You people really like poems about sex, don’t you?

You’re not alone. In addition to the new visitors to the blog, within 24 hours I got texts from four men I used to talk to. One had previously stood me up. Two were hit and runs from back in the day. And the fourth I don’t ever recall talking to before but he swears we did. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe they’re all creepy AF and what happened in the past needs to stay there.

I had originally titled that sonnet, “What in the Fuck Are You Doing?” because that describes how I feel about opening my door to a man who says things to me like, “I keep asking because I never know when you’ll say yes.” Last time we talked I used an old trick guaranteed to run men like him off… for awhile anyway. I insinuated I had feelings for him and I haven’t heard from him since. Should keep him quiet for a few months.

I am grieving for the child I was and for the old life I am leaving behind. I recently exited the anger phase after admitting I am furious that those who were so cruel to me get to go on living their lives with no consequence whatsoever, while I sit here alone with no one to spend holidays with, or buy me dinner on my birthday, or that I would make my beneficiary. Seriously, my financial advisor reminded me last week I needed to declare a beneficiary and I had to tell him I don’t have anybody. He suggested I look into non-profits so that’s what I’m doing.

As an atheist I believe there is no afterlife or next life to get you back for being a bad whatever you are in this one. So Epstein, Trump, and Kavanaugh will never pay for the damage they’ve done to others and neither will those who damaged me. If you’re honest with yourself, you don’t care, do you? And if you’re really honest, you’d wish people like me would shut the fuck up because you don’t want to know there are so many monsters among us. You’d rather believe Jesus lets the best team win and fries all the bad people for eternity, unless they accept him as their savior, that is.

I am now in the acceptance phase. I don’t like the way things are, but it is what it is so I best make the most of it. I don’t have people in my life that would help me like now when I’m down with shingles, so I am hiring some help. I have a man mowing my yard every other week. I’m shopping for a housekeeper to come in weekly and also for a pet sitter. We’re cleared for travel now for work so I’ll need a sitter anyway, and that person could be paid to walk Molly when I’m sick or injured. I’m using delivery services. I’m using the dishwasher instead of washing dishes by hand. I have tools to use and I’m going to use them.

Along with acceptance of the way things are comes acceptance of the way I am. I am a pretty and fantastic woman, and it’s high time I started treating myself that way. So here is a love poem, a sonnet, to me.

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Sonnet for an Amazing Woman

He still calls women fat, ugly bitches
when he's angry, and he's always angry.
He started this before age five, which is
when he was taught how to say this to me.

They call this thing Complex PTSD.
After years of searching for an answer
from those who claimed they could help set me free,
at length I extracted my own cancer.

I am a piebald, messy mix of fun
and dysfunction, an enthusiastic
soul whose passions burn as hot as the sun.
I am brave and strong, sweet, yet sarcastic.

A rare gem hidden 'neath the bloody sores,
I will not keep her hidden anymore.