Bonnie’s Beach 🏖

My Life. My Experiences. My Love. My Words.

Sep 3

It’s Not Me…

by

It’s you.

A poison.

A victim to your own false bravado. Pretending to be something more than you truly are. Believing you are owed respect while simultaneously disrespecting those who truly love you. You only show respect to those you fear. But those who love you, who truly want to help you, who want to be there for you, are easy targets. You claim everyone who loves you eventually fucks you over, while knowingly taking advantage of their kindness and willingness to open their hearts to you as you manipulate them, use them, lie to them, steal from them, and discard them when your facade falls away. You give them no choice but to protect themselves from you and your abuse.

Don’t you see the pattern yet? Are you in such denial that you refuse to admit your true faults? That your actions speak louder than words ever could? That all the love in the universe will eventually run out when you waste it? When you blame it? Bully it? Degrade it? Shun it? Spite it? Abuse it? Deny it?

Claiming to not give a fuck about others and their feelings, only shows how you refuse to love yourself. Your desire to be the good and kindhearted man so many of us know exists, is overshadowed by your pride, your ego, and your anger. You are a coward who claims to know who he is while hiding behind his silver grin. Running away from everyone and everything when paranoia turns the world against you.

You have been told before, you get what you give. You only give what you want to but disregard what is needed. You twist words and emotions to forge daggers to pierce the hearts of anyone within arms reach. Your attempts to force blood from stones blinds you to the fact that the blood is your own, from your own hands. The harder you squeeze the deeper the cuts become, as you tighten your grip on the sharp edges you created.

You push away.

You run away.

You hide from the truth you claim to know and preach.

The frustration caused by your inability to control others is a reflection of how you are unable to control yourself. Your anger. The nature you up learned from various teachers while growing in such a dark, cold world, and there is little doubt you learned from the best.

You’re so blind.

But you choose to be that way.

You’re tortured by choice.

You’re alone by choice.

How can you bend and grow and love when your rigidity breaks in a strong wind?

You have shattered the hearts of those around you, forcing them to put up walls which only proves your own point: the truth you want to believe is true, is just the lie that you created.

You wound everyone so deeply that they become dangerous. Like injured animals they lash out and defend themselves from you. So they can survive. Because choosing to be complicit while slowly bleeding out, means certain death.

And what good is a heart after it’s stopped beating?

How do you expect to receive love when you have singlehandedly destroyed it?

How do you ever expect yourself to love anyone, including yourself, when you choose to suffocate it before it can take its first breath?

You are loved more than you know.

We all see through you now, and yet we still choose to love you. Yes. We have protected ourselves from the you you show to the world. We may be naive in our hopes that the goodness, battling deep inside you for air and sunlight, will once again break the surface and win the war.

It’s ultimately your choice, and who gives a fuck what we think?

We are not you.

I am not you.

And now I have to learn to live with these new walls that have been erected to save myself.

But those walls are not me.

They are you.

Self-Healing

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Jul 31

The Dumbest F*cking Person On The Planet…

by oceangrrrl

…was one of my favorites, and I had started to believe it was true even though I knew, deep within the darkest depths of my soul, it was as far from the truth as one could get.

So what would make me even remotely believe that I was stupid, ugly, fat, worthless, frumpy, you name it (those are just the g-rated ones), over beautiful, intelligent, sexy, amazing, talented, and worth someone’s love? After some self-analysis over the past few months, my eyes opened more and more as I was able to answer that question honestly: me. I’m not at all saying everything was my fault, although that had been the stance I had adopted nearly two years ago, but I am just as much to blame as the person who gave me the poisonous words that I’d ingest willingly over and over again. Rather than building a tolerance, I mentally and emotionally cracked until I was so broken, I couldn’t see past the pieces scattered on the floor, creating a circular void in the center where I once stood. For every compliment there was a polar opposite, and the bad far outweighed the good to the point where my brain refused to believe the compliments held any truth whatsoever.

But here’s the kicker: I allowed it, and I had become someone else. Someone who cowered. Someone who triple guessed every decision. Someone who lived with an anxiety that was never there before. Someone I hated. Someone who wasn’t worth a damn thing. Someone who didn’t deserve to waste the precious ozone we all depend on. Someone who thought that changing who they were in order to make someone else happy would actually work. I mean, who would think that altering one’s behavior in order to please someone else would completely backfire? When the things someone loved about you had become annoying and irritating, you assume that action or behavior should be altered so they’re no longer annoying, right? Right??? Those small acts of love, like kissing someone goodbye as they slept when you were leaving for work or calling just to say hi, became sudden outbursts of anger. So those small gestures disappeared one by one as they only garnered a negative and frightening response. The anger turned into yelling. The yelling turned into some of the harshest things you could hear from someone who was supposed to be your life partner. This was the man I was determined to spend the rest of my life with, and I was determined to a fault. We both were. My tunnel vision hid the truth: that I had changed.

Not that there’s anything wrong with change! We change and adapt and grow as we continue our journey through life. But this wasn’t growth. It was adaptation to survive. It was an alteration made to what made me me, and what someone had loved about me, and I was no longer a priority. My schedule was planned around his. Normal things I had been doing for years now seemed to be in the way of what he wanted and what was expected. My gym schedule had to be altered so I would be home immediately after work to start fixing dinner, and soon my gym time disappeared altogether as work became a priority over my health. Hair appointments had to be scheduled by 2pm to meet the same mandate. The same went with doctors appointments. Meeting my girlfriends once or twice a month to grab some food and margaritas happened less and less, until I would make excuses in order to not go at all. Seeing friends and family became a rare occurrence, as they kept me away from the person who wanted my time, and in order to avoid any backlash at home, I became a coward and found excuse after excuse to not see them much at all. Even when I made plans to go out, because he had plans to go out, I would be guilt tripped, called or texted every hour, informed he would be home at a certain time so we would be able to spend the evening together, only to find that I cut my plans short to go home, and his plans had changed to keep him out later. So there I’d be, at home alone, just me and my cats. This was all gradual. It didn’t happen overnight. In the beginning they were small sacrifices for the man I loved, but over time they began to break me down. I was isolated from the people who loved me and would hermit at home to avoid any conflict. I had become weak and fearful of any fights that might stem from his claim that I was disrespecting him. When I did make the rare plans to venture out my phone was glued to my hip so as not to miss a call or text, because if I didn’t answer or respond fast enough, there would be another tongue lashing over the phone and when I got back home.

