The Feels.

Writing what I want to write, secrets, and owning it.

by terra

You write what you want to write. That’s it. Fuck the rest. This is your home, your space. You want to weep about the things that have been done, however trivial they may be in a world lacking world peace and struck with poverty, fuck it. You write what you want to write.

That’s it.

Because everyone is fighting their own battles, because everyone hurts, everyone feels pain, and to measure it is bullshit. Fuck a battle where I weigh my pain against yours and you weigh yours against mine, because why? Why? What’s the point in saying to a person who is hurting that their pain doesn’t weigh enough, no matter the genesis of that pain? That’s bullshit.

I don’t want to be a sad bitch on the internet, I don’t want to come here and cry everyday about the fucked up shit in my life, but at the end of the day this space is mine and if I want to cry over the wrongs done to me, that maybe don’t have to do with pandemics or poverty, then I will. Because this space is mine.

So let me tell you a secret.

I’m sensitive. Beyond words. I’ve got this tough bitch, honey badger, fuck shit up demeanor, but fuck that. I’m a sensitive bitch. You hurt, I hurt. That’s how I work. He hurts, I hurt, even when I shouldn’t. I hear a song and it takes me. I can’t stop it. It drags me down, to those depths – and I think you know them – those dark places where sadness is comfort and broken is built.

I cry over lonely puppies and Sarah McLachlan and I’m done saying I’m sorry for that shit. This is the person I am. I take a lot in, and I do with it what I can. I try to fix what I can, try to heal what I can, try to rectify what I can and the rest, the parts that I can’t fix, well. They fucking eat me, those parts.

Because – and here’s secret number two – I want to save the world.

I want to fix your shit. I’m a fixer. It’s what I do. Give me your shit, and I’ll give you a solution, because I want to see you smile. I want to make you laugh. I want to make your ribs hurt you laugh so fucking hard and so I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever pain you have to give and I will wrap it up and throw it out into the universe because I fucking love you.

I shouldn’t have to apologize for giving a shit, and so I won’t.

Because I do. I give a shit. I care. I care so much I’ll break myself for it, because me be damned – fuck me.

And if writing is my catharsis, then so fucking be it. Walk away if you don’t want to read it, or don’t if you do.

And so here it is:

I laugh too loud and I swear a lot.

I don’t eat sea creatures – not even crabs or lobsters or shrimp.

I’m really fucking funny sometimes. And sometimes I’m really fucking sad.

I hear a song and sometimes it dictates my mood. That’s it. That’s just the way it is.

Most days I just want to run. For as many miles and as many hours as my legs and lungs can handle.

I drink craft beers and scotch, and, if I’m in Vegas, Blueberry Stolis.

Nachos are my favorite food, green my favorite color, spring my favorite season and Halloween my favorite holiday.

I’m almost always wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

I don’t wear lipstick and I’d almost always rather be barefoot.

I don’t have a filter and sometimes I say things I shouldn’t.

I’m not fucking perfect, and I shouldn’t have to be.

Solo camping, lighting fires and doubt.

by terra

Sometimes, for me, the best medicine is just being gone for a bit, just going into the woods and spending time around a fire. And so, last weekend, the first free weekend I’ve had in just about forever, I went camping. Solo camping. I set up my own tent, blew up my own air mattress, with lung power, and lit my own campfire.

IMG_6127campingcamping1I didn’t quite know what I was going to do with myself at a campsite, alone, in the middle of April, but I figured it out. Mostly I read and poked at the fire, ate cheese and bread and meat and roasted a few marshmallows and then, when it started to rain a bit, I curled up in my tent and read by candlelight before falling asleep to the sound of rain on my tent.

And then it was morning.

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I slept far less terribly than I feared I would and waking up in a tent on a cold morning, snug in a sleeping bag, is really rather nice. But, there were adventures to have so, after eating some more bread and some more cheese and some more meat, I broke down the campsite and loaded up the car.

And then I hiked.

camping2   IMG_6150

Not far, really, just into the woods for a bit, away from things, and the rain mostly stopped and I found myself again, in the wilderness, not really wanting to come home.

But I did. I drove the two hours home, rolling things over in my mind and feeling probably a little too pleased with myself at my solo camp adventure.

I have this terrible anxiety about things like this, about going and doing things on my own, and yet I’m solidly an introvert, totally okay with spending time alone. But this was a different sort of alone, this wasn’t sitting in bed reading on a Sunday afternoon, it wasn’t watching TV alone on my couch on a Tuesday night, it was removing myself from comfortable spaces and pushing myself into the uncomfortable unknowingness of new solo experiences.

