When I was younger my Mother bought me a blue t-shirt that announced in big bold white bubble letters, “Here Comes Trouble” I suppose my Mother looked into my big hazel eyes and saw accidents waiting to happen. Having never been one that treads lightly, oh no, that’s to boring. I tend to look both ways then run down the path, hit the spring board, and take off. I’ve managed to never break a bone, but have wound up with several whoppers of bruises. Lately, those bruises appear more frequently. Currently, I have a bruise the size of a golf ball on my left knee, my left arm has three bruises on the bicep, right leg has a scratch and two bruises below the knee, and a huge bruise and a burn on my back. Wild sex? If only that were the case, I’d block my siblings from reading this. I’m just a glorified klutz. Earlier today, I ran into furniture and apologized before realizing it was a chair. My guard has been down.

The reason a defense is called a defense is because that’s what you do when life knocks you down. When the offense has run out of steam, you defend yourself or allow your friends and family to do it for you. It doesn’t matter what they say or how they go about doing it, because they give it back in spades. After being knocked down one to many times lately, and feeling the pain of bruises, I’ve been leaning on my family and friends using them as my line, allowing them to take the helm. When you grow up thinking you’re Wonder Woman, this task is harder than it is to eat a fried bologna sandwich.

Stomach churning.

My Mother realized long ago that the best way to catch a butterfly is to not chase it at all, but to remain so still that it landed on your shoulder. She never tried to rationalize my nonconformist behavior with explanations of the moon being out of alignment at birth. She let me go. I’ve made mistakes and so has she. As an adult I’ve questioned my childhood, she shrugs her shoulders and says, “I did the best I could. Buck up.”

The last two mornings I’ve woke to voicemails that turned my stomach, “It’s your biggest cheerleader,” laughing she chirps my favorite childhood songs. Now, I’ve come to terms with events in my past and the mistakes I’ve made. The thing about having regrets in your past is that you spend every minute of the future building a wall that makes the monster harder to see. You convince yourself that the wall is sturdy, thick, and one day you wake up and those horrible things don’t jump out of the closet at you. You have to pick yourself up and occasionally lean on those around you.

Maybe the job of a Mother is to not shelter but bear witness as a child hits full force…and then to cushion the fall when it’s over.

Looking out the window I faltered in my thinking. People actually live here? I began sweating before the plane hit the ground. I could do this. The interview process was the easy part. Ask a sales gal to sell herself to strangers. Scoff. In Vegas. Okay, that’s just funny. Selling myself in Vegas? My Father is so proud of his middle daughter.

Later that day, after the interview, after I was asked questions like, “Why a man hole cover is round.” After I questioned the questions with responses of, “Because they can’t be square. Why did Marge soak in it?” After all the fluff that gets me by, he and I sat across from one another mid afternoon in a bar that made night fall inside. We were virtual strangers after a chance meeting weeks prior while he was visiting a friend. This time, I stayed in town to visit with him.

Wryly with a shade of sheer delight that tends to stir trouble I begged,

“What do you have to lose by telling me? I don’t even live here.”

“Not yet”

I lied, “Stop. That’s crazy talk.”

Shrugging his shoulders and squinting his eyes in a manner that states he could sell ice to an Eskimo, he hesitated a moment to long, and willed time to hang over us like a storm cloud. Venturing out of himself, “Okay. I work for a casino. And I have a degree. I didn’t always have the best role model when it comes to women.”

He raised his head for the first time and catches me staring him down, then wavers. Verbally, he bleeds the truth. I look at him wondering if he’s ever asked himself the question. The answer is there for the taking and I took the plunge. Maybe I wasn’t the one who needed help, maybe – that distinction belonged to my Vegas Boy distinctly himself. Maybe. Who am I kidding? The two of us own it. Over the next two hours I gather he’s never asked himself why he’s single at 34 and still tossing women aside like dirty laundry. After all the people he’s pushed away and allowed to push him away, the man has a hard time buying into the concept of love and happily ever after. So, he’s formulized a way to recreate himself into one who wouldn’t have to buy into a concept of faulty love. And, like the Wizard of Oz, he’s learned if you hide long enough behind a curtain of bluff and principle, people stop trying to find out who you are in the first place. Like the man who wears the Mickey Mouse costume at Disney World, I figure.

How many times have I fallen in love with a man whom my mind inflated to such mythic proportions that I could stare right at him and still not see him clearly.

And then suddenly I listened to him, I listened to me, and I forgot what fear was. Not that I was ever one to claim it but, I forgot how fear felt. I made the decision to make a monumental move. My life, in Texas, is comfortable…just like that. A sentenance that takes no thought to form. It’s easy.

