Five months had passed, the winter was gone and spring arrived in the nick of time, the dark days at an end, so was my thinking at the time, of change and moving on. I didn’t post this for whatever reason, instead I posted about hope, and Simple Gifts, and how knowledge is power, just two days after I wrote this. 

I was not waiting around and the confidence came from these events, these obstacles. Ol’Danny Boy was a lesson about being led astray, about boundaries and triggers, and avoiding toxic people.

I saw how everything was just passing by, chi, good vibes, positive thoughts,  just flowing away, and I was lost in false corners with no solidity behind me, too easily led astray, broke too easily, inside and out. In a way I guess he helped me to see these things, to see the shadows, the dark side, the me I hide.

Maybe it was just a simple thing, just moving everything back 6 feet, through the wall, to the kitchen. I know, it seems so trivial, but it represents this shift that happened after BealArt Guy, and after I’d seen the damage he would do to all my plans, my independence, with his dying dangling before him like an anvil,  wounding everything around him with his anger and alcohol, his narcissistic tendencies and his quasi-stoic resolve to die an unhappy man. His wish was my command, but I was not going to live like that.

This going off with whichever wounded stray dog that came my way was also a, em, well, had been a problem. There was this feeling, this compulsive kind of need for something, confused empathy for toxic people, and this silly idea that I could save them. Yeah, I know, it has always been my Achilles Heel.  Anyways…

From April 4th, 2017

I turn 50 in August and I find myself feeling this strange joy.  At some point this winter I discovered that something inside me had healed, just a bit more.

It began with a ruthlessly detached no fuck’s given weed. Very liberating.

It was after that I realized I felt uncomfortable with how my little bachelor pad was arranged, so I changed it.

At first a space for junk, but once the junk was gone, it sat there looking lovely and so I decided to make that my space. 

A place to sit and watch the birds out the window at the feeder in the morning, with the cardinals chirping away, and the chickadee-dee-dees, and a squeaky nuthatch couple who shyly make their way, popping ore’ for a nip of sunflower seed – as I only use sunflower seed, in hopes of a stray sunflower in the long hot summer days. You never know what can turn up when I feed the birds.

Well, here I am, 50, brutally discarding the waste and sorrows of years, collected, and carried, and no longer required.

It started around the time BealArt guy came around, and around the time writing letters to my dead Mother became tiresome, and around the time I was Freshly Pressed. And spinning and dancing and joyful and hopeful, and it was then I said…

I need a place that reflects me. So that when I walk through the door, at the end of a long day hauling boxes and walking my 20,000 plus steps a day, I am surrounded by what I love.

I unlock the door, after putting Rose’s kickstand up, and set her outside while I get Irish settled. I go out and get her, and put her back in her place. Everything now has a place. It feels somehow like all my things have just been waiting to come together, here, in this west side of those four corners outside my door. Here, in this old farmhouse, with it’s neat cut-off spiralling wooden stairs up to whatever lay above me. I imagine that young servant girl, waking before dawn and coming down those winding steps, as I myself turn to the room and say “thank you Spirits of White Light and Goodness, take care of all that I love, Namaste”, and I turn away, perhaps, as the shadow of her breezes to the now hidden place in these old wooden floors where they kept the wood for the fire.

Sometimes, I just stop and gaze out the window, listening to some beautiful violin, streaming through the air to me.

And I can’t wait to be 50.

I always wondered where I would be when I turned this age. Wondered who I would become.

And, I can honestly say I am proud of this strong woman, who works her arse off, cycling to work at 4:30 am, I am challenged. Looking up at the still starry sky, as I roll along the dark pathways, through this lovely little stand of trees I found on the edge of this park. The path winds along, past the darkened shape of the colourful play equipment, turning towards the opening, and through to the quiet streets of suburbia. 

The woman who turns 50 this year is not that naive girl of 19, the one who BealArt guy knew. She’s not who the ex-husband knew, certainly not. 

Went out last night with D3. He’s the one who gifted me most of the wood planes and created the display for the top of the cabinet, and he’s my bike guy, and that is all Crossroad’s Man is today.

Some morning’s he’ll arrive at my door, for coffee, to sit and chat, while the radio plays soft piano concerto’s in the background, he on Grandma’s Green Velvet Settee, drinking my strong coffee, to kick-start his day. With the beautiful morning light streaming through the window with the brisk spring air.