I did a card pull today, from the Cartomancer Cards poker deck and the Tarot Del Toro. These are essentially the same card. A fire card, the epitome of fire, being an ace. In traditional cartomancy, the ace of clubs can be either wealth and gain or a marriage, or binding contract. The ace of wands is the element of fire in transition, things have to burn to regrow. Or inspired consciousness and the desire to grow, to begin. Planting new seeds. New beginnings, creativity, initiative, balancing, energy. Take from that what you will.
I'm an intuitive reader. I know the technicalities, but sometimes they don't feel right. For a person, or situation. These were for me, though anyone can take anything from them, if they feel right. Pretty sure there's no marriage here. So, creative endeavours it is. I will be writing more little fictions here, and posting more card pulls and music stuff, as well as the personal bits.
As for personal bits, someone drove 6 hours to have dinner with me. That was nice, and appreciated. I got a super awesome new coffee maker for Christmas. I love it. And my sharky gifts. My birthday is soon. Like, a week from tomorrow.
He was my ace of fire, so I'm not sure what this means. He is a fire sign, tripled. I miss him, of course. But maybe I was a fool the whole time. I never got to see him on a holiday, except for last new year's eve, which we were alone, in bed for. I never got to be tagged anywhere with him. I never got a post on insta with two beer glasses and a meal shared. I've said before I felt hidden, like a secret shame, almost. I didn't meet his other friends, so i couldn't interact with them on social media. I was just, nothing. I guess now he can do these things. She's pretty and fit and apparently shareable. I've left contact up to him, and there has been none. I haven't even looked at all of the del Toro deck, because I relate looking at new cards with him. I have, in fact, looked at that one above. I feel forgotten and disposable. Like I was never anything special. I'm certainly easy to move on from, and that hurts. I guess he doesn't want to be my friend anymore. I guess I can't blame him. I'm working on wishing him happiness with her. I'm really trying. He has it, whether or not I wish it.
I just wish I could understand. Or feel anymore like I was worth anyone's love. If someone you've been friends with for so long can't love you, who can? Maybe he just wants me to shut the fuck up about him. I don't know. My truth is this, I still say good morning every morning, which means more. I still want to send him things. I still miss him sending me silly shit, because it meant he thought about me. Maybe I was always a fool. It's hard, not reaching out to him. Really hard. This is worse than losing a friend to death. Most of the friends I've had that died did not do so willingly. This has been a complete rejection. Complete. Maybe he needs time. Like I said, I don't know. Such pretty words about rebuilding trust and friendship, oh, while he's dating someone else. Knowing what I want, I was supposed to be okay with this. Maybe I can't even get that anymore. My trust was broken. My heart was broken. But I'm supposed to be okay with everything.
The silence again feels cruel and dismissive. Maybe it's supposed to.
I'm not serial killer obsessed, but I do know a lot about Charles Manson, oddly. Who was never convicted of killing anyone. I don't know what his favorite ice cream was, though.
This could be long.
I lost something this week. A relationship. I am so unhappy about it. I love him so much.
In September, I fell. I'm clumsy. I did some damage to my face, I lost my bottom front teeth. There's not a gap, I have an appliance. I am extremely insecure about how I speak, now. I avoid it even more than usual. This process has been far more psychologically devastating than I can properly explain. It hurts. It's uncomfortable. I hate everything about it. If I'm not wearing it, there is a huge space. I can't talk like that, either. My anxiety has been through the roof. I understand that I haven't handled it well.
Neopolitan, maybe? A classic choice for a man who grew up poor.
I don't want this relationship to end. Let me tell you about him. He is warm where I am cold. He is a sunflower in a filed of daisies. I love his laugh. I love how his eyes crinkle when he smiles. I love how his mind works, he is methodical and considered. I truly love watching his face when he figures through something. He makes me feel safe, which I never really have before. He is like the sun, steady and hot, where I am mercurial and sometimes hidden in the dark, like the moon. He has all of the physical traits that I have said aren't really my thing, yet he is to me radiant and glorious. I have never felt so blissfully lost, physically, in another person. Was it love at first sight? Not by an extremely long shot. He was the partner to a friend for a long time. I don't think that way, poly past or not. I lost her, too, during this process. No conversation or anything. She just, walked away. I never meant to hurt her.
