themiddlelayer

[themiddlelayer]

RylRed and Me: Connecting the Blogs

Welcome to the latest iteration of my social media presence... Please call me Ember.

The Middle Layer began almost a decade ago when I decided that I wanted to do something else with my writing. I've done this since I could hold a pencil so my inner thoughts have gone from spiral-bound notebooks to word files and eventually online in a variety of places.

Blogging has been my journal, my sounding board... my place to publicly splatter my guts on the wall.

Before Tumbler, I was on MySpace where being wide open online was becoming the norm. I was completely, drunkenly, unfiltered there to the point where it filled with things I shouldn't have said at all. It was an ugly place in life but it's part of my story... I also made a lot of friends on MySpace, forming my social circle in Texas in my 20s and into my mid-30s.

When I shifted to Facebook in 2009-ish, I was still authentically myself but slowly I realized that the people who knew me in real life didn't need such an open window into my head. To this day the "memories" section makes me cringe, but it also reminds me of how far I've come both in the way I engaged online and in my real-life journey.

Things changed again when I got active on Twitter in 2020.

Initially, it was a place for me to promote my Ember Sparxxx content but it felt weird to post political rants and COVID stuff in the same place I was linking my adult content. That's why I started my 'nilla account: RylRed.

In general, I never hid the fact that I was getting naked in front of the camera, but I also didn't want people who knew me in real life to see it unless they explicitly asked.

I guess that's been a good way to describe how I engage with my various social media accounts. I don't hide anything, but I try to keep each account far enough apart that nobody stumbles into anything by accident.

Do I want my co-workers to know Ember Sparxxx exists? Nope. Would it be the end of my career if one of them put in the right search terms on PH and they recognized me? Also no.

Funny story there... that happened with my former spouse immediately after the first of my content went up. Ooops!

I have no political aspirations and the only politician I've personally encountered was a low-level city councilman who I turned down. Another story for another time.

With Twitter burning to the ground (along with our democracy... so many rabbit holes, so little time!) I decided to come back to Tumblr and just connect some of these dots.

I'd already changed the privacy on some of my Middle Layer content and will continue to use nicknames but because of the blog/sub-blog stuff, I'm going to end up re-blogging TheMiddleLayer & RylRed's Rants between each other while. I'm still figuring out how to re-establish my online presence without connecting too many dots to real-life places where I have to maintain a filter that I just don't wear in places like this.

[themiddlelayer]

Every day there's one more thing that feels like the drop that'll make the bucket overflow, but it's still raining and somehow I keep getting up and doing the things.

January 6th, 2020: I was working from home watching rioters tear the Capitol apart on one screen with my Teams app open on the other. I was supposed to be working on e-learning materials for new hires at the company where I worked, but I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t think about truck reservations or maintenance schedules. I couldn’t think about what I was going to do for lunch, or when I’d last gotten up to pee.

That was the last time I remember being so overwhelmed by the state of the world that I was frozen in abject horror at it all.

There were meltdowns over more things, of course. The day I tried to make my first cloth mask and collapsed on my office floor, sobbing all over my fabric scraps. The day I drove by Denny’s on the way to one of the last in-store grocery trips I’d take. Breaking up with my best friend over my COVID-cautious behavior while she was in Vegas, having flown through Phoenix… all pre-vaccine.

Getting the call from my brother that my mother was hospitalized with COVID and declining rapidly.

Spoiler alert- she survived and still believes it’s all a global conspiracy concocted by baby-eating Dems who secretly, are all lizard people running the “New World Order”.

Today as more details come in about the mass shooting in Texas I don’t feel half of the rage and sadness that I might have felt in the past.

If I’m being totally honest, I felt more rage waking up to a dirty kitchen earlier this week. More rage at the finding the scrubby sponge covered in cheese and at Metalhead interrupting whatever we were watching to ask Pirate for gas money. And that’s fucked up.

I've become relatively numbed from the rapid succession of major historical events and statistics of late: more than 1 million deaths from COVID, 21 weeks into the year and 213 mass shootings, 200 bodies found in a basement in Ukraine, formula shortages, the impending reversal of Roe, and on and on...

They have become numbers and headlines in a way that removes all of the horror and humanity.

At the same time I’m seeing interviews of a grieving father, the EMS who learned that his daughter had died while evaluating her best friend; videos of enraged parents screaming at officers to do something being pushed and yelled at by the bystanders with badges; interrupted press conferences full of rage. It feels perverse and exploitive, more voyeuristic and inflammatory than humanizing.

This is the world we live in.

Are there going to be protests? Probably.

More hashtags with variations of ACAB that will side-step the Zuc-bots designed to shut down that kind of ‘hate speech’ while ignoring actual neo-Nazis? Of course.

Political action? New laws? Of course not!

Because we’ve been here, done that again and again only to watch the Ghastly Old Party continue to bring their Bibles and guns into the statehouse without repercussion.

Pirate keeps saying that nothing will change until there is real violence... Violence towards the right people, not the poor, black, and brown ones who keep turning up in body bags and behind bars en masse.

Every time he says that part of me recoils in horror. That horror feels like the last piece of my own humanity clinging to the idea that we live in a world where we are still somehow safe.

Meanwhile, the rest of me knows we aren’t safe.

It’s become a statistical reality (not that I’ve dug up the numbers personally, but I’m sure between Pirate and MM they can find them) that life expectancy in the US is rapidly declining for so many preventable reasons.

Increased mental health problems turn into increased negative health outcomes, violence, and self-harm, all exacerbated by (if not rooted in) increased poverty across the nation.

Toss in the anti-vaxxer/anti-mask “what about muh free-Dumbz!?!” crowd and here we are: barely halfway through 2022.

The sad part is that so many of the things killing Americans are things that other countries have solved: access to health and mental health care, restricted access to guns, vaccine and mask mandates.

It doesn’t have to be this way. But this IS the American Way now.

Whatever the case, I’m just trying to hang on to my humanity without falling apart and it’s a delicate balance I’ve yet to achieve.

Yesterday I saw a tweet that said that providing mental health care right now feels like handing sunscreen to people who are on fire.

