If a waiter stopped by right now to take your order, what cocktail or drink are you having?
It's 5 o'clock somewhere and therefore I would like a lemon drop martini. Please sugar my rim (huh, now that sounds nasty) and use Ketel One Citrone. Thank you. By the way, keep your hands off the top half of my glass or I'm sending it back.
What are your deal breakers in a relationship?
There will be no abuse in this relationship. Don't you dare lay a hand on me and don't think that you're smart enough to lay some mental abuse on me. I've been there and I've done that so I know what to look out for.
And for those of you who look down your noses as women in abusive relationships asking "Why doesn't she just leave?", stop it. Unless you're in her shoes, you have nothing to say. If she survives the relationship, she'll be 1000 times stronger than she was when she went into it. I'm not condoning absuive relationships by any means and please, if you are a witness to abuse, step up (but carefully) and say something, preferably to her as not to anger him more, but don't just stand by and watch it happen.
I have never thanked you because you were not worthy of thanks and I only thank you now, RMS, because you showed me what not to allow myself to get into. You're everything that every woman should avoid and you should probably get some psychological attention.
Women, stand tall and let no man (or woman) tell you that you are less than a person. Let no one lay a hand upon you in anger for that is not their place. Only when you are complete in yourself and love yourself will a partner arise for you who will treat you with the love and respect that you deserve.
I speak from experience.
We lay together. Quietly. Bodies close.
I open my heart, my mind, my soul to you and I feel your love and acceptance.
I move closer to you and I can feel my soul slowly sliding closer to yours.
I concentrate on clearing my mind and freeing my body. I press closer to you and feel my energy transfer to you.
As deeply as I love you, this scares me and I start to withdraw.
As I come back into myself, I realize that my physical body has become stiff with the effort of joining you.
I start to relax my muscles.
And take comfort in your love.
If you are unfamiliar with Temazcal, or the traditional Mexican sweat bath, you can check it out here. If you know, or are too lazy to click, just continue on and you'll get the gist of the process.
First, a little background:
This all occurred during my trip to Mexico City. I had been working in Mexico and during a vacation, a group of co-workers and I decided to see the sights. We had friends, also co-workers, who lived in DF (Distrito Federal) who were willing to put us up during the week vacation. This was the same vacation where I saw some crazy zoo critters. The night previous to this adventure, we had gone out partying. Hard. I may post about that some day.
It's an early rise when you're going to Indian Igloo, as it's called where I was. An early rise that smelled like I jumped in a bottle of vodka and felt like a jackhammer in my head. Nonetheless, I donned my sunglasses and went along for the ride as a good guest would.
Upon arrival, I am left in the sitting area while the friend that I stayed with and his mother went somewhere. I had no idea where at the time as I was concentrating on not sharing all of last night's alcohol with them. A lady came to me with a glass of some sort of fluid and told me that I had to drink it all. It looked like OJ so I was quite content to chug it down. Unfortunately, it wasn't just OJ. It had kind of a funny taste to it that I couldn't place. Considerably after the fact, I found out that my OJ had been spiked with garlic. The funny thing is that it didn't taste that bad, or at least not bad enough that I wouldn't drink it. After a while, my friend showed up and showed me a room to go into to change into my bathing suit. Traditionally, you would go into the Igloo naked, but I'm not tight with them like that.
So now I'm all changed and ready to go. A small ceremony is performed outside the Igloo before we go in. We enter one at a time and get situated on the floor. It is hotter than the seventh level of hell in this little place and it doesn't help that it's pitch black inside and there are about 3 or 4 other people in there with us. My friend makes sure I'm all situated and then we lay. Quietly.
Some folks believe that if you clear your mind and allow it to come, in the Igloo, you will see your spirit guide. Having some Native American blood running through me, I was open to this idea. Other folks might say that they make it so hot in there that you hallucinate, which might not be that far off either.
I believe that my body pushed out all of the previous evening's vodka and I got everyone in the Igloo drunk but I like to belive crazy things. After a while, a tin of water was passed around for us to have a little sip. Shortly after that, a piece of cloth was passed around. I'm not sure what was on it, but I was told to rub it all over myself. I obliged since I figured it couldn't be anything that would hurt me since I'm not allergic to much of anything.
