…Or maybe, more to the point, making myself sing, even when everything in me wishes to scream.

Three days ago, 22July2014, I drove through a rainbow. Yes, through.  This is not even scientifically possible, yet it happened.  It happened quite clearly.  I have never actually seen the end of a rainbow in my entire 34 years. Rainbows are the dispersion of light through water in the air, so you should never be able to drive through one, as your perspective would keep you seeing the rainbow ever in front of you.  Even seeing an “end” is highly unlikely, though if you have a clear view for a long enough distance, it would be possible.  Where I was driving, the visibility was .. let us say what happened should not have been possible, but happen, it did.

I have seen several things in my life that should not be possible.  It does not really matter which things.  They happened, they are done.  I do not read horoscopes.  I do not look for signs.  However, I have noticed that sometimes things present themselves to us that seem to, upon later inspection, foreshadow later events.  After driving through the rainbow, I texted someone who is, despite no genetic link, my brother.  I told him after that, I was surely to die or win at life. Funny, that.  I have not yet died, but the next day proved… another small death of sorts.  And I have suffered so many of those in my life.

Someone pointed out to me in 2007 it seems every 7 years, my life undergoes drastic horrendous changes.  I do not recall who, or what the changes were 14 years ago. Or 21 years ago.  Grievous head wounds are…funny things.  So much of my life is a mystery to me, and I have so few people I can ask.  And in truth, I do not care.  The past needs to stay there.  But oh, do I remember the changes 7 years ago, and how they altered everything about me.  And I did not put the 7 year change together until the past 6-8 weeks or so, when the shit in my life that had not quite fallen apart did, with.. amazing painful aplomb.

I have hurt more, cried more, in the past 2 months than I have in the rest of my life combined.  At least I can feel?  Sometimes, I am not so sure how good that is..

I am sick of being the better person. I know we all hit that point somewhere. There are only so many times one can rise above the shit before they get used to smelling the shit on their shoes and quit scraping it off. I hit that point a long time ago and keep doing it any way. What’s the point in rising above? Because it makes me a better person? That doesn’t help me sleep better.  So what is the point in being a “better person”? In “rising above”?

I still have websites up from Sunday and Monday, where I was trying to find a company to mail a cookie cake to my recent ex for his birthday Wednesday.  I could not find one.  I was going to send his roommate a message and ask him to go pick up one and let me send him the money.  Then I got the text from the ex.  The text that had no purpose other than to wound me.  And rather than send anything to purposely hurt him, I sent back that I’m glad he’s enjoying his birthday and I hope he enjoyed that last stab at my heart because he won’t get another chance.  I did not attack.  {{sighs}}  I could have, but my first instinct was not to lash out.  heh.  Despite my love of hurting others (and good god, if I believed in one, do I fucking love hurting folks sometimes..), my first instinct, my second, third, fourth, even NOW, my instinct is not to hurt him.  Instead, I did two things I have never done previously.  I changed my telephone number and the locks on my doors.

Yup..It only took 30-something years, but the “completely cold heartless bitch” fell in love.

I loved my ex-husband. I even loved a guy or two I dated, just like I love my friends, the few I consider family.  I didn’t actually want to marry my ex-husband.  I don’t even really recall much of our marriage.  Granted, we got married 5 months after he cracked my skull open, so go figure. I remember, vaguely, only being bothered, before that, by his lack of commitment after our length of time together, not actually wanting to spend my life with HIM.  The person he was, at one point, was pretty awesome.  I can’t speak about him now, nor do I want to.  I’ve no desires to know him, at all.  The shit that happened in our relationship killed any desire to have anything to do with him on a personal level.  If we did not have a child together, I would never have anything to do with him, at all.  This recent ex, however.. Yeah.  I wanted a life with him.  However long either of us has left, considering our lives have led us in directions that have likely cut our probable lifespans a bit shorter.

And that is fucking scary as hell.

Wanting to spend your life with someone?  Especially when you have been single, living alone for 7 fucking years.  I wanted to meet his family..especially his grandmother.  The fact I won’t truly hurts.  Waking up to him, when it happened, was one of the best parts of my day.  Little things like cooking together, just watching a movie.. My hand on his chest was a feeling I’ve looked for my entire life and never thought I’d find – home.

