Woebegotten memories, paving the road behind me

"You can't dwell on it Louise."

"I know, Boy. But I can't get rid of it either."

Sometimes I feel like I should affix a Vaccumm cleaner to my tail, and wiggle as I walk to be sure to leave no trace of where I've been. If I can't see it, maybe it doesn't exist. If I never had anything to look back on, maybe these nightmares would subside and I could have a clearer view of what I wanted to see ahead of me.

WARNING: The rest of this post is me. Just me. No Young John. No Benny. No lies. No vague, veiled or poetic musings. Just me.

I remember the night you threw your fist through the wall, and the day you blamed me for it. I was so frightened. Frightened of you, frightened of the mistakes I had made, frightened of what tomorrow meant. If I woke up tomorrow, it would only be worse. It would only make you more real and me more hateful of myself. What had I become?

Just a year before, I was a young, stupid, innocent girl. Struggling with my self-image, I was muddling through ok. Just ok. I worked hard and regretted not partying harder. I loved hard and regretted actualizing my dreams so early. Why hadn't I stayed Innocent? Why hadn't I pretended to understand adult relationships in that simple way we do before our youth is compromised?

Now, here I was, sitting in the bathroom, watching your face turn red and hearing the sounds of fury flying from your strong hands. It was easy to displace myself and forget the things you had said before and the wrongs you had already done, but now... Now you were busting up your own bathroom and swinging a piece of trim over my head like a banshee. Now you were smashing my watch, sending my rings flying into the sink.

Now, shit was real.

Not long after, I had packed my bags and set them at the door. You had left at eleven, quite literally howling at the moon. No answers. No reason. No one would explain to me what was wrong with my new husband. Why he preferred to disregard me. I had gone for a four a.m. run in the foggy river town in pitch blackness. I was so foolish to think I could find you in the dark. I was so foolish to think I wanted to find you. When I saw your car in the drive at the local bar, I was so foolish not to march right in and tell you to go to hell. To pack YOUR bags.

When you did come home that morning, you were furious at me. I don't even remember why. I do remembering imagining what it would feel like to jump in the river and float on down stream. Would it hurt to just stop breathing? Would it hurt to just keep running? In the dark? In my flip-flops? Without you? Why wouldn't you see why you hurt me?

All I had wanted was an explanation. A rational response for one god damned minute. Instead you went out with god knows who and did god knows what and then yelled at me for asking questions of you. For fearing you. For fearing myself, slipping fast down a slope headed in on direction: the death. The death of me, of my heart.


I will never know more truly than I did then what it is to lose your senses.Too consumed with the ever slowing and tired sounding thump of my heart, I forgot to pray. I forgot to listen. I forgot to see.

To pray for God's will and deliverance, even though I had sinned in marrying you in the first place.

To listen to His answers, answers that came pouring in from the Holy spirit, my friends and my family calling me to home and to safety.

To see the path before me straying from what I had wanted all along.

The goal quietly pushed aside, I lost all frame of reference. I married you because you said you loved Christ. Because you said you would protect me. Because you said you would love me. The moment I heard you say I do, I looked into your crystal blue eyes and realized I had married a dangerous, unfeeling serpent of Satan. I realized your grip on me would tighten and squeeze and pull at every nook and cranny, every crack and crevice of my heart until it burst, until I disappeared, until you won.

Why can't I get you out of my head?

Because you owned it in that brief fiery storm of my youth.

But I am a Phoenix.
Strong.
Proud.
Rebuilt.

Pummellos, Lilikoi, and Star fruit.

She smiled over at him while she pushed the cart through the crowded grocery store.

"Young, I don't know."

"But Benny if you don't know who does?"

A quiet, mousy man leaned in over her shoulder and nearly inaudibly whispered, "Have you ever tried one?"

She didn't know if she answered aloud or if he read her mind that no, indeed she hadn't. Young noticed him, making his strange floating presence much more concrete than she had felt.

"I thought maybe you would know what they tasted like, " the man half repeated, half stammered a response.

"No, she's mostly useless. I tried asking her that when she insisted she had to have one and her answer was 'I don't know, they just look fun'" Young winked playfully at her and the man nodded in response, fondling the fruit Benny left behind.