It wasn’t just verbal abuse, it became mental abuse. I would be shunned and ignored. The silent treatment with a seething side of anger. It was always about respect, and I seemed to be the one doing all the disrespecting. Never mind the name calling and being hung up on. He believed he was justified, because according to him it was all my fault. I didn’t listen. I didn’t follow directions. I ordered the wrong thing at the drive-thru. I didn’t text a response within five minutes. I didn’t answer my phone. These things would “make him think” is how he put it. I was now a liar and couldn’t be trusted. So my phone had to be with me at all times.

As time went on I no longer found joy in anything I used to do. Hiking and going for walks were out of the question, because what if I lost my phone signal? Having my friends and family stop by the house became uncomfortable for everyone as his irritation that they were there was clearly visible, and I began to make excuses for why they couldn’t come over anymore. I became “busy” and unavailable and always had something else I had to do. He and I would make plans to do something together, but we never seemed to do anything at all. Covid definitely helped in this area, because now there was a valid excuse to not do a damn thing. He would spend his time in the garage while I cleaned the house, and then he’d leave to see his friends only to tell me he’d be back for dinner. Then he would let me know he would be late, but we’d still have dinner. Then that would turn into his just picking up something, because he wasn’t sure when he’d be home, and I would just need to fend for myself. This happened more and more, and I was trained to not expect much in the ways of plans. I isolated myself to the confines of a house I cannot wait to move out of. If the house wasn’t clean, he would make some snide comment to me that I was slacking. If I spent too much time cleaning I’d be told the house was fine, and that he didn’t care if it was clean. If he took out the trash, and I failed to put a new bag in the trash can right away, he would accuse me of playing games and being spiteful. All over a trash bag! Dishes in the sink? Obviously my spiteful way to get him to finally do them. When I’d tell him I just hadn’t gotten to them yet, he would wash half of them, pissed off that he had to do any sort of womanly chore, and then retreat to the garage to shun me for the rest of the evening. More and more, the things I said or did or the misread facial expressions became disrespectful to him, and his mood would 180° in the blink of an eye. So the shunning would again commence. Entire days and weekends where he would avoid me at home and wouldn’t speak to me. I was a prisoner in my own house, always worried, always anxious, always knowing there would be a scolding when he would decide to break his silence. What names would he call me this time? How loud was he going to yell? How hard did he plan on slamming a door? How long was he not going to talk to me again? Who was I going to wake up next to in the morning? Was it going to be Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? I was no longer allowed to contact his family and friends. He no longer accompanied me to family events. We no longer went on dates, and when he said we would, he’d turn it into a couples date with his friends, but then he would end up cancelling. So staying at home doing nothing became our date nights. We used to watch movies together on the weekends. That turned into watching ten minutes of something together until he finished eating what was on his plate to leave me there alone as he went back out to his garage. And these are just some of the small, more pleasant discomforts that became the norm. One time I was yelled at after we went through a drive-thru to get breakfast, and I had asked him if he wanted his sandwich or his hash brown first. I was yelled at and accused of being stupid and not knowing who he was at all. How could I not know he wanted his hash brown first?! I was an idiot. I was dumb. I was useless. I never made that mistake again.

Over the course of a year it became worse. The yelling was louder. The cut downs became cruel and even more hurtful. The more I tried to change who I was to avoid those moments, the more pathetic I became. I was too easy a target, and I took it, and I cried. I would have anxiety attacks at home, while grocery shopping, even picking up dinner, because what if I forgot something? What if I ordered the wrong thing? What if I messed something up or did something wrong? I would try not to cry in public as these thoughts rushed to the forefront of my mind, and the anxiety would build and build. I learned to swallow it down, put on a fake face, and get whatever I needed to get done quickly. I was a coward. I didn’t have the strength to stand up for myself or fight back. I always just let it happen. I let him speak to me as if I was a piece of trash, and he would be sure to tell me I was. I allowed it. So when I finally did begin to fight back and return his words, the intensity increased, but I was tired of just taking it. I was tired of being the bigger person and not stooping to name calling or potentially saying things that can never be taken back. That was a lesson I had learned years before, and I had become very good at keeping my mouth shut, and I absolutely hate fighting, because it doesn’t solve a fucking thing. Words spoken in anger are not words of truth, but if repeated enough they become a lie you believe. They are meant to cut and slice and stab and draw blood, and boy could they. But I was tired of being the one bleeding out every time, and I let my words fly. Saying cruel words even in defense didn’t make me feel better. They made me feel even weaker, because now I was becoming angry. If I wasn’t allowed to cry or be sad anymore I concluded that the only logically, acceptable response was to be angry and mad. That was the response I was always receiving, so why couldn’t I do the same? But I learned anger is very difficult to control. No matter how loud I yelled back or how many cruel things I could shoot back in defense, it would only build and build until I wanted to throw things. I wanted to break things. I want to put my fists through walls. I wanted to scream. I wanted to explode. But I’m not that type of person. I would think of the consequences and keep the anger inside. I became salty and unhappy with everything. My sarcasm and cynicism became relentless. This in turn made him even more angry, and it became a vicious cycle of fights and cut downs and being apart. I turned my anger onto myself in the form of not giving a shit. I would relentlessly pick at my face and body. I stopped giving a shit about what I ate. I would avoid calls from friends or family. I hated my job. I hated my house. I hated my life. Worst of all, I hated me. I believed it was all my fault. If I could just fix me everything would be better, but I didn’t love or even like myself enough to fix anything. I was angry and hurt, and it showed. I looked at photos from two years earlier, and I could no longer recognize the face I saw in the mirror everyday. I had aged. I looked tired, sad, and ugly. The poison was doing its work, and I kept drinking it. Vial after vial, I would drink it all and feel even more empty. Even my not giving a shit was a lie I’d tell myself, because I knew I cared too much. I knew what I was doing to myself. I knew! My self-destructive behavior had more control than I wanted to admit, so I would cry and be angry. I was an absolute mess. If I didn’t love myself, how on earth could I love anyone else? What sort of example was I to my daughter? How could I possibly teach her to love herself and be strong when I was so weak?

