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Monday, March 29, 2010

re anonymous 3

I got a comment from an anonymous reader of this blog asking me to give dates for the things that happened to me. I can only answer that with this, I have major holes in my memories, and serious trouble with timelines. Most of my memories gravitate around ages 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and a couple of scary things in my early 20’s. Not all of the abuses I suffered were at the hands of the same person or people. I was raped by strangers, mentally and verbally abused by parental figures, starved or kept in a constant taste of hunger by step parents, raped by step brother, and also by other boys, family members, etc. The worst of what I lived through for me was the terror, the physical abuse, and the fear of never knowing when dad would be the bad dad or the good dad, or if the brother was going to be the bad brother or the good brother. The brother took up where the father left off when the divorce happened. Living in constant fear of being hurt made life a living hell for me growing up. The people in my life who hurt me and won’t accept that they did can kiss my ass at this point. It is no longer about what was or was not done. My life is about trying to learn to live in the now and not in the past. If you, anonymous, would look at my answer to someone else’s comments on a different entry, you would see that I take responsibility for my part, not defending myself, not telling, not giving up. I found a way to survive, splintered, angry, hurting, but alive and trying to get myself to a point of living in the present.

Color me Maureen

I know I am not supposed to need anyone to make my life better. I know it all comes from in me, but sometimes you meet someone and the world lights up, colors are brighter, smells sweeter, and it seems it’s all because of her. Then I go and cross boundaries, talk too much, spill too much, get over sensitive, and impatient, and I fucking drive her away. Colors fade, no time is a good time because in a crowd I would rather be with her, at a party I miss her, bars are boring when the music is too loud, and just about every activity that I want to do reminds me of her and wanting to share it with her.

I looked at the Moon tonight and wished I could share the view of it between trees with her. I took a photo with my phone, and after figuring out how to take a night shot with the phone, I sent her a pic, but it wasn’t the same as saying, “Hey Babe, look at that, isn’t it beautiful?” When I see a sunset all colorful and amazing, the first person I want to share it with is her. When I sing karaoke, if I have no one to sing to, I just kind of go through the motions.

Life has a hell of a lot less color for me lately. It isn’t as much she isn’t dating me anymore as it is I know I fucked it up and can’t fix it. I can’t become more patient or less annoying overnight. I talk too fast, too much, about anything and everything, like I have no filter and no boundaries. I know I cross other people’s boundaries. I know I tossed at her just about everything there is to know about me and then waited for it all to make her dislike me. I let myself feel hurt over stuff that wasn’t that big a deal, but I totally get hurt easily.

I used to be able to keep people from knowing I was hurt, but I can’t anymore. It has taken years to peel away layers of bullshit to be able to be present with my feelings when I feel them, but now I am overly sensitive. Overly sensitive isn’t a good thing. I would rather feel than not feel, be sensitive rather than insensitive; oh wait that whole boundary thing and talking too much, kind of insensitive. I can be so dumb sometimes for such a smart woman.

Years I’ve been single, with some short lived relationships here and there, and I always wanted someone to flirt with me, try to pick me up in the bar; I wouldn’t actually go with anyone I got hit on in a bar, but I wanted someone to try. Tonight I got flirted with and hit on and it was no fun at all because all I could think of was the one I drove away.

Every time I consult my little blue book about the subject of “her” and if there is any way it would ever come to pass that I could be healthy enough for her, I get the same page. It might seem as though perhaps the book just always opens to that page, but no, asking other questions, I get different answers. The Universe seems to want me to figure this shit out on my own. It really wouldn’t matter if tomorrow she said she would take me back, because I have been told I am not to date right now. I need to get me and my emotions under some sort of control before I can date again. I have much to learn and much to understand about myself before I can understand or learn about anyone else.

At least as a friend she’s still someone I really enjoy being around. I would rather spend an afternoon sitting in her room sharing thoughts, feelings, and dreams with each other than go out to bars or whatever. I would love to go to her house and cook for her and just relax way more than going out or whatever.

I need to bring the color back to my life with my writing. I need to bring color back to my life by growing. I need to bring color back to my life by being accepted to the school I want to be accepted at for my Masters. I need to bring color back to my life by getting something published somewhere. I need to bring the color back to my life by writing new poetry and finding new insights.

Only I can bring the color back to my life.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Coming Out

Coming Out

If you are reading this, you already know I came out of the closet as a lesbian when I was 21, a very long time ago. What you don’t know is that I was first told I was DID or had multiple personalities back when I was 28, and I am just coming out about it now. I’ve probably known longer than that because I have always had an alter ego named Mikey with me. I have spent my entire life learning to cover for these personalities, taking the blame for rage, being thought of as stupid for forgetting important things or not being able to do word problems in math, being thought of as a daydreamer because I lose connection to reality and stare into space, being diagnosed as bipolar and borderline personality disorder, and lying to cover things my alters did. I do suffer from depression. It would be weird to grow up in the environment I did and not be depressed.

I am a ham. I am a ham because I like attention. I am starved for attention. I grew up starved for attention. The attention I did get was negative. I have sought out negative attention because it is what I know. It is not right that I have done so. It has been suggested that I am only saying I am DID to get attention. It has been said this is me crying wolf. It has been suggested that my suicidal depressions have been me crying wolf.

None of that is true. I have covered up my DID for a long time, at least since I was a child. I have kept, and do keep, my feelings of watching myself from a distance to myself. I got carried away when I finally put a name on this thing, when I finally listened to a therapist who caught me in a dissociative state, and allowed myself to admit what I knew was true. I posted things on Facebook and MySpace that I shouldn’t have. I allowed some of my alters to post things. My alter Mikey, although only 8 is smart like me and has been coconscious with me through all of my education, so he knows almost everything I know. He can’t write an analytical paper or literary criticism, but he has a large vocabulary, as I did at his age, and he sounds good on paper. You wouldn’t think as much of him if you heard him speak, he has a speech problem and talks like a 4 year old. He also has a twin sister who stutters.

My cries for help when I am suicidal are because the last time I actually attempted it, I didn’t call anyone, not even when the attempt failed and I spent an entire day trying to sleep the drugs off and feeling like all I had done was kill a shitload of brain cells. I ask for help now. I’ve been taught in therapy to reach out, ask for help, say something, don’t let it stew in my head, making the plans, writing all of the good-bye letters, let it out. So I let it out. I go to friends, I go to hospitals, I call hotlines, I reach out! I am not crying wolf. Yes, my feelings of suicide come and go, but they are present way more than most people know. I don’t always feel that the feelings are getting the better of me. This coming month is the 5 year anniversary of my brother’s suicide. I am feeling a lot of different feelings about that, suicidal, worried, confused, angry, and lost. I am trying to hang on to a few really good things, like “Buddy’s Day” when I get to bring friends with me to the park in Long Beach and help homeless people, my best friends, Peggy and Susan, are both celebrating good things; Peggy’s 5 year anniversary of being married to a great guy is coming up and Susan is 5 years cancer free in April. These are the things that keep my mind off wanting to kill myself to silence the alters who all want to share every last awful memory with me now that I am acknowledging their presence.

I am DID. I have “people” in my head. They all came into being to help me survive things no child should have to survive. I lived through things that I have never shared outside of therapy. Even my partner of 8 ½ years doesn’t know all of it, because telling her everything might make her hate me or my family. It might make her hate my family. I wanted her to dislike them the way I did, but it didn’t seem fair for her to dislike them for the things that happened so long ago. I had to cover up a lot of behaviors to make sure she didn’t know the real truth about me. She knew I was a shoplifter, but she didn’t know it was Mikey who liked to steal things. She knew I had rage, which I let her think was the bipolar disorder, and not that it was MJ who was raging. I did a lot of taking the blame for things that I couldn’t even remember doing.

I have lied for years about how much time I lose and how much I don’t know. I lost time a lot as a child; as a matter of fact I don’t remember a whole lot of my childhood. I have some of the memories, and they aren’t all good, but if what I recall is bad, how bad must have been the things that my alters have held back from me? If I am ever talking to you, and unfortunately I do talk to or at people and not with them, and I don’t suddenly seem to know what we were talking about, that is because I dissociated. It happens.

I’m not going to say I am not a liar; I have lied about a lot of things, mostly to cover up my condition. I have also lied about experiences, or should I say they have lied, they have their own lives that I didn’t live, that they only lived in my head. It is the fact that I did not let my imagination die that has allowed my mind to create these people who have whole lives of their own. Lucky me!

I am more than myself; I am “we.” “We” are a team, just forming to become a unified Maureen who can solve her own problems and take care of herself. Something I have done few times in my life. I have never been fully self-supporting monetarily. I have never lived without family or a roommate or partner. Our goal for me is to get to a place where I can take care of me. It might take all of my inner people to care for me, but at least it will all come from inside me.

I’d like to introduce a few of my alters to you: Mikey, age 8, always present; MJ (Mathias James), don’t call him that, age not determined at this point, my anger, my protector, full of rage, especially road rage; Annette, age 25, self-confident, does job interviews, is out when I am feeling good and grown up; Sian Barbara, age not yet determined, comforter, self soother; Gregory, 17, laid back, he drives when I am unable or too anxious; Reeny, age 8, Mikey’s twin, stutters, is very shy; Patti, knows all of the math stuff I don’t know; and Jolene, age 55, southern feisty women.
I still don’t know about all of them, it comes out a little at a time in therapy. I know they are in my head, but they have been “in hiding” for so very long that they are slow to come forward. There are actually more alters who are waiting in the wings to come forward and tell their story.

