I Had A Brilliant

Blog ready to go.

I mean I really did.

And usually all I need to get to that blog is a line, sometimes just a word, or an image.

I was messaging with a friend, cooking my Sunday afternoon roast chicken, and I commented on something and it triggered a thought and I was like!

Yes!

That!

That’s what I’m going to write about.

Then.

Well.

Fuck.

It doesn’t usually happen, I mean, it really does not, I completely forgot.

It was a “b” word, I remember that.

It was something that sounded like or reminded me of the word bear, but it’s not that and even if it was that, what the fuck am I doing writing a blog about a bear?

“Listen if you bring in the bear and you give it that much weight, that much suspense, you have to do something with the bear, otherwise, kill that chapter,” Alan Kaufman said.

Yeah, Alan.

I worked with him in a class for about nine months or so.

I was on a hot streak, I was writing like gang busters, I had put out a first draft manuscript for one book and was in the middle of writing the follow-up piece.

And there was a chapter in the book about a “camping trip.”

I put it in parenthesis as I was told when I got sober that was a cute way for me to label being homeless.

Which is basically what it was.

It’s not camping if you don’t have a home to return to after your trip is up.

But there had been a bear scare near where we were located and I wrote about that for the chapter I was presenting in class that week and Alan was not having it.

In fact.

Nobody was.

“I mean, Carmen, it’s really well written, you had me, I was right there, but then you didn’t do anything with it and why bother putting that much emphasis on something and then leaving your reader hang,” he concluded.

And although I liked the chapter.

Yes.

I did indeed scrap it.

I wrote another piece after that as well.

As well you know if you’ve been following my blogs, I have written manuscripts, but not done much with them and at this point, in life, in school, where I am.

I am just not going to make that much of a deal out of it.

If I wasn’t blogging.

Maybe it would be different.

But the blog provides me with something that is ineffable and I love to do it.

So why would I change?

It’s all really ego, after all, I want to say that I am a published author with a large body of works and a following, of course I would like to also make money from what I write, but I obviously haven’t pursued doing that.

And that’s like a total line of omission.

Yeesh.

What the fuck was Paris but a six month daily write-a-thon where I did finish another draft of the book and I did submit it to over 50 agencies and editors, where I did actually get published, with one short story in one magazine and a poem in another.

I have tried.

I tried really fucking hard.

But not much lately.

So.

This is just my little blog and I like it the way it is and I’m not seeking representation when I’m writing it, I’m not seeking fame, I’m not even seeking your attention, though, yes, granted, it is dreamy when I get it.

No.

This really is all for me.

And.

Sure.

I do get curious, I do want to have an affect, I do want to be seen as a good writer, but am I trying to get published right now?

No.

I will, most likely, I do believe, get published at some point.

There are just too many words in my head, too many stories, too many images to write about to not keep writing and with the constant practice I do hope to become a better writer, it’s not just about doing the writing though, it’s about doing the reading as well.

Not that I did much reading at all this weekend.

I ended up being really gentle to myself and slept a lot and hung out with friends.

Today I had an amazing lunch at PPQ Vietnamese over on Clement Street at 25th.

It had rained a bunch earlier and though it had cleared out by the time I went to meet my friend for lunch, it was still one of those dreary days when a good bowl of hot and sour soup is really in order.

We shared a pot of tea.

A large bowl, and it was large, of Hot and Sour Soup with Shrimp and some shrimp fried rice.

We sat for hours and talked and caught up.

I was so grateful to spend time with him and talk about life, work, school, dating.

I’ve known him for over ten years.

It’s good to have friends that I can open up to, tell all to, not have to worry about judgements, confide in.

I have more of those than most I suspect.

And for that I am inexhaustibly grateful.

I do spend a lot of time on my own, I’m a tiny bit, a lot, of a lone wolf, but I have learned that doing it my way or on my own doesn’t always work out.

Heh.

Usually the results, well, let’s just say, not so good.

So.

I can’t remember what I was going to blog about, but there they are, all those lovely, delicious words.

I can tell you that I did good self-care today.

Roasted a chicken.

Made a perfect pot of rice.

Did my laundry.

Took a hot shower and washed my hair.

I even decided to let it air dry.

Hopefully it will be by the time I go to work tomorrow.

Heh.

It takes a while.

Oh.

But when I do.

How soft it is.

And tomorrow is Halloween and I don’t have a care in the world about it.

I do know my charges will be excited and that will be sweet to witness.

I do know that it has been a hoot seeing people out and about in their costumes all weekend.

I have always, will always, love San Francisco for embracing Halloween and all things dress up.

I do like a good costume.

The holidays are sneaking up and I have much reading to do, papers to write, and work to juggle, but just for today I let myself just be.

I read but a little.

I got tech help with a computer issue.

My tech guy was AMAZING.

And now I’m going to slowly wind it down as tomorrow is an early work day for me.

It was a slow, soft, sweet Sunday.

Thank you universe.

I needed that.

Saturday Afternoon Sad

It’s been a sad day or so for me.

The sads, they caught up with me.

They had a tea party with the sorrowfulls and the woefulls.

They had a big cup of cafe au lait with the maudlin and the melancholic.

And then they moved the fuck on.

Like the grey scuttling clouds dusting me with blurry tears of rain on my scooter as I zoom zipped up Lincoln Avenue to meet my person at Tart to Tart.

She sat down across the table from me and cocked her head, “are you crying?  Have you been crying?”

Ugh.

Yes.

Off and all since yesterday.

There are reasons.

And there are reasons.

And there is a season to my sorrow and it will pass.

If I let it, if I talk through it, let it out, cry a little, laugh a little, tears sliding down my face just as my tender footed heart does a drop kicking curtsey of pain through the goal posts of my soul, I put my head on the table and collapsed for a moment.

“What’s going on?” She asked me.

I told her and cried.

I got it out and cried.

We talked and talked and thank God I have her in my corner, thank God for her experience, strength, hope, for her guidance and perspective.

“Of course you’re sad,” she said, “let it out, but don’t wallow in it.”

We talked about things I could do.

Basically nothing.

Well.

That’s not true.

I have to surrender people, places, and things, I have to let them go, I can’t control situations, I can’t control people, I can’t make the trains run on time.

I am just not that fucking powerful.

What I did do though was take her suggestions to do some writing and also to be gentle with myself and do something nice for myself.

I text my friend and said, “hey thanks for the Ghost Ship pass offer, but I’m going to rescind my ask, I’m too emotional to be in a big crowd with loads of drinking and drugs.”

I needed to be with my people tonight.

My fellows.

My fellowship.

My friends.

And I was.

But.

Before I got there I decided to celebrate me.

My life.

My recovery.

My sobriety.

Because without that I would have nothing.

And I am so very grateful, so overwhelmed with the awe of it that I am still here, still sober, still doing the deal, still showing up, that I needed to do something special and just for me.

I went to the MOMA.

I had a quick-lunch at La Fonda Mexican Grill, carnitas anyone?

Then scootered down town.

