Once upon a time

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, in a slushy land far away, there lived a cool, complicated chick who contradicted herself sometimes because she was large and contained multitudes. She concerned multitudes, too, but that was nice, really, because it just meant people cared about her. So, cool.

Sometimes she wanted to hear stuff from people, stuff she wasn’t hearing. Sometimes she didn’t want to hear stuff from people.

That was her prerogative, being a cool, complicated chick with a blog.

[Anyhow, don't get your panties or your banana hammock in a twist, because you can leave comments after this fairy tale, if you want. Or you can start your own blog. Whatevs. The cool complicated chick would have given you a thumbs-up, but, you know, this was a long time ago, in a land far away, yadda yadda.]

Anyway. Cool complicated chick. Sometimes she wrote sad stuff on her blog (because all the cool complicated chicks had blogs, back then). Really sad. Sometimes she wrote funny stuff. Pretty funny. Some people figured this back and forth was because the cool complicated chick was kind of a mess, because of her Polar Bear Disease. Because, like, who could write funny stuff one day, then harsh everybody’s mellow the next with the same old sad story, right?

Thing was, how she wrote didn’t have anything to do with her having the Polar Bear Disease. She did have it, sure, because some DNA elf left the helix spinning on her 16th day of gestation. Bummer. That made life extra-hard and extra-multitudinous sometimes. Cool complicated chick liked to spend the hard days alone in her turret, watching her neighbor use his new snowblower, and begging her brain to behave. It’s rough being a cool complicated Polar Bear chick, take our word for it. Don’t try it at home, unless you’re licensed to handle a Polar Bear brain. And, you know, you’re rockin’ cool and complicated.

Anyway, the truth was this: she wrote sad stuff and funny stuff because she felt sad stuff and funny stuff, often at the same time. And she figured her blog was a record, of sorts, and she was cool with the record, well, going down on record.

About what?

Yeah, that’s the thing. She never knew. She didn’t have a plan for her blog. It wasn’t a mommy blog, a feminist blog, a life blog, a relationship blog, a Polar Bear blog, a my-shiz-is-nuts blog, a divorce blog, a philosophy blog, a dog blog or a cooking or knitting blog. It wasn’t about raising organic chickens or skydiving or spelunking or cartography.

It was just, you know, a cool, complicated chick’s blog. Sometimes, it sucked hard, to be her, and she cried buckets, and she wrote about it. A record. Sometimes, she was overwhelmed with the blessings of her life, and she wrote about that, too. A record.

She figured some folks thought that that much crying was, well, a broken record. Whatevs, she wound up saying to that, after she cried a little in the shower and threw the shampoo and then set it back carefully in place.

She read once that tears fertilize the earth. She couldn’t remember where—her meds made her a little foggy that way—but she thought it was a nice thought, about tears.

As a kid, she wasn’t able to cry. As a grownup, cool, complicated chick, she did cry a lot, yeah, sure.

But she was doing the best she could, every minute of the day.

But some things took time.

She never understood how other folks seemed to ‘get over’ stuff. Kinda like the way Sleeping Beauty seemed cool with the lousy fingerprick, and not pissed off as hell to find out she’d lost 100 years and was groggy enough to marry the first idiot she kissed. Sleeping Beauty seemed to ‘get over it.’ She ‘moved on,’ everybody said.

Well, cool, complicated chick always got pissed off as hell with the ‘get over it’ crowd, because it just wasn’t who she was. For whatever reason, things took time with cool, complicated chick. Most lost things and most lost people and most lost animals, nope, she never got over them. A broken toe, sure. Exploding toilets, okay. She had her priorities straight, after all.

But her way was her way, and her words were her words. And by the end of her life, surrounded by people and animals she loved and whom loved her right back, she’d long since gotten over the sense of foolishness that comes with being a cool, complicated chick who tries to go on record with a life. With her life.

Yeah, she was large. At least, her underpants were. She contained and concerned multitudes. You might have liked her; you might not have. Not everybody grooved on cool, complicated chick. That hurt. But unlike Cinderella, she had some Issues, and not everybody is up for Issues. Even though everybody HAS issues.

Cool complicated chick’s heart was big and broken and pissed-off and humbled and lonely and blessed. She knew about all of it, her heart’s lurchings, as story after story in her life unfolded. She was flawed and exuberant and defiant and terrified and sick with fear and aching with love that didn’t always have a place to go. She got blamed for the wrong stuff and not for the right stuff, and she did the same right back to others, that awful blaming that gets you nowhere.

She wanted to change that. She wanted to zap blame right out of the equation and see what would happen: love without blame, love that listens, really listens.

But there was too much hurt floating around for that.

She wanted bad to believe in true love—oh, she did, more than anything—but when she thought back on her experiences and listened to Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and Belle at the bar, well, let’s just say cool, complicated chick got to a point where she didn’t know anymore if ANY love could be big enough to hold humility and honesty and strength and compassion and pain and forgiveness, all in one great package. Oh, and some fighting. She had decided that some healthy fighting would be a good thing, in a love, instead of sweeping stuff under the furniture, with Polly Pockets and dog fur.

When it came to love, she just wanted to be remembered for her goodness, and not for what she’d done wrong or said wrong. And she was willing to do that right back.

But it didn’t work out that way.

Ah, it would take a pretty big, pretty amazing love, she figured. She started to think she’d be lucky if she could learn to love herself that way, even fighting with herself in the kitchen over omelets gone terribly wrong, then forgiving herself, and moving on to start a new, better day with herself.

She never did learn how to make a great omelet.

We can’t tell you any more of what happens in the middle of the story. Sorry. But you get the idea: she was born; she tried to be a good daughter and sister; she did pretty okay in school; she wrote stuff; she acted in plays and was really good, no Meryl, but still; she cried; she laughed; she rescued some great dogs; she gave birth to some great daughters and raised them apart from a man she really, truly loved; she watched ‘Zack and Miri Make a Porno’ and laughed AND cried during it and then she decided she must be a dude, man.

And at some point, she stopped feeling humiliated so much, and began feeling humble instead.

And at some point, she died. Like everybody else.

What? You want more?

She didn’t want there to be a moral to the story, because life’s gray like that. She made us sign a contract. No fairy tale ending. Nothing you would remember, in the long run.

Well…be kind. Her grandmother said that. Kindness goes a long way. So does forgiveness.

And the cool, complicated chick liked art a lot. If something on the stage or in a painting moves you, she once told a visiting bard, find a way to put it back into your own life. Don’t observe from afar. Also: Don’t be too precious about your art. It’s just dirt on paper.

She said a lot of things, most of which have long since been lost to posterity, which she would have been happy about, in the end. Even by the middle of her life, she was beginning to let go of certain dreams. Not all, but fame was the first to go. Love, well, you can guess.

No, really. That’s all.

You can go now.

Oh? You need something?

No, sorry. She did not live happily ever after. It wasn’t her style. It wasn’t her DNA. She did her best. That’s what you need to know.

Something. Okay.

And she did not live happily ever after, and she was unable to embrace certain circumstances from time to time, but her heart stayed open. It broke open, and stayed open. The End.