when it doesn't work, take ii

the first day together, june 2019

I used to turn to my words when I was lost.  It was a habit I picked up quickly and off the cuff way back in the MySpace days of like... 2006?  I'd give anything to go back to those mini-blogs and see how melodramatic they were, because I am certain they are just absolutely groan inducing now.  The problems of a 21 year old seem to pale in comparison to a now 36 year old, at the time having never actually been in love and not really understanding the intricacies that came with being so.  During love, after, and then way way after... when you've had a few years to reflect and learn... you can see the minutiae of it all.  When I picked up the pace on blogging again in 2011, here in its current form, I turned back to writing in my lost wanderings after the first of my three great loves had ended.

Even with writing my books, scribbling thoughts out is a habit I have let drop by the wayside in subsequent years.  Maybe because I would choose to turn toward other distractions instead, rather than dealing with things bothering me.  For example after Derek, I bought the Manor, and I spent a full year with my nose down renovating it as a distraction.  It worked in the sense that I eventually pulled my head up and realized I was in a different place than I had once been.  It didn't work in the sense that I when I did eventually lift my head up, it was to lock eyes with Andrew.

I don't need to re-tread the steps of our relationship here, I've done that enough and kept you all updated as much as I was willing to do.  When we broke up for a second (re: final) time in March, I jotted down my thoughts and figured that I was quickly and tidily wrapping everything up.  No muss no fuss, a place for everything and everything in it's place, whatever metaphor you wanna insert here.  Yes I was sad that it ended, as was he, but it was gonna be fine and we were gonna be fine and I was gonna be fine.  

Flash forward to July 1st and whoops, no one was fine.

october 2019

Y'see, the first month after our breakup wasn't an issue.  We took a couple weeks before we stopped sharing a bed before he moved to the guest room, and then we took a few more weeks for him to move his closet and dresser into another room.  I wanted it this way, because after our first relationship ended so abruptly, I never had any closure from it.  This way, it was a slow slide out of what we were and into what we would eventually be, with no rushing and just a gradual letting go of things.  Then everything slowly dematerialized into a status of "friends".  

Only we never were actually friends... the relationship aspect of things only ended in the sense that we stopped saying "I love you" 50 times a day and there was no more cuddling on the couch/physicality.  Everything else stayed the same.  He would pick up random things at the store for me he thought I might like, I did the same.  He'd make dinner, I'd make dinner.  He'd buy some drinks, I'd buy some drinks.  We always viewed it as a form of yin and yang, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, but there was a thought and devotion to it also that lay just beneath everything.  Just beneath the surface.

We did these things because we still loved each other, y'see.  Maybe we weren't "in" love, but that also is hard to quantify, right?  After all, at some point being "in" love just turns to "unconditional" love, and you do the things you do because it makes the other person happy.  I've had a lot of mental health struggles over the last 8 months and I talk about this with my therapist pretty frequently as I attempt to sort through the bog that is my mind.  By early May and after a bout of Covid for both of us, I was starting to crumble.  My mind was stuck in this sort-of revolving door of thoughts that I was still in a relationship, only I wasn't, but I couldn't move on, because I didn't want to and also because I couldn't, because I was still in a relationship... only I wasn't?  I had not made any progress forward and I was feeling constantly like I was going out of my mind, feeling like Andrew was setting a lump of limitations on me as an individual, even though he wasn't at all.

I still felt like I had to check in all the time, to tell him where I was and who I was with and what we did.  It just wasn't healthy.  So then I told him we couldn't live together anymore, and within a few days he had found an apartment in Madison that he'd be moving to July 1st.  That was that.

december 2019

From there, we did what we do best.  We put our blinders on and just moved day to day, planning things for the move and largely ignoring everything that the move meant.  It's easier to ignore things... to not write about things... than it sometimes is to confront and understand.  For my own part, I kept telling myself "you're going to feel great after July 1st, you're going to be free and feel like you've got a new lease on life and who you were BEFORE you got back together is gonna come right back in, and hey!  You're gonna instantly drop weight!  You're gonna be HAPPY!  Everything is going to change when you drive away from Madison, just wait and see!"

Only things are never really what you anticipate, right?  You have a high hope, and the reality of it is that you land somewhere amidst the dirty feet of said hope.

A week before move day, I got sick again with Covid.  Then Andrew got sick again with Covid.  I spent two full days face-down on my bed, navigating fevers and chills and coughing fits and essentially feeling like I was going to die.  I couldn't eat, I couldn't smell or taste anything; any plans for that "final week" were out the window.  No grilling out, no going to a restaurant for a nice goodbye meal, it was just sitting in the house and mostly him taking care of me, and then a little bit of me taking care of him.  Then on Thursday night it was both of us struggling to load up his car and my truck, fevers and all.  And then on Friday, it was kicking off our 4 hour drive to Madison through America's bullshit independence day traffic.

july 2021

It took a couple hours for us to unload the vehicles, and we were drenched in sweat and pretty quiet from just feeling rundown when all was said and done.  I helped him put his new bed frame together, and then we got the TV unboxed and on its stand... and then I could just feel the constant nagging in the back of my throat as it tried to close itself off from the tears I had been fighting back.  

So I said I was going to go and get started on the drive back to Minnesota.

Andrew seemed a little surprised.  Not that it wasn't the plan, because it was.  But it was also the sudden end to nearly three years of trying to navigate and figure out what our love for each other was.  What it was meant to be, what it was supposed to be, and where it ended up.  It was the conclusion of a journey during which we both earned our licks.  There will be no more five hour car rides to just spend a full day with one another.  No more hopes for surprise kisses or wonderfully healing hugs.  No more mornings together drinking coffee and just talking for an hour about everything and nothing at once.  No more goodnights and sweet dreams, no more oft-quoted jokes in passing or quick checkin-ins when I get home from work.  

Eventually you have to lay things down where they are supposed to be set, and you have to move on.  Ours was a relationship that perhaps crushed itself, more than once, under the weight of its own self-importance.  Trying to live up to a standard for the other person so desperately that there was no place else for it to go but downward.

september 2021

So I held my arms open for a hug, and I got one.  And I cried.  And I tried to force myself to let go once and for all of this man I have loved like no other.  I tried to force myself to say the words I'd rehearsed through my tears the night before, but that was to no avail.  Suddenly for every small thing I couldn't stand about him, for every small thing that bothered me and hurt me and annoyed me, there were infinite more things that brought me so much joy and happiness.  It was in that small infinitesimal moment that I so desperately wanted everything to go back to how it had once been.

I pulled away and he took my hands and he thanked me for everything, in a way so sincere that I interpreted it as much more open-ended than just helping him to move.  And then I turned and I left the apartment, glancing back one last time and feeling like it was the last time I'd ever see him, wether that feeling was warranted or not.  I put on my sunglasses in case someone saw me in the hallway and wondered why I was crying so hard.

I habitually keep myself firmly planted between expectations and reality, and maybe because this was our second go-around, I had to let reality win this time.  

Because that's how it works, right?  Win some and lose some?  I suppose that's the thing between expectation and how the real world is.  There's reality.  Or at least, there's reality as it actually happened.  Then perhaps there's the reality as you were told it happened.  Then ultimately, there's reality as you experienced it.  What's the right one, and if there isn't one, is it wrong to prefer one over the others?

november 2021

Maybe in another life, maybe in some upside down... we're still together.  Andrew and I are quoting movies into the middle of the night, staring at each other lovingly on our pillows and believing nothing else in the universe matters but us.  We're sharing a pair of AirPods, their song is lulling us to our content, and we're just good staying exactly like that.  But then I think of Selina Kyle in Batman Returns, and how she said "I would've loved to come live with you in your castle, Bruce.  Just like in a fairytale.  But I just couldn't live with myself."