I began counting the moments watching the hand tick a circle on my watch. Coyly smiling back at him I knew a secret that would make him wonder what I was up to. Make him question if the shell I hide behind is as transparent as I fear it to be.

I, of all people, deal with the choices I have made in the past and will contend with the one’s I make in the future. There are times in this life that make you feel helpless, make you feel like a puppy dog unable to find it’s way home in the rain. And even though my heart wants to give in, throw in the towel and fulfill my college dream of joining the Peace Core….I kind of like my shoes.

I wanted to write to you tonight and hear my own voice because, I miss it. I miss the moments of fun when I surprise myself and question where a sentence came from. I miss the times I unleash on you knowing you have no idea what, or who, I’m talking about.

My need for support edges out my better judgment. I want to tell you how I broke down at a friends house yesterday and danced in the rain. I want to tell you how, between sobs about my niece spending time at the hospital, I’d give my own life and everything I’ve ever loved for my sister and her family to not let her go through this; I want to tell you it all. However, my friends won’t have it, my family won’t allow it, and I am not that open.

I want to pour myself into you and unleash, I need someone for that. And now, I’m feeling the way silence does, you know how it can push in on your ear drums, make your brain swell, and make you deaf?

I cannot begin to tell you the words I want to use; none of them are big enough to bear the weight behind them.

I’m building an arc, who’s in?

We’ll get to the part where I went dancing in the rain last night. But for now, i’m going to buy supplies.

why anyone would have a mini cooper in this city is beyond me.

I’ve been watching my rather nice life self destruct over the past few weeks. The socially acceptable way of saying it is that I’m taking a break. To say that I took more than one pause today is fabricating a moment of self destruction; and who am I to deny you reading those. After all, that’s the juicy stuff right? Here’s the thing….I’m going to Vegas on Tuesday and may not come back, seriously. I’d be going there for a job which means I sign my name to the liver transplant waiting list tomorrow.

This could be the end of my life as I know it. And I don’t mean like I’m going to begin doing something crazy like eat a piece of meat for the first time in twenty-three years. In Texas, I’ve found to my dismay the reaction, “Oh you’re a vegetarian? You don’t look like a vegetarian.” And we all know what that means. The temptation is to punch them in the eye and as they stand there trying to stop the blood say, “Now do I look like a vegetarian?” However, remember that whole thing about being a lady? I don’t believe throwing punches would do the cause any good, so I have abstained. So far.

And today on my morning run I realized how many nontransferable roots I have laid down in Houston. I’ve discovered it’s nice after moving around my entire life, after never living in one location for more than four years, after twenty-nine years of wandering, it’s nice to conclude, maybe I’m home. Then again, never draw conclusions. EVER. There are way too dangerous.

I’ve spent the morning wiping tears from my eyes and putting my best foot forward to take on the world and taking cheap shots at piñata’s while preying they spew more than five cent candy at me.

You should know by now that I’m not one to settle down properly, the yard and the white picket fence is nice but, so are sky lines and oceans. My writing to you has been chaotic, because there’s been way too much in my life that seems to burst or fly sideways only to come back later in a haunting fashion. My predictive capacity for the future is as erratic as my capacity for identifying what I’m going to eat for dinner. Not a clue.

I’ve found that a lot of the people I know, in this city, I know better because of our disorders. No, orders. Er. I’ve grown to love this city of faux-pau cowboys and amazing individuals. Could I ever find another city where I religiously make fun of one friend for her obsession with bronzer and perfume, another who makes up words (make fun of her too), another whose monster comes out of the closet every weekend (make fun of her too), another who does these smoochy faces in all her photos (make fun of her too), another who her and her twin simply trump everything (Yep), and a best friend who he and I don’t last five minutes with out making fun of one another? We’re like one big laughing joke on a bender and I’m only getting started.

There’s this life I have here, the lives I have left behind, and the one I have yet to find. That’s the one, I imagine, where you’re supposed to be able to see and touch your truths, or at least track them through your fancy gadgets thanks to their radar component.

Perhaps, I’m preaching to the converted…look how far we’ve come.

Besides, what would I tell my mother? That I’m moving to Vegas to become a Show Girl? Yeah - like she’d buy that one.

I’ve always believed there ought to be a network for the love-lorn, patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous, devoted to helping those who are crippled by broken hearts. Sure there are enough of us, I think. People who would benefit from a buddy system for the moments when you catch your sweetheart with his arm wrapped around another woman, or when he doesn’t call for days, or don’t receive a text message back, or when you see in his eyes that he’s already started to forget you. The moment of doubt you wearily check the phone, for like the 3rd time in the last hour, call your Sponsor who will talk on the phone with you for hours like a seventh grade girlfriend, draw you a dart board with his face on it and take the ache away.

