The Bitch Goddess Is Back, Babies!

Well, well, well, wouldja look what the cat dragged in?  Me!

It's been a dang ol' while and a half, hasn't it?  Since 2013.  Now it's April 1st, 2020.  No foolin'.  And if you're living on this planet right now, you'll know we're in the midst of some reset of the Matrix or something.  Everything's shut down, we have to stay home, and I figured hey, I've got some time to Write, and I bet somebody out there has some time to heckin' read!

Now, hey.  Don't get all uptight about me referring to myself as the "Bitch Goddess."  Stay with me.  I've been called all the flavors of "Bitch" over the course of my life, and instead of getting hurt by it, I decided to flip it around and own it.  And.  When I was in graduate school, a particularly dark time in my life, to be honest, my friend Ruth said to me, "You've got this amazing Bitch Goddess voice.  Use it." 

I was twenty-two years old at the time of that conversation.  A baby rattlesnake.  I heard her.  I knew the voice she was referring to.  But despite her advice, I didn't know yet how to use it.  At the time, when I was twenty-two, I thought the biggest tragedy in my life would be not being So Young.  Since the last time I wrote to you here on The Sequential Vortex, Friends, I've learned that the biggest tragedy of my life would have been not letting go of being So Young.  I'm forty-one (and a half).  I'm not young anymore.  But I'm not old yet.  Especially in these last seven years, Friends, I've had this Life kind of kick my ass and hand it back to me so much that there have been points where I've said, "You know what, just keep it."  And Life would throw my ass back at me and stalk off until Next Time.

But I think I've learned to use my Bitch Goddess voice.  So don't get all skinny around the nose that I'm okay with being referred to as such. 

So what have I been up to in the last seven years?  Jeez.  Nothing, probably.  But lots.  Too much. I don't know.

I kept a blog going for quite a while, "The Daily Zoe," which featured my now-eight-year-old daughter and her daily antics.  We hung that up in 2017, a few months before that kid went to kindergarten.  And holy heck.  2017.

We lost our big white dog Rozzie on St. Patrick's Day in 2017.  I had said I could never lose her.  But she got old.  She got tired.  She was in so much pain, even she couldn't hide it anymore.  And you might remember Rozzie as the little disabled dog who could, and did, and had a smile on her face the whole time.  I had said I could never go into The Room at the Vet's and be with her until the Very End, but that's exactly what I did.  It was hard.  It hurt my heart.  But it also helped heal my soul.  I went and bought flowers for our vet's staff after I left the office that day.  They were and are like family. 

Then we got another big white dog named Sylvie.  She came home on June 30 in 2017.  She's Rozzie's Identical Cousin, except she's also pretty much nothing like Rozzie.  She's a sweet girl, but high strung, high-energy, a Talker.  She's a handful.  Yeah, I know.  She sounds like the White German Shepherd version of me.  And you're probably right, dang you.  She eventually warms up to other people when she has to, but I am most certainly Her Person.  She is my furry white shadow, even if she's broken my finger, given me whiplash, and dragged me all over the yard on my back in the snow like a snow-tube.  She also curls up on my legs and falls asleep in the evenings.  I love her so.

So Zoe went to school in 2017 and missed 20 days over the year due to illness.  But she got some cool tubes in her ears and had her adenoids removed and has been killin' First and Second Grades in the time since... until all the schools have closed indefinitely, due to COVID Cataclysm.  And the funny thing about Zoe going to school is that for the last 20 years, I've told myself that I'm an introvert and I hate people, but as it turns out, I might be probably an introvert (I need my downtime in the quiet dark to recharge), but I do NOT hate people.  I heckin' love people, especially the ones in my school district family.  I took up writing the elementary school newsletter and became a school board member and love.  it.  (OMG!  I know, wild, right?!) 

I think it's going to turn out that Zo going to school will change my life for the better as much as it's changing her life.

And we had an associate dentist that started with the practice in the fall of 2017.  Yay!  He left in April 2018.  Boo!  Hey. Everything happens the way it's supposed to, though.  Even this.  We just keep moving forward. 