Eventually you have to look at the world without rose colored glasses on and you need to take the steps necessary to start moving yourself forward again.

In the car, as I answered a myriad of text messages through my sobs, one came through from my mom as I started driving back to Minnesota.  After I had asked her why it was so hard for me to let go, one of the things she told me was "the deep feelings you have for the people in your life are part of what makes you so wonderful."  It's a blessing and a curse, in part, because often times for me the pain is just an inevitable part of the process.

The drive home was not liberating.  The day that followed was not liberating.  In all actuality, what it made me realize was that we had just broken up all over again.  Stupidly, what I fear now is that my life will be boring... because it's just me now.  It's me, alone, on my own, solo, yadda yadda.  And it makes me so sad.  I wonder if there comes a point in your life when it's too late to become the person you thought you would be?  Or maybe who you hoped you would be?

december 2021

We've spoken several times already since the move, and it shouldn't be such a concept for me to talk to the person I thought I'd share my forever with, and speak in an actually constructive way that illustrates people can truly be adults.  To have my emotions relayed back to me in such an honest and truthful way that I would believe what he is saying and understand that in this, I'm not alone.  

I might cry about it all a lot more, but I'm not alone.

I think back to the letter I wrote for Andrew after we broke up the first time, and I had been reading Memoirs of a Geisha.  I read this passage and loved it, and I shared it with him.  I think it still rings true.

"...and of course, I couldn't stop from thinking of the other life I'd once led.  Grief is a most peculiar thing; we're so helpless in the face of it.  It's like a window that will simply open of its own accord.  The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver.  But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it."  

This will pass.  Right now, I'm sad knowing it will pass, because that means putting away these emotions as they currently exist.  Our relationship will continue to transform and change over the next weeks and months and years, as it has for other people in my life.  For now I take refuge in the memories of what it once was, and when I feel like I've spent my time with them, I'll take another step forward.  I wish I knew what that direction was, but hey... it's a direction.

But I'm here to say that I know how love endures, beyond what the obvious concept of it once was for me.  And to Andrew, my Meatball, if love is fire, I'll burn for you.

Ciao for now.

when it doesn't work

My sneaky photo from our first weekend back together.

So.

::chuckles awkwardly::

So.

Here I am, sitting in a Starbucks (surprise), drinking my coffee (surprise), and writing about the amicable splitting from perhaps my greatest love (actually that one is a surprise.)  How do you even start one of these blogs anyway?  There's no anger, apart from the anger I have for the situation... there's no happiness, apart from the happiness I (we?) feel in having a weight lifted off my/our shoulders.  

There's no sadness, apart from the crippling heartbreak that comes with letting go of something that was just really... it was just great.

I think most of you are well-versed enough in the history of Andrew and I that for the most part, it doesn't really have cause for repeating.  We met in June of 2019, had a whirlwind 9 months, and then it was over.  After about 9 months of largely complete radio silence, we started talking again.  A whole lot.  Then in June 2021, we got back together.

There, you're up to speed.

I think that historically I tend to go into things, be they relationships or jobs or like... kids birthday parties... with the best intentions.  Bright eyed, often projecting a naivety that's actually a cleverly disguised harsh criticism, and overall friendly.  Right now, that is how I feel I approached this branch of perhaps the most epic love story I've experienced in my life, or at least, my life so far.  I was bright eyed because it was a fresh start to dive into something that had been torn away from me so suddenly.  I was seemingly naive but harshly critical, because I was looking for any of the negative semblances of the relationship version we shared that predated this one... and I was friendly, because not being friendly to this person I never stopped loving just seemed wrong.

We moved at a lightning pace, sliding back into a rhythm both so different from before and so much exactly the same that, according to both of us, it was like no time at all had passed.  It was as if the absence never occurred.  We clicked, like we always had, but without the drama that plagued us during "round one," as I was so fond of calling it.  We had our issues, it wasn't all roses all the time, but they were issues that we talked about in the moment and worked through.  Like adults.

Not that we weren't adults before, but we just... well, we didn't really talk about a lot of things bothering us before.  Perhaps Andrew more than myself, but I was just as guilty in this facet.  We're both very keen on the mentality of "giving it time," aka burying it, and hoping for the best.  

The funny thing with talking about things as they arise, is that I started feeling like I was the nag.  I felt like I was coming across as if I had a problem with everything, and because I had a problem with everything, it was as if I couldn't function if there wasn't something to take issue with.  Which, y'know... fun to be me!  But we worked through it consistently and all remained pretty great despite all that.

We did come up against a wall in November, one I'd actually rather not disclose, but one that was... I don't know what word to use other than "finite."  It wasn't a bad thing, no one did anything wrong, but it was a game changing reality for us.  For what it's worth, we tried to work around it.  We talked a lot, I thought about it A LOT, and we moseyed through the holidays with that tried-and-true notion of "give it time."  Because time heals everything, right?  And eventually things are just fine?  At least, that's how I've lived my life.  When I encounter things or situations I just don't like, usually a bit of time resolves them.  Sometimes... a bit of time only means you'll still have to pay the piper.

In this instance, unfortunately, time did not resolve it.  Unless you consider us coming to terms with it and deciding to end the relationship a "resolution," that is.  It wasn't the resolution I wanted.  It wasn't what Andrew wanted, either.  But here I am, writing about it in a Starbucks.  Again.

July 2021

The most painful part of our first breakup was that because it came on so suddenly, I didn't have time to anticipate the end.  And because of that, I was left wondering that constant and horrible question of "what if?"  There were so many unknown things about where we would have gone, how it would have felt, if it eventually would just run a course, if it would last forever... and I thought about it all constantly.  What I was so fortunately afforded with this breakup is that I can now answer all of that.  I got my second chance at love with him, and I was able to ultimately resolve all that had been left unsaid and undone between us in my mind.  

How many people have that opportunity in life?  I certainly haven't before, and I cannot stress enough how fabulous it was to receive it.

My heart surprises me in all of the different ways as to how it chooses to break over the years.  Some heartbreaks are so... potent... that they have taken the breathe from my lungs.  They were unjust and cruel, making a mockery of me as an individual and the love I hold.  Some heartbreaks have been more of a "good, get gone, go, see ya," accompanied by the bitterness riding on those words and slipping into my soul.

This heartbreak is something else entirely.  This heartbreak is one that comes with the failures of everything before, magnified so strongly by all of the hopes and dreams that came with the notion of this being the first time I've ever gotten back together with an ex.  I think back on specific moments in time over the last three years and I just... I draw into myself.

For example the other week when I said to Andrew "this was just supposed to work."

It's hard not to feel like a failure when big and important things in your life don't work out.  Even if it wasn't for a lack of trying, even if it wasn't for a lack of care and attention, I feel like a failure.  This is compounded by the fact that there is no one to be mad at.  No one in the equation of two people made a choice that destroyed the other.  Andrew and I are two fairly stubborn people, absolutely, but we are also stubborn in that as we come to know who we truly are, we stand by our moral values and core traits.  

That's okay.  

Sometimes it sucks, but it's okay.