The traffic wasn’t bad and the last bits of rain had cleared.

I parked in the motorcycle parking just off Minna Street and popped into Blick, the art supply store and yes.

I bought myself stickers.

Because a girl likes stickers.

And I wanted to give myself the little things that mean something to me, I’ll write every day for weeks in my notebook in the morning and every day I will put down a little sticker in the margin and it will remind of the day, the moment, the heart-felt sorrowful tears and also the gratitude and joy of being alive and on my scooter in my pink lady motor cycle jacket.

I mean.

I used to use and drink in that neighborhood and to see where I am now in comparison to where I was, it’s a fucking miracle.

I am not exaggerating.

Not a bit.

Not a tad.

Not at all.

I am a fucking miracle.

My life is extraordinary.

Miraculous.

Awe-motherfucking-some.

Sure.

I have feelings.

And I can swim in them.

Or.

I can be a light.

I can be a beacon and I can shine.

Maybe some will be draw to that light.

Maybe.

I got my stickers and went to the MOMA.

I stood in the short line, the members line, and got my ticket.

I asked what was the favorite thing in the museum for the desk person.

He told me about the Bruce Connor exhibit.

It was exquisite.

There were so many mediums the artist worked in it was enthralling to see the breadth of his work.

I watched a few films, I stood in front of photographs and felt wonder.

I felt awe.

I felt warm and held.

I felt safe.

The MOMA was always my safe place when I was using.

I used to work at a high-end fancy pants restaurant around the corner and I would drink in the neighborhood, I knew the industry people, I went to the Palace, House of Shields, The W Hotel, Dave’s on 3rd.

I did cocaine in all the places at any of the times I could get my nose into it.

Shit.

I did key bumps in the bathroom at Starbucks.

But.

I could never bring myself to use in the MOMA.

It was sacred.

This church of art.

My first home, the first thing I did when I came to SF, I went there, I wanted to see the art, I wanted to walk the Occulous Bridge, I did so again today, I got a membership.

I have a membership again and the skeleton of the museum is there, nooks and crannies that remind me of the horrors of dancing along the skein of insanity that threatened to entrapped me as I hollowed out my soul using and drinking.

But now.

Well.

Now.

All gratitude.

All the love I have for myself, the awe I felt when I bought a postcard from the gift shop that was a photograph from the Bruce Connor show that was a street graffiti that side “love” where it should have been a right turn arrow on a street in Oakland.

That was the only thing I bought at the gift shop.

I am a museum gift shop junkie.

I like to get my magnet or my postcard.

Today, though.

Shit.

I almost bought a Polaroid camera!

There is a company, I did not know, that when they heard that Polaroid was no longer going to make the instant camera and film, stepped in and bought the processing plant and the equipment.

It’s called The Impossible Project.

I was pretty smitten.

I mean.

I almost did it.

I almost bought it.

The camera is actually not that expensive.

$150.

The film is a bit though, $20 per packet and you get 10 Polaroids.

I waffled.

I just paid rent.

But.

Heh.

My birthday is coming up and I resolved that I will get myself one.

I would love to bring it to Paris with me in spring.

How amazing would that be?

I also will be getting another camera, a point and shoot digital to replace the one that I finally broke at Burning Man this past burn.

A Fuji Fine Pix.

I priced them about a month ago and they’re a bit expensive, but the one I had before last me 9 years!

I took it with me to 7 Burning Man’s, to Paris three times, Rome once, London once, New York, Los Angeles, I literally took over 10,000 pictures with it.

I probably took triple that, I just realized.

My photo library has over 10,000 photos.

And I am a mean editor, I delete the shit out of my photos, so yeah, I probably shot over 30,000 photos with that camera.

I’ll be getting another one of those, yes please, and thank you.

But.

The Polaroid.

Well.

It truly called to me.

Whispering sweet secrets of my seventies childhood.

I always wanted one when I was a kid.

I never asked.

I didn’t think I would ever get one.

I remember when my cousin got one.

Christmas I think.

That could have been the year that my mom told my sister and I that there was no Santa Claus.

See.

My cousin’s parents were going through a divorce and man oh man was she getting the spoils.

My mom was poor.

God we were so poor.

And there was certainly not going to be a Polaroid under the tree.

We were living with my aunt and my cousin at the time.

My sister shared a room with my mom or my cousin, I can’t remember.

And I slept on a mattress in the basement.

It was horrible.

And there was no Santa Claus.

No.

NO there was not.

So this year.

Hey Santa, I’ve been a really good girl and I’m super grateful for my life and my sobriety and all the amazing things I get to do and be and well, it might help the sadness you know.

If I got a new camera instead of coal.

I know.

It’s early.

But you know me.

Always looking ahead.

Yet.

When I stop and pause and breathe.

I see.

That I have been given the best gift.

The most amazing gift.

The awareness of grace and how I have been snatched from the jaws of insanity, psychosis, and terror.

Hospitals.

Institutions.

Death.

I am grateful beyond my ability to express.

And when I sat on the top of the infinity fountain that spans the view of Yerba Buena park, across from the MOMA, I basked in the sun.

I basked in the light.

I pulled out my postcard.

“Just look how far you have come,” I wrote.

I printed my name and address and stuck a stamp in the corner and dropped it in the mailbox on the corner of 3rd and Mission Street.

Thank you God for my amazing life.

I really am.

The luckiest girl in the world.

Even when I am sad.

Most especially then.

It’s ok.

Because.

I know that I am loved.

 

Holy Shit

Tomorrow is my first day off in two weeks.

And I was going to go to yoga in the morning.

But.

Um.

My blog had sex instead.

ER.

Hahahaha.

I mean I did.

Heh.

Just going to put that right out there on the front page.

With a lover who is a friend and well, hey, sometimes a girl needs a friend with benefits, it’s been a hell of a week.

I really will go to yoga again, I will, but I’m up late and don’t feel like not having a full nights sleep.

It seems nuts to actually get up earlier on the weekend to go to yoga then to just let myself sleep.

There was so much that happened this week and though I can’t speak to it all, an emotional toll was had.

Enough said.

Sometimes circumspection is the best thing.

Restraint of tongue and pen.

And blog.

I may actually go out tomorrow night.

What?!

There is a slight possibility that I may have a friend that can get me into Ghost Ship.

The last time I checked it was an $80 ticket.

And that was a few weeks ago, I’m sure that tier has sold out.

My friend was like, it’s late, but maybe.

I don’t really have plans otherwise.

I was invited to a party in Oakland.

But.

Um the bridge.

And BART.

And Halloween crazy in the city.

I’m not so sure about that.

I would rather stay on this side of the bridge.

Although if I had a ride over, I would go.

It’ll be a lot of folks I know and some faces I haven’t seen in a while since so many people I know got pushed out of the city to the East Bay.

That being said, I get a pass to Ghost Ship, I will be hitting that.

The Orb.

Dj Dan.

The Mutaytor.

Plus, I know some of the folks from Mutaytor.

It would be fun to see them at a show again.

