Flashback Friday- Ghosts

it's 1030
i've written something already today
checked in with social media "friends"
eaten a full meal AND prepped a snack
drank enough red wine that my lips and tongue are stained
i just finished unpacking my overnight bag though i've been home for 8 hours
i just finished unpacking my overnight bag 'cause a part of me wants to still be where I spent the night
but i'm not there
i'm here
i'm here in my square footage trying to ignore the ghosts that are suffocating me in the ether.
i should be asleep.
i didn't sleep much last night.

Or the night before. 

i should be asleep,
but i'm not.
i'm here and i can hear the ghosts of the arguments i've had with my past
the laments
the promises made
and broken.

The ghosts are deafeningly loud.
i haven't slept in my new bed in a week
my new bed
instead,
i've slept in the bed i shared with the man i shared a name with for more than a week 

To appease the ghosts.

I've offered my peace as a sacrificial lamb to the others who invisibly dwell in my apartment.

#41014 Love's Sophomore, aka Don't Fck It Up

After watching HIM walk, everything else seems sub par.
Everything else is just everything else.
He will either be my greatest love or my greatest ruin.
He who I will make legend.
He who I will make mine.
I just want to drink wine and eat decadent foods with him and fuck and drink and eat some more until we are both completely spent.
He makes me believe again.
      makes me think my happily ever after could be a tangible thing
      makes me want to spit blessings instead of heart broken curses on the page.

Am I to be the fool again?
If I am to be love's fool, at least let me be love's sophomore.
At least let me be old enough to know better and young enough not want to.
To know better than to listen to or believe any and everything I'm listening to and believing,
but I'm still here
Ignorance is bliss & I've already said how overjoyed I am to be HIS fool.

I may have said the wrong thing to the right man,

Again.
I doubt too often,
long for too much,
drink too much,
spend too much,
and love much too easily
with too little to show for it.
& now I may make another bad decision instead of spending another night alone.

May make another poor life choice for the sake of warm arms around me.
May claim another empty notch on my lipstick case to preserve pretend pride.
Taste the tongue of another in the name of licking my own wounds

Said the wrong thing again.
Now I may be sleeping solo again,
Not for lack of choice,
But because I may have made the wrong one again.
Let the wrong one affect me and fck up with the right one,
Again.
Said the wrong thing to the right man, again.
Lacked patience and been hasty.
I've heard that doing the same shit over and over and expecting different results is the definition of Insanity.
I've read this script before with different cast members, more than a few times...
Doesn't that make me batshit crazy or just a writer in desperate need of a rewrite?

#022714 In My Cups

Who's gonna take you home if it isn't me?

I was too drunk to still be out.  Too drunk to interact with strangers. He didn't feel like a stranger since we'd been talking so closely for so long. For him to hold my attention for as long as he had, he must have been able to hold his own in conversation. He certainly was pretty, but I wasn't sure if this was someone I wanted to wake up next to. There was too much 80 proof in my veins and too many nights of sleeping alone weighing on my mind... I really only wanted to feel someone's feet next to mine at the end of the bed.  Wanted to nuzzle into someone's who wanted to hold me's arms. I couldn't tell if the man I was sloppily flirting with was that person or not, but he would do. Right?

#021714: The Other Side of the Tracks

It's midnight Saturday night on the Brooklyn bound A train platform at West 4th Street. I'd just left a birthday dinner for a friend. It's cold as a witch's tit in a cast iron bra outside and being on the platform only offers brief solace from the bitter, biting cold. As I walked up to a spot I deemed safe enough to wait for the train to take me to my second job, I saw him. Lanky and passably attractive at a distance, but up close, not so much.

"I was telling him about our amazing date."  The woman on the uptown bound platform yelled to him across the tracks. First, he chuckled, then it seemed that somehow, her discussing their date with a stranger invited a pantomimed conversation with him.  Initially, his performance led me to believe that he was autistic.  The whole exchange felt like a missing scene from The Other Sister.

#020614: The Grey Area

I think this is inspired by Singles Awareness Day being next week. I'll decide if it's a good idea or not later. Too hungover right now to know now. 
 

It could all be so simple, but you'd rather make it hard.... 