More time passed by and just as I was able to ignore the heat and sweat enough to think that I might reach spiritual enlightenment, my friend tells me that I have to leave the Igloo. I don't know why I have to leave, but rather than disturb everyone else, I just head towards the door best I can. Outside, the lady who gave me juice is waiting for me. The change of light and temperature momentarily stunned me and I allowed myself to be led to a chair. Subconsciously I may have wondered why there was an outside chair inside but my main concern was sitting down before I passed out. I sat quietly, inspecting myself, wondering what the heck was all over me, when I realized that it was a kind of muddy clay that must have been on the cloth from earlier.
What happened next was inexplicable. The juice lady returned rather stealthily and without warning, proceeded to throw a rather large bucket of ice cold water on me. I'm pretty sure I screamed right before my heart stopped. I don't know if you've ever had your body temperature raised to about 1000 degrees and then dropped to just under 30 degrees, but it isn't pleasant. She didn't speak English and my Spanish is poor at best so she just stood there and smiled at me like this was a normal procedure. I think it was after the stupified glazed look left my face, she felt it safe to usher me back into the Igloo.
I would imagine that we sat in the Igloo for about another half an hour before a mutual decision to leave. At that point, I was escorted into a place where I could shower. I received soap and a towel and instructions to clean up and then go into the room across the hall to relax but don't dress. I was getting a massage. Awesome!
When your body is that hot, your muscles loosen up which makes the massage 800 times better. I passed out. It was wonderful. After I was all clean and relaxed, there was another bonus: lunch! You'll have to understand that I loves me some Mexican cuisine. To this day, I don't know what we had, but I do know that it was delicious.
We all (my friend, his mom, and the other folks that were in the Igloo) sat down at the table to eat. There was a lot of chatter at the table, but I wasn't really listening as I was still in my massaged state. Slowly but surely, that jackhammer fired up again. As I tried to focus on making it go away and enjoying the scrumptiousness in front of me, my friend told me that the woman in charge wanted to know if I still had a headache. Now, I know that I probably looked a little rough when we came in, but I never mentioned, not even to him, that I had a headache. Naturally, I asked if he told her that and he said that he didn't. So I asked how she knew. He said that she sees auras. Well, that's pretty damn cool if you ask me. I told him that yes, my head was still exploding.
Our hostess was kind enough to come over and provide me with additional massage at this point. I'm a sucker for it, so I wasn't going to complain. While this is happening, she's chatting with my friend. Again, I'm not really listening because it's in Spanish and it requires too much thinking for me to understand it. The next thing I know, she decided to crack my neck. Now, I DO NOT LIKE THIS. I don't like when the chiropractor does it and I certainly didn't appreciate it when she did it. The look on my face must have been classic because my friend immediately told me that he said to her that I would not like that. The best part is that there was so much tension or whatever built up in there, that when it did crack, it was so loud that all conversation at the table stopped. In retrospect, quite funny but then not so much. She tried to get the other side, but I was already on guard. She still managed to get me.
After all was said and done, we thanked our hostess and went back to the house. It was a tremendous experience and if you ever have the chance, I highly suggest it. 🙂
I spend my days and nights wondering what will be the next thing wrong with me. Analyzing every ache, pain, bump or bruise. I've been this way for as long as I can remember. It would really frustrate my parents, especially my mother. As a pre-teen, I was terminally ill at least once a month. This was pre-internet, or at least pre-my access to it, so I had to stick with the things I knew. The most popular ailment of the time: brain tumor.
I used to get constant headaches when I was younger. Sometimes mild, sometimes just enough to be annoying, but occasionally, they were knock down, lie in my room in the dark, in the cold, buried under the blankets, please don't speak in anything more than a whisper headaches. Those were the headaches that gave me the ammunition. These were the headaches that were caused by my brain tumor.
Sidebar: I am not making light of anyone who may be suffering from a brain tumor. Just recounting a story.
I suppose that my incessant yammering about my impending doom, along with one of the aforementioned headaches, finally drove my mother to the point of taking me to the hospital. She knew it was serious, at least to me, when I physically couldn't function because of the red-hot spike that was dead center in my skull. By far, the longest trip in a car, ever. In the real world, that trip was less than 20 minutes. In my world, where every bump in the road equated to John Henry driving that spike another inch deeper into my brain, the trip may have lasted 4 years.