The last time I saw them perform was Burning Man, years ago.

I actually danced on top of the stage scaffolding too, now that I recall.

Ha.

That was also the night I fought, and won, but that’s another blog, in Thunder Dome.

That must have been five years ago now.

They are a great group and I had a blast dancing.

And it’s been a hot second since I have gone dancing.

So yeah.

And despite not having a costume I’m sure I could whip one up pretty quick.

Two things fast come to mind, one I could be a pin-up girl, albeit one in Converse, although I love wearing my black suede peep toe Mary Jane’s that are 4 inches, I mean love those shoes, they are not the greatest for dancing.

I can actually wear them out for a long time, since they are a platform, but that’s just walking around or kicking it.

Actual dancing I’d rather do in my Converse.

I could go as a modern-day Frida Kahlo.

I was thinking that would actually be really easy to pull off.

I would wear my Big Mac painter bibs in navy stripe, which literally do have paint all over them, they’re vintage and the color is so close to International Orange, that I like to tell myself that they were bibs worn by one of the guys painting the bridge.

Then all I would have to do is braid up my hair, tie it up top my head and wear a bunch of flowers in my hair.

Pencil in my eyebrows and voila!

If I go, I think that would be what I do, especially since the bibs are super oversized and comfy as fuck and I could dance my ass off and there are big pockets and I could keep all my stuff on me–cash, id, lip gloss, phone, and not have to carry a bag or wallet or purse.

I could just lock every thing up in my scooter.

Pin up my braids, stick the flowers in my hair and done.

Yeah.

I am definitely down for Ghost Ship if my friend can get me a pass in.

Yup.

I just checked, the only tier of tickets left for tomorrow night is $85.

And since this lady just paid rent, I don’t think so.

That’s like groceries for a week.

But, yeah, if it’s free, I’m down.

Especially since the three acts I really would want to see are all playing the same stage–The Mutaytor first at 11:30, then The Orb, then Dj Dan.

Although by the time Dj Dan gets on I may call it quits, that’s a late ass night for me.

Anyway.

This is all complete speculation at this time.

I may just end up seeing my person, doing the deal at the place, and doing a bunch of reading for school.

I managed to get in some before work today and that made me happy.

Even a little is progress, even just a few minutes, nice digestible chunks of information.

No expectations about anything, anyone, or any plans.

I’m just going to let go and really let God plan out my weekend.

Whenever I make plans God laughs.

And laughs.

And laughs.

“Well you’re not as standoffish, I mean you still are, a little,” my lover said tonight, “I saw you, though, you didn’t bolt, you stayed and stuck around and talked to folks.”

“I’m trying,” I said.

“I know it’s not easy for you, this stuff is not your forte,” he added.

It used to be, but I um, had libations to lube the way.

I don’t have social lubricant like that any longer and though I can get down at a party or a group thing, my go to is lone wolf style.

But that makes for a lonely wolf.

“That’s the thing too, stop trying,” he added.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said and laughed, and then added, “how do I do that?”

“Relax, stop looking, and just see what happens,” he ended.

He’s right, most everybody is.

Let go.

Surrender.

Stop trying.

Have fun.

“Oh, and really, do you want to be in a relationship right now?” He asked, raising an eyebrow, “do you have the time?  I mean, maybe just wait until you’re done with your program.”

Wait another year and a half?

Fuck that.

Then I thought.

Whatever.

I really can’t figure it out, since figure it out is me trying to fix me and there’s no need to fix me because I ain’t broken, I give up.

Surrender.

That is where it’s at.

Now and always.

Seriously.

No expections.

Equals.

No resentments.

And I’m always down for that kind of party.

Always.

 

 

Well, That Was No Fun

I knew, sort of, but not really, that I might be courting disaster by making the decision I made this morning.

And I made it anyway.

The good news is that I did not get hurt.

But man.

It was an uncomfortable ride home.

I decided to not take my scooter in to work.

I had planned on taking MUNI.

Then.

I don’t know what happened, but I got a wild hair up my ass and decided I was going to take my one speed.

Now.

I love my bicycle and its true I have done tons of wet weather riding in San Francisco.

However.

It’s been a minute since I’ve done any commuting on it and I was seriously regretting it as I sloshed through puddles and got soaked, seriously drowned rat soaked on my way home tonight.

The one upside is that I stripped down completely, threw all my clothes in the wash–prompting an early start to the weekend laundry and also giving the excuse to crawl into my pajamas and put on my very cozy bunny slippers.

I mean a wet, rainy ride home in the rain should be rewarded with fluffy bunny slippers.

Just sayin’.

I’m glad I did it, the bike ride in was actually really nice.

I had forgotten how much I love the smell of clover blooming in Kezar Triangle or the smell of the eucalyptus in the Pan Handle.

So good.

It was also a nice ride as I made it in before the rain began to fall.

I even popped over to Valencia Cyclery and got a detachable fender for the rainy ride home.

And it fell off.

I don’t even know where.

But it fell off and I got drenched.

Soaked.

I was wearing a rain jacket so my body was dry, just from the waist down got wet.

Anyhow.

I won’t be doing that again.

Sometimes memory can play tricks on me.

Like.

Oh, it’s not that bad, riding in the rain, at night, in San Francisco, where I swear people lose their minds when it rains and they drive.

I don’t understand it.

Especially since I learned how to drive in Wisconsin, meaning ice, snow, sleet, horrible driving conditions, I know it’s a little challenging when the weather changes, but it’s crazy out there.

Tomorrow I’ll take the MUNI train in, good old N-Judah line.

It’ll be too long, which is what prompted me to do the bicycle today too, it just takes such a long time to get to work on the train–it’s triple to quadruple the time it takes in comparison to my scooter and about twice as long as me riding in on my bike.

I have a thing for efficiency and using my time well.

I just didn’t want to waste time today.

And.

I needed the exercise, let me also put that out there.

I sort of fell off the beam with the yoga and I haven’t been in about two months.

Well.

Maybe not quite that long, but a month and a half?

Yeah.

That seems about right.

And I will get revved up and say to myself, tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll go back to the studio and I just can’t get my ass to do it.

I have been praying for willingness, I have put that shit in my God box, I have told my people, both of whom were like, girl get yourself back into that.

I know.

I know.

I am being stubborn.

I’m holding a lot of excess emotions and it’s not fun.

I need to exercise, I’m an active person and when I transitioned from riding my bicycle 15 miles a day five days a week to riding my scooter almost every day, well, the yoga was a huge deal.

I also.

Fuck I don’t want to say it, but it’s on my mind.

I’ve gained a few pounds.

Not a lot.

I’d say three to five pounds.

So either I start working out again or I have to cut down on my food intake.

I don’t eat sugar or flour, I don’t eat processed foods, I don’t eat nut butters, I don’t eat white potatoes, very infrequently do I eat any kind of potato.

I eat hella healthy, but I like to have a snack at night and since I stopped riding my bike and doing the yoga I really don’t need it, but the habit, is well, a habit.