Another example was going to sleep that first night, both of us laying in the bed and me crying as we held hands.  After a time, with neither of us wanting to turn the light out because maybe subconsciously that meant it was the light truly being turned out on us, Andrew said "it's only the first night once."  Even now, three weeks later, my eyes well up thinking about that moment.  Sometimes the sadness of this not working is all-consuming.

Because of the different ways we communicate and show emotion, I spent a lot of time in both phases of our relationship operating under the fear that I didn't matter to Andrew.  This is not something he ever expressed to me, it was just, for lack of a better word, a "vibe" I held on to.  To me, there's nothing worse than something so important coming to a close and knowing you didn't mean much to a person.  And for each time I said this to him, and for each time he told me that was not accurate and dispelled my theory, I just held on to it.

Here, at the end, I know I did matter.  I know I mattered very much to Andrew, and I know what space I'll occupy in his heart and mind for now, for a long time, and for maybe forever.  I hope he knows that he occupies this in me as well.  The perspective that comes from an amicable, respectful split, has been very interesting to me (and to him).  While the feeling of being in-love has gone, there is still so much love and care that I hold for him.  Any partnership, be it boyfriends or girlfriends or spouses, hopefully results in that special person being one of your best friends.  This is true of us.

I used to hold so much stock in my bests, sometimes unfairly putting a weight on our relationships that should they fail, the catastrophic reckoning would consume me.  Now, with so many of my bests having fallen to the wayside (or kicked to the curb, natch), I get more than ever how some people are only meant to be in your life for a while, and others perhaps forever.

I feel that Andrew is one of my forevers.

There was a gravity between us from the first time we met, constantly pulling us toward each other through so many obstacles and hoops and fires and rivers and canyons and voids of misunderstanding.  We just kept coming back for more.  Because of that, I am led to believe that not only is Andrew a best friend, but also a soulmate.  You're not confined to one in life... it's silly to limit yourself in that way.  But that's how I feel.  He's just a part of me.

I don't know what the future holds, as for now we are roommates and navigating how that has shifted our dynamic.  This is something we'll continue figuring out, until one of us decides to call it and move away.  Either him, moving on to his own property of choice, or me deciding it's time to sell the Ranch and scoot along to my next adventure.  To quote one of Andrew's favorite phrases, "who can never be sure?"

After phase one ended, I discovered "Cool" by Dua Lipa, and I listened to it *all*the*time* during lockdown in 2020.  So much so, and throughout the year, that it was my #1 song on Spotify for 2020.

Then it was my #1 song on Spotify for 2021.

Looking at it now and how it made me feel, I always attributed this song to my relationship with Andrew, or Meatball, as I so affectionately refer to him.  Perhaps Dua says it best, "guess I never had a love like this; hit me harder than I ever expected."

Indeed it did.  And let the record show, once and for all, I don't regret a single second of it.  

Ciao for now (c:

a new resolution part xi

2021 seemed like the year to finally just "get it right," y'know?  Maybe that was just for me.  After the shit storm of 2020, I'd pick myself up from the gravel, dust off my skirt, and make a real gift out of the things before me.  This would be aided primarily by Covid-19 being brought under control (it wasn't) and also probably some sort of circumstantial thing (not that either).  So how did the year end up being alright?  Or rather, why did it end up being alright?  I don't know, to be honest.  

Everything comes with issues of one variety or another.  Sometimes you keep it local and order a good iced-coffee from a cafe, finding at the end of your drink there's a fly frozen inside one of the ice cubes (ask Andrew, it happened).  It could be finishing your basement, new carpet and all, only to have the sewer line backup with raw sewage and result in said basement being torn apart.  Sometimes it's finally biting the bullet and purchasing a truck, only to have gas prices rise uncontrollably after.  There are instances where you get into the best shape of your life and then get lazy and allow it to all slide away effortlessly. And sometimes it's coming to terms with what you thought was going to be a flawlessly perfect relationship ending up with specific caveats of its own.

Yet still, the year was fine.

I often find myself wondering if there's reason behind feeling melancholy when I write some of these blogs, and I worry that I feel this way because when I finally bring myself to sit and write something, it's the truth of who I am coming out through words.  It certainly wouldn't be a surprise to have that be the case, as my words have typically been a free-flow of raw thoughts and emotions I sometimes didn't even realize I had in me.  Nothing groundbreaking here.  This all brings me to the conclusion that I should be writing as frequently as I possibly can, yet despite this conclusion, I'm often running in the opposite direction of doing so.  There might be a metaphor or, like... an anagram or acronym or... or something... hidden in this fact.  You run from the very thing that will help you work through your issues because working through them means facing them and facing them means maybe changing things.  

And the older I get, the more I fear things changing.  You might find that funny, really, because I used to be all about the change... though change is sort of everything but fun now, and this fact makes me feel like a curmudgeonly old man.  That part I'm okayish with.

Looking back at last year's resolution, it was to take the steps necessary to recapturing my own happiness.  What that looked like was open-ended, as I'm a fan of doing, and in a few choice ways this was a successful resolution.  Funny enough though, I don't feel I can accurately even explain what those few choice ways are, which is odd.  I suppose underneath the immediate face of this happiness was really just the "choose what you want to recapture and work toward it" mentality.  That would be a fair summation, because I did choose to do just that.  I came to terms with not wanting to be on social media platforms, because they didn't really make me happy.  Andrew and I got back together, which on its face has been wonderful, and underneath said face has still been lovely if not drawing up things for us both to work on individually and as a couple.  And I suppose the last biggie would be finally taking the time to ask myself the questions I should be asking over where my life is at, what I am doing, and where I want to go from this point.  

Y'know, easy light questions.

This year marks 10 years since I embarked on filming 26 Golden Things.  2012 was (and remains to be) probably the best year of my life, and I can see a bit more clearly now as to why that is.  While it was a year of focusing on myself and what made me happy, it was also a year of instilling great change in my life.  Not because I wanted it, but because I needed it.  I find a decade later that I am back at that point once more, standing at the precipice of a lot of choices.  What they are, I'm not comfortable divulging here, but just know... some are large.  

Andrew and I sat down last night to watch the movie because I said I wanted to be inspired to write this blog, coming at you almost a week late.  Did I find said inspiration?  Not entirely, but it did help me out a little bit by seeing what I had once done and knowing that I could do it once more.  No, it won't be buying a new car (though if Honda reaches out to trade in my lease early, I will be there in a heartbeat), 

26 Golden Things will forever be a project that changed me in profound ways, moving me drastically from one mark to the next and outlining a road map for me (and anyone else that was a part of it) on how to make things better.  Ten years later, "making things better" now involves a therapist to help navigate the stresses of life/work/love/home ownership, but that's just part of growing up sometimes.  We can't stay living at our parents forever with no debt and expect to grow from it, as I did in 2012.  

This all brings me to my new resolution.  If 2021 was about taking the necessary steps to recapturing my happiness, then 2022 is about making the changes that will set me on a new path.  I'm sure I'll be shouting about some of them in no-time, that's exciting part about "good" change, isn't it?  Getting to share your own happiness over what is going to be different in your life?  A lot of these things are a ways off and many won't come to fruition even this year (TBD, honestly), but I'm ready for them.  Not right now, of course, as I nurse two broken toes from dropping a mirror on my foot at work, but soon.  Soon.

