limbs unencumbered in darkness

I'm just taking time for myself, focusing on getting myself back. 

I know it sounds totally nuts.  I'm working hard on letting myself enjoy it.  Enjoying finding myself again.  I'm on vacation.  And for the first time in a long time, I'm reading in total silence.  Or I'm listening to music and folding origami.  Or I'm sleeping alone sprawled out in my bed and relishing the joy of limbs unencumbered in darkness.  And that I can feel words like unencumbered in my soul.  Why do I know words like that?  Where does it come from? 

Dude, I'm digging it.  I bought Babbel and I'm trying to teach myself Spanish too.  Kind of hilarious at current.  But I'm going with it.  Just enjoying the process.

Life, I do actually love you.  Thank you for being patient with me.  And now I'm going to try to be more patient and kind with myself, because this is kind of awesome. 

Also hilarious: jade roller in the freezer for a few, and rolling on some kind of serum watching The Last Kingdom.  Nerdy thirty-something alert.  I can do whatever the fuck I want.  And it's awesome.

fuck you, daniel sain. you soulless piece of shit.

I am so very weary of it all.  Of drinking on the nights I am not back to work.  And then the nights I am due back to work thinking about the suffering and the death, the feeling of dread collecting about my shoulders like some terrible shroud.

I should feel joy. 

Joy that I avoided a meager soul.  A soul that knows none of this depth and complexity.  That has to look up words in the dictionary and even then cannot feel them and the weight of them.  I was thinking of Tim O'Brien and The Things They Carry.  And how he could read words but not connect with them, and even then he might take hours to get through a single chapter.  That judging nature of my being.  It's not nice, but it's honest.  The slow drudgery of it all, the way when we moved together it was still always apart.

Well, fuck you.  Go ahead and block me.  I rise against.  I meet your block and I raise it.  Never shall you know my bed again.  Never shall you know my wit or my sharp tongue, or laugh so honestly.  Never shall you feel so comforted that you did all the right things after a hard day's work.  Never shall you feel so appreciated in what you do.  And never will you get off so fucking much.  

So fuck you.  No other woman will want to fuck you the way I did.  You soured all of it.  You are the court jester, the great dunce in the corner of the classroom.  The rest of the class at work knows it.  No one is saying I made a huge mistake.  I hear that I know you are sad, I'm sorry, but he was awkward, I think it was for the best.  I always thought he was a dick, time to move on.  So many things of the same sentiment.  

No one thinks I'm a dick.  No one thinks I'm a tin man without a heart.  

I've got soul.  I've got five million hearts.  Rivers of blood.  I am a beating drum, and I will not be silenced.  So fuck you.  I will play louder.  I will rise up.  I will not drown in myself.  I will run.

Daniel Sain, you are the cruelest cunt.  You said you would never do to me what had been done a million times before.  But you are a truly ignorant fuck.  I have been left a thousand times.  And I have grown up.  I am Francie Nolan.  I am that pitiful fucking tree growing in Brooklyn, despite all odds, pushing up in the tenements of Brooklyn.  I will grow strong and tall and I will have love and all the things I have given to others for so many years.  And you will learn nothing, you will push your grimy dick into some other unfortunate soul and have another one year relationship and wonder why you, why you?  

You are the worst kind, the cruelest kind.  And I should have seen you coming a mile-off.  The repeat offender disguised as the poor-me, the take care of me broken wing boy.  The one that needs saving.  I will no longer be saving ANYONE.  I am taking care of ME.  I love ME.  I am weary of this banality.  I need a new storyline.  I need someone without creepy eyes and a one-note personality, who has questions for the universe.  I need someone who can apologize and have love in his soul for me, not someone who only has ego and love for himself and refuses to speak to me but merely blocks or unblocks me depending on his whim and the current status of his self-importance.

You don't even know how to eat pussy.  That's why I stopped you.  Watch some porn.  That's where I learned my tricks, what makes you above it.  

