Traverse the mundane,
Plod through the chores of daily life and work,
Do what needs to be done and what is chosen to do in each moment,
Finally slowing to a dimly lit room, alone, where you reflect and realize
That somewhere, many miles away, there is somebody, also resting in a room alone,
With you.
~pinarosana, 2023
You’re spoiling me.
“I’m spoiling you? Nah, darling. I’m preserving you. That’s the formaldehyde.” ~Julius
People who have been broken before are always so beautiful. I’m drawn to them. Those who have been ripped to shreds emotionally and are yet unafraid to expose their soul again. People who will tell you how they feel, with their voice, and their words, and their eyes, and their hearts open wide. I see you. I cannot stop seeing you. You breathe life into me and remind me why I am here. I know you, even when I barely know you. I feel you. Thank you for existing and for being who you are. You are bringing me home.
The muses have returned. The broken have brought them.
Namaste
I had a great race at the Invesco QQQ Thanksgiving Half!!! I accomplished exactly what I had hoped to accomplish, even though I didn’t think I’d actually be able to do it.
This is new a personal record for half marathon for me (on my 28th Half Marathon race between November 2014 and now). An improvement upon my previous personal record, set in 2018, by 6 minutes and 3 seconds.
This also time qualifies me for the 2024 New York City Marathon, which is the goal I was aiming for. I had tried year after year to get into NYC through the lottery, with no success, and am filled with gratitude to now have a qualifying time and a better chance. 
It took a long time to get done, but Mom’s memorial headstone was finally placed last month. They did a really good job. I’m glad we got the photo on it and I’m happy with what I had written on it: Mother and Teacher, Loved by All. Everybody did love her. She had a charm that really reached people, even as disheveled as she was. People adored her, across the board. Except, at times, me.
I am thankful for her, for the person she turned me into. She made me very independent. She taught me so much, either directly or indirectly. But I caused her a lot of grief during her life; I’m sure of that. I harbored resentment that I didn’t have a normal childhood. I fought with her constantly about the hoarding, about not having a room of my own, about her wearing a purple terry cloth turban on her head to drive me to school, about having to climb out the driver’s side, when I was sitting on the arm rest because there was too much junk in the passenger side. I fought with her for my entire life about selling Avon and accumulating so many things. I kept trying to change her and she just wouldn’t. I know it hurt her to see me unhappy. She wanted to try, but she just couldn’t. Something had snapped when I was just a baby, and there was no turning back. I think she would have been much better off if I had never been born. Maybe not, who knows. Maybe it’s just coincidence that things got messed up after I came along. I did help her a lot, at times, but with things that likely would not have otherwise occurred if I hadn’t existed. She suffered greatly during my life. I guess a lot of Moms do. I don’t know. I’m glad I’m not one. She loved me a lot. I have no idea why. She called me her precious treasure.
Today is Mom’s birthday.
If you still have your Mom, give her a call for me. If there is anything you can do to make her life a little easier, do it. Ask her questions about her life and listen to her stories. Give her a hug if you can. Tell her you love her and thank her for bothering to have you, no matter how things have gone. She probably didn’t have to, and it was a lot of work for sure. Her life was forever changed by it. Make her realize that it wasn’t all a waste. Appreciate her.
I wish things could’ve gone better for you, Mom. I know things were a lot easier before I came along, and I wasn’t always the best kid. I’m sorry. I love you.
Today was really difficult, the whole way through. I woke up weak, tired, stiff, and sore. Of course, I immediately thought about Mom because it’s her birthday and she isn’t around anymore; shortly thereafter I started crying and thinking about everything. I couldn’t workout or run, which would’ve been the endorphin boost that might have helped me. I tried, but I just didn’t have the strength. As the day progressed, the minutia of misfortune just compounded. The cat peed on the bed. I spilled a whole big pan full of bacon grease all over the kitchen floor. I lost a data file that I had been working on for hours the day before. I had to make multiple trips to the store because I kept forgetting ingredients. I broke an egg when I got my groceries out of the car. I found myself brooding repeatedly over something I should have long since recovered from emotionally. Just all the little dumb stuff just piled up. I felt my face frowning literally all day long. I couldn’t make it not do that. I’m still frowning as I type this.
I had to get a bottle of bourbon for one of the things I am making to bring for Thanksgiving. I’ve been depressed all day. I made sure to get the smallest bottle I could, enough for the recipe and not much more. I know better. I mean, I wouldn’t do that, but just to be sure I wouldn’t, it’s better this way. I’ve cried so much and even though I’m strong, there is no sense having something around that I won’t use except for cooking, something which might remind me of darker days when I would drown myself in tears and numb the pain with whatever I could. The difference is that these days, I don’t want to cry and suffer. I also know that inflammation and the pendulum swing of using a substance to mask suffering are real, so I have that hard-earned knowledge and experience working for me. So, a tiny bottle of Woodford is all I got. 13 years ago, it would have been a different scenario.
I realized tonight that cutting vegetables can be very therapeutic, especially when a big, heavy knife is used. Of course, then I began to think about the fact that I’ve never cooked or baked things for Thanksgiving before, nor did I ever have them cooked for me at home growing up, except when I went to visit my Dad. The thoughts spiraled. Poor me. Stupid thoughts. Get out of my head. I’m awesome and I’ve come through so much, entirely on my own. If it was poor me, that would not have been possible. Whatever was not done for me as a child, I had to learn by myself. Normal childhoods are overrated.
