• After a very strong Christmas season, changing business model
• Healthwise, got better, then much worse, then better that the worse, but not as better as before.
• Can now walk up to a mile unassisted. Big deal.
• Sister had twin newborns at the end of May.
• I’ve had to take 6 hours off my daily schedule to allow for time with Sister’s older twins.

I’m on a health and personal economic down-swing. Seeing a new doctor on Friday, paying cash of course. It’s a pain management specialist, because living with this pain has become a special challenge. And because my sister and my mother are insisting. I’m pretty sure the doctors will say the same thing they have always said and I will have wasted my money.

But maybe if a DOCTOR tells the world I need to rest, and heal, for about a year before I can expect the pain to abate, everyone will listen when I say it. Or I’ll stop saying yes to helping everyone else with their problems before I help myself with my own life.

I did have this great dream though. I dreamt that some friends and I went to the Orleans in Las Vegas together, and that they were having some unusual problems that made our stay less than enjoyable. But because the cashier had cashed some $50,000 insurance check I’d brought (who gets insurance checks for $50k? But whatever), we could afford to go stay in adjoining suites at “theHotel” at Mandalay Bay, my favorite hotel a ways up the Strip.

We were about to leave when I woke up, but here’s the weird thing.

That $50k thing kept coming up. And in the dream, I had this second awareness that said felt that this had happened somewhere in the past, so where was the money in my life today?

I woke up feeling like there’s some money that was coming to me from a past success that simply has not arrived yet… and it felt impending, like it’s About to happen. And I couldn’t get away from thinking of it in that amount.

So, since this type of weird premonition has come true on so many other occasions, I thought I’d record it here. Pray for me!

Today, I wanted to record two things.

One is the feeling of absolute exhilaration I’ve been feeling on and off since Saturday. In my heart I can feel with vivid clarity that something special is about to take place, something beautiful and magical, and something that is going to change my life for the better, something that will enhance the lives of those around me.

Secondly, is that I had a checkpoint this past Friday. I may have explained what a checkpoint is, but if I haven’t, here you go: it’s a combination deja vu and extremely powerful feeling of positive premonition and destiny. Within a week or so or having them, some manifestation far beyond any abundance I could possibly have imagined comes along and blesses me as hard as it can.

I call them checkpoints because of the feeling I have when they happen. It’s as if God is saying, “You’re in the best possible place in the best possible path of any of the available ones for you to have chosen from.”

And I went through a little rough patch there for a week or so after bringing a great many positive things to me. So Thank God.

It’s okay to call a foul.

photo credit: Tigerlily 09

But I think I need to come here a bit more often and just… be able to share my experiences. So here’s a quick summary of what’s been going on.

Work

I’m entering a super-independence mode. Traffic and sales are picking back up. I’m seeing a lot more opportunities to loosen some associations I’ve been leaning on, not because the people I’ve been working with are bad (they’re not) but because I am finding that I don’t need them the way I’ve been letting myself believe.

In so many ways, despite the ups and downs of my health, I’ve been doing better on my own. Just afraid to make that leap. No longer!

Life

I’m single and enjoying it. I’d like to be with someone but there’s just no time at the moment. I’m in the mode of “making the time to make time”. In other words, I want to be able to have my business on track and able to auto-pilot at a profit, not just at a maintenance level before I proceed.

Health

I’ve had some serious ups and downs lately. As much as I can, I’m avoiding being too specific with anyone. At first it was because I didn’t want anyone to worry, nor did I want to speak the worst-case scenario into being.

But now it’s because I’m enjoying a darn near miraculous recovery, and to keep it that way, I use the time I would spend telling people about being sick, to make myself well. So if you ask me one-on-one and I’m vague, that’s why.

In other news, it may be time for me to start recording exactly what I’ve been up to in my manifestation routine, because it’s working like crazy. I haven’t decided if that would be a spin-off blog. Honestly I don’t think I write in THIS one enough for there too BE a spin-off.

At the moment, I have a pact with a friend to study the same material each day of the week, and to meditate for success. We don’t both always do it but when we do our daily income goes up about 500%! Consistently, and that’s in profits we generate together.

Apart, as long as I keep to my routine, I see streams of revenue from places I hadn’t even known about. Right now, I’m doing EFT, meditations for wealth, and reading my goals and affirmations upon awakening every day, and developing the habit of doing it in reverse order when I’m going to sleep. On the days when I’m not too much of a punk, I’m also doing daily energy circles.

