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Jombie is scarier than Phyllis Diller<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n
Nicole asked me today\/yesterday if I ever did the Christmas thing, “Well, what did you do last year?”. This time last year seems unreal. I never think about it. My life was drastically different. I was out working at the fabric shop, cutting yards of holiday prints with cheerful red cartoon santas to the tune of a million piped in carols, and returning home to an increasingly failing relationship. I was stuck in a depressing house where I never felt welcome, never felt at home, too broke for busfare, too broken to properly leave, even for an evening. If I left, there was yelling sometimes, and serious shattering accusations. Christmas was coming and I couldn’t think of what that meant. I put up lights in the kitchen, lining the badly painted blue sill of the window over the sink. A turkey in the oven, my mother coming over with my brothers to decorate the plastic tree that Bill found at Ocean Sound. Most of my days were running on auto-pilot, every evening the exact same meaningless thing. The same dinner in front of a different uninteresting movie. I don’t remember the presents but for the ones that I gave away.<\/p>\n
I reminded Christy the other day that soon we’ll have known eachother a year, explaining when she denied it that I met her the same day I met Ethan, at her SinCity birthday party. “That wasn’t you. That was the other Jane,” she said, as I detailed the fetish night, what she wore, what Ethan wore, where it was, which couch they had taken over. “The other Jane was *pause* chubby.” People worried about me, but they never said anything, not until after. When I left, when I moved in with Adrian, every last person I saw<\/i> told me that “You look so much better, you were looking sick.”<\/p>\n
It feels like last December was a thousand days ago. A different age of the world. I’m alright now, I’m okay.<\/p>\n
December, January, February, March, April, May. One, two, three, four, five, six. I’m twenty-two now, my lucky number for as long as I knew how to count. I always knew I was right. Shedding flawed flesh and spirit, taking on friends again, drinking in frightening freedom. I live independently now, holding down the kids chat job for minimum seven months now, maybe eight. I pay my rent and have enough left over to squeak my way into performances and a few dinners out. This week I pay the thousand in debts I accumulated while living as a useless mouse. It’s a big thing for me. I have new eyes, glasses that work. I saw the moon clearly for the first time in five years last evening. I’m traveling, I have people I care about. There’s a thousand positive things that matter now, many hundreds of half-said moments, a lifetime of seconds building atom by atom into a life again, better than it ever was before.<\/p>\n
This fall alone has been affirmation. Certain people have crossed paths with me and changed me. It’s like leaping from the bridge in the dark to discover that the river is made of soft supporting light. Photographs in my in-box making me matter, conversations in verse to poets, reckless discoveries that saved me, threw me into the fire to burn. I’m growing strong again, like I haven’t been in years. Like I have never been completely, because now I’m no longer strictly a child. My mental wings open, brushing the ceiling with starchy plum feathers, and I find that I like it. <\/p>\n
I’m remembering who I am.<\/p>\n
\nif you want to see me before I go, this is it. Bring people, spread the word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s been a good year. People have collected, have flocked, have grouped, have collaborated. It’s been amazing, the differences. It makes me happy, (even if I still don’t know who gifted me with the pro account). (Someone better claim the pictures or my self-esteem will laugh at you.) Jombie is scarier than Phyllis Diller Nicole … Continue reading “whore! slut!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}