I finally went for a breast MRI on the advice of my doctor, just after Zoe finished kindergarten, and that experience sucked just as hard as I figured it would.  I am not a claustrophobic person, but lying face-down on a metal bar for 20 minutes and not being able to move or take a deep breath tends to make a gal go to some pretty confining places in the corners of the imagination, and I was shaking when I finally got to come out of the machine.  It's all good, though.  I had another chance to practice proper MRI stillness a week and a half later, when they did a core biopsy of something they found in the first MRI.  It all came back clear, and I got to spend the hottest weekend of 2018 so far walking around with ice packs in my bra- which, breast biopsy or no, I HIGHLY recommend when the outside temps rise above a zillion degrees!  Seriously, just wear a ruffly or baggy shirt and TRY IT this summer.  You will not be sorry.

And then, damned if I didn't turn Forty.  And it wasn't so bad, because I believe I'm in the best shape of my life, and I don't have all that mess of being So Young hanging around my neck anymore, but there are moments when I get this feeling like I'm in a car that has just fallen over a cliff, and I'm in this quiet, still capsule, watching the scenery outside the windows sail up past.  A moment of "Where in the hell did the last 20 years go?!  Half my life's over!"  And the panic sets in.  Full-on panic.  And a little rage at myself for perpetually thinking "I've got time to correct this.  There's always tomorrow."  It's true, until it suddenly isn't. 

There have been times when I've felt as though I'm standing in a hurricane, screaming just to be heard.  Fighting for every inch of ground I gain... or hold.  Days when I feel like maybe getting a trophy for ending the day in the same condition I began it in wouldn't be so far out of line, because...whoa.  I've had dark moments where I've wondered if I disappeared right now, would anybody notice?  Or would I just be a footnote in some story somebody tells years from now?  "She was here, and then she was gone.  Hey, how 'bout them Bills?"

I constantly worry that I'm not doing right by Zoe.  Am I the example she needs?  Am I here for her enough?  Too much?  My life revolved around her for the first six years of her life, and as soon as she went to school, I've felt the obsolescence set in.  Every day, she needs me a little less than she did the day before, but she also needs me a little more, in different ways that reveal themselves as we go.  And the whole time, I'm just shooting from the hip, dropping and hoping it's all going to be okay. 

I've sat up all night many nights, taking stock and seeing where I've followed when I should have lead.  I've kicked myself for picking the wrong battles and letting the really important things slide.  I've beat myself up for not giving myself a fighting chance in some areas, and I've wondered if I should change anything at this point, or continue to seethe behind my smile.  I've scared the daylights out of myself, realizing that there's so much rage simmering so close behind that smile. 

I've evaluated roads I've taken myself down and come to realize that whether I like it or not, I'll be putting myself in 4WD and leaving the charted trails (but then again in these times, won't we all be doing just that?) 

And when I've asked the Universe or Whomever what I should be doing to pull myself out of any sequential vortexes of existential dread, It's answered, "Write."  And I've said, "Nobody gives two schitts what I have to say, so go screw yourself." And you know how it goes when you talk to the Universe or Whomever like that... I've taken some lumps.

So here I am.  Back again.  Maybe I'll write something you need to read.  Maybe I'll make you mad.  I'll probably reveal too much of my own Struggle- because no matter how ideal things look from the outside, I am just like everybody else.  Rage simmers from behind my smile, too.  Maybe I'll make you feel better about your damn self, because "at least I'm not as effed up as April is..."  And that's great.  Take it where you can get it, babies.

All I know is that I'm going to be writing this for Myself, and living for Myself again.  The second most terrifying thing about sitting here at this computer, typing these words is admitting that I've given so much of myself away over the last two decades.  The most terrifying thing is that I gave so much of myself away in the first place. 

Hopefully I'll make you laugh.  Making people laugh is my favorite.  Especially in dark and uncertain times.  Just got to get over this first post, is all.  But I promise you.  If it's dark, reach out your hand.  I'm here.  None of us is alone. 

It's good to be back!