Sometimes you show up at exactly the right time. Sometimes your timing is just right and you're right where you need to be in someone's life without even trying. We can always learn from each other.
It is with my greatest hope that most of my blogs, shorts, and stories make their way into your funny bones. I love to laugh and make you smile. Me being the serious one is rare but this has been on my mind recently as I am healing from many years that I refused to acknowledge the pain, or obstacles that I was having by hiding behind my "strengths " which loosely translates to me thinking that no one should ever see me cry or hear me complain and often left me feeling inadequate; In other words, feeling like I wasn't enough.
Marlboro Man once told me that "baring your soul to someone, is one of the best naked feelings in the world." He's right. Having someone to speak openly to, to just say what's on your mind, without repercussion, without rejection, unconditionally, just listening, is one of the most freeing feelings.
If you don't have someone that will do that for you, I definitely recommend using your insurance or forking over fifty bucks for an hour to unload on a professional counselor of some sort. NOTE: while bartenders and blackjack dealers are professionals they are NOT counselors...just saying.
It's often easy to hide the things that we assume and feel no other person will accept about us or we may even think that they will look at us in a way that is shameful to us; perhaps they will think that we are being weak. Your brain plays over and over in your subconscious "Suck it up buttercup, be a man, don't be such a girl, or toughen up." That can lead to overwhelming silence, creating resentment, or keep us from allowing ourselves to be close and intimate with people that we love and cherish.
We continually recite things that are designed to somehow make us stronger and in certain situations, they are exactly what we need, in others, they are a poor representation of half-hearted attempts at where we should be drawing our strength from....each other.
We are bombarded each day on social media by bullying, mudslinging, even blatant name-calling. Don't get me wrong I see the good memes too. But the ones that catch my attention are the ones that are souls crying out to be heard, anger, anxiousness, feelings of no control, resulting in a flurry of painful prose but not resolving what we are really saying " I love you. I need you. I want you to stay, or even I'm sorry." How and why can we covertly scream this out on social media but not in the privacy of our homes, with the ones we care the most about?
It was closer to 3 am then it was to sunrise, I was tired but I couldn't sleep. I was bundled in my bedroll (sleeping bag for the city slickers ), I had one eye open and I'd been watching Marlboro Man toss the coals in the fire with a long stick and intermittently shake his head while mumbling quietly to himself. I was doing a terrible job of pretending I was sleeping because I had held my eyes shut so tightly. He glanced my way, but I was sure he hadn't noticed that I was awake; then he quietly came over and got really close to me. I could feel his warm breath on the side of my face and he whispered in his low smokey voice "You're supposed to be sleeping Cupcake."
The smell of the cigarette smoke had lingered on his breath and was caught in the stubble that was growing into a beard at present. He offered his hand to me, I took it and he helped me to my feet " I know, " I answered, "not sure why I can't sleep."
"Are you hurting or feeling bad about that tumble you took earlier?" I was remounting my horse just after lunch and I lost my footing.
" I'm nursing a pride hangover," I said. We both laughed.
I had slipped out of the stirrup and hit my knee on a pretty big rock. I was a little sore but my pride had taken a bigger cut than the bruise that would form on my knee over the next few days. Wade, Jesse, and Marlboro Man watched me fall, they were already mounted. It was only a matter of seconds but it seemed like a scene in a movie where everything goes into slow motion, that prolonged my pride agony. Jesse was off his horse faster than a calf roper at a rodeo. By the time he had gotten to me, I was already back on my horse.
I shared the boulder next to Marlboro Man. He had motioned for me to sit next to him and there was plenty of room. He held my hand, looked me in the eye, and smiled. "I love these little getaways with the boys. We been doing this for a very long time. It was just the four of us before. Then just the boys by themselves for a while, cuz they couldn't get me out of the house after Livvy passed." His voice trailed off towards the end of his sentence. I smiled at him and we both turned our gazes to the nearly extinguished fire. Marlboro Man got up, grabbed a log, and set in the coals. He took a pack of cigarettes from his jean jacket pocket, hiked a single smoke from the pack up to his lips, clenched his teeth around it and tucked the pack back safely into the pocket.
"Those boys," he pointed to Wade and Jesse sound asleep on the other side of the fire "are the reason I'm not that fragile anymore." I listened while he continued to talk." I know you can understand this Cupcake. Think you been through something like this yourself, where the kids can't know how much it hurts." It was more of a statement, but I nodded anyway. "An old tough cowboy like me, ain't supposed to let anyone see him cry either. We ain't allowed to be fragile, most men aren't and we got feelings too" He paused for a minute then continued "The pain that you feel when you lose your life or what you know as your world is nothing short of dying, being reborn, and learning what you have to do all over again." The campfire flames made his blue eyes shimmer in their light. He nodded towards the two men across the fire
"Those boys were my reason to go through that kind of pain, to get my rear end out of bed every morning. I wanted desperately to drink and drown in the bottom of the bottle if I could. Her memory reminded me that I needed to be right and stay straight because of them. When I was feeling real bad they'd ask if they could help or would just simply leave me alone. You know Cupcake, when it don't seem like there's a reason, that's a damn low point, especially for a man. I can't speak for a woman" He smiled at me " but I suspect it's kinda the same." I nodded.
"The depression part feels so damn empty like you're starving and your body hurts all over, I just wanted her back. Then I wanted to shoot everything and everyone in sight."
We looked at each other and said "anger" at the same time.
"I'm not so sure I have achieved the 'acceptance' part after all these years. Other than I know she's not gonna walk through the door anymore. I need to think she's with me in spirit, you know?
I went to a lot of sessions of me unloading my heart, so I could stay right for those boys; not drinking and shooting the place up every time I was pissed off.
The sun was rising over the ridge, Wade and Jesse were stirring, he leaned in and said "I'm not that fragile anymore. But now I know it's ok if I have to be."
If you know me or have known me for any amount of time, my first language is music (English is second lol). I often place songs within the blog, but I chose not to this time for a few reasons; The words in the blog are important to me and the distraction is not worth it. However, the two songs that I picked for this piece are two contrasting songs to me. One is communicating and asking the person to stay...The other, it seems to me, wants the other person to silently guess that there is something wrong and to fix it before they leave after the honeymoon period has failed. Both beautiful songs but communication is truly the only way.
