sum of deez dings

Some of these things—these dreams—I dreamt when I was practically a child. High school, college, you know?

These things I’ve been carrying around on my back, from town to town, job to job, each new face I meet. I haven’t really examined them since I first dreamt them.

I haven’t really dug under the surface and asked: Why? Why this? Why this for me?

It’s not a bad goal. Not a bad aspiration. But does it feel good on me still, decades later?

God, I’m almost forty and still doodling ideas I made when I pierced my own nose over the course of three hours—not even straight—in the middle of the night with a sewing needle and a post earring from Claire’s.

And maybe that is what I’ve been mistaking for destiny all these years: a girl alone at night, trying to make herself into someone.

So now I feel it’s time to take inventory, really tally it up, and ask: What do I want?

Not the “I” I swore I was forever and a day ago, but the “I” I am now. The one who lived all that life.

What does that woman—the almost-forty woman, in her second marriage, name on the mortgage, fucking paid-off car—want?

What does she want?

It’s peace. It’s freedom. It’s peace.

It’s not being tied forever to who I was for a minute.

gotta live yo life at sum point

Safe and Secure.

Last night, under a full moon in Capricorn, I kept waking up with fear.

Nothing was happening.

That was the stupid part.

I was in bed. I was under a roof. My husband was asleep beside me. The dogs were somewhere in the house, breathing their hot little dog breath into the dark. The moon was doing whatever moons do over women who are trying, God help us, to sleep.

And still, my brain was dragging furniture to the doors.

The kind of fear where I start thinking through all possible outcomes of my life. I start making contingency plans: if X happens, I will do Y. Worst case, best case. Mentally drafting Facebook Marketplace posts in the event I have to sell everything I own just to eat.

Not because that’s realistic. Because it is a fear I have, and my brain wants to solve it before it happens, like fear is a bill I could pay early.

Not that it probably even would happen.

But try telling that to the moon.

Recently, I listened to a podcast, and the researcher being interviewed said, “Safety and security are the two things women want most.”

It was an episode on the psychology of men’s and women’s drives and desires and needs. Fine. Okay. I’m listening.

But then the researcher continued, “Safety and security are relative, subjective, so the best advice for any woman is to choose to feel safe and secure.”

Excuse me, ma’am.

Mrs. Doctor Lady on a podcast.

What?

What do you mean just choose to feel safe and secure?

Like it’s a throw pillow? Like it’s an essential oil? Like I can just stand in my kitchen, snap my fingers twice, and announce to the cabinets, “Well, boys, we’ve done it. The nervous system is chill now.”

And I’m too lazy to quote quote quote quote some smart bitch, but it actually did make sense, which honestly pissed me off more.

Obviously, do your best to be safe, to be secure. Basic safety stuff like being alert in parking lots and sharing your location and not dating abusers. Basic security stuff like saving money and budgeting and whatnot.

But safety and security are relative.

Recently, my husband and I passed on a house because the neighbor had some aggressive dogs. We said no, no, no, this house is UNSAFE.

And I still think that was a fair thing to consider. I do. I am not trying to girlboss my way into a dog attack.

But I also think there are plenty of people who would be absolutely elated, relieved even, that just two dogs behind a fence were the biggest threat. At some point, someone should be shaking me and saying, “There are people dying, Caroline. There are bombs exploding in some neighborhoods.”

You’re right.

And still, my nervous system lives in its own country with its own war and it's own economy.

And security? My God. It’s not even that long ago that my current savings, bank account, assets, what have you, would have been unheard of in my own life. I remember a time when I received a $2,000 tax refund and felt fucking RICH.

And not in some flippant, hyperbolic way. I mean I really felt rich. So rich I went to the bars and bought drinks for everyone. Me. A benevolent queen in Forever 21 earrings, blessing the village with well vodka.