I will talk about having alters and bad memories. I will talk about having PTSD, but I don’t usually talk much about the things that actually happened to me because I feel guilty for not being better at protecting myself. I feel guilty for not telling my parents when it was happening. I listened to the threats and thought they were real. I am still afraid to tell all of it to anyone. I am glad I have other “people” to hold some of the memories. What I remember is bad enough.

I have always answered to Maureen, and we will continue to answer to that. My name is Maureen. I am a 49 year old woman. I have some other “people” in my head and they are different ages. I am not them, although they are part of me. I am still the same person all of my friends have known, but now I am coming out about all of the pieces that make up this person named Maureen. I have been losing friends and it isn’t fun. You think people care about you, but then you say something unpopular about yourself and it drives people away. I’m sorry my friends have trouble accepting this thing about me, but if they chose to let me go because they are finding out now something that has always been, well that is their loss.

I talk too much. I cross boundaries. I fuck up a lot. But I also am very giving, loving, understanding, and warm. I have been a terrible listener, but I am working on that.

I am hoping maybe some people understand me better now, but if they don’t, oh well.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

conspiracy theory

I had a realization tonight, and it might sound kind of weird, but I am proud of the things my mind did to survive the hell my life was with the boys and men around me as a child. Maybe it’s wrong to be proud my mind splintered into pieces, but the alternative might have been much worse! I am still me, and I am a bit more. I feel like Humpty-freaking-Dumpty, except I have hope for getting put back together again. The mind is an incredible thing, to think of ways to survive horrors. Probably having a great imagination as a child is what saved me. I was able to create “people” to take what I could not. And the coolest thing about the mind is that I did this incredible thing without knowing it. I managed to live into my thirties really before I knew that I was probably not alone in my head.
Now there’s a cover up and conspiracy for you, my mind hid itself from me in a way. So here are all of these people cropping up in my head, and they mostly know each other, but they totally keep themselves a secret from me. I did have Mikey, but I always thought he was like a mask I put on or an imaginary playmate that just never grew up and never went away. Major cover up, they kept things from me, still do. I am not even allowed to start asking them about memories I don’t have yet. I would love to fill in the blanks, but noooo, that’s not part of the plan. So now I have my alters and my therapist in a conspiracy to keep me from filling those gaps. I’m also realizing I am missing a lot more time than I thought. I don’t share family memories. I find many of the events my family recalls are things I saw only as dreams. I never guessed until when I was around 32 that my therapist at the time suggested I might be dissociative.
I really want to write more about this, but I can’t right now, others are asking for body time and I need to rest my eyes. I think I’ve been in front of this screen more than two thirds of my waking day.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

My Autobiography of sorts

Life Just Kept on Walking
Our autobiography is to be about our movement, geographically, emotionally or educationally. I am not sure where mine is going at this point. I am unsure what I want to share. If I tell the truth, the whole truth, it becomes something unbelievable for most people. Suffice it to say I am torn between telling it as it was, or as I wanted it to be. Or maybe I just want to put in the few good memories and leave it at that. I do not want to shock anyone with the horrors of my childhood, but I want to be honest. Being honest may mean being harsh and shocking. My life reads like bad fiction. I walked through much of my life wearing labels other people put on me. Later in my story I will address this label issue. For now I think I will leave out the goriest details and just put in the moments that had the biggest impact on me.
First Memory
My earliest memory is riding in the back seat of our family's car and noticing the appearance of my leg changed if I lifted it off the seat. I kept lifting it and setting it down again, thin, fat, thin, fat again. I was intrigued. I do not know how old I was, but my foot barely extended past the seat bottom, so I was fairly small. I am alone in this memory, as I seem to be in most of the memories prior to my family going through divorce when I was eight years old. It is one of the few positive memories I have before my parents divorced when I was eight.
We lived in the sleepy little town of Whittier, California. My mother has attended college at a small Quaker college in Richmond Indiana, which just so happened to be the sister school of Whittier College. She had a professor who always talked of Whittier with great fondness and all of her school friends wished he would just move back there. Never did it occur to her that Whittier would one day be her home.
I did something that surprised my mother when I was about 4 years old; I began to read. I read labels at the grocery store. I read the simple books I had. Mother thought I had memorized the books and chalked the label reading up to the pictures on the cans. But when she brought home a book I had not yet read, or had read to me, I was able to read most of the words in it. No one told me that I had done something spectacular in teaching myself to read, they never really said much about it at all. The opposite was true in our home. I was treated as if I was stupid and frequently called "stupid" or "idiot" by my parents. By the time I started Kindergarten my brother was studying cursive writing, and I began to imitate him. So the first time I was asked to put my name on a paper at school, I wrote it in cursive. Again, no one seemed to think this was unusual. However, I began to know I was doing something different because my friends could not read or write. It would be many years before I truly knew I was not stupid. I wrote this poem because of the label my family put on me. It is my voice and the voice of many others.
LABELS

You called me STUPID,
And I believed,
I called me SMART,
And I achieved.

You called me DYKE,
Like I was dirt,
I called me LESBIAN,
It didn't hurt.

You called me OLD,
All used up,
I called me YOUNG,
I'm just a pup.

You called me GREASER,
No good and lazy,
I called me LATINA,
Worked like crazy.

You called me NIGGER,
Good for nothing,
I called me BLACK,
Now I'm really something.

You called me KIKE,
Christ killer and cheap,
I called me JEW,
My pride to keep.

You called me INJUN,
Drunken red face,
I called me NATIVE,
I was here in the first place.

You called me FAG,
A person to bash,
I called me GAY,
Your labels I smash.

You called me STRANGE,
Twisted and bent,
I called me NORMAL,
Just a little different.

You called me by LABELS
That made me want to hide,
I called me by LABELS
That I could wear with pride.

You called me a NOTHING,
What could I do?
I call me a PERSON,
Just like you.

I loved to read. The first book that I fell in love with was Harold and the Purple Crayon. It was a marvelous story of a little boy who drew adventures with his purple crayon and then lived in those adventures. He became part of what he had drawn. It was a while before I understood it was his imagination that he was living in. I would draw in hopes of somehow getting into my drawings like he did. Harold was my hero and purple was his color. To this day purple is my favorite color. The other book I loved the most as a child was Where the Wild Things Are. I loved stories where children went away from the real world and had adventures. I was living in a not so wonderful family and longed for escape, which I found in the books I read. I loved The Owl and The Pussycat. I loved to look into the drawings in picture books and see myself in them. I wanted to be free, and in reading I was; free of the dramatic rescues of a mother who tried to kill herself, free of the males who hurt me, hit me, free of the other children who taunted me for wearing glasses and being “weird.” I honestly don’t know what weird or different is to a 5 year old. It was as though they could see through me to the abused, broken child I kept hidden inside.
First Grade
I had the coolest teacher for first grade, Mrs. Schubert. She was wonderful. She helped me adjust to the discovery that I needed glasses. The discovery was actually quite startling for me. A note was sent to my parents spelling out that I was more than likely going to have trouble learning to read. Now they knew I could already read so they blew it off. Two weeks later they did routine eye screening; the woman gave me a Dixie cup and told me to cover my right eye and read the chart. My response was, “What chart?” A letter went home immediately telling my parents I am legally blind in one eye; reading ability no longer in question. She made me feel special about wearing the glasses, so I didn't feel like a geek. In the middle of that year her husband accepted a job in another state, and she left me. I was devastated. This is my poem about it.

Mother’s Day
As I sat in my first grade class
waiting for the time to pass,
I twiddled my thumbs and twirled my hair;
for the assignment of math, I didn’t care.

My beloved teacher had moved away.
How much that hurt I wouldn’t say.
Mrs. Schubert was gone, Miss Boils in her place.
The first one was kind, this one a rat face.
It was my job to drive her berserk;
from the day she arrived I refused to work.

The time for math over, now time for fun,
I wasn’t allowed, my math wasn’t done.
We were to make gifts for Mother’s Day.
I sat with my math, not allowed to play.

Colored popcorn and beans on a paper plate,
That I wasn’t included filled me with hate.
I sat alone facing her wrath.
I wouldn’t give in, I would do no math.

Everyone left carrying their prize,
I walked home with down turned eyes.
Looking down I found a wondrous thing;
I discovered a butterfly wing.
Oh, it was a beauty to behold
the delicate wing of black and gold.
My face lit up; the day wasn’t black.

Over the years, and looking back
on the gift I gave that day to my mother,
it’s the one she remembers above any other.