And what am I doing? Laundry. Doom scrolling, exchanging links and messages with MM and getting ready for a dental appointment.

I’m here writing about another example of all the ways that society is collapsing around us.

MM shared some articles recently that indicate a total collapse in the near future and just said “End of the civilized world within 5 years, all a downward slide to 2024, and then the Civil War and completion of the US's collapse.”

And here I am at my desk Tweeting, blogging, fueling the fire, and thinking about what to make for dinner.

That last piece of my own humanity is clinging to the hope that there’s a better answer than burning it all down.

As far as I can tell the only way to truly get out of the line of fire is to leave the life and home I’ve been trying to build for myself. The house, a nice enough rental with a sectional couch and open floor plan; the job where I’m interviewing for a promotion; the health insurance that affords me the luxury of all of the medical appointments I’ve had without being afraid of the co-pays; the last bits of the American dream of middle-class life in a gated, cookie-cutter suburban bubble.

Running away to Mexico to live near the beach is not the fantastical dream it sounds like, and I know it. There are no good answers and it all exhausts me.

The rain keeps falling. The blood keeps pouring. The tweets keep coming. And my laundry keeps drying while the rest of the world is drenched in rage.

[themiddlelayer]

Kummerspeck

I’m still here. I’m somewhere new, a cookie-cutter gated suburb of Phoenix to be specific, but still here.

Pirate and I seem to be the last people on the planet to not get COVID and the isolation has been wearing on me. This weekend I’m going to brunch somewhere with a patio to catch up with my beloved Olive before she moves back to Canada. The one person in the state I’d care to share oxygen with is leaving the country this summer.

Another thing to grieve.

This chapter of my life might as well be titled “Grief” or more accurately “Kummerspeck.” That perfect German word encompasses the grief itself and the physical changes that come from settling into the sadness with a block of brie, a bottle of wine, and salted-caramel chocolates.

You’ve heard people talk about wearing their hearts on their sleeves? Seems I’ve taken to wearing my grief across a midsection that’s wider than it’s ever been.

I’m a living testament to how weight gain is different at every phase of life.

At 19 years old and over 200lbs I had a smaller waist than I do at 43 and under 200 lbs. Whatever the case, I’ve given up ‘hard pants’ in favor of leggings and skirts for now. Athleisure wear is still trendy, right?

Why all the grief?

Byron is the obvious answer… his sister has been tagging me in Facebook posts of memories of him. The one last weekend, Easter weekend, hit me square in my bloated gut. It was Easter weekend, 30 years ago, that he held my hand on the way home from church. That was the day I knew I loved him, as much as a 13-year-old girl can know anything.

It just happened that I finally unpacked my DVD collection on Easter. The same box held my old VHS tapes, one labeled “Easter 1992.” I resisted the urge to dust off my VCR and watch it, mostly because I didn’t have the energy for that kind of deep dive into my own feelings.

No time to schedule a proper meltdown yet.

Instead of taking the time to process things and heal, I’m spending my energy explaining the logic behind why we run the dishwasher when there’s room for a few more dishes to a 22-year-old.

There have been daily arguments and the repeated question of ‘How much of this is mental illness and how much of it is him just being an asshole?’

Pirate’s anxiety has spiked and his already-thin patience ran out before Metalhead deflated the air mattress and assembled his desk in the former gym-and-storage room.

Unlike the person with the patience of a saint that I once was, I’m finding myself short-tempered and struggling to withhold my own outbursts of frustration with things. That’s a new layer to the grieving for who I thought I was thing.

I’ve lost that calm patience that’s allowed me to manage and instead find myself shutting down, too tired to even cry at times.

I’m over it. I’m out of spoons.

The brightest silver lining I can find is that there may actually be a medical reason for at least some of it.

Last fall, my labs came back with elevated calcium levels but my doctor seemed to blow it off, failing to put in the order for follow-up labs.

My new doctor personally called me on Friday night when my bloodwork came back with the same results. He mentioned the lab closure for Easter Monday but I told him I’d get in on Wednesday or Friday at the latest.

The more I read about hypercalcemia and hypoparathyroidism the less inclined I am to wait until Friday.

My mother was diagnosed with both last year but she insists it was due to COVID and has healed itself.

The bruise from last week’s blood draw is mostly healed, so I’ll get in tomorrow right after the training session I’m working.

In the meantime, I’m still here. Sometimes that’s the best any of us can do, right?

[themiddlelayer]

Reblogging some things to connect my blogs.

The New Normal

The pandemic has changed everything and lately I’ve been asking myself, “When did this become normal? At what point of the last 10 months did the idea of the ‘new normal’ fade into a new reality?”

Keep reading

[themiddlelayer]

Lonely Sea

CW: Mention of suicide and suicidal thoughts.

Someone I knew back on the east coast just shared the most heartbreakingly stunning portrait of loneliness that I’ve ever seen. The black and white image was shot from his elbows up as he held onto himself in a hug of sorts while looking down and away. McT said that he felt “alone, and adrift….piloting a rudderless craft in a tumultuous sea of acquaintance, with no safe harbor in sight.”

I’ve tried to figure out why we never managed to truly connect.

When we met, McT was the emcee at a burlesque show that MM and I frequented in DC. I remember feeling both turned on and a little afraid when I helped him take some things out to his car one night after a show. Alone in a dark parking lot with this man who sparkled with the most amazing charisma on stage but harbored self-doubt and insecurity about so many things about himself.

His introduction as an old Jewish man in an old Jewish body was part of the act at the time.

Since then, he’s transformed into a literal strongman with broad shoulders, calloused hands, and an ever-growing resume of performances, festivals, classes, and encounters with the greats of the modern-day sideshow. On the outside, he still sparkles, but he’s become more and more open about all of the things underneath his shine.

There was definitely a mutual attraction between us, but circumstances just never lined up and I left the east coast a few years after that night in the parking lot. For nearly a decade we’ve followed each other on social media and had the occasional chat where I never know exactly what to say.

