Sticky Fingers: Dipping into the EX Files

I'm in post-vacation-depression. The kind where you just want to wake up and drink a cocktail at noon instead of doing work and even though it's snowing I'm still wearing a sundress. I want to eat dessert after every meal and turn off my alarm clock, maybe even throw out an occasional "WOO HOO!!" It's denial and depression all at once. It hasn't helped that this week I've been back on the job-hunt grind; constantly refreshing my inbox, frantically scouring the pages of MediaBistro and five million other like sites, interspersed with a recurring and irritating habit of mine; Dipping into the EX-Files.

Technology makes it too easy not to do. It's the same equivalent of having an important document sitting on a table with a big "CONFIDENTIAL" sign stamped on it, you're naturally going to want to peek. The EX Files: Any information pertaining to a previous relationship, that's floating around the Internet whether that be your previous relationship or his.

It's the mystery that makes it tempting. I ask questions and I'm always curious about the relationships my boyfriends have had, because every relationship makes them who they are....so when you find that their EX Files are like comparing Jennifer Aniston to Bjork, or Bacon to a Veggie Dog (or any other random pairing of opposites) you naturally want to dig a little deeper to figure out, "what was it exactly...."

I've dipped into the pages of my EXes lady that he left me for, not because I'm still wounded, but because there's still times when I'm feeling nostalgic or I trip over a pillow he made me with his face plastered on it, that I haven't gotten rid of and I think, "What the fuck?" I'm curious because she seems alien to me, so different from everything I was...and hey, maybe there's my answer. There's times I still care because I never got to make him cry and simply saying "goodbye" to someone when you were royally fucked up isn't the kind of end that makes you gleam with relief, making him cry would. As catty up as that sounds, I catch myself in Mean Girl moments and Cheshire cat grins...I can't help it.

I've dipped into the pages of my current Love's ex girlfriend, whom I find very interesting and talented but cold and distant unlike me. Like you may need a frostbite warning being in the same room. But yet, I'm intrigued. How a person can love such opposites???

There's a natural curiosity and if I'm not the only one that has it, then I'm sure they're reading this right now. Though the past is an illusion now, it still left a fingerprint that remains in the present.

"You should really get rid of that" My naked boyfriend hovers over a pillow with my face and my exes plastered across his, smiling and in love- so distant from me now that it's like looking at a picture of another person.

"Yeah, I should. I don't know why I haven't. It's like people who keep concert stubs, who don't scrapbook. What's the point I guess."

"HA. If only when he made this he could've flashed to this moment, years down the road, of a naked man, after just making love to you saying, 'throw that out'" My Love gloats, yes baby- you are the winner.

....and then I can't help but think, what pieces of My Love do his exes have, what pieces does my Ex have that his new love looks and scoffs at....

Part of loving is believing in the MOMENT of what you're sharing is timeless. You give pieces of things and even more pieces that are invisible and you believe in the act that it's safe. It's exactly what makes love recklessly beautiful, vulnerable and terrifying. Knowing that someday another person may hold a piece of what you gave in indifferent and unwelcoming hands and ask that it be "thrown out." Even with that awareness, I can't help but emblazoning My Love with every mark of my adoration and bottomless affection, hoping that it is in fact the one that lasts.



WHAT'S IN YOUR EX FILES???

We're all UNIQUE seashells....

"That's not perfect enough..." I say, as if it were FACT.

....my little Sister's angelic response, "Why not?"

"I don't know it's all... (searching for the right imperfect word) ....broken and holey. Not Godlike, but grave-like." To ensure she knew I didn't mean the seashell resembled a relic of Jesus in anyway.

The thought that something broken and holey wasn't pure perfection didn't occur to her as "imperfect" and she tossed it in her sack of seashells; perfect enough for keeping, to her.
Every inch we stepped she kept finding seemingly "perfect shells" the shells I was hunched with a rabid tenacity searching for, I was in full Huntress mode, "I will find THE MOST PERFECT SHELL on shore before the sun goes down, or I will not go inside. I am a woman on a MISSION. You cannot hide from me!"

