Tonight's ad (among many):

A small moment of relief for having stayed quit through these crazy storms.

Now:
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SF Bay Area

FREE quit smoking support!  "Return to smoke free" CD by Jay Tinsman, pack of nicorette, homeopathic quit-smoking remedy, and "smoke free" herbal support supplements.  Note:  these last three items have been opened and partially used.

My smartphone app says I'm 1 year, 43 weeks, and 5 days smoke free, and that by not smoking 6719 cigarettes, I have saved $3628.

I actually did not use any of this stuff when I finally quit for good, I went cold-turkey.  So if it's not here when you arrive, know that YOU CAN DO IT ANYWAY!  Good luck, GO GO GO!

Address:  711 Prospect Row, San Mateo.

Pay it forward!
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Packing

I don't know where I am going but I have started packing to get there.  Box by box, I hope to sort through the detritus of our life together, and also of my LBB (Life Before Bun).  If there's something I think I might not need, I put it on the curb in a paper bag, and place a Free ad on the Internet, describing the giveaway, and saying "pay it forward".  I feel strongly that this is the right thing to be doing right now.  Cold wine, Latin music, empty boxes.  We choose what we want, but then try to go on with what we are given.  Later, late night / early morning, I will go sleep outside, away from Our Bed, and the dew will fall on my face until it's time to get up and begin again.

Here are some things that we did:

We made homemade Christmas presents together, with a different theme, every year.  I’ve lost the bright orange rice-sock we made to heat and put on the neck for relaxation.  Maybe she took it when she left?

We lit Hannuka candles every night of the holiday, I printed out the prayers for her to read in halting Heeblish.  She chose the color of the candles and I let my voice ring out to the blessing of light.

We sat on the couch and sang Joni Mitchell songs.  It was only once but I will always remember it.  

We had long talks about remembered kinds of candy and food and gum from our childhoods and then I went and bought a plethora of Hubba Bubba for us to share.

We went to Therapy. 

We cried.

We slept in the same bed many or most nights for about three years.  She ran hot (her friends called her oven-head) so I could just put one toe or finger on her and eventually I’d be warm all over.  I can’t bear to sleep in our bed now so I've made myself a nest outside.  When it rains I camp on the living room floor or go to the house of a friend.

We shared care of my beloved cat-son, from 5 years before until the day that he died.  We strategized how to get him to eat when he grew so, so thin, and she helped me dig the hole on the horrible horrible day of his burial.  

We fought about sex.  We had it, and did not.  We tried to find ways around the disparity in our desires.

We called each other Bun to such a level that it was locally famous.  Many of my friends also called her Bun.  An acquaintance once wrote on Facebook: “Your partner, I believe her name is Bun…”  Also many derivatives of Bun, you can only imagine.

She was sad.  She was so sad, so often.  I would come down the stairs to find her staring at her iPad, curled up on the couch in the middle of the day.  I tried to hold her, help her.  I guess I failed.  Maybe she just needed me to HEAR her.  I pushed her to get help.  I thought it helped.  

We joked about my remaining cat and enjoyed her as best we could.  She riffed on my names for said cat, cackling: “Choochi!  Choochi-mama!  Mama-lama-choochi paws!” 

We lived together.

She worked, hard, and adventured, harder.  I supported her every way I knew how. I trusted her - to be far away, around strange women, tracking down the gods of the wilderness.  I trusted her to be faithful to me.  She bought maps and special equipment, trained in the backyard and other places.  I did my best to clear out a swath in our world for her to pursue her dreams in.  I stood tall against anyone who might stand in her way, including myself.  Including her.

We visited my parents and her parents, her brother and my brother, my nieces and her nephews.  I called her father "Dad" and she called my grandmother "Abuela."  We told each other that we were each other's family.

We appreciated each other’s looks, with every variation of “you are cute”, “you are so cute”, “WHY ARE YOU SO CUTE OMG I CAN'T STAND IT”  And yet at the same time, and in some weird way, I wonder if either of us felt deeply seen on the physical level.  I remember her making muscles for me, saying: “How’s this?  Am I strong?”  and I wonder if I ever gave her what she needed.

I must have never given her what she needed because she is gone.  I’m alone in the house of Joni Mitchell and Hubba Bubba, of the one lonely leftover female cat, and the nest pitched outside, far away from the dangerously lonely, betrayed bed.  I am alone in the former House of Bun, trying to muster my own laughter, my own cute, my own warmth in the cold of the night.

I don’t know, I may never know, how it is that I incurred this loss.

How to bear the unbearable

Find out something that burns you like acid.

Rage and cry and wrestle with understanding.

Receive no clarity.

Go to the beach and cry out to the stars.

Call Josie.

Drink wine and take a hot bath.

Cry out to the night.

Fetch the Leopard so you are not the only mammal in the bed.

Sleep for three hours.

Wake up and wrestle with understanding.  Be tortured by the thoughts.

Call Jen.

Look ugly.  Be awkward.  Lack grace.

Rage and cry and struggle.

In this unlovely way, somehow, the sun will eventually rise.

Warning, this post is graphic

Hard, hard dreams last night.