When I was single and we had a few video chats I counted him as one of my troupe of regular connections. There was a part of me that envisioned a visit once things were “safe again” but when he mentioned he was seeing someone, a nurse working in a COVID ward, that bubble burst for me. It always felt like we wanted different things, so thinking of him as a friend was safer than trying to pursue a romantic relationship anyway.

 This was during the initial ‘lockdown’ phase of the pandemic where extroverts like the two of us lost a lot of the things that gave us joy- live theater, comedy, sideshows… dinners out with loud conversation, and laughter, all of the human connection that extroverts thrive on. It energizes us.

During those few months alone in my apartment, I felt a different kind of loneliness.

I was re-building a life and trying to figure out who I was without a partner while battling some of the darkest parts of myself. I was truly afraid that something would happen and I’d die alone in that apartment. I envisioned falling and hitting my head or choking on a chicken wing and laying there rotting until the smell alerted the neighbors.

Worst yet, I was afraid I’d finally give up and test my theory that a memory foam mattress could hold all of the blood well enough that the carpet would be okay if I slit my wrists in bed. I combatted that with daily text messages and occasional video chats with people who helped me feel like I was still a person and not yet the ghost of a life that once was. McT was one of those people and I don’t know that I ever told any of them how much their presence in my life saved mine.

Partnered again, I’ve moved 3 times since that apartment.

The connections that saved me have all drifted away in one way or another.

I lost touch with the married firefighter who talked about running away and sharing a bottle of red wine with me; I knew I was just a fantasy to him. Cookie guilt-tripped me for not socializing with her pre-vaccines and her husband became increasingly uncomfortable to be around. Ninja finally got married to his finance sometime after his mother’s suicide. Byron died of liver failure, unrelated to COVID.

I’m having brunch with Olive tomorrow at the same place where we had brunch on a patio last month. When she met me in the parking lot I burst into tears because it felt so good to be hugged. That was the first time I’d eaten out, since 2020. It was also the first time I’d really touched anyone but Pirate or a medical professional in that same timeframe. We are finally within a reasonable driving distance but she’s moving back to Canada next month.

My relationship with Pirate is more autonomous than any I’ve had before, despite being the first monogamous one I’ve had since before MM. I’ve been deliberate in maintaining my own money, my own space, and not being reliant on him to take care of me like I have in past relationships. I know that it’s a safety thing for me after a lifetime of being so enmeshed in my partnerships that I never knew where “we” ended and “I” began. I’ve been deliberate to stay “me” and not “we” because I know that I just don’t have it in me to endure anymore loss or heartache.

Losing Byron last winter broke me in ways that I don’t know how to fix.

He was the only person left who remembered who I was before. Before motherhood, marriage, divorces, loss, heartache… He was my first real heartbreak, but that meant that he knew what I looked like before life started piling up on top of the last of my genuine shine. The smaller that light gets inside, the harder we have to try to put on that face that says, “I’m okay” when we aren’t.

McT has always felt like an invitation to tell the truth. I’m not okay.

On the outside, I still do my best to put on the sparkle and keep going. I applied for the promotion at work that my boss said I’d be perfect for. She went as far as telling recruiting and the heads of that department that I was interested and as soon as I told her I’d found the application, the posting disappeared from the company website. I also signed up for the classes I dropped this spring because of the move closer to Phoenix.

I did all of this with a gaping wound on my dominant hand because dermatology decided to biopsy the random itchy spot that’s been there for months. I did it knowing that I’m driving over an hour to see an endocrinologist on Monday. Best case they agree with my primary care doctor on his suspicion that I’ve got hyperparathyroidism and they move forward with surgery to remove the offending gland(s). I did it knowing that I’m scheduled for surgery next month that will have me out of commission for at least a week to repair my (literal) dragging ass.

I’m not okay in so many ways.

The isolation and loss have left me with neither the sea of acquaintance nor safe harbor that McT mentioned. Pirate is only that to a point, and that’s my own doing. That’s me refusing to set anchor because I can’t believe that the storm is truly over.

While the loneliness I feel looks different than McT’s on the outside, I know that it’s bigger than that. It’s something that’s lived inside me for so long that when I had friends and a social life, the moments in my sea of acquaintances was enough. The loneliness would fade into the background so I could sit at the table and laugh along, forgetting it until the tearful drive home.

Leaving the party left room for it to swallow me up completely, but I still had the party.

Mine is the loneliness of a single-parented latchkey kid who was just expected to be an adult without ever being taught how to be a person. It’s the loneliness of the helper who doesn’t know how to accept help in the instances when someone offers it without being asked.

I learned early on that it’s easier to just do it all myself than depend on anyone else.

I’ve managed to reinforce that lesson over and over as an adult. My loneliness isn’t one about losing that sense of home that one’s family of origin is supposed to provide, but one where I never felt at home with my family of origin. Home has always been this imaginary place that I’ve spent my entire life trying to build. But how do you build something when you’ve never seen the blueprint and have no idea which tools to use?

My loneliness is one that I hide in places where I don’t show my face or use my real name. This is the room where I come to splatter my guts on the wall. It’s a place where the only people with the keys are strangers and people I used to know.

McT has the courage to expose his loneliness in public in a way I just can’t. I could never share this in a place where people that still know me might see it without deliberately seeking it out.

Pulling the curtain back on this kind of loneliness tends to elicit an outpouring of emoji reactions that just rattle around inside the places where connections stay missed… Missed not for lack of wanting, or lack of trying but rather simply not knowing how to do it for more than a moment here and there along the way.

And maybe that’s why McT and I could never quite connect. Maybe his lonely and mine are both so big that putting the two side by side is a wider chasm than time and space could overcome.

[themiddlelayer]

All Apologies

Silence is a kindness that I wish others could have afforded me.

And I thought I’d given all the apologies I could but let me try again anyway…

I’m sorry that I gave you keys to the room where I go to splatter my guts on the wall

When your ghost comes knocking in my dreams.

(Jersey)

To the Italian man who wanted to share a bottle of wine-

I’m sorry that I looked like an oasis in the desert from the distance of a city you couldn’t escape

We shared was a lovely dream that I didn’t want to wake up from.