The past four months have been extremely difficult. This was supposed to be a time of joy and celebration. Instead it was ripped apart by all this anger, and my anger had become resentment. Once you hit that stage, it’s hard to go back to what was before in order to forgive and trust and love and heal. It is the final boss at the end of the game, and I had come to meet it face to face, and I was destined to lose. The extreme lows were followed by extreme highs. I was exhausted and confused and lost. Any positives were quickly washed out by negatives, to the point that was all I heard and believed anymore. I was trash. I was a stupid bitch, a dumb cow, fat and ugly, a sexual turnoff, a crack whore, frumpy, a dumbass, and I was told to shut the fuck up repeatedly and hung up on. I believed it all at this point. I would try not to cry as this poison was shoved down my throat and into my heart. I was broken. I had no fight left to give, and the poison had me believing that life would be better for everyone if I just wasn’t around anymore. Not that I’d ever actually go through with that at all, but those dark thoughts crept within the shadows of my mind, whispering sweet, sour nothings in my ear, inviting me to play along. As I mentioned in the very beginning, the darkest depths of my soul had something deep within. It was keeping something safe and hidden until I was ready to acknowledge it.

I was ready…

-Bonnie

If you have read all the way to this point, I’m sure you have grasped the situation I am writing about. Only my closest family and friends have been kept in the know of what my life has become over the past couple years, and believe me, they don’t even know the half of it. I only write about it now, because this is a type of therapy for me. It is a form of release and a way to help me reflect and heal myself moving forward. I will not share everything. The moments I do share are lite versions of the worst of it all, but they are enough, and I can only hope that my writing about my own experiences might help someone else. As natural as it is to pick a side, this is not meant to bash my now ex boyfriend. We still love each other. We had hurt each other immensely, and we knew we were toxic for one another, and we would have continued hurting each other if it wasn’t put to a dead stop. Things have been said that will never be forgotten, but now I have the ability to truly grow and find myself again. There’s a girl I knew four years ago. She was in love and happy and radiant, and I am determined to find her again. She may not shine as brightly as she once did, but I’ll pull her back into the light, and I will continue writing about my journey of self-healing and discovery as I learn to love myself again. If you want to leave a comment, all I ask is that it’s a positive one. Please do not bash someone else. This space is mine to share with you, and I need it to be a healing one. 💙

Self-Healing Uncategorized

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Feb 15

Catcher of Rainbows…

by oceangrrrl

I am not a writer.

I am not a painter.

I am not a poet.

I am not an electrician.

I am not a homemaker.

I am not religious.

So what the fuck am I? Besides annoying and sarcastic and hilarious? Probably the only thing I excel at being: a Jack of all trades. I would say Jill, but then people look at me all cockeyed, so it’s just easier being a Jack. Master? Nope! Expert? Absolutely not! Genius? Hahaha! No! Scholar?Most definitely nope! So what am I besides being subpar or good enough to do as many things as I possibly can?

Scatterbrained. Absolutely all over the place. You thought I’d use a better term, right? Believe me, I thought maybe philomath would be a good one to use as an all encompassing umbrella term, but when it is synonymous with scholar and genius, I have to say it’s a hard nope. If you’ve never heard of a philomath before, it’s worth the lookup. In a way it does describe me. You just have to knock its seriousness down about ten rungs to that whole Jack/Jill level. Nothings against the Jacks and Jills of the world, because we keep this world moving.

Wanting to learn everything I possibly can comes with a price. I have learned (yeah, ba da dum, tsss) as I’ve gotten older that my brain does not like to shut off. It has its moments of pure, determined focus, but more often than not, it is attempting to catch rainbows. My thoughts are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I have so many ideas that I can’t seem to recall 90% of them. If I don’t associate your name with something immediately, I will forget it within two minutes of hearing it. If I sit down at a restaurant, and there’s no conversation, I will read everything in range, at least five times, and I will still have to reread the menu to figure out what I want to eat. It is a blessing and a curse. Mostly a curse, but it has given me a divine sense of humor that can come out as mean if I don’t watch myself. Which is also odd, because I am actually a nice person. Annoying, yes! Mean, no! But I can be, so don’t be a dick!

I have learned to write everything down so I don’t forget. I also have to remind myself to remember to write it down, because I will forget to do that too. There are so many things I still want to do, see, and experience in my life, that I no longer have a bucket list. I have a CVS receipt over a mile long. In fact, it’s probably hit the two mile mark at this point, but honestly, I don’t remember where it left off. Obviously the list gets longer each year, because I find myself doing things that aren’t even on my list to begin with. Then I add more to that list that I may or may not get to this year. Or next year. Or ever. Eek!

