It Is What It Is…..

I enjoy my talks with my girlfriends. They seem to be looking for the same as myself. We are similar yet different. One is obese and wants to just enjoy life without being so fat, as she puts it. She has dropped 100 pounds yet has so much more to lose. She gets together with her girlfriends for a trip away from reality however her issues always follow. The other is recently divorced from a man who has cheated on her and abused his body with drugs to the point of getting so paranoid that he has lost his job and tore his house apart thinking everyone is out to get him, spying on him. The others have been married for years yet they are missing something in their life.

Me. I honestly do not know how to describe myself. I was always called a looker. Men wanted to be with me. Some women hated me because of how I looked. I could not help how I looked. It was not like I drew attention to myself. I was totally opposite, not wanting to be noticed. I lived in a loveless marriage. I felt I was slowly fading away. I did not have any real friends because they could not understand why I stayed with him. They could not understand that I just gave up. I gave up ever knowing real love, real happiness with someone. They could not understand how I could be always happy smiling or laughing. They did not know I was trying not to think of the emptiness I felt. They always said how everyone liked me. I could not see why. And I was not an easy lay like a lot of women I knew. IF they had actually taken the time to realize that I was just like them in some ways. I worked, took care of my own home. I grew tired. I had times when I just wanted a place to get away from things. And I was shy. I never asked for help.

I had worked with men all my working life. I saw and heard things I never wanted to see or hear. It is what it is. It made me stronger. It made me start to stand up for myself. In the end, I kept to myself, still lonely and longing for someone who just might want to love me. Not a fling. Real honest love. I wanted I guess what people would call the fairy tale. I wanted honesty, loyalty, trust. I wanted to know I was someone’s someone that I could feel safe with. To find that home.

There are times I go down to where I was born. I sit and stare at the house and remember how it used to be built. Yes, there are bad memories but it is what has made me who I am today. I do not visit often. I am no crybaby but when visiting my dad’s grave, the tears run down my face. He was the only stability in my life. I miss him so much though it has been many decades since he has been gone. I can actually sit at my dad’s grave and see the old homestead. I can see the school that my dad built, where I danced the nights away as a child, where I went to for the first few grades, where I taught. I can see the church where I went to Sunday school. I see the store my dad helped build. I wanted to swing on the swing set my dad set up for us kids.

I walked the graveyard and remembered the people I lost. Bruce and other students who thought that drinking was the thing to do. How I got ridiculed for not joining them. I would always walk home with my head hanging down and the tears would run. However, I am standing, they are not. I walk over to where my grandfather and uncles are buried. My dad is off by himself as is one of my uncles. My mother is buried on another end where my foster grandmother is, next to her foster grandmother. I often wondered why they were not buried in Canada, where they were from. My brother-in-law is there near my dad. And now my sister. As I walk the graveyard I can sense my ancestors walking behind me. Why am I here I ask myself.

I stop over at the cemetery on Oak Hill Road. My paternal grandmother and great grandmother are there along with another relative I never knew. It is a very tiny cemetery. Then I make a final stop at the cemetery on Smart Road. That is where my other brother in law is buried along with his son who hung himself at 32, and my good friend Dawn who was so very young. A lot of other relatives are there from back in my past. My final jaunt is to the cemetery in Belfast where a young lady is buried. Her sister and I were best friends growing up. We used to tease her so much. She died in her early teens. Her sister who used to be my best friend, Denise, now lives in Louisiana, who joined a cult. And there is Brenda who I worked with, who hung herself at a young age. I wonder why. What could they not deal with. What made Denise join a cult. I think it was then when no matter what I had endured, I felt blessed.

I wondered why I am going down memory lane. When something is bothering me, I tend to go within myself. In time, the answers come. I only have to give up trying to control the answers coming quicker. Is it that I am older now? I still think about people I went to school with while here. I do not have any guilt for not joining in what they were doing. Over half of my graduating class that I grew up with, are dead. Drink, drugs, illness. I also wonder if it was the schools we went to, where they had asbestos in them. So many questions with no answers.

