"And every night I miss you I can just look up and know the stars are holding you tonight."

It's over.

She passed away early Father's Day morning.

It's a blessing. She's no longer in pain.

I keep thinking about Simba. Maybe because he was honestly the closest "person" I've ever lost, maybe because his diagnosis came not long after hers, maybe because I'm crazy. Who knows.

At any rate, I remember the worst days with him, before his rally. Watching him suffer, wondering why it had to be that way, but not having the strength to have him put down. I remember the nights I laid in bed crying and praying, "Please God, just let it be over."

I'm grateful she doesn't have to suffer any longer.

Today, the world is a darker place. I will learn to shine my light that much brighter to compensate. I believe I can do it, because she would have believed I could do it. She brought so much warmth and peace and joy to the people around her, just by being. I want to do that. I want to be that person.

Vicariosity.

My friend M told me she's living vicariously through me.

I laughed, but I guess I get it. I go on dates - hell, I get ASKED on dates. It's new and awesome for me too. I go on adventures, I drink, I suffer hilarious misfortunes and make hilarious mistakes. I dated a French guy, then went through the most absurdly romantic breakup ever. I had three guys profess varying degrees of love for me IN ONE DAY. Not gonna lie, my life has an awesomeness to it.

But M? M has a husband and two girls. Her oldest is shy, quiet - so much that if you can make her crack a smile it's like winning the lottery. Her youngest is five and hilarious in that way we forget how to be as we get older. She tells stories about horses on toilets and she can knock the wind out of you with a hug.

J has a husband a teen, and an almost-teen. They're beautiful and funny and melodramatic - red-headed chaos incarnate, x2. The oldest is dating now - every day is a potential roller coaster, where the highs are a joy to behold and the lows break your heart. The youngest isn't quite there yet, she's still random and wild and silly. She always has a comeback and it usually makes you laugh til you cry.

R's husband can play the dulcimer. Her oldest is a girl and she's teaching herself Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic. Her middle son can communicate with fireflies with a flashlight and wants a pickaxe in case a tornado traps the family in the basement. Her youngest made a jetpack for a stuffed hummingbird.

Who's living vicariously here?

I think I'm seeing this guy. He said life is over by the time you're 33, when you're married and you have kids. Now I see the appeal in drinking til 3 AM, sleeping half the day, doing whatever sounds good at the moment. But there's more to life than that.

Jailbreak.

I pride myself on my open, trusting heart. Despite the number of people who have tried their best to destroy the beauty at the heart of me, I keep on loving, keep on trusting. It feels like triumph.

It also sucks. Twice in the last month, someone I care very deeply for has all but withdrawn from my life. It's wearing on me. Break my heart. Crush me decisively. Don't fade away, leaving me with the hope that you'll someday return.

I live to connect with people. But lately it seems that the stronger the connection, the more likely they are to disconnect. Is it me? How am I getting in so deep when the other person can't possibly be, since they find it so easy to bail on me?

Or is my optimism correct? Are they simply cowards, not comfortable with connecting this deeply?

Memorial Day Lake-cation.

My folks invited me to the lake with them for the weekend.

That Guy drove us down on Friday night. The trip was nice; we laughed, talked, listened to music. We learned that fireflies keep glowing after they splatter into your windshield and we made a game of it. 14 total. He introduced me to Mindless Self-Indulgence and I didn't mean to like it but I think I did. Then we found a Gen-X radio. It played the best of the 80's and 90's and we sang along and it was exquisite. He hit it off with my folks as soon as we got there. I knew he would, they're good people and so is he. They went to bed not long after we got there and we did the same.

I was the last one up Saturday morning. They were drinking coffee and talking on the deck out back. Mom and I walked the dogs, marveling at the fancy lake houses and the beautiful scenery of Monkey Island. We came back and went to the store while the men made eggs, bacon, toast. We had breakfast on the deck, then ventured into nearby towns for sightseeing. There's an old motorcycle museum with a bunch of stuff from Evel Knievel and Steve McQueen. There was also a 1957 Ariel - I sent pictures to my sister. We stopped at a little Route 66 car museum, where the men went to look at cars and mom and I poured through old postcards looking for interesting messages - my own little PostSecret adventure, I guess. I found a couple decent ones, and the woman who runs the shop pointed me to her website, www.postcardsfromtheroad.net. Very cool. We took a tour of the Pensacola Dam - a lot of stairs, but very neat nonetheless. We went home, Dad grilled burders and dogs, and we played some cutthroat Dogopoly. I was the cat (of course) and I got the best properties and built two doghouses each. I also got a "Bad Dog" card that said "Big Bone Tax" and laughed til it hurt. We went to bed with the game unfinished, and I put my monies in my purse because you can't trust those men.

