In retrospect, it was not a good day to artfully mutilate.

Today began with the news that someone close to me had died.

I guess to say Ed was close to me was a stretch; however, he and his wife owned the last house my ex-husband and I bought together.

Ed knew we couldn't afford a riding mower yet, and we needed one, having gone from a tiny square of grass to three acres. He came back and mowed for us for the first few weeks until we secured our own rider.

Ed was wonderful to our son, laughing at everything the four- and five- and six-year-old Hunter said as if each utterance was simultaneously the funniest and most clever thing he had ever heard.

Ed was a solid, dependable man who loved to work outside, who loved to build things or put things together or go out on his boat or enjoy the company of his family.

Ed was the second friend to leave us this year. Bill was the first. Bill was married to Marilyn, a former co-worker of mine, and Bill, like Ed, had been so good to my family. Bill had written a children's book and paid my son, then eight, to illustrate it. Bill, so ill with cancer at that point, had nonetheless commandeered the bail money to spring me from jail that terrible day last July.

This is getting mixed up in my head, but it was this jumble of thoughts that swarmed as I decided it was time to attack the bushes in the front yard.

I had been told to do it a week before by my aunts, and, since I don't pay rent on this house where my grandparents raised a family, I figure a few chores here and there are nothing in comparison.

Ed's passing this morning was the predominant thought on Bush One. Bush Two was Bill. Bush Three became Johnny Flynn, the grandfather who had lived in the house across the street from where I was savagely cutting, the grandfather I secretly adopted as my own before I developed a relationship with the busy, distracted man my grandfather had been.

The hedge clippers were rusty and reluctant. Manhandling was necessary.

The polite Clip, Clip morphed into Rip, Slash.

Bush Four turned into the lost relationships with my siblings, two of whom went to Chicago this weekend to see Lollapalooza together. Could I have gone? No way. Did they even think to ask? No way again.

My youngest sister, whom I had seen earlier that day, who went out of her way to hug my son, then cut a wide swath around me when I reached for my own hug.

Bush Five was the final obstacle between me and Bush Victory. I stopped to survey my work and realized that, if bushes were fingernails and I was a compulsive nailbiter on a binge, they would probably look like these nubbins. Bitten to the quick.

It was hot out there. Very hot. I was in my swimsuit, with towel tied around my waist, a vicious case of Swimmer's Ear ravaging my canals, sweat diving off me as if I were a burning building. My eyes felt like the only dry thing in my control.

It was Bush Five that wrenched the power from me. Bush Five opened the floodgates.

Bush Five remains untouched. There are some things I'm not ready to attack yet.

The unchanged

I am different. As a day-to-day thing, I don't think about it, but at moments when my mind is wide open this awareness invariably finds its way into my mainstream conscience, where pop-ups like "I love doughnuts!" and "People suck!" reign.

In the four months I have been off work, things I expected to accomplish have fallen by the wayside (my vow to become an amazing juggler has only culminated in the reality of very short bursts of three-ball success; the promise of "Play the harmonica after watching this 10-minute video!" has somehow kept me from watching the 10 minute video. If it's only 10 minutes, after all, well, I could do that anytime!).

Many people have said, in that sage and somehow smug way, that this time was meant to be mine so I could find myself. The ways my days unwind are fairly straightforward - if Hunter is here, we swim and sleep and play computer games; if Hunter is gone, I try to sleep or stay at my friend's house to distract myself from the horrible, empty ache that fills my body and is so much worse than anything Pepto Bismol vows to fix. Mafia Wars has become my Pepto and is worthy of a whole blog in itself.

As always, I digress.

My birthday was last week and my sister, my sister who is entirely different than me despite our two parents in common, my sister who is 24 to my 34, my sister who is brilliant in all the ways I'm not and more, gave me a book. Not just any book, not a book on how to organize my life or lead with my head instead of my heart, but a book by our shared favorite author, Alice Hoffman.

This is the way that I will never change. Alice Hoffman writes of things that I find thrilling and beautiful and impossible. As a child, the only fairy tales I wanted to hear or read were Grimm's Fairy Tales, horrible, bloody stories sparing no details, stories that gave the promise of the fantasy but not without the horror of the reality. Hoffman's latest book speaks of these stories, even marinates in them.

