Mundane

I've realized, like my heart and soul, my blogs are random, they veer from the extremes of insanity to the mundane of life. I chitter about boys and then dream of technicolour death in the same day. I talk about roses and puppies and blood leaking from my skin. OK, I don't really talk about roses and puppies, usually just bad sex and random experiences that plague my soul.

It's the theatre of the macabre, Sex in the City amalgamated with the Rocky Horror Picture Show bundled up into an inocous package that is me. It's unfair that I look so inocous, like the librarian that by dark is the sexed up tart, I look ordinary, you would never know that I surf porn and dream of oral sex, that if could, I would kick every single pretentious school mum in the ass, that yes, I do want to run you over in my car, and have meaningless affairs with your husbands to occupy my mind. I hate smiling at you over de rigeur conversation over the weather and nodding pleasantly about your lauded volunteer work to turn our children into model citizens driving SUVs and coveting lake houses and second homes. I am sure your husband is having an affair but as long as you have your million dollar home, your daily trainer and Botox you should be fine. I think you're pathetic and myself pathetic for living in your world.

Truth is, I should have been a man. I have commitment issues, neediness makes my skin crawl. No, I don't feel the need to call you when I am away and I don't care what you're doing unless it's titillating. I like to be alone, and I'm selfish, I want you when I do, and when I do you better be on, and if I don't, be gone. I don't crave and covet, unless it's food or a great dress. I like fun and games, I don't want to pontificate on marriage. The big white dress and the Cinderella fairytale (unless he's a sugar daddy) nauseating. Give me a bikini, a beach, tequila, a party and an airplane to an unknown locale where I can find culture and life outside of marketed perfection.

I wonder as I walk down the street whether people can hear the ruminations of my mind, that i feel like a deer in headlights constantly in heat of some form. That I shop savagely for release, that I mingle amongst them for escape, that I'm scared to go home, that work is impossible, and life strangling.

I have a perfect Christmas tree, in my perfect house, on my perfect couch, with my perfect cat, and my perfect car outside. I also have the perfect tan, the perfect look and the perfect job. I am perfectly filled with shit.

I have to go to my perfect life now, so i bid you adieu till later.

Bitch

I'm on vacation, I haven't left the hotel room in 3 days, I traveled across the country to vacation in self angst, frolick in the surf of depression while sipping sugar rimmed margaritas. At least I wasn't cliche enough to cry into my drinks, instead I lay on the ground wondering how it could come to pass that, 3 days later, I was still in my pyjamas, laying on the ground when there was a bed, watching reality show re-runs on my laptop and serial cop shows on TV simultaneously and haphazardly attempting to do sit ups to somehow feel like I was worshipping my temple of a body in this time of need.

I am not sure how others handle angst but mine is a roiling hotpot of contradictions. I am not sure hotpots actually roil but being so amazingly muddled as I am it was probably the bargain basement model that got recalled for roiling.

What is there to say? That life feels so much better confined to 600 square feet at the Four Seasons with Mariska Hargitay as my constant companion in the quest for serial rapists while chewing on room service tuna tataki and drinking $5 Fiji water.

I was in a relationship with a wonderful man, who, against my will, is patiently waiting in the wings. It's been approximately 3 years together, 2 since he asked to move in and 1 since I have started to splinter. I have a fabulous job that would make you green with envy and I travel to exotic destinations that require bikinis and stilettos in the name of work. I also have 2 adorable, charming, well-mannered children who think I walk on water and I drive a Lexus and live in a 3000 sq ft home in the most coveted area of town. I also have a country club membership and I'm skinny with a great shoe and clothing wardrobe. Go ahead, say it, I hate you bitch.

To top it off, how many people vacation angst at the Four Seasons? Can I be the epitome of pathetic? How many people fly first class, take off for a week, say bye bye to life so they can wallow in 5 star self pity?

The one silver lining of all this is I lost 5 pounds and bought a pair of fuck me heels. That should fare me well now that I have no relationship, have sold my house, am quitting my job and am trolling kayak.com for escape hatches from my self inflicted suburbia of perfection.

Who the hell is this bitch, you may ask yourself, as I do numerous times a day.

The song that comes to mind is Bitch, apropos. Loosely and with much liberty it goes, I hate the world today, it's so good to me but I can't change. I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I'm bitch, I'm a tease, I'm a goddess on my knees... I'm your angel undercover. I'm your hell I'm your dream and I'm nothing in between.