Are you sorry for being too afraid to leave when my door was still open?

(Nomad)

To the broken boy crying on the floor in my shower-

I’m sorry that I showed you warmth when you were so accustomed to your icy reality

Twenty-five fingers balled into fists, pushed too hard for my 10 to hold on with.

Are you sorry for the barely-healed damage that your hands ripped open when you reached out again?

(Punk)

To the man who once pinned me to a tree in the woods in anger-

I’m sorry that I knew what I was doing so well that you forgot I was still underage

Sitting in a Haight-Ashbury bar with shots of tequila only blurred the reality of our crimes.

Are you sorry for the danger you put me in and the unseen scars left behind?

(Byron)

To the ashes of my first love-

I’m sorry that I can’t be there to help scatter you to the winds

The hole you left in my foundation is now filled with the grief of losing you for good.

That’s better than empty

Or so I’m told.

You were the only one to tell me how sorry you were for loving me the wrong way.

#bad poetry

[themiddlelayer]

Good Bye, Byron

***TW for death and grief***

I am sad.

One of my oldest and dearest friends is at the end of his very hard life. He has been in pain for so long… physical and emotional agony beyond anything most of us could imagine. I’m trying to find peace in knowing that his suffering has ended.

His heart is still beating. His lungs still fill with air. But the morphine has already taken the last semblance of the man who I once knew. His sister shared a picture of a sad old man in a bed, not him. Not Byron.

Another childhood friend commented-

That’s not my buddy…Doesn’t even look like him. My poor friend. Pure sadness in our hometown. It shouldn't be this way. He's full of energy and sarcasm. My friend... my dear friend.

My heart is breaking in ways I didn’t expect.

The first time I lost him, I was still very young. I moved away from home and simply didn’t know where he’d gone or what had happened in his life after the phone call when I made a choice.

At 16 years old, I was living just a few hours away from where we’d grown up together. I got that call the day after I’d gotten into a relationship with my first husband and father of my only child.

Byron said, “I love you. I’ve always loved you” and he asked me to come home and be with him.

I said no.

Easter Day, 3 years before that phone call, he held my hand on the way home from church. I knew I loved him then.

We shared some firsts and laid the groundwork in my mind and heart about what it means to love and be loved. Until that phone call, I didn’t know he loved me. Or even saw me. I didn’t know that I mattered at all.

I was young and in love and all poetry is bad poetry. These are two of the bad poems I wrote about him.

“Love”

Love is a bottle of vodka

on a cold winter’s night

It warms you

intoxicates you, then offers

Another drink

until you’re hooked

(At the time, I couldn’t have predicted that he would grow up to become an alcoholic.)

“The Toy”

No happily ever with you

just the morning after

then you’re back in her arms

Fucked and forgotten and I was

the toy

Not the one playing…

Byron’s nickname comes from a quote that I believed for so many decades.

“In his first passion woman loves her lover; in all others all she loves is love.”

~George Gordon Byron

For several years after that phone call, I would think about him and wish I’d said yes.

The song “Your Wildest Dreams” by the Moody Blues played on the radio often back then. There isn’t a better way to explain that time without quoting that song. I won’t try.

Almost a decade passed before we found each other again.

I’d married an active-duty soldier 6 weeks before 9/11 and we were living in Germany. Byron was married, unhappily, to the woman who bore his 2nd and 3rdchildren. I befriended her via MySpace, but life was pure drama for all of us back then. Byron was deep in his alcoholism, living the nightlife, running a comedy club.

There were always stories. He hung out with Nick Cannon. He dated Tonya Harding. He sang karaoke and was always the center of attention. Everyone knew his name, but the “haters” were always trying to bring him down. Chaos. Pure chaos.

After Germany, I moved to Colorado alone, then bought a house in Texas where that marriage ended.

The ink hadn’t dried on my divorce papers before Byron moved in with me in an attempt to start over somewhere new. When I picked him up at the airport, I almost didn’t recognize him until he opened his arms and yelled “Wassup Homette!” or something equally cheesy and, well… Byron.

He waited tables at a restaurant where I worked, dated a girl who took my first college algebra class for me, and cheated on her with a friend of a friend of mine.

I kissed him exactly once in Texas. And I knew immediately that it was wrong. He wasn’t that man to me anymore.

The last time I saw him was when he came to get his things out of my house. The night before, we’d gotten into a fight over him going out for more alcohol. I don’t remember if it was because he was trying to get sober or if he was already just too drunk. He flung one of my kitchen chairs across the room, narrowly missing me. I was devastated.

That was the 2nd time I lost him.

He was working on his sobriety when we re-connected again. He had a little girl and a new wife by then. He wasn’t allowed to see any of his 4 other children, but this little girl was different. He was getting sober so he could be a better father for her.

I was in Arizona with a different soldier when I got a ‘goodbye’ voicemail from him. He’d been living out of his van in the parking lot of the restaurant he was working at. Getting fired from that job pushed him over the edge.

We were connected on Facebook where he’d also posted something similar. I felt like I’d been kicked in the chest. After a few hours of watching the comments, I realized that nobody else was going to do anything to try to help him. I looked up the police department in the town where he lived and spent that night exchanging calls with law enforcement. They found his van but he was nowhere to be found.

I cried myself to sleep thinking I’d lost him again.

The next morning when he returned my call, he was mad that I’d sent the cops after him. But we still ended that call with “I love you.”

From there on, he would randomly just call me to talk about whatever was going on in our lives. He posted “Happy Birthdays” on my Facebook page… his daughter’s birthday was the day after mine. We liked and commented on things we each shared via social media. He was listed as simply “family member” on my “Family and Relationships” page. We were as connected as we could be, despite the years and miles that separated us.

Three years ago this month, my life fell apart again. But it was still bright and sunny on the summer day that same year when the next big hit came. We were on a video call when he told me that he’d been diagnosed with liver cirrhosis. He wanted to call me and tell me about it face to face before sharing it on social media. Talk about bitter irony… finally getting sober only to get really sick from years of alcoholism.

