Epiphany

Did battle with the router demons once again. Dragon slain, gremlins banished, peace and the Interwebs restored to my wooded kingdom once again.

While perched atop a ladder in the middle of the woods with my itty bitty pink laptop balanced on one hand while ants crawled down my other arm from the router's power cord, I had a rare moment of clarity. I realized something that I've always known, yet seem to forget every time my heart is broken: I don't NEED anybody.

Yeah, I'm a Daddy's girl, and it was nice when Dad drove by on the four-wheeler and asked if I needed any help buying a new router. But I was able to tell him in all honesty that it didn't matter. I do use the internet to do work from home sometimes, but I could always wander down to my old house or even just drag a chair out under the tree in the middle of the woods where the router is and plug into the ethernet cable.

I've always been like that. Wood burning stove as the only source of heat? No problem! Wringer washer? Who cares! No television? I have books! I've always been independent. I've always been a bit weird. I've always been a bit of a hermit. Those things don't change and neither does the fact that it's nice to have someone around who can and will help you, but in the end if you can't do it yourself then you'd better not really NEED it or else you'll find yourself without it one day. Whether that something happens to be love, or running water, or the Interwebs, I've always been able to cope before and I haven't changed one bit.

Needs and wants are two different things altogether. I want the Interwebs so I went out and figured it out myself. If I want love I'll figure that out for myself too. Yeah, I miss what I had with The Geek, but if it's gone I can live without it...

Hot tea & a Cold heart

Been okay lately, right up until yesterday. Went out for a couple of glasses of wine with an old friend on Friday night. Awake until 2am. Thought I was actually kinda moving on. Then BAM! weird things start happening way too early in the morning for me to do anything but deal with everything through gut reaction. Geek has a bit of a problem which requires me to talk to him again, toss in a little bit of guilt on my side about the wine & the friend from the night before... That's when things start to get confusing for me. I know it's done & gone, but when we talk it sounds & feels just like it always has. Comfortable, familiar... Geek thinks that's the problem, that we somehow slipped past love and into comfortable and then got stuck. I'm not sure that was the case for me. The whole reason that I opened up to him in the first place was because I was completely and instantaneously comfortable around him - like we'd been best friends forever. Anyway... that's why it all slides sideways for me when he & I talk like that.

I cried a little yesterday. I felt sorry for myself a little yesterday. I talked about it with my friends and it put some things in perspective again. I guess it's just one of those things that will get easier and easier with time. I still care about Geek. I can't quite close that door... yet. However, I also realized yesterday that I had let go of him little bit by little bit over the past few years. Not sure what any of this means to the future and I'm not sure it really matters right now.

So, this morning I'm drinking hot tea and trying to thaw my frozen heart. Today is a different day and tonight will be a different night...

Melancholy Muse

Having you, was like drinking spring water from my hand.
Natural, pure, bittersweet,
and all too quickly slipping between my fingers.
Now, I sit with parted lips pressed to palm,
savoring the cold numbness,
and wondering if I've drunk my fill.

~ Southern Martyr 6/11/09

As I said before, my muse has found me once again. I don't know if I'll keep posting the little quick things I write, but for now it helps put things in perspective and believe it or not it actually makes it all much much easier. If I can channel a little grey funk into a poem or even just a meaningless string of words on paper, then somehow it's gone from my mind afterwards. I guess it's my way of passing it all on to the dragon who never sleeps...

A moment of painful honesty... with myself.

This morning I took a long hot bath.
Rummaging through almost empty bottles
while water slipped down my sleepy face,
I realized I was out of shampoo.
That I would have to use his.
That today would be another struggle.

~Southern Martyr 6/11/09

Been a Long Time Comin'

I've been neglecting this blog for ages now. I've also been neglecting the people I love and myself. So, it's no small wonder when the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Work has consumed me for the past 2 years. I still feel a huge personal obligation to myself to follow through on what I've worked so long and hard to do. However, I now fully realize the toll it has taken on the rest of my life. I still can't just up and throw it all away, but I can take a deep breath and step back and get a little perspective... even if it's forced perspective.

Thus begins the first day of the rest of my life. Which actually occurred about a week ago, but I've been so busy that I'm just now getting around to acknowledging it. My Geek moved out. I miss him & I'm not going to close any doors, but in leaving the door open I can't keep anybody else from wandering inside either.

I am going to start up bellydance classes again as soon as the new class schedule starts up in July. Right now I am going to yoga classes once a week. The dog is slightly traumatized by the whole situation, so I've been taking him out for REALLY long walks in the evenings. (If I don't take him outside & walk him till he begs to go back inside, then he has trouble sleeping and insists on laying awake on the floor beside my bed moping and farting all night long.) When I'm stressed out I don't eat very much, so between the stress, the yoga, and walking the traumatized dog, I'm losing weight and feeling better than I have in a long time.

I've also started really writing again. My muse abandoned me long ago. It seems he only lingers with me while my emotions are in chaos. He has returned with a passion, now that I am heartbroken and confused. He visits me while I am wandering through the woods in the late afternoon and I lure him back home to my desk with the promise of hot tea and a tale of woe. After tea and a discussion of life's struggles, he often lounges among the books stacked untidily in the corner and encourages me as my fingers stumble across the keyboard. Finally, after a glass of wine and a heart wrenching haiku, I will topple into bed beside my black cat and my muse will gently kiss my eyelids and allow me sleep.

Work is still hard. There are personal and personality conflicts that I would rather not put to the page. Suffice it to say, I've dealt with this kind of thing before and I do have a plan B if all else fails. I'll survive work a lot easier than the unknowns of my personal life. I'm just keeping my head down and my foot out of my mouth. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, even if it seems a long distance to travel.

My Daddy told me recently that "Every day above ground is worth it's pain." I think that just might be one of my new favorite qoutes. There's another qoute that always creeps into my mind when the rug is pulled out from under me: "When a dog runs at you, whistle for him." ~Henry David Thoreau.

I'm hoping that I can keep the creative juices flowing and maybe get my life together while I'm at it. I think that one way to do that is to keep writing - anything, anytime, anywhere. It's what I did all the other times my life seemed to crumble around me. I'm going to try and post something, anything, on this blog at least once a week. That's my starting point. Maybe, if I can manage that, then I might possibly start posting a little bit of my writing. I don't know. No matter what comes, I have decided that I'll just keep putting one foot in front of the other and see where I end up. And I think that if I write a little bit, dance a little bit, and keep my friends close to my heart, then I'll at least enjoy the journey.

I realize that this post is a long & rambling explanation of something that no one besides myself cares about, but that's how I deal with things. I write them down. I bind them to the page and they don't seem so overwhelming anymore. They become nothing more than flowers pressed between the pages in an old book, until one day I find them again and can't remember why I put them there in the first place. Also, sometimes I just like shouting into the void...