I may be giving myself too much credit for the goddess on my knees but it made me feel better so suck it up, how's that for sexual entendre?

My insides hurt, not a physical pain but a pain of indecision and guilt, guilt that sits so heavy it presses the air out of my lungs and my cage wants to crack from the pressure.

I am depressed, my world is splintering, slowly the veneer peeling strip by slow strip exposing truth, the honest truth, the truth I want to hide, run from. The life is sucked out of me, the hamster wheel turning, the light gone, the cage well nested but a cage nonetheless.
I am trapped, again, in someone else's dream, someone else's Pleasantville that I tried so hard to create, mold, perfect, sealed myself into the pinata with the pretty candies and toys I never wanted.

Everything is so heavy, breath is heavy, movement laborious, walking within a dream, not touching or feeling, life circling me in slow motion. I want it all gone, I don't want the toys, the sweets, the life, I want my independence back, my right to choose, to do what I want, to run, to play, to hide with thought to no one but myself.

Shackled.

I tasted freedom, brief and sweet, and one tiny drop turned into a ripple, to a swell, to a wave, an insurmountable wave that will wash clean my path and drown anything in its way. I can't stop it, I don't know if I want to, I should, I cannot. The guilt eats me.

Dalliances

I kissed a man yesterday, a man that wasn't my partner. I met him on a plane 2 weeks ago, we never spoke on our flite, sitting side by side in first class, it was not till the last 5 minutes off the flite and no more than 30 minutes in the airport together that we looked and spoke to one another yet the attraction was palpable, just writing this I can feel myself flushing, remembering the feeling. It wasn't a crazy in love madness, it was a pull of two people that knew they would enjoy time together. And I did, I did resist, I wanted to walk away after we sat on the hard plastic chairs and laughed in the airport, trading barbs and the sensations of 2 people knowing. I could have watched him walk onto his plane, we could have kissed after those 30 minutes and never looked back, but I didn't, he didn't, we traded Facebook aliases.

As far as I know, he had no reason to walk away, I never gave him any doubt that I wasn't single, he never asked, I never asked, why did we? We were 2 strangers off a plane. He's tall, charming, handsome in that boyish way, slim, funny and caustic, eyes that twinkled, we could flirt all day, I'm 41, he's 40, we're not kids, and we're not stupid, we're both professionals. I've been married, I have children, I know insanity, but I also know feelings.

So it went from a casual encounter to trading a few sentences everyday, him convincing me to come visit and myself for him to come see my world. I kept telling myself I was inviting him to introduce him to a friend. I was on a work trip in Hawaii, he was on holidays, we were on 2 separate islands, separated by a 30 minutes on a plane. It was light, it was fun, it gave me smile to see my Inbox flash his messages.

He never came to see me and I didn't go see him, but for a week we jockeyed on-line, both knowing we were dueling attractions. He went home and I was slated to fly back home through his city, with an overnite. Right there danger sat, throbbing at me silently from my itinerary as each day drew near. We both played the game, ebbing and flowing like the tide, at times giving at times drawing back. We never spoke, we emailed, we texted, and I continued to lie to myself that I didn't truly enjoy the banter, just a nice guy I met on a plane. We settled on breakfast, or I convinced myself nothing could come of breakfast, that inocuous time of day where nothing happens. We would have breakfast, we would say good bye and I would leave, safely.

He was everything I remembered him to be, and I cursed myself inwardly. Breakfast was fun, it was comfortable, that invisible string was there, tugging, niggling. It was my bad, I didn't want it to end, I selfishly wanted more time, more laughs, more energy and when I should have said good bye, I didn't.

He took me around, we toured the city, took pictures, enjoyed the sites. I know for me, it wasn't the city, it was the company. Anything can be fun when your energies are high and mine was high. He is a really nice man and it seemed we had a lot that we similarly enjoyed and liked conversation never stilted and attraction only grew. I had kicked myself internally so many times my kidneys were bruised but I was there for the ride and no turning back.

The day had to end, my flite was leaving, we had lunch, a couple of drinks and all I wanted to do was touch him, hold his hand, feel the chemistry be tangible, but we walked with the invisible string pulled tight between us. We pulled up to departures and I knew the kiss was inevitable, I wanted it, would he kiss me? Could I avoid it though I wanted to feel the sensation, find out whether this was real. I pretended to gather my things, dragging my time getting out, knowing once I looked up and we had to say good bye I wouldn't be strong enough to look him in the eye and say no, lie to myself again.