Christmas A. D. (After Divorce)
The year my parents divorced I was eight years old. We moved, not once but twice in that year. We settled in an apartment in La Mirada, right on the line between La Mirada and Whittier. We were within walking distance of the home I had lived in the first eight years of my life. Money was tight, very tight. Mom had almost no money and it was getting close to Christmas. She sat us, my older brother and I, down for a heart to heart about what to expect at Christmas time. We were both past the age of believing in Santa. She was frank with us. We were not going to have a tree. There would be no presents. She would save what she could to make a nice holiday dinner for us. It was going to be a really poor Christmas. She was so depressed and she cried as she told us all of this. I, being the one who assumed the role of "fixer" in our family, decided I would have to do something to fix it for her.
We lived in an apartment on a street behind a Vons grocery store. They had their Christmas trees out the day after Thanksgiving. I went there to play in the trees, to pretend one was mine, all decorated and pretty. As I was playing there for the umpteenth time, I spotted this spindly little tree about my height. It had very sparse needles and it was kind of light green, not the rich green of a Plantation Douglas fir. I was reminded of the forlorn little tree in the Charlie Brown Christmas Story. I stopped to read the price tag. If I could afford this tree, I would help mom and make the tree not so lonely. It was only 75 cents, but for me it might as well have been $75. However, I decided I was going to try to get that tree. I hoped that being so sparse and all no one would want to buy it before I could gather that much money. The man in charge of selling the trees, or guarding them or whatever his job was, allowed me to put the tree way in the back, shielded by other trees.
I enlisted my brother's help. Asking him for help was not easy. I never knew if he would be nice or mean. He was nice this time. We began to scrounge through the dumpsters behind our apartments looking for returnable bottles. All pop bottles were returnable back then. Small bottles were a nickel, bigger ones a dime. We found some, but not enough. We got into mom's closet and looked through the bottoms of her old purses, where we found a few more pennies. We started expanding our dumpster search. He boosted me over the side and I would dig through the yucky trash looking for those bottles. It took us almost a week, but we came up with the 75 cents we needed. The tree was still there last I had checked, and I checked twice a day at least.
Mom must have known we were up to something because when we asked her if she needed anything from the store, she sent us after something cheap she didn’t really need. We ran off to the store. Mom was home watching TV. The tree was right where it had been all along. We paid the man and started carrying it home. Mom says she heard us giggling as we climbed the stairs to our apartment. We set the tree down in front of the door, knocked and hid behind the air conditioner.
Mom was flabbergasted. She cried. She couldn't think of what to say. She put her arms around us both and cried some more. I felt warm inside. Mom was happy and I hadn't seen her happy in a very long time.
Something in Mom changed at that moment. She went out and took out a loan against our home furnishings to make sure we had gifts that year. Our little tree dried up and died before Christmas; Mom replaced it with a larger, greener one. I was grateful for the gifts I got that year, though I cannot remember one thing I got. I only remember the gift I gave. It was year I learned that giving was the real gift at Christmas time.
Sixth grade
I moved in with my father, and for the 5th time in 4 years, I changed schools. At my new school there was a student teacher who read to us the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull. He made it come alive for me. He pointed out the symbolism and forever changed the way I read anything. I began to look for meanings beyond the words. But even more than that, he introduced me to Richard Bach, a writer and philosopher who has changed the way I see the world. I was very fond of the man, whose name I still remember, Mr. Dzerzhinsky (I am unsure of the spelling, but we all called my Mr. "D" anyway.). The day he was leaving for good I cried and cried. My friends all thought I had a crush on him, but I did not, I simply admired him and felt close to him in a father daughter kind of way. I was afraid to go see him while I was crying but my friends urged me on. So I went to him and as I got angry with myself for not being able to speak to him without crying, he spoke softly to me and said, "Remember this, it is better to feel things and feel them deeply than to never feel at all." I have never forgotten that and I have learned to forgive the tears I cannot always control. He changed my life forever.
High school
I actually got to go to three years of high school at one school. That was the record for me until college, three consecutive years at one school. So I started ninth grade, a geek, or a freak depending on who you asked. I was definitely not one of the "In Crowd." I had to ride a bus to school in Pomona; we lived in Diamond Bar at the time. At the bus stop there was a girl, a geek like me. She didn't wear the cool clothes. Her hair was pulled into to pony tails at the sides of her head. He hair was blond and her eyes a piercing blue. She had a full woman's figure, with hips and curves. I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I was shy, but in time we became buddies, sitting together on the bus every morning and every afternoon.
Over the course of a few months we got to be best friends. I was smitten with her. I was just beginning to understand the feelings that had made me feel so different from my school-mates all through the years of puberty. I was just learning about lesbianism and I knew it was finally a label that fit me. I was in love with, or had a major crush on my best friend.
There was an afternoon when we were hanging out in my room. We were listening to Neil Diamond. I leaned over and kissed her softly on the cheek. She turned to face me and I kissed her mouth. My heart was beating a mile a minute. I felt like I was going to fly into bits. I thought she would push me away, but she kissed me back, for a moment, and then the moment was gone. She said she couldn’t do “that” again, explaining that she had already had a lesbian experience and the guilt over it had eaten at her, so she just could never do it again. She was my first friend in a long time; I do mean close friend. She was the first person outside my family, and therefore required to, hug me. We so close through most of the three years I was at that school that my fantasy of her being in love with me almost became real to me. We never kissed again, but the kisses in my fantasies, wow, those kisses were dyn-o-mite. I mention her here not only to tell you of my being a lesbian, but also because Meri Lou, that was her name, was the first person to tell me I was smart. She encouraged me to excel in school. She got me into deep discussions about books we had read. She challenged me to be the "A" student I could be. I was still attached to the label of "stupid" my family had given me, but I think I began in that time to shrink that label if not yet to discard it.
It was in these, my teen years, that I also began to show signs of what would many years later be diagnosed as bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder, and other mental health issues. I had some rather spectacular psychotic breaks, one very memorable one at school. I don't know what spurred it, a whole chunk of time is missing and I was suddenly throwing my book bag at a boy's head and screaming at him that all men were disgusting and stupid. Then I started roaming the halls trying to find Meri Lou. I knew I would be okay, I could calm down, if only she were there. A campus proctor tried to grab me, but I pulled myself loose and kept moving. It eventually took two proctors to rein me in and get me to the Vice Principal's office. The school psychologist was called in. The nurse was there. They got out of my rantings and ravings about men and school, and whatever else I was ranting about, that I wanted Meri Lou. They got her from her class. We were allowed to go into the nurse's office and there she held me until I could calm down. My father was called and I was taken home. My father's reaction was not one of understanding, but of threats as to what might be my punishment should I ever "pull any crap like that again!" There were to be many more outbursts of that nature, and with them many depressions, with a few suicide attempts thrown in here and there. Neither of my parents, or anyone for that matter, ever tried to find out why I was having such outbursts and depressions. I was 35 before I was diagnosed and treated with medication. To give my mother credit she knew I was troubled back when I was 8 or so, and took me to see a therapist. The therapist kind of traumatized me by exposing her crotch to me. I was fascinated seeing a grown woman’s private pats and also so freaked out I puked on the way home.
My mental illness kept me from completing my education in a timely manner. It is still a factor. I have been going to college off and on since 1980. I took 3 years of Theatre classes and went out into the world to work as a stagehand. I have one AA degree that I got in 1995 with highest honors. I applied to Whittier College and was accepted, but could not afford the tuition because I had defaulted on an old student loan. I stuck around community college a while longer while I rehabilitated that loan then applied to California State University Fullerton and started attending classes there. My mental health became an issue as I tried to balance a relationship, a job, and school. I screwed up my GPA and dropped out of school to keep my job and relationship. I was blessed to have a very understanding and loving partner. My mental health was an issue in the relationship as well. At CSUF in my poetry writing class I wrote two sonnets, or attempted to; this is one:

Sonnet of the Mentally Ill

You know what it’s like to live in my head?
Connections aren’t made like they are for you.
More often than not you wish you were dead.
It’s hard keeping straight what’s what and who’s who.

Important things get lost in the jumble.
The pill drill can help, though not all the time.
Frustration at this can make you mumble,
But take them you must, or walls you will climb.

Some days it’s hard not to sink through the floor,
With mangled thoughts and twisted perception,
I don’t want to feel this way anymore.
Shrinks say they cure; what cunning deception.

Counseling may help, and the drugs do too,
But all said and done, I’d rather be you.

1998


The Chemistry Game

My brain chemistry
Plays games with me.
Day after day,
Level I can stay.
But one tiny bump,
Comes to my throat a big lump.
As I Choke on the rage
Too varied to gauge,
I fly off the handle,
And Flare up like a candle.
Then suddenly it drops,
The mania stops.
Falling out of control
Deep into a hole.
Passing ground zero,
No longer the hero.
Deep into the pit.
I’m tired of this shit!
My brain chemistry
Plays games with me.
We never have fun,
It’s a loaded gun,
Pointed at my head,
One slip and I’m dead.

2003

I wrote this one while staying in a mental health unit trying to get through a deep depression.

The Pillity Pop!

I've got lots of questions,
please don't tell me lies.
What happens inside me
when sanity dies?

Chemicals, Shmemicals,
how hard can it be,
Pillity, Poppity,
to find the right key?

What makes me so different?
Don't pretend its not so,
my pistons aren't firing
all in a row.

Chemicals, Shmemicals,
what kind of a mix,
Pillity, Poppity,
my brain it might fix?

How is it possible,
how can it be,
that taking a drug,
makes me more me?

Chemicals, Schmemicals
take this one to see,
Pillity, Poppity,
some semblance of me.

What can I tell you
I don't make the rules?
If this isn't real,
the doctors are fools.

Chemicals, Schmemicals,
I take a bite here,
Pillity, Poppity,
I'm shrinking, I fear.


Where did she come from,
my strange, evil twin?
Who opened the door
that let her walk in?

Chemicals, Schmemicals,
what else can I try,
Pillity, Poppity,
to make the twin die?



All of that doesn't matter,
what matters is this,
I act like I should,
if a dose I don't miss.

Chemicals, Schmemicals,
take them I must,
Pillity, Poppity,
or my sanity's dust.