He was a friend. He made me the best cookies I've ever had for my birthday once, a few years ago. He is everything. Of course I know he's not perfect. But he is amazing. It's not rose colored glasses. He is the sun.
Maybe plain vanilla? Or chocolate. I don't think there was cookies and cream when Charles Manson grew up. Maybe homemade strawberry, or peach.
I was always insecure about how glorious he is, and how... me I am.
Fudge ripple? Pistachio? I really liked Spumoni as a kid. There's pistachio ice cream in that, right?
Let me tell you how I failed. SO many things I did not say. He can be seen as arrogant, but he doesn't take compliments well. I hate that the last time we were together went like it did, but I think he had already made up his mind. I wish I had asked to take walks with him. Be outside. Held hands in the woods. I wish I had pushed "doing things" a bit more. We never watched a movie together. There isn't a single picture of us. There is no trace on social media. I get the impression he didn't really tell anyone about us, I think we have a bunch of mutual friends who don't realize we were together. Maybe I wish I had said more. Maybe I wanted to be something to be proud of. I don't know. I wish I had talked more, about us. He is quieter than me, and that is saying something. I love his stillness. I could have made more plans, but I fell into an unsatisfying routine. I wish I had instigated adventure.
Maybe it was sherbet.
I want to fight for this, but I don't know how. I know he thought it through, and decided I fell more to the cost side than benefit. I want to scream how much I love him, and how I know I fucked up. But how can you argue with someone you know has thought it through? He isn't impulsive or irrational. I can't change how he feels now. I wish I knew how he did, before. I want to fight, but I don't know how. How do i fight for this?
I think peanut butter and chocolate is my favorite, specifically Baskin Robins. I don't know if Mr. Manson ever tried it. The peanut butter swirl is extra salty. Oddly, I don't like salted caramel and chocolate.
For 524 days, I sent him a good morning message, if I didn't say it in person. I wake up, and smile, and reach for the phone to send him good morning. I still reach for the phone before it comes back. He is the reason I smile in the morning. He's still out there. Now I get tears, because I want to touch him.
Peppermint ice cream? Did Mr. Manson have holiday spirit?
I ended up in the emergency room a couple of weeks ago. I thought I was having another heart attack. I find it strangely comforting that they test for heart attack by blood, now. Your heart sheds dying cells that can be measured. I also now know, by numbers, how close I came to death the first heart attack. The ER doctor gave me my medecine for a month. I feel so much better. I just have to figure out, in two weeks, how to gwt new prescriptions, without insurance. I can't go back to always feeling like I do without it, being afraid to go to sleep because I'm sure I won't wake up, because of the chest pain. I have had chest pain since my heart attack in February 2018. Dressler's syndrome, apparently. The heart medecine takes that away, which takes away a lot of my constant anxiety. I am demonstrably, medically, better.
Butter pecan? Praline?
This song has been in my head since Tuesday.
How do I fight for this? Please?
I bet it was vanilla.
All the world just stopped now So you say you don't want to stay together anymore Let me take a deep breath babe If you need me, me and Neil'll be hangin' out with the dream king
Neil says hi by the way I don't believe you're leaving cause me and Charles Manson like the same ice cream I think it's that girl and I think there're pieces of me you've never seen Maybe she's just pieces of me you've never seen well
All the world is All I am The black of the blackest ocean And that tear in your hand All the world is danglin', danglin', danglin' for me darlin' You don't know the power that you have With that tear in your hand That tear in your hand
Maybe I ain't used to maybes Smashing in a cold room cutting my hands up Every time I touch you Maybe maybe it's time to wave goodbye now Time to wave goodbye now
Caught a ride with the moon I know I know you well well better than I used to Haze all clouded up my mind In the daze of the why it could've never been So you say and I say you know you're full of wish And your baby ,baby, baby ,babies I tell you there are pieces of me you've never seen Maybe she's just pieces of me you've never seen well
All the world is All I am The black of the blackest ocean And that tear in your hand All the world is danglin', danglin', danglin' for me darlin' You don't know the power that you have With that tear in your hand That tear in your hand
So. I’m single. I’m not looking. Do I want to be single? That, like most things, is complicated. I am, in general, poly. I respect all types of relationships. To me, it just seems unreasonable to expect to find one other human that fulfills every single need or desire in a relationship. I don’t think it’s fair to be expected to have to give up something important to you, just because someone meets most of your needs. I completely respect those who pursue and follow that thought. I can do completely committed, monogamous relationships. I can be a partner to someone who has a partner. I can be a friend, with benefits. I find none of these things insulting, or belittling. I do not need monogamy in a relationship, but I do need safety, and honesty.