They really work, I’m not sure why I am psychologically reversed about doing them. I want to, because it works, but I find some excuse not to, or forget. I’ll go do one now. See you again soon.

Did I say Proud? I think I meant “mixture of shame and horror that I could subconsciously still rank well even when I’m trying to temporarily hide this blog from the world in general except online friends”.

this. pain.

like background noise it goes on forever. and sure, some of it is exacerbated by stress and things psychological, and on the one hand there’s no such thing as the physical realm and we’re all just one being, individuated, projecting our reality in a dreamscape that doesn’t actually exist.

but locally? i’m in agony. and all the positive thinking and energy in the world doesn’t put it to an end.

since 1992. seventeen years.

17.

i’ve been in pain every day. every single
motherfucking
day.

no. i’m totally serious. it never completely goes away. i get to a point where i say that i’m fine because it’s that low grade ache that i can forget about if a movie is funny enough, if a lover is competent enough, if a moment contains enough joy for me to ignore what’s happening in that part of my body to go into my head and eclipse it with something mental or another physical sensation.

but yes, every day. and sometimes.

not every day but sometimes.

i’m just living for something to happen so i won’t feel like i wish i was dead. not that i’d ever be suicidal because how can you die without inflicting more pain on yourself. insert wry laugh.

see there sometimes i try to just escape it with humor. cover it up with mental rumors of a possibly better life. as if enough hasn’t happened to me in this one as if i haven’t paid enough penance having led a life of survival…

- so brutal I once tried to get it published but kept getting rejected for reasons of it being “too outrageous even for fiction.” listen to me laugh again because that’s a sidebar. i’d volunteer to live through the hardest horrors again if it would give me two consecutive days of peace in this body.

because i can’t take any more God. it’s enough. it’s too much and what’s making it worse is that I know it’s

never going to end.

for a second there

just a second

i was starting to think i made a mistake
starting to to think letting you in was not the smartest move

but now?
after yesterday?

i’m sure this was the right path
positive you were the right choice
i know i haven’t picked someone who was wrong for me
i know i haven’t deluded myself into another adventure with unavailability

and to think i wandered into this thinking
this was short term fun.
rather than a slow, easy journey to a new joy.

If only i could explain what you’ve done for me
just by being you
if only i could find a way to reciprocate for everything you do
at the moment, the only thing i think of
is to maintain an oral recognition
of the regal manner in which you’re fulfilling all my wishes
especially the ones I didn’t know I had.
you’re a genuine diamond
your sparkle blinds me

and from my heart to yours my lion
your shine will never go unappreciated.

and
i just can’t figure you out
i can’t figure you out
don’t know if i want to
i just can’t figure you out
can’t figure you out
loving all your voodoo

I’m trying to hold on and trying to let go. Loving the secrets of you. Loving not knowing exactly how I feel or how you feel and you’re getting to the end of my probation. If it was up my heart the answer would be yes but I confess that I’m afraid of you. Always trying to prepare myself for the possibility that you’re no longer feeling me.

Silly, I know. You’re always so honest that I could just ask. And the things you do, what you say, and the way you treat me should be enough to keep me from thinking I need to guess. All I know is I want to go slow and easy and yet be sure. Can’t bring myself to do it yet… I’m loving the sweetest agony at this mystery…

and i
just can’t figure you out
can’t figure you out
not sure that i want to

can’t figure you out
can’t figure you out
what am i gonna do with you…

You’re a puzzle to me that’s for sure. Mixing magic with the mantra of mellow melodies. Pressing piano purity on pleasurable penalties. I waver between being sure that you’re for me and thinking that maybe this was just a season of the reaffirmation of me. Whatever happens you’ll always be dear to me and this is new to me — I’ve never felt like it almost didn’t matter if it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, having been blessed with the reward of … you.

You’ve taught me what my prototypical man should look like. Reminded me how a lady ought to be treated. Showed me my own beauty. And whatever happens I’ll never forget that about you.

So I just want to thank you.

i can’t figure you out
but it took me my whole life so far to figure out me
i hope i get the chance to spend an equal amount of time
in discovery of you but if it’s not meant to be
a forever type of thing
i hope you know that you brought the song back to my heart
and I’m always going to be so so grateful… to even know you…

i’m hoping you know
that though i badly need the dough in question
i’d rather work all through the night
into two next days,
and know you were safe and well,
than have you in danger to bring me something i can get on my own.

i so appreciate you and everything you do for me
just remember that if you’re low
so am i
and it’s better that we both get full on our outside sources
than be half empty for the sake of each other.

it’s raining baby
somehow the sun doesn’t seem to shine when you’re gone
something about your eyes being indoors
make night come faster
brings a taste of loneliness to laughter
songs sound flatter.

right now everything else is secondary
I want to see you.

