Category: Life in general

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Entertainment Life in general

7500 Miles

One of the people I’ve reconnected with recently is my beloved cousin Nicholas, who is currently serving a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

We’ve been through a lot together, Nick and I.  He’s definitely someone I’d want to have in my life even if we weren’t related and didn’t have dozens of blackmail-worthy stories to tell about each other.

Nick is a music lover, through and through, and has even played me a song or two on his guitar whenever we’ve gotten together, without me having to twist his arm too very hard.  When I confessed that I only just came into possession of an ipod, he  stepped up to the plate to help me fill it.

And by the way – that is exactly the reason I haven’t bothered to get an ipod until now.  Choosing songs seems like a daunting task, especially for someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to browse through the millions available on itunes.

Each day, Nick sends me the lyrics to a song, I read it, YouTube it, and if I like it, I buy it from itunes and download it to my ipod.  Sounds complicated, I know, but it’s really not.

Let me just say, this is an amazing way to discover music.

For the most part, he sends me songs I’ve never heard, which makes the lyrics read like amazing poetry.  Some of the songs can make me cry or laugh or say, “Fuck yeah!” before I’ve ever even heard the words set to music.

And then once I do hear the songs, I feel like I appreciate them in a way I wouldn’t have, otherwise.  Especially since Nick and I have very different tastes in music.  Or at least we did, before he started schooling me on the art of “real” music.  Although, to this I say: Whatever, dude!  Top 40 is music whether you like it or not!

I’m so glad Kellydropped an ipod in my lap, and that I’m filling it in such a unique way.  And I love that even though Nick and I are 7500 miles apart, he can still brighten my day with music.

So tell me: Are there any songs y’all think are an absolute must for my music library?  Help a girl out!

Categories
Guest Posts Life in general

Want/Need

I would rather be wanted, than needed.

Neediness reeks of desperation, loss of control, weakness.

That is not what I want to see in your eyes when you look at me.

Don’t need me. 

Your need is the suffocating heat weighing heavily on my chest in the middle of a barren desert.

Your need is a small and dark place that leaves me scrambling…

          for the open sky,

               for a cool breeze in my hair,

                    for pavement passing swiftly beneath my feet.

Don’t imprison me with your need… hands grasping, voice begging.

Don’t need me. 

Want me.

Want me for who I am…

Not what I am to you. 

Not for what you think you need me to be.

Let me walk away….

     and revel in the joy you will feel if I choose to return.

*** Originally published as a guest post at Princess Prose ***

Categories
Life in general Surviving

Sweet Darkness

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in….

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

You never know where you might find someone, or something, that fits just right.  If you’re not paying attention you might pass them by, never even realizing how close you came.

There are some people who just make a significant impact on your life, simply by being in it, and those people can bring you alive without even trying.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about who those people are, for me, and about the fact that I’m in contact with so few of them.

It’s interesting, to think about the ways in which they were eliminated.  It makes me angry to remember the way he would get jealous when I gave someone else my attention, and how he tried his best to squash whatever happiness those relationships brought me.  He always wore me down to the point that the effort it took to keep those people in my life wasn’t worth the battle. 

What kind of person does that to someone they love?  It’s hard to get my head around that.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been trying to mend some of those broken friendships and so far, so good.  It’s amazing how, no matter how much time has passed, with some people you just feel completely at home.

I have been isolated for long enough.  I want to surround myself with those who help bring me alive, who appreciate me as I am, and I’m so lucky to know that there are people like that out there.

Even in darkness, there is always light. 
Categories
Entertainment Life in general Motherhood and Pregnancy

The Real Mommy

Standing on line at the grocery store today, I saw this:

I have no idea what the article inside says, but the headline, “Who’s the Real Mommy?” is enough.  I don’t read that particular magazine, so maybe their goal is to offend people buying groceries all across the nation.  If so, goal accomplished, National Enquirer.  Kudos.

In my twenties, I was an ovum donor for two couples who had exhausted all other possibilities to have children, short of adoption.  The road they traveled to get to that place – where they needed my donated eggs – was long and difficult, not to mention expensive.  And even with my help, there was no guarantee that the embryos, implanted via IVF, would result in successful pregnancies or, eventually, the births of babies they had spent years trying to conceive.

I saw that magazine and immediately thought of those two women, now mothers of children they carried inside their wombs and have nurtured and mothered and loved, for so many years, and it hurt me – deeply hurt me – to imagine them standing on line at their own grocery stores and being smacked in the face by such a horrid headline.

“Who’s the Real Mommy?”

To suggest that I am the “Real Mommy” of those children is beyond my comprehension.  I did the injections, grew the eggs, and went through extraction, but the moment they left my body they were no longer mine.  The children they came to be contain my DNA, my genetics, and may even look like me, but I am not their “Real Mommy”.  I never have been, and I never will be.

Their Real Mommy is the one who wanted them so badly that she went to the ends of the Earth to have them.  Their Real Mommy is the one that went through years of disappointment and was finally able to carry them, birth them, and love them in a way that only she could.  Their Real Mommy is the one who held them in the first moments of life, who looked at their little newborn faces and knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they were hers – not mine.

Their Real Mommy is the one who cried tears of joy as she rocked them to sleep in those first few months, nursed them through countless illnesses and kissed their first skinned knees.  Their Real Mommy brings cupcakes to school on their birthdays and reads their favorites stories a thousand times.  Their Real Mommy knows how to make them laugh, dries their tears, tucks them into bed at night, and loves them to the moon and back, because they are hers – not mine. 

I can foolishly hope that neither of those women will go to the grocery store this week.  Unfortunately, though, even without the idiot media publishing hurtful headlines, I know those women – those mothers –  have dealt with plenty of ignorant people who have that kind of attitude.  I deal with them, too – the people who think I’m crazy for giving away “my” children.  But they’re not my children. 

And they are the greatest gifts I have ever given.

Categories
Life in general Surviving

On Rage

The interesting thing about simmering rage is that eventually, it will pop and splatter like bacon grease in a cast iron skillet. 

One should never cook bacon whilst naked, for that very reason.  You never know where that hot, explosive rage is going to land, and heaven forbid it scald your nethers.

As a child, I was consumed by rage and I don’t even know why.

I had a happy childhood.  Great parents.  Funny sister.  Cutest dog, ever.  Together we traveled the globe, in search of adventure.

So where did it come from, that rage?  I still don’t know.

It was just this thing, this animal that lived inside my veins and had to make itself known.  It had to scratch and claw and maim to satisfy its thirst for blood.

When I was a teenager I learned how to manage that shit.  Because, holy mother of god, I was a handful, even to myself.

Lately that random, bacon-grease splattering rage has been popping up unexpectedly, leaving me whispering to myself like a lunatic, “What the fuck, Dre?”.

I’ve got this anger, see?  And sometimes it feels like it’s eating me alive.  I’m pissed the fuck off.  But I can’t just let it explode, because I’m a responsible adult with impressionable children and also a conscience and a shitload of empathy.

So I’m back to lifting weights.  I didn’t realize how much of a release that was until I hadn’t been doing it for a few weeks. 

It feels good.  I feel good.  My abs feel good.  And also my ass, although you’ll have to take my word for it.  I’ll post some pictures, soon.

Fortunately, I find myself wanting to yell, “FUCK YOU!” at people a lot less often.  Also good.

Although. 

I really would like to scream “Fuck You!” at someone, at some point in my life.  And possibly punch them in the face afterward. 

I’ll put that on my bucket list.