2001

In 1996 I was first treated for depression and later for bipolar disorder. It was a memorable year in other ways too. I found what I thought was to be my soul-mate; I found the woman with whom I intended to spend the rest of my days. She is the most patient, understanding, loving, giving human being I have ever known; we are still good friends. Her life experience is not at all like mine and yet when we were together we fit together like a hand in a glove; or at least I thought we did. The trouble with emotional illnesses is that our perceptions are not the same as those of other people. I have written many poems to her and about her, but this one I think says more about what her love did in my life than anything else I could say.
All my love

All my love packed away in little boxes.
Saved for one day when Ms. Right would come along.
Stored unused, dusty, yellowed with age,
They sat so very long waiting for the "one."
Rusted to each other, pieces large and small, from the damp,
Dampness of tears shed over love that came and went,
Stunted in growth from lack of light and air.

All my love packed away in little boxes.
Dragged out and dumped at your feet,
Smelling of mildew, and mold, in damaged boxes.
Given to you in one big heap,
For you to sort through, looking for the salvageable;
You, Ms. Right, receiver of half-forgotten bits of love,
Must somehow breathe new life into the dying love.

All my love packed away in little boxes,
Labeled, "father," "mother," "brother," etc.
The box labeled, "lover," far, far back on the shelf.
Boxes long ago given up on, never filling, always draining.
Convinced was I, that I would never use them again.

All my love packed away in little boxes.
You opened each one to see what it contained.
Handled each fragile bit with care,
Examined them in the light of your love,
Tossed out what was broken beyond repair,
Repaired all that you could with love of your own.
And after all you set aside as garbage,
I still need bigger boxes to hold all my love again.


I am still on my journey of love, of discovery, of education. In 2004 I was attending Cerritos College to pull up my GPA. I applied to CSUF and CSUDH. My wonderful partner that I thought I could not live without broke up with me. I had to move into my mother’s apartment. CSUF turned me down, telling me to keep going to the CC and pull the GPA up a little more, CSUDH said if I finished the classes I was in with Cs or better, I was in. I went to CSUDH the following Spring. I was determined to get my BA. I was told I would never finish it, but I did, straight through; even enduring the suicide of my younger brother during my first semester there.
I thought I wanted a teaching credential, but schools are laying teachers off. There are no jobs in teaching. I tried my hand at Management in graduate school, but I hated it and I knew I would never make it in management. I lost the job that I wanted the management degree for anyway. For once I did not lose the job over the economy or my mental health. I simply blew it and made a serious safety error that got me fired.
I’ve been told I can write. I have been given a gift. I love to put words on paper; stories, poems, creative non-fiction, essays, pretty much any opportunity to string together words in order to convey feeling. I have had not one, not two, but four creative writing instructors tell me I should pursue my talent by getting an MFA in creative writing. But I’ve always asked myself what in the hell could I do with that degree. The funny thing is I have told many, many people to do what they love and the money will follow. I love to write more than I love to read, and I never thought that was possible. Where the road will take me now is anyone's guess, but I am applying to an MFA creative writing program. When I get that degree I will figure out how to make it into a living.
My mental health is still a concern. I am still adjusting my meds. I have been given a diagnosis that makes perfect sense if you knew my whole story. It makes perfect sense if you know that from time to time I come to behind the wheel of the car not knowing where I am or where I am going. I have missing memories of most of my childhood. I have a lot of missing memories from my teens. I lose time here and there regularly. One minute I know where I am in a conversation and what seems like moments later is much later and I have no idea what I’ve said or if I have offended anyone. I use humor a lot to mask my fear. Did I mention I am afraid of everything? Some of my fears have no basis in anything, like being afraid I’ll skewer my eyeball on a straw by accident, or worse on purpose.
I know where I want to go, I want to be published and I want to teach community college. This time I can see myself getting there. Visualization is one of my favorite tools for learning. I visualize where I want to be, or how I want to be, or what I want to come into my life, and by repeated visualizations, I make those things come true. I love to use visualization, but for some reason I have drifted away from it. Perhaps because I can’t get my mind to be quiet, there are all of these alternate personalities trying to tell me their stories and share their memories. I don’t want these memories and stories. I don’t want to be DID. I don’t want to be sicker than I have to be.
When I do visualize I do the footwork, don't get me wrong; I don't expect magik to make my life better without getting off my ass and moving myself along my chosen path. The road doesn't move, so I have to! I will leave you with this thought:
Out of breath,
running just to keep up.
Fear like lead weights
holding down my feet.
Each stride, each step,
monumental effort.
Hills too steep,
climbing and stumbling
I fall further behind.
Another hurdle,
I trip and fall,
pick myself up,
start running again.
Worn out shoes,
blistered feet,
I want to stop,
just stop and rest.
Huffing and puffing,
I cry out,
Wait up!
No dice, no slowing,
Life just kept on walking.

Why I Keep the Blog

I keep this blog thing, where I can write anything I want. I try to share it with people to help them see the world through the eyes of one who is mentally ill. But I truthfully also write it to write, to stretch my writing muscles daily. I write for at least 4 hours a day. I submit now, something I never used to do. I write a lot of my bad experiences for my blog because they are not meant to be places like MySpace and facebook. I also toss in some of my poetry for myself. Everything on my blog is for me, but I do want people to see it because it has a dual purpose, to let it out, and to teach. Learn from the bad stuff, learn what it is to live inside the head of someone who does not know how to think positively, but is learning it as a new skill. My life is going to get worse before it gets better as my therapist and I discover all of my alters and get them working as a team. Right now they are not working as a team for me, they are all still in total survival mode. That is why they exist, so that I could survive the horrors of my life.
Have a sense of humor as you read my work, and also a sense of learning and of love. I am learning. I am growing. I am a process and a group. I am so much more that the sum total of the words you see here on the page. Read not only my poetry, but the essays that talk about learning about being DID. Read it all if you are going to read it.
The truth is this is a dark place mostly. I throw a few other poems in from time to time to lighten it up, but it is a dark place where I can put my thoughts and let them go to an extent. I still have to work through all of this in therapy. As I dig deeper into the alters and learn who they are, it will get darker. And then eventually the memory work begins and that will become very dark indeed. I have to do this thing to get well, or better. I have to do this thing so that I can become someone people want to be friends with. I have to do this thing so that it stops eating my insides and tearing apart my head. Since beginning a new medication, and starting this blog, my migraines have all but stopped. But I believe as I open doors in my head, long closed, the headaches and pain may come back. The anxiety will get worse before it gets better. I do little thing to try to overcome the crippling anxiety every day. I go out alone if need be. I go where I want, when I want. I spend long hours alone in LA waiting between individual therapy and group. I don’t know where I am, but sometimes I get in the car and I explore my surroundings. Other times I stay in the safety of a Starbucks and write.
My recent project is actually taking bits and pieces of poems started many years ago, and creating new ones from the old ideas. It is good therapy for me. I want people to see I am working on me and getting better. I want people to see how serious I am about growing from this place where I am just a survivor to being a thriver. This blog that some of you may see as totally negative is actually a very positive place of growth and learning. Read it again. See where I am going. It is a journey for me.

The Pillity Pop

The Pillity Pop!

I've got lots of questions,
please don't tell me lies.
What happens inside me
when sanity dies?

Chemicals, Shmemicals,
how hard can it be,
Pillity, Poppity,
to find the right key?

What makes me so different?
Don't pretend its not so,
my pistons aren't firing
all in a row.

Chemicals, Shmemicals,
what kind of a mix,
Pillity, Poppity,
my brain it might fix?

How is it possible,
how can it be,
that taking a drug,
makes me more me?

Chemicals, Schmemicals
take this one to see,
Pillity, Poppity,
some semblance of me.

What can I tell you
I don't make the rules?
If this isn't real,
the doctors are fools.

Chemicals, Schmemicals,
I take a bite here,
Pillity, Poppity,
I'm shrinking, I fear.


Where did she come from,
my strange, evil twin?
Who opened the door
that let her walk in?

Chemicals, Schmemicals,
what else can I try,
Pillity, Poppity,
to make the twin die?



All of that doesn't matter,
what matters is this,
I act like I should,
if a dose I don't miss.

Chemicals, Schmemicals,
take them I must,
Pillity, Poppity,
or my sanity's dust.

2001

Dream date

Dream Date

Softness,
curves,
a woman.
I reach out,
she takes my hand.
We walk,
we love;
it’s slow,
it’s fast.
In these arms
I am home.

Dinner

I look at you
and sense
a full meal:
appetizers,
meat and potatoes,
a small salad
on the side,
and dessert,
sweet, creamy delight.
A feast
lovingly prepared,
passionately eaten.
Sated,
I lick my fingers
and wonder,
where do I hide
the bones
when I am
through.

to Debra on her 18th Birthday

You didn’t like me
I know
Although you never
Let it show

I loved you
From the start
You Took a
Piece of my heart

Now you are a woman
Fully grown
I can only hope
Love has always shown

Not your parent
Yet I feel I am
I’ll be here
If you get in a jam

I’ve done my best
To be a stone
You could lean on
When all alone

I wonder if
You’ll ever know
All of the love
I try to show

I hope and pray
Your dreams come true
On this your day
I love you.

Change Can Only Happen in Me

Yesterday is what it is
It cannot be changed
Change can only happen in me
How does yesterday affect
How does it change me?
These are the questions
I seek answers to daily
Yesterday is in my mind
Daily
Spinning every moment
Of now into something
It isn’t
And I don’t know how
To change that yet

Change can only happen in me
I look at the past
The hurts
The joys
What do I want to remember?
So much is missing
So many holes
Yesterday is what it is
The events don’t change
The good or the bad
But what do I want
To relive
The pain or the joy

Moments of joy
Out numbered by pain
But what joy they are
When held up to the pain
Without the pain
The joy can’t be measured
And still the pain is what I act on

Yesterday is what yesterday is
Change can only happen in me
Choosing the joy
Means letting go of the pain
What purpose does it serve?
To live in the pain?
Why do I hold on?
To let go is to risk
To risk is my fear
But without risk
I stand still as a post

Let go of yesterday’s hurts
Hold on to the joys
That is the mission
The journey

Am I up to the challenge?
Can I really let go
Take the risk?