So I was over at this great blog today. I’ve been following this girl because of her endless funny quips on Twitter, come to find out she has a blog where I can indulge in her mental chocolate cake constantly.

Today she wrote a blog post called

Men Who Think Their Shit Doesn’t Stink

that I encourage you to read if for no other reason than the comedic way in which she breaks it down. Here was my response:

How have I not ever been to your blog before? Do I just not get up early in the morning.

Let me be the first to say BRAVO. Then I’m gonna say something controversial, prefacing it with the fact that I am in full….

FULLL FUCKING AGREEMENT

with all that you have said, right down to the word SOME not all in reference to the black man.

Here’s my controversial piece. I know after some hard self reflection that it’s true of me, that I struggled with it, and that once I came to embrace it as truth, I started getting treated much better by men.

–> We women at some point, accept much worse than we deserve and THAT is how we get caught in these bad relationships. For some of us it takes one bad experience to ex-communicate the one type of man, for some it takes dozens.

It boils down to us being encouraged to believe in scarcity (no good black men, no black men period, take what you can get, we’re getting to old to be picky in finding a lifemate, you can’t get a good lover so if you find a man that’s good at sex, hold on to him at all costs, that sort of garbage), and men being raised to believe in abundance (you have plenty of time, *some* women are a dime a dozen, date a lot just to find out what you like and don’t like, you have a biological need to spread your seed, it’s natural, you can get an orgasm anytime, alone or not)

I just want to expand on that a little from my own experience.

As long as I can remember, two major themes have emerged in my quest for love.

The first theme was that someone who could truly love the way that I do, unafraid to give their whole selves over to the experience, giving actions and true bliss of love was rare, and I was going to have to take what I could get. Life taught me that lesson over and over again until I disagreed with that idea.

The second theme was that being a black woman (really, any type of woman, but this is especially pronounced in the black community) that my choices for a mate in a black man were small. And that if I was realistic, I had to choose from one of the following subsets:

1. A Good but Boring Man who’d be a good husband but a bad lover, would not have an equal share in providing financially for the household, and not a friend at all,
2. A Dog who I’d have an exciting time with sexually who was really good looking and exciting but would ultimately treat me horribly and break my heart,
3. A hybrid of these two – someone serially polygamous, that is, while he was interested in me things would be great, but there was no way he could control his dick long enough for more than a few years or so,
4. The One Night Stand – possible Baby Daddy material, but not good for much else, or,
5. The Unavailable Man – great when he was around, but absent/unreachable/not affectionate most of the time

Being a quality girl, and a fiercely independent person, if there was a conscious choice to be made among the subset of men I could choose, it would be the Unavailable Man. Either he wasn’t physically around but was emotionally giving, was physically around but emotionally unreachable and/or unreadable, he was in some way technically still attached to his former lover, or some weird combination of these.

Until, once again, one day I said No.

My point is that I believe our limitations in love have to do with what we will accept. I think it boils down to self esteem (I’m not good enough or can’t compete for what I really want), belief (what you want doesn’t even exist in another human, despite mathematical probabilities and the fact that YOU were born), and as I alluded to before, the stories we form to shape our experiences as we grow up.

The thing is, we don’t get those pictures in our head alone. I believed in those 5 types of men, and that they were all that were available because I was fed that belief in my environment. Not only that, but as a woman, I was steered away from the notion of NO.

Don’t say no to sex or you won’t get it when you want it.
Don’t say no to this relationship because what if it’s the right, perfect one.
Don’t say no to being with this mediocre person because he may be as close as you can get.
Don’t say no to settling for less – just call it being realistic.

Screw that. I’ve waited this long to be happily married. If it means it takes me another three years to meet, have a relationship with and marry the person I want to be with, then I’ll wait those three years. If it never happens, then I’ll be happily single for life. I tried the route of settling to get married with my last serious relationship and guess what – I’m still single. And it’s not killing me.

I hope that the guy I’m seeing now will eventually be the One. I’m not hell bent on it, but I think we’d make a good match.

