A Sort of Fairytale

     So one time I wrote this really emotionally driven (surprise) blog after Jake and I had a fight where I metaphorically likened my insecurities to walking a tight rope or jumping off a mountain or something really over used like that and he wrote back this really snotty comment like, "You're not on a mountain asshole you're on a curb. Stop being so dramatic," and I was like "I have all these feelings don't judge me!" and then I cried and he didn't and we stopped fighting probably because he was just hungry and mad that I'm a drama queen and we lived happily ever after, until today. Not like we aren't happy today, like we are still happy but that was only a few months ago, and we're going to live forever (so he says) so we have a lot of life to live.
     Anyway, in writing a Lifetime movie closing scene disguised as an email to Katie I realized something. I AM SO FUCKING DRAMATIC. I'm going to blame it on Disney movies, and Twilight, and that I have a menstrual cycle.
     I have been in a handful of really shitty relationships (shocker, I know, have you read any of this blog?), and I guess my naturally melodramatic personality took my whole life over so that even when this amazing man walked into my life and literally forcibly made me love him I was still like, "This can't be right. I am going to still write sad shit." And that made him upset, because he didn't do anything wrong. He's right.
     My idea about love is so skewed because of, I don't know, everything in the media, and in books, that I didn't realize that maybe we women are all still secretly waiting to be told we are really a princess and not a peasant and that our husband is a beast that is also a prince that will eventually save us from our shit lives if we just prove that we love him enough. PROVE THAT WE LOVE HIM ENOUGH. That's the key. That's what I've been doing. And this is where it got warped. I thought that since I had tried so hard to love my ex-whatevers and had been left that I a.) was doomed b.) was doing something completely wrong and c.) would be alone forever.
     So when Jake and I fought at the beginning of our relationship those old thoughts were still floating around in my mind and I convinced myself that he was just sick of me already. But really he was just sick of me feeling sorry for myself. Because he knows he loves me, and I know he loves me, and Oliver's mad that he loves me because he occasionally has to sleep in between us to remind Jake who was here first, and I didn't realize fully until just now that love is not at all what it looks like in the movies. Where a girl cries because she is so broken and the guy goes all Coldplay and is like, "I'll fix you."
     Love is when someone makes your bed in the morning because they know it makes you less neurotic. Love is when someone cooks a separate pan of scrambled eggs sans chorizo, then rolls his eyes at you about it because he knows you've never even tried chorizo and you just don't like it because it looks like meat paste. Love is when someone constantly badgers you about your addiction and says, "I'd have an intervention, but no one would show up except me," because the addiction is to Coca Cola and no one else cares about my sugar intake. It's when someone always texts you goodnight even if the day was rough, and still kisses you like he means it before you leave. Love is laying in an uncomfortable position all night because you are just so overwhelmed that this amazing man is in your bed, even if he is sleeping on top of all the covers and you're kind of freezing.

In short, love is real. It's not sparkly and glamorous and there's no Adele song playing in the background of every argument or make up or whatever. It's just someone who wants to hang out with you when you had a bad day, or a good day. Who wants you to be better than you are, but in a non-manipulative way.

I am pretty positive I found it guys. At least the kind I needed. And you know what, usually I'd worry. I do worry, but then I just remind myself that I'm on Prozac for a reason.
You know what? That's what love is. Someone who reminds you to take your Prozac. And drink more water.

Author's Note: Jake has never actually called me an asshole. Unless I deserved it.

Every once in a while I have these moments of calm. I am submerged in this deep blue tranquility I feel I can only achieve in sleep. For the last 6 years or so it hasn't come in slumber. It hasn't come often. It comes like the calm after a storm. This utter loss of control. This weight that cannot be lifted. It is most often a calm of resignation to my circumstances. But tonight, it is different.

