Blessed Curses

* V tread gently

The veil seems thin today. With jumbled up song lyrics that I can’t place circling in my head.

There are so many memories, I’m cursed with them. Yet when they are all that is left…

Children in the sun, barefoot with flowers in our hair. So wild and free.

Pretending that we would live forever and that danger wasn’t real.

Laughing until we cried, crying until we laughed. Making fun of the dangers that we played with.

They are just as jumbled as the song lyrics. Flashes of memory set like movie montages.

We almost died so many times that we forgot the reaper was real.

Ah, now there he is, least understood cryptid, our least favorite psychomps. *

Was he there? Were you scared? Please if any prayer I ever spoke was answered. You were not alone. All the better angels held your hand. That when you closed your eyes on this life you opened them to magic on the other side.

And just like the montage of our lives my brain wants to gloss over the ugly. But I can’t.

Your kit would have been beside you. Your lips blue. They coded you. Chest compressions, ambu bag, epi? Narcan most likely. I can see that too. I’ve done it enough to hear the echos in a room I’ve never stood in.

Between five and eight people who never heard your laugh trying to start your heart. Your precious, loving, misguided, broken heart.

I am so mad at you. Take it back. Fix it.

All I have are memories

Didn’t we do enough damage? Didn’t we pay a high enough price? Why did you think it cost your last breath? Why did you have to give your last heart beat?

I feel you around. But this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

*Psychopomps (from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός, psychopompós, literally meaning the ‘guide of souls’)^[1] are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply to guide them. Oxford Dictionary

Pity

If you are a very patient and dedicated reader then you know that my range of emotion mostly includes a large ball of confusion with everything else and thrown at the wall like a Pollock painting.

Urban dictionary loosely defines End of watch as

a. End of a shift

b. Death in the line of duty, in service to others.

It’s used a lot by the Police. It conjures up a poetic softened picture of sacrifice made.

It’s been bouncing around in my head for a while.

I’m here, caring for the people who broke me in their thirst for excess and filling the holes in their own personal hells. As body and mind break down they become less powerful and more in need of protection from where they ran themselves into ragged torn edges.

You can’t maintain hate for someone you pity. And my heart isn’t hard enough for indifference. So here I am, shielding them again, from the world, each other and the long-term effects of choices they have made.

Age, and health sensibly dictate that it’s almost over. Another few years till my shift is over. Positions of power have shifted, where as once they dictated and demanded cleanup and damage control. Now they look to me for answers.

I wish the memories faded as they themselves diminish. Maybe that will come in time.

And yes, I know that this is just an extension of the misuse and abuse. And yes, I know that I am strong enough to just walk away.

If I allow the past to harden me, to cut them off and cast them out, away from me. Isn’t that what I have struggled against? To not become one of them? To keep on loving and being kind, to give light and sanctuary.

Light and sanctuary, with boundaries. I will do what needs be. I will get frustrated and overwhelmed. And even have the flash fires of the old anger burn themselves out before they ever pass my lips and are born into spoken words.

Because I see more clearly, over grown children used to having their way through meanness and manipulation, but all their toys are broken now. Even me, and I can muster is pity. I will give kindness where none was given, I will have patience where none was shown. Those are the lessons I am taking with me. Cruelty is a great teacher, even if this wasn’t the intended lesson.

Danger Will Robinson*

When I was a kid and Lost in Space came on in reruns the Robot irked me and I ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS thought the creepy doctor was going to kill them all or at least the kid. There a lot of telling information there. Warnings are useless and no one heeds them. And the monsters are someone you know.

I have a panic monster, lives in my gut. Lots of people have a version of it no matter what they call it. Mine grew into being when I was a kid, hence why he is a panic monster.

It’s fear that gnaws at your stomach and takes swipes at your fight or flight instincts. The monster loose in my guts allows the outer me to hold still and look calm. I am guessing that it was a childhood coping mechanism to separate myself from what was happening, or what was bubbling under the surface waiting to happen. And like most of my monsters growing up, didn’t kick them out.

Time blurs when the panic monster is near. Faces super-impose on top. Violence is interchangeable. I see, stepdad, over rapist, over ex husband, over…

Each raised voice, echoes, each sharp movement makes my nerve endings catch fire. Fight or flight. Who am I kidding? Flight isn’t an option. They find you. They always find you. Even wearing someone else’s face.

Patterns. Triggers. It repeats and repeats and motherfucking repeats.

And the panic monster claws at my gut, and runs his finger down my spine. And good respectable folks turn away because it’s uncomfortable.

Lost In Space, September 15, 1965– March 6, 1968, Creator Irwin Allen.

M-o-o-n

Tonight it’s full. Sky is so clear that I could see the milky way from the back yard with the house’s shadow between the moon and I.