I’ve been telling myself for the last couple of weeks, the snack has to go and/or you have to go back to yoga.

Ugh.

I hate this stuff.

I feel like I am always working to maintain and sometimes I have to work harder to maintain than the majority of people I interact with.

Then I think.

Compare and despair.

And I think about how much work I have done, which shows me that I am capable of doing it now.

I just don’t want to.

Yet.

When I think of all the things I “don’t want to do” and that I do them anyway as they are good for me, I realize again that I don’t know what’s best for me.

I have the feeling I will get back on the mat and I will cry my eyes out.

It’s been leaking out.

I cried a bit today.

Earlier this morning.

When I met with my person tonight at Church Street Cafe.

Now.

I’m just grieving some more.

And it comes and goes and I get angry and then that too passes and I’m just sorrowful.

I am not wallowing in it, which is good, I just don’t want to feel it either.

Yoga breaks me down and gives me access to a lot of those emotions and also it allows me to let go of things that aren’t mine to carry too.

Sometimes I will carry other people’s stuff without even realizing it.

I’m feeling it in my body, there’s stuff there that’s not mine, doesn’t actually matter whose stuff it is, just that it’s not mine, and I need to work it out of my system.

Riding my bicycle today helped with that.

Also talking to my person.

“Girl, get back to yoga, you need to get your ya ya’s out, you have too much energy,” he concluded, looking at me from under the brim of his yellow slicker.

“I know,” I said and ducked my head down, damn you tears.

It was just the rain on my face, I swear.

And I do know.

And when I write it down here, things change, I change.

It’s a step in the direction I need to more towards.

I don’t know that I’ll get my ass in tomorrow.

But I’m going to shoot for Saturday.

My favorite teacher is there and though he has a challenging class, he also has a kind heart and I know he’ll just be happy to see me there again.

He always is.

So.

There.

Committed.

You read it here first.

Yoga.

9 a.m. Saturday.

It’s a date.

 

Day By Day

I just get by.

Or.

So the thinking goes.

I was a little off today, a little not quite myself, a little quiet, a little introspective.

This is not a problem.

Granted.

It’s also not something that I care for very much, thinking about myself usually just breeds misery.

The day was just a day, I tell myself, sure, it didn’t exactly go my way, but I have no control over that.

Frankly I was just grateful it didn’t rain so that I could ride my scooter to work.

Mondays and Wednesday’s I’m up at the top of Eureka Street in Noe Valley and it’s no small climb, it’s not a good place to get to via public transportation, nor would it be an easy ride on my bicycle.

Nope.

So not having rain today, grateful.

Tomorrow is another story.

Rain, rain, rain.

All week.

All weekend.

Ugh.

I’ll probably take MUNI into work on Thursday and Friday and to see my person in the Inner Sunset on Saturday.

I don’t have plans.

I don’t have Halloween plans.

I don’t have a date.

I don’t have anything.

Well.

Ha.

I guess I have homework, there is always that.

What with the rain I suppose I could get a lot of reading done.

I had hopes to do some reading today at work, but that definitely did not happen.

Kiddo out sick from school.

So, although I had a fat baby nap, I didn’t have time away from my charges to actually sit and do any homework.

Despite having brought it in with me.

I never touched it.

I did play a lot of Go Fish.

I did hang out and read him Harry Potter.

I did dance party with the little girl and her middle brother when he got home from school.

I made homemade pizza for dinner.

I did, actually, have a really nice day with them, it just wasn’t the day I had planned.

Story of my life.

And I can’t gripe too much, I actually did some of the reading before I went into work today.

I got up and did a lot of writing.

I read a bit too and that felt good to be doing it, though it wasn’t as much as I wanted, anything is better than nothing and it’s a kind of steady progress which will get me there.

I felt a little lonely today.

There is that.

Loneliness happens.

But.

I know that I am not alone and that helps.

Even when I am by myself, I am not alone.

I also had a moment of free-floating dread that happens about this time of year and I always forget about it until it’s happening and then it hits me and I’m like, oh yeah, this time of year was the time when I started my slide to the bottom, to my bottom.

It’s a kind of body memory.

I had an excruciating bottom and it began at Halloween and lasted until the first weekend of January.

It was devastating and all the holidays have their special marker of horror for me.

Halloween because I had thought I’d escaped my disease, or it had escaped me, my dealer had gotten arrested and for a month was MIA and I thought to myself when it happened, good, this is exactly what I need.

The goose hung high.

I was literally the proverbial boy whistling in the dark.

I had plans that Halloween to hang out with friends and have a late dinner at Bruno’s Super Club on Mission Street.

I was a flapper.

I had a pretty awesome outfit.

A beautiful grey cloche hat with a black ribbon, I had very short hair at the time, slicked back with one kiss curl on my forehead, buckle shoe Mary Jane’s, fish net stockings, a short sassy black chiffon dress, a strand of baubles, a fake beauty mark high on my right cheek, and a long cigarette holder for my cigarettes.

I got a lot of compliments on my outfit.

I was pleased.

I remember I was just having my first or second cocktail of the night and we had just finished ordering dinner.

I was going to get the sliders.

I got a phone call instead.

I hopped up to take it and headed outside for a cigarette.

It was my dealer.

He was out and how much did I want?

I hemmed and hawed and said two.

Two grams of cocaine that is.

I didn’t think about it, I didn’t think, wait, what, you weren’t going to do this anymore, I just spit out a number and then said were I was.

I went back inside, ordered another cocktail, sat down and waited for my dinner to come, which I never touched, as my dealer called just as my plate was being set down in front of me.

I hopped back up, said I’d be right back and dashed outside.

He was idling at the corner in a nondescript grey Saturn sedan.

I hopped in, handed him $100 and he handed me two grams of blow and said, I haven’t had time to cut it.

Fuck.

It was in brick.

I managed.

And I managed to fall right back down the fucking rabbit hole.

I went straight to the bathroom and chopped up a couple of lines.

They were too rocky, too big, but I was too excited and couldn’t wait to break it down proper.

Dinner sat and got cold.

I drank another cocktail.

Our friend got done with his shift and a crew of us headed out to a Halloween party.

Where?

I have no clue.

I do remember being the center of attention at one point on the back stairway having a game of dozens with the host and smoking cigarettes.

I remember a lot of trips to the bathroom to break up the cocaine so that I could actually snort it.

I remember calling my dealer the next day.

And the next.

And well.

You get the idea.

So.

Hello late October, hello Halloween with all your scary and tricks and treats.

I’m not much into it anymore, though a girl does like to dress up.

I don’t like the feeling of expectation and the need to party that seems to overtake even most normal folks.

The dread, once it was named, eased off my body and I went up to see some fellows and get right with God and I left feeling reconnected and grateful for the gentle reminder of how fucking bad it was.

I never want to go there again.

I mean.

Never.

Happy.

Joyful.

Free.

Thank God for this life.

I am.

The luckiest girl in the world.

Seriously.

Bengal

Spice Girl.