The Story Sisters was released in June, but, being jobless, I was unable to afford the luxury and the library has not had it in stock or may not even have it at all. I have never asked. Fortunately, Shannon knew, and gave me the gift, as she has with so many incredible books before.

Love you, sister. No matter how I may continue to change, I will always love these books more than any other present.

To borrow my straightforward buddy Marth's phrase, "That is all.".

Like it matters what I say.

I shouldn't be disturbed hearing rumors about myself; I live in a town of about 9000 in the Midwest and rumors are its lifeblood.
Today I heard one that really made my blood churn. I think it's because the close-minded people I used to work with (and there's specifically three of them I think of here and one I definitely do not lump in with the rest of the losers) continue to talk about me three months after my dismissal. Have you people not done enough to me? Do you have to continue to pick at me and discuss me with every customer you have, many of which then contact me with reports of your sharp tongues? I think you're pathetic, all three of you, four counting the guy, and this is why:
1. I did sell my house. Did I lose 42,000 dollars in doing so? Hell no. I'm not retarded. In fact, I think I'm much smarter than all of you. And I made money on the sale, not that you sad sacks care about the truth.
2. The girl responsible for at least 10 co-workers losing their jobs because she will say anything she can to further her own pathetic goals? Nobody went to her house and sat in her driveway while she called the sheriff's department on them and had them removed. There is no sheriff's report, because it never happened. I think it's so funny that my unemployment was denied because of this total fabrication, and I think it's funnier that nobody bothered to check the validity of the claim before firing me. It never happened.
3. Every day I have been away from that job has been better. I have been off for three months, I have not used my credit card in that time, I have not collected one penny of unemployment, I have not cashed in my savings or CDs and I have no sugar daddy, yet I am still able to have time off, and that's fantastic.
God, the four of you suck. Enjoy this post, because I dedicate it to you.
That's really all I have to say.

You want the moon? I'll tie a rope around it and bring it down to you...

What do you want to be when you grow up?

That question should never be asked, in my opinion. It sets us all up for failure.

Deny it. Go ahead. If you present a valid counterpoint to my point, I will listen with an open mind and be prepared to admit I was wrong.

But you won't. Because, provided that a.) you read this and b.) you take the time to let it sink in properly, you will realize that I'm right.

I am, in addition to being right, a lifetime victim/loser in the worldwide lowest self-esteem competition. For me to be this confident, well, you'd have to present one hell of an argument for me to concede.

This is why I am right.

When asked what you want to be when you grow up, you are, let's assume for my purposes, a child. Children have the most open of all minds, because they haven't been beaten down mentally to the extent the average adult has. Children don't understand failure on the scale that adults do, if indeed they understand failure at all on a scale measuring outside of their own world.

Children also have the benefit of imagination without limitation. This, I believe, goes almost hand-in-hand with an open mind. It's a beautiful, amazing thing, and I hate to see it disappear. I think I know the exact time it blipped off of my son's radar for good, and I mourned it no less than I would have a death. In fact, I believe it died with my grandfather. A lot of things did.

My point is that tonight, over twenty years after I left true childhood behind and remembered to close the door behind me so as not to let the heat/cold out, the door blew open again. And open = good.

The door opening contradicted two things I previously believed as a child on the cusp of adulthood:

1) The world really is your oyster.

2) Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

There IS a Santa Claus. And just as it was explained to Virginia in that long-ago letter to the editor, so was it shown to me.

Santa may not be the Santa person just as God may not be the dude in the robes and hair. But both are real. I was given the gift of a new life tonight, a life I thought I blew my chance at forever. I denied it. I cried about it. But in the end the rope still dangled. I'm grabbing the rope before I convince myself I don't deserve it.

Grabbing the rope also means turning away from the future I once thought was good enough. It means blowing the head off of that future, which suddenly looks a lot like settling to me. It means, maybe, blowing off a person who has been crucial in my post-marriage development and it means maybe blowing them off for good.

But oh, the rewards! The possibility of being able to return to school and not have the stress of figuring out how to pay for it...the possibility of dreaming again, the possibility of actually answering the question I feigned scorn upon hearing for the first time, years ago:

"What would you do if you knew you could not fail?"

I have no answer, still. I don't know when I will have one. But what I do have is an open book with both permission and time to look up the answer.

Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. You are definitely in the minority.