Meanwhile, here she is skipping along the beach, pigtailed and optimistic finding perfect, uncracked, unadulterated perfection; curly shells, twisted shells, smooth and hard-no dents, cracks, strange escape routes from it's former inhabitants. Just perfect. What's she looking for that I'm not???

"Ok, let's just stand. We'll focus on one concentrated spot and there we'll find some PERFECT SHELLS. " This is me being SMART. Wise. A lady with a plan.
So there we stood, in full Hunchback of Notre Damn style, asses out, arched with the ambition to fulfill my duty as Superior Shell Finding Master. As my back ached from yesterdays running (another ridiculous inner competition I put myself up against) I thought to myself, I can't find a single shell that's "more beautiful" each one my eye skims across is absolutely splendid....they're all perfect, they're just different. What's any more perfect that the next? The similarity between how I regard beauty in day-to-day life, people, things, etc. and the searching for "the perfect shell" had an eerie kinship. For all the times I regarded someone as "eh" or judged with a vain outlook. What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I recognize that if I JUST LOOKED CLOSELY, I'd come to see that each shell, small, sunset colored, off-white, broken, cracked, halved, were all PERFECT. Each person, each voice, each lifestyle.... Perfectly what they were meant to be, perfectly unique. Some not as flashy as the others, but yet absolute in their discreet beauty.

I've had this COMPLEX about being unique, since I was about fifteen. I was told once, by a famous Reality TV Show judge in a singing competition (guess which MOFO I'm talking about) that I was "GREAT" but, "What's unique about you....." When you're fifteen you don't know that the fact that you EXIST is unique and that answer isn't the first one to come in your head, the answer that is least unique usually is, out of panic, sheer terror that someone would have the audacity to even question your brilliance, you sputter ordinary answers, hence fueling the vapor of righteousness to steam a bit more from the person that asked in the first place when you give your answer.

....years later after living a life of intentionally striving for "UNIQUENESS" often doing things simply because they seemed "different" than what everyone else was doing; here I am on the beach, judging perfectly unique and individual seashells as "imperfect."
It was only once I decided to have "concentrated focus" that I saw, clearly, that every. single. shell. was in fact, perfect. Perfectly imperfect in their differences from the others. I wanted to take them all home with me.

Only when I decided to let go of all of my preconceived notions about perfection could I truly see that perfection is an ideal only unique to beholder.
Each path that we take in the way we live is designer perfectly for each of us, some of us seem to take "safer" routes, but in the end we all pay some price. We all suffer certain losses, of confidence, faith, dreams, or people and we all have UNIQUE had to at one point sacrifice one thing to have another. Though we may walk similar paths to our neighbors and friends, we're each taking in everything UNIQUELY. Therefor our choices, our INTENTIONS, have to be just that; UNIQUELY PERFECT TO US. AS INDIVIDUALS, not as a whole. Never made out of obligation or duty, but out of our unique desire and yearning; to fulfill our individual journey's to their potential.


...I'll come home with a bag full of PERFECT shells. Some grey or tiger striped, others only a piece of what was, but all chosen from my perception of beauty.

The "Someday" File

I was stubborn and decided I would put on a "bit" of sunscreen on to please my prying Mother and now it looks like someone seared my chest bone and rubbed hot sauce under my boobs.
"MA, I'm that person that gets super tan. I'm like fucking Pocahontas." Says Chelsea Talks Smack, now she's holding a bottle of chilled Pinot Grigio between her breasts because she doesn't have any Aloe.

On vacation in Sanibel Island with my family. We're that family that "vacations." We always have, whether it was Austria, Italy or France, Mexico, or San Diego- we vacation, we drink, we argue, we cuddle and we eat. I'm certain that it's God's idea of giving us a test in unconditional love. Or restraint. It's the Heavens testing out their product like, "did we make them stable enough to not kill a family member under pressure, with a broken GPS and 24/7 interaction?"