FUCK YOU, DANIEL SAIN.  You hurt me so much, for so many months.  You are the cruelest.  It's COVID-19, and I tell you I pray for you and your family, which I genuinely have, and you don't ask after me or mine?  I visited your family on numerous occasions, and you were never bothered to meet my mother?  You never loved me, you fuck.  And now I get it.  I see through you.  You are a genuinely sick, disturbed person.  Yeah, you, Daniel Sain.  You are a sick fuck, and you deserve the karma in this life you receive.  Thank you so much for just up and leaving me with ZERO FUCKING EXPLANATION EVER because that saved me from living with a disturbed person. Oh and for never contributing or paying rent, super awesome.  Winner, winner!



You are a fucking asshole.  You have fair-weather friends (all four of them).  You will get what you deserve.  I might be drunk but at least I'm telling the truth.

covid-19

Being a PICU nurse in New York City during the COVID-19 (gonna refer to as covid so less assaulting on the eyes) pandemic of 2020 certainly isn't the worst thing.  I could be working in the MICU or in med surg. 

My heart bleeds for those nurses.  I literally think of all of the providers, all of the people in that hospital, and I just cry.  I pray for all of them.  For the nurses, the doctors, the respiratory therapists, the nursing assistants, the techs, the physicians assistants, the environmental services workers, the nutritionists, the physical therapists, the occupational ones, speech.  The list goes on.  But not only them.  The ones who suffer in the beds.  The ones dying alone in an OR repurposed as a place to take care of critically-ill patients. 

I feel so powerless. 

Now we are starting to admit adult patients, to take off a tiny fraction of the stress they feel on the adult side. But it never feels like enough.

I pray nightly for all of these people.  For my family, for my coworkers.  I am so grateful for the people providing us with food and PPE and places to stay.  I hear the cheers in Brooklyn at 7 pm on my days off and it has, quite honestly, moved me to tears.

In my personal life, it's different.  I don't really feel a whole lot of anything anymore.  It's been seven months since Dan left but it feels fresher.  I wish I could hug him and provide him comfort.  But I know he doesn't need it from me, and I need to work on myself.

replace the bad with the good

I thought to write today.  I read poetry flush with words like perseverance and penultimate.  With lines the broke marvelously, a true sight to see.  

And then I thought of this post I saved recently on instagram, from tinybuddhaofficial.  It might not be the most magnificent prose, but for me, here, in this space--fuck, if ever I want to create in this life, create with words and be unafraid to be ugly and make mistakes and just commit something to the page, I want to remember it.  So here it is:

"I want you to imagine a ten-year-old version of yourself sitting opposite from you right this minute.  Got it?  Ok, now, I want you to tell this little girl or boy that they mean absolutely nothing.  Tell them they're an embarrassment, that they're worthless, that they're useless.  Are you doing it?  Can you say it?  No.  You can't do it, right?  Now, realize that this is essentially what you do to yourself every single day.  What do you want to REALLY say to this kid?  That they're worth it, right?  That they're incredible and they should never let anyone tell you otherwise.  Now say this new stuff to yourself.  Replace the bad with the good.  Repeat it.  Believe it.  Understand it."  

--tinybuddhaofficial 

My negative self talk is so harsh and the voice so loud I was even criticizing myself while re-typing that, like woah, that's a fuck-up, I must have that bit down incorrectly because that doesn't make sense.  I caught myself and almost started to laugh.  I suppose the first step is realizing what you are doing.  But it is amazing how much negativity can stand in the way of creativity.  I mean, if people had listened to negativity we would never have so many of the awesome things we do today.  It's pretty much the basis of most every amazing film (har har being melodramatic here, but somewhat true I guess).  

