The Yellow Crayon

(Note: This is gonna be a two-part blog, simply because of the complete change in tone. Promise this is not a sign of any schizophrenia on my part - it's the days that have been like that - I'm going with the flow.)

Being back in my hometown for a week reminded me of some truths about myself, things that I've had to look at, remember, and decide whether or not to claim them again. For one - I'm still looking for home. It's not a place really - more of a state of mind. I'll know when I've got it, I remember what it used to look like for me, and it is something I can look forward to again. Two - my circle of strong women is growing, changing, evolving, and embracing of this new me. It felt good to be accepted, to be loved and not criticized, to get high fives from fiercely fabulous females who understand the chaos that I am living, the struggle to be not just independent but SUCCESSFULLY independent, the desire to be loved at my most unlovable... I spent a lot of my time in Miami in tears. I felt Grace and Hope and Despair and a lot of other things...

When I returned I got two surprises. One was that I had been missed. Two was who was doing the missing. It's confusing to realize that while you were doing your best to follow the rules, say the right things and hold back the wrong ones, to not push... that the rules are still being broken, things are being said that can't be unsaid, and little nudges are backing you into a very uncomfortable corner.

Friend of mine got married this weekend. I wished him Mazel Tov via text message while angrily drinking vodka lemonade and wishing desperately for the cigarettes I've never smoked in my life. Why did I care?

My little sister told me that this whole divorce thing should be taken as a learning experience, one of life's lessons in store for me. She said I should look back over my relationship and recognize all of the signs there were that no matter how good of a wife I was, how faithful, how "eager to please", this shit was bound to blow up in my face... she didn't say all that but I am improvising. The thing is, while I was in Miami, inundated by ghosts of my past, memories that hurt like hell at every damn corner, I started to see what she meant. Things that I let him get away with, that I went along with for his favor, things I did that killed a little bit of me because I knew they were wrong but I did them anyway...

And I cared because those signs I just named for my doomed relationship - I see them in his. He's going to get hurt...and I have to let him.

It's strange - this whole hindsight thing. It really does give you clarity. They don't tell you how much putting yourself under a microscope will hurt... and it does. Like the damn dickens. I carried that hurt with me onto the plane, placed it in the overhead compartment, wheeled it through the airport, and drove it home with me. It's like a thundercloud over my head and the last few days I've felt like its been raining for forty days and forty nights...

You can imagine the mood it put me in. Emotional. Vulnerable. Unsure of anything. Reaching out for some unknown cure-all without really knowing what exactly I was looking for...

Sure as heck didn't find it in the bottom of a bottle, that's for sure. Cause I looked - heck I'm still looking if we're being honest.

When I came home and opened my door, I noticed that I had put a current painting-in-the-works back on my easel before I left. Variations of yellow, which I did when I was in a hot and sexy mood. I expected the lift I always get when I see it... instead I just felt tired and lonely and in desperate need of a hug. I spent the next day and a half trying to pull myself out of the funk with no results... I went to support my friend at an art show and even in my yellow dress I felt out of place - like my skin was too big or something. Went out for drinks the same night and got accosted by some drunk motherfucker who thought that putting your hands on a woman's breasts - after said woman had warned you twice about invading her personal space and inappropriate touching - was completely acceptable drunk behavior. I wavered between wanting to stomp his nuts into the ground and running away in tears - mortified. Damn yellow didn't work later, despite a very creative man's interpretation of "Woman, thou art loosed" played in a studio...

Yellow - sexiest color in the crayon box - was failing me miserably.

Tonight I feel like a yellow crayon - accidentally but irrevocably broken. Maybe with the break still inside the sleeve, so if you try to use it, you realize immediately that something is wrong. Perhaps it was a long time coming, or a recent development, but there is no denying that its broken now. I'm kind of looking around in shock, wondering how in the hell I accomplished this one. Too available? Lack self-respect? Too emotional? Difficult to love?

I don't believe any of those by the way. I love myself. I don't play "catch me - kiss me" games. I'm honest and earthy. I know what I want and what I don't, what I'm ready for and what I need more time on...

I think I told you that I watch old TV shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Just finished the final season and in the very last episode she talks about how she's "cookie dough". The analogy was kind of adorable, but completely understandable to me. That's how I feel. I'm cookie dough - not quite done baking yet. Not sure who's going to end up with cookie-me in the end (though they would be very blessed to do so), and I'm not trying to figure that out until I'm ready.

Sorry about the yellow crayon-cookie analogy. Too much TV I guess :).

Here's to trying to figure it out, having the guts to admit when you've fucked up, and to waking up tomorrow morning ready to start it all over again - because that's what fighters and bad-asses do.

Still love you.

-Asha