The other night when my boyfriend was massaging my ovaries, it's that time of the month and he's kind, what? you'd want someone to massage your ovaries too if they offered. I promise.
I blurted out, in true ovulating form, "I COULD KILL A PERSON."...could I really kill a person? I don't know, we'll see when the end of the week rolls around if all members of the tribe arrive back in one piece. (NOTE: If any of us drown or are killed by some freak accident like choking on a tiny bit of seashell while diving, It probably wasn't ME who did it, just a disclaimer, prison isn't the "big house" i'm looking to visit)

When you're laying on the beach you have a lot of time to think about things like that. Like killing people. Or like "what would it be like to be a bird??" You also have a lot of time to discover extra long hairs that you've apparently missed shaving for what, 6 years? They're like that pesky cockroach that you eventually name, "Hey Steve, nice to see you again, how are those Goldfish? Cheesy enough for you?" ....I've counted exactly SIX leg hairs that I've shaved over five million times, but they've marked their territory, roots are deep. Eventually they'll strangle me in my sleep or something....In between thoughts of killing or getting laser hair removal....

I started reading the book "The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry" by Kathleen Flinn about a woman in cooking school at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and that's when the mind spun off into a frenzy. After I daydreamed about attending pastry school, taking up smoking and living off St Germain in Paris with my Man- occasionally buskering for extra cash so we could take the train to Prague and drink vodka.

I started daydreaming about all of the things I've filed into the "SOMEDAY" file.

Someday I'll.....

...feel financially stable. I won't fret that the next paycheck isn't coming...
...visit Spain, Brazil, Greece, Ireland, Thailand, Bali, Turks and Caicos.
...be organized.
...get a story published in (fill in the various blanks)
...live in Paris for a few months, where I'll spend all day writing music, stories and cooking. At night all my interesting friends will gather and have heated debates and laugh boisterously. They'll all be characters with depth, talent, pain, stories....
...finally get to tour. FOR REAL.
...like looking at my stomach in a bikini.
...volunteer and stick with it.
...I'll have a foundation that's strong enough so that I don't have to juggle SEVEN JOBS. Oh yeah people, SEVEN.
...it'll matter that I've worked hard at everything I've attempted, it'll prove to be worth IT.
...i'll eat raw food for a week straight. And I'll love it.
...I'll be able to say with complete confidence that I'm doing EXACTLY what I want to be doing.


ALL of my somedays are so long it's an entirely different blog. Then, as I baked like a Lay in the sun, that saying, "Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes" popped in my head. Dreaming is about as tentative as it can get....opening the filing cabinet and saying, "someday...." may mean it stays there forever?

So. I got up, and found one thing to cross off my list, (there's an actual list...a long one...in a journal) "Someday I'll go kayaking in the ocean." CHECK.
and tomorrow, instead of "Someday- I'll go sailing" I'm going to go sailing. NOW.
The "Someday" File will turn into the "TODAY" file as much as possible, everyday...until my "somedays" are old days.


What's in your SOMEDAY FILING CABINET???
... excuse me while I go dip my breast in the Ice Box.

Someday you'll.....

Just call me The Twisty Death Apple

Back to regular programming.

The line between "Real life" and "blog life" is a fuzzy one. Sometimes I get SO caught up with my online life and neglect real life; like going outside, enjoying 3-D friends, etc. Often times, I know that I cannot turn on the computer or I will be sucked into a black hole and by the end of the day, I'll have no clue whether there were clouds in the sky or not.....

Then, when you aren't blogging for awhile or "checking in" you have this pressure, like shit- "she better be up to something great and come back with something interesting to say, otherwise what's her excuse? Reality television and couch-potatoing got the best of her??"

Anyway, blah blah, who cares.

Yesterday was My Love's 25th birthday- we ate sushi, had two fantastic shows, rehearsals and engaged in other adult-like debaucheries. I was really waiting for an excuse to make cake so I'm glad I finally got one, because Mama was missin' licking the beaters.

