe.

So mote it be.

Just about every December I have the song by Counting Crows called “Long December” playing on a continuous loop in my head pretty much from Thanksgiving right up until the new year.

The melancholy candle-lit mood of brooding next to a rain-speckled window and sullenly, yet hopefully, looking out into the distance and hoping for better.

Just about every December I remind myself how cliche it is to brood on a schedule like this and every December I tell myself I will not mentally loop that song for 5 solid weeks because I will somehow not be brooding when December comes.

I will somehow not think of the family members we lost this year and I will somehow not think of all the ways my Dad failed me and I will somehow not think of the tiny 17-year-old Chihuahua that we said goodbye to only a day after the Christmas festivities this year.

And while we’re at it…”Christmas festivities”. Yeah, we are still in a weird pandemic and grieving for so many deaths and it’s just not festive.

My soundtrack lately is the hum of the dishwasher, JD killing electronic monsters with much crashing and beeping, and the slow steady hum of dissatisfaction.

I’m antsy in my bones to connect to the world again but also might be just fine if we go on living this way physically disconnected from one another, pinballing through endless Zoom meetings, random text messages, and photos on Insta that make everything seem ok for a split second.

But I miss Josephine. I miss her savage love for interrupting my thoughts and I miss the way I feel like nothing else is important but doing her bidding by slamming out words on a page or slapping paint all over a canvas or just thinking of exotic ways to exist. I conjured her when I was 19 and imagined she was a fanged red-haired maiden in a lush green velvet dress and she would show up unannounced at the bedroom window of my mind and we’d explore memory and emotion together, sometimes late into the night.

I miss her. Hell, I was her at one time. I’d say I don’t know what happened to her but I suspect I do somewhere under all the things I do to stay busy when I don’t want to think.

I’ve been busy for 20 years now.

The house is clean. The bills are paid. My career is noteworthy. I’ve built countless circles of friends and social frameworks. I’ve transformed my physical self a million times. I’ve uprooted myself and morphed. I’ve done all the things except sit down with Josephine and ask her what she wants of me at this age, now that I am wrung out by life.

“More”, she will say.

This I know.

The train rumbles in the distance as I write this. Poetically and not. Rusty, rumbling with a silky thunder, and coming long and black into the sea of tonight.

My therapist is talented but is not an excavator. She pats and soothes and uplifts but I need someone to slap the shit out of me when I am tip-toeing around the truth that we both know is crouched in the corner. I’d confront her myself for the millionth time but she’s crafty and slithers back into memory and marrow with the greased ease of a well-rehearsed excuse.

I’ll ghost her, I’m sure. Maybe I’ll be kind enough to cancel the appointment and give her some feeble excuse about how work has me too busy and she will either be too polite to call me on it or she will be too busy to care. Either way, I’ll be that barefoot girl on the porch at dusk just waiting on the cicadas to start humming so I can crush the sweet, cool, wet grass of relief under my feet. And then it’ll be another 6 months before the filing cabinet starts to overflow and I’ll avoid interviewing a new therapist because it’s just. so. fucking. exhausting. and eventually, I’ll write and eat and sleep and avoid. Rinse and repeat.

If I found a new wizard, I might sing my greatest hits of trauma over the course of 2 appointments and give them a snapshot of the girl who has lived despite a lot. And no, that’s not pity or “look at me, I’m a survivor”, it’s just the truth of being able to look back at my life and say, “Yeah, I made it through that and that and that” and know that it’s not nothing.

I didn’t jump out of the hayloft with the rope tied around my neck when I was 12. I didn’t overdose on all the snorty, tarry things when I was 20. I didn’t just drive into the river when I was 30. But I thought about all of it. I thought about the mechanics of it but ultimately was just too chickenshit to do it. And I think about that too.

This fucking Pandemic. I fantasized in the beginning about the time and how I would spend it. Maybe I’d lose 50 pounds. Maybe I’d finish one of my books. Maybe I’d finally paint the fucking bathroom. Maybe I’d heal. These days the “maybes” are “maybe I’ll not do anything productive other than make it through this the way I’ve made it through everything else”…by sheer, stubborn, prolific living. Un-shiny and un-special some days. Just breath in and breath out and a zillion breaths in between where I am doing nothing more than living.

I’m learning how to sit still. Without lists or tasks, without music or movement. Just still. Breath in and breath out. Swirling memory and emotion or sometimes nothing more than the dull buzzing and humming of the human body being alive in a chair late at night looking at a screen and spilling words out onto an electronic page as they come because the words in the body’s head are all that’s left.

I might look back on this time next year and want to kick my own ass for “wasting” a year of working at home and having all this “time”, yes, in quotes, to improve myself. I might even do that negative self-talk thing where I’m like, “I can’t believe you squandered that “opportunity” and got nothing accomplished other than a few little side-projects”. But I know the truth. I know it now and I’ll know it then: people died. Not strangers, OUR people. And my knees hurt. And JD needed me. And the dogs needed me. And work was busy. And we were in a Pandemic. And the election was emotionally draining. And and and and and and and.

And unfortunately, when you are a person with a little depth of spirit, you can’t just catfish your way through a year of fuckery by pretending everything is ok when it isn’t.

The “opportunity” was to learn to sit still. To be slammed down in the stony chair of “lessons on being present” and feel the concrete biting into your legs for a year. To want to get up but discover you can’t.

You’ll sit still and you’ll hate it at first. It will hurt. You’ll use every tool in the book to try to get up but you’ll wear yourself out digging and scraping and you’ll finally say, “Fine, then, I’ll wait it out”.

Your breathing will slow and your body will sink into the stony crevices. Your heartbeat and brainwaves will hum quietly and your eyes will soft-focus on colors and patterns. You’ll hear memories bubble from the bottom of your guts and you’ll be too exhausted to fight them off. You’ll say nothing for months but rather listen to the swirling cacophony of silence that is at once maddening and unnerving.

And then it will happen. The lesson.

What is the lesson, you ask? Simply this: This is being alive. This is being alive. This is being alive. This is being alive. This is being alive. This is being alive. This is being alive.

This is being alive.