I began bracing myself for losing him again that day.

A few months later he would face an unimaginable heartbreak. That bright beautiful girl who’d inspired his sobriety was taken from him.

He and her mother had gone through a nasty breakup… I’d helped communicate with her to help him get his belongings out of the house where she later moved a murderer in. Devastating doesn’t begin to describe it.

That’s when the phone calls got harder. There were times when I could barely understand his slurred speech. Times where he would tell me something he’d already told me on a call he didn’t remember. There were a lot of tears and reminders that his little girl would want him to keep going.

When my life fell apart, those hard calls still held moments where he did his protective thing asking me if he could come fly out and kick someone’s ass for me. Moments where he told me how much he loved me and how proud he was of the woman I’ve become.

His call on Valentine’s Day, 2020 was right after I’d moved into my own home for the first time ever.

I sobbed when he told me how strong I’ve always been and that I deserved so much better than life had given me.

He gave me all of that love and support in the midst of his own agony, watching and waiting for the man who took his little angel from this earth to be sentenced.

When the first wave of COVID hit, he was making a living stocking grocery and pharmacy shelves. That meant he knew where those hard-to-find items were and had access to buy them before stores opened for the day. He took advantage of that, delivering care packages to people who couldn’t find toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

My care package was a bottle of Tylenol, an unopened thermometer he’d bought for his daughter, and candy- a pack of nerds. That was one of his goofy terms of endearment. Before we could just say “I love you” it was “Love ya, Nerd! Lol!”

That first lockdown was a scary period both because of COVID and because I was alone.

We talked often during that time.

He laughed at my crazy adventures in dating and said that he wanted to be my other boyfriend. The romantic connection between us was long gone but we talked about growing old together, watching Grey’s Anatomy while he acted goofy and sang “Oh-oh Ah-oooh Ah… the right stuff!” while hitting on the nurses in the old folks home.

I had to stop following him on Facebook back in late 2018 after he posted a particular picture from his daughter’s funeral. He was holding her with her head (thankfully) obscured by his head hanging over her blond hair. Her little hands were in her lap with a tiny ring on her finger. She had a frilly white dress on with sparkly silver shoes.

When I would go check on his page, it had become a portrait of a life that wasn’t. There were the repeated cries for help- he was out of money, out of food, homeless on and off. He was sick, injured, in and out of the hospital in excruciating pain.

The happy images were bittersweet because that was his memorial to his little girl.

I sent money when I could and always did my best to pick up his calls, even if all I could do was tell him that I loved him but couldn’t talk.

These last few months he started calling me, telling me that he just wanted to hear my voice. He told me how tired he was, and I finally stopped trying to encourage him to keep going.

I just told him I loved him over and over and did my best not to cry until we hung up.

The first post about him accepting hospice care was back before Thanksgiving. I missed that one because I hadn’t been checking his Facebook as often. I wish I’d have known before he was too far gone to call one more time.

At this point, it’s been a slow-speed car crash that I can’t look away from. On December 5th his sister posted:

My Brother is fading. He’s on 30 mg of morphine per hour. I can’t understand his speech it is slurred from the heavy sedatives. It is my hope to get up there within a couple of weeks. Praying he holds on til I get there. This is so hard.

The next day she shared that the nurses told her that she needed to come as soon as she could.

I reached out and I sent her a little money to help pay for her trip. It’s a 10-hour drive, so I was able to stifle the urge to check her Facebook page for most of the day she traveled. But that was the day I asked my partner to pull out the tub that had all my old pictures in it.

I sat on my office floor with a glass of wine and cried while I rummaged through my memories, looking for the ones of us from when we were kids.

She’s been there for a little less than 2 days now and the images she’s sharing are heartbreaking. Every time I feel like I’ve cried all I can, the urge to check for an update hits and there’s another picture of that sad little man’s body. Not Byron. Not anymore.

Last night, she sent me a direct message. It was a picture of my school ID dated 1992-1993. That would have been my freshman year. He’s held onto it for almost 3 decades through moves, homelessness, marriages, and divorces… a lifetime.

His was not one of those lives where home always had the same zip code. Neither was mine.

Today he officially moved from the hospital into a hospice care facility. He hasn’t eaten in 3 days and his sister said he hasn’t been able to wake up to talk to her. Another friend of his asked if he was going to pull through and she replied simply, “No.”

So now I watch and wait. The same mutual childhood friend just commented:

I'd make him wake up if I was there. Straight up !! I'd be having him singing and dancing right out of that place. Lol !! Play some NKOTB n I bet he'll wake up. Especially "Summertime!!" I sure do wish I was there to comfort my friend, my homie, my brother. Sure hope he gets a waking up. Remember, nkotb if all else fails.

I’m so fucking sad.

So I sent a message to that dear friend who Byron and I grew up with.

It's been a hard week.... thinking of you Dear friend ❤ Here's a little smile for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbIEwIwYz-c

[themiddlelayer]

The People I Came From

I was ‘raised’ by people with one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel.

I vividly remember hearing over and over how ‘Uncle Sam’ was going to pay for grandpa’s funeral because he helped build the pipeline in Alaska.

The irony? There have never been any funerals.

Not for my grandfather whose Alzheimer’s had him wandering off and having long conversations with dead relatives before lung cancer waltzed in and took him out.

Not for my grandma who grew up a ‘rich Oakie because they had 2 mattresses,’ picked cotton in the fields, turning her skin into papery wrinkles in her late forties. The family ‘upgraded’ from the silver Twinkie by the river into the double-wide in a park in town because of 2 of my grandma’s car accidents. A police officer hit her and driving away from the courthouse, another one rear-ended her.

I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.

Not for my father who spent most of my life drunk or high, hiding from me- the reminder of my mother that he couldn’t face. The woman who broke his heart that he never got over.

My father got custody of me and my younger brother in the divorce, so that’s where I was raised- in a house with my brother and father with his parents as the backup babysitters for the times we couldn’t be home alone.