The desire to learn is strong. I do consider myself pretty damn good at figuring things out. I can Google like a champ, and if I can’t find it on the internet, it most likely doesn’t exist. So there’s that. I love puzzles, cryptograms, word searches, and other random, mind-engaging activities. No. I do not like crosswords, chess, or algebraic equations that use Greek alphanumeric characters that have an assigned, mathematical value. Hell nope! When puzzles are associated with math, like the Rubik’s Cube, I’m out. I can add, multiply, figure out angles, and solve for x. Calculators are my friends. Again. Google is my friend. I can get a max of two sides of that damn cube. So I gotta admit that performing at 33.3…% efficiency is sad. Like, really sad.

And yet I must learn more!

But I never seem to want to learn everything about one thing. I just want to learn something about everything. So that whole curse thing happens here: I learn enough to do whatever task is at hand, and then the desire to learn more vanishes once that particular task is complete. I have a minimum of twenty started projects going at the same time, but two new ones are added each time I complete one. I still owe (not really owe, I enjoy giving a lot) multiple Christmas gifts that I am still in the process of making. I put my heart into everything I do and make, and yet my brain likes to travel elsewhere. It is stressful, exhausting, and it takes its toll on my current, physical and mental state. I get tension headaches nearly every day now, and if I don’t get those under control, they evolve into migraines. Those bad boys like to linger a good three days. I want to get so many things done every day that I don’t seem to have time to finish them. That is, if I even find the time to begin.

Everything is fleeting. My writing comes in waves. My desire to paint is like a storm blowing through. I waste time doing absolutely, nothing worthy of said time. When my body wants nothing more than to sleep, because my eyeballs literally hurt, my brain has other plans. Yay! Puzzles!!! That inspiration to get things done, seems to sputter out midway through just writing out my to-do list. I am a mess.

So why am I writing now? Why am I sharing my nightmare of a mental state with you? Why am I sharing with you the things I enjoy starting and never finishing? Yeah. I don’t know either. Maybe it just helps me organize my thoughts a bit. Maybe I have some deep, philosophical urge to let others know they’re not the only crazy people out there. You are not alone. We are not alone. Know why? Because we are all fucking crazy. Seriously. The quicker you learn that the easier life becomes, because no one thinks the exact same way you or I do. At least we are unique in some way. Ok. Not really. We just like to believe that lie we tell ourselves. We are sooooooooo not unique, and the universe is completely indifferent to our measly, blip of an existence. Even knowing all of that, I still want to learn more. Yes. I’m crazy. But at least I admit it.

Keep doing your crazy. I’ll keep doing mine.

Just don’t be a dick about it.

-Bonnie

Yeah. I can write poetry to scare people, and paint one hell of a bear. I can make a grilled cheese that’ll give you a heart attack ten years down the road (I’m trying to shorten that to five by adding even more butter. I think it’s working), and I can organize like a motha fuckah! I can lay waste to a bag of Dove silky, milk chocolates, and I can get my cat Sausage to “do the thing” which involves getting her to rear up on her stocky little ham hock back legs to get more scratches. Yeah. She’s a special one with her own IG account @catsausage. I can also continue writing random shit about myself, because your level of crazy wants to keep reading it. Sucker! I kid! I appreciate you reading my randomness. I really do. I think it’s fun sharing my weirdness, because you can maybe relate to a fraction of it. If not, I at least hope it was entertaining. Go check out my cat’s page. You know you want to. Just do it. Yes. I am pushing my cat now. You’re welcome. 😉

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Jan 27

Lovely Rafters…

by oceangrrrl

Part IV

It’s hard to imagine how things went so sour
It had begun ever so sweetly
Until this the eleventh hour
For a lover of puzzles cryptics and codes
How did she not see
This pattern so bold
She had allowed this to happen
Every single damn time
Sweet whispers of nothings
I me mine
And she asked herself why do I give love so freely
Am I not worthy
Am I just wash rinse repeating
It would seem it was so
Like an ebb and flow
But how would she stop this insane way of living
And not think of rafters
Wounds forever seeping
Being alone brought freedom it’s true
But then you’re alone with yourself and you
Though there always seemed time for family and friends
Nothing split down the middle
No who what where when
Yet why did she yearn for a love never ending
Alone she would heal
Her heart happily mending
The confidence would build
And she’d think she was ready
To go out on the prowl
Drunken nights on the town
To wake up once again
Just her and her bed
Then one night he’d find her and take her back home
She’d fall and fall hard
Stupid woman you should know
She’d ignore the red flags
They’re nothing love can’t conquer
Oh but they would come back to haunt her
Two years three four
She could take it
What’s one five ten more
But those stabs in the back
And the constant attacks
And the lure of the rope from the rafters
The thoughts were so lovely
Pull up a chair it’s time honey
The knot pressing the back of her skull
But she just couldn’t do it
Stupid heart stupid stupid
As she began to slip out of her noose
A leg that had broken
(Just her luck and she knew it)
Gave way with a snap and came loose
Oh you dumb bitch
Tempting fate like this
How did you think this would go
One final gasp vision was fading
(I’d give this slip a five star rating)
Dangling from those rafters all alone

-Bonnie

Please note this is dark and not my true heart Although life is one hell of a teacher. False love is not worth it you don’t deserve this Please go to a counselor or preacher.

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Jun 3

It’s Happening…

by oceangrrrl

To start off I finally was able to get my hair done after a few weeks of watching my natural color grow out more and more. Let’s just say my natural, ashy light brown does not fit my skin tone or my personality. With the extra 2 1/2 inches came my first officially noticed gray hair. Then came a second one. Yikes! Not like I didn’t know they existed (thank you hair stylist and boyfriend), but as long as my hair remained highlighted, I could pretend they weren’t really there. A win for me!

But this is a milestone year. I will be turning forty in December. And though it’s going to be just another day, and just another year older, I don’t feel forty. I don’t feel old. I look it more and more, and I see the lines and loss of elasticity, but my personality and body don’t feel like they’ve hit that mark yet.

