Life as a Cautionary Tale

 Every time I come here to write something, I check the visitor stats. And every time I question them. There’s always new views, sometimes a small handful, sometimes a ridiculous number that screams bots. But it’s never the same. Which is something. I wonder who actually comes here, is it people who stumbled across one of the many articles I’ve written over the years about a lot of nothing (and the one about a lot of everything)? Is it old friends who remember about this existing every so often? Or is it some unknown variable I can’t guess? My money is on the bots though. ;) 

But that’s also what I tell myself on purpose. I write under a lazy pen name for a reason, and that reason is to ease the stress of censoring my thoughts out of consideration of the people I love. Vague nicknames and broad strokes to talk about the people who make my life the adventure it always seems to be.

And with that GIANT disclaimer, I happily write: someone close to me is pregnant, and I am over the moon about it!! We spent like 3 hours on the phone this last weekend, laughing and giggling and having her ask me questions about being pregnant. At one point, I said something along the lines of “You’ll be glad to hear all these stories when you’re 7 months pregnant, your husband falls asleep with his foot touching you, and he’s breathing too loud and the only thing keeping you from smothering him with a pillow is you knowing just how lucky you are to have him with you during this”

Because my pregnancy was terrible. Uncontrollable health issues aside, being pregnant was one of the most alone times of my life. Which seems silly, since I was married at the time, but it’s really not at all silly. Actually, I take it back, my uncontrollable health issues made my loneliness multiply into something that forever changed the shape of my heart.

BUT, it makes for a good cautionary tale. 

Beware of picking the wrong person to attempt to build a life with or you’ll end up having to start from scratch and claw your way back to stable for many years after your entire life comes crashing down. 

Beware of starting your own business if all you have is your student supplies, a ridiculous amount of stubbornness and an unhealthy caffeine addiction.

Beware of having people that depend on you and need you at the drop of a hat because your other relationships will suffer, and you’ll likely not find someone who understands that while number one is already taken, second or third most important is still pretty damn special.

And I’m not complaining! Please realize, I have come to understand, what’s the point of being halfway clever with your words if you can’t turn the stories you live through into lessons for other people to try to learn from. I’m not gonna lie to you either though, sometimes it’s exhausting feeling like your existence is just so others can make less mistakes. 

And I really look forward to some stories of mine where no one is learning anything except the difference between my laughing out of acceptance and my laughing out of pure enjoyment. 

Time keeps moving forward...

 I’m moving. Again. Once again deciding what parts of my life to keep, and which to toss. I am so very excited. Big changes are happening, just by moving, all the pieces are adjusting, and shifting to make a different shaped life.

I am so excited, I feel like my heart is going to BURST.

I am so terrified, I feel like my heart is going to burst.

The older I get, the more responsibilities I take on by myself. The last times I’ve moved I’ve had friends/lovers/people who owed me favors show up and help me. 

I don’t think anyone owes me any favors anymore, and my oldest friends either live far away or are slowly being replaced with people who fit better, so I’m sort of in a weird spot. I have people I’m comfortable theoretically asking for their help, but not anyone I think would say yes, or would actually show up, OR if they did show up, that I wouldn’t feel totally awkward and like I’m imposing. 

There’s a lot of stairs in my future. And I have a lot of furniture. Movers? Is that how solo anti-social/awkward adults do things? Pay strangers to haul their shiz? 

Cool. Now to see if I can get my kid to actually help pack this time around....

“Life is Pain Princess” – Westley, The Princess Bride

There is some people, that when they think of me, they think their angriest, darkest thoughts, who wish only bad things to happen to me because of the way I wronged them in the past. There are people that when they think of me, think of me as this blessing in their life, who cannot see past the good I‘ve done to see me as a flawed human worth criticism, and I can do no wrong in their eyes.  No matter what I say or do, to those two groups of people, their opinions of the type of person I am is cemented into their heads.

Which, kinda sucks. We all are terrible people at some point in our lives, as well as amazing people, but most of the time, we’re all just okay-ish people trying to make the best of what lives we’re living. Most of us, most of the time, are completely average. And that’s ok. Mainly because if you do it right, you have other average people in your life that makes your life feel unique and special and decidedly NOT average.

Last year my best friend got married to “The Love of Her Life”, not in quotations sarcastically, like you might be expecting from me, more like as a title. They knew early on that they were done looking and they almost immediately started planning their future together. The way they adore each other, and have stood by each other, right off the bat from day one, ready to stand up to any challenge life throws either of their directions is sincerely a sight to behold. The way they love each other is enough for my cynical ass to have some sliver of hope to one day have that sort of confidence for another person, and have it returned. It is disgusting, and true goals.

Recently, some of his ugly came out. And it rippled through her life quickly and messily. The shock waves will be felt by his actions for a long time to come. He is remorseful, and in the middle of what I imagine to be one of the hardest lessons of his adult life. My best friend is torn apart having to find the balance between standing by her partner and expressing the amount of betrayal she now feels.