...then I did a few girly flip outs about how I'm leaving for Sanibel Island on Saturday and I'm not fit to get into a bikini yet, so I punished myself even more by stressing over a platter of onion rings and cream cheese frosting. What the fuck is that? When you're feeling stress, it makes you less productive, or when you're feeling an overwhelming amount of things to do, it makes you lazy?.....or when you're feeling fat is just makes you hungrier?

Why are brains so twisty and complicated?

I've started to notice one serious problem that my brain has been coming up with. My brain has been weaving this web and capturing all good things, wrapping the up, suffocating them, then turning them into twisty fucked up versions of the "original beautiful thing." For instance, My Love's sweetness:

"Babe, you are the most intense person I know."

When someone tells you you're intense, it's only natural to INTENSELY react....
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M INTENSE?!?!" .....well Chels, your uncanny impression of Jack Nicholson in The Shining may have a tiny bit to do with it. My poor love walks into so many traps....when he's trying to be nice I read into everything he says and turn it around and make him feel bad for saying it, when he was really only trying to be sweet.....Why won't I just LET HIM be sweet?

He says:
"You're like that fruit......"

Me: "What fruit????...."

My Sweet Love: "You know the fruit that Adam eats....it's like that really delicious AMAZING fruit....like nothing he's every tasted before. The texture, the flavor, everything about it is the most incredible thing in the world...."

Me now in full-crazy-mode: "You mean the apple? I'm like the tempting Apple that KILLS Adam? The Satan fruit?"

My Sweet Lover now fully locked in my death trap: "....oh wait, NO. Not that fruit. You're like the fruit from Chronicles of Narnia....right? Is that what I'm thinking about? Amazing Narnian fruit? .....I didn't mean the apple, wrong story. You're not the tempting death fruit."

Me feeling like Satan's plaything dangling in front of sweet cherubic Adam (i.e. My Love):
"Well, I do like apples. But, good. I'm like what? You think I'm the fucking fruit that makes you die. I look nice on the outside but I'm actually POISON. I'm the reason for your slow-death demise. I'm the destruction of all things good."

Sweet-cherub-angel-lover-still in cage: "Baby, I was just trying to say you're the most amazing thing, unlike anything else I've ever had in my life. You're not wicked sinful fruit. You're incredible fruit....rare, delicious fruit."

WHY DO I DO THAT??? I've started taking everything, EVERYTHING, that My Love, my family, my friends say and dissect it's goodness into tiny strange bits. Pieces so small they're impossible to decipher or reconstruct. I'm a mad man, with a machete to all things that would allow me to feel good about myself, the way people feel about me, my success- everything.

Why, as people do we not just allow ourselves to celebrate when YES, we are fucking amazing! Yes, you are beautiful! Smart! Deserving! FUCKING. INCREDIBLE. Why are we the first people with a quick draw to shoot down anything that allows us to be as incredible as we really are?

All I know, is I'm ready to put the machete back down. To drop my shield, my defense mechanisms and sudden unnecessary outburst of rank venom.

If ain't broke, don't fix it right- or at least don't go at it like a wild Banshee chasing a rabid boar. Let the good things BE......

Truth hurts like a kick to the teeth.

Sometimes, when it's the most important time to tell the truth is when it hurts the most.

Lie all you want about how your fucking day is, or your icecream preference- but when you tell someone their teeth are turning yellow, or that their boyfriend is a tool bag, you're really gonna cut deep. When you tell someone the way they're living their present is affecting their future, in a negative way, they aren't going to listen to you with open ears.
Teeth being yellow isn't subjective, it just is- and being colorblind is a disease. Rihanna getting back with Chris Brown isn't subjective, it's just stupid. Global warming isn't deciding whether you prefer wine or beer- it just IS. But isn't denial so much easier??? Is it easier to see the smaller picture.....

...is it?