Point is, I am tired of being down.  I am going to start to try to build myself up.  Do small things to clean my apartment up every day (ie throw out shit I don't use/need).  Do little things for my health (eg no soda, less sugar--I can do it, but if I have a bad day, no point beating myself up about it--tomorrow is a new one, and I'm hard on myself as it is--I truly am my own worst enemy).  I want to love my body, I am over this body dysmorphia shit.  I look damn good for 34.  I looked at myself naked in the mirror today, and challenged myself to stay there.  It was uncomfortable, but I stuck with it.  And to look at myself and tell myself I loved myself.  It's hard.  But maybe if I practice, I'll get better at it;)  Sorry for the weird self-help post today.  I've been in an odd mental space, downloading different apps and trying to help myself get over the past and into the present.  I know I can do it.  I'm tough.  And one of these days, I'm going to write something fucking amazing.

nocturne no. 20 in c-sharp minor

Most days feel like I'm just trying to get through.  Forget trying to make a success out of things.  My apartment generally reflects my state of mind--that is to say, clothes are strewn about the room, the counter collects more and more random pieces of junk, and the mirror becomes more be-speckled with each passing day.  Forget attempting to write beautifully, one must attempt to merely write.

The words tumble out in a jumbled, ugly heap.  I don't usually know what I'm feeling, and if I feel anything at all, what I feel in one moment might change the next.  I cry on the A train home from work more times than I'd like.  Sometimes the initiation of tears comes as I exit the adult emergency room and cross Broadway, heading for 168th station.  Sometimes it's as I'm hitting the stairs down to the pits of subway hell, and sometimes it's merely waiting for the A to collect me and take me to Brooklyn.  Sometimes I cry only as my key hits the lock as I am about to enter the apartment, and sometimes it starts when the last stranger exits and it's only me waiting to get to the 20th floor.  It's always the same.  Always quiet.  Always an entirely wet face and swollen eyelids and the red nose.  When I'm in the apartment and see Sammie, I greet him and pet him.  And then sometimes it's no longer quiet.  

How one human can tell another every thought, talk and text and call, and then one day cease all communication will forever perplex me.  I just cannot fathom doing that to someone else.  I feel like there's a part of me missing, some kind of phantom limb projection of the soul. 

I know I've officially lost it, between the incessant texts and calls and emails.  All unanswered of course.  Perhaps unopened.  Why I do it to myself, I don't know.  Maybe to punish myself?  There were earlier points in the relationship where I wanted to end things.  Where I thought his affection was too much and it frightened me.  And for other reasons.  That he had a depth of emotion, mainly sadness (depression) and rage that were very real and palpable but utterly soulless.  As in, there was little intellectual depth to them, there was no artistic core.  There was only sheer rage.  Utter depression.  It perplexed me.  How does one not fuel said depression without literature, poetry and film and music?  How is it only that unto itself? Does that make sense?  I questioned to friends if the gap in our intellect was a problem.  No, they said, he's crazy about you.  He's the one, they said.  

And then he packed up his shit and stopped talking to me.

I'm listening to classical as I write; I don't know how a person can listen to music with words because I get so completely distracted.  But I jest as I know we are all different and I'm sure many cannot listen to classical.  My ex Chris couldn't listen to anything during sex because he insisted it distracted him too much which was a definite downer for me but entirely true for him as a sound engineer/mixer/whatever.  It's the Swan Lake Suite and quite pretty and makes me think of Tchaikovsky ballets.

Anyway, I've been letting pieces of me die every day.  I look at myself in the mirror and I feel like I look back sadly.  I feel like my eyes are very expressive and my eyes are sad, does this make sense?  So as much as I'm very upset and hurt by Dan's actions, he didn't let my apartment go to shit or my health go to hell or have me not sleep or what have you.  That's on me.  And I need to choose better.  So today will be the first day of no contact and I will start making a list of why this is good, and it is going to sound petty and immature but I need it to stick to this for now.

I had zero contact with him for a week and a half and then I texted hi and he started sexting me and I sheepishly rolled with it.  This was on December 1.  And then he was a dick and didn't say hi at work and I texted as much and he stopped talking to me again.  So I need to really stick to it this time because he is the type of immature asshole to keep taking advantage and fuck with me again.  