Upon arrival at the hospital, I was taken into a room and provided with a life-long fear of needles. The poor nurse who attended me may have been new or just bad at drawing blood, but she ruined me for life. I'm sure that it didn't help that around that time, I also used to get the most ridiculous heat rash in the crook of my arms. (In case that's a country term, it's the other side of my elbows.) So, I'm Black, then it's summer so I'm even BLACKER, and on top of that, I have this rash which has discolored my skin even more, exactly in the place where she needs to take blood. She assures me that it will only be a little pinch, but she lies. Chalk it up to my heightened sensitivity because of the
brain tumor headachemigraine, but it felt like she had just sliced into my arm with a sword and a dull one at that. She is a very aware nurse, I will give her that, for she recognized right away that she wasn't in a vein (hence the lack of blood draining from my body) and that I was in pain. The latter, though, she probably realized because I was screaming like a banshee.Now, instead of removing the needle and taking another STAB at me. I know, I'm sorry, bad pun. She decided that it would be easier if she just moved the needle around in my arm until she found some blood. I am not joking. I have now completely forgotten about my head because my arm is on fire. I screamed. And screamed again. And again. Until the nurse got scared and I told my mom to make her take it out and go away. My mom, being the superhero that she is, obliged. The nurse, who was just trying to do her job, informed my mom that she had to get blood for tests. I yelled out to get someone else to do it. The nurse looked like I just stole her puppy. I was in too much pain to feel bad.
After being admitted, and several rounds of testing, the esteemed hospital staff diagnosed me with, and I couldn't make this up folks, an allergy to cheese and hot dogs. Staples for a pre-teen on summer vacation. They told my mother to keep me away from the processed foods. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not eating a hot dog will cure me forever! Tomorrow, I'm having a hot dog.
Yesterday, after I got out of the shower, I looked at myself in the mirror and it kicked in. I started thinking. Why haven't I put any weight back on? I had the flu and lost it, but it hasn't come back and it always comes back. Am I getting too skinny? Is something wrong with me? And in the mirror, I have this arguement with myself. You can't be sick or your body wouldn't bother to bloat up for your period. But it goes away as soon as it's over. You can't be sick or else your hair wouldn't be growing so rapidly. What if that's some freak symptom? You're not sick. What about my skin? What about this spot, or that spot? Give it up and go to bed already, would you?
So I did. I went and laid down. With dinner only 3 hours gone by, I wondered why in the world would I be hungry at that moment? I had some water thinking it would help. I soon realized that it wasn't that I was hungry, but I was feeling a bit nauseated. This too, I thought would pass. But it didn't. It got to the point where I had to get up and take something for it. Hello Pepto my old friend, I've come to chew you up again. It must be psychosomatic that as soon as the Pepto hits my mouth and I chew it, I feel better. Finally, better enough to rest.
Until about 3 minutes later when my shoulder starts to hurt. Of course, being who I am, I immediately start to think that I'm dying. I lay in my bed worrying, wondering. Should I say anything? It is my left side. What if I'm just being stupid? But the pain is getting worse. There's nothing wrong with you, it's just an old injury flaring up. But WHAT IF IT ISN'T?!?! Just lay here quietly and stop freaking out. I tried that. The pain dissipated as the yucky feeling did. The psychosis did not.
I wanted to feel my heartbeat. Make sure it was normal. I couldn't feel it. With my hand on my chest as still as I could be, I couldn't feel my heart beating. Common sense told me it still was otherwise I'd be dead, but that was not comforting. I tried for the aortic pulse. It was there, but faint. It seemed to be hiding behind some swollen glands. That are now a lump. And I wonder if something is wrong with me. And what would happen if I died right there. And a wave washed over me. Can't quite explain it but it freaked me out even more. Somehow, common sense yelled loud enough to get past all the other voices in my head. It said, "You're just sleepy, dumbass". Somehow, that didn't calm me. I laid awake. Worrying. Scared that something was wrong. Scared that I might die if I fall asleep. Scared that if I stroked out that no one would even notice till morning when it would be way too late. Scared that I haven't done a quarter of the things I want to do, seen a quarter of the places I want to see.
As I laid in bed, paranoid, a lone tear rolled down my cheek and made it's way into my hair. I made it through the night and the waking hours aren't so scary.