To the rest of you, I will definitely keep you posted, whether you want it or not.

"Waiting For My Real Life to Begin" - great song. I can't believe the waiting might be over for good.

Back to Reality

"The Only Way To it is Through It"

"If It Is to Be, It Is Up to Me"

"Git 'Er Done"

Regardless, regardless of the quantity or quality of quotations that sped through my mind like an LED message on crank, the task ahead had already worn me out and I hadn’t even begun (hence “The task ahead” – did you get it?).

Ha.

After eleven months and seventeen days, the time had come to finish what I had started. I had moved myself out that day in 2008, though at the time I was too bewildered by the handcuffs to think much further ahead, and now I was back to get my stuff.

Is it really your stuff after that much time has passed? The easy way - historically my favorite way - was to say
“Hell no it ain’t your stuff, baby! You march yourself outta here and get back home on yer laptop! Let another day get gone before you come back up for air. You need rest!”

Rest was ALL I had had, though. Since April 8, I had accumulated an abundance of rest, and I could hardly justify more bedtime even with all of the denial in the world on my side.

So, I put my head down and stuffed boxes. Since I’d only brought four, it was incredibly easy. The stuffing of the boxes has always been what I prefer. It’s a cinch, as long as you don’t ever have to take that stuff back out of the box and figure out where to put it next.

Pretty much everyone has to figure out where to put those assorted items next, though – like the empty, washed Bath and Body Works Ultra Velvet Cream jar full of brooches missing their pin backs, or the dried-out scented oil bottle with the tinder-y sticks poking out of the top, or the three trash bags full of action figures still in the original packaging so as to preserve both the value of the figure and the insurance that your child will never have fun with it.

After those four boxes were filled and hauled to my too-small car and three rooms and a hallway were emptied of all wall hangings, I was starting to feel panicky. I can only take small doses of extreme reality at a time after being exposed to lethal amounts of it for so many months, and I had already hit my limit.

I told myself I just had to get to the car. Then I just had to get to the house. Then I just had to get this one box in the house. Just this one box! Then another.

The third, and biggest, box started to tear down one corner halfway between car and house, and for several agonizing seconds I thought I was going to lose her. As I tried comically (it helps to think this visual could have at least provided a laugh to potential witnesses) to hold the box and will my hands to act as a patching device at the same time, I experienced a moment of extreme clarity which lasted through the rest of transport time:

I do not want to live with anyone ever again.

Ho ho ho, if it were just that easy! But these things I was moving, by and large, all meant something to me. They were chosen with care and a keen desire not to display anything tacky. They were gifts, or they were things I desperately wanted at some point in my life, and I do not, do NOT, want some future mate telling me there will not be room for the things that, in the end, have helped shape me into what I am.

And that is… what? My thoughts are relentless little bastards, really. I hate my thoughts! My answer is still that I don’t know who I am, but I am getting little clues, like this one, and, when pieced together with tiny bits of insight that have already stopped by for a visit, will slowly reveal myself to myself. This is my hope. So far I haven’t figured out much, but I know this much is true:

I don’t want to be married again.

I don’t want to stay in this place of complacency that has allowed me to gain 20 pounds and hide behind Mafia Wars on Facebook.

I don’t want to do anything that will hurt my son, and I don’t want to let my son walk all over me either.

I want to find a job that has meaning to me or will at least have something to teach me. Oh, and it has to pay money.

And finally, I don’t want to live with anyone. This newest insight kind of shocks and pleases me all at once. I assumed I would want to live with someone, someone very specific in fact, so the fact that I don’t is a significant victory.

This inner triumph carries me through to the last box, which is of course when something breaks – a tennis ball-shaped frame containing a picture of me, age 17, mid-backhand, during my final home tennis match in high school. My doubles partner Gretchen had given it to me at the close of the season and it had survived nearly 17 years intact.

Ah, well. Screw it.

Who would have thought I would crave mental over physical?