And yet, so it begins.

It’s happening!

What is happening you might ask? Oh, just the “back in my day” stories. It’s not like I haven’t noticed me stating how things used to be or that such and such place used to be open fields or whatever the case may be, but yesterday marked the first time I fully recognized just how blatant it had become. I could no longer ignore my comments of “way back when” were happening more often.

Let’s set the stage, shall we. My regular stylist, who is a few years older than me, was advised by her doctor to take it easy for a couple weeks due to health reasons. Salon let me know I could reschedule with her when she gets back or I could schedule with another stylist. I’m super picky about my hair (it’s my single beauty splurge), but remember those grays were showing, and I didn’t want to see them anymore. So I bit my lip, took the jump to get my long overdue hair into the shop for a tune up, and I went ahead and booked with a stylist I had never met. She was super sweet, a mother of two, and thirty this year. She did an excellent job, btw, but while you allow someone to play with your hair, there’s a lot of time sitting in a chair and coming up with conversation topics.

Mind you I am not super social. The older I get the more I avoid human contact and small talk. I am not a conversationalist unless I know you, and we have reached that level of comfort, although there are some people in the world that are very easy to talk to even when you don’t know their names and end up never running into them again. Imagine ships passing in the night. You know how the line goes. So while I am sitting in the chair with a mask (requirement to be in the salon) covering half my face and blanketed in basically a tarp, I was trying to find worthwhile subject matter we could discuss. It would be even more weird if I just sat there and didn’t say a damn thing. It would be extremely rude if I just whipped out the phone and either kept up with what I could for work or played sudoku nonstop.

The music playing over the speakers was an easy topic. It was horrible, country music neither of us had ever heard before. We couldn’t even figure out who was singing the songs. Not only that, but there was an awful cover of “Heaven Let Your Light Shine Down”, and we were both grateful for that one to end. So music. Music became a topic. Which, of course we had already discussed COVID-19 issues, I just rolled the music into how COVID will affect future concerts. We talked about concerts we had been to. She mentioned she had wished she’d gone to a George Straight concert last year when he was in town. I jump in with “I got to see him at the old Cowboys stadium in Irving for the George Straight Country Music Festival!” So here we go. Setting the stage for the backstory of days long past from my youth. Good Lord. I mention when that concert took place, ‘96 I believe. Holy crap! That was 24 years ago! Then another concert I went to back in ‘97 at the Texas Motor Speedway. It had just been built and basically held two large concerts before even having a race. The first was a country fest. No. I did not go to that one. I did however go to their Rock Fest ‘97!!! Let me tell you! Awesome concert!!!! Bush, No Doubt, Counting Crows, the Nixons, Collective Soul, and more. It was so kick ass!!!

So it may not seem like much to the average reader, but I have now noticed just how much those old stories kick in to create a connection with a younger crowd. The older party explaining how they are still relevant and how their experiences can correlate with the experiences yet to be had by the younger party. The younger party struggling to follow along since they don’t quite realize just how cool that story really is in the mind of the older party. No wonder the youth have a hard time listening to stories about the days of old. No wonder the majority of people I know don’t have a passion for studying history (yes, some of you are crazy for wanting to do that, imo). It’s right up there with telling someone they can’t do something. They’re going to do what they want to do, no matter how much you may try to explain what happened to you and how badly it turned out. It’s allowing them to touch the flame to not want to touch it again. Same with experiences. The older we get, the more we experience, and the more we want to share to keep those memories alive or relevant or teach or inspire. But that younger generation, they want to have their own experiences, and it’s hard to set time aside to hear about someone else’s when you just want to make your own.

With this new “happening“ I now want to hear those stories I didn’t quite appreciate when I was younger. The stories of how my mom had actually gone to a Beatles concert and even experienced Inna Gadda Da Vida. The stories of my dad taking out his metallic blue glitter dune buggy, the same one he would take me and the neighborhood girls out for sno-cones as a little kid on hot, Texas summer evenings. All of those things that get talked about over and over again, but they just went in one ear and right out the other, because they couldn’t be appreciated yet. Now I know.

Now I’m listening.

-Bonnie

And if I have any typos in this thing, I couldn’t care less. I’m typically picky about grammar, but I just don’t have time to fix all those written mistakes when I have so much more listening to do now. 😉

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Apr 14

To Dream and Fade Away…

by oceangrrrl

With all of the weirdness going on the world, it’s difficult finding something good to write about. There’s the projects around the house that finally get started on and sometimes finished. Then there are new ones that may or may not reach a starting point. There’s checking on friends and family and neighbors. Check in. Check in. Check in. Do your part in making sure those you know haven’t lost their sanity. set up those family zoom calls. Talk to people you haven’t seen in years. Do it. Show humanity at its simplistic version of itself.

Talk about the past. Talk about the present. Talk about the future. Discuss changes. Cause and effect. The fun topics. How’s life. How’s work. How’s school. How’s it going without a job. How’s it going being alone. So alone. No one there to even check in with.

Share food. Share toilet paper. Share stories. Share a beer. Share a space six feet away. Share carefully. Cautiously. Anxiously. But share nonetheless.

It’s true. We’re all in this bs together. We are all sharing the uncertainties and the fear. We should all be sharing love.

But that’s as simple as it gets. Share love. Share hope. Share strength.

Dream of something better. Being better. Doing better. Don’t fade into the darkness alone. You can find a friend or family member. Find them. Bring them to the light. Bring yourself into the light. Keep them safe. Keep saving everyone. We’re all going to need one another.

And done.

Today is another day. Smile. Love.

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Feb 20

Tell Me Lies…

by oceangrrrl

Honestly I’d rather you not, but we all do it. Don’t lie. You know you do. We all lie at some point.

