My mother never wanted us to have a dog. She swore that she was bitten as a child and was terrified. I didn’t believe her. Doesn’t every Mom say that? Don’t they all say they walked to school every day in two feet of snow uphill both ways? She felt the same way about bicycles, skateboards, roller-skates and well; anything fun. Funny, she never warned me about drugs, alcohol and cowboys? My life may have turned out different if she would have talked to me about SEX. Oh god, I just wrote about SEX here. I never believed my mother about the dog story until after she died and I found these photos. Wow, that was one bad dog.

Mom, all I have to say is……

Neener, neener, neener — I got a daawwg!!!

Happy Mother’s Day wherever you are.

Someone gave me a camera when I was 13. It fulfilled every need I ever had at the moment. A young girl who can’t yet decide between breaking free and staying inside. The camera was my buffer between the scary world I inhabited and the world I dreamed of living in.

One day I took my camera with me and my sister out to the refuge where we walked out dogs on a daily basis. I sat her down in the full afternoon sun handed her some flowers and told her to look down. This beautiful image was the product.

After I took the photo I handed my sister the camera and said, “now do me”. Just at that moment my sister held the camera up and my dog Sally ran by after swimming in the pond and chasing ducks. Sally’s wagging tail smacked me right in the face.

Its not just the my anvil shaped hair, or my unfortunate bone structure or my bad skin. Its the fact that unless I’m given plenty of warning this is how my photographs usually turn out.

That photograph of my sister - I stuck with it because of that one print.

A few years back a relationship ended and I thought I would never recover. I’ve written about before in my fear of commitment series. A series that proves there is no such thing as a white knight and for the most part fairy tales are for movies only.

I’ve had little contact with my International Man of Mystery mostly because he might be one of the few who I cannot be friends with. This particular relationship ended suddenly and, painfully. There was no long months of discomfort and fighting. There was no “unhappy” talks; it just ended very quickly over email, over an ocean and a 8 hour time difference. To say I was crushed is an understatement. There were many tears, there was anger, there were bottles and bottles of bourbon and I was left to deal with it. “I told you so” came out of a lot of mouths; which is fun like salt with blood and open wounds. However, I do not ever regret the time we spent together; it was truly some of the best times of my life.

A year later, the week that my mother died was an emotional roller coster. On one hand, I was happy she was finally no longer in pain; on the other hand I selfishly wanted her here so I could come to some sort of conclusion on our lives together. I stepped into work one afternoon to clean up a few things before I took time off to bury my mother. I walked into the office and began half-heartedly scanning my email. Suddenly my eyes caught an email from my International Man of Mystery.  My heart dropped found a way to drop further than it already was. I was stunned, I stared for a very long time. I didn’t open the email.

I called my best friend. “There’s an email”, I whispered half scrunched under my desk.

“What do I do? I’m scared”

She asked, “Why are you whispering?”

I answer, “I don’t know. I feel like he can see me through the monitor.” 

Her direct order, “do not answer him”.

I hung up the phone and immediately opened the email. It was composed in a strange way and almost seemed like a form. “Hi, just updating my contacts. How are you?” I explained that my mother just died and that I’m not going to be in the office for a week. He can reach me at my hotmail address if he wants to catch up. A day later I was parked at my computer, drinking bourbon attempting to compose my mother’s eulogy. Most people lie during eulogies. I had every intention of telling the truth. I couldn’t figure out how to say, “my mother was a junkie, her life was fucked up” and make it funny. My International Man of Mystery popped online.

We made the small talk, he expressed his sympathies and I accepted. I was drained emotionally, I had nothing for him that day. He asked if I hated him and I lied and said no. I had no room for hatred that day. He explained what happened and how that other girl in London treated him badly and said bummer. I told him that secretly I was happy she treated him terrible because I would have never treated him that way. He asked me to send my mother’s eulogy to him so he could somehow be there for me. We signed off and we never spoke again. That conversation haunted me, all the pain rushed back but my capacity to deal with it was at a minimum. I still didn’t date for years after that relationship ended. Sex was an act of revenge, love was out of the question.

I tried to google him every now and then and found nothing. We girls do this, we google our past in hopes to find answers, validation, resolution. We want to know that the current girl is an ugly troll, we want to know that our ex’s are failures. We somehow need this to move on. I learned my lesson about googling after I found out my real-father actually committed suiced when I was three. Wow, not only have I spent my whole life looking for my fabled father but I found out my ultimate fantasy, my white knight, the one that had to be rich and normal and would rescue me from “these horrible people that have held me hostage all my life”  was as fucked up as everything else in your life.

I don’t google people much; I really, honestly, truly - don’t want to know.

Last Sunday I was editing “the book” and I came across another “HI, check out my updated profile” email from International Man of Mystery. I clicked on it nonchalantly; more out of curiosity. There were pictures where there were no pictures before, there was a life that I never knew about before. There he was living the life I thought I would be living some day with him. There was a house under construction, vacation pictures with a woman and eventually a baby. A baby, a baby, a baby.

My only thought; “At least I didn’t have to give birth again.” I somehow dodged a bullet.

That moment I realized that because I did not spontaneously combust, because my heart didn’t physically jump out of my chest so the dog could chew on it, because I didn’t cry. I’m over it -  finally fucking over it.

Dangerous Sky - Photo by Chantel Williams 

Available on Zazzle 

When I was a teenager I went through some of the hardest times of my life. This place used to be my home. I haven’t gone back there since I graduated high school in 1990. I turned my back on my dead step-father and my drug addicted mother.

For some reason this weekend I decided to take a drive and I ended up here. Next to Lake River, where I used to ride my bike every weekend to escape, to swim, to sit in the sun. I came without the anxiety, without the worries, in a completely different mind-set. I came and didn’t feel like I thought I would. I felt very little just a simple appreciation for the beauty of it all.