Until then, toodles gang (c:

the eleventh iteration

"In the next year I want to share more.  More blogs, more stories, another book to release, and of course the videos of what I am doing in my home." - Sean Parker, October 2020

So, none of that actually happened, and if I'm being honest here (and you know about my penchant for honesty), no one writing or reading this is surprised either.  To me, what's funny about that sentence is how totally and completely I rebelled against the idea of sharing more in the year to follow.  I first deactivated my Facebook account in November, and subsequently deleted it permanently in July.  At the time of deletion, I also deactivated my Instagram account.  Part of this move was based on my need to protect my own sanity and interests, and a large part was to focus on my love life.

That of course being the other big "whoopsie!" from the previous blog.  I wrote about Andrew and I reconnecting over a long phone call, which a month later turned into regular correspondence.  In February I dove into a blog trying to pepper everyone for the possibility we might be getting back together, then I shot my shot in March and watched it sail right past like a led balloon.  Then, without warning, by June we were back together.  Still are together, in fact.  And it's amazing, really, for me to look back with fresh eyes on a year old blog, see how much has shifted and rearranged itself in my life, and to also cap off the last decade with this, my favorite of the series' I've annually written about:

The Ten Year Anniversary for

Musings of a 

Self-Proclaimed Author

I feel like it took me a long time to finally understand something about myself when it comes to sharing my life.  To get there, it ended up requiring a complete departure from social media, the thing I had so completely and fully embraced from the inception of MySpace and onward.  It also meant pulling myself away largely from the blog.  Not because I felt like I couldn't write or anything like that, but because I just didn't feel like sharing.  You can't just live in the moment and interpret things as they occur if you are constantly looking for an angle to pitch it to the rest of the world.

I've spent years sharing about myself.  Call it my ego, or call it a delusional assumption that people cared to read about my life and the antics going on in it.  I'll clarify that, real quick, because I do know some people want to know about my life.  My family and a few friends, or even the other random two of you reading this right now.  Did I ever bring anything astoundingly special to the table?  Not really, but I also knew that all along.  I think my niche that I fell into was being the everyman, showing what I was going through and working on, figuratively or not, and how I was doing it (or not doing it, as it were).

In the past I received some comments around this habit of mine and how it helped some people.  It may have helped with a breakup, to shed light on the emotions of getting rid of your first car, and it may have drawn inspiration in you for projects to work on in your own house, etc. etc.  Over the last couple years though I started losing the point in doing this.  The past is in the past, but I still was holding on to it like it had never changed.  I often look back on 2012 with this strange fondness for how things were, knowing they will NEVER be that way again.  All five of my best friends living in the same city, without the cares of rent or a mortgage or children, with nothing but great times ahead?  That exists in your mid 20's, not your mid 30's.  Mostly.

The reality now of course is that I only really speak with three of those friends anymore, one of them occasionally, and one that I want nothing to do with any longer.  I'm on my second mortgage and I've moved across the country twice.  I don't live within 5 hours of a best friend, though arguably I have friends here in Minnesota that I feel just as fondly for.  The point is that the old version of me is one I still held up on this pedestal and assumed wasn't allowed to change, because how would that affect the brand?

The "brand" of Author Sean Parker, self-proclaimed or not.  The image of this individual who at times had become quite bloated in his own self-importance.  That's what made the move away from Facebook easy in the first place; I was grossed out by myself and who I had become.  I don't think I ever, in the last ten years, posted something without thinking "this'll get likes!"  Truly.  I wasn't sharing for me, I was sharing for you and to spark a comment or conversation.  "Look at how interesting my life is, let's chat about it!"  The fact of that matter is that I grew tired of talking about it.  At some point I started making the mental shift to posting just to share something with SOMEONE.  I was lonely and bored, in a relationship or not, and I just wanted to share things despite not actually wanting to talk about them.

When you get to the point of being annoyed by people bringing up Facebook posts YOU MADE, maybe it's time to step away from making said posts.  Instagram came next.

I needed the attention there.  I in fact craved it.  I remember one of the very first arguments Andrew and I ever had, and it was about me posting on Instagram.  Firstly it was that I was posting selfies that I had originally sent to him (because hello, I looked great), and secondly it was that I was hashtagging to my heart's content to get more followers and likes.  His question was simple, "who's attention do you need other than mine?"  I was so angry about that, because how dare he ask me that?  The public NEEDED me, Andrew!  They waited on bated breath for my next post, my next brooding selfie, didn't they?  I needed to give them what they wanted.

Except they didn't want that... or at least, they weren't asking.  I was just supplying.

By the end, I'd amassed 2,100 followers over my tenure on the app.  The bulk I didn't know, and I didn't care to know, but they cared to know me and that was what mattered.  Not to slap a tag on myself as toxic or anything, but... yes.

After Andrew and I got back together (more on that in another blog, this one is about me, natch), that was when I decided to move away from the 'gram.  At first I posted a little goodbye message to my friends and just deleted the app, but about a month in I went back and started deleting people.  First I went through the list of those following me and forced them to, y'know, not.  That 2,100 was whittled down to 49 people, the ones I was fine with seeing my life if and when I started posting again, and then I made my account private.  Then I whittled down the people I myself was following, from like 600 or so to just 44.  Then deleted the app again.

In early October I downloaded one more time, and decided to keep it.  A few friends noticed that I was watching their stories and said hello, but that was about it.  I reached out to a couple other friends just to say "hey" and that I was still alive.  But I haven't been liking or commenting on anything, and I haven't been posting, aaaaaaand there is now this weird trepidation in doing so.  Weird that my first post in 6 months will be to announce I've written this blog, and thus, am back.  

Albeit edited.

I'd like to think in the next year that I'll get back to writing more, but I don't know that.  I'd also like to think that I'll post a blog with all of the updates I did here at the Ranch, but I don't know that either.  Partly because I really didn't take that many before and after pictures like a real asshole.  I do know that I do intrinsically have a need to want to share about my life, but the things I want to share have gotten much more selective over time.  It will come back though in some form or another, I'm sure of that.

I thought when I sat down to write the ten year anniversary of this blog that I'd have something more profound to say and share, but I just don't.  It's crazy to look back at where I was in 2011 and where I am now, though I'm sure that's something a lot of people could say about their lives.  It just is what it is.  A year ago I was writing this in solitude, a month shy of getting my massive bitch kidney stone and enduring the Christmas holidays and my birthday alone.  It was hard.  Today?  I am listening to some soft Christmas music while Andrew takes a shower, and then when he is out we will drive north to Duluth for a quick holiday overnight getaway.

I'm happy, and I'm in love, and I sometimes fear this feeling is fleeting for me.  But it's a love that keeps me warm, and it certainly is stronger than any I've ever felt before.  Especially back in 2011 when I was lost and had no idea who I was or what I wanted to be.

Still don't, but that's what your 30's are for.  Ciao for now (c;

a full year stronger

Would it surprise you to know that this is the only blog I've ever written with a title I've already used twice before?  "A Full Year Stronger," originally posted on March 3, 2012, recapped what the end was like with my first great love, Ken, 365 days after the fact.  Then came "A Full Year Stronger," posted on July 1, 2018, bringing full circle what had happened with Derek, the next great love.  I think at the time, labeling the blog as one of my series' ( an episode / iteration / volume) meant that it was going to be the first of many.  As if I was expecting it to happen again, and really, what kind of person would I be if that were the case?  Though no longer an "eternal" optimist, I still remain an optimistic person and I still very much choose to see the good in people.  