Benny smiled, embarrassed as usual by Young's preference for her. His gaze always fell on her, bringing a flush to her cheek and, inevitably a twinkle to her eye, even while buying citrus at the grocery store.

She shook her head as he moved through the crowd toward the rainbow chard and thought, "I would rather be buying produce with Young John than be making love to Romeo, or sailing with Blackbeard, or flying with Peter Pan."

Benny, since when are you so fanciful?

A Life in Parts.

There are a few things that I have left out.

Nay- that I have even lied to you about my faithful followers.

Please allow me to apologize. I didn't realize until just now that my omission or disguising of the truth may have hurt you. Or that my telling of the truth may have bought you some peace- an inward peace of knowing that I am ok, an outward peace in knowing that those of you out there who know my pain are not alone in your decisions or needful prayers.

I still do not possess the strength or the peace of heart to tell you everything, but I hope that, in a few installments, I may tell you as much of my heartache that you should care to read. I hope also that you will learn from me. That you will learn to comfort and deal with the lost ones. That you who are lost will feel less alone and maybe even invest some hope in my success. That you who have been where I am now may share your strength with me and help me further my progression. That maybe you too will share your story with bravery to someone who is in need.

I will begin by telling you who know and you who do not know that I lost my virginity before I was married. It broke my heart and my spirit and began my descent into one of the most bizarre and frightening times in my life. I no longer carry the same shame with me that I initially felt, nor do i bear the same irritation at my ignorance. I have seen why I made my choices and were the lead.

This was a trauma to me because my chastity was something I valued highly. When Mr. Hamster loved me as much as I loved him, we joked that our relationship would not be consummated until long after our wedding day because, well, in short, sex is a huge commitment. The breaking of blood in something no one should take lightly. Speaking frankly as a lady, it hurts like hell, too. And there is a reason for that. But, regardless of how I felt, I gave in to the serpent in my ear and gave up my only chance to start from the beginning.

I didn't know why I did it. And it was a horrible experience. It was with a man twelve years my senior at a time when my life was consumed in doubt. I wanted to be loved. I knew he would never love me. I wanted to be held. I knew he wasn't the type to hold. I came to the odd conclusion that it was time. That I should let go of my childhood fantasies of meeting the right man, falling in love, getting married and sharing that first moment together. Besides, no man is a virgin when he is married, so why should I have taken my purity any more seriously?

Something that made my decision even more difficult was that everyone thought I was unchaste to begin with. I suppose because I wear my shirts a little low cut, my skirts a little high cut, I laugh loud and long and I wink freely, I must be a whore. And besides, the only man I had ever loved truly to this point thought I was a whore, so why bother? Why save myself when you were the only one i wanted and you were never going to smile on me again? Your peace was never going to be in my heart? Your hand never upon my shoulder as you examined and corrected my work with loving assurance? You were no longer my truth, Mr. Hamster. And I was already broken.

I'm not blaming him. I made all of my own decisions. I am merely explaining them to you and myself.

So I gave it up. I died a tiny bit in my soul. I cautiously approached the funeral pyre, laid down my pride and my chastity upon it and with my own hands, lit a fire that could only be seen by it's charred mark on my heart and memory.

Looking back, it was a foolish misstep that I could have easily prevented. Had i stop and listened to the Peace of God whispering my ear, I could have found the strength to walk away.

More accurately, had I stopped listening to my foolish pride and envy, I could have resisted the temptation.

I made a choice to forge ahead. Against God's Will. Against my love for myself. Against the things I knew to be true about my friends who had made the same choice.

In the end, it hurt more than words can describe, he disrespected my gift and my body more than I thought possible, and I made a hundred more missteps that- had I abstained, had I resisted- would have never occurred.

Then maybe you would see an unbroken heart here before you.

This was only my first mistake. Allow me to revive my memory from it's weeping, and I shall give you more of my soul later.

What makes a girl do the dirty deed...

I have recently caught myself thinking about sex more and more. It is no secret to you faithful reader that I have long since struggled with my id based, sinful, sexual desires and their balance in my life. I also struggle with the "right" kind of sex and sexual expression.