But, how does that work exactly? What’s that /thing/ that makes people so sure that outside of extremes that aren’t even worth listing in their obviousness, that they have a person worth fighting through thick and thin with? I was married, and was so committed to our relationship that I tattooed his wedding band pattern onto my ring finger. Even with that level of commitment, one of the first words out of my mouth to my friend who tagged along with me was “Well, if this doesn’t work out, I guess I’ll deserve the pain of laser removal.”  Apparently my lame psychic power is guessing crappy things that are going to happen in the future. And yes, laser tattoo removal is horrible.

Now, I can only speculate. Call it soulmates, the right person, both people learning from their past relationships to be at a point where they know how to fight for a relationship instead of ending it…  I don’t know, because I haven’t experienced it yet, so I don’t know what to call it, or how one gets it. I just know it’s not something I’ve found yet. But, I think it’s something I’d like to experience. Which is sort of a new concept for me. I’ve always assumed I’d float through life myself, my kid and my friends.  Honestly, I’ve spent so long building a full life in other areas, it’s never been a priority.

There’s something about the way my best friend looks at her husband though.  Even when she was angry and hurt, I could still clearly see the love and determination in her eyes. Even knowing that they have an uphill battle ahead of them, knowing that it will take months if not longer to rebuild their trust, their love is still clear as day. And that sort of magic is worth holding onto, if ever given the chance.

 

"One Day Can Bend Your Life" - Mitch Albom

Recently, my grandfather passed away, and it gutted me. Like, even though I'm now able to successfully hide it in front of people, a part of me died when he died and I will not be okay for a long time because of it.

I'm not good at talking about my emotions, and in all honesty, I hate that they exist. I legit wish I was a robot so I wouldn't have to deal with the whole lot of them. Happy, sad, anger, hatred, love... They all are incredibly hard for me to express, and in turn it's hard for me to deal with their intensity. A lot of my anxiety stems from how I feel and my inability to express them. Soooooo. The best person in the world is no longer in it, and I still am. I am not ok. But I also know that the world won't stop turning just because I'm sad so I attempted to purge the intense feelings of loss and despair out of my body as fast as humanly possible.

I exercised way too hard, gave myself an asthma attack and felt it in my body for days afterwards. (On purpose, multiple times) I got a couple of "extreme" piercings hoping for some intense pain, and attempted to go dancing right after to trigger the pain some more. (They didn't hurt, and where we went ended up having a drag show NOT dancing that night, we had a blast, but it was not the night I thought I was getting). I accidentally didn't eat for a couple of days, aside from the jerky a friend physically handed me. I looked up, and ultimately decided not to contact some people from my past who while would have distracted me, would have re-opened the kind of wounds I'm trying to keep closed, especially while already grieving.

While I was at the piercer, I had him look at my ears. I've wanted to gauge them for a long time, but it's never seemed like "the right time", and all of the sudden it did. Unfortunately, due to the decisions of Megan Past, my ears aren't gauge-able. Too much scar tissue. I was able to make 2 (out of something like 12) holes in my lobes usable. Ok, not me, the piercer was able to give me 2 usable holes in my lobes and re-open my two cartilage piercings. 8 opened/re-opened holes in 6 days felt really good, and it ended up making me one step closer to fully liking what I see when I look in the mirror. Unexpected bonus!

Which brings me to my thoughts. If I would have known that getting DIY or cheap piercings when I was younger would have prevented me from getting gauges, would I still have done it? Would I have chosen fulfilling the reasons for them existing then, knowingly forfeiting a future want, hoping that future me wouldn't want it, or would I have made a different choice?

When I was a senior in high school I fell in love with the biggest mistake of my life to date, and I was so busy trying to hang onto that toxicity, I didn't register for college. No Pepperdine, even though that was always my ticket back home to Cali. I earned a full scholarship to a local university that I didn't have to apply for, just accept, and because of my stubbornness over it's reputation I turned it down. By the time I had removed my head out of my ass, the only thing available to me was community college, but because I couldn't stand living at home anymore I very quickly had to chose between school and work. Work won.

Even now, I don't know for sure that if I was told what would happen if I didn't apply for the college I dreamt of AND turned down a full ride scholarship to a different university, I don't know that I would make a different choice.

My life is a forever mess, constantly changing in the ways it's messy, but it's my mess and I love it. And yeah, I've made choices that forever close doors for me in the future, a lot of the time, doors are shut that I don't even know about, but that just means even if they look exactly like what I think I want or need, obviously I don't. Or maybe, I'll still want them, even though I know I'll never get them. I'm allowed to want things I can't have, at least while I'm walking by them on my way to the doors I do get to open.

I'm starting to think that no matter how old I get, life never settles. Great job doesn't equal settled. Amazing friends turned family and family that are friends doesn't mean settled. A comfortable home doesn't mean settled. Finding a person who fits into my life like a puzzle piece won't mean settled. All those physical and heart comforts just make it easier to handle the things that shake life up. Settled is a lie. Happy and at peace is the goal. But settled? Never.