(1) Even if I don't believe it, most people who found out came to me and said they were sorry but also secretly glad and that I could do better.  This obviously says something about my character.  Need to work on things...
(2) Intellectual disparity. Enough said. 
(3) Kind of belongs in 2 but legit worst speller of life.  Even in social media postings.  Which was embarrassing.
(4) Deer hunter. Yes, it needs to be done. But not by my boyfriend.
(5) Frequently used girl emojis in texting. And entirely way too many in general. Gross.
(6) Cried a lot more than I did.  Struggled so much with a distant (I'm not an uncaring fuck, here, okay) friend's death and grew so depressed that I was extremely concerned and wondered what would become of him in the event of a parent's passing.
(7) Had serious explosions of rage. Threw things during these times. Hard. Usually while drinking. Still so not okay. Which brings us to numero
(8) Drank wayyyyy too much. Always encouraging me to drink more. I came to you and told you I'm coming out of a divorce and did not ever drink for a number of years you fucking asshole. I don't need to drink more. You have a fucking problem.
(9) Had a crazy sleep cycle. As in slept not at all for days, or only a few hours, and then would crash and sleep sixteen hours at a time.  Super fun hanging with a sloth on off days.
(10) Got more out of shape as relationship progressed.  Just sayin'. And you said it, but yeah, your dick is rather unimpressive.
(11) Hair is going super grey. Super. 
(12) Lives with parents. For two years. Cries about it. Brings us back to six. This one deserves higher place on list.
(13) Not the world's best respiratory therapist. Very questionable judgment sometimes, though usually because lacking sleep. And working two extra jobs. But that is seriously stupid dude. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you. You deal with peoples' lives, and you need to take it seriously.
(14) Talks about being as hard of a worker as me. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if I stroke out by 45. I work harder than legit anyone I know. For you to say this to me as you walked around 9C the other day eating food (yeah, my coworkers tell me everything) is a joke. You take breaks, you are constantly flirting with other girls at work, cry me a damn river.
(15) You said you value how I wasn't the jealous type or nosy blah blah. Well, that's because you later owned you cheated on your former longterm girlfriend even though "it was only emotional cheating". Dan Sain, you're disgusting. Once a cheater, always a cheater. 
(16) You are way too emotional during sex. And crying during it sometimes is also weird.
(17) I met your family. On more than one occasion. And you couldn't be bothered to meet my mother. Fuck you. Instead you went to Mexico and prolly had sex with a dude.
(18) When you aren't living with your parents, you're living with a seriously mean gay dude (yeah, met once and he was so mean to me and MY gay friend seconded this--and that you said your friend said I was a dick and took his side, that should have been clue one)...who when he worked with you as a tech in the ED was rumored to be fucking you. Too bad I found out about that AFTER we broke up. No wonder you are so insistent on anal.

You are a big stupid oaf from a backwood town in PA. You will drink too much beer and be in debt with a beer belly and single without kids perhaps still living with his parents at 55.  You will look back on your relationship with me and say, she was the one who got away. 

Fuck you, Daniel Sain. I hate you for breaking my heart.  I don't believe any of what I've written.  But if it takes writing it and reading it every day to keep from contacting you and letting you break my heart again I will.  Because you will break my heart again and I cannot go through this shit again.  I won't make it through alive.  I'd rather take one of your deer-killing guns and blow my brains out.  And leave the rest for organ donation, of course.

I still love you.  I hear love as Chopin's Nocturne No. 20 in C-Sharp Minor plays. I will never understand why you chose to leave Sammie and me and not look back.  I will keep going, I will be strong.  I will choose life.  Even if it is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. 

It gets harder to put yourself back together every time. After each move. Each different state. After you learned your father wasn't who you thought he was, after the divorce and disintegration of family. After the cheating and your own divorce. After all of the deaths in life and the traumas at work. I finally thought I had found my happiness.  You get a little more bitter, a little more cynical. A little less certain that you'll ever have the things you want. So you just start pretending you don't want them. A house? Kids? A family of one's own? I thought you were it, you know. You said you wanted all of those things before I said anything. You cried saying you fell in love with people who wouldn't move to PA, when I would be there in a heartbeat. That's fucking sick. Why you did this to me I'll never know, but I can't kid myself anymore. You're not coming back through that door, are you? I dreamt it for so long, but it's a sick joke. 

you are a horse running alone

I know that I feel better now than I did a month ago.