Piera was kissing someone in bed next to me.  Then I flew around (that part was good).  Then I was at an opera theater trying to get away from the bad guys.  They had gotten one lady already - they would slowly disfigure her hands, one finger at a time.  They would cut it off, wait for it to heal and for her to resume her life and then start cutting at the next one.  She was sobbing as she showed me her gory swollen excoriated hands, and cried out "they won't give me a drain" - they wouldn't install a drain in the wound, so it ended up closing while unhealed.  Then the wound would swell and the pus and infection would explode it back open.

I cried again today.  Somewhere along the line (like, in teenage years) it became almost impossible for me to cry alone, so every time I achieve it is worth noting.  Somehow I need to be held and seen by someone else to feel safe enough to cry.  Scared of my own grief, I guess.

My Mom pointed out that I am the lady at the opera.  I see Piera tomorrow, to learn just how much kissing of someone else is going on, and how and why she walked out so suddenly.  I guess it feels like another finger is being cut off.  I'm sorry if that sounds dramatic and weird.  This is just a description of where the wild things are as I see them.  So all I can do is try to open a drain in the wound, and let it ooze into the pillow with my tears and snot and funny looking crying face.

There were all the other women, and then there was Piera.  (I said it like that when I was with her, so we can know it's true.)  This relationship, unlike all the others, was built on mutual compatibilities, shared experiences, trust, and a whole lot of like.  I've loved a lot of women, but liked and trusted far fewer, oddly.  And Piera was the first person who I felt saw me as me, the real me, and loved that me, and would stay and stay, and stay.

And I was wrong.

Nothing to do now but try to cry, and wait as well as I can for tomorrow.

I don't want this post to end on a falsa happy note, because today is a truly tough day.  But it is worth noting that in this dream, as well as one I had the day after I found out what had happened with Piera, I flew.  In both of these flying dreams, navigation was the question.  In both of them I had a navigation apparatus that I ignored/didn't know how to use/didn't work, and in both of them I was able to steer around properly and land safely when and where and how I wanted.  Both landings were on a beach.  HMMMM!

Tears

So tears came for me tonight, great gutted wrenching howls that probably terrorized the whole neighborhood.  I don't want to say too much about it, just that it was sacred, and scary, and I lived through it by myself, without calling out for help.

Househunting on the cheap in the Bay Area

Things I like: 

• Quiet streets
• Yellow houses
• Yellow kitchens, also white, or blue.
• Laminate or hardwood floors
• Yellow (or white or blue), sunny kitchens with hardwood floors (duh!)
• Tile floors also
• Big, bare yards (blank slate!)
• Big windows
• Open spaces
• No neighbors!  Or few of them, and quiet - like I have now.
• A place for the Leopard to roll around in the sun and show her chubby pink belly to the sky
• A short, predictable commute to work.  1/2 hour, just long enough to eat breakfast and assemble my mental armor.
• Green houses.
• Pink houses.
• A place where I may consider transferring the decomposing body of sweet sacred Georgia Brown.
• A place where I feel safe OR a place cheap enough that I reserve some money for a big fence and an alarm.  But preferably the first.
• A place where I can lie with no shirt on in the clean sunny dirt (see above).
• Having a vegetable garden.
• Not having to freak out about locking up my bicycle in maximum-security solitary confinement.
• Blue houses (a nice blue, or blue and white.  Not the depressing, dull, poverty-grey-blue.)

Things I do not like:

• Grout.
• Having to move at all.
• Having to weigh my safety vs. my privacy vs. hours in the car every day vs. sunlight.
• Grey houses, or brown, or a weird, deranged pastel that is mostly dirt.
• Carpet, especially if/when it is old and disgusting.
• Neighbors with pitbulls.
• Neighbors with un-neutered, uncared-for pets of any kind.
• Being single (so far.  To be fair it has only been three weeks).
• Knowing I will probably get out-maneuvered by counter-offers or cash investors even if it's a property I *don't* love.
• Sitting in traffic for the hours I will end up doing if I get a place I can afford (one hour each way every day).  Achy back, no food, polluting my sweet sweet world.
• Jumping awake in the middle of the night wondering if someone is breaking in (not looking forward!)
• Seeing people on meth or other drugs twitching near the house I'm looking at.
• Condos where there is someone above you, below you, and to either side.
• Small, concrete patios with no sun.
• HOA dues of $300 at least.
• Places that smell or feel like urine, smoke, or anger and hopelessness.
• Looking at my current home with an eye to what’s mine, what’s hers, and what has to go.
• All this, really.  

I am grateful, of course.  Not of course, like it's a given.  I am grateful, simply, punto y final.  I have my health (no cancer!), safety, a clean, safe home while I figure out what is next.  None of that is to be discounted and plenty of women do not have any of those.  And please, say a prayer for those who do not.  (Goddess protect them, those who do not.)

But I still have my own unique experience which is that I. Hate. This.  I did not want it, and I do not like it.  I had built the life I longed for, my co-builder jumped ship, and now I need to cast about and look for the next shore.  (I don't care if that is a mixed metaphor, it works for me).  I can do it, and I will, but I don't have to like it, and I don't.  Now.  On to see the next listing.