I haven’t emotionally or mentally decided that about him yet, I don’t feel like I know version 2.0 of him well enough to say. His big bonus point is the same as what could potentially be a flaw in our relationship, is the problem. The amount he has to be on the move or travel for work and other concerns meshes perfectly with my need for space, freedom and the need to lock myself and work intensely a few times a year.

But part of me, of course worries that I’ve chosen the unavailable man again. What’s different this time though, is that when he’s not physically here he makes himself available to me in other ways. And really, he could use the excuse of unavailability not to see me constantly, but he finds ways to overcome our conflict in schedules and we still see each other plenty for me.

At this point, I don’t care where it’s going with him or how long it lasts because he’s been instrumental in making me really look at and appreciate myself for who I am. If it’s not him, it’s certainly gonna be the next guy. And for the first time, I’m 100% okay with the fact that the guy I want, and have right now, may not be the one I have forever.

Because I’ve said no to the idea that he’s the only one like him out there…

butterflies, softened

It’s almost uncomfortable. almost.

The way you make me feel – unreal unfamiliar but not unclear. Even though I’ve never felt them before, I know exactly what they are. Butterflies.

I’ve heard people talk about this before, and thought them crazy or caught in the throes of some lustful intoxication that feels like lust but I’ve felt lust and this is no duplication. The funny thing is that it’s not constant, I only seem to get this electric fluttering when we’re on that same wavelength.

Like … connected. I hate that this feels fated. Men are normally the ones who feel that about me. And I enjoy that high and indulge. It’s easy for me to tune into other people, to feel their feelings in my body, to intuitively be able to draw the stress from their bodies, insinuate peace into their minds, to get them to feel me, to feel me the way they can see some version of the real me. I guess that’s the reason I’m always the one to leave.

But man… these butterflies. My belly dancing with your memory in it. Fluttering and diving, just thinking of you. Like an insane person. Like one of those crazy, about to fall off the cliff into love people. Man, am I in trouble…

I’m so afraid to feel this way, to be swept into being into you or letting you be into me and I can’t figure out why. I guess I am too impatient and both tired of waiting and in love with the agony of being only 80% sure that this fever is mutual. All I’ve got is what you say and do to me, which technically is enough but I hate assumptions. But there’s so much enjoyment in being courted and taking it slow.

So I can’t give in to the temptation yet. Not with the lingering promise ahead. Not when this living buzzing feeling inside feels so good.

Not when I know what I know in the light with you. Not when you tell me you can’t make love to me in the dark because you have to see me. Not when you climax from our kisses. Not when you say such brilliant things for no reason. Not when you remind me of my beauty. Not when you make such beauty out of sound.

Part of it IS lust. I admit that. I can’t lay on my stomach on my bed anymore – it always ends the same way with my thighs pressed together longing to feel you behind me..pushing… grinding… mmm….

Wait, what was I saying… oh yes… part of it IS lust but it’s only a part, this isn’t an accident, or just the juxtaposition of our bodies bringing each other earthly satisfaction. I guess it’s like you said, there’s no way we can keep away from each other and restrict this to “just friends”. Or that other time you talked about how we are so pulled to each other. Or how, given the chance, we go to crazy lengths to see each other for tiny snatches of time.

I learned this during our recent starvation from each other. I still couldn’t escape your eyes in my head, and this went way beyond wanting you back in my bed. I wanted you opinion, to hear you smile, to make you smile. And if I take this fate back to bedroom states, yes, I don’t just want to be pleasured by you, I want to find every way to please you that I can.

So infinite, definite, intangible, and yet real enough to touch. Lust and something turning into love, so scary when I normally have such control over my emotions. I can get to the edge and back up. With everyone else but you.

I hope. These butterflies will loan me wings…

yet

climaxing into your observant gaze
seems a fair trade
to feel the flame of your tongue
licking my body clean of desire for anyone else but you.

how did i get here?
how did you happen to me?
i’m supposed to feel like i’m not free
but being with you for some reason

is not smothering
you hold me tight but your grip doesn’t break or crush my air

and i love that you’re with me
but i do remember that at some point
i did swear
promised myself i was only near you to feel the warmth of your flame
not to be consumed by it
took my oath on not falling like this
on not liking anyone enough to miss
on not being kissed…
on not looking into your soul
on not losing control

with the frustration of a passion unleashed
for almost a week
i have to admit…
i actually like the effect you have on me…

maybe…
even love…