It is an odd thing to find what you believed you never would, to fearfully embrace it, savor it, then lose it.. then try to re-learn how to live without it.  It is amazing the things we can learn to live with, positive or negative.  Which I am sure I have mentioned previously.

I sent him a text a few weeks back.  I told him, basically, the shittiest part about not believing in a god or afterlife is.. this, right here and now, is all we have.  There is no chance, after this, to “get it right”.  There is just now.  There is no Heaven to reunite in.. no next life to meet again.. no anything “after” to try again.  And I feel the past 20 months have been a waste.  That is not something I say lightly.  I do not call situations or relationships or experiences wastes, because we learn.  We live. We.. SOMETHING.  But what is there to learn here?  That I can survive?  heh.  I already knew that.  We can all survive anything we put our minds to.  And believe me, the past two months have been a motherfucking struggle, and then some.  I just fail to see what there is to learn… Congratulations on falling in love, finding someone you dream of at night, are willing to  mourn, love with all your heart, want to meet his family, would love to hear your kids call daddy..and could not work things out with.

Now is all we have.

The world is filled with so much hurt, despair, pain.  Why do we add to it purposefully, unnecessarily?  Especially, why do we add it to the lives of the people we profess to love?  Why do we add ourselves to someone else’s life, come in like a storm, and leave wreckage in our wake as we leave?  What purpose does that serve?  In the end, if we DO care, it only hurts everyone involved.

Okay, intellectually speaking, I get it.  We lash out to cover up the hurt we feel, blah blah whatever.  I guess this goes back to me rising above, being the better whatever.  I just don’t have the fucking energy to put in to being a total cunt to people I actually love.  There aren’t many people I genuinely care about a lot.  I don’t bond with many folks.  I never have.  I love fewer, and I fall in love with even fewer. Point in fact, this is the first time.  So, I just can’t put energy better spent in positive interactions in to purposeful negative interactions.  Yes, I do lash out.  We all do.  But I do not do it on purpose.  Even if I am goaded in to it, and succumb, I can feel it chipping away at..whatever spark I had in me.  Some people call it a soul, I don’t really give a fuck what it’s called.  You can call it whatever you want.

That part of me has me indelibly changed forever, and the spark that kept the flames going has been doused..and the smoke has cleared.

That is okay.  It has to be.  It has to be because that is my reality, and I have to find a new spark.  No, I have to make a new spark.  I’ve rebuilt myself from the ground up before.  Granted, I had that spark to go on.  Still, it will be okay.  I live for me and me alone.  I’ve never been one to live for my kids; what if they die?  So, I have to make a new spark.  I have to make me over, inside and out.

I have to know I am still okay, and the me I was is okay and even pretty awesome.

I have to not be tired of being strong.

I have to allow myself to break down and cry to a friend sometimes, like I did Wednesday night..whether it is i person or on the phone.

I have to allow myself to not be Superwoman and to say enough, and to be human.. not just to the man I’m in love with, but to the people who love me.

It would be so much easier if I could hate.  But I cannot.  I don’t do hate or jealousy, or fear.  I mean, I feel all of them briefly, but I allow none of them to stay longer than a breath’s length of time.  I have not, since I was a child.  Since I was semi-harassed into re-opening my Facebook account..and I DID ask for advice, to be fair..which is very very unlike me.. This has been on my profile several years, and it is still true:

I love with all my heart and hate with none of it.

Jealousy is a wasted emotion full of wasted time. So is fear.

I just don’t have that kind of time or energy.  I have to allow myself to break out in songs that remind me of him and let myself cry and fuck up the tone and keep singing.  I have to bust out in random songs like I did tonight while putting away the dishes and hit the pitch on nearly every note despite the lack of accompaniment.  Besides, Chris Cornell’s “When I’m Down” is a beautiful song, and has special meaning to me, no matter how much everything in me hurts right now.  Maybe I should record it.  Maybe not.  I used to joke if I ever got married again, I’d sing it to my husband at the reception,because I AM a dark sort, but when I love,it’s always there.. even when I am down.  And that is very true.  But since I am, apparently, going in to my every 7 year underground cicada “fuck you, love the Bitch Sisters of Fate” (that’s Lachesis, Atropos and Clotho, for you uneducated types), I might as well sing.

And sing I fucking shall.  Even if, especially when, it hurts.