Redneck Shaman

*The following are things that I have personally witnessed and been a part of.*  Take that for what it is.  About 10 years ago, when I still lived in one of the southern states, I had jury duty.   The case was as follows, roughly.  A guy was subject to a sting operation for selling marijuana. He was basically the local weed dealer. No evidence was presented that he sold any other drug. On the day in question, he met up with someone at a gas station to sell an ounce of marijuana. The team of police officers, and yes, there was a team of them set up the sting.  Around 5..maybe 7...Both exits were supposed to be blocked to prevent escape. One police officer was not in his designated place, so the exit that was supposed to be blocked was not. The police officer did not block the exit, he pulled up to the gas pump.  (This is relevant, just bear with me) Anyway, our suspect pulled in and realized in a hurry that he was about to be arrested, so he ran. There ...

i just read statued a limitatons and laughed so hard

I have been staring at these blank pages for a very long time now trying to find the courage to type the words that are pent up in my heart. Fear is a weird feeling for me.  As a rule, I am not a fearful person.  It's conditioning. Once upon a time, I used to be a vibrant, albeit geeky kind of person.  Alive. In love with life. Not afraid to try new things, or meet new people. Now, I rarely leave my house and a lot of days I can barely muster up the courage to get out of bed.  I thank the makers of the universe daily for the love of my animals. You can only live in a state of fight or flight for so long before it takes its toll.  I am a fighter, though, and while this seems interminable, there will come a day where I am happy to get out of bed again.  I am seeing flashes of my old self occasionally, and that gives me hope. I am cracked, people.  Cracked in a way I would never wish upon a soul.  I would say broken, but I'm not broken....

I see there has been an update that allows you to change your name.  Alrighty then.  So this is my new name now.  But fair warning, I'm a little more redneck than shaman.  But I do like the extra degree of anonymity.  I hope all that read this are having a wonderful day!

We're looking at it all wrong.  When they don't need us anymore, it means we did a fantastic fucking job!

It's been just over a year since my husband and I separated. We celebrated 23 years of marriage before that.  It's strange the difference a year can make in perspective. I don't really mourn the loss of the person I was married to.  I don't mourn our life together.  I had been in mourning for the loss of self. I'm not going to fill these pages with the ways in which he wronged me, because I'm certain I'm not perfect and did plenty wrong.  At the end of the day, it isn't about who's right or wrong, or who's to blame.   What it's about is the fact that I don't like who I am when I'm with him. As I learn more about who my true self is, the more I see that we were probably never meant to be together, to begin with, but I'm not sorry for that time either.  While I don't like who I am with him, I do like who I am with my kids.  I believe that there's a reason that things happen the way they do, and that time served ...

I'm still here! Eighty seven drafts, some with only a single sentence, but I am still here.  I hope all that read this have a wonderful day!

One of my favorite book series is the Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M. Auel. The main character, Ayla, has always spoken to me for some reason but not so much as she has for the last year. Basically, she is a Cro-magnon child adopted and raised by a Neanderthal family. She struggles with being different while growing up and finally she has to be true to her own nature. As a result, they curse her with death and cast her out on her own. As she went through the motions of trying to survive and unlearning childhood behaviors, she would say to herself, I'm already dead, so what difference does it make what rules I'm breaking now? I find myself thinking similar thoughts as I try to rebuild my own life, almost utterly alone.  Not quite though, because I have had friends I can count on who have been there for me.    I've learned that I am empathetic, forgiving, and genuinely kind. I'm flaky as shit sometimes and while I try to minimize it, I am still learning copi...

Then there comes the day where you realize you have given your last fuck about a situation.  I wonder which one it was ..I might have said a proper goodbye to it. It fucks you up a little at first, I think. Like, you sit there, and you think I "should" give a fuck.  I used to give a fuck.  But, I honestly seriously cannot find one fuck to give anymore. You might even like..look around your chair or something to see if maybe you dropped it on the floor.  Nope.  Not there either. Then you think..holy shit, I'm truly free!  At peace, even. I get a little paranoid after that..I think, what if I'm just smoking really good weed right now, and I really do give a fuck? Nope. Not about that. I'm saving my fucks for important stuff.  It's a heady feeling to realize that you came out on the other side of a bad situation with your...self intact. I have spent the last year getting to know myself again.  Sounds dumb, but it's part of self-healing. I ga...

50 Year Old Women        A friend of mine asked the other day who was “thirstier” lesbians or or men.  My response is women over the age of 50. Do you want to know why?  Because we know we can’t get pregnant.  For real. Men, if you dump your woman when she turns 50 for a younger model, you done fucked up, and I don’t mean financially, although, she’s happy to take your money too. Women after the age of 50 turn into sexual freaks!  That freak you think you want in the 20-year-old who doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing?  Seriously, why do men do that?  Is it fun to have to teach someone new how to please you?  Why do you think middle aged women suddenly take up yoga and other fitness activities?  So, they can have the stamina for more sex. You see, we spent all those years paying the price for the sex we had.  Either we had kids, or we stressed about not having kids or both. Do you know ...