And really, that’s what these past months have been about. They’ve been about saying yes to things I would have hid from before, they’ve been about seeing what, exactly, I am capable of, about doing things I never, ever thought I would or could.

Sure, I’ve camped before. Rather a lot as a kid, and only a little as an adult. I was married to an eagle scout once, so that should garner me some camping street cred, but it’s not something I’ve ever done alone. I was terrified I wouldn’t remember how to put up the tent, even though I did the night before, in the yard, with some slight supervision from someone who has set it up before. And I was scared the fire wouldn’t start, that I would be a fire-starting failure and have to curl up in my tent, eating un-roasted marshmallows and pouting, but no. That fire lit with just one match.

I don’t know if I have a point, but someone said something to me before my last half marathon that I keep swirling around in my mind because he was so, so right. He said, “You doubt yourself too much.”

And I do. And I don’t want to anymore. Because I’m fucking 30. And I’ve had enough of that shit.

Curse words, mostly.

by terra

Most days I just want to light shit on fire. I want to burn the whole god damn world down, I want to fight until I’ve got nothing left, just like I’ve been doing for the past how ever many months. I want to take a match, strike it and burn the whole fucking thing down, my life, my love, my reality. I want it fucking gone because it’s not the shit I picked, it’s not the shit I fought for, and yet still, it’s mine.

So I carry it.

Because, really, what’s the other choice? I lose my shit? I strike the match, burn all our lives to the fucking ground? That’s not feasible, see, because we must maintain some semblance of sanity, no matter how hard it might be.

Right?

Because the scorned bitch, she’s the one who is supposed to stand proud and swallow her hurt and live some great fucking life and be the best version of herself, but fuck you. Real life is a disaster. It’s a shit show.

Real life takes the fucking life from your lungs, it cripples you, it throws you on the fucking floor, broken limbed and bleeding the fuck out, because reality, my friends, reality is a mother fucker, and all the things you learn, all the things you realize, they will cripple you.

And sure. I’m a strong bitch. I”m a badass mother fucker. I’ll spit hate in your face and never regret it, but that doesn’t mean this shit, this terrible and fucked up shit isn’t the most terrible shit I’ve ever faced in my whole fucking life.

I wanted to be choked out, to pass the fuck out, to leave for a bit, but my neck is too small, his biceps too big and the closer I get to the bottom, the more I realize that rock bottom is farther and harder than I ever fucking anticipated. You touch this spot, this terrible spot where you think it can’t get worse, and then it hits you, the weight of the lies and the truth and you sink even further and you see your worst self, the most terrible parts of you that you buried in a yard 15 fucking years ago. And yet.

Still.

There she is, that damaged girl, leaving claw marks on everything she touches.

But you live it, you take it, you swallow it, you fix it. Because that’s what bitches like me do. We win. God help us. We fucking win.

Whatever that means.

A Letter.

by terra

David:

You’ve been dead for 14 years.

I get anxious as we approach the 16th anniversary of your death, when we get to the point where you’ve been dead longer than you were ever alive.

I got mad this year. I was pissed.

I turned 30, and you, with a birthday just one day before mine, didn’t. And so rage. Because 30 fucking sucks. And you should have been here to suffer it with me, all of it, the heartache, living and breathing and all of it.

You should have fucking been here.

It’s dumb. You took your life at 16, and 14 years later, I’m still carrying it, still carrying the weight of what you did, still bearing the knowledge that they all blamed me, that I was the last person you saw, that I didn’t share enough of your last cigarette with you, that I didn’t demand a ride that last day, that last day of your life.

I want to yell at you. I want to fold up on the floor and cry in the bathtub and regret it all, but your death has colored my life, has made me the bitch that I am, has taught me about survival.

You were amazing. That laugh. That leather jacket. Learning to do headstands. All of it. You were amazing, my almost-birthday-twin.

You’re further away then you’ve ever been. These 14 years, you’ve had my back. You’ve been the thing that kept me from harm and I know, right now, I’m losing my grip on all the things, on logical thought and clear decision making and whatever else, and that’s not your fault, but mine, because I am digging my own grave. You wanted so much to protect me from harm, and you have. You’ve been there, for all of it, in your own way.

I love you.

But I still wish you were here. Every single day, especially in March and always on April 6th.