Time will tell
Tomorrow will be yesterday
Soon enough
And then I will know
Did I make the choice?
To change my view
Or have I held on

Yesterday is what it is
Change can only happen in me

beautiful woman

Beautiful woman
Kissing me in the rain
Smelling of sweet cologne
Streaming memories
of one loved and gone
Smelling of work
Sweet human smell
Sexy
Kissing me
Me kissing her
Eyes light blue
With intelligence
and light from within
Smile that stirs my soul
Beautiful woman
So sexy
Soft
Sexual
Honest
Becoming
Friendly
How can it be
You don’t know
how beautiful you are

Be Myself?

Be myself?

Be yourself they say.
Do they know who I am?
Do they know that for me I is plural?
Do they know what a fucked person We are?

Me a fascinating concept,
Who am I?
Am I the 4 year old,
The 8 year old,
The smart one,
The teen boy so laid back,
The angry one,
Maybe I’m the southern one,
Or the self assured one,
The quiet one,
The one who holds the math,
Or the stutterer,
Just who the hell am I?

Be myself, if only I knew who I,
Who We, are.

If I am myself, I am despised
If I am someone else,
I am a liar.
If I put on the happy face,
Make believe I’m like you,
Then I’m ok.

But guess what,
I am most definitely not OK!

Twisting in the wind,
Breaking boundaries,
Talking too much,
Talking over people,
Never knowing
Who I’ll be
One minute to the next.

I try to be present,
Be Maureen,
But the others want time
In the body too.
They want to be heard,
kind of like you.

Being myself gets me nowhere.
No one likes who I am.
They call me liar,
Faker,
Crier of wolf,

They don’t know,
They are not me,
They have not lived
The life we lived.
They didn’t need
Others just to survive.

They think they know
Me,
But deception comes easy
Over time and space.
We fill in gaps
With laughter
Or anxiety.
We create reality when reality escapes us.
It isn’t lies, just careful perception.
What’s going on?
Wait and see.
Then join in when I know it’s me

Being myself has lost me friends
It loses girlfriends for certain,
Because the me that is host
Has open wounds,
And reacts badly too often;
Hurts easily,
Is impatient,
Talks too much too loud,
Fears everything,
And just plain annoys folks!

If I let another take control
Sometimes they know
Sometimes they don’t
Many they have seen
Not knowing at all
The difference between
My alters and I
I cover it up
I like to perform,
So they think
I’m acting
They just can’t see
What is right in their face.
The people who live inside my head
Know how to pretend,
Know how to be me.

Be yourself they say,
Great idea,
If only I knew who that was!


3/20/2010

Sonnet of the Mentally Ill

You know what it's like to live in my head?
Connections aren't made like they are for you,
More often than not you wish you were dead.
It's hard keeping straight what's what and who's who.

Important things get lost in the jumble.
The pill drill can help, though not all the time,
Frustration at this can make you mumble,
But take them you must, or walls you will climb.

Some days it's hard not to sink through the floor,
With mangled thoughts and twisted perceptions,
I don't want to feel this way anymore.
Shrinks say they cure, what cunning deception.

Counseling may help, and the pills do to,
But all said and done, I'd rather be you!

Friday, March 19, 2010

NEVER be yourself if you are fucked up!

It has been nearly 5 years since my brother, Buddy, decided it was time to end his life. He used a gun. He took pieces of me with him that I will never get back. He was my closest sibling emotionally, unless you count totally disliking someone an emotional connection, then the older brother is the closest.
I am not dealing well with the emotions that have come up for me around this particular anniversary. Buddy chose a life as a homeless person for many years for a number of reasons. He wanted experiences. He wanted to see the country. And I am sure he had many reasons he never shared with me. What I do know is he had a great time. He enjoyed himself. He wrote a lot, writing I hope my father will one day let me get a look at.
When he was younger, he and I shared story ideas back and forth in the mail. He would send me headlines or opening lines and I would write; I would send him opening lines, and he would write. We shared our poetry with each other. We shared our feelings about our dad. We both felt we were like him. We both felt a deep need for his attention.
Buddy was way more than my little brother, he was my friend. He inspired me, encouraged me, and accepted me. His love made me feel good and it made me feel connected to my family. Dad remarried and I have this whole other family I barely know. He helped me know them by telling me about them. He was a good brother and a good friend.
So why am I so angry with him? It isn’t just because he killed himself, although there is certainly anger over that. It isn’t that we weren’t in touch for months before he did it, although the anger about that is at me, not him. Perhaps I am mad at him for beating me to the punch. He always said it wasn’t a matter of if he killed himself, but when. I never thought he would do it before I did. I fight with those feelings every damn day of my life and have since I was a child. I first felt the need to die around the age of 6. I truly fight the feeling every day or every night. If at any time I have any emotional upset, the feelings get stronger, deeper, and harder to deal with.
Yesterday I got dumped. I am trying to find ways of dealing with the feelings that come with that. I want to die, flat out, no shit, no crying wolf. I just want to die because I know that I am never going to be well enough to be a partner to anyone. My therapist says I am wrong, but I am 49 and not getting younger. I met the person I always hoped to meet, and immediately drove her out of my life by being myself. Beware of people who tell you just to be yourself in any situation, if "yourself" is a severely damaged bag of goods. I should NEVER be myself outside of therapy because being me means being emotional, impatient, boundary crossing, and just plain annoyingly fucked up. The point of bringing up being dumped is that Buddy was pushed over the edge, and killed himself over finding out his boyfriend had been cheating on him. He died over a boy. He died of a broken heart and spirit. I am broken hearted and broken spirited. I want to die. I keep thinking that it is as easy to mourn two children on a given date as it is to mourn one. So his anniversary date is calling to me. It begs me to make it my own death day.
I am so twisted up inside. I just want to break everything breakable and trash everything else. I need to tear up all of my writing, give away all of my shit, drive somewhere in my car, and take enough pills to make saving me impossible. Part of me really wants to do it in my therapist’s neighborhood because it’s quiet there. But I can’t do that. I can’t do any of it because it is not yet my time to die. Dead inside already, my body seems to need to keep going. “You are free to create and honor any past you choose, to heal and transform your present.” Richard Bach. Nice idea, but how do I create a past that isn’t all broken and pieced together? How do I create a past without memory holes in it? I am basically always ready to run off and die over every negative emotion. I can’t see a way out. I cannot see my way to the other side. I need to find ways daily of remembering that I will hurt many others by my death. Well maybe not many others, but a few. I doubt there would be a crowd at my funeral. Maybe all of the people who don’t like me, way outnumbering those who do, could throw a party because I finally did it instead of talking about it.
I get accused of crying wolf about this whole dying thing. I guess that is because I talk about it. I talk about it to take the power out of it, but perhaps that escapes my friends. I know my friends are smart. I know they have offered me good advice at times, except that part about being myself, but they don’t seem to get that when I stop talking about it is the day I am going to do something about it.
If you are reading this, and you are tired of hearing me talk about my pain, my life, my desire to end it all, think on this for a moment, if I don’t talk about it, I am in way more danger of doing it. I’ve been good. I am not dragging my friends into my “drama” as they call it. I am not reaching out to anyone. I am writing. I write and write just to keep the thoughts from making me crazier. I know many of you don’t believe I am as sick as I am, but you are wrong. I am very disabled by my mental health issues. I am incapable of holding down a job. I am incapable of doing much but study and write.
I think I have surpassed my promise of writing for at least 4 hours today and I want to finish the book I am reading and start a new one. I am inspired by the book I am reading to write something equally as funny about my mental health. Carrie Fisher is a freaking genius with words. Who else could have written, “Instant gratification takes too long.” It’s like the best line to describe me ever. I am going to write that book. I am going to also publish my book of mental health poetry called, Inside Out. I wonder how one finds a decent literary agent. I think I am getting to the point where I need one.
Goodnight

It's Not How She Looks

It’s not how she looks
But how she looks back
From first encounter it was there
The look returned

I shared my attraction
She didn’t flinch away from it

Friendship
I hoped for more

Patience
I waited
Wanting to go out
Hang out
See her away from work

Time
In time I got my wish
We hung out

Truth revealed
She isn’t so straight

Kiss
On a dare
Kiss returned
Soft and stimulating

Risk
Take the risk
Ask for more

Win or lose
Take the risk

One kiss
One night
No matter
Dreams come true
Beauty comes to me
And while satisfied
Hunger grows for more

2008

I Know Strong and Weak

I know what strong is
Getting up every day
With pain in your back
Soreness in your heart
Wounds that never seem to heal
And showering
Dressing
Facing the day

I know what strong is
Every day struggling
To make forward progress
Knowing you’ll probably fail
More often than not
Each time you fall
Standing up again
Taking on the challenges
Of every day

I know what strong is
Haunted by your past
Unable to let it go
But yearning to learn
Facing yourself in the mirror
Knowing others see failure
Trying not to let it get to you

I know what strong is
Walking through the pain
Refusing to give up
Staying alive when dead would be easier
Loving people you know won’t love you back
Standing up to abuse
When cowering is what you want to do
Letting yourself cry, or scream, or feel
Instead of building walls
Keeping others out
Or holding it in
Letting it eat you from the inside out

I know what strong is
Not perpetuating violence
Letting it stop with you
Even when hitting
Or throwing things
Would be so easy

I know what strong is
I know what weak is

Living in the past
Feeling each hurt again and again
Letting it eat at you
And spill out on those you love

I know what weak is

There is more strong in me
Than weak
More resistance to failure
Than failure
More drive to get well
Than desire to sit still

I know strong
I know weak
I am both
Not equally
Not happily
I am weak mostly
In the eyes of others
And strong in the mirror

I know what strong and weak are
I know they are in me
I know that few
Ever see
Anything but
Weak.