I bring this up, because a lie is bothering me this evening. Not one I told, but one that was told to me. The problem with lies is that when you’ve done your fair share of lying in the past, you become quite good at it. So good in fact that you know when you’re being lied to even when it’s something small. It is easier to believe these false words than so as not to fully accept them. So this lie, that shouldn’t really matter to me at all is pestering my mind like the single mosquito in the room when you’re trying to fall asleep. It wasn’t recent, and yet it pops up from time to time as if it happened yesterday.

So with my bringing up lies and lying and liars in general, it’s funny how people are offended or angry when their lies are called out. No one likes to be called out on their bullshit. For example, the older I have gotten the more I enjoy not going out. Oh! I miss the energy of friends and the memories of social gatherings, but as I get more crotchety and lazy, it doesn’t always feel like it’s worth it. It is. It’s worth every damn bit of stress or anxiety or primping, but it’s So. Much. Easier. To just stay home. So what do we do when this happens? How many of us say that we are currently enjoying our hermitting stage and just don’t feel like dealing with the hassle of going out? I have. It’s rare. But mostly it’s an excuse, or I don’t feel well, my partner isn’t feeling well, or I have an early morning, etc, etc, etc. The lying comes with ease, because it is so so so easy. It’s easier to explain we don’t feel well rather than go into why we would rather have a stay in and watch a movie or why our current mental strength is not up to the task of being around others.

We lie. We lie to make others feel better. At least we liars believe that our lie is saving someone some grief, but is it? Let me ask you something, when you lie like this, to get out of something, does it make you feel better? Or do you feel guilty after it’s come out of your face? You know you may have just lied to your best friend, and deep down you know they know. So does it ever feel worth it to ourselves? Are we really saving anyone from grief when they 99.9% of the time know you’re making shit up? Not really. We make ourselves feel like shit for lying about something we shouldn’t have to lie about to begin with, and yet we continue the tradition.

Think of all the times you have lied to save someone’s feelings. The lies of encouragement when you don’t have the heart to be real, because it will spare a person pain. So many lies. I love your outfit when you wouldn’t be caught dead in it. Or I love your makeup even though someone has obviously spent too much time and money to look like a cheap whore. Even the silent lie to save not just their embarrassment but also our own. How many times have you let that person smile at you without saying there’s something in their teeth and then watch them smile away at others who do the same thing? Maybe not the same thing as lying, but it’s far from pointing out some honesty.

How many lies do we tell ourselves on a daily basis? How many do we believe? Do we eventually tell these personal lies so often that we believe them? Do our lies control our feelings toward ourselves? Sometimes we even lie to ourselves, repeating over and over and over again that we are happy. We look good. We feel good. Mantras to get as motivated in the morning can begin as a lie and then slowly progress towards the truth. Funny how that works. Day in. Day out. Every day. I feel good. I feel happy. Lying until it’s true. Sort of like the whole fake it til you make it. The way we dress. The way we speak. The way we act. We are all just a bunch of liars. Always trying to show others we think they want to see. Putting on our costumes and masks to hide the real us. It’s easy to pick out the ones in the crowd who don’t care anymore, who aren’t out to be something they’re not. The ones who choose their lies more carefully and use only when needed.

The one person I lie to the most is myself. Deep down I don’t like me. I don’t like being lazy. I don’t like feeling unattractive. I don’t like who I am anymore. Only the lies I tell myself get me through the day anymore. They’re the only things that boost my confidence levels enough to get things done. I lie and say I like me. I lie and say I look good in this outfit. I lie and say my hair looks good. But it’s all lies!!!!!!!!!

But do I want to hear the truth? We know how much the truth hurts. Do we all want to know the truth about everything.? Or is it better to accept the lies and believe them to be true? As easy as it is to lie, maybe it’s even easier to just accept it and move along. so that lie that continues to haunt me, I might as well accept it as a lie someone told me to keep from hurting my feelings. It was a lie made to make someone else feel better about themselves. And that’s fine. But it’s still a long way away from the honestly I was craving at the time.

So be honest. Your loved ones deserve it. Even when it hurts. Even when it makes them feel guilty. Demand the truth from them in return. Now go drink some expensive tea and relax. Repeat some mantras until you believe them. Then go out to the world and show them the real you. There no resin the hide yourself under a blanket of lies.

Enough rambling on and on. Have a good evening. Would love to hear some comments on how this post makes you feel.

-Bonnie

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Oct 16

It Could Always Be Worse…

by oceangrrrl

I say this to myself far too often. But it’s true. It’s an all encompassing truth. At least for me anyway.

So let me tell you how my week has been going. Just realize it’s only Tuesday. That should give an awesome clue as to how this will be laid out.

Sunday was a good day. Warm. I got a couple of paintings done and started a separate art project. It was sunny and warm, around 81°F. It was a tad boring of a day, but I kept busy for the most part. Then a storm comes through. Temps drop. Crazy lightning outside. Flood warnings. Yay Texas weather! It’s kinda normal, actually. The kicker is that Monday morning it is 39 F(ing) degrees outside! 39°?!?! And it’s raining. Cold and wet. Great start to a Monday.

I head outside to my car, praying it will start. Clyde does not like cold weather, but I’ve had so much work done to it that I am hoping it will be ok. Clyde started right up. Wasn’t running weird from the cold. I was highly impressed at this point. It’s going to be a great day! Right? Not until I head home from work!

Clyde has thrown in the towel. I barely made it home. Called the shop where I had spent far too much money to get Clyde fixed up. No answer. Actually, it’s Tuesday night, and I still haven’t received a phone call back. Jerks! Anyway, I had to pull over a few times on the way home, but I made it. Thankfully I made it. Of course my heart is pounding. I’m thinking my car is finally going to blow up. It didn’t. Whew! So anyway, my dad has a spare vehicle, and I am currently borrowing that. My stepmom is amazing! She came over to pick me up, brought dinner for me, and gave me the keys to my dad’s car. So awesome!