I was raised in a house where, by the time I hit puberty, I knew I didn’t belong. I wasn’t one of them. I was like my mother. “A champagne appetite on a beer budget, riding my high horse” all over the little 2-bedroom condo where we lived. My father’s bedroom was the garage.

When finally left and I moved in with my mother at 16, it became apparent quickly that our similarities were so much that she saw me not as a child that needed to be parented, but as an equal. An adult.

Someone that she didn’t need to protect from anything- not her lecherous husband who kissed his grown daughters on the mouth and talked about our breasts at the dinner table. Not the patients at the rehab center they ran where I was a staff member- the grown men whose beds I eagerly hopped in and out of under their roof.

Not her best friend who was threatening to kick my ass. She was the girlfriend of the staff member with who I was involved for several months. Her 31-year old boyfriend was 3 days out of San Quentin when we met. It took less than 2 weeks before we were exchanging passing gropes in dark hallways and love letters, carelessly discarded where my mother found one.

Funny story- I’m Facebook friends with Mr. SQ and he’s popped up over the years. The last time we talked, I mentioned how young I was when we were together.

He remembered that I was young- too young to be sitting in a bar in the Haight with him, too young to be walking down Ashbury looking to score meth, too young to be talking about running away to Europe together. Too young to be the one comforting him in secret when his girlfriend miscarried their son.

He didn’t realize I was that young. He was shocked when I told him that I was only 16 when we were having those adventures together. Then he asked how I knew what I was doing. Then he apologized. Then I gave him the link to Twitter for my alter ego- a creator of BDSM leaning adult content.

For all our similarities, I had to unfriend and block my mother earlier this year. Between her dismissive anti-feminist comments during all of the ‘me too’ posts to her anti-vax stance during the pandemic and all the insanity in between, I just couldn’t do it anymore.

When I tried to talk to her about I’d spent my entire childhood being told how ‘smart’ and ‘mature’ I was for my age rather than being parented, she replied that I was always the one teaching her things.

More proof in her mind that when, at 3 years old I looked up at her, hands on my little hips, and scolded, “When I was your mommy that’s not how we did it!” it was the truth. She managed to make that my reality, despite not being my custodial parent.

My mother was just released from the hospital where she was battling COVID.

She had been there a few days before my brother finally tracked her down. She was so disoriented that the nurse asked him to verify that she has 2 children and where she lived.

I had a video chat with last week her where she paused between each word to take jagged breaths as she described her lunch- seemingly the most amazing cheeseburger she’d ever had. She’d been calling friends to tell them it had been “swell” and that she didn’t think she was going to make it.

Now, she’s in a rehab facility somewhere near my brother in Utah. She didn’t tell him she was getting out of the hospital or where she went.

He still seems to think that the stories about ICUs running out of beds are just media propaganda. He also had COVID last month, right after his wife had surgery. He went to work as a Walmart manager for a full week, thinking he had a cold before he lost his sense of smell.

These are the people I came from.

One foot in the grave, one foot on a banana peel. And no matter how hard I fight it, I feel myself slipping.

Work, couch, bed, repeat- the hamster wheel life of the pandemic.

#covidiots #MotherIssues #childhood memories

[themiddlelayer]

Dreams of Nomad

It’s been 2 years since the quad blew up, as of next week. Two years since my entire world exploded over a 48 hour period during which time my then-family should have been celebrating Solstice together. Two years since I lost not only Nomad but his kids, Boy1der and Lil Hulk. 

Last night, dreamt about Nomad and the boys. It was a long, drawn-out dream with details that escaped me as soon as I woke up but I felt all of that loss all over again. I know it’s a kind of grief, and as such there are unexpected waves of it that still hit me. They are fewer and farther between but no less painful when they happen. 

First, there’s the ache in my chest and flowing tears that I can’t talk myself out of. Next comes the anger in thinking about the way that I lost so much more than the rest of the quad when it all went sideways... anger at the way I was the one who kept trying to get us to sit down and work out our issues and accept that the individual marriages had ended. 

We had something totally new that we could have grown if we could have just let go of the way things were when we were just 1+1 and 1+1 making four. But MM and Nomad couldn’t stop chasing Gypsy. And Gypsy couldn’t stop running away. Ultimately, the love between me and Nomad was more of a trauma bond while the love between me and MM was more about our home and family, not us as a couple. 

When it all ended, I was sleeping alone while life went on for Nomad, Gypsy, and the boys for the most part. Gypsy and MM kept in contact through “secret means” so as to not upset Nomad but they “ended things” at least twice. One of those times, MM’s voicemail to his boss led to uniforms at my door at 6am for a welfare check. I had to basically cover for him and assure his superiors that it was safe for us to be under the same roof before I locked myself back into my bedroom.

I was sleeping alone while MM began the process of self-discovery that brought him to the identities pansexual and polyamorous, dating a handful of women at a time while coming to me for relationship advice. 

Last fall, after I moved out of the house MM and I bought, we were first trying to be friends again, and he told me that he invited Gypsy and Nomad to his going away party. He thought about inviting me but wanted to let me know what the guest list looked like in case they showed up. 

MM later told me that the three of them got together and talked through things, mending those wounds. He extended Gypsy’s invitation for me to do the same, but my wounds were too deep. Apparently, they still are because it’s the end of my workday and the ache in my chest that I woke up with is throbbing again. 

I never saw Gypsy after that Solstice weekend when I left her saying that if she couldn’t love Nomad and the boys the way they deserved that she should just leave them.

I only saw Nomad and the boys one more time, the day I brought their Christmas gifts to the house where MM and Gypsy had spent so much their time together. Boy1der was on the spectrum and wasn’t as affectionate towards me as Lil Hulk always was. That day, Boy1der ran to me as I was getting out of my car crying, “Don’t leave us forever!” and wrapped his arms around me. 

That moment only hurt my heart a little more than the look on Lil Hulk’s face the last morning of Solstice weekend when he came into the bedroom expecting to see his mother under the covers and found me there instead. He still asked if he could make me a cup of coffee as his little heart sank. That was the moment I knew I had to make the choice to leave that home and go back to the one I shared with MM. 