Revised 3/19/2010

Blank White Page

Blank white page that stares at me
And it’s just a place to spill my guts
And I can’t write and I want to write.
I must write and I cannot write
I want to cry but crying won’t help.
Guts spilled are so messy, disgusting
Who wants to see that
On a page of paper?
But I must.
Writing is easy,
It has been said,
One simply stares at a blank page
Until drops of blood form
On the forehead!
I must spill my guts,
Or let them fester
Rot inside me.
Necrosis of tissues
No longer needed,
Excise.
Surgery, guts spilled
On the operating table,
Remove, cut away,
Graft in, replace the rot
With memories
Of good
Is the hope
Blood, there will be blood
Memories stained in it
Mind infused with it
The bloody mess that
Droplets on my forehead
As I spill forth the words
That cannot be held
And will not be quiet

3/19/2010

It Will Never Be

It will never be,
me loving her,
her loving me
All of issues,
all of my junk,
keep people at distance,
chase away love.
I’ve tried on love,
but so far
none has fit,
they stay for a while
then see the real me
the one with the warts
and disfiguring scars
I chase them away
The future looks dim
if the past keeps
touching the future
My past burns me
Tears me apart
3/19/2010

I can

I can do almost anything
But forget I loved you
Or remember you never loved me

How Many Times

How many times did I just let it happen?
How many times did I keep the secret?
Was it my fault?
Could I have done it different?
Fear immobilized me
He’d just beat me more.

How Many times did I just let it happen?
How does that add up to participation?
How is it my fault?
Could we have done differently?
Fear immobilized me
He would just use me more.

How many times did I just let it happen?
How many times did I just slip away
To some other place
In my head,
Another head,
Another brain,
Different memories.
Fear immobilized us all
They would just use me more

How many times did I just let it happen?
How many times it was kept from me
By the others
The team
In my head
How does it come to be
That all was my fault?
Fear immobilized us
And they always used me more.


2010

How Do I Measure Up?

Holes in my brain,
Gaps in my memory
Pain took away.
People came in
Took the pain
I could not take.
Splintered mind
Twisted soul
Ugliness inside.
Ralationships,
Friendships,
Family,
None care for me long.
And I know
Why,
Holes in my brain,
Gaps in my knowledge,
No boundaries,
No help,
No tact,
No one
To break the code
That holds the key
To how to
Change.
Code breaker
Came
And
Went.
What is a friend?
What do we give,
expect,
Long for?
What can I count on,
Who can count on me?
I cannot count on me.
Past
Is what I can count on;
Repetition,
Knowing the same shit
Will happen again,
And again,
Without change.
Instruments
Of torture change.
Faces change.
Pain is constant.
Rejection,
Rejection of me,
Rejection of my behavior,
Rejection of my sensitivities.
I am useless
Wasted skin
Filled with past pain.
And no relief,
No understanding,
Compassion;
Just distrust,
Misjudgment.
Pain,
My constant.
There is no constant
In the Universe
But change
It is said.
But for me the biggest
Constant is rejection
And pain.

2010

Constant

Holes in my brain,
Gaps in my memory
Pain took away.
People came in
Took the pain
I could not take.
Splintered mind
Twisted soul
Ugliness inside.
Ralationships,
Friendships,
Family,
None care for me long.
And I know
Why,
Holes in my brain,
Gaps in my knowledge,
No boundaries,
No help,
No tact,
No one
To break the code
That holds the key
To how to
Change.
Code breaker
Came
And
Went.
What is a friend?
What do we give,
expect,
Long for?
What can I count on,
Who can count on me?
I cannot count on me.
Past
Is what I can count on;
Repetition,
Knowing the same shit
Will happen again,
And again,
Without change.
Instruments
Of torture change.
Faces change.
Pain is constant.
Rejection,
Rejection of me,
Rejection of my behavior,
Rejection of my sensitivities.
I am useless
Wasted skin
Filled with past pain.
And no relief,
No understanding,
Compassion;
Just distrust,
Misjudgment.
Pain,
My constant.
There is no constant
In the Universe
But change
It is said.
But for me the biggest
Constant is rejection
And pain.

03/2010

crushing ache

Crushing ache
Busy
Pushing away
Leaving behind
Crushing ache
loneliness
Day
After
day
Reaching out
Texts
Emails
Calls
Messages left
No answers
No imcoming calls
Alone
Crushing ache
Friends
Where
Are
You?

Change CAn Only Happen in Me

Yesterday is what it is
It cannot be changed
Change can only happen in me
How does yesterday affect
How does it change me?
These are the questions
I seek answers to daily
Yesterday is in my mind
Daily
Spinning every moment
Of now into something
It isn’t
And I don’t know how
To change that yet

Change can only happen in me
I look at the past
The hurts
The joys
What do I want to remember?
So much is missing
So many holes
Yesterday is what it is
The events don’t change
The good or the bad
But what do I want
To relive
The pain or the joy

Moments of joy
Out numbered by pain
But what joy they are
When held up to the pain
Without the pain
The joy can’t be measured
And still the pain is what I act on

Yesterday is what yesterday is
Change can only happen in me
Choosing the joy
Means letting go of the pain
What purpose does it serve?
To live in the pain?
Why do I hold on?
To let go is to risk
To risk is my fear
But without risk
I stand still as a post

Let go of yesterday’s hurts
Hold on to the joys
That is the mission
The journey

Am I up to the challenge?
Can I really let go
Take the risk?

Time will tell
Tomorrow will be yesterday
Soon enough
And then I will know
Did I make the choice?
To change my view
Or have I held on

Yesterday is what it is
Change can only happen in me

just some rambling stuff about me

It has been said about me recently that I am weak, I disagree. I have weaknesses, as does everyone, but I am not a weak person. I have lived through some tough times and feel that I have come out of these times a stronger person. I have an internal strength that gets me through when I need it most. The death of my brother could have thrown me into a deep depression, but it did not because life has to go on. I have lost friends and family, I have lost relationships, and I have seen a lot of tough things at a young age. When things happen I may get flustered, frustrated, fearful, but I keep moving forward because I do have that inner strength. My nephew thinks his uncle who died is a hero to him. His uncle, my brother, killed himself over a relationship. I personally think it is much more heroic and strong to live through the pain, to keep going in the face of that which makes us want to quit. I have been known to say I feel like giving up, but I don’t give up.
It has been said that I need to love myself before anyone can love me. Here’s the thing I see about that, I do love myself. I really do love myself, but I don’t like everything about myself I know I have some great qualities, but I also know I have room for improvement in a few areas. Negative thinking and reactions to life is one place I need to improve. I try, and I find it very difficult to see anything positively. I can talk myself into a place where I can see the good in things, or the solutions to problems, but my first reactions are still negative, this is something I do not like in myself. The fact that I have so much trouble, as an intelligent person, finding a solution to negative thinking makes me feel like a failure. For me the ability to self talk to a better outlook is a huge improvement, but it’s not what people see in me first. There are other things I don’t like in myself, most of them are things I try to solve and find myself failing to solve. My insecurity is another one. I am no longer in a place where my life is uncertain or that I have to wonder if people care about me, but the pattern of being insecure about what is coming at me, who gives a crap about me and so on is so deeply established in my head that I find I cannot trust. Trust is hard for me, I either trust too much too soon, and get hurt, or I find I don’t trust love when it is real and that is a huge insecurity. I need a lot of reassurances that I am loved and that wears on the people in my life. I hate that in myself, but again, I don’t hate myself, just that quality in myself.
It is said I should love the way I look, just the way I am. I do, except naked. I have not been able to embrace the way my body looks after my weight loss. There is too much that bags, sags and hangs. I know I am good looking, but that baggy body is not good looking. Getting naked in front of someone for the first time is something I dread. Recently I had the experience and it was really rough for me, but the person I was with had no idea that was why I was all out of sorts and got teary eyed. It is a turn off for any woman I am with for me to get so weird about revealing my body for the first time.
I am told I need to be ok with myself before I can be ready for a relationship, that I need to be okay being alone, but it’s kind of a weird circle for me. I cannot ever be ok being alone unless I know being alone won’t last forever, but friends say I need to not worry about it lasting forever to be ok being alone. The truth is I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to feel like I am going to die alone. I don’t know how to feel differently. I don’t want to be the crazy cat lady, but at 49 it looks like that is exactly what I will be. I met someone who is so right for me in so many ways, but apparently I am not right for her, nor will I ever be because I am always going to be fucked up and I can change and grow, and every time I move forward a little, more past, more memory comes and I am as fucked up as I ever was.
I am in therapy. I have asked my therapist to try to teach me positive thinking, but I fear that the pathways in my brain are to deeply ingrained to be changed. I have asked her to help me find security in myself, but myself is the one thing I am secure about, it is the world and others that I find no security in. I have asked her to help me find a way to be ok with being alone, and even being ok with the idea of being alone forever. She says I will not be alone forever, but I think perhaps she is completely wrong. She really has only scratched the surface of my fuckedupness and will possibly never understand all of it. She is the best therapist I’ve ever had, but that doesn’t mean she can fix me or help me fix myself. Every layer that peels back reveals more rot. It goes to the core and I will never be anything but a disabled, fucked up, single, crazy cat lady.
I feel I have made progress in my life. from. I am a much stronger, more confident person than the one I was once. I am a work in progress. There are those in my life who see the changes, who see what I have done, and then there are those that see only what I have not done. Every day I try to do better. I often call upon someone to listen while I talk myself into a solution, but some people see this as asking for them to help me, for them to solve my problem, when all I want is for that person to listen and be my sounding board. Thank you to those friends who listen. Thank you to those who do help, when I ask for help. I ask for help when I need it. I reach out because I don’t expect people to know I need them and come to me. I do not expect help every time I call, sometimes the only help I need is an ear and some understanding. And whether or not I am believed, sometimes I call people just to see how they are, hear about their lives, do my caring for them.
So hears the deal, I do love myself; I think I would be my best friend if I were someone else. But that does not mean I like everything about myself. I am a strong person, not a weak one, even if at times I show weaknesses. Show me one person who is 100% happy with every thing about herself and who has no weak moments ever, and I swear I’ll do my best to imitate that person. But I think that everyone at some time finds things that they want to change. I think everyone has a weakness somewhere. I think the fact that I am aware of my limitations and that I am working on them is a very good thing. I could just go blindly on wondering why every thing falls apart in my life. I know where I make mistakes, and I am trying to fix those things. I fail a lot, but I get up and keep trying. That ought to count for something.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Prisoner