I was talking with a friend the other day.  She's a very smart, motivated and talented lady.  I admire her greatly. She mentioned something in particular that made me think.  She said she once took some time off from the world. We all need to do that.  In this fast-paced world, we have forgotten how to just be.  Words like self-care and other words are bandied about and it can get confusing. The concept is a simple one.  You can't take care of anything else unless you take care of yourself first.  You have to be able to feed yourself, make messes, clean up your own messes, learn what makes YOU thrive as a person. If you aren't thriving, if you aren't well-balanced, you cannot begin to nourish another and be any kind of real help to them. I think many of us get caught up in taking care of others before we learn how to take care of ourselves properly. There's a reason kids are supposed to go out in the world.  There's a reason they have ...

What the hell happens to men in New Orleans?  I swear to you some juju gets into them in that City. Maybe it isn't just men.  Do you realize what we do for some plastic beads? This gives me a lot of faith in humanity that we would show our chests and all kinds of other depraved things..for some 25 cent plastic beads.  And they probably are like penny plastic beads. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, don't get me wrong.  But seriously the first time I went with my husband of 20+ years he changed into a different person. This fella, who has not cared for gew gaws the entire time we've been married, bent over and picked up some beads that were laying on the ground, covered in God only knows what, and presented them to me like they were made out of the rarest diamond. And they were broken, to boot. He held these things out and expected me to worship him for the God that he was.  And, you know what I did?  I took those nasty beads, twisted ...

I was relaxing with my husband the other day.  We were reclining on our bed enjoying postcoital relations. I was proud.  I had done a lot of work to make the bedroom an oasis of love. The air was permeated with the smell of Tahitian flowers, there was a splash of yellow on the bedspread to add brightness to the gray of winter. The bathroom and fixtures were gleaming with cleanliness. The sun was shining brightly through the window in a stronger than the usual weak sunlight of winter. We connected.  Well, I thought we had anyway. Maybe no so much.  I am very sensitive to his body language and when he started getting melancholy, I didn't understand. Then he said when it got warmer, he was going to help me take care of the cars and whatnot. I looked and saw what he saw and all I could think is "Darling, you are looking out of the wrong window."

I can't sleep and what I do when I can't sleep...is write. I am confused and broken and more than a little feral. Where did it start?  When did it start?  Am I righteous in my anger or just angry? Is anger my new default?  What about fear? Where did the capacity for compassion and love go? Was it stolen?  Am I truly crazy? At the end of the day, do I  like myself? I was woken up by a song playing in my head this morning.  I'm smart.  I know the answers to these questions, yet I can't prove it definitively. In this day and age if there isn't empirical evidence, then there is doubt.

Today is September 11th. All Americans over a certain age know exactly what we were doing 16 years ago at this time. Those that did this, whatever their name is  this week, hate us. They absolutely hate us and they have pledged to kill us to the point of killing themselves to kill us. What is puzzling to me is the actual degree of hatred they have for us. Think about it. The desire that is inborn to a human being to survive, a.k.a the survival instinct, is very strong. This hatred that they have for us is so deep and they believe in their cause so much that they are able to override an instinct that is hardwired into the brain. Let that register for a minute. I'll wait. I honestly do not know what could be done with a group of people that hate us that badly. My instinct for survival kicks in and I just want to turn it all into a parking lot and some really cool theme parks. I believe in my heart that our resolve has to be as much as or more than theirs. It's fight o...

This one is my soul cat.  She is supposed to belong to my son, but all parents know what happens to the animals when the kids move out.  What was theirs, is now yours.  If only it worked that way with their video games. I think this one has always owned me, though.  When I went to the shelter to check the cats out, there were a bunch of little kittens running around on the floor.  I couldn't get the attention of any of them. This one here was the only little baby in a cage.  And boy did she try and get my attention.  She mewed and mewed, stretched up in the cage and tried to get to me.  I stuck my finger in the cage, and she rubbed on me and was mewing up a storm.  It was love at first sight. I looked at the attendant and said, "I think she's picking me."  He had this grin on his face that I didn't quite understand.  It wasn't a grin of agreement, it was more like "you poor sucker". Little did I know what I was getting...

Aching arms, wet face, broken heart.

I am here to tell you that mailboxes must have magnets in them.  It seems I cannot drive past one without it flinging itself at my truck and then falling to the ground.  Not without inflicting damage also. I suppose it could be my magnetic personality. Carports seem to want to attach themselves to my truck as well.  One time I had one clinging so hard to my truck, crying plaintively, please don't go! Damn near ripped my front bumper off trying to get away from that one. Then there are trash cans.  Those must be suicidal.  I had one throw itself behind my truck every Monday morning for about 3 months.  Luckily I am skilled enough that I was able to not murder it.

Everybody hurts people.  I was thinking about this last night.  Everybody hurts people. Name one person that has never hurt an individual and I'll call you a liar to your face. We hurt the ones we love the most.  Why this is I haven't been able to fathom yet. I think it has to do with expectations. It's the intentional hurt that hurts the most.  I don't understand how people can be so deliberate and targeted with their hurtfulness. That being said, everybody hurts people.  It's a part of life.  It's how you react when you are hurt, or when you realize you have done the hurting that measures you as a person.

I hurt people.  It's what I do.  Just ask anybody that knows me.  This is your only warning. Everybody.  There are no exclusions to this rule.  Just so you know.  I will say something that hurts you.