The good bye never left my lips, what should have been a hug were lips meeting, softly, gently, questioningly and hesitant. His hands lay on my hips and the warmth of this still burns in my mind. I don't remember anything but the feel of lips and his hands. It was 5 seconds that was eternity, my body wanted to lay against his and kiss him again, my instinct told me I would never leave. I looked into his eyes, the closest we had ever been, the line crossed and I said good bye.

Posessed

The world starts to slow, movements seems arduously long, moments interminably stretched, thoughts sluggish, limbs moving in slow motion, actions swirl around me, a vortex of happenings outside my reach, I'm stuck in half time, unable to concentrate, unable to move. And then the possession begins, the air breathes differently in my lungs, fluid sensations permeate up my skin, eyes go hollow, sight without sight, words swim and drown in my head, sentences hang unheard, comprehension hard, the mind losing touch, my body a shell. Almost possessed, it feels like my breathe becomes another, my mind pollutes with foreign thoughts, as if someone is ripping and crawling through the membrane of my mind, gripping and tearing the edges to crawl its oily, wet form out into being, coming form within me, to become me, draping like mucus, hot and slimed, its force leaching into my subconscious like blood absorbing into soil, filling me, blood mingling into one, breath taken as one.

I become but a conduit to reality, the puppet not holding the strings, my mouth moves, my brain thinks, my limbs act, but not of my accord, I cant stop them, it all seems so far away, and I reach to bring them back but its so far, yet so near, I can see me, I can feel me, but I cant touch me, screaming silent screams from a glass room, no one can hear me, but they all see me.

I watch, feel, see myself think, vivid images, palpably real, willing me to believe. My hands closing over the handle, gripping steel, cold, shocking, welcoming, strength in the power, relief in the feeling. I point the blade, tip pressing against my breast bone and I plunge, deep, feeling so real the blade piercing through skin and heart, cleaving open my chest, sinking deep, freeing, painful and relieving. But this is not real, it seems so teasingly real, I can imagine each sense, every pain, feel the gut of the knife deep in my soul. How much it wants me to move, to go, to do, make this our reality, deeper it sinks into me, flesh becomes one, how easy I can feel the slices on my arm, skin separating for blood to flow, rivulets of warmth, thin, cold blade, cleanly on soft hot skin, the image erotic, stirring me, my blood absorbing into soil, re-joining mother earth, so sensuous, thrilling, how I long to hurt, how I want to be destroyed to feel the orgasm held before me.

Inside the walls I struggle to discern the truth, I know all this to be wrong, the addict tempted by the drug, just once more. I try and breath, struggle, struggle to come out, to see, tears, how it possesses me, fitting uncomfortably into my skin, my discomfort intolerable, I cant take it off, my body burns, my mind parched, throbbing and aching, beating against my skull, swollen with poison, retching. I wish I could burn, scrape the skin of my bones, I writhe, I beat, I cry, make it go away, a child’s cry so tiny in wake of such magnitude.

Like magic, a simple pill, a swallow, a flow of water extinguishing the burn, melting the ache, dulling the shards, so much relief, siphoning the fury, shedding the discomfort, vacant now, but safe. All drained, nothing moving, nothing harming. Still, lost, not sure where thought is, but no matter where it is, I now move in a blank safety, sedated, whole, entirely my own, but dumb, dumb of thought and sound, waiting in void till I truly return, to move and live, again, whole of mind and body in reality.

Frozen

There is a picture hanging in my bedroom, beautifully framed in silver. She sits perched on a rock, back to the world, watching the sun set into the darkening ocean in front of her. You might wonder about the girl in the frame, such an idyllic scene of calm and peace, the magnificence of the world before her. If you look closer you may notice that her shoulders are pulled perhaps a little too tight, her back straight and not relaxed as one would think, her arms and legs protectively close to her body. The sky is darkening and the rays of the sun leaving and I know in her heart, she too is feeling the darkness come in and the light fade.