Sunday was the Best Day Ever. Mom and I walked the dogs while the boys made pancakes and the finest sausage I've ever eaten. Then we went out and rented a tri-toon boat on the lake for four hours. Mom and I laid on the loungers up front, drinking and soaking up sun, laughing with the wind in our hair while the guys did their thing. Gen-X radio was on and we hit a couple of fierce waves that damn near drowned us - one hit so high the water was rolling off the bimini top! After about two and a half hours we dropped anchor. To my surprise, the water was AMAZING, so mom and I strapped on life jackets and went for a dip until the sun made us thirsty. The four of us lounged, drank, Mom and I ate. At one point Dad warned me that I was looking a little pink in back, so The Guy rubbed sunscreen on my back. We all went for a quick dip before it was time to bring the boat back. On the return voyage, Mom said "Whoa!" and I had the foresight to throw a towel over my face before we got hammered with a wall of water so massive, Mom said she actually had to hold her breath. After we took the boat back, we stopped at a lakeside bar called Ozzie's that refused to serve me or Mom because neither of us brought our IDs. Oops. We went back home for some amazing pork tenderloin and corn on the cob, and by time dinner was over, Dad was pretty drunk in a hilarious way, and kept insisting that we go to the Road Hog, which is probably the nicest biker bar I've ever seen and has bras hanging from the ceiling. I promised I'd bring one next time. So we went. The Guy spilled his drink all over the table (a drink was spilled and it wasn't my fault!) and I kept feeding the jukebox, with occasional help from Dad or The Guy. Dad convinced them to tune one of the TVs to AMC so he could watch Breaking Bad with no audio. On the way home, I pretty much demanded we stop for ice cream. I scored a box of fudge bars and ate one on the way home. By then we were all pretty much ready for bed.

Sunday I woke up really feeling the full extent of my wicked sunburn. Pancakes and a fudge bar fro breakfast and we headed home. The car ride was quieter - I slept a while.

"I can't be pure again. But I can control who takes what from me." - Julia Scheeres

I'm six years old, home from California to visit Nana. Daniel is her nephew; he is sixteen and wonderful. I love his dark hair, his braces, the way he treats me like a real person and not a kid.
Nana has a rope swing hanging from the big tree out front. She had it made for me, and there are interchangeable oak seats - the small seat and the wide one where Nana and I sit and read books.
Daniel takes me out to swing. It's the small seat. I sit on his lap but I'm afraid I'll fall off when we swing backwards. He tells me it would be easier if I turn around, so we turn me around, but when I try to sit his lap is suddenly angular and uncomfortable. I try to squirm away, try to tell him that we need the wide seat, but I'm six and he's sixteen and he holds me still and I start to cry and he coos and comforts me like he did when I had a bad dream, but there is no escaping this.
I never tell. And I never use the swing again.

When a honey bee stings you, it releases pheromones that draw the swarm. Is it like that? Can a person be tainted, marked as prey? Or is it an internal process - when that part of you is stolen, does it leave you crippled in some discernible way, attracting predators the way blood in the water attracts a shark?

I'm eight the first time my stepfather comes to me, stumbling and reeking of marijuana. He's a bad man; I think he's come to kill me. I'm soon wishing he had. I'm too scared to move, to cry, to scream. Paralyzed, I think of the swing.
This time, I tell. It doesn't help. He keeps coming back. I stop telling.

I've been used so many times. I suppose I let them. I don't know how not to and I don't care, really; what's it to me if they use me or not? Even if I don't let them, the truth is that they still want to. I'm an intricate network of easily-exploited weaknesses. I'm holding out for someone who chooses not to exploit them. For all my bullshit tough-talk I really am romantic. It's not rescue I want but protection, the white knight who sees the beauty and goodness at the heart of me and wants to defend that from all who would sully it again.

Maybe I'm just bullshitting myself. Maybe I'm just imagining that there's still beauty and goodness at the heart of me. You know what they say - fool me twice, shame on me.

Clarity.

I keep having these sudden moments of clarity when I'm alone and usually not home. Something will catch me - the sunset silhouetting the trees, an errant leaf on the wind, the first star - and I'm struck by how bizarre and wonderful life is.
There's a typhoon of pain and joy inside me at any given moment. That's how I became Cataclysm - as my blog title says, I am a natural disaster unto myself. I put a lot of effort into keeping that destruction within. It's a part of me and I can't - and possibly wouldn't - change it, but it's not my way to willfully wreak havoc on the lives around me.
I'm getting a grip on one of the sources of pain in my life. It still hurts me, but I'm working towards it hurting for only the right reasons.
There's beauty in pain, if it's for the right reasons. Childbirth hurts like nobody's business, and it's one of the most beautiful events on earth.
Learning to love someone not just for who they are, but for their own sake and not for yours, is amazing.
Love hurts. But sometimes, it's a good hurt. (That was Incubus, for the record.)

The cake was a lie.

It's almost that time again.

I moved out of the house on April 4th of last year. Our would-be anniversary was June 8th.

This time last year I had three states of being: drunk, hungover, or waiting to get drunk.

I was both lonely and scared to be alone. I felt like a failure. And I was angry at him for blaming everything on me.

So I drank.

The anniversary was the worst. I saw it as a monument to all my sins. I remember killing a bottle of rum, deciding I wasn't drunk enough, and calling someone to take me to the liquor store. By time I was done, I couldn't even raise the glass to my lips, couldn't walk, couldn't function.

That was a MONDAY. Can you imagine how Tuesday felt?

I woke up and decided I was done fucking around.

I knew what I had to do.

I had to come clean to my big brother. About everything.

Of all the people in my life, Russ is the one I worry about disappointing. And the divorce was hard on him, both because it contradicted his beliefs and because he was close to both of us.

So I talked to him about everything. The divorce, the mistakes leading up to it. And somehow, that fixed everything.

So here I am, a year later.

Wedding: $1500
Moving to Kansas: $300
Getting an apartment: $700
Divorce: $174
Finally figuring out who I am: Priceless.