He called me.

That is hella cute.

Especially as I am sitting here writing my blog with a cup of the aforementioned tea.

After a brief and totally pointless 24 hours, well, I suppose it’s not pointless as I have learned again what I had already known.

Tinder sucks.

The best thing about Tinder was matching with a lover I had already matched with and chatting.

Funny meeting you here.

You’re a hotty!

It was cute.

We chatted a little, discussed possible Halloween plans and that was that.

The rest of it was a fucking joke.

I had forgotten how many, oh so many, “nopes” there are.

I can’t do the swipe left, swipe right thing.

I tried.

I kept doing it backward.

Fucking dyslexia.

So.

I would just hit the “nope” button.

I hit it a lot.

And then the ones that I did say yes too pretty much sussed themselves out as useless as well.

Ah well.

I tried.

And then I just gave it to God.

This shit does not work.

I was off the app this morning, deleting it for the fifth time.

I think that won’t be happening again.

I did have a moment though, when I realized, I did meet a couple of decent guys on the app, one of whom I had a nice little tea date with prior to going to Burning Man.

Between his schedule and my schedule we just never seemed to reconnect.

I still had his number in my phone, I sent out a little questioning text.

And what do you know.

He’d been thinking about me.

Kismet.

We chatted a little, I made a suggestion for going out for a cup of tea and though he wasn’t available the time I mentioned, he did seem quite eager for a rain check.

He’ll be getting back to me when he gets back into town.

And until then.

I do it the old-fashioned way.

I ask them out in person.

I flirt.

I connect face to face.

It’s harder.

Oh how easy it is to get lost in the fantasy of connection that happens online, but that’s just what it is, fantasy.

Safe.

Reliable.

And oh so very, very, isolating.

I want to be of the world.

I want to be in reality land, even if it takes more effort.

In the end, the results will be worth it, I do believe.

I realized today too that I was going to give my number to a guy at Lucca Ravioli, he’s adorable and though I don’t see it going anywhere, it would be just a little tiny bit thrilling to flirt.

Besides.

I’m only in my current job until December and I can handle it if it goes south, I won’t be going to Lucca once or twice a week for the family.

I won’t be going to Lucca at all.

I almost did it today.

The shop was busy, however, and the boys were with me and I smiled and that was enough.

I got a “thank you beautiful,” from Juan though as I was paying for the cold cuts I had gotten for the family.

He always flirts.

But.

He’s sporting a wedding band.

Is it just easier to flirt with someone when you know they’re not available or you’re not available?

The safety net of the ring on the finger.

I did not, however, notice a ring on Adam’s finger and he’s always so flustered when he helps me out, over talkative and flirty, it’s very cute.

He’s a tiny bit younger than I normally go for, but whatever.

Take action.

Let go of the result.

I am not trying to figure it out.

Ha.

Just letting go and letting God.

I mean.

Serious.

I am on a runaway train toward the person I am supposed to be with.

Oh.

I’ve been derailed a little over the past few weeks, but I seem to be evening out and I’m super grateful for the experiences that I have had and now.

Well.

I feel primed.

And that’s exciting.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen.

That’s cool too.

I have plenty to keep me busy.

The never-ending stack of books that I need to be reading.

The papers I get to write.

The families I work for.

“Carmen, you’re going to be leaving us,” he said soft and sad and kissed my hand and leaned into me with all his sweet weight.

Oh goodness.

The goodbyes are already killing me with the boys I work for.

They have been very concerned about me, about where I’m going to live, even.

“Are you moving?” One of them asked me, I assured them that I was not.

Then.

I realized.

Well.

Yes.

At some point, I do want to move.

I live in a studio in-law with no windows.

Which technically is illegal.

But the back door is all glass and I get sunshine through that.

None the less, I do want more space and more light.

God more light would be fantastic.

Although I have tricked it out nicely and it’s cozy and warm and I do love it.

So.

I said, “well, eventually I will move, but just to a bigger place,” I assured him and ruffled his soft brown hair.

“I know!  You could move in with us!” He jumped up and down excited with the thought.

“You don’t have enough room sweetheart, where would I sleep?”

Not that I would actually ever, ever, ever, ever consider moving in with my employers, I like have my autonomy thank you very much.

“You could sleep in the Lego room!” His eyes got wide.

“Oh, honey, that is so sweet, thank you, but you want the space for your Legos and the new piano, well, I don’t think there’d be enough room,” I finished and gave him a huge hug.

“I’ll talk to mom and dad about it, you can stay in the Lego room, it’s perfect,” he concluded.

Oh my God.

And I have two more months of this.

I am grateful I have the time to wind it down with them and it is so nice to spend time with them, although I have to reset boundaries pretty consistently with them as I’m not as often in their lives, it’s worth it.

The love I get is so worth it.

It’s been a good week.

And it’s only Tuesday.

Can’t wait to see what happens next.

It’s going to be off the hook.

Just wait and see.

 

Can’t Figure It Out

Because there is nothing to figure out.

I know I have written about this before.

I just struck me hard today when I was doing some reading for school.

Yeah.

I know.

Take a break.

However.

I really wanted to get caught up on the reading that I didn’t have fully done from this past weekend; I have a couple of whopper big papers due the next round of classes and I want to have the reading done and organized in my head.

I got up early today.

Earlier than the last three days, four days, I’m a little lost as far as what day it is, they are all bleeding together.

All I know is that Friday will be an amazing thing to get to.

Next Saturday will be my first day off in two weeks.

Two weeks.

My employers asked me if I had a good weekend.

Sure.

I went to school for 29 hours after working a full week of work and then turned around to do a nine-hour shift today.

And it was a short shift.

It usually goes 9.5 hours on Mondays.

I had a great weekend!

Bwahahahaha.

No.

Really.

It was actually a lot of work, but it was so good to see some of the people in my cohort, I just have made some extraordinary friends there.

I have, I have.

And though I didn’t want to be at work, Mondays are my longest day, they are also, in some ways my most relaxed.

I only have one charge.

Her parents are gone the entire day.

And.

She naps.

Heavenly baby naps.

So I actually did do homework.

I wasn’t going to bring my Psychopathology books with me.

I really wasn’t.

I was going to give myself some down time.

But then I thought, you’ll be pissed when you get a fat baby nap and you don’t have some homework to kick through, it’ll feel like wasted time.

You know me.

I hate wasting time.

I need to learn how to though, I do know that.

Anyway.

I had a sweet, lovely morning with her, we danced, we read books, we went for a walk around the block on her little push tricycle.

It was adorable.

Then I put her down for naps, had lunch, made some tea and got into the reading.

I kicked through two chapters of Psychoanalytic Case Formulation.

Don’t be jealous.

Hella sexy read.

Then.

I started reading my Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice book.

I know.

I know you want to read them.

It’s ok.

You can borrow them when I’m done.

Heh.

I was struck as I sat on the couch fiddling around with my hair how I have changed so much and grown so much and then I was thinking about a condition that we were studying in class over the weekend.