– t.

(I always wonder, who would I be without you?)

Things I’ve written, being the Crazy Cat Lady & an update on my zoo.

by terra

I’m over at the Hooray Collective today as well. Here’s a snippet:

I couldn’t breath when I met you. I took a look at you and lost all sense of reason because you were just too much. You were tall and perfect and professional and an adult, which I, at 21, wasn’t. There was something about the way you held yourself, the way you carried yourself that I found irresistible and any control I had over myself was lost then, to you.

I’ve said sometimes that I’ve loved you from that minute, but that’s probably not true. I was too overwhelmed by all that you were to categorize it as anything other than SO MUCH, because that’s what you were and that’s what you have been to me. So much.

You looked at me then, that day we met, and I thought I was melting. I remember being so flushed at the sight of you that I thought for sure I was glowing. I felt insignificant next to you. Feral. You were this polished thing and I was this mess of a girl, raised by wolves.

Click to read the rest.

—

Recently, the last time temperatures plummeted into the single digits, I put a dog bed on the front porch, for the wild cats, and, as I looked at the bed on the porch, nestled behind one of my red Adirondack chairs, it occurred to me that with that simple little act I had taken yet another step toward embracing my role as the Neighborhood Crazy Cat Lady.

I didn’t really mind, because if it meant the wild cats had a cozy place to curl up, then it was all okay to me. I wasn’t sure the kitties would use it. It smells like dog and house and not-wild cats, but then, after the first terrible cold snap had passed, I came home to find Daddy Cat snuggled up in the cat bed and I might have done a little fist pump right there on the front lawn because he looked so happy, and so cozy and so I’m calling it a CRAZY CAT LADY WIN, haters be damned.

As for the indoor creatures, they’re all crazy.

photo 1That white dog, Sadie, lost her damn mind when the snow came. She was so pleased and darted out of the house to run circles around the yard, kicking up snow as she went. And then there’s her sock obsession. She just can’t quit socks and it doesn’t matter where I put the socks after taking them from my feet, she will find them and she will bring them downstairs to snuggle with on the couch and she will sometimes leave them on my pillow and sometimes I come home from work and find a single, lonely sock in each room of the house.

They’re basically her babies, those socks, and she’s very, very protective of them, often growling at the cats when they can to close to her sock pile and occasionally liberating them from the insides of my running shoes.

photo 3And then there’s Luke, who is most definitely the most kind creature living in this house. He’s a proper gentleman, although there has been a noted uptick in his anxiety whining. Sometimes he just stands in the middle of a room and cries, for no apparent reason. He has a lot of feelings, I think.

He also has this incredible ability to pick up a whole mess of leaves and yard debris and carry it into the house on his back. There’s something about his fur that just traps the leaves so perfectly that sometimes he comes in with leaves all over his back, looking like he was just practicing his camouflage techniques.

photo 4Bitty is crazy. Out of everyone, she’s the meanest and the softest and the silliest. She’s great at snuggling, and at biting the edges of boxes and at spying on me from various locations. In the morning she races me and the dogs to the back door and then has to be held, just for a minute. She meows and chirps along the way and it is so, so sweet.

But, she’s very sassy, that orange cat, and is still waging a full on war against the wild cats. When she’s really pissed, she’ll bite the trim around the windows by the front door and I noticed the other day that she’s totally bit off the paint in a few spots and a bit of the wood as well. It is not cute.

photo 2Beanie is probably the strangest animal that lives in the house. He’s the best climber, for sure, and whenever there are scary things in the house, like dogs he doesn’t know, he climbs from the kitchen counter, to the top of the fridge, to the top of the cabinets and hangs out up there, chirping a little bit. It is vaguely unsettling to walk into a dark kitchen, flip on the light and find a wide eyed mess of black looming from above me.

He also believes very strongly that an empty food bowl means his death is imminent. I don’t ever even check the cat food bowl anymore because I know, the moment the last bit of kibble is come, Beanie will appear, fear in his eyes, bopping his head at me like a pigeon and frantically racing up the stairs to see if food has appeared yet.

And me?

I’m ok. Sometimes I have solo dance parties in my dining room while cleaning the house on Sundays and sometimes I go for a long run and feel like I never, ever want to stop. Sometimes I don’t want to get out of bed and it’s a fight to push myself forward. Sometimes my heart hurts so bad I wish I could cut it out and go on without it. But mostly I’m ok. Just ok.