Prisoner
In my room, prisoner to the people in my home I often need to avoid. The brother that no longer scares me still bores me to tears. He annoys me and that is more than enough reason to stay out of any room he is in. I can’t stand to be near him sometimes. He is such an asshole. The mother that asks again and again the same question, “Are you ok?” I don’t answer, or I say I am fine to give her the definite impression I do not want to discuss my feelings with her. Frustration at her makes me stay in my room to avoid snapping at her. So I am prisoner to them, or my avoidance of them.

In my room, prisoner to the need to organize, I am obsessed with getting the room clean and in a state that will make the woman I have been dating feel comfortable staying here with me occasionally. I have, with her help, picked up the worst of the awful trash that was an outward expression of the inner turmoil. Inner turmoil tamed by a new medication, I am ready to live in a cleaner environment. I have cleaned up the piles of my things we created when we removed the trash. I have removed every last thing from each drawer, thrown out what needs to go, and reorganized everything in neat orderly fashion. I have reorganized my closet so that my clothes are in the order I want them to be in, sweeping away the vestiges of having made a mess of things to accommodate the deadbeat I shared my room with for a few months. I have pulled out all of my shoes and straightened them into pairs, OMG. I never pair up my shoes. I am thrilled at the results.

In my room, prisoner to the computer that I do my writing on, because I write daily, I must write or the day is incomplete. I write; emails, poems, rants, and more. I play my scrabble games. I check email compulsively numerous times a day. I read Facebook comments and messages. I am in touch with so many I have lost, and lost a few I have been close to. I sit at my desk to write during the day. Only at night do I bring my laptop to the bed to write some more.

In my room, prisoner to the mound of laundry, I wash, fold, and put away every article of dirty clothes. I work on the book I made for her birthday. I type more quotes to put into it. I carefully place the stickers here and there. I leave much room for her to write in her own comments and feelings. The book will be partially blank so that she can finish it herself.

In my room, prisoner to my thoughts, which whirl about, taking every wrong turn, and yet seemingly ending up at the right destination anyway. I think I am chasing, so I talk to her and say it is not what I want to do, but I guess she didn’t hear the part about it is not what I want to do. I think I am losing her, and I fear. I twist my mind into knots worrying and wondering. She sends me an email, and in it are conflicting messages. She isn’t ready for a relationship; she isn’t in love with me. But also she likes me a lot, adores me. Now I don’t know if I am going to be dumped or just told to slow down. I don’t know if she is going to greet me with a kiss and a hug, or a bag full of the things I have left there. I think and I worry. I twist everything into the worst possible case scenarios. I will not stop twisting and turning in the wind until I hear from her again.

In my room, this is my place to be myself. This blank white page on which I pour out my heart and soul is a place to be myself. When I am with her, I try to be myself. But it is here, in writing that I am most myself, most at home. I cannot ever get all of what I know in my head and heart out onto the page, the day I do is the day I die.

In my room, I am prisoner to the thoughts of darkness that tell me that mourning two children on April 27th would be not so different than mourning only one. The dark thoughts creep about, trying to take hold; I fight. I am not willing to dwell in the land of darkness today. I am not going to die any time soon unless there is some accident. I have the means. I have the time. I can leave this world by my own hand and in my own time any time I want to. I am choosing not to do this. I am choosing to live in the now and instead of running from my past. Running from my past is part of what has held it in front of me so much.

In my room, I write this. I write all of my feelings and all of my woes. I write so that when I scream in the darkness, I am not alone, someone will hear me. I make calls. I do whatever I need to do. Today was a shit day. I feel like I am relapsing with my bronchitis. I got dumped by the Department of Rehabilitation. I get no more job help, but then they didn’t help much. I get no more help getting more education. I avoid my graduate school application because I am still much more interested in doing the writing then learning about it. I want to find a way to get two degrees at the same time. I want to go live on campus. I want to move out of this room and this apartment. Living here is not like renting a room because the people I live with are family, and therefore twice as annoying as the most annoying roommate.

In my room, I am goddess and creator. I have much to teach, much more to learn.

At last, in my room, I am sleepy. I will take my meds and go to sleep.

Perhaps now, in my room, I will sleep without dangerous dreams.

Maybe this time.

Monday, March 15, 2010

IsSheReal

I watch her walk around her room,
doing the most mundane things,
unloading the bags
she brought to my house,
and I am filled with
comfort,
longing,
joy,
and wonder at how
this amazing creature came
to be in my life.
Why, I wonder, does she like me?
What about my picture and profile
made her “wink” at me?
What does she see in me?
No, not what, how,
how does she see in me
the things
only I seem to know are there?
And “winking” at me,
how did it come to pass
that she spread a ring
of hope and light around my heart?
This woman,
like none I have ever known,
looking, on the outside,
not one bit like the woman
my heart imagined,
inside looks and feels
like exactly
what we imagined
and dreamed of
for years.
This woman,
is she real?

3/12/10

Liquid Words

Words full of emotion
Well up and spill
From my eyes
In tears
Running down my cheeks.
Blinking,
My lashes splatter
The unspoken words
In spots on the
Inside of my glasses;
Symbolic I suppose
Of the words
Inside my brain
Struggling to come out.
My mouth unable,
Eyes spill forth
The words I cannot
Say.

3/12/10

slow down

Slow Down

I am falling,
damn my stupid Pisces heart,
betraying me again!
I am falling,
and as usual
I fall alone;
feeling too much,
too soon.

Unable to rein
in the wild
Mustang,
Love that runs
free in my heart.

Falling,
I fall alone,
afraid
I will again
chase away
the beautiful butterfly
that has landed
on my heart.

Can I rope
the wild one?
Rein it in
long enough
for the butterfly
to grab hold
and fall with me?

Falling again;
falling alone
makes me fear
the cat lady
I am likely
to become
if no one
ever falls with me.
This is the one
I want to fall with.

For her love is a
slow thing;
not easily caught,
And falling isn’t
her path.
She does not
fall,
she grows into
Love.

And falling,
impatient,
can I stop
my heart,
and let the seeds
she planted
Do their
job,
and grow?

3/12/10

why do I let my insecurity color everything

Why do I let my every insecurity color everything I see, hear, or experience? I hear, “I care about you.” And I cannot believe it. I fear it. I think any minute the rug will be pulled from under me. I don’t quietly keep my insecurity to myself, oh hell no, I act on it, speak it, blow it. I drive away those would like me, maybe even some day love me by being so fucking insecure.
I can’t even believe my parents when they say they love me. I ask them all the time if they really do. I don’t know what is wrong with me. I fear being alone, and then I drive away love and friendship by my stupid insecurities. People hurt me, so what? Isn’t that in the past? It should be, but how do people do that, leave the past in the past? I know this is what PTSD does, keep the past right there in my face at all times, but I hate it.
How do I get past this stupid thing? I’ve joined a group. I am getting better. I at least know why I feel the way I do. And knowing the reason, I try to explain myself, but I fuck that up too.
There is someone I want very much to talk to right now, but I can’t. I said I wouldn’t call her again. I said that and then in less than 15 minutes I was texting her, trying to explain and it just made it worse.
You know who you are, if you are reading this, I hope I will hear from you again. I want that very much. I am hurting over my stupidity and my past that won’t go away. I am hurting over the things I said. I want to say I am sorry. I am sorry. I said things without thinking how they sounded and now I don’t know what to do. FUCK!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