Trichotillomania.

Huh.

Obsessive hair pulling.

Some people can’t stop pulling out their eyebrows or eyelashes.

Some can’t stop pulling out their hair.

I used to be a hair twirler.

I did not know that until my mom told me, years ago, that when I was little I would obsessively twist my hair until I gave myself bald spots.

I just about burst into tears.

I still do it on occasion.

And it’s a self-soothing response to stress.

It’s also extraordinarily indicative of trauma in the client’s history.

All the things I used to do to deal with the pain of being me.

Pulling out my hair.

Stopped that.

I don’t actually remember when I stopped, but I did.

I also know that during a very stressful point in my sobriety and recovery I was working with someone who pointed out to me that I was twirling my hair and he hadn’t seen me do that before and wondered out loud what that was about.

I didn’t know at the time, but I found it comforting and I will do it once in a while now.

I have noticed that I do it when I am reading for class.

I also notice a few other habits that I didn’t use to correlate to anything at all.

Like.

Oh.

Fuck, this is embarrassing, but whatever.

In the interest of science, er, I mean, my blog.

I used to exhibit pretty bad excoriation.

Excoriation (skin-picking) disorder.

I know.

REALLY SEXY.

I’ll stop soon.

I promise.

Maybe.

It has faded, but it was a slow fade.

I started with my mom doing it to me, she’d pick at my acne when I started going through adolescence, then I picked it up, I am surprised I don’t have acne scars.

I used to have pretty bad acne too.

Still get it on the odd day, but it’s pretty much gone, worked its way out of my system by the time I had two years of sobriety.

I had a horrible habit around it.

I would pick at my fingers too, bite my nails, peel off the cuticle around my nails, oh so many hang nails.

Also.

Yes.

A trauma survivor response.

So much fucking trauma.

And that’s when the reading hit home.

And made my chest tight and also, shit, fuck, motherfucker, holy mother of god, I finally figured it out.

Well.

Hahaha.

I figured out why I am always trying to figure it out.

I have had an inkling of it.

But it all just fell into my lap.

I was reading about trauma, shocker, I am going to be reading a lot about trauma and I need to remind myself that I also get to do a lot of sweet self-care for myself and although I recognize my resilience and it is extraordinary, there are still ways for me to be gentle.

I mean I have had some big time information come into my life regarding my family and family of origin in the last few weeks.

I have seen it ripple out into the world in odd and interesting ways.

Some sweet, some strange, some uncomfortable.

All sorts of information and wilding things falling out of the wood work.

Amazing.

Then.

As I sat reading, twirling my hair, scratching at the back of my neck, why is it so itchy?

I had a huge aha moment.

Oh my god.

The reading is re-traumatizing me.

Great.

Which is to be expected.

It’s just stirring stuff up from the bottom of the pot.

It’s all good though, I realized what was happening because I had read about the ways in which trauma can manifest itself psychodynamically.

Oh.

And all the other ways I have coped in the past popped into my head and that I have stopped doing them.

I stopped!

Do you have any clue how amazing that is?

I do.

I put down cocaine, alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, all forms of processed flour.

I no longer have stage four cystic acne, I don’t pull my hair out, and I don’t pick at my cuticles, I stopped biting my nails years ago and I have to say it is a small and beautiful gift to myself that I go and get them done.

I am proud of my nails.

My hair.

And of course, I have moments, trembling with the need to change and soothe and self-sabotage when I want to cut it all the fuck off.

I know that I won’t.

But it pops up.

All the things that pop up.

The last one, the one that I have been saving, since I figure I lost most of my readership a while back as this is not a sexy, sexy blog, is that “figuring it out” is a psychodynamic symptom of a child that has suffered severe trauma or sexual abuse.

Check.

Not to be tongue in cheek, but to move this along, I realized that I kept having this recurring pattern, all my life I have been trying to figure it out.

Breaking my own heart trying to figure it out, even when I was told again and again, “figure it out is not a slogan,” or good luck with that, or that there was no “figuring it out” to drop that.

That I have been standing banging my head on a wall for years and years trying to figure it out.

Because if I can figure out what is wrong with me, I can fix me.

I can fix what ever it is in me that didn’t know how to stop what was happening to me, that if I figure it out the same thing won’t happen to me again, I won’t get hurt, I have figured out what is wrong with me, why I destroyed so much and then I can get on with the getting on of life and be ok and like.

I don’t know, have a boyfriend or something.

Except.

That I didn’t do anything wrong.

I don’t have to fix something that I didn’t break.

It wasn’t broken because of me.

How can a four-year old be accountable to that?

Childlike, I blamed myself for my grandmother’s divorce, my mothers separation and subsequent divorce from my father, that I was the reason I was being abused.

I was the whistleblower.

But.

It was still my fault.

I brought the house of cards tumbling down.

Like all abused children I believed that there was something wrong with me, and in this believing I persevered with a hope, that if I could figure it out I could change it and the abuse would stop.

A four-year old cannot be held to that.

A four-year old doesn’t know how to cross the street without holding an adults hand.

“Come on baby, we’re running away from home, momma’s mean,” I said to my two-year old sister, taking her by the hand and walking out the door.

We walked around the block.

I had been told to never cross the street without holding an adults hand.

That’s how my mom found me, walking around in circles.

That is how I found me.

In this circular pattern of thinking for so fucking long.

I can’t fix me.

I was never broken.

I didn’t cause it, I can’t cure it, I can’t change it.

I can just accept it.

Which is not approval, by the way.

It was just what happened.

I can, however, be of service and take it in stride and let it go.

I can let my heart fill up with love.

I can say it stops here.

And something new grows forward.

Something amazing.

Me.

More and more fully myself.

I am so excited.

Seriously.

I know this seems implausible.

But I am relieved.

It finally landed.

I finally got it.

I can stop trying to figure it out.

The relief.

Well.

The relief is huge.

And I am blessed.

Graced.

Grateful.

And loved.

So very.

Very.

Loved.

 

The Half Way Point

Has been met.

I wrapped up my third weekend of five here in the first semester of my second year of graduate school.

Graduate school is sexy.

In case you were wondering.

Sleep deprivation.

Overconsumption of caffeine.

Anxiety about keeping up on the reading.

Writing papers.

Cramming it all in between the nooks and crannies of living life.

And.

Hoping once in a while to get a little sunshine on my face or a hug from a friend.

Or.

God fucking forbid.

A date.

Dating is challenging.

Throw recovery into the mix, full-time work and grad school.

Fuck me.

I’ll see you when I graduate and oh, then I’ll be interning.

That will be entertaining.

I do have hopes though for some magic.

I do.

I might even hop back out into online dating and Tinder.

I might.

I say this as I’m downloading the app to my phone.

I might use it.

Fuck me.

I amuse myself.

I was chatting with a friend of mine after class today at Philz and I told her about how I was getting a little too hormonal for my own good.

I also have to say, thank God for girlfriends you can share all the things with.

I am so lucky.