I am so confused right now, and in cases of confusion, much less confusion of this magnitude, I have to write it out if I want any kind of resolution to my inner conflict.
I have had minor setbacks in my life; anybody who knows me knows the last year has been one big hot mess.
So there is no reason that I can come up with to be so devastated for this, but here it is:
I got Facebook dumped.
One of my Facebook friends, whom I have never met and would likely have never met, somebody I chatted with a few times and had found to be my male counterpart in terms of being on par with my own biting, acerbic wit, dumped me from his friend list sometime between yesterday and today.
I am crushed. Crushed! I don't even think I'd talked to him at all two weeks ago, so in the space of roughly 10 days I came to rely on our occasional chat or Facebook email.
It was all in the type style. I feel so bummed to have lost that. Who knows what happened; I'm not stupid enough to think it was truly anything I did and I certainly don't feel brokenhearted, but I am shocked that I feel more deeply about this than I have any physical relationship I've had. Physical RELATIONSHIP! We only chatted! What is wrong with me?
I have almost 1000 Facebook friends. I chat with a handful at most. This is one person. One person I must have really, really liked typing back and forth with, certainly, but one person in an entire world.
Burn!

I was under the impression I would know what I wanted at some point.

Decisions don't suit me.
That's not to say I don't make a lot of decisions quickly every day, and I'm a creature of habit... my first decision is almost always not to get out of bed as soon as I awaken. Boom. Stay in bed. Done.
After that, it gets tricky. Possibly because I always, always - maybe not in a timely fashion but I never miss a day - get out of bed.
There's no point in dwelling on this since I know the answer (knowing everything makes this a given), but in the spirit of indecision I feel compelled to put it all down on cyber paper. If you don't want to read it, don't then!
This is a little scattered in thought since I keep trying to tell myself in a panic that it's going to be bedtime and then I won't be able to eat since I'll be asleep so I probably won't eat until TOMORROW which is a whole other day and what if I starve and a ladle of Peter Pan peanut butter with honey isn't going to make me fat, peanut butter is the good fat and good for you and that's just taking care of my body, not harming it, etc. Yes, I actually thought "etc.", so hush.
Before this takes a total header off the bridge and hits the sharp rock right next to the water, I'll get to my point.
I think I'm impossible to please.
The situation that bitch-slapped me into clarity involves people. When I was married I just wanted time to myself. I dreamed about it. I longed for it. I became cranky as the years passed and I continued to not have it.
Boy oh boy do I have it now! I'm in the middle of the five day stretch without my son that I endure every other week. This time it is particularly brutal because I have not had the desire to stay with friends that I usually have. I did it the first two nights, first in Kansas City, then on the floor of my friend's living room (accidentally), waking up to discover that her kids had a field day on me overnight. After beating the little monsters with a sturdy tree trunk, I reflected that it wasn't as fun as it used to be.
Now I am at the start of night two entirely alone in this 5000 square foot house. There was a time in my life this would have been paradise to me, and don't get me wrong, it isn't bad at all. I do like it. It's just a little lonely.
Here's where my confusion waves its hand impatiently. I'm lonely. But I DON'T want people to bug me.
If somebody talks to me, and I like that person, great. If they keep on and on and on and there's no end in immediate sight after a few minutes, and they're droning, not great. However, if they then stop talking abruptly and I hear nothing from them in days, I get a little pissy. What did I do? They were the ones talking!, my indignant inner voice protests. Then the pissiness turns into a little bit of concern. Or did I do something? Maybe so! Maybe I did! That part is short-lived, thankfully, but then a general unease settles over me until the next person strikes up a conversation.
Basically I want you to talk to me. But don't do it a lot. But do it regularly. But know when to stop. But sometimes you can talk longer. But don't make a habit of it.
It's the old "I want you unless you want me, in which case good day."
Why do we do that? Don't EVEN pretend you don't, it's part of the human condition. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Something new and better is ahead. Whatever.
Who even knows how I managed to stay married so long with such a skewered outlook on relationships. Hell, not even relationships - CASUAL CONVERSATIONS! It's the same whether on computer or phone, texting or talking - ugh I don't want to talk, well, maybe, hey, they hung up! What the hell? Eh, I'm not calling back.
It's a wonder I've made it this far, being so socially backward. My only comfort is that I'm all about equal opportunity - whether it's somebody behind me in line at the grocery store or my mother, I go through a speedy but undoubtedly present inner dialogue each time. I didn't realize I groaned aloud every time my cell phone rang until my son mentioned it one day.
"Why are you the practice coordinator for baseball when you hate people?"
It startled me, but not enough to quit.
"I don't HATE people, it's just...it's hard...you'll understand someday. Or not."
These nuggets of parental gold frequently slip out as I fake my way through these crucial months of early puberty (and before that), and I'm sure Hunter will thank me someday for helping him through it by not really helping him at all. He might not thank me out loud, since he knows I hate talking, but if he thinks it, I'll know. Or not. More than likely, I'll be too busy freaking out about why he hasn't called to consider that possibility.
And just like that, back to square one.

