Phoenix Rising

They say a woman’s intuition is the strongest “sense” on earth.  That’s probably true, whats truer still is that we ignore the fuck out that bitch until she slaps us in the head and they we complain that we “just never saw this thing coming”.  At least that was my reality before him. Now though, I listen to that tiny voice like its Jesus preach from the Mountain.

He taught me how to really listen to my gut and since then I’ve been a traditional Sagittarius in every sense of the word. I’d never again lay awake at night with my gut roiling with insecurities and doubts. Pretending to be asleep while my “lover” was sexting another. Crying over missed plans…getting the hair painfully ripped from my fucking ass crack for him come home, stick his finger in the dish I’d worked hours to prepare and an declare “oh that’s good save it I’ve got a “meeting/time with the fellas/ate on the way home/just too tired.”

Nawl, I’ve been there done that and got the fucking tattoo on the base of my skull to prove it. Not that anyone could see that lil’ act of defiance.  It was the seal on top of my “break up bald head bare foot earth mother” rebellion after leaving him.
In fact, it was in the top ten things that I didn’t regret but wouldn’t be doing again.
The days and weeks after leaving are almost surreal. Even now, I look back on the last year and I almost can’t believe it myself.

The night before I lay in bed feigning sleep while my intuition ate at my insides. The glow from his phone and the soft buzz of the notifications for each incoming message driving me insane. I kept my eyes closed and bit my tongue to keep from crying. Tears slid hotly down my face. I tossed and turned hoping somehow he’d read my distress and comfort me. He never did. I finally launched myself up from the bed as if shaking myself awake from a nightmare. He didn’t even phone away, just dropped it face down on his chest before offering me a barely faked “you okay”. The lack of real concern dripped from his voice like icicles falling from the roof. I shrugged and tossed a “bad dream” over my shoulder as I grabbed my phone and trudged to the hall bathroom.

It was the incoming text from him seconds later that galvanized me into action. “she’s awake. Some bad dream. I’ll call you in the morning sweetness. Goodnight love.”
I’ll never know if he truly sent it by accident or not. I shot of the toilet, heart racing and stared at myself in the mirror. WTF WAS I DOING? My reflection was yelling at me to move. React anything. I should have put that pillow over his head and pressed with all my anger. I should have hit him in the face with my phone and asked who she was. I should have done a million things. But what I did was crawl back in that bed and lay down next to him curled into myself until he left for work the next morning, his smooth baritone drifting back up the stairs. He hadn’t said goodbye to me, but he kept his promise to call her as he left for work.

I lay there until I heard the garage door open and then close. I lay there until I was sure he was more than a few blocks from home. And then I moved. I grabbed my phone and deleted all of my social media. Downloaded important contacts and downloaded files I thought I needed before creating new email addresses. Online bank accounts being fabulous I closed and reopened those as well. We only shared one account and in moments I’d separated those. A few minutes at the on the lap top we shared in the office and I’d printed out enough of his messages to satisfy my self and tossed them on the bed. I pulled all my clothes from the closet and drawers and tossed what I was taking with me in a duffle and the rest…toiletries, hand bags, shoes everything else in garbage bags that I took next door. Miss Jenkins looked at me with tears in her eyes and a soft smile before patting my cheek and squeezing my hand. She wished me well and promised to make sure that the clothes made it to some lucky woman in need. I doubted he would go so far but I made her swear that if he tried to report me missing, she’d tell the cops that I wasn’t. No way he could miss me now anymore than he should have been missing me over the last few months.

The house was in his name. A lease that he’d been promising me he’d buy when we got married. Ha, not likely. Not with his finances. The money was always mostly mine, I just went out of my way to make sure he felt like the head of our home, including down playing that fact that while he worked a traditional 9-5 in an office, I was the one rolling in cash. My glorified and yet unfinished ‘arts” degree was actually quite lucrative.  Early on, He liked to tell people he was my agent/manager whatever, but even that was a blow to his ego. It meant he was still living off my success.

I laughed at the incredulous memories staring at beard trimmer and the hair he’d left all over our sink. Whats that they say about a getting a new hair style after a break up? Whatever it is, must be true, let out a caveman grunt and lifted my chin in defiance as the first pass of the clippers tingled my scalp. Five years of natural fluffly fro fell around me like tufts of black cotton from a pillow until there was nothing left but baby soft stubble and pale sun deprived skin. Who knew one’s head would need a tan? I cried like a bitch in the shower though. The spray was too much. It felt to raw and to exposed. To sexual in this moment when I should be distraught. I stood there in the hot water lamenting the loss of my hair, but more so the loss of my dignity.

How could I, have let myself be so neglected. How could I have been the woman who wasn’t enough? Wasn’t I giving him everything he asked for? I had been taking stock of my culpability for months. Trying so hard to make sure I was crossing all my t’s and dotting my i’s where our relationship was concerned.  And still I just wasn’t enough.
There in that shower, the last time either of us would use that 500-dollar rain head, because I ripped that bitch from the ceiling, I decided it still wasn’t my fault. Not me alone. This was on him. The only thing I was responsible for was taking it for so long.  For staying when I should have given up and left a long time ago.

A few minutes at a local dealership and a I had traded my new fully loaded SUV for a newer fully loaded Porsche in hot hoe red and hours after he’d left from work, I was speeding down the highway. In a new car, no hair and money and the bank and no fucking man to answer to meant that I could do what ever the fuck I wanted, when I wanted, where I wanted for however long I fucking wanted to.

I took me four weeks to work my way from California to North Carolina. Mostly because I spent a few days wasting money in Vegas on booze, weed and sex. The anonymity of being a writer/photographer that was famous but not FAMOUS meant that I could party like a rock star but not end up in any tabloids.
The best way to get over a man is under a new one. And I got under a few.  A few chics, too. I got high and got fucked. And the got drunk and high again and again. Until I just couldn’t fuck anymore. I text my sister to let her know what the deal was and true to her form she only said “condoms and checkups, safe words and check in soon or I’ll come get your ass myself. oh, and bring me some kush …Atlanta is whack right now”.
With no one expecting me and not a care for what he was going through I left Vegas and made it to Arizona. I needed to sober up before continuing east or talking to my real agents. They needed more than the swift emails I’d fired off letting them know I was going off grid due to a break up. In Tuscan is where the grief hit. Where I couldn’t fucking get out of bed until the smell of my own breath was driving me insane. Where I ordered wigs online because I couldn’t believe I fucking shaved my fucking head and I wanted my God damn hair back. Where I fucking called him at his office and then hung up when he whispered my name. Tuscan is we the memories of the life we’d lost demanded I pay homage, where my heart fucking tried un-rot and crawl out of my chest. Where I wrapped the Porsche around a street light and crushed a two-thousand-dollar camera lens. Tuscan is where I left the ring, he’d given me from his mom’s mother to a nurse with three kids whose husband was fucking her best friend. She needed it and he’d dishonored it. Tuscan is where I thought I died. Fuck him and fuck Tuscan fucking Arizona.