Shake Em Down

I don’t like the way things are going, so it’s time to shake things up and then shake em on down.

I have become predictable. He has learned my ways. I am also too sweet, too kind, too generous, and way too nice. I neglect my own needs to take care of others. It is time to break my patterns, to act instead of react, and start by doing something unexpected.

Who knew belting a few songs out in the kitchen would be an excellent alternative stress reliever when you feel like slamming a few pots and pans?

Oh yeah, I sang my heart out with complete abandon, as if I were home alone or out doing something like cruising down a highway in a convertible with the top down (oh, do I miss that car) where no one else can hear me except God and maybe a few cows. I started with Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz, followed by hymns, and kept going. I had just finished singing an old favorite, Blues Traveler’s Run Around, when I noticed him standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing?”

“Cooking.”

The man had never heard me sing, at least not like that, as I’m very self-conscious of my singing voice. It’s lower than his and some songs come out a bit gritty. He’s told me that I sing in my sleep but I imagine that’s very soft, like when I sing to babies. This was full throttle at the stove.

Singing might have caught his attention, but I’m thinking it’s what I did next that opened his eyes. Or, what I did NOT do… being so predictable and all. He knows that when I cook, I always cook enough for both of us and I always, ALWAYS, ask if he would like me to make him a plate. For the first time ever, I didn’t even tell him that it was done.

Bit mean? No… he had his own pot of nasties simmering on the back burner.

Besides, he does not tell me when what he cooks is done… if he says anything at all, he says it AFTER he eats, like when he is walking to the sink with his dirty dishes. I won’t touch his leftovers as that hits me crooked. I’m not a dog. I don’t want his scraps.

LATER

Well, its true… actions do speak louder than words.

The man woke up the next morning and surprised me with ham and eggs. Yes, he cooked breakfast for both of us AND he brought me a plate. Then he thawed out one of his gorgeous steaks just for me. That totally blew my mind. The kicker came two days later, when he fried chicken for himself and he brought me a piece, saying something about how “it wouldn’t be right” not to share with me.

Oh yeah, he got the message. I’m still like wow… just when I think we are doomed, that we might not survive 2018, he shows me that he really does love me, that it’s not just words.

Is love enough?

I don’t know… it’s been one hell of a year and we are only into April. Jaded sisters think I should change the locks but I’m not ready to toss the babe out with the bath water, so to speak. Oh yeah, I’m not done. And I’m not done shaking things up either.

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Welsh Witch

His name escaped her lips between a whisper and a sigh,
Years pass in fragmented silence after friendship dies,
Her life still has no answers and she still wonders why
He slips into her dreams before the mourning dove cries.
N.2018

 

I have two unfinished drafts waiting for me to click publish, one political and one personal, and both can wait. My mind has been on an old friend all day, with a soundtrack of Rhiannon playing in my head and I don’t know why. He was wearing a well-fitted black suit with the white artist shirt that he lost years ago, much younger than he is now, tall and slender, when I saw him in a dream a few nights ago. He smiled and nodded, didn’t say a word. I woke up feeling the deep ache that comes with lost friendship. It comes with the knowing that I will never hear his voice again. That I will never see his scrawl on an envelope tossed into my mailbox. In his mother’s words, “That’s Life.”

Then today. I spent the day online researching demolition debris. Yeah, for real. Don’t ask… will explain later as right now, I have too many questions without answers. But, that’s kind of what THIS is… it’s demolition debris from an old friendship that got demolished, smashed to smithereens, and occasionally a fragment washes to the surface. The soil of my life is contaminated with memory and emotions.

I need a Rhiannon, an old Welsh witch with three little birds… come sing me to sleep so I can wake up feeling whole again.

Mind Shift

Stepping back or to the side even just a little bit can render drastic changes to how you view things… sunlight filtering through tree branches may shift from being a glare in your eyes to a dance of light and shadows across lush, colorful textures of moss and bark.  It’s time to do a mind shift, to step back and look at everything from other angles so I can see what is going on here from other perspectives.

From one perspective… it is this song:

Change the word “mom” to “man” in the lyric that goes “I don’t get angry when my mom man…” and that’s what is going on here… and I’m waiting (again) for him to “come back to me” as he’s been MIA since yesterday morning. Oh, he did call last night, melting my irritation on “hey beautiful…” Sheez. Thing is, “life is too short so love the one you got” and I know he really does love me, even when he is three sheets to the wind before nine.

Step to the side a bit… what changed recently?

Frequency. What used to be once or twice a month comes faster and harder now.

~

COUPLE DAYS LATER (waking up alone again): Shift again… what am I forgetting?

Duh… he doesn’t live here… total complete brain shift.

Okay, so let us examine the facts… ignore that he has been here at least 330 days of the past year, has a lot of clothes and stuff here, does chores here, cuts the grass here, has keys to the doors and acts like he lives here… does he actually, really truely officially, live here? NO… he has his own apartment downtown. Does he get any mail here? NO… his mail goes to HIS address. Does he chip in or pay any of the bills? NO… he pays the bills for HIS place. Considering that he would be the first to say that you are supposed to “pay where you stay” and credit his dad for teaching him that lesson soon after he got his first job as a teenager, by his own rule or definition, call it whatever you want, he doesn’t really live here.

I’m going to have to mull this over and think about it for awhile.

If he doesn’t really live here, I need to stop thinking that he does… is this the beginning of the end? Can two people go from living together (or thinking they were living together) to NOT living together without one thinking that the other doesn’t want them?

I don’t know… time will tell.

Thanks for reading.