The Dark Side

We all know there is one, and every one of us has one. A dark side. It is the place in our heads and hearts that we tap into when we our emotions are tied in knots. We hide in our little dark side and play with our nasty and twisted thoughts. Some hide their dark side from others. Others let it LASH OUT and snap its teeth at the world. Personally, a loose lid is what suits my dark side.

I have always embraced my dark side. I fed an nurtured it. For me it has always been a place to play and let my mind run wild without being judged or viewed as a freak. What would I look like as a vampire? What would life be like for her if she was no longer slender and beautiful? What if he was no longer able to utter hurtful words? The dark side had answers.
Your fangs would be long and white and your eyes would mesmerize every human that looked upon them. If all of a sudden she had one fat leg and a gigantic hairy wart between her eyes she would topple like a house of cards. If he coughed and gagged every time he was about to say nasty things, then barfed out a big juicy bull frog, he would no longer open his mouth with that intent. Answers.

The dark side is what fantastic movies and great books are made from. Witnessing another’s dark side spill out can be fascinating! Watching them take their own answers into the lab to create hellish places, heinous humans, and horrible creatures is quite frankly, comforting. The comfort is found in the discovery that you are not the only freak on a tweak.

When I crawl out from my dark side I feel lighter, and less burdened by the “norm”. The “norm” that tries to cram us all in to pretty little boxes of what it thinks we “should” be.

It is days like today, Halloween, that we are all free to celebrate our dark side. To pay homage to the answers the dark side has given us. To say thank you to the dark side for giving us a place to play. It is a festival of being anything your heart desires. Whether it be a bat or a buccaneer, a fairy or Frankenstein, there is no boundaries. Today we can have wings, fangs, tails, or a zippered mouth. The choice is yours. Today we are all free to just BE.

WHOOO… Are… YOU…???

As I sit here eating the cookie/brownie bars I made from a box and majorly botched, the caterpillar I love so much inches into my mind. Yes, the one that asks Alice who she is. WHOO am I? I’m a boxed bar botcher. How does that happen? The directions are written clearly on the box. WHOO am I? I am me, and in the process and progress of being me shit happens. What surprises me is how being me changes daily. The other day I looked in the mirror and thought, “YEESH. You weren’t there yesterday. What happened to me?” To which I sighed and answered myself, “Shit. Shit happened.” There are many days I feel like Alice. Alice in the wonderland of being a mother and getting older. Instead of a hangover, I now have a hang under, which used to be my stomach. That’s pretty wonderful if you ask me. It makes me wonder, how can the human skin astoundingly stretch to accommodate another human inside itself? Pretty amazing. Until you consider the dismount. What the HELL kind of rinky dink operation is the skin running here? There is no gold medal of awesomeness until you perfectly land the dismount! No gymnast has ever won the gold after leaving the parallel bars to end with a face plant on the big blue mat! Do you ever hear the celebration for a deflated, rumpled looking balloon? No. Elasticity? Please. The skin after a baby is the equivalent of a pair of underwear you find at the bottom back corner of the drawer. When you hear those first few crunches of the tired old elastic shattering, you don’t even put them the rest of the way on! They go directly in the garbage because you know they are going to shimmy down your ass all day long. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if they didn’t need to hold up some sort of cotton wad that you now are required to wear in case you sneeze, cough, or laugh because your bladder is like a fat dude in a wife beater that is five sizes too small for him. Sitting on the couch watching ESPN Workout, wiping the grease from a chicken leg he has sucked clean off his chin. Useless. So when I botch the box bars, there are reasons I simply say “shit happens”. Usually the answer to the question “WHOO… Are… YOU…?” is, I am amazing, and unapologetically flawed. Just like the human skin, and the female bladder.

What steel looks like…

And so it begins… My love affair….

Start with something simple they say. Start with something you love. Well, for me, that simple thing I love is words. I love words. I love the way they look, how they sound, and the power they have. In my world things are not black and white. Things in my world are midnight and eggshell. Good and bad do not live in my mind, fantastic and heinous do. Words form and group together in my mind before I even realize it is happening. A story unfolds as I am sitting at a stoplight and look over at the Mom driving the mini van. The rest of the van is erupting with movement. Objects flying, arms flailing, tiny heads vibrating. Mom is oblivious with a far away look in her eyes. I know that look. Mom is at Carlos and Charlie’s in Cancun shaking her ass against a gorgeous Guadalajaran gentelman. Green light! That’s how it happens, all day long, every day, story after story. Ususally, a trip to Walmart that should only take a few minutes, turns into an hour of character building enjoyment. Is that woman’s ass leaking or did she sit in something? Its ok lady, spank the shit out of your rotten little monster. Not only did he open that box of cookies and start eating them, he’s got another package of them shoved under his butt that he snatched off the shelf while you were grabbing some gravy mix. Then a text comes in on my phone, “You coming home or what?”. Back to reality.  The words in my life add color and meaning to every day things, places, and events. They explain the unexplainable. They comfort and soothe the chapped asses that I run into. When necessary, they are my sword and shield to do battle with the villians (AKA: supermoms, assholes, and douchebags) in my life.

Simple, in a way, yes.  Love? Absolutely!