But instead you stare the phone hoping The Force will kick in and will him to take a step and contact you. You’re not supposed to call unless it is an emergency, which in my case would mean I just saw on CNN a meteor is headed straight for his apartment and….I do like the boy.

And now I’m trying to figure out this puzzling moment. Can a person you never knew you wanted to know slip unannounced out of your life?

DUH!

Slowly the truth dawned on me while he spun his legs in circle on the path to nowhere. Yet, I stopped him mid sentance and asked him the question I already knew the answer to with out wanting to.

“What’s your name?”

“Devil in Disguise”

Okay that’s not really his name but this man had done something grotesque and horrible to someone I love dearly. It made me sick to my stomach just to think of it. And he alone in the party was guilty.

“Yeah I knew that”

Closing the book my hands were drenched around I felt blood coursing through my system as I eyed this man. I wanted to drop kick his ass in a tortoise half shell then send him flying where he could never do another dispicable thing. But, I’m a lady. I persist to tell him the past relation of how I knew him and gathered the strength to act dignified and not like Tupac. It has been nine years since he saw me last. However, I’m always surprised at how small this man is. That’s probably something to do with rotten people- the boneless spine unhinging with each passing day.

A small shiver escaped his body. It was really quite a human noise with an audible breath and a catch in it, like a muted regret, “Oh.”

I tried for a moment to long to entertain small talk.

“I can’t do this. I can’t even look at you.”

“Well you do what you have to do.”

“Apparently you did.” as I walked away.

And that my dear friends was the drama at the gym this morning. Nothing says bitter like running into your father’s former business partner on a life cycle machine.

“Dad, you’ll never believe who I just saw. Can I kick a 72 year old man’s ass?”

“I love you too.”

“Fine then, if I see him again I’m going to ask him who his plastic surgeon is. He’s had his eyes done and a face lift.”

“Bonus”

When I woke up Friday morning the rain had stopped and my bed was stripped from not making it before I left for a well needed glass of wine with several dear friends. I looked at my watch which was conveniently still on my wrist and felt the mini skirt that was still on my waist…just in case I needed to run out of the apartment in the middle of the night, apparently. It was also the beginning of June which tends to remind me of how many steps I’ve taken, took back, then leapt forward. For this and for other issues, my stomach ached. The room felt cold. I thought I heard laughter, but told myself I was the only boat creaking in this storm. I thought I heard footsteps then realized it was only Jo foraging for food. I rolled over in a manner that reminded me of my mother when I wake her in the morning.

Sun light littered my room in a way that told me that I had about enough of this shit and it was time to start the day. I never asked the question because the answer couldn’t bear its weight in my head. The theories I had collected make much more sense than a concrete cruise ship.

That in a nutshell was the end of my preoccupation with death. Not that I will ever stop fearing it. I just stopped thinking about it. If I’d have any extra time on my hands that wasn’t spent thinking about important things like what I’m going to wear tonight (or why my sister and I have a texting love), I might spend more time worrying about things out of my control. But the truth is I’ve learned to put a wall against such thoughts. Each new thing I learn about the world is a stone in that wall, until one day I realized I had exiled myself from a place I could never go back to. And yet, that wall has also protected me. I still never think about the truth in those things while attempting the two mile drive to Walgreen’s and not wearing my seat belt. Acciednts always happen close to home, right? What if I was in one and thrown thrown twenty feet ending up paralyzed or dead? It could happen. Yet, I still don’t think about the truth, because eventually we’re all going to die. Instead I force myself to think inside a happy box while my mind is more like a nine year old with ADD trying to solve a cross word puzzle.

I’d like to think that the world wasn’t ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn’t ready for the world. I’m always arriving to late for my life or as Clint calls it, “J.S. T. Time.” Translation: Jessica Standard Time. Now that I’m here an hour late or an hour early, I just don’t know how to deal with certain situations. So I ask Kristina, I ask Soleil, Hillary, Kim, Celeste, Brittany, my sister-in-law…I ask and I ask when I already know the answer.

Because let’s face it, if your asking the question…you already know the answer.

And… yeah - i’m back and promise to update more than the last few weeks, I was wading through some pretty deep water.

I swear i will put something up here readable soon. I’m bored with taking all these silly quizzes that tell me what flavor lollipop i would be or what sex and the city charachter i am most like. I mean, really you can’t narrow someone down to one measley character who happens to have more flaws than a hobo stuck in a well in a span of twenty questions.

So, anyone have any REAL questions about ANYTHING..even ’bout me? I’ll answer to the best of my ability or seek answers in my magic 8 ball.