I had to leave the home where Nomad and I cooked dinner together and helped the boys with homework on “non-nesting nights.” I spent mornings in the kitchen in that home making the coffee, and sipping on my own mug while his mother and I chatted. I would pack up the boys’ lunches and backpacks, then Nomad would drive them to the bus stop. Even when he was running late, Nomad always came back to kiss me goodbye as I handed him his travel mug in the doorway. 

It was as much my home as the house that MM and I bought together earlier that year. After Solstice weekend, neither address felt like home anymore. I stayed another 9 months at that address, then spent 6 months somewhere else trying to build a home... only to have that explode spectacularly when I was blindsided by another man. But those are all different stories...

Maybe it’s just the time of year that brought this up. My biggest personal losses have all happened around the holidays- specifically late December. All the breakups, except the last one that happened at the end of January this year. The weather gets cold and my life falls apart so around the time I need to turn the heater on, I start drifting in and out of time in my dreams, feeling all of those feelings again. 

I remind myself that life is good now. I’m so very loved and appreciated by my partner, Pirate. MM and I are staying married on paper so that I can keep the health insurance and he can get the tax breaks. The three of us started a group chat where we talk about the shared phone plan, job opportunities and, the occasional non-business related stuff. They are both my family, and the bonus kid, Metalhead has come back around after a brief stint of closing himself off from the family time stuff we’ve done regularly for the last 6 months or so. 

My bills are paid, my job is stable, and we don’t have to go out and risk COVID for any reason. My biggest worry is what to make for dinner, and how much it will cost in pet rent when we move into a house with Metalhead and all 4 dogs if we can’t keep the ranch. Either way, we can always go month-to-month in the apartment into spring if we don’t have that settled in time. 

On that note, I’m making taco casserole tonight and thinking about whether or not I should have a medicated cracker before I log out of work for the day. I wish I could turn off all of these feelings when they surface like this. I wish I could have just talked myself down this morning and did leg day. But I made it through the workday, accomplished a lot, and can go melt into the couch for the night soon enough. 

#processing #nomad #all the feels #tis the season

[themiddlelayer]

MM once joked that this is my theme song.. that my exes never really go away. He said that they have “orbits” meaning that they randomly circle back into my life. Sometimes it’s just to check in and update me on their life. Other times it’s more. But was never bad until Tampa. 

The lawyer sent a cease and desist letter last week, to which he replied with the same ridiculous bullshit about me owing him money. 

Like, Dude... there is no such thing breakup tax and if there was, YOU would owe me for the emotional distress of being blindsided by discovering what you’d been doing right under my nose the entire time. If I owed you money then why didn’t that come up right after I left in February? How about after I told you to not contact me again? No? Then randomly in September after I got pulled into a group chat where all your lies were exposed you decided that you’d try that line. That in itself clearly illustrates that it’s an invalid claim and is purely harassment.

What’s next? Well the lawyer said that I can file harassment charges in FL where he’s at. The letter is going to the lawyer and if he can’t represent me in that case then I guess I’m getting another lawyer to take care of it. I’d rather spend double what he’s claiming I “owe” him on lawyers than give him a single fucking dime.  I’ve always been too nice. Too forgiving. Too understanding. And once again, Tampa is the one to teach me how to stand up for myself and not take it. 

Thanks for the lesson.. now fuck off, Dude! 

#FuckYouTampa

[themiddlelayer]

You learn more about someone at the end of a relationship than at the beginning.

Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

Fitting. The lawyer just sent a cease and desist letter to Tampa. Fucking stalker won’t stop harassing me. I also learned that gmail sends messages from blocked contacts to spam. There was yet another message from him there including a really low blow about my Kiddo... oh, and apparently he’s been reading this. Maybe he will finally stop saying I just lied to him and used him, after reading about how I felt during and after the break up. But that’s probably asking too much of the delusional, narcissist he turned out to be. Ugh. 

#FuckYouTampa #StalkerBS

[themiddlelayer]

The Tale of Tampa

Tonight I was added to a group chat on FB titled “Tampa’s Harem of Lies and Deceit.” There were 6 other women in the chat including Tampa’s best friend’s widow and the “psycho ex” who gave him PTSD and he got a restraining order against. Guess where this is all going?!?

BF’s Widow had flown out to AZ to see him, at his request, several times. She’d also slept with him a handful of times while he lived in AZ and flew back to Florida. She couldn’t recall the exact dates that he was there, but it’s likely that he was in FL that week last September when he was out of town “for work.” 

PTSD-Causing Psycho had ended things with him when she found out he was lying about still being married on paper. None of us could say for sure if he was still sleeping with the “ex” wife but it was suspected, heavily. 

There were two in the chat who’d missed each other by less than an hour at his house, recently. He gave one a collar on his birthday and the other came over right after she left. He e-mailed me on his birthday (earlier this month) whining about how I’d broken his heart. One of the chicks said that he’d told her I had messaged him. 

There were SO MANY things that came out in this conversation...he was talking to several of them while I lived with him. One shared a dated screenshot where they were talking about him flying out to see him but then he said he had to work. He never worked weekends. Another shared a dated screenshot where he said he was waiting for her to “make an honest man of him.” 

In the end, a couple of us mentioned that we’d all had negative STI test results before and after being with him, which all BS aside was the most important thing. I’ve done the poly thing and know several people who have had other similar non-monogamous relationships successfully. But when someone lies like Tampa did, you can’t protect your own health. 

Universe just reminding me that I made exactly the right moves and I am exactly where I need to be now. 

[themiddlelayer]

Chubby

Ah, the perils of being naked on the internet! It was only a matter of time. And really, it was meant as a compliment...  I've enjoyed your posts for a while now (and I am a big fan of chubby ladies). 

Chubby. I got called chubby. 

I know what my body looks like. I’m soft in places, my tummy hangs down a bit when I bend over. My upper arms are bigger than I’d like and I’m prone to bumpy skin on them. I’ve got freckles and hyperpigmentation. Without concealer under my eyes I often look like I’ve been punched in the face. 