I told her about how things have gone this week and got all flustered and wound up and how if I’m feeling like this, if I’m so flushed up and flustered, maybe I need to take action.

“I need a fucking boyfriend,” I said.

“Yes, you do, but get laid and maybe, don’t worry about the guy being sober, like, throw open the pool and just you know, have some fun, get you through for a little while,” she said and laughed with me.

I’m a touch frustrated.

And it’s ok.

It is what it is.

But walking around perpetually turned on, although, hey, my skin is glowing, is a lot to deal with on top of grad school, work, etc, ad nauseum, blah, blah, blah.

It’s just life.

I remind myself.

It’s just another thing to experience.

I’ll probably have it up, the Tinder profile, for a week and be like fuck this like I have previously.

But.

I do feel a need to take some action.

I was thinking about asking someone out.

Not that I have had the opportunity to do so recently.

Recently having been this weekend, in which I was in school classes for 29 hours, so yeah, maybe not the best time to go out on a date.

But.

I do feel like I need to keep trying.

Keep things moving.

Keep trying.

Keep living.

I’m going to be a fucking therapist.

I should have some more relationship experience.

And besides.

I feel ready.

Definitely ready and I’m adamant about the “no married men” thing and the being available to be with someone who is available.

No going back to the drawing board.

But maybe just a little roll around the hay.

Hmm.

I don’t know.

I definitely don’t have to figure it out right now.

Perhaps the frustration of not getting what I want can be harnessed.

Heh.

I could run the world.

Not like I’m not already busy enough.

I was able to express myself to my friend though, it was so helpful and I am so grateful for my friend and to get to have dinner with her and her husband and another beloved person tonight after school, after cups of Philz coffee in the Castro, I was really so very grateful for them.

We went and had dinner at Lark, up on 18th between Castro and Hartford.

Pretty much the heart of the Castro.

Lots of lovely men to look at.

Not that anyone of them were interested in me, aside to compliment my frock.

I have to say, nothing like having a load of gay men tell me I look divine in polka dots and red lipstick.

Thank you very much.

I wore my crinoline too, it was just too much, but just right all at the same time.

And we had such a lovely time.

My friend also suggested that I talk more with them in French.

I tried.

I get a little flustered with it, but it’s such good practice and considering how much I love my friend and she’s French and lives in Paris and I’ll be going to Paris to visit her.

I also suspect that it won’t be my last time to Paris.

When someone you love dearly is living in Paris, you go when you can.

I did rather well, with the French-speaking, actually.

I ended up describing my relationship to my person, my mentor so to speak (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) all in French and though I stumbled a bit, I got it all out and that felt rather good to explain about my person and how I am helped by working with him and the whys and whereof of getting support around my family of origin alcohol and drug addictions.

It was rather awesome.

I mean, there was still some things lost in translation, but really, I did ok.

And my friend said the same thing, she told me that I actually speak a lot better than I think I do and that what I should start doing with her is speak as much French as I can and when I can’t, then use English.

She’s totally right.

It helped immediately.

I went back and forth between English and French all dinner.

It was thrilling.

And when I thought about it.

My heart just beat so hard in my chest.

Who was this woman, in her red Chanel lipstick, speaking French at a fancy restaurant in San Francisco?

Surrounded by people who love me.

I mean.

I have absolutely no question that I am loved.

It was just amazing.

And I felt so, well, awed, really.

I felt validated too.

It’s been a good week for that.

I’m in a good place.

A happy place.

A secure place.

A place of love.

A place of polka dots and my heart on my sleeve.

A place full of music and joy.

I might be just a tiny bit relieved to be done with the school weekend too.

Heh.

Happy.

Joyous.

Sexy.

And.

Motherfucking.

Free.

 

Damn You

Second wind.

I did not expect to be so jazzed up all the sudden.

I was crashing pretty hard in my last class of the day and just put my forehead down on the shoulder of one of my classmates and said, “make it stop.”

Or something to that effect.

It was a long day.

But hey.

It’s done now.

And of course.

I am wide awake.

I’m listening to music and writing and drinking hot tea and thinking about high-school.

Yeah.

That sounds like good times, right?

Ha.

But.

It was with a certain sweetness and fondness that I was thinking about myself and with a great deal of compassion for the experiences that made me.

I wouldn’t wish to go back.

I wouldn’t wish to change it.

I wouldn’t go and tell that girl child turning woman, do it different, here’s how, no.

I would not.

I am in love with who I am.

I was happy today and light and free and sad and sorrowful and of service and I showed up and yes, I was tired by the end of the day, but that girl, that girl reading books in her room, cuddled up in a worn out chair covered in my grandmothers afghan, that girl made this possible.

She dreamt.

She would listen to music and read and stare out the window.

I don’t remember what I thought about.

Sometimes I would look in a mirror and wonder about the reflection there.

I thought I was pretty.

I thought I might even be beautiful, but I did not get that kind of feedback.

I was curious.

Am I seeing myself?

Or.

Why?

There was that a lot, the asking why.

Sometimes I would fantasize or play with my hair or dress up.

Nothing that I ever reflected by wearing back to school, clothes wise that is, except with one or two exceptions of trying out a new look one week in high school my senior year that I was so nervous to wear that I could hardly enjoy it.

But I rocked it.

I have always liked clothes and fashion.

I was not in a place to wear the clothes I wanted.

But.

Boy did I covet certain things.

I am proud of myself though.

When I look back.

I carved out my own way.

I was my own woman.

I had nothing to really model on, which was on one hand a kind of curse, but I also got to learn, trial and error what I liked and what I don’t.

I’m still discovering.

But.

Some seeds were planted in that room.

From reading all those books.

My God did I read.

I miss that sometimes now.

All the time.

Reading for pleasure.

I don’t get to do it nearly enough.

Reading for school has super ceded that luxury.

Funny that.

Reading, a luxury.

But my God.

When I think about the hours curled up on the couch, or in my room, or in my bed, or under my favorite apple tree in the orchard.

I was moony and dreamy and fanciful and the stories I read reflected that and also, they were my escape.

I was thinking about that as well tonight.

Escape.

All the ways I can check out when it gets to be too much and how I have hidden out, sometimes in plain view, and yet, how very much I want to be seen.

I felt very seen today.

I did a genogram presentation of my family tree.

I traced inter-generational traumas three generations on one side of my family and four generations of it on the other side.

All the pain.

All that hurt.

All the sorrow.

I felt my chest get hot and I realized that what was coming out of my mouth was not what I had planned and that was ok.

I have done enough public speaking, so much, I have spoken in front of crowds big and small, that I don’t really have a problem doing it.

I’m actually really quite good off script.

I typically do need to know what I am talking about.

And my family history, though not as much of a mystery as it was a week ago, was still settling in my system.

I made sure I was pretty today.

I wore flowers in my hair.

I thought of sweetness and resilience.

I thought of grace and service.

I thought how I could show up and heal by sharing.