I was married once. I never thought he would be my “forever.” I do not hate him, though I do hate some of the scars he left. I do not think that he’s a bad person, I do think that together, we are catastrophic, and bring out the worst in each other. I have seen him only peripherally since the final split. I stood up, in a marriage counselor’s office, and said “I’m done.” And I was. I hope he found happiness in whatever he pursued.
I lived with someone, after that. We both knew it was not forever. I can acknowledge, now, that my damage runs a lot deeper than I had previously thought, before that relationship. I was still highly insecure, and jealous, and possessive, and angry, because that is all I knew how to be in a relationship. It’s all I knew, at all.
I was never a partner in the relationship with my ex husband, I was a possession. From age fourteen to thirty one, off and on. Something to be controlled, and mitigated. I did date someone else in high school, but I don’t even know how to describe that relationship. It always felt ethereal, not quite tangible. We are still friends.
Since then, I have only been in poly relationships. I know that part of the reason for that, is that I am very withdrawn, I like my space. I like having a space that is mine, somewhere that I can retreat to. I am weird about being touched. I am still dealing with how to express my needs and wants, without feeling selfish. I rarely ask for anything.
I found the relationship that I thought would be forever. There was a level of companionship that I have never experienced before. A level of comfort, and support that I didn’t think possible. Someone I was comfortable planning a future with. Someone I was just, comfortable with. He was charming, and outgoing. We seemed to fit and contrast in all of the right ways, bringing out the best in each other. Was it perfect? Nope. But we could always talk through things. We used to take adventure days, just drive and look for places to take pictures, little hole in the wall places to eat, tiny towns and roadside attractions. These were my favorite days, ever. Even now (it really hasn’t been that long, I suppose) I miss those days, most of all. I get panic attacks if I think about it too much, because I can’t imagine another human wanting to spend time with me, like that, ever again. He says, even now, that we could do it again. Anytime. That relationship ending, and the way it ended, broke something inside of me that I thought could not be broken. It was horrible. It’s still horrible. He is still in one part of my life, because I am too stubborn to give up something that I worked so fucking hard for, even though I will always fear that people think I got the positions I hold by dating him. Maybe I’m still trying to prove them all wrong. His choices have left me completely bereft in a way that I was not prepared for, and the totality with which he turned his back on me is unforgiven. In a fucked up way, he made me believe that all of the things my ex husband said to me are true, but with actions, instead of words. That’s enough about that.
What would my perfect relationship look like? Radical honesty. Don’t tell me what I meant. I actually mean what I say, which is apparently shocking. Being poly does not mean never getting jealous. Jealousy is like the check engine light on your car’s dash. It is not what is wrong, just an indication that you need to look closer before something breaks worse. To me, anyway. I expect someone to be with me, when they are physically with me. I need those who will accept me as I am. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be challenged. Don’t fall in love with someone else, and forget to mention it to me. Know the difference between love and infatuation. Don’t hide things from me because you think I’ll get hurt. That’s not how relationships work. You don’t hide your actions to keep your partner from getting hurt, you hide actions so that your own needs keep getting served, to hell with anyone that relies on you. Of course people make mistakes, and do things that they regret, or were misthought out. Hiding it, instead of confronting the issue, is what makes it a lie. And every day after is a lie.
See? I lost track. I’m still angry. This is why I’m single.