So when I wrote the second blog six years later, I still believed it wouldn't happen again.

Then here we are an additional five years on with the third go-around.

Things with Andrew were always so different to the other relationships I'd been in, from day one through day final (I'm not gonna count them (okay it was 263)).  Before him, relationships were just smooth sailing from the start.  Attraction, get along famously, long long honeymoon period, settle into normalcy, watch it gradually crumble, get cheated on, call it quits, insert all the sad faces and emojis here and press send to complete.  I can hardly remember anymore what my life with Derek felt like aside from what the blogs and photos tell me... and Ken?  Even less so.  It feels not only like it was a lifetime ago, but as if it happened to someone else entirely. 

With Andrew, it all still seems to exist right before my eyes.  You can argue that that's for a multitude of reasons.  First being that it was only a year ago, so of course it's still fresh, and second because of the different nature of relationship we had.  

I was infatuated from day one.  Utterly and completely.  Then we met, and that infatuation grew.  It compounded on itself, it quadrupled in strength, and then it multiplied indefinitely.  We had some epically awesome fights and epically awesome... you know what.  And while our honeymoon phase got bitch slapped into reality maybe two months in, after that it settled into this beautiful normalcy.  For the short time we'd been together, it felt like we'd really gone through something and come out stronger on the other side of.  Then on a sunny Monday in February, one year ago from... I guess an hour from now, actually, I came home and he had packed his belongings.  

After twenty minutes of talking Andrew was gone.  I'm not sure I've ever cried like that in my life.  I don't think I could pinpoint a moment in my life where I'd felt so low, so hurt, and so utterly and completely devastated by something that was so clearly out of my control.  As a control freak, try to imagine how challenging that was, not having a say in the direction you thought your life was headed.

Enduring a couple weeks of shell-shock and misery led to the great quarantine of 2020.  And as it was with most of you reading this, what Covid brought was hard in its own right.  I don't mean to say my time in quarantine was harder than any of yours, because I can certainly guarantee it wasn't.  I was paid fully through my job, I didn't have any problems covering bills or buying food or any issues with insurance, etc.  I was just lonely to a point that it was exhausting to me.  I was constantly exhausted, and it's interesting how that happens, isn't it?  Where you feel like the life has been sucked out of you on a daily basis despite not having done anything to warrant it?  You're just drained from thinking.  From running things on a cycle over and over and over again behind your eyes, wondering what you could have done better.  What you shouldn't have done at all.

I don't look back on this relationship with pure fondness... that would be a lie.  There are plenty of things I hated about our relationship, plenty of things that were simply "wrong."  There were things I bent my will away from, or towards, or whatever direction you like.  I changed myself.  I transformed into a person I never thought I could be, trading in on some of my more stubborn traits for more co-dependent ones, and the painful result was where I landed in doing so.  

Spring moved on though and right now when I glance backward, the summer was actually great, all things considered.  I worked in the yard and got a great tan, I spent more time outside in general than I had in YEARS, and I strengthened a few more of my Minnesota friendships.  Summer was gone in a blip, of course, and then I sold the Manor and bought the Ranch.  I got sick in December with my giant kidney stone and that misery carried me all the way to juuuuust last week when my stent was finally removed after two surgeries.  It didn't feel like as much time passed as it had.

You can wallow in your own self-pity as much as you want, but eventually, ultimately, you have to lift your head up.  It's amazing how much can change in so short of a time.  You're so far from where you were a year earlier, both literally and figuratively, and since you turned a blind eye to most things you can only speculate on how this happened.

Was I wronged by Andrew as I had been by the others?  That's a difficult question to quantify a response to, as it's both a yes and a no.  No, in the sense that he didn't really lie to me (he did, but not in a betrayal or malicious way).  Yes, in that I had something pulled away from me without my a) approval, b) acceptance, c) consent, or d) all of the above.  That's the very nature of a breakup though, right?  One party (or both) doesn't want to be in it anymore?  Boo-fucking-hoo, move on?  Problem being that I don't operate that way.  Never have, never will.  I can say I've moved on and continue to split infinitives in blogs and all that crap, but I don't really move on.  

Call me stubborn, call me a Capricorn, but ultimately... call me single at 35 and writing for a third god damn time about being a full year stronger.

So all that being said, with a relationship unlike anything I'd ever experienced and subsequently a breakup unlike anything I'd ever been through... why would I expect it to dissolve into familiar territory a year later?  A year can do a lot to a person, after all.  Because you think you're done with things.  People... events... maybe even places.  Then all of a sudden you're not done.  Mot truly.  The people and events and maybe even the places that meant so much at one point, sometimes they have a way of coming back into your life.

Deleting Facebook in November was a great thing but it also stopped me from sharing errants thoughts all the time.  Such as the fact that Andrew and I began speaking on a regular basis in mid-November.  It's admittedly not something I would have made a status update about... "Hey all!  Just a heads up, the guy that flipped my world upside down before quarantine and destroyed my heart?  Well huzzah, we're speaking again!  We play Fortnite together five times a week and chat for hours, wa-hoo!"

Not likely.

But that's how it happened... we started playing the video game that was weirdly a big part of our evenings during the cold weather for months on end.  And we started talking over headsets while playing, some nights for 45 minutes, some nights for several hours, and we texted in between.  Not in the manic way we used to, but we were still communicating.  I think at first I was confused as to what this was.  Should I be getting feelings?  Should I be stopping this completely?  Should I be setting up all sorts of flaming hoops and high-bars for him to catapult through and over in some sort of mental olympics to prove himself as worthy of my attention?  Short answers are no, no, and no.  

Sometimes people deserve a chance., and you can look at it as a second chance, or third/fourth/fifth, whatever... but sometimes they just deserve a chance.  I think if we open ourselves up to offering that to people in our past and maybe some in our present, so many wonderful things are possible.  Over the last few months I've gotten to know Andrew as he really is, not the person he tried so hard to be when we were dating.  Not that the two wildly differ, but there are subtle things that set them apart.  Getting to know someone as they really are, with no pre-conceived notions of trying to impress the other or fit a mold for them, it can be an eye opener.  

We've spoken at length about what our relationship was and how it just wouldn't have worked out back then.  Not in that original form.  There were so many paranoias and notions of what the other was expecting.  We both sort of established "personas," if you will, at the inception of our relationship, Andrew more so than me.  But the pressure to live up to that persona, so terrified of letting the facade fall away and what the repercussions might be?  That's a lot.  Even if Andrew hadn't left when he did... it wouldn't have lasted too awful long beyond that.  In my heart I knew it just wasn't right how things were... and ultimately he was the stronger one to make that call and walk away.  I can't say with certainty I would have been able to do the same.

It's hard inviting an ex back into your life though, and I think that goes for any sort of ex.  While I have mostly positive relationships with all of mine, it was a gamble doing so.  Sometimes it pays off in a great way (my friendship with Jonathan being a prime example), and sometimes it's just nice to know you aren't hanging on to any sort of hate.  Maybe not the MOST fondness for some of them, but definitely no anger malice.  

Making the decision is hard because you're opening yourself back up to someone that has the ability to hurt you.  They know you and they know what makes you tick, often more than anyone else, and it's a risk to trust yourself enough to not let that happen.  It has happened to me... I've reached out to start a friendship and realized all too quickly that "oh, you jumped the shark on this one!"  Time truly does heal all wounds, first numbing them down and then eventually allowing them to seal shut.  But time is hard to be friends with because it moves too fast when you don't want it to and it slows to molasses when you need anything but.  