I Write Because I Must

I write because I must. There is no choice involved. To write, to think to create, these things are as important as air, food, and water, without them I would die. Publishing a poem or story would be icing on the cake. The joy is in the process, in turning thought, emotion, or a small event into a story or poem. The joy is in condensing powerful, complex emotions into the shortest, simplest terms and words possible. The joy is in the words; words which have the power to hurt and to heal, to build and to destroy, and in putting those words on a page in a way no one else can because they are not me. I write because the words in my head would make me crazy if I didn’t. I often think in poetry. I write because I must.
I teach, or desire to teach, to spark in another’s mind the same desire to read, write, and learn. I teach because the moment when a confused student sees clearly the concepts they are challenged to learn, is the most fulfilling satisfying moment in life outside of sex. Often I hear that English Language Arts is not as important as teaching Math or Science, think then on this, how would scientists and mathematicians read their materials had not some underestimated, underappreciated English teacher at some point taught them to read? I teach because we teach best what we most need to learn. I teach because it is what I was meant to do.
I write because I must. I teach because I can. I use words to paint the texture of my life, the world the way I see it, life as it unfolds for me, for us. Words will be my life, for all of my life, be it writing alone in my room, posting on a blog, or teaching in a classroom

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Playing (this could be disturbing, if abuse disturbs you, don't read it)

Playing, that’s all she should be doing. Age five, pig tails and toys, popsicles on hot days, selling Kool Aid, Having friends, these are the things she should know and love. But that was not to be; her life became nightmarish in a single transaction. The older brother, who should have been protecting her, was working to destroy her, and it is not clear if he knew how much it would destroy her.
He wanted baseball cards, something his family could not afford to let him buy. So he makes a trade; baseball cards for the sister. He makes this trade with a teen aged boy. He has been hurt by someone else, raped and left to deal with the feelings on his own. He never told. He made sure the sister wouldn’t tell by threatening to kill her cat. She knew he would do it. She watched him “dissect” a goldfish while it was still alive.
The boy takes his sister by the hand, a gesture that should have been comforting, but wasn’t. It was threatening and scary to be touched by him in anyway. He had beaten her so many times; leaving bruises that no one paid attention to. He was a bully. He bullied other kids in the neighborhood, but his sister was his main target. So he takes her hand, and she feels cold and slimy inside; he leads her to the house two doors down, rings the bell and runs away leaving her standing on the front porch too scared to move.
The teen, Lowell, opens the door. He immediately pulls the girl into the house, gripping her arm tightly, too tightly, scaring her even more. At this point she is terrified and paralyzed with fear, she couldn’t run away. He takes her through the house to the back door, and out into the yard. There is a big tree; she can see it has a tree house of sorts built into it. He tells her in a hissing whisper directly into her ear, “Climb the ladder.” She was shaking, but she made her way up to the platform of the tree house. Lowell followed her.
She was wearing a dress; she was always in dresses because her father didn’t want her to wear pants. She loved the jeans she had, hand-me-downs from the evil older brother. She would occasionally sneak into the brother’s room and borrow his clothes to dress up like a boy to go out and play. This was not one of those days because the father was home, so a dress it was.
Lowell reaches up inside her dress and rips down and off the cotton panties she always wore. He touched her, there, in between her legs. It didn’t feel good in her mind, but her body had a mind of its own and the touch felt tingly, kind of exciting. He stroked her there, and the more he did the more excited and scared she got. And then he changed, no more stroking, he opened his pants and pulled out his penis. It was ugly, purplish and red. She had seen her brother’s penis, but it was tiny, this one was huge. He pushed her legs apart with his knees and then he took his hand down to guide the penis into her. As he entered it burned, it hurt; she started to cry out, he covered her mouth with his hand and said, “Shut the fuck up.” She shut up. Tears rolled down her face as blood ran down into her ass crack. Deeper and deeper he pushed into her until he could go no further. She hoped that would be it, but it wasn’t. He began to pull and push, humping up and down; pain exploded in her. And then he groaned and stopped, but stayed on top of her, making it hard to breathe. Eventually he rolled off of her. He told her to leave, “get out of here whore.” She had no idea what a whore was, but she wasn’t waiting to ask.
Running home, without her panties, blood on her legs, terrified that she be chased, she stumbled and fell, skinning her knees. She hurt “There” so bad, and there were splinters in her butt. When she got to the house that was her home, she ran to the bathroom. There she filled the tub with the hottest water she could stand, undressed and got in the tub. The water turned pink from the blood. Carefully, but fully, she washed every part of her that he had touched. So far it seemed as if no one knew she had been gone, or that she had returned and jumped into the tub.
After her bath, feeling as clean as she could, she went across the hall to her room and put on fresh cotton panties. She put on a dress, and under the dress, over her panties, she put on a pair of shorts. It was the first time she had ever worn shorts under her dress, but it became a permanent thing. More barriers meant more safety to her.
The brother, evil brother, came into her room and asked her what Lowell had done to her. He had a sick need to hear the details. She knew resisting him was useless because a beating would follow any refusal to spill the story. She told it all to him. He listened with an excited look on his face. Nasty feelings of guilt for not trying to get away were floating inside her head. Strangely she asked him to help her get the splinters out of her butt, because she couldn’t ask her mom to do it. He remover the splinters, and then he touched here “there” making it dirtier and weirder to let him see her body, she moved out of reach of his touch and quickly pulled up the panties and shorts. And then it was over, or so she thought.
That night she could not sleep, every time she closed her eyes her mind saw Lowell. This would be the beginning of many sleepless nights. Sleep had become an unsafe place to be. She still bleeding, and afraid it would never stop. She changed her panties more than once in the night, finally she folded a washcloth and put it in her panties.
She never told anyone, but the next night, when her mom was getting her ready for bed, the mother saw the bruises, but ignored them. Ignorance would be the excuse later in life when the girl did tell, the mother would plead ignorance. Lies, everyone lied. It was the rule; don’t tell the truth about the bad stuff. Don’t tell about the hitting, the yelling. Ignore the police taking mom out of the bathroom where she had taken a handful of some kind of pills. It didn’t happen. Ignore the cruelty. Ignore it all.
Playing is all she should have had to worry about, but playing was just a convenient escape from the realities of pain and torture. The brother traded her many times to older boys to obtain this or that thing he wanted. He always wanted the details. He often touched her; he even watched a few times when he had traded her to some boy.
She no longer felt like the same person. She had to be someone else for her parents, and someone different for the brother, and yet again someone else when she was being raped. She began to feel wormy and disgusting inside, as though she had been invaded by worms and bugs. She felt dirty and guilty. She knew she must have done something to deserve this, but she could never understand what it was she had done. In her mind this was just how it was and she was powerless to stop it. Imagination was all she had left, and often she would fall silent and still because she was some place in her head where no one could reach her. In time she would begin to write these stories, write poems, but she kept her writing secret, it was hers and hers alone. In her life at home she lived in fear and difficulty, terror and rage, but in her head she lived in a world or her choosing, away from those who hurt her.
.

Through the Looking Glass 2010

Through The Looking Glass 2010
I’m not Alice, this isn’t Louis Carroll’s looking glass, but I am definitely seeing what has been on the other side of my looking glass. I’m 49 years old, yesterday, and I have not a lot to show for it. I have keepsakes of a life of alone. I’ve had loves, and lost them. I collect crap, key rings, ornaments, and cats. Oh yeah the cats, the joke is I am going to die the crazy old cat lady from down the street and no one will know I am gone until some strangers smells the decay and finds the cats have been feasting on me. Except for me it’s never really been a joke, it was what I thought my future held. I live with my mother. I am unemployed and have barely ever been self-sufficient in my life. For twenty-seven years of college I have one AA degree and one BA degree, and no work that I can do with either. I have a collection of poems, essays, and short stories I am too afraid to attempt to publish. I take care of my mother in that I make certain she takes her meds,eats and sleeps. I have no one to leave a single thing to. I have no life to show for the years I have lived. And until a few days ago, I thought I had no soul mate, no future outside of getting another degree and more student loan debt and hopefully teaching college.
I fell through the mirror in a sense when a very cute woman answered my personal ad. We have talked and talked; she talks and I listen. I talk, she listens. We both write, from the heart. Our chosen art forms are actually quite different; hers is visual and tactile, painting texture of the world with her photography. I show the texture of the world in words, emotions, wearing my world, my heart, not so much on my sleeve, as on a page of paper coated in a gloss of words.
Our lives have taken similar turns, too many for it to be coincidence, but then not one thing happens by accident. It’s like these winding highways, side by side, twisting, turning, coming close to touching, then swerving off. Circumstances so similar at times, and then not, but the feelings, experiences, so similar it is uncanny. We have travelled life’s highway and never known that on the other side of a mirror each of us had a cosmic twinling.
We met, amazing conversation. So cute, such deep green eyes, they smile at me, the eyes, they see me, inside me, and they are not afraid of who I am; we speak, eyes to eyes, silently deafening. How can I begin to tell you how this makes me feel? I am not alone, there is another, like me, life lived, with ups and downs, good times and bad, but alone and lonely in our 40’s. Cat ladies, writers, artists, creators, magical beings of pure and perfect light, Fishes swimming in the same ocean, we belong.
She speaks of a magical grandmother and I smile, mine was magic in her way too. I hear, in my heart, the voice of my grandfather, super human, loving man who never hurt me, “I sent her to you.” I am crying because his voice has not come to my heart in at least 5 years. He passed in 1994. I miss him every day. He was my hero, my pal, my very special Papa.
She had an aunt, Zell, who was so very special to her and she felt lost when she lost her. I felt lost when I lost my Papa. I was nearly catatonic for 3 days after his death. She was the same over her aunt.
So here it is, this woman has been on the other side of my looking glass, not in wonderland, but certainly wonderful, and I just needed a nudge from the right direction to fall into that looking glass and find her there. No mad hatter, no tea party, no white rabbit, just a teen who told me where to look.