You think I’d forget about the blue moon this month? Absolutely not. In fact, it’s very hard for me to forget blue moons. And I’ll explain.

This drawing in fact has been tattooed on my left shoulder blade back in hmmm…2005? So 21 years ago I got a tattoo of the blue moon. I was a hopeless romantic back then. I loved the song by Cowboy Junkies “Blue moon revisited (a song for Elvis)” and I had just had my first heartbreak. Well, it’s a long story but he moved away to Upstate New York. So you can see the appeal of the blue moon song, which ironically I’ll never listen to that song again but I’ll listen to Billie Holiday’s “Blue Moon.”

Hah, it’s funny, I made an entire code mush book on my love for this man. And here’s the punch in the gut, I ended up marrying him (that ended). Yes. He did return, just like the song sort of suggests. The tattoo can be redeemed, and I could give him my stupid code mush book I made him. UGH…but not entirely happy ever after, because I think now, that was all bullshit. All of it. Oh, you’re thinking “Aaaww, how romantic!” No, it wasn’t. Looking back, hell it was not romantic at all. Every bit of my delusional fantasy of him returning and actually loving me etc. It was really all an illusion.  For you see, I was barely an adult, barely knew about life and what it actually takes to love a person. But I don’t know, I could go on about how wrong all that was, but it was a terrible lesson in life. Not all those that come back in your life are there because they love you, sometimes it takes years to figure it out. Sometimes you realize the people who were actually there through your life,  your friends who you casted aside so you could make way for this man returning back into your life, those were the genuine ones,  the ones that mattered. And you threw them aside like a crumpled piece of paper. You’re an idiot and always have been. And THAT’S the hard lesson that I’ll never forget.

And why I’ll never forget a blue moon.

Am I still a hopeless romantic? Only in my dreams, or reading novels and watching movies and I start to get a twitch of the “aawws.” Because now I know what it actually takes to love and be loved and it ain’t about blue moons, making art for them and chasing after their stupid asses. You can say I’m the opposite of hopeless romantic.  I’m a pragmatic nihilistic.

And time and time again I’ll catch myself thinking about it, blue moons and making little drawings for someone to see how special they are to me, and I’ll stop it. I’ll stop the fantasy before it begins. That’s not love. Love starts with friendship, love is effort and love takes time.

So I just have to say that about you, you stupid blue moon!! Goddammit you’re tattooed on me forever!!!