Is avoiding the truth really going to hurt less? Sure, facing the facts right NOW is sort of like wiggling that tricky tooth that's hanging by it's last thread and hoping that it stays there, because the actual PULL of it breaking is going to make you want to vomit- the open fleshy wound is going to remind you that YES, the tooth is GONE. So, it's easier to play with the tooth with your tongue until you decide to bite into a burger and the tooth comes out.....all bloody and unwelcome, inappropriate and meal-ruining, looks like you're going hungry today.
Is it better to pull or wait?

I've done both- I've tied the string to the doorknob and then backed out the second it was about to slam- both literally and hypothetically.

Sometimes the pain is literal. When it hurts the worst, it usual is. It's the kind that makes you fall to your knees and instinctively grab your stomach ready for every piece of your vital organs to just projectile straight out of your mouth. The kind that hurts the worst, is the kind that was so toxic to your state of being that you MUST get it out to feel better. It's the elephant in the room, the "she's so blind", the "if only she knew....." or the "get your head out of the clouds." It's the stain.

No one wants to be told to lose 25 pounds- but their heart surely wants someone to tell them. No one wants to be told that they're going to get themselves into MORE trouble by ignoring the facts. No one wants to be be told, "just work fucking harder." Or, "turn your pipe dreams down a few damn notches so you can hear what's really going on." And often, the reason they don't want to hear it, is because their subconscious is already busy dropping hints in the form of small road blocks in the pathway of their denial....but when the truth hurts the most, you're even more likely to try and figure out how to climb the fucking mountain before you acknowledge that it's Mount Everest, you aren't wearing a Northface jacket and you've got Converse sneakers on.....right- good luck.

When the truth is hard to tell, it's most often to the people you love the most, otherwise, you simply wouldn't give a shit. So what if they're hurt, NEXT.

Truth is one of the things that in hindsight, after the lesson's learned, it seems to easy. Choosing to ignore truth only helps on the surface....choosing to "deal with it another day" or choosing to put off the fact that YES, you DO have to pay that bill- and NO, they won't wave the late fee- the longer you wait, isn't going to make it go away.

He won't get better if he isn't already GREAT NOW. Just one more cookie IS going to affect your muffin top, stop acting like it isn't. Not telling someone what they need to hear isn't going to make you feel ANY different about it, and it isn't going to make their situation easier by you being silent. Silence of words doesn't create silence in truth.


The things that we need to experience don't always feel like a trip to the spa. Truth, can sometimes feel like Helga's Swedish massage with two fists and elbows....but, when the bruises are gone- the knots are smooth, you'll stand up so much straighter.



WHAT'S A TRUTH YOU'RE DENYING, whether it's something you need to tell someone, or something you need to tell yourself????

You CAN'T buy LOVE...but you can buy me a beer.

Damnit, I waited too long after my buzz to say all the shit I really wanted to say, now the moment has passed and I'm onto water (apparently my FACE needs to be more hydrated, says the facialist). Now I'm talking down the devil who wants me to eat a box of Thin Mints and surfing Craigslist for apartments I can't afford. But crown molding is SO appealing....

AFFORD; the topic that I was really looking to rant on this evening. MONEY, DEBT, ....feeling the fucking enslavement when you don't have enough.

I never, ever, thought I would be that girl that gave a SHIT about how much money my Love had. That was until I thought I could have babies with him. AND, I'm certainly not the kind that wants to fashion baby food out of brown bananas and Cream of Wheat.

Until now I figured, I'm an artist, we'll both just live in out little bohemian worlds, making crafty meals and walking barefoot. Thrift is chic anyway and we'll have enough to afford a good coat of paint when we need it. We'll really enjoy fancying up plain rice with concoctions of rare seasonings and we'll be good with eating sparsely while laying in the grass somewhere and identifying shapes in the clouds. We'll have enough love and passion for our art forms that it'll take up all the time and everything else will prove to be trivial We'll be the perfect example that doing what you love pays off, eventually....bliss will mean pure body, spirit, and mind.

