A couple of weeks ago, I took the huge step of meeting a wonderful friend for drinks and appetizers. In a restaurant. With other humans. It was both nerve-wracking and awesome, the first time I had been in a restaurant in more than a year and a half. But that’s not the point of this …
It’s my birthday. Forty-two. Historically, my birthday has sucked. Actually, all my life, though I have realized that the more recent sucking has kinda been my own fault. History lesson: I don’t remember much about my early birthdays, except they were big family events until we moved away from everyone when I was six. My …
I was mature for my age. Everyone said so. I regularly babysat for quite a few families in our church, including two families that each had six kids, and I took care of a one-year-old down the street two full days a week while her mother worked. Being homeschooled, I was available during the day, …
I came across this personal essay that I wrote almost 23 years ago. I sent it to my mother during my first semester of college (the first time around) and my father came across it while cleaning out their house and brought it to me last year. I’ve edited and condensed, but I have left …
When you start a journey through your messed up psyche, you have to be prepared to stumble on some ugly truths about yourself. Or maybe not so much stumble upon as be smacked in the face by a baseball bat of truth. Gobsmacked, perhaps. Though that makes it seem more comical and less brutally painful. …
I need time. I need space. I need a continuum, all to myself. Everyone is too loud, too needy, too big, too everything. I feel like I’m shrinking. I need more me. I feel like I haven’t been myself all week. How sad is that: I can only be me once in a while for …
The topic of this post has been a long time coming. Just about my entire conscious life, in fact. And the events of the post took place nearly two weeks ago, but I needed some time and space to think it through. I know that this is not “The Answer” to all my problems, the …
Our sense of smell is a curious thing. Forming powerful connections to our memories, scent turns us into time travellers. One whiff of an old familiar odor and off we go to another time and place, sometimes wonderful and comforting, like the scent of pipe smoke taking me to see my long dead maternal grandfather, …
First of all, I in no way whatsoever intend to hurt, offend, demean, dismiss, or disrespect anyone who has been in an abusive relationship of any kind. I’m not making light of abuse, at all. I am examining the ways I treat myself in an effort to be a healthier person. This is my lived …
My apologies for the stream-of-consciousness nature of this post. I have tried to rework it, but it resists. My thoughts are a tumbling jumble of crap that I need to sift through. This makes no sense. So if I continue the thinking of my previous post: I need to matter, and I only matter if …