After reading this enlightening article from (of all places) AOL news, I realize that, as a nation, we struggle with sex daily as well. Sex sells and it sells easily. If we Americans have no way to sell, we have no economy. And we're all worried about that, even if those among us never give a second thought to sex.

But here's something new you have never known about me: I have considered how easy it must be to sell yourself. And I have often considered mine to be of a temperament that could sustain periodic detachment of the mind and soul from the body long enough to supply carnal favors to someone I barely knew to upwards of $200 an hour.

Terrible, you think? Disgusted with me, are you? Well I have a question for you.

Am I terrible, or is the man who made me feel like my sex was a commodity a monster?

Am I disgusting, or was the woman who set the price before me tempting me with her success and my failure?

I have given my love away for free for years. I have kissed without being kissed, I have loved without being loved, I have wasted my affections, flirtations, and desires on unwilling and uninterested men and, sometimes, at prostitution or the profession of "call girl," I think, wouldn't it be ideal to have men seek ME for companionship? Forget the fact that they would be paying me, they would seek me to satisfy them.

Many men who do use prostitutes don't do it just for the sex. Sometimes, it is simply about being with someone who will not judge you. Someone who, for an hour or two, feels obliged to indulge you.

I would never be a sex slave. But I see how those women who chose to be could.

But aren't I already a sex slave? Haven't I already chosen my clothes and perfume based on that which makes you look at me? Haven't I already learned to push out my chest sit up straight and catch your wandering glance? Don't I sigh in your ear and tell you my deepest darkest desires in order to get you to hold me and love me and stop judging me even for a moment? Isn't this what the media, you men, and the women before me told me is necessary for survival?

I know I may seem unconventional for admitting this out loud. But I just didn't see any point to making those of you out there feel like you're alone.

The weight of the sin of desire is one too heavy to bear alone, so for you I have given a piece of my soul. Judge me if you will, but know that I know your secrets for they are mine too.

Things that must be remembered, no matter how painful

Propped along the side of her tiny house was a wobbly ladder she didn't even like to use to clean the pantry, let alone painting (something she'd never done) her own house (something she'd never had) all by her lonesome (something she never wanted.)

As she sured the feet of the ladder in the soft heather below, she prepared herself mentally for the ascension, breathed deeply and calmly, and thinking about Ponies, Rainbows and other paraphernalia of pleasantries.

Climbing slowly, with her wet paintbrush in her back pocket and her pail in her left hand, the white knuckles of her right hand gave her away. First step, then the next, all five mounted one by one until she was sure she couldn't look down. Then she tilted her body in the most awkward fashion, in order, she thought to steady herself, remove the paint brush and begin her task.

To her suprise, the time passed quickly and soon she had succeeded in painting a good portion of the upper half of her tiny rancher. When she thought she would faint for exhaustion and repressed fear, she decided to finish with the current paint in her small container and call it a morning, resigned to doing something she actually liked, such as tending the garden, feeding the animals, or folding the laundry. She, so absorbed in the task at hand, barely took notice to her changing surroundings. A noise starttled her out of a workful coma. Now, more alert than she wanted to be at such a great height, she surveyed the ground below. No movement or further noise answered her search, so she continued.

Then, she felt her rickety ladder rattle at a push. Dropping the paint brush and taking care not to throw the paint in a panic, she grasped the side of the house and hugged her body close to the ladder. Hearing a snicker, she dared to look down again.

"Steady Ben, I won't drop you," Laughing, he shook the ladder again, this time, much more violently.

"DR, please, you know how scared I am up here. Let me down, please..." Her voice trailed off. For a moment, she forgot who he was and almost felt relieved that a cougar or bear hadn't been shaking her post.

"Ben, trust me," another violent shake. Another maniacle laugh. Benny had nothing left to hold on to, her stability lost, she began to retract her step from the top of the ladder.

Missing the third step, she hit the ground with a brutal thud and felt her stomach leep, her heart sink and worst of all her ankle snap.

"Ben, I told you to trust me, now look what you've done..." DR motioned to the paint she dropped, and the smudge she left on the upper portion she had just finished painting, "Don't you know how much that paint cost me?"

Tears being worthless, she hobbled inside to lick her wounds, and sulk in her own secret misery. A secret, because no one can hear you cry if they don't believe you're human.