When I shop for clothes online I end up buying XL or larger because despite my pants being a size 10 (which is apparently large per the standard) my measurements on that same chart say I should be wearing a 14 or 16... Sometimes bigger for clothes made/sized in China and I’m okay with that. 

I know that I don’t look like a lot of the other “models” or sex workers I see on Twitter. I have bad tattoos and I just cancelled my cover-up appointment because the artist has been “chill” about the COVID thing. I don’t use filters or pile on the highlighter or contouring. 

I am over 40. That in itself is kinda a big deal to me, if nothing else than for the fact that I’ve got models on my feed that are the same age or younger than my and Pirate’s kids. I get it that MILFs are a thing, and I’m all for being that. 

MILF. Redhead. Painslut. Kinky. All labels I wear with pride.

What I am not is “plus sized.” Not anymore... and that’s why chubby stung. 

For years, I was that full-bodied woman who owned every sexy inch of it. I fought so hard to just accept that my size had no effect on how attractive, lovable, fuckable... worthy I was. It was a long, hard battle that, coupled with all the physical pain I dealt with, made every day so much more of a challenge than it should have been. 

I didn’t set out to lose weight when I did. I wasn’t on a “path to wellness” or any such thing when I stopped drinking and reduced my meat and dairy consumption to nearly zero. 

When the weight fell off, it was more than my body changing. It was my entire life. It was me going from being a wife with a home, to a place where I didn’t recognize myself. My body was smaller. My bed was shared with a big, fluffy dog instead of my husband. My days were spent focusing on just staying alive more often than not. 

The weight loss was an outward manifestation, for lack of a better term, of all the things I was losing shedding. There has been so much loss over the last 2 years and I was just barely finding my footing again when the plague hit. 

Like so many other people, I’m learning another new normal, as they say. That has come with more loss and I’m absolutely feeling a sense of grief over it all. 

My friendship with Cookie because of how she and Faust are handling the COVID thing, the simple pleasure of going out for brunch on Sunday morning, even the anxiety of pushing a cart through Walmart on a payday weekend... these things are no longer part of my life. 

Tomorrow my entire department has a meeting with the Vice President of the company to talk about “changes going forward” and that could mean so many things. I just got a raise, so that gives me some hope... but then my boss may not actually know what those changes will be so I can’t get over that anxiety. 

Oh, and MM asked about filing for divorce earlier so that he can file his taxes as ‘single’ for this year. That means losing my health insurance and the monthly bonus I get for using the company health insurance. Pirate has already said that he wants to be legally married to me, but he also told his ex that they could stay married on paper so she can keep her health insurance. In other words, his divorce isn’t happening anytime soon. 

All of this stemmed from called chubby by a follower on Twitter. 

Living in a body that has experienced so much loss isn’t something I’d thought much about lately. I don’t put on my old clothes and marvel at how loose they are as often. This has become my normal. 

That remark reminded me of how hard it was to get here. And, fuck it’s been hard... and it won’t be getting easier any time soon at this point. 

I’m staring down the barrel of more big changes from the job stuff to moving, possibly out of the country, and living with a teenager and 2 dogs again when that move happens. They are good changes but fuck... I’m so exhausted from it all! 

#weight loss #divorce #life in the times of covid #chubby #hazard of the job

[themiddlelayer]

No need to panic... yet

The e-mail from the head of the company is still weighing on my mind. That meeting is next week. But on top of that, my boss randomly scheduled a “quick chat” with me. I spent most of the day yesterday double stressed, and ended the day with medicated crackers and pizza. 

Boss messaged me this afternoon asking if I was free to meet early. I was sweating... on the verge of tears and then she said it: I put in a 4% merit increase for you last week.

I was expecting a lecture and instead I got a freaking raise!! 

Now to see what the next big meeting entails. 

#work life

[themiddlelayer]

Don’t panic... don’t panic

Okay, I’m panicking. 

The head of the company just scheduled a meeting with my entire department about the “vision moving forward.” There have been rumors of my department’s primary functions being given to other teams completely, for awhile now. We cut probably 2/3 of the overall staff when the pandemic hit. It feels like my department is in the cross-hairs now. 

I hate my day job, really... but finding something from home isn’t easy, even now. I looked all over before coming back from my leave of absence and came up empty handed. Pandemic aside, there’s next to nothing in terms of jobs where I live. 

Pirate assured me that he makes enough to take care of me if the worst happens, and this is the last month that he’s helping his ex wife with bills so that’s freeing up more of his income. 

Video sales have been okay, but we won’t make nearly enough to pay my bills doing porn alone. My twitter following is just under 200 and we filmed again last night but my OF only has 2 subscribers right now. Time to re-adjust some of the marketing and find other reasons for people to pay to see my ass. 

I’ve got money in savings, clean credit cards and am ahead of my bills for now. It’s the 13th and I had all of this month’s bills paid before today’s paycheck hit my account. I just found out that my car battery is under warranty, so that’s saving me $150. I’ve got 2 full weeks of vacation time they’d have to pay me for, too.

I don’t believe in poverty, dammit. I don’t do money issues. And if this job disappears I know it will be to clear the path for something better. But I’m fucking panicking right now. 

#day job #employment in the time of COVID #pornstar

[themiddlelayer]

This is what I mean when I say I’m a Sexuality Educator. 

[themiddlelayer]

Ooops!

I woke up to a message from MM that started with, “Soooo.. um... I was on PornHub last night... for reasons. And I did a search and clicked most recent.”

I had a feeling he might stumble on it, but wasn’t sure about warning him so as to not be caught off guard. Guess I should have listened to my instincts there. Ooops! 

The chat from there went into him asking about how we were doing marketing and him giving suggestions for better branding after saying he’d done some research. This is my life now. Bwahaha! 

What I want to know is what search term he used to find me? MILF? Redhead? Blowjob?

Whatever the case, we’ve changed the name to have 3 Xs at the end for consistency since the 1x was taken in some places. Pirate has an SOP in place and spreadsheet with everything. Oh, and we’re up to 7 video sales in a week of the first 3 videos and we just posted a new one. 

Good times for Ember Sparxxx! 

#this is my life #match made in heaven