Me today, of course, thinks $2K would nice but doesn’t go THAT far—plus inflation will only get worse—all the more reason it should be saved. Saved, saved, saved, because I need to feel secure as a lil baby wrapped and swaddled in my dollar-bill blanky.

Which is funny until it isn’t.

Because that girl at the bar with her tax refund thought she had made it. And the woman in bed with more money than that still wakes up rehearsing disaster.

Yeah, I guess safety and security are subjective, and the best thing to do is just CHOOSE to be safe and secure. Like snap, snap, I’m now safe and secure, bitches. I don’t need to wake up worried or planning or thinking about what-ifs.

And what a cruel joke, that what women value most—safety, security—we honestly never REALLY get, because it’s subjective. Because there is no number in a bank account that can promise nothing bad will happen. No neighborhood so quiet. No husband sleeping so close. No moon so full it can fill the hole.

But don’t worry your pretty little head too much, because the guys have it rough too. They most crave productivity. Not just present productivity, but past and future productivity too. So theirs isn’t just subjective; it’s got a whole stupid time-contingency thing too.

God bless us, every one. The men are haunted by to-do lists. The women are haunted by the locked door.

So fine.

I choose it.

I choose safety. I choose security. I choose the roof over my head, the money in the bank, the dogs behind their fence, the husband asleep beside me, the moon hanging over the house like a silver coin nobody can spend.

I choose it.

And still, somewhere around 3 a.m., my brain opens Facebook Marketplace and starts pricing the furniture. 

I think I could get $409 for this bed if I got good photos.

A body with some miles on it.

 "The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt—and one more failure."

—Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

I haven’t been inspired to write as of late. I wanted to, but nothing comes out. And there are these things that seem like they could weave into something coherent.

Like, for six days I’ve felt on the edge of my period: breasts ache, body bloated, acne, moody-bitchy-no-good-foul-mood, yet... nothing.

And I am flipping through my notes. Yes, because if I don’t write it down, I might forget it. Yes, I can live it, feel it in my body, it can hijack my life for almost half a month, but as the moon spins, I am stupid again. So, to the notes!

Maybe it’s diet, medication, stress. Or even just an off month, schedules off, summer heat. God knows it might even be my brain. You know what I’m talking about, like when your brain makes you sick by thinking about being sick.

But it could be menopause.

And I really need to take a step back and tell you vital context. I have never really feared growing old or “the change,” as women older and obviously less progressive than I called it when I was young.

At most, there was a brief time when I felt the need to decide if I was or was not going to have kids.

And in 2016, when I was 28, I went almost mad and actually was thinking I might. It lasted two months.

But I had so many other things to take care of and do, and it was on the back burner until finally I didn’t. I probably did not want kids.

After all, I put everything else in front of it.

A decade later, I decided I had feelings about it, complex feelings, but ultimately love my life as is.

So the idea of menopause and aging and not having kids doesn’t scare me.

I’m not even sure if scared is the right word. When I was 10, I used to put socks balled up under my shirt and pretend they were boobs. By 12, I had some and was excited, but then at 14, they were too big, too floppy, too cumbersome, and the outfits I could comfortably wear in public dwindled.

Repeat this with everything puberty. Period, excited, then it’s too much. Armpit hair, excited, then it is too much.

Till it more or less evened out and my body morphed slowly. Like erosion, like hair growing, so stealth and soft and quiet in the background, like gaining five pounds. It just happens.

It’s been gradual. I am a fish still in the bag, my temperature adjusting.

And now, what if it’s all wonky again? I will have to learn how to live and feel best in a new body again. Like an alien, I wake up—yet again in my short life—to find all the physical rules of my existence different. We were playing Uno, but now it’s poker—go fish!

And a woman I’ve never met in my life and probably won’t commented five years ago about over-the-counter progesterone cream, and now, six days into the sneaky little menses-who-cried-wolf no-show, I’m rubbing this hormone cream on my tits.