Where it goes from here, I don't know?  What I do know is this: for as much as I said I wasn't waiting for him to change his mind or come back, there was a huge part of me that has been since that day in February when he walked out of my life.  I wanted Andrew to walk back in, and he has.  There's vindication in that for me, somehow, and there's also sadness in it.  The sadness comes because this is isn't what it was and I doubt it ever will be again.  Is that bad?  Not really.  Could it be something else though?  Absolutely.  

Could it evolve into something even better?  Yes it could.  

There are days I full-tilt want that, to be swept up and away and feel light and free once more.  Then there are days where I simply just don't, because I was the one left behind and I was the one that had to scrape myself up from the pavement and figure it all out once more.  It's an overwhelming feeling to look back on the past year and see how much work it took to feel like a human again.  I can downplay it all I want, but I know the desperation I felt inside of me.  I know how far into the year I would randomly cry at a song or a memory.  I also know if it didn't kill you, it only makes you stronger.  And I know that for now, Andrew is my friend; he's a friend I shared something very deep and very real with for a period of time, and I am thankful for that.  I know he is too.

So that's where I'm at a full year later.  Stronger in some respects, weaker in others, but making paces forward all the same and navigating this unfamiliar terrain.  Covid still ensures there is no rush in my life for anything to happen, slowing me down to the crawl I've been at for a long while now.  But that's okay, right?  I've said it before in this last year, but slowing down is a good thing.  It allows you to take stock and look around, and make the best decision for you.  There are no rules to this game... start and stop the current level any time you want.

That being said, I'll leave you with Trixie Mattel's cover of Lana Del Rey's "Video Games."  I hope you're all doing well, that you're finding happiness as much as you can in 2021, and that you're looking forward to spring as much as I am.  

Ciao for now (c:

a new resolution part x

I've stared on and off at this keyboard all day long, not sure how to start or what to say.  I mean... I know what I WANT to say, but getting there is taking me just a moment.  How the hell is this my tenth time doing this?  I'm sitting at my dining table in a new house right now as I write this.  A year ago I was sitting next to someone I loved very much, in a Starbucks, with no face covering on and never in a million years imagining how I'd find myself in 365 days.

Did I ever tell you that I never read my old resolutions until January 1st of the following year?  Operating in this way makes it a true surprise to see how I inadvertently succeeded (or failed) in whatever prophecy I had set before my own feet.  Take writing the 2020 resolution, for example, where I admitted I really hadn't achieved a single damn thing from the laundry list I had set before myself in 2019.  

And then take the new resolution of 2020 and see how I blasted every single one straight out of the water.

There were two bits to my resolution a year ago, the "general" resolution and then a couple of things I also wanted to achieve.  These included: finished writing episode IV of my book series (success!), finish working on the house (after a long summer fo getting the yard ready, success!), and have Andrew get me into shape at the gym (not even fuckin' close as he left me just a month and a half later, whoops!).  The bigger goal for the year was to "let go."  Did I achieve that?  I like to think I did.

Sometimes I feel like the grand plan of the universe, as far as I myself am concerned, is to test me over and over and over again, just waiting for me to break.  Waiting to hit the flaw in my armor juuuuust the right amount of times so that it shatters, that it falls, and inevitably that the weakness of me as an individual is fully exposed.  Sometimes I feel like giving into these tests, and it pangs me a bit to admit that after 2020, I'm alright with that.

I used to think I had to be some version of a super man.  I thought I had to share my problems with everybody and then kick on the blinding floodlights to show as to how I persevered through them.  As if I had something to prove... something to hold above everyone else... in a way saying "I can do it and you can too, so suck it up!"  Part of that comes from childhood and how I grew up, where you just had to keep moving forward.  When we were kids, I can remember being a smart ass at the grocery store to my mom, turning and smacking into a coupon holder that was sticking out from a shelf.  And my mom would look down with vaguely disguised delight and she'd say "well, the bad fairy got ya," and that response should be true of a lot of things in life, right?  You don't need to be coddled for every little thing, you don't need the world to stop at your feet for every minor inconvenience, and this was a great lesson to learn.  I don't look back with any sort of negativity on this, it was a building block and a valuable one.

Another part of believing I had to be so great at everything comes from being a Capricorn, traits I've learned about a lot this year and have come to fully embrace.  And sure, with the zodiac you can put just as much faith into it as you want, but I find some of the evidence incontrovertible and choose to keep said faith in it.  Capricorn's have a habit typically of being hyper focused on how things are supposed to go.  They come up with a plan, they execute it pretty flawlessly, and they calmly look around afterward because that was just how it was supposed to be.  There's little room for error, and when error's occur, they don't really understand it.  They turn inward, they overthink, and they make god damn sure the error doesn't occur again.

So you've got to imagine my surprise at how this year in general turned out.  And you've also got to imagine my surprise at how every time I overcame an obstacle, either with ease or not, I was met with something so much fuckin' worse right after.  The year was snowballing in this wild attempt to throw me off course, and it did throw me.  I'm comfortable saying that.

I have been thrown.

Andrew left me in February and a couple weeks later quarantine was put in place.  I was alone a lot, with lonely thoughts to keep me company.  Eventually I could work out in the yard, planting grass and then pouring pavers, going through the motions of "this was your plan, so you might as well execute it."  But there was no thrill in it for me... it was just this bland sense of duty.  Then I put the house up for sale, and then I had to find a new one.  There were a lot of bumps along the way, a couple swerves, and then a full off-roading incident, if you will.  Then I had to get my tonsil lanced open.  Then Andrew re-emerged into my life.  Then the holiday shopping season started, I probably got a little too dehydrated, and now am left with a stent in my abdomen and a large kidney stone waiting to be broken apart through shockwaves in a couple weeks.

It wasn't a great year, lame Covid-19 or not (which you can for a lot of it).  Not seeing friends and family as much as I'd like, spending the holidays and my birthday mostly in solitude, that was Coronavirus, yes, but the rest was just circumstantial and complete bullshit.  I was angry a lot this year.  Frustrated with what cards had been dealt to me and frustrated with myself for not being able to pick myself up from the floor, dust off my clothes, and figure out a new plan.  The bad fairy had struck me, continued to strike me, and I just couldn't bring "eternally strong Sean Parker" to rally.  I don't think there's been a year on record in my life where I cried as much as I did in 2020.  Anything could make me cry.  I could cry right now if you asked me to, but there's not much use for it if you did.  I just kept thinking that life isn't fair, but really, boo-hoo for me.  It could've been far worse than it was.  

Upon looking back at the "learn to let go" resolution, I did learn.  Either willingly or not, I let go of the expectations I had for myself.  Maybe watched them burn a little, and maybe felt a little satisfaction in doing nothing to stop it, but that's what 2020 was for.  Slowing down, looking around, and taking stock of what matters in life.  Who matters?  What do you want to do that matters?  What do you need to change to make yourself happy?  I think we all got a strong taste of what doesn't make us happy so really, to turn that around, it isn't hard to spot.

I painted this almost 8 years ago, and it has hung everywhere I've lived except this house.  Tonight I'll change that, putting it up in my bedroom once more.  It's from "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," and to me, one of the best quotes I've ever heard.  A good quote can work wonders on you if you let it, and I need to start reminding myself daily of this one.