I’m even hiding from the moon. My secret keeper. We have been friends since I sat in silence as a child under her soft shine, hiding in corners from the evil men do. Since I watched out the car window as she followed me home, making sure I was safe another night. She knows the secret fears, has seen me cry and stood silent witness to blood spilled back into mother earth.

I know the story of how the sun drowns in the sea each sunset so that she may rise and breath. And how the old gods took pity and allow them to have days sharing the sky so that neither dies of loneliness and heartache.

All these years she has been a dependable constant and I hide. Ashamed of once more again crying over things I cried over before.

In 1986, a lonesome little mouse sang a song in an animated movie. That gave me hope eternal. (would you like some crackers for the cheese in that statement?) It’s truth though, “somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight, someone is thinking of me and missing me tonight”, Mouse was Fievel, in An American Tail. And my love for the moon began.

There has to be a whole psychological profile there that instead of princesses and fairy godmothers and knights in shining armor I latched on to a lost mouse scared and alone in the world looking for hope and family… I mean it’s more complicated story but that is the stripped down version okay?

I digress (again, sorry)

In Sai King’s The Stand, Tom Cullen watches, and knows by the phases of the moon when to leave. M-O-O-N spells prophet. She speaks.

So I’m hiding. Hiding from her knowing gaze. Hiding from her phases. I’m hiding from me too. Everything changes, and yet there is nothing new under the sun. It’s the soft light of the moon that pulls the tides, marks time, makes things less sharp but scarier. Will she tell me when it’s time to go?

Time Out, Please

Where is the cosmic time out button? Who in the Holy hell is in charge of supply and demand for heartache? Someone fell asleep at the wheel.

It’s a smorgasbord to choose from. I have a selected family, not just blood but those who I would bleed for, and have.

When I was down, those who helped me out of the muck. When my soul has faltered, patched me up with pieces of their own. Who where with me when we came out on the other side.

No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don’t.

Stephen King, The Stand

We survived, a life we never asked for, paying a high price for the sins of our fathers. When you hurt, I hurt, because I love you. Can’t turn that off.

And when there are enough outsiders together in one place, a mystic osmosis takes place and you’re inside.

Stephen King, The Stand

We all self medicate, numb the pain in some way, horrible coping mechanisms. Finding oblivion in drinking, drugs, denial, blank space in memory, fast bikes, fast cars, crazy women and dangerous men. Some of us jump out of airplanes, more than one has fallen down the neck of the bottle. Repeating the cycle, history in rewind.

I managed to escape that trap. Can’t catch me, but what moral high ground do I have? Because I sit daily pretending that the demons are not biting at my heels. Because I wake from 3 hours a night of sleep shaking and sweaty fighting ghosts that only I can see. Sometimes so real that I can feel 20 year old bruises until sleep falls away completely. How easy it would be to slip and fall.

We are all just window dressing. Covering old pain and chipped paint with lace and calling it bohemian chic.

V said “Shit, I can’t even form the words, just how much is enough? How much blood, how much flesh? Whose sins are we even paying for any more? I’m losing my faith that there’s a purpose, what kind of power tortures people for the sake of “growth” or “learning”, Nothing I fucking want to believe in”

Flashbacks, I don’t want to attend another unnecessary death. Is it a test? How much can one person carry and still stand, move forward?

I won’t lie, last night I was on my knees. Crying ugly at the weight of the world and the unfairness of the universe. Ghosts all around, knowing I couldn’t save them, that I can’t save anyone who won’t stand up to stop from drowning. There is room for all of us on the goddamned door, but you have to want out of the water and help us pull you up.

She apologized for not being uplifting, love, I’ve known you for 25 plus years, I knew I wasn’t calling Pollyanna. Survival is brutal and leaves scars, and dark humor and love stronger than blood.

I can’t tie this up in a pretty bow, just pulling at the threads that bind us. Change is coming again, you either adapt and evolve, overcome or die trying, or just give up and slip away no matter how hard someone else tries to hold on.

I stayed on my knees and prayed to the universe not for some cosmic hand to save each of them, but for the strength to see it through to the end.

When We Were Young

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” John 8:7

I am far from being without sin, committed by me against others and myself.

I remember when I first loved you. A fiery pixie full of giggles and enthusiastic hugs and life. My sister, my friend, my sister by soul. In spite of all we were surrounded by, or maybe because of it.

It’s a great cover. I’m okay, your okay, it’s the rest of the world that’s fucking crazy. We smiled, we covered, we faked and we numbed the pain.

And most of all we lied to ourselves that it was okay, but not to each other right?

And last night, when I saw the bruises.

I asked and you said “nothing good”. I took your hand and pulled up your sleeve.

You said “I won’t lie” and I cried, soft quiet involuntary tears. All I could say is I love you. And I want you to live.

It’s not the first time, no. But things have changed. Before there was something else to say. A reason to just lay it down and come back.

But children grow up, people change, relationships fall apart and your lost because it hurts and because you feel no purpose and no will to stop.