I don’t have internet at my place yet (actually getting installed tomorrow, been out for a few months now and cellular signal is fucking terrible). So I am attempting to begin the car buying process which involves multiple searches and filters and blah blah blah. Car shopping. I loathe car shopping. Since we were having shitty weather all day yesterday, my cell service was extra crappy. I couldn’t load anything. I was frustrated. I don’t think my bf knew what to do with me at this point. I know he wishes he could help more, but he’s in need of a new vehicle as well. Aren’t we a cute couple? Both in a hole at this point. So I call my mom.

My mom was all into helping me search for a “new” vehicle. She was putting in search criteria for me, and sending me pictures (which took an eternity to download on the phone 🙄), and she was emailing me links to check out the next day. Super cute and sweet! Love my mom so much! I’m pretty sure she was more excited about car shopping than I was. She found some good ones. Of course, anyone who can’t just walk onto a lot and pay cash for a new vehicle know the joys of used car shopping. You have to test drive all of them. I found some vehicles I was interested in, but dear God! They were not exactly nearby. Frustrating. Crappy weather. Figuring out loan calculators and budget and wondering if I’ll have food for the winter. Such fun!

Today, Tuesday, I drive to work. I’m there for thirty minutes and get a phone call from a friend of mine (also a coworker). She ran out of gas maybe two miles from a gas station! Her car lied to her and said she still had 21 miles left to go before being empty. So I leave the office to go pick her up. We head to the gas station. She gets a gas can and a gallon of gas. We head back to her car. Mind you it is cold as hell and just raining. Great weather to get stuck in. Just miserable weather. Bleh. So we get back to her car. The gas can nozzle won’t fit into her gas tank! I never knew this before, but Fords have a funnel-like thing with the spare just for this! Well, guess what she didn’t have with her spare. So we head to the office. Figure there’s a funnel somewhere in the shop.

Lunchtime rolls around, the rain sort of turns into a light drizzle, and we get ready to head back to her car. Walk out to my borrower vehicle and the driver’s side front tire is looking pretty low. Really? I was just like, come on universe, are you serious right now?! We head over to the gas station, slowly of course, and I put air in the tire. Seems good. We start off towards her car, get on the freeway, and the tire pressure sensor goes off. Pretty much at this point I was over it. I make it to another gas station, pull up to the air, trying to figure out what to do. It’s still cold and rainy. At this point it decided to rain a little harder. Called a coworker to take my friend to her car so I can beeline to a shop. Found a shop nearby, called, and they said they could fix it but wouldn’t be able to get to it for over an hour. That’s fine! Coworker comes to pick up friend. I refill the tire with air and head to the shop. PSI is dropping fast. I slowly make it to another station. More air. I’ve got three blocks to go, and I really don’t want to damage the wheel of this vehicle. Slowly make it to the shop. Get it there, and it finishes deflating.

Gotta say these guys were on it. They finished what they were working on and started working on the tire. Then they tell me the hole is too big to fix and have to use the spare. Fine with me! Do what you guys need to do! Guy comes back in and asks where the special tool is to get the spare down. I have no clue. Didn’t know there was a special tool for this. What else could go wrong?! Incredibly they found it!!! They mounted the spare. Didn’t charge me a thing! Seriously! Nothing! I asked what I owed, and the guy says nothing. I tell him I owe him something. The guy says I don’t. So I thank him multiple times, extremely grateful for the small kindness that brightened my dreary day. I make it back to work only wanting to go home and curl up in a ball and cry.

I made it through the cold and rainy day. Drove home from work. Walked to the front door and I see a bag hanging off the door handle. I take it inside, happy to see my two hair balls and open the bag I brought in. My stepmom brought it over for me with a card, a pumpkin dish, and a bag of candy corn, and that made me cry. I talk to my mom who is wanting to help me out by selling her horse trailer and old truck to lend me cash to put towards a car so I don’t have to pay interest. That made me cry. So my moms made my day end so sweetly and I felt so much love from the two of them. They really know how to remind me that I am loved. So even though my week has started off pretty shitty, today ended in lots of love and feelings of gratitude. Because it could always be worse.

To mellow this post out a touch, I’m going to share something. I recently had more work added to my tattoo piece on my back which entailed four butterflies. The original butterfly I had put on my back was for my grandmother. But I wanted three more coming up over shoulder. Each of those represents my mom, my stepmom, and my ex stepmom. The moms in my life who always made sure I was ok. They are there to help me when I need guidance and strength and someone to vent to. They are with me at all times. All of my tats have individual meanings, but they all come together as a mortality piece on my back. Still need more work done to complete. It’s almost there. It’s special to me. It’s me. But I wanted to share that about the butterfly section.

I hope this hasn’t been too dreary and all of a post, but I feel like sharing my shitty week with you, only to get to the end and seeing how beautiful today turned out. I am so grateful for the little things, my friends, my coworkers, my bf, even when adulting tries to bodyslam me from time to time, those little things all add up to amazingly grand things that make me smile.

Because, after all, it could be worse.

-Bonnie

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Sep 10

Life As I Know It…

by oceangrrrl

It’s a tad crazy to say the least. You’re up one moment and down the next. But then you zoom back up again only to fall further down, and then you’re ok. Not great. Not terrible. Just ok. And I have learned that ok is ok. It could always be worse.