Well, I feel more real. More solid. Less cloud-like. Less penciled-in and more definite, unerasable.  No longer a mere sketch. 

So in a sense shittier because I feel the weight of that reality--I am no longer watercolor, and it drags me down.  But I don't cry on the A train each night on my way home from work.  I actually have stopped crying altogether.  

And I do not know if this is such a good or bad thing.  I think it is best to feel.  And it is important to feel in the absence of whatever it is that you would have me feel.  You who do not speak to me or look my way at work.  Who have blocked me (ha! the wonders of modern technology, the drudgery that I even must type the words...my beloved "blocked me"--it sounds so juvenile and ludicrous, it does not bear the blow but instead makes a mockery of the whole debacle!) on every social media platform on which we were formerly entwined.  

In my head sometimes I hear the silly poem unfold: "Do you carrot at all for me?"--again baring sharp teeth, mocking me and jesting at me in the night as I try to bury into the blankets.  

Sleep is a mere luxury, a former lover that also does not wish to interact with me.  I do not know the feel of its embrace.  I lay in the dark, in the quiet: "My heat beets for you."  

I do know that creatively I am unfolding naked and glistening--all awkward struggle and gasping shrieks jagged into empty sky.  But still the cries hang over silence, they are heard.  They gain rhythm slowly.  I was a better writer years ago, in college.  But it makes sense, I read then.  I devoured books.  And I felt everything, I felt the world shake and tremble beneath my feet.  I was afraid of everything and nothing at the same time.  

Still it feels good to try again.

And I learned that unerasable, is, after all, a word.  So you see, my diction is improving after all.  

On the other hand my self care has been abysmal. The state of my apartment is rather unimpressive.  The stack of laundry is unwieldy in addition to being unsanitary, and I don't remember the last time I vacuumed the rug.  There exists clutter everywhere.  On every countertop.  And I don't shower each day like I used to.  My interest in food is waning.  But it is good for my bank account I suppose.  I weigh between 118 to 120 pounds on any given day and I'm not even trying.  I don't think it is a good look.  I'd rather have more curves.  But I am trying with Sammie. He is still groomed regularly and cuddled and loved.

"With your turnip nose. And your radish face."  I'm getting stronger.  Every day.  But I still wish that you would speak to me.  There's still that edge of madness threatening to topple this house of cards to the floor.  Part of me wishes I would snatch my own extended hand out from itself, cut it off at its slender wrist.  There!  You have no way of waving the flag of truce now!  

You always said you would never hurt me.  You looked me in the eye and told me.  You knew what the father had done.  You knew about the rest.  And still I gave myself to you.  Not everything, I saved some parts for me.  I didn't lay down every brick.  And you tried to destroy me. You left me.  But I am so much stronger than you. I have my words, I have my voice. I have a hundred million thoughts.  I am so much more, my love. And it saddens me. Because I could have given you more. But you chose to fall.  

I fell with you, but now I rise. And soon I won't look back, mi amor.  Soon I won't look back.  

For Women Who Are Difficult to Love
by Warsan Shire

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Things my girl Katelyn teaches me: don't give up, don't give in

Fuck you.

Everyone's been saying I'm sorry to hear it. You were so good together. Would you take him back?

I fucking hate you right now. You destroyed my hobby lobbyed second-hand run-down ghetto-ass heart over here. You drove your shitty-ass car over my shitty-ass heart and I'm too fucking tired to put it back together again. 

I'm actually smiling right now because I know I'm being so ridiculous. I do thoroughly enjoy being alone. But goddamm if I don't miss the sex.

Don't worry, you weren't that great. But I'm everyone's best. And honestly, fuck modesty at this point. It's gotten me nowhere.

Now I can't hold the laughter back. 

I'm pretty fucking awesome. 

I'll be just fine. It will just take a few weeks of the back and forth and then I'll beyself again. This life is a good life. Thank you to a special patient Kayelyn who had me beaming on the A train this week. Gotta live my life to be in the presence of that more often. ❤️