I lack the energy to follow all the rules in this dating game. Double speak exhausts and bores me in a way you can't even begin to fathom.  I'm not talking about the chase.  I enjoy being pursued and more than that being caught. But the other antics strike me as sooooo juvenile and therefore beneath me at my ripe old age of too-old-for-that-shit. I know 'Pac said, I don't want it if it's that easy, but is the converse that it has to be THAT hard?

So when dudes keep talking about how they don't want a relationship, yet clamor for all the perks of a relationship, I can't help but roll my eyes, HARD.  Last I checked, we were grown and grown people are allowed to have relationships of different types. There's a whole spectrum of titles between friends and spouse that we, dating grown folks can explore, yet it seems that dudes only know three: friend, bedfellow, spouse. I don't know if these are new dating regulations that were released while I was being made an honest woman, but I did not get these notes in my remedial dating class and as a result often find myself in some relationship gray area that is neither only lover but not quite significant other.

I'm a Virgo, I compartmentalize EVERYTHING. I'm cool with having a lover, matter of fact I LOVE having lovers, as long as said lover remains in the lover lane and doesn't overstep by doing boyfriend-y stuff.  That's when I get confused and that's when the grey area starts. If you're going to do boyfriend-y stuff from the lover lane, then why not take the plunge and be the BF? What makes it even more of a conundrum for me is that WITHOUT FAIL, the moment that the relationship averse gentlemen of afore mention wake up and decide that they are possibly trying to wife me is usually when I am officially over it.  Not over it the way many of us say when we really aren't and are being emotionally dishonest, but for real over it.  How long can I be expected to exist in these gray areas?

When a dude tells me he doesn't want to or can't be in a relationship, I give it a little bit more of the old college try. "Why?" you ask, because for much of my life, I've been the Ferrari of love; racing from zero to head-over-heels in ten seconds flat. But once I've tried to be patient, and things remain in the same undergraduate style holding pattern, I'm going to start to peruse my other options, because there are ALWAYS other options. *shrugs*

Usually, it's around the time that I get ghost (aka "I've been REALLY busy.") or when I stop responding to your text messages in a timely or interested fashion THAT'S when they decide they want me.  Not when I'm whipping up red velvet waffles for morning-after-breakfast or coping thoughtful birthday presents, or doing my best impersonation of a porn star. Naw. All that lady in the streets/freak in the bed talent is wasted. It's when I'm aloof and distant that suddenly I'm desirable.

A former "prayer partner" (shout out to @theXDExperience for that phrase that pays) once said that I do too much and in doing so, set the bar too high for it to ever be reciprocal. Soooo, basically, I should be less thoughtful and it will be easier for dudes to want me? I have to act like I don't like you so that you will like me?

What type of illogic is that?
Why go through all the machinations?
Why go through all that trouble?
Why play these games of tug-of-war with each other's heart strings?
Why not just want me when I want you?

I mean, even when I'm not being the Ferrari of love and I'm waiting and pacing myself and giving things the chance to blossom and bloom organically, even that has a limited shel life after 30. By about 3 months, you should know whether you want me or not.  If you do and you can't/won't join me in my quest for our happily ever after, then kick rocks quietly and get out of the way so someone else can join me on my quest. I mean, 3 months....that's 3 period cycles.  It would be nice if men could decide if they want me or not before the second trimester of our relationship. Excuse me, our label-less relationship, small "r." I don't even really care about the label or proximity as much as I care about fidelity.  Then again, maybe that's just residuals of my last major Relationship, capital "R."

Lemme go try to sneak a disco nap under my desk real quick....
SMOOCHES!!!
Shine on!

#010114 I'm Back...

10 years ago began one of the rockiest decades of my life.  In the space of 60 days, I lost 2 grandparents, broke up with one of the best boyfriends I ever had for reasons that seem positively ridiculous now, and allowed all of the worries of a quarter life crisis to kick into full throttle. These stresses would strangle me nightly. I had debilitating insomnia, manic anxiety episodes, and other slightly OCD behaviors that could only be  “cured” by a high twice daily dosage of anticonvulsant/mood stabilizers, copious drinking and constant attention from would-be-lovers.  To call them suitors would have been an insult to men who actually court women. All of this took place before through low self esteem, I met, fell in love with and married the wrong person.  That (discussed ad nauseam) relationship was five-year roller-coaster whose aftermath ricocheted through my life (and finances) longer than the marriage itself.