I need something

Besides sex, I need something else – a purpose or a change – something to get excited about, look forward to, to ponder, to wonder, to wish for – something positive to occupy my brain.

I am depressed and lonely – not horribly so, but it’s there enough that I have to consciously fight against it to get out of bed and do the day.

After sleeping most of the weekend away, I forced myself out yesterday and went on one of my go-to adventures: a trip to Silverton.

Silverton is where I had some of the best times of my life, where I felt strong and competent and light. Plus, it’s so fucking beautiful and feels like home. Going there usually helps any negative feelings wash right off and all I am left with are elation and joy.

It didn’t really work yesterday. I spent most of the day driving around crying; loud crying that just wouldn’t stop.

I was going to drive up one of the passes and hike along a ridge above tree line to get to an old haunt that I haven’t visited in years, but on my way up 550, it rained a bit and I resigned myself to not hiking above tree line for fear of lightning.

The day just fell apart from there. I got in my head that there was going to be lightning (danger) everywhere so hiking as an activity was off the list.

Then I decided that I would still drive the pass but after dealing with one mildly rough road and a bunch of OHV’s I decided that I wasn’t in the mood to go four-wheeling either.

So I chose to drive up into a gulch that I remember as beautiful. The road was more narrow and steep than I recalled. I got a few miles up and then hit a turn that would have sent me plummeting had I made one wrong move and I turned back.

What happened Sally? What happened to your ease and comfort in the mountains? Where’s your badassery?

I used to drive HUGE F350 cage trucks up, down, and over way worse, fearlessly, and yesterday I couldn’t make it around a simple bend.

And, the skies were clear.

Why did I sabotage my own day?

Because I am sad and lost and directionless. My self-esteem has been shot to hell.

I need something to which I can look forward; but it needs to be ongoing, not just a one day event. I’m going to Florida with my kids next week, which is great, but I am already dreading coming home to the humdrum.

Recently there was a possibility (again) of moving to Utah, and there was a not-boyfriend in the picture who had the potential of becoming a boyfriend.

Neither one happened. The stars did not align for the move (this town just will not let go) and the not-boyfriend became a not not-boyfriend, which is fine.

But those two things gave me reason to get up every day: I had something to anticipate, get excited about, hope for, and it helped.

Now I am left alone with my grief, my lack of direction, the weight of it being one year later and not feeling like I’ve landed on my feet – at least not yet.

It could be worse – my son could be in jail. Someone could have died that night. I know enough to be eternally grateful.

But with all the friends in the world, I am lonely. And not necessarily in a “I need a man” kind of way, but there is a hole in my world, in my heart, that still exists; it hasn’t filled itself in yet.

Part of me is thankful to have life be back to normal, uneventful. I keep saying “Boring is good” after this last drama-filled year.

But back to normal is relative. I no longer have a normal to return to – my normal was obliterated.

And I’m not the same person. This year has made me feel old, weary. I don’t have joy in my world like I used to, daily. I wouldn’t necessarily say cynical and jaded, but worn down?

Yes.

Less enthused. Sporting a blanket of sadness. Heavy.

I want something to bring me back to joy, excitement, enthusiasm, lighthearted happiness.

Any suggestions?

 

what I want

The other day I saw a friend, a male friend, a friend with whom I am on hugging terms.

We hugged hello, then we hugged in appreciation of my fresh-out-of-the-oven-melt-in-your-mouth-buttery-sugary-delight, then we hugged goodbye.

Somewhere in there, his scruffy face got buried in my neck and there was a bit of a nuzzle.

And now, all I want is sex.

That intimate contact of warm breath on my attention-starved skin has pried open the lid on Pandora’s Box.

And holy Toledo world, watch out.

I want to have fiery, hot standing up sex in a dark alley.

I want to have languorous afternoon sex while a summer breeze gently caresses our skin.

I want to have tender, sweet sex, and tear your clothes off sex, and fun funny sex, and morning sex, and middle of the night sex, and playing hooky sex, and car sex, and and and…

Shitdamn.

And I currently don’t even have my sights set on anyone – this is a general itch that needs scratching – not one of those situations where I’m feeling horny due to the pheromones exuded by one specific person.

(in other words, I’m not likely to be having sex in the immediate future)

Not that just anyone will do and I’m not quite at “Hey, make me an offer,” but if the right person walked into my kitchen and gave me a steamy sultry look, it could end up being baking table sex.

Oh dear lord.

Guess I’ve got to stock up on batteries.

 

 

alone

I blew off paddle boarding with friends today to instead go alone with my dog.

I had to force myself to go to the coffee shop to have some human interaction before I hole up for the rest of the weekend.

I did not bring my dog because he didn’t want to sit in the hot car.

I keep looking for him.

I spoke to him in the car.

He was at home.

He loves to paddle board. He willingly hops on and is good for at least an hour before he needs to stretch his legs. Sometimes he sits at the helm, others, he scouts behind us for attacking sharks.

He loves to watch birds.

He’s afraid of buoys. I found this out recently when I got close to one and heard a sudden splash behind me. I have no idea if he backed off accidentally or jumped off to swim away, but either way, he ended up in over his head out of utter terror.

With entertainment like that, who needs friends?

 

my chair

Tonight I took the time to sit under the moon in my chair, a ritual that I lost over the winter.

Shortly after I lay down I got shaky – physically and emotionally – and it was suddenly a year ago and I was in my chair, on the Ranch, trying to continue breathing while I dealt with my devastation.

Then I thought, “In a couple of weeks it will be a year.”

A year.

I can’t say whether this year has gone fast or achingly slow; it’s been both.

The hours I spent under the Ranch cottonwood tree staring at the same mountains in my view tonight, just from a different angle.

