… ’cause when it’s a 4:30am covert meeting of a pirate sage and his faithful crew, this shit just hits a little bit harder. Jean-Claude Van DAMN he’s so right …

i AM a “PERFECT MISTAKE”!

It’s taken all of the people in the history of my family tree, and the masterful compilation of their comings and goings, hunting and gathering, scavenging and foraging, falling and rising, destroying and building, sinking and swimming, killing and conquering, lying and truth telling, silence and screaming, plus some perfectly imperfect genetic coding to create this glorious fucking STORM I am.

I’ve known long well that I’m a jacked up train wreck of a beautiful disaster. It was my equally jacked up train wreck of a beautiful disaster husband who would physically hold me in the mirror when I couldn’t see my own reflection and force me to say these words out loud:

I love you Catherine Williamson! Not just some of you – ALL of you!

My husband found me (or did I find him?) when I was at my rock bottom worst in every possible mental and physical way:

For 16 years I have searched for my own reflection in another person’s eyes, but could never find it. I looked in the mirror and felt ugly. I felt dirty, empty, and invisible. I see the way people look at me but have never understood it. What the hell could anyone possibly see? There’s nothing here. I’m hollow. “Lights, smoke, and illusion!” Please, please, please Henrik, hear what I am saying. Last July, when it was finally time for the doctors to take the bandages off my chest and stomach, I came home and couldn’t even walk past a mirror, much less look inside one. I knew then that my destruction was finally complete, but just didn’t know how to reckon myself with the reality. That’s when I decided to not EVER search for my missing reflection again, whether in a mirror or through the eyes of another! I just gave up. Two full days passed before I was finally able to take my shirt off and I couldn’t actually look at myself for weeks. When the day finally came, I just stood there and cried. I touched my scars, held my stomach, dropped down to my bathroom floor, and cried for so many hours you can’t imagine. I have played the game very well I might add with the cards I’ve been dealt in a manner that would cause no one I love to suffer.

{“So Far Away“}

It was his unconditional love for me just the way I was that chased away the clouds of “imperfection” that had once loomed over my head. Slowly, but surely, I became less afraid to surrender “all of me” to not just my love for him, but the love I’d always needed for myself.

God Himself knows how much I do truly love myself now, PERFECT MISTAKES AND ALL, and not a day passes that I don’t still stand in the mirror and literally see my husband, my God, my angels, my ancestors, and even a few of my demons standing right behind me whispering:

You’ve got this, Catherine! You’re our reason! You’re our gift! You’re our scion, our message, and our voice!

They’re the pirates who came before me and the zephyrs in my sky who forged this path and built this mountain for me to stand on as they push me into the perpetual state of punctuation and magic I’ve become as I navigate this sea of madness. In the meantime, as I continue to soar through these golden years of mine, “I’ll be wearing steel that’s bright and true and carrying the news that must get through! I hold no quarter! No quarter, oh!”

I love you dearly, Ivan Moody, my kindred soul and friend. I cannot tell you how long I’ve waited for the perfect time, space, and words to blog this song. It was one of his favorites and I listen to it often. He truly believed that he was a pirate in another life, and the first time I ever heard him say it, I thought he was just being silly. He wasn’t. Every single time that man stared out across an ocean amid our many adventures, he insisted that he’d been out there before. The funny thing is that while searching for the missing pieces of himself that he’d never known anything about because of his abysmal childhood, the Ancestry report we fetched really did seem to point in that direction. Meanwhile, here I am, just swabbing the deck of my proverbial ship, and I cannot thank you enough. Your words of wisdom and the magic in your alchemy never cease to amaze me. I truly hope that they’re blowing through the sails of some other jacked up pirates’ sails, too.

NO QUARTER

Close the door, put out the light. No, I won’t be home tonight. The snow falls hard and don’t you know? The winds of Thor are blowing cold. I’m wearing steel that’s bright and true and carrying news that must get through. I choose the path where no-one goes. I hold no quarter, no quarter, oh! Walking side-by-side with death. The devil mocks my every step, ooh. The snow drives back the foot that’s slow. The dogs of doom are howling more. I carry news that must get through to build a dream for me and you, oh, oh, oh. This path I choose where no one goes … I hold no quarter, oh. {Led Zeppelin}