I can’t give you a reason. Other than you are loved. Other than you know what this looks like. I can plead and cry. I can hold you in my arms just like last night, just like all the years before. I can say I love you and tell you I don’t want to send birthday wishes to heaven with your grandchild like we did for your child.

I can ask please, let us be the ones who break this goddamned cycle. I can tell you I’ll walk this road with you, just like every other road we have walked before. I’ll hold your hand, just like when we were young.

Daddy Issues

Damn, the idea of this has floated around for a while now. And I don’t know if one single post can encompass the topic.

Where does one start?

The first man you ever fall in love with is your Daddy, or who ever fills that role for you. We can all nod yes, knowingly, over coffee or whiskey (pick your poison)

And as humans, we are all flawed.

The entire Pantheon of Gods, and the universe know.

But you don’t see that. As Daddy’s girl. No, you cant see it.

And some, knew good men as fathers.

Some, becoming fathers brought out the good parts.

Others, well. You get what cards are played, right?

She and I struggle in relationships. She and I who’s fathers bore so much resemblance in word and deed.

How do you superimpose the reality of the man over the ideal of the little girl.

How do you fix a lifetime of broken promises and broken birthday wishes that never came true.

How do you build a relationship as an adult with a false hero and fallen God?

We all fail, we all fall.

As a grown woman, I can look backward and see where he tried.

She and I struggle with right and wrong, we talk a lot about gray areas. And looking for things we lost or maybe even never knew.

We look for that thing we loved in those careless men. The strut, the confidence, the swagger. Repeating history for attention and affection and self-worth. Looking for validation and vindication for a child trapped and seeking not escape but just wanting to be noticed and loved.

Does that make you uncomfortable or maybe you understand and that is what makes it worse?

Either way…

Protected: You Forget?

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Tonight

Yesterday I was was hurting.

Today, more of the same.

What is broken in me is sharp and jagged and slicing deeper.

The day before and the day before and the time all the way back to a remember when I wasn’t.

Except, I don’t, I can’t remember when.

I don’t know when the first crack appeared.

My remembering is broken down there too.

I hope, really, for the little girl I was that there did exist a time.

I know that there were places where it was soft.

Few.

I hope that I knew trust in another soul.

That I felt the light from the source on my face.

Every day I wake up with the hope of me being better than the day before.

Some times I am.

And sometimes I cry, mournful of a loss I can’t articulate.

I cry for me and every other lost soul stumbling around with vision clouded by, what if, what was, what can’t be and what can’t be changed.

So tonight

I will bathe in clear cool water

Tonight

I will wait for the stillness to come

Tonight

I will burn sage

Tonight

I will pray

Tonight

I will meditate

Tomorrow the sun will rise on the same horizon, and I know that the same me will turn my face to the warmth, closing my eyes against the glare.

I don’t want to be some one or something else.

Just whole of me, not the sum of broken parts.

I am scar tissue under fresh wounds, I am fierce and loud, I am music and laughter, I am sex and passion, I am soft and yielding.

And tonight I will pray for peace…

And understanding.

Things Done In The Dark

Every one has a past.

Things things that bring them guilt and shame.

“Out damned spot” Lady Macbeth

Should you pack your shit and live there ?

Get stuck on who did what to you or what you did to who ?

( sorry, that line made me smile)

I spent a lot of time there, I have. Wanting to hurt like I had been hurt.

Still wander back sometimes. But I am letting go. And its good.

I feel lighter.

I cant change another person, I cant bend them to my will. Damn, cues lights and the chorus of higher angels.

This slow witted bitch got a clue ! Some where the guardian angel that I drove to drinking and hard drugs just smacked himself in the forehead.

Selective amnesia takes over though. And you forget.

Walk back into the muck without your waders on, optical delusion the water looks so pretty. The blue green color ain’t from the fresh spring honey, its algae and slime that wants to stick to your skin.

Why dont I learn ?

Perfectly timed soothing words are just a cover, or he would have said that, instead of the thing that made me cry. Drowning, gasping for air between sobs.

Ophelia looks so beautiful in the reeds, dying for love and regret, “incapable of her own distress” (William Shakespeare )

Stay awake !

Dont let madness overcome who you are meant to be.

I can and will walk in the light. No matter what I did in the dark to survive.

Things done in the dark change you.

Claim the change, let it rock you and be better for it.

The world is full of people who sit comfortably in their homes telling others how to live.

Those that have never clawed out of the abyss, eyes rounded with terror, breath shaky and short from pain, heart pounding in relief.

Dont close your eyes and sink.

Its one step, one foot at a time.

And gradually the incline changes, cause it aint all up hill. And the weight falls away as you dry, and you get lighter.

Each time you do, your stronger and nightlights help you overcome the fear.

Every day ends in dark. You cant chase the sun forever.

Just become stronger than the fear and more wiley than the thing that hunts you.