GO TO A DRY WELL, SINK HOLE OR QUICKSAND?

Do you go to the waters, rushing nearby, clean, sparkling and Healthy?

Or to the place with no remorse.

The people who will hurt you.

I go to the empty well, over and over. I never seem to learn,

The people with no character, depth, or true love.

I have springs of fresh, clear love so close.

I choose to go where none forth comes.

Why do I search for what I can’t have

In places where I need it-

In 9th grade, we moved to a new city.  CHAPTER 5   I made friends who accepted me as I am.  Instead, I tried hanging out with the popular crowd, never fitting in. How could I? Their worth wasn’t about friendship, kindness or truth, but about who, what, or where. Of course I didn’t fit in. And had I been old enough to see, I’d have known I wouldn’t want to.

My son always knew his group of friends were not the popular kids, and their crowd rejoiced in that fact, reveled in it, made sly jokes about it, proud of it. It gave me pause and made me smile.

In the chorale I belonged to for over 15 years, I had made friends with our pianist, yet felt something ‘off’ all along. The way he sought out my son to care for his cats, and going out of his way to insure my son sat on the piano bench next to him turning pages during our concerts. His discussion of teaching at a boy’s school made me wonder why he had left. Red flags were flying. 

He wore flowing pastoral robes when he married my eldest son and his bride.

The congregation where he led the choir, housed him for free in the house next door to the church, including free internet. That is, until he was arrested for crack and a computer filled with young male pornography, so young that an investigation had to be done as to their ages. Children. Not my child who was a teenager at the time and never had alone time with him.

I looked up to this charlatan, because he was a minister, on the library board, directed his church choir, and was our talented, gifted pianist of the county chorale. He had important connections, social status, and many other things I didn’t possess. But that was all on the outside. What lay inside was a liar. A man too afraid to come out of the closet with his gayness, so turned instead to crack, and porn and young boys.

He could have had a relationship with a man his own age. But he was too afraid of losing all the free goodies given to him if he owned his gayness; the free house, the free internet, the high standing in the community that looked up to him. So I was not the only one fooled.

His perversions spoiled chorale for me. He protracted cancer not long after his disgrace. And died. Our chorale sang at his service but not his church. That church wouldn’t have him. Our church, the one where we practiced. I couldn’t follow through after that, starting practices, then quitting. That they honored a true pedophile, one who lacked the courage to be who he really was, and instead lusted after children, soiled the group for me.

I seem to deal with two opposites within. Maybe it’s like losing one of the five senses, another becomes heightened. My ability to trust was shattered. And the result, or one of them is that I’m highly suspicious of others real intentions. I am more aware of what others are really up to. I am glad for this. It keeps me safe. And not.

In opposition, I turn to those that harm, because I’m familiar with outer shells, evil, lies, deceit, and the pretense of kindness… Like a moth to flame, the brightness, the lure of finally receiving what I longed for from my birthright, from a family, looking for it throughout my life in all the wrong places. 

I want to say SHE, but it is me who tends to seek out that which I am familiar with- That which harms and cannot, or will not give back.

Go to the springs of healthy life.

To my massage therapist who says she loves me, hanging my mosaic proudly in her office, genuinely happy for the gift, no strings attached.

Go to my friend who is Always there if I need her- but I will not ask for help. ASK.

Go to my husband, and learn to be open. Discover the gifts that I was too stressed to enjoy during the busier years of our marriage. Keep coming together in ways we never were able to before. Share this beautiful, peaceful life-

Go to the Earth, the Trees, the Flowers, and Critters… Go to where you will be filled…

What other wells have I dare not tapped that are rich, and healthy and full?