I mentally sifted and sorted. I cried, I had a few moments of relief. There was too much noise in my daily life – my chair was the only place where I found some peace.

Prior to the breakup, as things fell apart, I had trouble sleeping. As things got worse, I barely slept at all. And when I did catch a wink of sleep, it was in my chair wrapped in a quilt under the stars.

Tonight while half my brain said this is good for the soul, the other half wanted to run inside.

But I stayed. I flitted in and out of sadness and solidity – memory and the present.

Such sorrow for having had to have gone through this.

And yet, I feel my strength too. I didn’t lie out there feeling morose for the entire time.

It’s beautiful and spiritual and utterly fascinating.

It is good for the soul.

the discerning art collector

Whenever I walk past Pier One I look at the display windows and wonder, who finds mass-produced art attractive and actually wants it hanging on their walls?

Admittedly, it’s quite snobby of me.

I believe in one-of-a-kinds, originals, cool shit you find in the back of a thrift store, or art produced by friends.

So as I’m checking out at the Salvation Army the other day, I saw this hanging on the wall:

And I’m totally excited because it’s a real canvas stretched on a real wooden frame and there’s even a layer of gesso on some sections.

Convinced I’ve scored, I hang it on the wall, sit back and appreciate my new bird.

Then I notice that it’s hanging a bit cattywumpus and when I take it down to adjust, I see the sticker on the back:

Pier One Imports.

Guess who like mass-produced art.

Utah vs Colorado

I went to Moab this weekend to have dinner with my son.

What I am aware of when I go to Moab, is that I don’t call it going to Utah.

When I “go to Utah” I am going for desert and solitude and nature.

When I go to Moab I’m going for an urban experience, so the two barely feel like the same place.

When I am there, as beautiful as it is, I feel incredibly disconnected from the rocks around me; I’m distracted by cars and people and coffee shops and parking spots and sometimes even schedules.

But my boy is there, so there I go.

Tourists abound – it’s like a monstrous bus opened its doors and dumped out thousands of passengers then went away and came back with another busload.

The people are there for thrills, Arches, and shopping for Red Dirt T-shirts.

We have tourists too – they’re here for ruins and train rides.

The thing I notice the most about the adventure tourists is that they tend to be really uncomfortable in their bodies – these are people who do not spend a lot of time outside connecting with the dirt beneath their feet.

Everything in Moab is about the adventure; boatingbikingclimbing4-wheeling. It’s a scene.

My son loves it – he gets sick of the crowds, but as a river guide, he is right in the thick of the action – he’s part of the energy that creates the scene.

It’s a world that I used to be a part of but no longer am. I am conscious of bringing a little bit of country with me when I sit down at the dinner table at the restaurant owned by the boating company which caters to people in hiking boots and brand new Keens.

I used to feel so cool when I was a guide there. Now I’m totally not cool and totally okay with it.

After dinner, as I was leaving town, I thought about the fact that I no longer fit into that scene and I realized that after close to 23 years in a rural ranching community, I am very much a Colorado gal.

Albeit a Colorado gal from New Jersey.

2 hours away from each other, my town and my son’s town are like night and day – I feel like a hick – unsophisticated, working class, an intimate participant in the landscape of my home.

We work hard and get dirty a lot ’round these parts. W e are comfortable in our bodies because we use them and because we have a connection to the land.

On my way south to my very remote camping destination, I stopped at a used gear store on my son’s recommendation and my observations were proven correct.

In Moab, people buy pearl button shirts and straw cowboy hats at the same place they buy climbing equipment and wetsuits.

Hip, trendy, cool.

Over here, on this side of the border, we buy pearl buttons and hats at ranch stores.

Utilitarian.

 

 

I lied

Remember when I said I didn’t miss mountaineering?

That’s not true.

This storm tonight that is circling (it feels like) around my house, brings with it torrential rain, lightning streaks across every corner of the sky, and thunder, so loud and so immediate, it chatters the teeth.

This storm has awakened cravings to be up in a high basin: safe, but not too safe, closed in in a mid (a floorless, tent-like structure, used by old school outdoor educators everywhere), drinking tea and eating chocolate, while watching small creeks form next to my sleeping pad and obsessively counting the seconds between light and noise.

Some of my favorite memories involve storms in the mountains.

So I guess sometimes I do miss it.

pissed

I am fucking pissed.

How dare he do that to me, to us.

This is fucking bullshit.

And there’s no way that this one can be blamed on me.

I let him know that I know; after all of this time, he clearly he thought he’d gotten away with it.

No more.

I even stepped off the high road a little bit and you know what? It felt good.

The thing I believed to be most true about him was that he had more integrity than any other man I knew, which, in turn kept me secure in our relationship because he had too much integrity to ever cheat.

Whoops.

So the problem for me, the place where I keep getting stuck, is in believing/accepting/admitting that he is no longer the person with whom I was madly in love.

And because I don’t interact with him at all or ask about him or even lay eyes on him, in my mind he’s still the person I believed him to be: an exemplary man.

So then it goes without saying that if he is still that exemplary man, then he must really really not give a shit about me OR I’m not worthy of anything better.

But I won’t go down that rabbit hole right now.

So it’s confusing and surreal.

And it’s fucking infuriating.

definitions

ruminate, v.t. to chew the cud; to chew again what has been slightly chewed and swallowed; to muse; to meditate; to think again and again; to ponder

obsess, v. to preoccupy the mind excessively. To have the mind excessively preoccupied with a single emotion or topic

betray, v. to hurt (someone who trusts you, such as a friend or relative) by not giving help or by doing something morally wrong

Oh to be able to quit obsessively ruminating about the betrayal