It’s a good thing I didn’t have any children. My generational trauma ends with me. I will learn to process it all in a healthy way and I will release it. I will face into my shadow every time, learn to understand it, and heal it. I’m not coming back to Earth. I am done after this life. Once I am gone, I will be one with the Universe, never to return to this realm.
I wish you could see me now, Mom. I’ve come so far. A lot of the good things didn’t start to happen until you already had dementia. I finally got my life together. Every once in a while, I feel like you send me a ghost wink. I know you are out there.
To anyone reading this, trust me, call your Mom. Do what you can while she is around. It takes a lot of inner strength to carry it all afterwards. It is a lot of work to get through the things that you’ve hidden away. They are there, whether you think they are or not, and they will find you later. Do your best now.
Call your Mom.
Here is the soundtrack of the last couple months of my life. I’ve already listened to this one a bunch of times, enough times that when I hear one song now, I expect the next one, so I’m calling it done. The last 2 songs changed a few times, but I’ve settled upon a decision. The last month or so has been a ride. Some things have really come around, seemingly from nowhere, so I’m calling this one full circle. It fits, as do the songs, to the journal of my experience and mood the past couple months. As always, it’s a bit dark in here, but as you may have figured out by now, I like it that way. Welcome to my world.
Here are the other mixtapes: https://pinarosana.wordpress.com/category/mixtape/
Here is my profile on Spotify.
Spotify introduced a new feature in 2023 that allows listeners to exclude a playlist from their taste profile. It’s a great option for when you are listening to someone else’s stuff from their profile, or you have guests visiting, and you aren’t sure you want Spotify crafting playlists for you based upon their taste. If you want to explore my playlists and not have it affect your listening profile and song suggestions on Spotify, here’s how to use the handy “exclude from my taste profile” feature, which was introduced in 2023.
Track # – Artist – Song
1 – Drift – 3TEETH
2 – Save Me Now – Billy Idol
3 – Tomorrow’s Sky – HOST
4 – Nightglory – Kirlian Camera
5 – Coronation – The Beautiful & Damned
6 – Goodbye – The Luchagors
7 – Walk With Fire – Hunter As a Horse
8 – Stiff Kittens – Blaqk Audio
9 – Chokehold – Sleep Token
10 – Drown – Kim Dracula
11 – Dammit (After Dark) – Dead On A Sunday
12 – THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND – Bad Omens
13 – Dressed In Dreams – Brody Dalle
14 – Wave Of Mutilation – MXMS
15 – THE PURGE – In This Moment
16 – Glory – Cold Cave
17 – Eyes Without a Face – Marsheaux
18 – Antik – Nachtblut
19 – Black August – Kirlian Camera
20 – Trust – Urban Heat
21 – All the White Horses (Into the Mirror Darkly) – The Crüxshadows
22 – Adrift – Anders Manga
23 – Death Row – MXMS
“Basically, don’t go cave diving with someone who wouldn’t do a reef dive.” -me, 2000.
I was reminded by someone, in a really great and long overdue phone conversation, that I had said that 23 years ago.
I made a phone call last night that I have wanted to make for a very long time. My heart was racing as I dialed.
My statement above, about not going cave diving with someone who wouldn’t do a reef dive, gets mentioned to others by the person I said it to, apparently, to this day. He told me he had just mentioned it during a Zoom meeting.
I woke up at 4 and couldn’t get back to sleep as my mind went racing through all the thoughts and memories. Good thoughts, all of them. That call was much needed. I had so many things I have wanted to say to that person for over a decade, after having reclaimed my life from the destruction I created for myself after the last time we had spoken, 23 years ago. So much catching up that needed to be done. I would have never felt complete had that call never eventually occurred.
I’m so thankful for the five years of my life between 1999 and 2004. I had the best mentor ever, then. He is the strongest influence my life has ever known. I would not be who I am today had our paths never crossed. He has moved on, and did so immediately, and I don’t want to bother him or disturb his life, but I really needed to just reconnect and catch up what unfolded afterwards and make him aware of the influence he had. Some stay for just a season, but what a powerful season it was.
Who knows why things unfold the way they do. I will never cease to be marveled by life.
I said so many things that I have wanted and needed to say for over a decade. Now I am calm. I’m very glad I made that call. It was important to me to do it eventually, and now I have done that. The conversation went really well. 6:48 p.m. is when I called, on Nov. 9. We spoke for 42 minutes and 53 seconds.
Full circle. I am at peace regarding the ensuing destruction I created for myself after things ended between us. I’ve repaired those damages and am living the life I always intended to live, and I’ve had the opportunity to thank him for having initiated me into the process that unfolded.
After our first lunch date, back in 1999, I put a grape Kool-aid packet against the driver’s side window of his black corvette, as a joke, because one of the things he would say when he was hammering people online was “don’t drink the kool-aid” (re: Jim Jones). He was extremely influential to a lot of people and helped to greatly change a lot of standards and procedures for diving, and cave diving in particular. The funny thing is that we met via an internet hammering, because I was reporting a dive death that I happened to know about, and he assumed that I was associated with the practices that caused that death. I wasn’t, and I was quick to correct him, and then we went back and forth on the techdiver forum. I even got a “Mr. Clark” response (re: Tom Clancy). It all played out hilariously, culminating in a relationship that changed my life.
I wish him well. Even my running races, which I didn’t begin until 2014, I can attribute to his influence. He had just completed an IronMan triathlon before we met. He planted the seed.
You never know who you are going to affect, or to what extent. Be excellent, always.
the space between the notes 