....oh yeah, that was all until I really wanted to get an effing glass of champagne and some tomatoes and mozzarella at a bar, using money that (neither one of us) had at the moment and thus, we spun off quickly into a frenzy of anxiety and threw down the tightly tangled ball of stress and watched it unravel with sharp words and ultimatums. Oh shit, we're not it Kansas anymore. Kansas seemed so sweet until that fucking tornado and house nonsense didn't it?


All the "we'll live on nothing, until we make it" BULL started smelling like hair grease and Christmas cards where our parents would have to inform everyone that we were lending all of our creative talents to cardboard signs and fancy crack pipes.

When the fear of having NOTHING buries its gnarly little head in your brain, it doesn't make you cherish what you have- it makes you realize that's all you'll ever have if you don't shake a fucking tail feather, shake it so hard your ass falls off. Without the shakage, there is a possibly for; no home, no kids, no health care, no vacations, no wedding rings, no getaways, no happy hours, no fixing up. NOTHING. Nothing functional and human.

So after my head spun twenty five times and my tongue forked in various directions spitting ACID at innocent people, My Love handed my a card, that he made, that said, "I know all I can offer you is my love right now. I know I can't buy you things, but I promise you it will get better. I love you, I love you, I love you."

Yes, please stone me. For I am a heinous bitch with unreasonable expectations. The truth is, it ISN'T about THINGS at all....it's about being able to do all the normal human things without there being SERIOUS strain because of it. It's about feeling OK.


His note made it clear- we have to work through things.....and if I were to choose love or money, I will ALWAYS. ALWAYS. choose love. Even if it means we have to be creative to make PB&Js romantic.


Tell me, how do you deal with the financial strain? I know I'm not alone here, especially now.

GET THE FUCK OUT!

Have you ever gone through your cupboard, found a can of something with an experiation date in the 90's or an expired box of pancake batter and then, you put it back on the shelf anyway???

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about all of the things that we keep past the point of going bad; jobs, friends, relationships, that random package of gravy mix?, our presence at a party after the clock strikes midnight and everyone has turned into really fucked up versions of themselves and yet you continue to stay anyway.

The excuses always come down to really inexcusable things like; "but there's so much history...I'm not going to throw it away because we would have wasted so many years together." Well news flash to that, you're going to waste your entire LIFE if you stay with someone simply based on history. If there's nothing in your PRESENT worthy of staying for, get the fuck out.
Then there's these (most excuses start with a but), "But, what would I do?" or "But, I don't know what I'm interested in?" or "But, I don't have enough time. " OR, "BUT- I don't want to miss anything."

Sometimes, when you're in a place of making excuses for WHY you're staying, you probably should've left a long time ago.

The situations vary, and out of comfort or fear, laziness or a need to feel wanted in some regard we stick around....

Well here are some signs that I follow when I think it's time to GET THE FUCK OUT.......


1. He refuses to change his Facebook status and keeps it at "Single" or "It's complicated."
2. The cops are outside.
3. The girl who looks like an extra from Pretty in Pink is convincing the men at the party to let her do their makeup.
4. Someone is drinking straight from a bottle of Crown Royal
5. They're trying to pay you less than they promised.
6. One sentence, "I'd like to talk to you about God...."
7. There's a sign that says, "If it flies, it dies."
8. They say something like, "You're good- but not that good." Oh really? Then let them find someone better.
9. The drunk kid grabs the microphone....
10. He grabs the part of you with the most flesh and says, "Are you comfortable with your weight?"
11. You're seeing stars....
12. You cry en route to and from work.
13. They start suggesting you have a glass of water instead.
14. He asks for gas money after a date night.
15. You're doing YOUR job AND your bosses job, minus the pay.
16. "Vanilla Ice" and all of his friends roll in.
17. Your colleauges have Antacid on their desks and pop it like breath mints.
18. "Well babe, you're no Megan Fox...."
19. You're so bored you start creating word games, "How many words can I make with the word BORED....?"
20. You're justifying "why" without anyone asking.....



HOW DO YOU KNOW IT'S TIME TO "GET THE FUCK. OUT!" ???