It starts as a slow freeze, watching icicles form, corners of the heart hardening where it once pulsed softly, like watching each fragment that makes up our skin turn into ice piece by piece, the heart having less and less room to beat within, starting to feel confined and beating stronger and tighter into the space causing a suffocation to rise in the throat and the heart caged and pushing tight against the lungs.

Outside the rain falls, each droplet hanging like a tiny weight on each thread it clings too, the steady accumulation slowly creating a weight that takes hold. The rain a metaphor for the slowness, the weight of water pulling the arms and dragging the feet downwards, each step a monumental effort. One would think it would be easier to let the rain fall, the gentle rain, seeping into every fibre, saturating, the trickle leaking between the ridges and folds of the face, tears from the heavens, winding down the neck in cold rivulets, shivering the soul. Hair matted to the skull, leaking drops off the swollen ends, thick and full, bursting with shards of emotion to disappear into a watery grave.

My soul is so heavy, it cries in futility to be let free, beating fists against its invisible bars, turning in circles, wandering a never ending maze that ends where it begins to begin again, the cold rattling wind of despair whispering through. Hollow, a vacuum deep inside, sucking the life, soundless screams as the chambers empty of light, the dullness reaching and pulling itself up and in, digging into the walls with each effort to climb into the echoing emptiness, an infinite black hole, swirling in its vortex, feeding on every defeat and apathy, growing with each piece of surrender.

Thought is so far away, my own thoughts a mirage, hazy and so far away, my eyes glaze trying to find answer, the clarity. So slow, the synapses firing in slow motion, the sound muffled, decisions fading towards the mirage and I reach but my fingers move slower than time, I can’t make it to the mirage as beautiful as it may be. Underneath me the ground is barren and hard, the weight of water so heavy, each step interminable, every breath a surprise, words escape through lips of their own, surprised I am to hear them and I listen to hear what I say and do. The body its own temple, the Trojan horse, hollow, the shell for the force within, movements on a string governed by no force of my own, puppet to the owner, death-like in motion, encumbered with emptiness, selfish in its space, fierce, a rose covered in thorns, poison leaching the surface, loathe to touch, abhorrent and flinching from any that may try to near, recoiling and repulsing.

Nothing belongs to me but the chained soul, hidden so far and deep, aching and throbbing, buried within the heart, so sad it hurts, it aches, it writhes, she screams and I feel her, I feel her anguish, the despair so loud I want to wring out the unrelenting pressure, feel it molt and melt between my fingers, hot and heavy. My hands are filled with shards of glass, painful to touch, my feet burning from a non existent flame, needles pushing into every nail-bed, my limbs, my skin stretched so tight I fear it may tear, all seeking respite, strung like torture on a rack. Life is slowly receding into that space, the little space left within, my beating soul, with walls closing in, descending with the setting sun into the darkness, like the darkening sea swallowing the sun.

To draw the blade along the taut skin, watching the skin slide open, a trail of blood in the blades wake, at first slow, the astonishment and miracle of spreading flesh and warmth of life. It’s a drug, healing drug, as the pressure oozes from blood, the feeling a horror and fascination, but beautiful, beautiful easing pain. The first cut so tremulous, the release immeasurable, the next is quicker and faster, frenzied almost, wanting to feel more and more, insatiable need to bleed out the ugly, the wetness dripping hot beads of release. The rights and wrong jumbled into one, the salve so sweet, the demons leached, the scars too deep to repair, the thank you from within heartfelt, the regret from outside... so sorry for the wrong, it needed to go, I needed it to go. I slump, spent, finished, the cowardice of the moment ashamed, the reality fresh, nothing left neither inside or out, expunged and tired, now begins the rise from the fall, phoenix from the ashes.

Strangers on Planes

I met a boy coming down the breezeway of my plane, I caught him smuggling his lip balm in his backpack. I guess we didn’t actually meet, I was just horrified that he had lip balm, and unfortunately not horrified for the right reasons (like national security and threat to the lives of many). Admittedly, all self centered, how dare he have lip balm when I had painstakingly separated myself from mine that same morning? Why did I not think to forgo rules and regulation for the sake of my lips and not spend half the flight gnawing on my dry bottom lip as I pored over a complete book of fluff and sex by Jackie Collins. It was just not fair and truth be known I never actually met him (the boy), because somewhere through the causal banter one has with strange people alighting from planes I was still amazingly pre occupied with that little ball of wax he had and I didn’t.

