Triumphs and wrecking into walls

Ugh. I'm ok. Everyone is all right.

Life continues to test me... Maybe? If I were religious, I'd fall back on the solace:

"God doesn't give you what you can't handle."

A friend said this once, and though, I don't subscribe, it stuck. I'd like to believe it. Hell, I'd like to believe there is nothing I can't handle. And after this year (the past two years, really), I'm thinking something otherworldly is going on. Or I'm being Punk'd. And Ashton Kutcher is about to pop up at any moment to apologize and laugh. We can all laugh. I'm already laughing...

So last Wednesday (Abbie's birthday, by the way) whilst parking, I rammed my car into someone's retaining wall. Up over a sidewalk, bending my wheel and flattening my tire, then SMACK...er CRUNCH. Like I said, everyone is ok; it's being handled. Still, the money and the nuisance of it are enough to have me thinking I've got some kind of curse going on. Abbie tells me 25 and 27 are transitional years and planets are shifting and rocking their orbits. Something. I don't know. I'm now 28.  The jig is up, Universe.

But along with the grief and the loss and the changes and the confusion and the theft (yes, there was some credit theft thrown in there too)... there have been good things. Great things even. 

This weekend was my art show at The Headkeeper in Greensburg. I'm always so humbled by the turnout—the friends and acquaintances from every part of my life coming together for me and my paintings. I find that after two shows, this one being my second, there is no greater feeling than that type of appreciation. Who knew people would come to like my scribbles?

I'm lucky. 

That's what everyone wants to hear. And they are right. I am. It's not that I don't appreciate it all, because I do, but all of my good fortune seems to be overshadowed by (or at least in battle with) some really grey clouds.

I come here to bitch. I come here to ask WHY of the world. Who knows. I'm blogging today, you know, and I'm reminded to look up this "Job" character from the Bible. Kelly keeps telling me to read about him. I did. I don't know... I mean, we know how I feel about religion. But I like the gist—I like what it's telling us, according to some author trying to analyze:

If the Book of Job reaches across two and a half millennia to teach anything to men and women who consider themselves normal, decent human beings, it is this: Human beings are sure to wander in ignorance and to fall into error, and it is better — more righteous in the eyes of God — for them to react by questioning rather than accepting. Confronted with inexplicable injustice, it is better to be irate than resigned.

—William Safire, The First Dissident^[3]

Irate! iRate? iResign?

Listen, everything is going to be fine. I keep saying it. I keep saying it to tell myself. Assure.

On another note, I finally got my moon phase tattoo... on D's birthday. She hated tattoos. She hated the idea of my inking myself; however, she grew to love my paper plane after some time. And since she always said I was the moon... I think it's ok to have something that reminds me. That I am. I didn't get it solely for her or because of her, but I got it FINALLY after over a year of loving on it.






I'm phasing. I swear... this has to turn out on its upside, yeah?


Be good,
mt

Without

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Two-grief kind of day, maybe?

Sometimes it feels like someone pulled the bones from my body. Like a walking (somehow?) jellyfish. Sometimes I don't know how to stand up, don't know how to breathe. I forget what beautiful looks like. Isn't that horrible? Sun or rain, I don't care to be outside. I don't care to be a part of anything.

I guess it is that finite. Death. And that world doesn't interest me, permanence, black and white. It's forever that we all want, right? For everything to exist in a higher plane, for a better reason. And I think... for that year and a half it did. Finally. I had the feeling of "more." And I'm not ready to go back to what this is. This is no substitute or alternative. Not after the knowing.

It sounds dead-ended. It sounds desperate and depressed. I'm ok. I'm living, doing that thing everyone else is doing. Yes, sometimes feeling like a zombie, sometimes a human shed of its skeleton.

If I could only be empowered by this, take the lessons and the love and build on that to go forward, but those moments are fleeting. Minutes. Until the memories take over. And I can be in mid-sentence or mid-laugh and my guts fill up my brain and then... fuzz cloud.

How can I live now? How do I live now? How do I hold up everything, keep it together? I just haven't got a clue. And this writing, only here...

This is me trying to figure everything out.

xo
mt

40 days... and nights, I guess.

In lieu of my friends' journeys into Lent season (crazy Catholics), I've decided to test my willpower. I mean, Jesus and I aren't necessary homeboys, but it's sort of for me, you know? When I was younger, I was more interested in greasy, salty foods (see below), but these days, I'm way into sweets. In fact, I'd choose ice cream over the lives of most people. Ha. Not really, but you get the idea.

Anyhow, today begins my journey into non-sweet-land. It's like the opposite of Candyland. Sounds like hell to me, but why not? It's not like I couldn't stand to lose a few pounds, help my diet a bit. I just wonder how close I'll get to the edge, especially when those mencies come.

Wish me luck, kiddies! And to those of you riding the Lent train, what did you give up? Oh, and good luck!