I then traveled to where I used to live before going to the UK. Whoever owns it now has allowed everything to overgrow. I used to mow a half acre to keep it looking nice. I had all mountain ash growing along my street to my driveway. I still do not know what the trees grew at the opening of the stream that ran through my upper property. I called them my Hawaiian trees. The upper frog pond was still there but so badly overgrown. You could not see my old house because of the overgrowth and I was not about to drive up the long driveway. I suppose the new owners would have let me but when down that way, I just remembered. I also believed that by going back as I did, the answers came quicker and I felt at peace.

My final stop before heading home was at the city park. I sat on the grass staring out at the ocean. It was as if I was back in time. I had swam in the ocean when the pool was full of kids. I finally got to sit in the little building where we used to eat our lunches. I sat on a table, feet in the chair, looking around. I closed my eyes and took in the smell of the salt air, remembering. I looked to see if Bobby’s and my initials were still carved into one of the posts. I walked on the beach a little then realized how late it was and headed home.

A few days later, my ladies realized they had not heard from me so they called me. It still takes me a while to deal with 3 way calls. I told them where I had gone. They asked how I felt afterwards and told them I was just fine. I missed my dad. He was one I could talk to about anything so as it was, I explained I always went down memory lane when I went there. They asked me if it gave me any clarity. It gave me my memories I told them. Memories without the actions of those times. It also gave me some laughable moments of how I was the only Lenfest girl that had not been had by every boy in Swanville. We all laughed about that. They asked me if there wasn’t any man there that I would have wanted to be with. I told them that I was the only girl around there that hadn’t slept with the boys, so no, I was really not interested in any of them. I was like a conquest to them and who would win, which none of them did yet they would start rumors that we had been together. We all laughed then I heard their laughter fade away. My marriage dissolving was not entirely their fault. They could not measure up to what I thought I would have had with him. Till death do us part was not a part of their plan.

I asked them if they had found anyone they were interested in. They told me what they thought. Now that we were older, most of the good men were already married. Or gay. We all agreed that we wanted loyalty, trust, and honesty. They wanted not to have to struggle or have to support a man financially. I did not mind struggling. They had specifics of how their man would look and how he would be built. Tall dark and handsome for them. I did not care what my man would look like as long as he was real. A good sense of humor was important to me and someone who didn’t care if he got dirty helping me around my gardens, someone who could take over the lead if I grew tired. But most importantly I wanted to know I was truly loved and not cheated on. I wanted to feel safe with him.

I have always been the odd one to my female friends and to some of the men I have known. Some women can sleep with anyone that comes along. I cannot. I am sexual but I do not wave it like a friggen flag. I keep it to myself. I do not fall for some mans sweet words. And I have been known to throw a punch to any man who thinks he can have his way with me. When I say no I mean no. So then I am a bitch, cold as ice, virgin Mary, I have been called many names but I am proud that I am not a whore. And I may die as a virgin but I stick to what I believe in. I am not someone who cheats. I don’t want a relationship where I cannot be myself or be with someone I cannot trust with anything I have. It is like I have given up on everything. I can still do what I want but I do not do it with any real happiness. I have been alone for a long time. I would like someone to share my life but perhaps it is not for me. I have so much love to give and I will admit that I miss holding someones hand, hugging and just being happy with someone but I really have a problem with trust. I do not give myself to just anyone. Only one man I would but I have yet to find him. I don’t need someone up my ass 24/7 but it sure would be nice to come home to someone or to share some time with them.

So here I am now. I am a country girl living in the city. Talking with my girlfriends, none of them seem to know what is next in their lives or where they want to go. I think I have given up finding that “home” I always looked for. Love must not be in the cards for me and I can live with that. I do know that I want to live a peaceful, happy life. I want to work in my veggie garden, my flowers and to hear birds in my trees. Yet I do not know what to tell my lady friends…..of what I am going to do with the rest of my life. Probably just exist but what I really want is to have someone who wants to spend time with me.

Funny how I can do so much for others yet come home to an empty house. My ladies and I are alike in so many ways except that I go deeper. They say they love that about me. I cannot say whether that is a blessing or a curse. I think it is lonely all by myself. It is what it is.