Getting Hurt at Sturgis

I wear this gear.

Because I've been,

Hurt before.

I won't let any,

Thing or person,

Hurt me more

I like my gear.

Have you not seen,

All my scars?

I hate it here.

The damage has,

Gone too far.

I don't wear,

Gear for you.

I wear gear,

Because of you. . .

(Spawned by a comment made by Vespa Steph about her gear, I found it poignant and timely, here at Sturgis. You don't see many people wearing gear, but most of them are doing plenty of damage to themselves on and off the bikes. It seems that's what Sturgis is about.)

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Sweet Sweepers

Lavender asphalt in graceful sweepers float my spirit high.
Minimal input of handlebars releases my state of mind.
Blind corners fill me with faith, in the moment I create
The present; that is all there is. This curve carries my fate.
I don't know the other side where others have gone before.
I fear not my tomorrow, and I feel care no more.
Because sweeper, sweet sweepers, do carry me away.
Carry my spirit into the blind curves, living for today.

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Disappointment

Overwhelmed.
I'm overwhelmed,
With the expectations of others.
I don't want to hear that it shouldn't matter.
That doesn't translate in the real world.

Disappointing others is never easy.

No matter how I try, or don't try, or how honest I am,
With myself, everyone around me, to my loved ones, somehow,
I'm a disappointment.

I can't please others.

Every time I hear I've disappointed you, it becomes less painful for me.
I cannot continue to care when I know inevitably I will hurt you again.

I'm not ever going to be enough for you.

Because I'm not ever going to be who you want me to be.

I've tried to please others,
In hopes they would try to please me.
It doesn't work that way.
We all just end up hating whom we've become.

All I have left is my integrity.
All I have left is my desire to please myself.
All I have left is what I came into this world with. . .
One life to live.
My own life to live.
I must please myself to find happiness, because I'll never find it in you.
You will never find happiness in me.

Your happiness, your expectations, you disappointment, your joy, your achievements, your fears, your life. . . they all have one thing in common. You.

I will not hold those things for you. I'm busy with my own.

Every time I hear I've disappointed you, it becomes less painful for me.

Say it again.
Say it over and over.
Say it until I can't feel any more.
Say it until I'm released from my pain.

Disappointment.

I've become your disappointment.

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Ancestral Bohemians

As a child, we were nomads. My mother was constantly moving us, from rental to rental, never permanent, never stable. I made friends quickly everywhere we went because by nature, I'm very social. I wanted to live in one place and have a home, like other people lived.

As an adult, those days came. I owned a home, tended my yard, swept, cleaned, took care of my husband and children. I would lie down at night so tired and wondered, "Is this really what I wanted?"

My ancestors were nomads, travelers; but not by choice. They had once been farmers and occupied their ancestral lands for hundreds of years. My Great Grandmother Minnie Burke Rogers was a member of the great Choctaw nation. The Choctaw signed nine treaties with the United States Government, the first being The Treaty of Hopewell in 1786. In 1830, the United States seized the last of the Choctaw’s ancestral territory and relocated the tribe to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. The Choctaw were the first to walk the Trail of Tears. Nearly 2,500 members perished along the way.

My husband is a nomad, a bohemian too. He understands the longing in my heart to keep moving. Perhaps we are wanderers. . . still looking for a great place that no longer exists.

Bohemian: noun
1. a person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices.
2. living a wandering or vagabond life, as a Gypsy.

The less I own, the less I am owned by my property. I want less, not more. While this seems unconventional in this society of consumerism, I am comfortable with the thought. I'm more comfortable in my skin than I ever have been. You can keep your BMW's, your boats, your giant furniture and enormous homes. You don't own those things, although you can't see it. Those things own you. Be a slave to your paycheck, your payments, your bank account. I would rather go hungry than to spend my life working for "things". I long for freedom.

On my Yamaha V*Star Tatonka I am alive and free. I'm ready to roam again. On Monday we will pack a few items, load up my motorcycle, and drink in the lined concrete and become a blur in the broken landscape. I'm going back home, if only for awhile. Back to the road.

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Meant to Be

My exx, me, car builder Chip Foose, and my daughter Olivia in 2007

A short time after we married, I realized that I wasn't madly in love with my exx, but I thought we were good for one another. I wanted to make him happy and I wanted for us all to be a happy family. But it wasn't to be.

I spent 15 years with this man, trying to meet his needs, be someone I wasn't, please him, all in an effort to make him happy. I thought if he could be happy, then I was doing something right and I could find some sort of peace and be of value to someone. But it wasn't to be.

When I left I was so depressed about failing. My mother's first words were, "I told you so. . ." even though I begged her not to say it. Most of my friends couldn't understand why I left because I never said one bad word about my then husband. I needed support and understanding, but it wasn't to be.

Now he's found another. He seems incredibly happy and she seems to be the woman whom he was meant for.

I'm glad for him. I truly am. Because this was meant to be.

I'm glad I left. It opened the door for him to find someone who fits his life, fits his heart, fits in with his family, makes him smile and fills that hole that I never could. Trying to be someone I'm not never worked because it wasn't meant to be! Finding the right person is the best thing that can happen in life and for the man I spent all of those years with, the man I wanted to make happy, I'm glad that my final act of leaving has done just that.

He's happy now.

And I'm truly happy for him.

God, that feels so good to be able to say and mean with all of my heart.

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The Sense of Sobriety

On this, the eve of my 21st sobriety birthday, I am remarkably introspective. If you know me at all, you'll know that I'm usually introspective in some manner, but tonight even more so.

My accomplishment seems blurred and muddy in light of the death of an actor. Philip Seymour Hoffman died last Sunday, just 6 days ago, from an overdose. Alone in his apartment, found dead with the heroine needle still in his arm, the brilliant actor died at the age of 46, only one year since his visit to rehab. His acting abilities consistently enraptured me, transparent, vulnerable, brazen and shameless, his characters were deeply flawed but his performance never was. He displayed his characters as so incredibly human that I would lose myself in the film, forgetting this was an act, a play, a story for the audience's entertainment. It was life, in full force, at it's ugliest, tenderest and truest form.

And now that's gone.

This man who touched millions of people with his ability to make us feel was unable to recover from this disease, yet I've been saved somehow, by an incredible grace, from it's clutches. 21 years I've survived drug and alcohol free, able to grow and achieve so much, and now suddenly I feel so small. My accomplishments have been massive, at least for me, in my tiny spectrum of the Universe, but now they seem infinitesimal by comparison to this man. And yet, I accomplished the one thing that he needed most, that eluded him, and killed him.

He's dead right now and I'm alive. And somehow to me, that doesn't make sense.

Perhaps it's not supposed to make sense to me. The Universe and all of it's mysteries are beyond anything any of us can intellectually master. If I've learned anything it would be not to waste time trying to understand that which is so far beyond me.

I want to make it matter. I want my life to impact others in a positive way because I have been graced with a chance to do so.

I want it to make sense, for someone, if not for myself.

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I Am Alone

And on my worst days, the most painful of memories rise up, and haunt me.

I sing this song, alone.

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