Therein lies the issue, I feel, I believe, so much of the secrecy, the shame, the conflict and contention that doesn’t get spoken of, gets twisted up in my heart and lays there heavy and sodden like wet leaves mulching into winter on the hoar-frost covered land.

So.

I swept clear some ground.

I laid it bare.

I spoke my truth, to the best of my knowledge and understanding.

I breathed.

I felt my face flush.

I said the words.

I was held the room did not fall apart.

Although after, when I sat I realized how much the class was affected.

Well.

One person.

Her sweet face and red eyes letting me know how my words had landed.

I don’t really recall much of what I spoke of.

Oh.

The bones of it, the narrative, the stories, the lineage of pain handed down the line, mother to child, father to son, grandparent to grandchild.

I do.

However.

Recall pointing out the brightness on the map.

The bright triangles of joy I encapsulated myself and a few members of my family.

The joy of recovery and the strength there.

“Few people realize how the family structure is affected when one member gets into recovery,” my professor had briefly tossed out into a lecture weeks ago.

I hung that star on my paper.

I flashed it bright.

My recovery.

My foundation.

My base.

My place of growth, stellar and bright and resilient.

I have no idea where the resilience comes from, perhaps my grandmother on my fathers’ side, I am named after her.

Maybe.

I don’t know.

I don’t need to know.

I don’t need to change anything.

I don’t approve of it, but I do accept it.

And as I sank down in my pretty dress and felt my heart beat hard in my chest I knew I had succeeded.

If I can do it.

So can you.

If there is a meaning in all of this, it is that I survived.

And that I got better, stronger, more powerful, more loving.

More.

More.

More.

More love.

More magic.

Just fucking more of all the things.

And I’m almost through.

Literally and figuratively.

One more day of class and another weekend down.

One more small step down the road.

One more opening of the door to my heart.

Just a little wider.

Just a little more open.

Just a little.

More

Available.

For.

The sunlight of the spirit.

And.

All.

All of it.

All.

The love that gets to come in when I clear out the wreckage of my past.

Yes.

Please.

More of that.

Wound Up

Just a little bit.

Just probably because it’s Friday.

Another school night.

No going out tonight.

But I’m feeling it.

Friday night.

I had class today and saw my best girls today and connected and reconnected with them.

I told them what was going on in my life and it felt really good to say all the things and talk about it and have good perspective from them.

Especially my darling French friend.

“You see, this is why I don’t read your blog!” She exclaimed as we sat and shared over lunch.

I cried a few times.

Frustration.

It is real.

But.

I also felt seen and loved.

“No, Carmen, there’s no figuring it out and you don’t need to change, you are perfect, maybe it really is just San Francisco,” she added, “maybe it is just timing.”

I know that.

But you see.

I fell into an unavailable man-hole and it ate me alive for a few days.

There’s still imprints of it all over me and I’m ok with it now that I have had some time to do some writing and some talking and some sharing.

So unavailable.

So sexy.

So can’t even begin to make it work.

I could give a laundry list of reasons.

But to sum up.

Married.

And.

Oh.

Doesn’t live in San Francisco.

Fantastic!

Fuck me.

“I’m not concerned with that,” he told me, when I finally, tearfully, called my person earlier this week, letting the cat out of the bag, and said, hey, um, I need to talk to you about something.

“I’m more concerned with the married part,” he said, “and that’s the part you get to focus on.”

Yes.

The being attracted to someone who I cannot be with, that part.

Oh, like I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

Fuck me.

“He has bright eyes,” she said as I showed her the photograph, “there is something very compelling there, he is handsome.”

Yes, yes he does…

Yes, yes, he is.

And he sees me in a way that is so flattering, so seductive, so unbelievable that it makes me feel like, woman hear me roar.

Except.

He’s married and doesn’t live in San Francisco.

I keep going back to that.

It doesn’t matter that there’s the sexy connection, it doesn’t matter.

In the end I can only fantasize and well, that doesn’t serve me.

I want flesh and blood.

I want sweat and hand holding.

I want a person I can hold on to and who can hold onto me.

I want.

I want.

I want what I want when I want it and I want it now.

“Now” is never going to happen.

And I also deserve to have it.

The huge love, the thunderous applause of blood in my face, the arch of light in my eyes, the smothering of kisses on my face.

I want it all.

And so.

I shut it down.

I shut it down hard.

There was no consummation, FYI, not that it’s any of your business anyway, but there was enough there to know that it could happen if we were in the right place at the right time and the right moment.

Except.

Well.

Er.

Fuck.

I also have a living amends to not have sex with married men.

So, um yeah.

It didn’t happen.

And it’s.

Not going to happen.

So stop the fantasy, stop the playing out all the possible solutions in your head, stop trying to figure it out.

“You know, your blog is only a sliver of you too,” she added, leaning in, “in France this is not such a big deal.”

“Oh, I hear you and it’s not that, really so much,” I said in response to a question she had regarding the nature of the relationship, “it really is the married and lives in another town problem.”

And.

Also, “he’s put you on a pedestal,” she said, “but yeah, it is so good for the ego, so sexy.”

So good.

I mean.

Fuck.

It’s really nice to be seen.

Even if I’m not seen fully, here in my messy end of the day braids and helmet hair, my silliness as I dance around the room, in my sadness, in my humanity.

Nope.

I’m not fully seen.

But the intoxication of being even just a little seen.

Well, that is thrilling.

And.

Ha.

Intoxicating.

But, yes, ultimately, it’s a dead-end street for me.

I am grateful for the experience, wild with the gratitude, the gifts of perspective and how fast it happened, the flirtation arose, it was, well, flirted with, then I got to put a stop to it.

And get to really is the gift.

It was hard.

But with some support I did it and now I get to move on, into the light of whatever new day, new date, new man is out there waiting for me.

The deck is cleared.

“No, it is not dating for you that I want,” she said and paused.

“I want for you the grand passion, the coup de foudre, la grand amoureuse.”

Yes.

Thank you.

My darling friend for saying it.

I want that too.

And though I did feel struck by lightning when it all came out, it was lightening in the distance.

The rumble of a storm brewing, a passion to end all passions.

But on the other side of the world.

And I am here.

Now.

In this moment.

In San Francisco.

In my little studio down by the sea.

Ready.

Available.

Not trying to fix or change or be someone or something other than who I am.

Maybe it is San Francisco.

Maybe it is that I have had a habit of being attracted to men who aren’t available or attracted to me.

Although this was not the case, the man is attracted, oh my.

OH MY.

And attractive.

But again.

Not here.

Not available.

Ultimately.

Not for me.

I also think, or have been thinking that though I have had opportunities, I have also sabotaged and defended myself from possible, or probable hurt, I have been hurt, I don’t want to be hurt again, but I can withstand the pain of being hurt in a way that I didn’t believe or know that I could.

Safety is not the issue anymore.

I am settled in my skin.

I have done the work, and though of course, there is more work to do.

I am capable of being present and available.

And.

I am so excited to see what happens next.

It’s going to be amazing.

I have faith.

It really.

Is going to be.

Amazing.

I feel it.

Seriously.