I guess this is what happens to women when all the crones are just shit-posting AI fake news on Facebook. If I had a daughter, I hope I would let her into everything I’m feeling and thinking right now.

She shouldn’t be flying into it blind.

Yes, all those women in my life, older women, elderly women, all those women, and I heard plenty of fear about menopause and so little of what it was actually like.

P.S. Tonight I microwaved nacho cheese in a “29 and holding” mug I thought was so funny and ironic when Mom gave it to me when I was 25.

URGENT!

What do they say? When it rains, it pours?

Pours out the ass?

I suppose you could say I have a lot going on right now. Earlier, I was squirting diarrhea into the toilet, but thanks to the miracles technology has bestowed upon us, that didn't stop me from still being that work-from-home diva, muted on the call, of course, hearing all about the end of fiscal year.

Let's have a meeting about how busy we are. Then let's schedule a follow-up meeting about that meeting.

And while I could mute myself for the call, I couldn't mute my ass. Or the stench. Or the rest of the chaos unfolding around me.

Like the Guatemalan man who had cut a two-foot-by-two-foot square in the ceiling of my guest room.

See, impeccable timing.

It rained hard last night, and there was water on the guest room bed: A leak.

Which is great because, you know, our house is on the market, and we were less than twenty-four hours away from a showing.

So we panicked.

We ran around.

We called numbers.

I say we, but I really just mean my husband.

Hence, the Guatemalan men in my attic, cutting holes in my ceiling and probably wondering what the fuck is wrong with the little white girl who disappears into the bathroom every thirty minutes while someone on speakerphone keeps shouting, "END OF FISCAL YEAR."

As if, between the drywall and insulation, they also worry about fiscal years.

Alas, the stupid leak might be fixed.

At least fixed enough for the showing.

So there I was, chewing an anti-diarrheal while inviting in a snooty-looking blonde, a decade younger than me, and her realtor, who spent a grand total of five minutes in my house—not even bothering to look at the bedroom we'd rushed to save—before deciding it wasn't for her and walking right back out.

Fiscal year. Leak. House showing.

Every little emergency arrived on the same day.

And somehow...

it all got done...As if none of it was urgent after all.

But my ass soup?

That Hershey squirt?

That's eternal.

Summer Solstice 2026

Awaken, child, for I know thee. I know your heart and the fears it harbors and the hopes it dares not name.

Summer Solstice was yesterday, and with so little night, so little dark, my subconscious wreaked havoc. Dreams on dreams, layers of dreams. Not fun dreams, surreal and whimsical adventures in which the boundaries and physics of life are drawn out to their elastic limit. Not even nightmares. It was as if my mind handed me all my fears on a silver platter. One night only. Tonight's chef's special.

While, now, hours after waking, I cannot recall every little bit, I will disclose the few I do remember, for they weigh heavy on me, like a recovered repressed memory that really would have been better to stay put in the trenches.

Like I am in the audience of a comedy show with some guy. Who is he? Random dream guy. As often is the case, a placeholder for any guy. For whatever reason, I am lying on my belly, and someone points out that I am bleeding through my pants. There is blood on my ass. So, of course, I go to the bathroom, which has a steeply sloped floor and weird automatic soap dispensers that are broken. Of course they are broken, and plastic tubes, like life support, are spurting slick soap onto the floor—heavily fragranced, chemical-sludged, colored goo. And I struggle to get to the bottom of the slope where the toilet resides. I struggle to get back to the top of the sloped floor, back to the door.

Sweet child, you have hidden from your own blood as though I had not woven it into you.

I return to my seat, which has now appeared (good and gracious Lord, thank you. I no longer lie on the floor on my belly; I sit in a chair!). But every male in the audience is in some state of undress. Some fully naked, tiny little micro dicks, shaved and on display, big fat guts hanging over swollen, red, angry testicles. Some are in boxers or briefs or undershirts. My male companion—the Any Guy U.S.A.—is in a wife-beater and boxers, just like my husband wears to bed.