Which finally brings me to my newest resolution: take the steps you feel you should take toward re-capturing your own happiness.

I was happy for a really long time.  Truly.  And I have been unhappy for what now seems like a very long time as well.  Pick a reason.  For 2021 I think it's time to start exploring the avenues that have either given me joy in the past or that I assume could give me joy in the future.  I have reached out to a college not far from my house for some information around one of their programs... and maybe that's just step one this year.  Nothing is off the table and the sky is the limit, and I feel like I finally have a clear enough head to make these decisions.  But like the quote says, it's never too late or too early to be whoever you want to be.

35 seems like a good age to get it figured out, and 2021 seems like the year to do it.

Ciao for now (c:

when it comes to being haunted

Parker Manor

I used to live in a haunted house.  

That's what you've come here for, yes?  To hear about it?  To see if I, purveyor of all things true and not one to fabricate a story (less they be in my novels, natch), could maybe make you believe?  The lovely thing is that you don't necessarily have to take my word for it, either.  You can ask a handful of my friends what their own experiences were like, all three of them quite similar, none of the three ever having spoken to the others.  And if you don't believe in ghosts, or spirits, or anything from "beyond," well, I can't force you to.  I will say that had you experienced any of this, you'd be hard pressed not believe.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  

It is Halloween today, after all, and you want some stories.  Let's begin.

The first time I entered the Manor, it was mid April and snowy.  My realtor, Kieran, let me in the building and took a phone call outside as I entered.  In hindsight, knowing what I know now, I feel like the house itself had something to do with that.  Maybe it could sense me coming and wanted to feel me out on its own?  Maybe it was a mutual understanding between the two of us.  What I do know is that I was flooded with memories from my childhood the instant I stepped inside.  Ask my mom and sister, who I later shared these memories with, if that's true.

As I moved through the foyer of the silent house, my mind raced back to being five or so years old and visiting the extended Parker family in Indiana for Thanksgiving.  It was the smell of the Manor... it was the feeling of these distant echoes of memory I had forgotten over time rushing through my ears.  As my solo tour continued and I moved outside to the backyard, a different set of senses were flooded.  This time, by memories of my grandmother on my mom's side.  Two great familial connections within minutes of eachother?  I took it as a sign and decided this was the house for me.  It had to be.

And it was; a little over a month later and I was moved in.

Now, the weird shit didn't start happening right away.  There was the leaking bathtub and the weird wiring in the basement ceiling that I took down.  The janky green walls and mismatched outlets and switches, not to mention the faceplates for all these providing a veritable pupu platter of designs.  It was about two weeks in, mid June, when things started.

I went to bed one night around 11 and got snuggled under the sheets.  After messing around on my phone for a while, I turned out the light and closed my eyes; within seconds there was a knocking on the front door.  Three quick, concise, knocks.  My blood froze, because I still had not installed the security system and I was pretty consistently panicked someone was going to break in.  I got up and went to my office at the front of the house, trying to look to the porch below to see if there was someone there.  After a minute or so, with no one visibly leaving, I went down the stairs and opened the front door.  No one there.

A couple nights later it happened again, this time around midnight.

A few nights later, it happened again.  This time around 10.

It was never the same time, and it was very infrequent.  Sometimes it would happen a couple days in a row, other times a week would go by.  Always the same three, quick knocks.  Always coming from the front door... never anybody there.  This was also when the box fan I placed in the hallway started rattling after I'd turn the light out at night.  No loose parts... never rattled when I was awake and moving around... only when the lights were out.  

And I ignored a lot of this.

There were things that creeped me out in the house, for sure.  I didn't like going in the guest room at the top of the stairs, and in particular I didn't like being near the closet door inside the room.  It was the only room in the house not outfitted with a ceiling light, and something about that always struck me as odd.  I also avoided the root cellar in the basement.  After two years of living there I never once stepped foot inside of it.  I'd show people that were visiting, but I never went in.

Sometimes when I was outside doing things in the yard, I'd get that prickly feeling on my neck like I was being watched.  A few times I would see the curtains move inside the house, knowing it wasn't the cats because they don't typically play with 'em.  But like I said, I ignored all of this.  I didn't talk about it with people (I mentioned the knocking to a few friends), and I think that was because if I pretended it wasn't a "thing," then it just wasn't a thing.

But those things started accelerating in October.

My very old friend from high school, Sara, came to visit me so we could go and see Florence + the Machine together.  She had arrived the day before, and after an evening catching up, I went to work the next morning while she had free reign of the house.  Sara had gone for a walk, and when she came back went upstairs to lay on the guest bed.  I should say now, the door of the guest bedroom directly faces the stairwell, which itself has a landing halfway down where it then makes a right turn toward the ground level.

Sara was on the guest bed, and from the corner of her eye she saw a man walk past the bedroom door.  Heading from my bedroom hallway, on the left of the stairs, and through the office door on the right.  She called my name out, thinking I had come home during her walk, and when I didn't answer, she got up to look.  Of course no one was there... and of course I was still at work.  She shared this with me when I got home and while it creeped the absolute shit out of me, I tucked it away in my mind.  It was just a silly thing that had happened.

October 26th, 2018

Two nights later, my best friend Tina came to stay for a few nights, bringing her little ones with her.  They arrived late, past midnight, and I sat with the kids while Tina got the guest room ready for bed.  Snapping selfies with the kids, obviously.  Eventually she got them settled and tucked in, I myself doing the same because I had work the following day.  In the morning, barely light outside (and my alarm hadn't gone off yet), I was awake.  Tina knocked on my door and asked if I was up, to which I said yes.

"I am never going to sleep again," she said dryly.  She proceeded to tell me how Devlyn, who was not quite three, had woken her up in the middle of the night crying.  When Tina asked her what was wrong, Devlyn cried that "the man" was smiling at her in the corner.  Tina looked and saw that no one was there and assured Devlyn it was fine.  Dev then lay back and looked up at the ceiling, and Tina watched as she mimed a knocking motion at the ceiling.

I finally admitted what Sara had told me about seeing the figure walk past the guest room door, of a man, and also about the knocking I had heard from the front door of the house over the few months I had lived there.  Nothing else happened during her trip, but by this point I had decided I would talk to the house on Halloween.  Even though I felt like an idiot... even though I felt like it was maybe pointless.

But then something else happened.

An old friend, Mike, was visiting his parents here Minnesota for a few weeks, but he lives in Los Angeles.  Mike is a clairvoyant, which you can say is a little "woo-woo," and he would accept that.  But he does readings for people out in LA and cleanses houses with sage and crystals and all that good stuff.  We had tried connecting earlier in his trip to no avail, but he was able to come by the house later in the day after Tina had gone and before he had to fly back to California.

We watched a movie and chatted for a few hours, and it was nearing 1am when he said he should get going.  "But show me the rest of the house!  I want to see upstairs."  So I took him upstairs and showed him the rooms, his eyes squinting a bit at the guest room but moving on with me.  We chatted in the office for a while, but by then it was nearing 2am and he really had to go.  We started going down the stairs, me in the lead, and when I got to the bottom I turned to look back at him.  Mike was standing on the landing, looking up the second half of stairs and toward the guest room.  He looked down at me, then back up, then back down.

"Do you see things here?" He asked.  I froze.  

I'm not fucking kidding, every hair on my body was standing up.

"No," I said, because it was true.  I had not seen the figure.  Mike nodded and looked back up the stairs.