There’s a woman in my life that I call my first girl crush. Clearly, I have known her for a very long time. While she is, undoubtedly, my first girl crush, I loved another female long before even her. Certain songs will always make me think of certain people, or situations.
I am pretty sure that this is true of most people. I started listening to The Cure in middle school, but I didn’t meet my Caterpillar Girl until high school. I get asked, upon occasion, how I came out as pansexual. I never did, really. I just realized when I understood the concept, that I always had been. I felt no confusion, or shame, the first time a girl kissed me, any more than the first time a boy kissed me, or the first time a person who wasn’t sure yet kissed me. I fall in love with people, not genitalia. It’s funny, what I am physically attracted to in men is much easier to define than what attracts me to women. But, I digress. I never kissed my Caterpillar Girl. She was my friend, though I now know that I was in love with her. She was my best friend, though I was never hers. High School is hell, you know. I went to a smallish high school. There weren’t that many freaks, so we stuck together. I know a lot of people who say they don’t know anyone from high school, anymore. Honestly, for me, most of those freaks that I needed and loved so much back then are still around and about in my life. For that, I am eternally grateful. My Caterpillar Girl was beautiful, she still is. We are similar in sense of humor and temperament, though she always leaned a little more to hippieness, where I went punk. Thirty years later, I can still tell you what she was wearing the first time that I saw her, her hair falling across one eye, just like mine. Okay. It was the late 80s. A lot of people’s hair fell across one eye. Being so similar in ways made high school, difficult. I have never been much of a casual dater, even in adulthood. Even in adulthood, she and I have been involved with the same men, at different or coinciding times, more than I have been involved with those who never knew her. No, we never had any kind of physical relationship. But I did crave being near her. My high school “sweet heart,” my then future exhusband, was always jealous of how I felt about her, and used it to tear me down, sometimes. He would hang out with her, and tell me how pretty she was, and how he thought I was pretty, too, even if no one else thought I was as pretty as her. If I couldn’t do something that he wanted to do, he would say that it’s okay, she would think he was important enough to spend time with him. But, I was in love with him, he told me so, and it was eventually true. He made me resent her. I carry a fuckton of guilt about it, even now. Things happened. Things unraveled. And one day, she was far away. High School ended. Life marched on. I married him. I knew when she came back, but I was embarrassed beyond belief at my actions. At not standing up for her. At picking the ‘wrong’ side. Then, I went away. And came back. Six months after I moved back, yes, I could tell you the date, I was at my favourite place (a bar) to do my favorite thing (dance) and there she was, twenty six years later. With one of the same friends we still shared from high school. I smiled. She smiled. I lowered my eyes and walked away. Her facial expressions still the same, her laugh the same. At some point during that night, I drunkenly crawled across a picnic table, in short skirt and boots, just to tell her that I had never not loved her. We are Facebook friends. I see her here and there. We chat. I have no idea what she actually thinks of me, now. I am clearly not trying to hide who she is, even though I have never mentioned her name in this. Do I want to have any sort of conversation about this with her? Not really. It was a long time ago. I complicated everything even further, like I do, in recent times. I’m not going out of my way to point her to this, at all. I will just still smile at the memes she posts. The memes that are so like the ones that I post. We listened to a lot of music in high school, driving, hanging out. There are songs that remind me of all of those places, and people, and specific moments, trapped in amber in my mind like personal music videos. We listened to a lot of The Cure. Sometimes, I wish she knew how very, very sorry that I am. That I will always be. A few of my happy places are memories of listening to music, much too loud, in the car. Dancing barefoot in the rose garden, peasant skirts damp with dew, or from playing in the fountain. I was listening to Spotify the other day, and Caterpillar Girl came on, and I smiled. She flickers, and she’s beautiful, she glows inside my head, and she will always be my Caterpillar Girl, even now that she is fully a butterfly. Caterpillar Girl lyrics The Cure Flicka flicka flicka Here you are Cata cata cata Caterpillar girl Flowing in And filling up my hopeless heart Oh never never go Dust my lemon lies With powder pink and sweet The day I stop Is the day you change And fly away from me You flicker And you're beautiful You glow inside my head You hold me hypnotized I'm mesmerized Your flames The flames that kiss me dead