I ask him what is up. And the only response was that the comedian on stage said it would be funny for all the guys to get naked, and it wouldn't be weird if they all did.

Beloved, how strange that you should stand clothed among the naked and still believe yourself exposed.

Next dream: I am standing in a pool that only comes to my waist, yet everyone else is under the water, swimming beneath the surface, close to me. Close to my legs, as if they are sneaking a peek. I think they are all men, but I'm unsure. At least all the bodies I can see swimming under the water are male and buff. Like bodybuilder buff, swimming so close to me. And all I can think about is my pubic hair probably peeking out the edge of my swimsuit, and that they are probably only under the water to gawk at the shame of what had naturally grown out of my body. The cursedness of womanhood that sprouted when I quit being just a little girl.

Daughter, you have mistaken becoming visible for becoming unsafe.

For some reason, my husband (not indescript Any Guy, my actual current husband) and I are staying with my friend Kim. And for some reason, he needs to get up before me, so he has requested that Kim wake him up, even though I am sleeping next to him. So she tiptoes into the room and wakes him up, and I just lie there, silent and still, but also awake and aware. And jealous and outraged and hurt. He has picked her over me. They tiptoe out of the room, and I spend much of the dream searching for them. I find her, and she says it's nothing, he just needed to be woken up. But I could have done it! Why, oh why, did he ask her?

Precious, every door you feared would close behind you has always opened toward me.

Naturally, with dream logic, we leap to the next scene, in which I am moving in for a year with a couple because this has led to my husband and me taking a year-long break from living together (this is what happens when you have someone other than your wife or your alarm clock wake you up). Naturally, my husband is helping me move in. Did I mention the woman of the couple is pregnant? Not a little pregnant—hugely pregnant, might pop out a kid any moment.

My husband and her husband are trying to unpack my stuff, but she and I are trying to stop them. You can't just throw my stuff in with theirs! We need a system. We need organization. She and I plead with the men. Get some decorum! For we both know I will move out in a year, so even as we are moving in, we are planning the moving out. We need to have a system in place to distinguish whose stuff is whose, to make it easier when, in 365 days, everything we are doing right now falls apart.

Rest now, little soul. I have watched you bleed, hide, compare, divide your home, and prepare your leaving before your arriving. Sleep.
 Even morning arrives without rehearsing itself.

Unfinished Business

Last night, my husband, lying in bed, turned to me and said,

 "God is keeping us here in Alabama a little longer for a reason.

 I just don't know what it is yet."

See, this is one of the things that first attracted me to him:

his spirituality,

his faith in the universe,

his belief in magic.

Not metaphorical magic.

Actual magic.

In our first month of dating,

we each slept with a crystal we'd chosen,

then gifted it to the other.

It was his idea.

The clear quartz point he gave me

still sits on my altar.

The raw amethyst chunk I gave him

still rests on his smoke stand.

So when my husband, lying in bed, turned to me and said,

 "God is keeping us here in Alabama a little longer for a reason.

I just don't know what it is yet."

I took it seriously.

I pictured psychic chains

tethering a ghost to a place

until it resolved

the unresolved business of its life.

And today I looked around

this place with renewed eyes,

searching for the soul contract

we made with this land—

the land we are so desperate to leave.

Do we need

to unite our home,

to end the feline civil war

that demands we keep one cat away from another?

Should we harvest and can

the tomatoes this summer,

so they'll sustain us

through the Hoosier winter?

Perhaps it's the neighbor

who waves goodbye each morning.

I gave him zucchini from the garden

and cookies I'd baked.

We still harbor resentment.

Or perhaps it's the leaky bathroom faucet

we still haven't fixed,

though the replacement parts sit,

silent and accusing,

on the floor.

Or maybe it's nothing.

Maybe we're falling into

the oldest human trap:

constructing

the illusion of control,

like OCD—

believing that locking

and unlocking the door

three times

can save you.