I feel a smile playing at my lips. Even, here on this porch, where I have spent so many nights with dry salt streams on my cheeks, it feels like...well I can't say that I've ever felt this before. I can't describe it. There are simply no words, which scares me. The usual worries about the validity of this calm are still pushing their way through the Prozac. Screaming their high pitched warnings:
"Don't trust it."
"Don't hope"
"Don't be fooled"

But these days, these voices, these demons (if we're going to be Catholic about it) are held at bay. Because, the calm I feel today started to creep in when I let my gaze wander to those deep blue tranquil eyes. When, after putting up a fight, I stared my dreams square in the face and kissed them in the cold, on this porch, in this chair, where I've cried so many tears for so many who weren't worth them. In these blue eyes I feel safe, I feel calm, I feel a future again. These eyes are not glassy, glossed over like so many influenced by substance or that lacked it. These are not the eyes I've spent year writing about. These are not the eyes I thought I deserved to stare into, but with the new year, came this opportunity, this encapsulation of the dark corners of my heart. The secrets I started to keep even from myself, because they were too precious for even me to ruin.

This might not make sense. Or be the best thing I've written. My fingers are frozen. My lips are chapped. I cannot wrap my mind around all the things that make so much sense, and the things that are only making sense now that they've destroyed me.

I cannot wrap my mind around him. But I've accepted the fact that I must stop trying. I must stop trying and simply give in...

but we all knew I'd do that the first time he held my hand, didn't we?

Why not?

     I haven't blogged in a while. I haven't been creative in  a while. I haven't been able to wreck the internet with my virtual tears about non-consequential shit.
     I think this means things are ok.
     This isn't going to be a story. Or have a lesson. It's just going to be words. And maybe they'll make sense.
     Nashville does not, as I've made it seem, suck. It is beautiful. It is freeing. It is slowly being unravelled and, like the left-over Halloween Tootsie Pops that are surely rotting my teeth away, the best part is in the center. Finally, it feels like I'm in the center of something; surrounded by the most amazing people. I've spent a lot of time treating God like a coach who's constantly sitting me on the bench, but maybe I had to prove myself. Honestly, I think I was trying too hard to play for the wrong team.
     I thought the last year was supposed to be about starting over. Unfortunately, sometimes starting over means making out with your best friend, getting uninvited to a wedding, and then somehow in the mess unearthing these amazing people you couldn't see clearly through the haze. And at the risk of sounding totally cheesy, all of those people...are my angels. That was cheesy. I'd erase it, but then I'd have to re-read it and vomit.
     I don't necessarily know if those old friends are lost. I can't say I'm trying to salvage anything. I am content. I can say that for every mistake, and mistrusting step I made I learned something. Mostly that I'm a sucker for a sweet word. It's because I watch too many movies. I think now though, my eyes are clear, not clouded with the MTV quality drama that exists within the confines of whatever kind of family I'm the black sheep of.
    I think more than anything I am trying to resign to the fact that everything that I used to think was a big deal isn't. And every single drunken girls night, or pajama conversation is a big deal. That is happiness. That is family. That is love. And that is what makes everything ok. That is why I'm here.
     So bottom line, and an update for anyone that still checks this thing: I am living with two of the most amazing people in the world. And I will find a home, but for now I am safe. Oliver is happy and healthy and not a fat dog anymore. I feel fulfilled by everyone I hang out with. I miss my family every day. I answer their phone calls. I am happy most days. And when I'm not it usually only lasts one cigarette. I am over the things I needed to be over. I am ok.

I am ok.

Poem. Thought. Observation.

Poem: Written on my leg in the dark
A love that lasts, not lingers.
That is not simple.
That shakes you.
That doesn't knock you down,
but eases your unsteady feet off the ground

I want that. To be honest, the wanna-be princess inside every human doomed to live a life constantly derailed with estrogen emotions wants that.

Someone to give a shit.

Magic 8

     I think we're constantly searching for answers that don't exist yet. That has to be why there's a Magic 8 Ball online. So at the push of a button we can see some predetermined answer, and if we don't like it, we push again.
     We push too hard sometimes. We push so we don't fall apart. We push the pieces we want to fit into puzzles they weren't meant for. We push through. We push for. We push ourselves around. We are so consumed with the end, the goal, that we lose sight of all the beautiful things quietly residing in the deepest places of our hearts. Wrapped safely in memories of cigarettes, swimming pools, dry heat.
     Some things that are old are dissolving. Some things that are old are going through a metamorphosis we could have predicted had we been paying more attention. And they will grow, they will turn into things more real than we have known. They will be tangible.
     We will be patient.
     We will submerge ourselves, or perhaps test the water with our fingertips. We'll feel the heat on our faces slowly warm the chill in our hearts.
     And it will all be ok.