Please remind me about the important things.

I haven't blogged (I hate that word, but 'written' and 'posted' both seemed wrong) in over two years. Those two years have been, in a word, interesting.
Right now I want to say they were wasted, but they couldn't be wasted if I ultimately achieved a solution to such a big problem. In summation, I'm divorced now, and lost several other things in the process, such as my home, half of my son's time, my relationship with a few key family members, my pets, my job, my car and a few cell phones.
I gained 15 pounds (bad), my freedom (amazing), and a whole load of knowledge that, today anyway, I'd just as soon give back.
The truth hurts.
Distraction is my greatest love, other than my recent addiction to Facebook (which is, that's right, a big distraction). It keeps me just busy enough to forget what I really need to be doing. For example, today I have almost no plans, but I have a list of what I NEED to do that includes getting my name off of some government grants for single mothers list, sucking it up and finishing (ok, starting and finishing) my 20 hours of mandatory C.E. - continuing education to the layperson - to keep my certification which is up July 31, heading over to El Dorado Springs, birthplace of me, to haggle on car price, and possibly waking my son up since it's already almost 1 p.m. Oh, and showering needs to get in there somewhere.
Instead, I've gone up and down the stairs God knows how many times (exercise!) in a vain attempt to test the theory that if I start moving, I'll keep moving. So far all it's done is get a load of laundry started and cause me to stop at the doorway of my son's room each time a trip is completed, staring in wonder at the sheer damn size of the kid. He is 5'6", feet size 10, hands bigger than mine, almost 13 years old with a voice reminiscent of Barry White. Last night we compared hand size, and he won, well, handily. His hands just edged mine out in the palm-to-palm test. His hands that used to close in a fist around my finger. His hands that tore a tiny but nerve-laden skin tag off my neck when he was a baby. Those hands that now grasp a pencil and scribble out math equations while he explains to me how he knows the amount of money I will save in eight years by springing for a 2009 model car over 2008.
He has equations for everything - saving money on new cars, leveling up in games, acquiring property and other inventory in Mafia Wars. Where did he get such solid business sense? Where did he get that self-assuredness that remains well out of reach for either of his parents?
He wasn't switched at birth unless the other baby born that night had an identical tiny mark just at the base of his rib cage that we always told him meant God pinched him when we called "Hunter Lukenbill, come on down!" He has always looked like nobody but himself, but I notice as he ages that more and more people tell us we look alike.
He has never brought home a grade card with anything less than an 'A'. His teachers have always loved him. His peers swarm him. He isn't much on sports, but he's an amazing musician. He has done so well during this last year of tumult that I still wait for the ball to drop.
He isn't perfect. He is almost a teenager. He is, right this second, going through puberty. He rolls his eyes at me. He has the loudest sigh of anyone I've ever met. He argues everything I say, no matter how trivial, because I could not possibly be right. This is the time he needs me, maybe more than the first few years of his life. And this is the time that I am dropping the ball myself.
I've been in such a fog for so long I am afraid I no longer have the capability of being present in the moment. I spend my time obsessing about things that aren't worth anyone's obsession. And as I watch him sleep for the umpteenth time today, I can't help but think of the song, and maybe it's not appropriate for this situation, called "While You Were Sleeping" by Elvis Perkins. If you haven't heard that song, do yourself a favor and check it out now. There's a great version on YouTube when he performed it on David Letterman's show. I won't ruin the whole song, but this is a small sample:

Full of dreams.
You overslept.
In keeping with the quiet
Through the walls I krept.
I walked on tip-toes,
Sent darkness swirling
Over all the kitchen
In the early morning.

Uh oh
Uh oh

I`ll never catch up to you
Who sleep so sound.
My yawns are useless,
My heart beats too loud
To go to sleep,
My mind`s too proud
To bow out.

This was a blog about distraction, and look what happened. I got sidetracked.

I love you, son. I promise I will try to do better, even if it's too late.