But it does seem Life has its curveballs, and sometimes you just can’t hit the damn ball that’s been thrown your way. It’s football season, and why the hell am I using a baseball analogy? Whatever. Moving on. So yeah. Life. It’s the greatest adventure we will ever know. It’s our life. We make it what we want. Yes. There are plenty of external factors that can influence it for good or bad, but overall, it’s yours. It’s yours to do with as you please. Waste it. Grow it. Destroy it. Expand it. End it. All things we as humans are capable of doing with this gift we have all been given. Not that we had any say as to whether we wanted one to begin with, but I would like to think I am quite happy that I was even given this opportunity to live. To laugh. To cry. To create another life. To love.

Our parents passed this gift of life to us, sometimes by accident. They happen. Their lives will one day end, and ours will continue on for a while. It’s inevitable. We have the choice to give life to another, and the cycle continues. The first few years our lives are not our own. They are governed in some form or fashion. The attempt to mold us while we are young and susceptible to influence to become more in the eyes of our parents and others. But we grow up and realize this one major thing: it’s my life. Some people never grasp this. Some grasp it early on. Some grasp it only when they have passed it on to another. There are an infinite number of ways that people become aware of their life belonging to them. So how do we decide, out of the endless possibilities, what we want to do with it?

One thing I have learned is that life is uncertain as all fuck. I have written plenty about how my plans for my life never seem to go accordingly. It’s like I’m swimming, swimming, swimming and then WHAM! I swim into a fucking wave this hits hard! Really hard! So I get confused. Wonder what the hell just happened. How did I get pushed backwards from how far I thought I had gotten? Maybe I swim around in circles until I’m completely lost. Maybe throw in a little panic mode for good measure. Then I look at my options of how to get through the wave currently making a beeline for me to wash me up on shore. Sometimes I just have to swim over it. It might take a while, or maybe it was a small wave I could have easily dove under if I was paying the slightest attention to the details? Each wave is different. I like using the wave analogy, because even though they can stop you in your tracks, they can also make you fall backwards and tumble, tumble some more, lose your breath, force your head onto a rock, panic, tumble again, scratch your legs up pretty bad, and maybe even throw some seaweed into your face. Which seems ok until you actually experience seaweed in your face! But eventually you make it through and breath deep.

So back to this whole gift of life and the choices we make thing. We can take the highs but be prepared for the lows. We can take the lows and hope we can find that high again. Hope. An extremely important motivator. A small thing that has great influence in our lives. We can use hope for any bad scenario. It helps us look at our low points as if they are ok.

Life is full of ok moments, and life is full of good moments if we choose to see them that way. It may seem like I’m rambling on about this, but trust me. In my head it’s all perfectly laid out and makes complete sense. Or so I would like to believe. Just when I think I have it all figured out, that curveball is sent straight for my head hoping to knock some sense into it that I have absolutely nothing figured out at all. And that’s one of the beautiful parts of this gift I have been given. I’ll never figure it out, but hopefully I can prepare myself to enjoy it to the fullest. I’ve had my share of hurt and pain and heartbreak and endless wave upon wave, and I choose to look back and learn from those lessons to make my life better for the future I hope I get. Because honestly, we don’t know when this gift of life stops giving.

So, with my ramblings, I hope that you see your life as a gift too! The millions of people that have had a butterfly effect on my life and vice versa are all gifts in some way. Hopefully when I am feeling low I will think back on this post and remember the hope I have expressed here. Don’t lose hope. Don’t lose the light. Don’t forget your gift. It’s too easy to lose your way in the darkness, but don’t give up hope. Remember, we are all sharing this gift of life with each other. Maybe this time it will go as planned…

Love,

Bonnie 💙

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Aug 12

The Little Things…

by oceangrrrl

They always make the biggest difference. All those little things. I can talk about all the bad ones, but that’s too easy at this point. It’s the small, sweet, kind things that have the biggest impact. You know, the kind words from friends who know you’re going through a rough patch. The random phone call to let you know someone is thinking about you, just because. Getting the last bite of someone’s dessert, because they know it’s your favorite. The smiles from complete strangers that can brighten your dull day. The wise words of people who have been there and done that. Someone putting your grill together for you while you’re at work and then breaks it in by grilling some steaks for dinner. Someone taking you out for spur of the moment ice cream. All those little things.

When life gets you down, or you’re just sort of blah. It’s like no matter how much shit the universe throws your way, it also seems to know when you need a slight break. When you’re trying your hardest to brighten other’s days, and you could use some brightening of the spirit yourself, it just happens. A funny joke. A funny story. Maybe something you do that makes you laugh at yourself for a second and hope no one else saw it happen. Even just witnessing others do kind things for their friends. All things that make me smile and feel that the world is better because of all of them. Even my own, little world. It needs those kind reassurances that there is happiness and joy and love, especially when it doesn’t feel like it.

There’s always some weirdness in my life, and sometimes it throws me off course. I get off schedule. I get flaky. I hide away in a book with not much to say to anyone. I avoid others. Even the ones I need to have around me. And I know better. I know I should be surrounded by friends and loved ones when I get this way, but for some reason it’s just easier to hide away. Not that I am truly hiding. I guess I am just better at being alone with my thoughts at times. Or maybe I’m better at hermit-ing. I don’t know. I just get blah and disappear.

So thank you to everyone who is patient with me during these periods of hiding. Your kind gestures help pull me out of my funk. You help me heal. And although it may seem like forever, it helps me see the light again and get back to being myself in due time. Those small, sweet bits of light make more difference than you’d ever realize.

So this will be short and sweet and a sort of thank you note. A nod to those who help me find my smile and my self again. To those who know me well enough to know I go through funks when life can drag me down. Don’t ever stop. For my sake, please keep them coming. I love you all. You make my life brighter in the darkest of times.

Keep smiling. It’ll help someone’s day, somewhere, when their life is blah.

-Oceangrrrl 💙

My sweet, little hairball of happiness and joy. She’s my little Sausage buddy. 😍

A place where I found a nice chunk of joy, and where I wish I still was.

Water. A place of peace. The little things…

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