"But you hear things," he said quietly, and I nodded.  "You hear knocking."  It suddenly felt like the house was so much smaller than it had been before... the walls felt like they had closed in around me.  Mike came down the stairs slowly, looking slightly shaken.  At the bottom of the stairs he was glancing up them again and then finally looked me in the eyes.  "There is a lot of energy on this stairwell," he said gently, "and they want you to know they are here.  They aren't dangerous... they..." and he trailed off and seemed to stand up on his tiptoes, gently gesturing behind him.  "Jesus they're right here."

I had my arms crossed very tightly across my chest and just nodded.  Stiffly.  

He explained that all of the dark wood in my house (floor boards and trim) was sort of like a conduit for this energy.  He said they are happy with me but curious, and that I should introduce myself to them better.  Mike didn't seem to think any of the spirits had lived in the house, but he wasn't sure.  And then he left to go home and I was alone, and I don't think I've ever hit the lights and flown upstairs to my bed so fast in my life.

Two days later it was Halloween.  Now, you should all know by now that I take Halloween very seriously.  I take the day off from work, I have chili simmering in the crockpot all day, treats in the oven, and movies on TV.  I carve my pumpkins and decorate outside, always ready for the trick-or-treater's if and when they show up.  I woke up that day and got dressed, and on my way down the stairs, I stopped on the landing and just stood there.  

After a few moments of silence, I started to talk to the Manor.

I told it who I was.  Why I had purchased the house, what had happened in my past that led me there, and what my intent was with the building.  How I wanted to respectfully repair it, transforming it back into something of glory.  I found myself talking about my heartbreak... I even cried at one point.  It was such a strange and surreal experience but ultimately it was an uplifting one.  I felt different throughout the day, almost like I had reached a weird sort of understanding with the Manor.  And maybe it had reached it with me as well.  I literally asked the house not to scare me, and that if it was doing something that scared me, I would have to ask it to stop.

The traditional face

From that, I followed the rules of Halloween.  I didn't blow out my candles early, I left them glowing until they extinguished themselves by their own accord.  I handed out candy, I watched movies, and I kept it spooky.  And the next day was the first day that the house stopped messing with me.

There was no more knocking... no more weird noises from my box fan.  It was quiet.  I didn't see the drapes move anymore, and I didn't feel like I was being watched.  The Manor had become my home and I its keeper.  There were a couple random nights every few weeks where the fan would rattle, and I would literally call out "please don't do that," and within moments it would stop.  I promise you this is true.  A year later in the following fall when Andrew was essentially living with me, I told him about the ghost stories.  He didn't guffaw... I think he was polite and entertained it all because he knew I believed in it, even if he didn't.

He believed more when that night, after however many nights he had been staying with me, the box fan started to rattle once more.  

But then there was nothing.  Nothing when he left me... nothing in the following months of quarantine and isolation.  In the summer I got busy fixing the yard up, and in early July decided I was ready to sell the Manor and move on.  There weren't any events in July, nothing worth noting at least, but then the house sold on August 3rd... and then things started happening again.

I would come home from work and the TV would be on.  I would go to bed and in the morning, lights in the kitchen would be on.  A few times I assumed that it was just me forgetting them, but the frequency was too often.  The fan started rattling every couple nights.  The dryer was running one afternoon after I got home from the grocery store, with nothing in it.  As I was packing up the house I was constantly feeling ill.  Dizzy, like a car sickness.  If I left the Manor for a while, say to go be at the pool with Jonathan?  I felt fine, and I was always fine at work.  

But then I'd go home and just be tired, and angry, and sick.

It didn't take long to start believing it was the house; I assume the Manor knew what was going on in that I, its "person," had decided to flee the coop.  I've said before that houses are living things... and if you're a living thing, why would you want to let go of something that was good for you?

On my last night in the Manor (which itself felt incredibly creepy because there was nothing on the walls anymore and any sound I made echoed throughout the place), I was trying to get to sleep.  It should be noted, I had not been sleeping well.  At all.  For weeks.

Blame the house.

I was lying on the mattress that was resting on the floor, staring at the ceiling, when this weird sort of soft but still somehow rattling boom echoed throughout the house.  Both cats came tearing into the bedroom, fully puffed out, and freaked.  Sophia leapt onto the mattress, circled around up near my head and Paolo stayed on the floor right beside me, both of them turned to face the door and motionless.  This is 100% not something they have ever done in my 10 years of raising them, and you could have heard a pin drop in that place it was so silent.

Bam.  Bam.  Bam.  Three knocks from the front door.

My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my ears.  I waited, with quite literally bated breath, for some horrifying monster to come slithering around the door frame.  There was a quick snap in the hallway as the office light turned on.  I immediately got up, angrily moving through my bedroom and rounding the corner into the hall.

"Stop it," I said loudly, snapping the office light off and turning back to my bedroom.  

The office door slammed itself shut behind me, and I about flew down the hallway.  The boogeyman was real that night and it proved childhood is never really over.

My ceiling fan clicked and clacked all night, other lights turned on in the house, at one point the ceiling light in the bedroom was turned on.  Keep in mind it's a light that needs the chain pulled to turn it on... but it was on, around 4:15am.  I think I eventually fell asleep because I was just plain exhausted.  Whether it was from the stress of the move or because I was living in the house from Poltergeist, I dunno.

When morning came and the moving truck with it, I sequestered the cats to the guest room (and I felt bad because like I said before... fuck the guest room), and spent the entire day in the backyard.  I didn't want to go back inside the house, I wanted to leave.  I wanted to get the hell out and start my life somewhere else, because what had once been a good relationship had certainly turned sour.  Later in the day, Jonathan came by to help me load up the car and get to the apartment I'd be living in for a couple weeks.  We were standing in the living room, talking quietly, when there was suddenly a strange, unexplainable sound that came from somewhere inside the building.

"The house is mad at me," I said quietly.  And while anyone would and should laugh at that, even I myself, Jonathan seemed to understand.  He had heard it too.  So we left.

The final blog

A couple days later I returned to the Manor to write my goodbye blog, sitting in the silence of the living room of an empty house, and I took this picture.  Above my feet you can see a light.  Some of you will call it a sun-flare, and that's fine.  You have every right to do so.  But I call it an orb, because as I wrote that blog, I felt like I was being watched again.  The Manor was reading my words as I wrote them, and maybe it felt like my goodbye was justified?  Maybe it was ready to let go of me, and I it.  We'd both certainly changed a lot from when we first met, and in the end, not much in life lasts forever.  Or the afterlife, for that matter.

But that's the story, and now I've shared it with you.  And maybe some of you have your own stories, and maybe you don't.  This was mine as I experienced it, and some of those facts are pretty incontrovertible.  I never found proof that anyone had died on the property or in the house.  I've also got to say that writing this wasn't therapeutic, it just scared the piss out of me as I wrote it in the near dark of my new house with a bunch of Halloween decorations around me.

Why do I do this to myself?  Who fuckin' knows.

Anyway!  I am off now to start the crockpot of chili, to get a movie going, and to decide which pumpkin I want to carve first.  Even though Halloween looks very different this year than those in the past, I hope you take advantage of the full moon on this one night where the realms between the living and the dead are at their thinnest.  It's a wonderful time to connect with yourself in whatever way makes sense, and maybe get a couple scares in at the same time.  Also, say hi to your house.  It might do ya some good.

Happy Halloween gang (c: