I captioned this photo of me in the dentist office the other day:
“Bring the pain.”
From a girl who once had her nose ripped off by a rottweiler, everything else seems pretty tame.
Yesterday, I was in pain.
But unfortunately – it was the emotional kind, not the physical kind.

Yesterday started and things happened and at one point,
I got on Twitter and saw this:

….right when I was in a bit of despair myself.
I don’t ever want to lie to you…
with my sunshine there is also the darkness.
And I can get dark.
I wasted the other day wallowing.
I was hurt to the core by a friend and my mind was on loop going over every detail in my mind.
I spent two hours composing an email.
I didn’t come down for dinner.
I wasted a beautiful day of my life on some lame drama.

An invisible tornado invaded my space.
It pulled me in and threw me around.
Then all this invisible debris hung heavy in the air and around me.
And I got caught in the dreaded thing known as LOOP.

That thing where your brain replays it a billion times,
and you get hurt over and over again.
Then you see your dog and you’re like – come here, cuddle me – look! Things are good, I’m grateful I’ve got my dog here with me in front of this beautiful fire, this is so nice and if so-and-so wouldn’t have repeated those nasty things about me and I mean, why would they -WAIT. STOP. Stop it.

And I would start a conversation to kill the loop, and things would be nice, and then there would be a lull in the conversation…
and the loop would find a way to get in and make me feel horrible and angry and disrespected and, and, and….

And everyone in the room would see my face go dark
caught in an invisible tornado in my head
in the middle of a perfect Winter day.

And I saw your replies about finding your creativity to yesterday’s post…
and several of you talked about getting out, going on a walk, going for a ride, not having a destination in mind.

I pulled on two hoodies (one’s destroyed but I can’t get rid of it),
I pulled on my vegan Doc Martins,
I pulled on an even bigger coat over that,
and I pushed the door open to the outside world.

And it was beautiful. Snow crystals caught light blowing in the wind. The sound of the crisp breaks in the snow as our boots cut a trail in the forest. Niney hopped from one boot print to the next in front of me and I smiled.

What a great day, this is perfect, you know maybe if I figure out somehow else to explain to them how they hurt me, they’ll get it, because I really don’t think they understand, maybe if I reframe the whole thing….STOP.

Dreaded loop, be gone.
It doesn’t matter.
When I’m on my deathbed
I’m not going to be upset about this stupid thing.
I’m not going to think of it as anything that even effected me.
It will be long gone and buried.
I know that no matter what happened, no one was out to get me.
No one wanted to hurt me.
It just happened. Things happen sometimes and people make mistakes and it feels like you’re both talking in two different languages and nothing comes out right and that’s just how it goes.
Life is beautiful and life is flawed.
I am beautiful and I am flawed.
My friends are beautiful and they are flawed.
But at this moment,
I don’t give a fuck about all that.
I want to think about this walk.
This walk in the snow, with my true love and my furry best friend.

I move forward.
I look.
For the first time in over 24 hours
I am here.

My eyes glide over the surface of the lake
and I think…when I get back and I’m going to email so and so and….STOP.

I panic because the loop is bigger than me. I have not been able to overcome it.

My mouth opens and I blurt out to Burke:

“If you could be Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, or the Jersey Devil…who would you be?”

He thought about it for a minute….”Is the Jersey Devil like ol’ Scratch at the Crossroads, or is he a monster?”

I couldn’t remember and I didn’t want the loop to come back so I said: “He’s like both, I think.”

“Then I’d be the Jersey Devil,” he said. “Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster always seem to be so alone. If I was the Jersey Devil, then I could kind of mess with people when they came along, talk with them, buy their souls and stuff.”

I nodded.

My mind started to think about Burke’s answer and how his brain works. How he thought about the existence of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster and his first thought wasn’t that they might be scary, his first thought was that they would be lonely.

I followed Burke’s footprint tracks, just like Niney.
I thought of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster
and if they do exist, I hope they aren’t lonely.

I would want to be their friend.

The loop was murdered by thoughts of calling out to Big Foot and the Loch Ness and letting them know they could be safe if they lived on my mountain, that I wouldn’t report them being there to the papers, that I would bring them food if they wanted, I could just be there and leave notes or wave from the house and they would know that they weren’t hated or hunted and that
this crazy girl in this crazy house loved them
and they weren’t alone.

We got back to the house after the walk and I reached into the fridge and this guy was peeking out from a shelf.

This guy was hiding behind the ice cream.

These little cards are hidden in places all over the house by the beautiful creatures that occupy it.

I found out they had been there for the last six months.
I was blind to them
until I needed their message.

Onward to a fantastic New Year, Kindred Souls.

There are sharks in the freezer.
There are meercats in the fridge.
And no tornadoes in today’s weather forecast.