How does it work when you’re walking down a narrow pathway and have conversational blah blah blahs and then you’re done and you’re still stuck walking next to each other. That awkward silence of thinking maybe you should say more, but what is there to say? Then you don’t want to walk too quickly because it seems you’re running away and might offend them (but who cares, it’s a stranger on a plane?), but if you lag behind you seem rather stupid (again, see previous blurb)… what is it with exchanging words that all of a sudden changes the air around you. Have you ever noticed that cars never drive exactly in tandem with one another, we’re always inching a little bit ahead or behind? We’re scared of making contact, because once you invade that space, how do you get out? You’re stuck on the breezeway and the end seems interminable, like steps to the guillotine and what a relief as you get out and immediately pretend to be busy so you can escape.

After escaping, in the best possible way, not from the boy, but from the annoying to talk or not to talk dilemma, I eventually made it to food. The thing about America is they don’t realize how much they eat. I tend to forget this till I get in line at your standard fast food burrito place and realize the burrito they’re rolling is about the size of my head and probably just as full. The other thing America cannot understand is waste, it was inconceivable that I would be willing to pay for an entire burrito and only request half- sacrilege! Really I would just throw it away so why not give it to someone that had the potential of eating a head? So I request my half a head, much to the sales attendant’s amusement, and from behind me a voice requests the other half of my head (at this juncture I could make a lewd comment about head but will refrain). So now, yet again it’s the boy with the lip balm, here we are sharing space again, how close does sharing a burrito make you?

You can’t really share a burrito and not interact, so as we wait for our burrito we jockey about for position and the right tone and end up having a meal together. I wavered on the sit down together but decided in the end it was polite, he looked like your nice boy from next door (your standard psycho killer), we were sharing and if we had nothing to talk about I could always escape to my plane and never deal with it again. First off, I decide, for me, that this needs to stay non-engaging and relatively removed. Of course, when I decide things like this it is almost always usurped by the fact that we have too much in common to not connect and have a good conversation (sigh). We’re both from Vancouver. We’re both in Dallas. We both are headed to Miami and then we’re both going to the Caribbean AND we’re both working on luxury villas in the Caribbean. What a game fate likes to play sometime, I swear they’re pushing the pieces up there, down there, wherever! I could toss in the fact that we both carry lip balm, like burritos too fill in the cracks.

OK, OK, it was nice to actually talk to someone, I usually spend most plane rides hidden behind my headsets and a few magazines (usually the Economist (has anything happened in Africa?), Oprah (find my inner woman) and Cosmopolitan (the next 50 ways to orgasm) but this trip Jackie Collins wormed her way in, perhaps this was the start of it all, I looked shallow? What does reading a Jackie Collin’s book connote? To me, dumb, airhead, embarrassing and lame. Perfect, just the image I want to put out, a woman that needs to vicariously live life through women named Birdy and Lucky who have wild sex with Russian mobsters) so I don’t need to speak with anyone. Nothing worse than talking to the person next to you and feeling beholden to then carry a conversation the whole flight. Plus men always feel the need to talk to the single female traveling alone, like we need some petting, a bowl of water and a history of their successes?

So LB and I have a great conversation about building in the Caribbean and his plans were fascinating, and so were the differences between the two islands, and a few other points that I have now forgotten but were entertaining at the time, and then we had to catch a plane. I might note that neither of us are that great at keeping or tracking time as we near missed not only the flight but the gate.

So the dilemma, do we sit together on the next flight? 2 hours is a loooooooooong time if you run out of vivacious chatter 30 minutes into a flight. So while he’s asking me this (whether we should sit together) I am furiously calculating in my mind if I truly had the fortitude to do so, does it mean I’m interested in more than a friendly way (I hope not, that would put me in the Jackie Collins category) because it was not my intent to pick up wayward Canadians in airports, then what if we did talk for 2 hours and I came off as so (that would be even worse), so maybe circumvent this all by not sitting together, but then I’d never know what the end of our conversation would be, as it had been pretty good rapport so far and he did seem like a decent guy. 3 seconds wasn’t a lot of time to properly address all of this, including pondering whether this was an elaborate pick up line (how do I know he didn’t follow me to the burrito stand? Was I being gullible?) while standing at the counter with both him and the service agent looking at me expectantly. I capitulated, how was I to resist interesting, entertaining Canadian and (damn me) cute.