Well now.

Great tidings and many blessings blah blah blah… pfft, I don’t even know if you use this e-mail address anymore. Doesn’t matter really, I just miss talking to you.

I feel like I have been in Ohio forever.
I feel like I have come here to die and was unaware.
I’m fighting the good fight against normalcy and I feel like I am being beaten even though I can’t see how.

I miss California.

I even miss Nevada if I am honest.

I miss anywhere nowhere near anyone or anything that I grew up with.

Now that my grandma has passed I feel like I really don’t have a connection to the Midwest anymore so why I keep trying to be around here, why the universe pulls me here, I have no idea.
I used to think that the reason was you.
I know that it isn’t.
I’m pretty sure that I don’t have any unresolved issues with anyone other than my mother in that case- but I’ll be 42 in a couple of months so I genuinely no longer care. We are our fathers anyway, our mothers simply carry and teach us, but we are our dads through and through… (Thank goodness!)

After my birthday I may start focusing on what my heart wants, which is to  look for a different gig, a whole lot further west and much more south.

If I have to be forced to live my days out somewhere against my will because I am a mere wage slave then I would rather it be in Oceanside or San Diego. The location itself makes me a happier version of me and really, what else matters anymore?

No one knows this, not the manchild or the golddigger or the sorority sisters or Jiminy Cricket, but I’ve never really ever stopped fully seeing Old Faithful. We’ve had loads of time apart, he was pretty manic there himself for a while but we’ve both gone out with other people and it’s just not, I dunno… sticking? I think that he is able to separate the wheat from the chaff having known me and I am just not interested in helping anybody do anything anymore-(get to know their families, provide financial support etc..) I honestly don’t want to get to know anybody new, I’m so over love, it’s exhausting! I love him enough and no more and that is fine.  I keep him pretty busy so he doesn’t have much time left to obsess over whether or not I’m going anywhere. When things have been incredibly and unbearably rough, whether it was a mental break down on my part of a financial bind, whatever it is or was, he doesn’t hesitate to lay down in the mud, on my behalf. I’ve never known anyone, as much as I have pushed this cat away to keep coming back for more. Maybe it’s real for him, I have no idea. I haven’t told any of my friends because I have been so mean and so mad at him so many times in the past that I am confident that they would either not forgive me or be so judgy that finger pointing alone would cause them severe arthritis.

I guess I’m telling you because we aren’t as close anymore as we once were.
Surprisingly that doesn’t hurt as much as I imagined that it forever would.

People seem to forget that I have “hella” dirt on them that I never use and I really don’t have to take their berating because my choice in lovers- but I keep it to myself and take advice with a grain of sea salt- the intent was care, I know.

The one thing I think that allows us to stay connected, Old Faithful and I, is that he has finally got it through his skull that my idea of long term happiness does not limit its execution to monogamy- if love is a real thing and if it is the greatest thing that we will ever know, I don’t see how its value increases by not allowing yourself to have very much of it. I have no answers, just questions…also we like the same kind of music and really, I can’t get along with anyone I can’t jam with, I don’t care how good they look.

I suppose I haven’t really ever stopped seeing The Monster either. He will be 24 in January, isn’t that ridiculously adorable? It will be a year this month that I have known him. And still in that time, I don’t understand him any more than I did the first time he showed up at my apartment with a bottle of Jack, a strap on and some ropes. He scares me because after I see him I sit quietly and realize how sadistic I truly am and in a way I am grateful that I have an outlet for it in him. And I’ve run the guy through the ringer, because clearly he either has mommy issues, or is secretly gay or something beyond my basic understanding to want to spend any time with me ( But I really only think that because I should think that because everyone else in the world says that I should). He says that I am an incredible woman. Pfft. Sureeeeeee. Whatever. Not a lot of people get away with this for very long so, I’m going to just enjoy the attention. The good news is he’s a cravable object and my brain needs that. I need someone I trust to get my tires rotated for me and rake the yard and someone that I adore madly in my head fulfilling all my most depraved desires. Ha, fortunately for me they are both actually real people now that I actually know for once and GASP, they know that the other one exists and double GASP, neither minds… you’re lucky that you’re being extremely distant because the pictures that would have been in your phone by now would have certainly caused you to want to discard it immediately and wash your hands with bleach!

Someday I will write about all of this, and even when I can stomach it, The Man From Moreno Valley and you as well, Guru. I’m almost there- here’s how I know… You know when you hurt yourself physically you get the contusions and bruising etc. but after a few weeks or so it fades and you can’t outwardly see the wound but if you press on it a bit, it still smarts? It’s not quite healed, yes? I’m beyond that point in my recovery just in life in general that all of my old wounds barely hurt at all if pressed with full force, the bruises have all but morphed into my skin tone and I’ve run full out of fucks to give. The only worrying that I do now is worrying that I am not worrying enough about anything.

So if you still use this e-mail, HI FRIEND!

I’m okay for the most part!
I hope that all is well with you and that the majority of the time you are smiling. It’s my favorite way to remember your face.