Episode 32: The Sunday Scaries

HER.

Remembering the hard stuff not just the shiny stuff… CHILI! GROWING WINGS! Old stories. A WHOLE FUCKTON OF GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV. “The Nile.” REASONS TO GET OUT OF BED! CRINGE WORTHY LETTERS TO MYSELF FROM 4 YEARS AGO!

Excerpt:

So this week, really has just been a lot about work, a lot about cleaning and a lot about showing up in community. 

There have been some beautiful moments. Moments that took my breath away actually. 

But mostly it’s just been work, work. 

Now I love my work. But it’s not romantic. It’s actually quite clinical. 

So when it came down to the line, it seems I just didn’t know what to talk about this week. I’m having radio show host block. 

If, you know, that’s even a thing. Well if it’s not, it is now. And I’m sitting in all this silence, another slightly unremarkable unromantic week. And the onset, of the Sunday Scaries. My main partner has been on tour for the last couple weeks. And boy am I excited to see them next week. I’ve booked us a little Air BnB in the Catskills, and planned a hike up a mountain. And, just a lot of time alone in a barn. You know. Romance, but on a budget. But to me, showing up is romance. Quality time is romantic. You know, I think I fall under the category of people that have all 5 love languages as my top love language. 

If you don’t already know, the 5 love languages are define as such: 

Physical touch,

Quality time,

Words of affirmation,

Acts of service,

And gifts of gratitude. 

But anyways. Sometimes, in the prolonged periods of silence, I find that my mind wanders, back to old love. Back to things that used to be. My beautiful house built into the side of the mountain next to the train tracks. The smell of the pottery studio. Other lives I lived before this, that were ohh so different. 

When I say I’m a completely different person, I actually mean that.

I have lived many lives.

Loved many people. 

And someone asked me, several months ago, when the last time I had fallen in love was. And I had to think about it, long and hard. I mean, I love people, and I have never stopped loving anyone I have ever loved. But that was one heck of a question. I don’t talk about her much. 

But the last time I actually FELL in love was with her. She was, magnificent. To put it mildly. I looked up from across the basement room of an old stage coach, it felt like an underground speak easy, people crowded around the open mic performers, the lights low and red, every once in a while, I performed something. But that night I was just out on the town drinking a glass of red wine (which I do not do anymore). I remember feeling like the whole world stoped turning for a second the moment  I saw her. I forgot everything, even my name. 

She stood across the room, arms crossed, leaning up against the wall. She was wearing a black hoodie, her angular cheek bones cut down the sides of her face, she had a captivating androgyny, dark eyes, and the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. 

To say I fell in love with her at first sight would be, an understatement. 

I couldn’t take my eyes away. 

I just sat there, across the room and stared. 

Then suddenly she moved, I wasn’t sure what was happening, someone near the stage handed her a guitar, she laughed it off. And then got up on stage. 

Ohh no. I was done for. 

It couldn’t,

Ohh god. She’s talking.

I think I blacked out for a minute and came to the moment she started to sing. 

Spanish, of course it was Spanish. 

I became acutely aware. That I was now sitting. Slack jawed. Mouth completely open. In some kind of horrible paralysis. 

She payed two songs. The second one she had written. 

I remember every word of the second song. 

Warrior girl, take off your armor, go deep inside yourself and turn the alarm off. I don’t want to hurt you want to help you grow, see what happens when you let go. 

She got off the stage. And disappeared before I could even breathe. 

I sat there for another moment. Completely awestruck. 

Then I got up and went upstairs to the bar, another glass of wine would surely calm my nerves. Bring me back to my senses. 

I told the bartender, I was a little shaken. He was kind. He was always kind. And then before I could even catch my breath, she walked out of the kitchen. And there she was. Standing right next to me. 

Now she swears, that I was composed, and gave her a lovely complement, about her music. And started up a conversation. But I swear by everything I know to be true, that I absolutely babbled a bunch of random words and comments, (Olivia then stumbles over several words here, you know in reality on the show) taking the award for worlds most awkward human as she asked me if I wanted a bowl of chili. Yep, folks. Chili. I said yes and fallowed her into the kitchen. She was the chef it turned out. And the rest is history. 

And I loved her, with everything I had. Someone asked me about her this week. And I said, well I finally met a woman who just wanted to have sex and dance salsa and cook food. I was like, this is it. Let’s do this FOREVER. But the age difference really bothered her, and a lot of other things really bothered her, and well, I guess I just wasn’t her girl. I mean, I’m not. And she was never as sure about me as I was about her. I was soooooo sure. I mean, I would have bet on every race horse. I knew I had already won, every time she walked through my door and never made it past the threshold before one of us was naked. 

I would have gone anywhere with her. Anxiety and all. But then, I wouldn’t have ended up here, screaming into the void every week, studying the nervous system. Sober as a rock. And you know what? I know none of that sounds fun. Butttt it’s my version of fun. So deal with it. 

So it’s not just any random reason all of this came roaring back this week. Well, I talked to her. Which I haven’t in many years. And it was super awkward, and mostly just a work logistic question I had for her. And well all I wanted to say was, I missed the sound of your voice, but I didn’t want to be…. you know… That person (Olivia wanted to say THAT BITCH, but its community radio so she refrained). 

And so I did the thing I always remind my friends to do, when they can’t stop thinking about an ex. I always tell them, that we love to romanticize the good moments, think about how magical that one thing they did was. But often we forget, to remember the painful stuff too. To remember why we aren’t together anymore. 

And you know what. I’m so glad I’m not with someone who isn’t sure about me. 

I’m so glad I finally learned that I only want what wants me. Man when she broke up with me, I like, rented a yurt with a wood stove in the middle of wayyyy out there nowhere in the woods and went and constructively lost my mind for 3 days. 

Like that’s how bad it was. I left my house with the college student who lovingly called us his lesbian moms, and went out to sit in a yurt and cry. Yep. I did that. And I drank whisky, and smoked spliffs, and painted (ohh I used to be a painter by the way) and grew a pair of massive extremely painful wings in a vivid waking hallucination, and walked through the frozen forest, while listening to Jesse Cook, writing in the journal she had given me with frozen fingers, and crying to the ice covered trees. 

So you know what. This week we’re just going to listen to Jesse Cook, and Gregory Alen Isakov, because well. A little quiet, and a little of the Sunday Scaries, but also to remind us how far we have come (how far I have come) from that heartbroken women, from the frozen pines, from the appearance of unwanted wings. And because I figured it was about time, we got back to the heart of this show. The hopeless romantic in me. And I figured it was time, you really knew how very hopeless i was, before I built a bunch of roadmaps, with you every week, that help me keep my head on straight. And now I like to think, that I have received a body that keep on carrying me through it al, and I am learning my lessons, so I don’t have to repeat them again. 

And sometimes it’s constructive. At least. To remember where we have been, to remember why we don’t want to go back there. Because I don’t think my heart could have taken her on again. And likely, never will.

But me and the pines, will always have Jesse Cook, and this empty northern hemisphere. 

So here’s, lost by Jesse Cook, followed by This Empty Northern Hemisphere, by Gregory Alan Isakov. And then ohh yeah…. You guessed it, it’s time to break out that journal, and remember, exactly why “there” is no better than “here” and “here” is actually pretty great and exactly where I am meant to be.