EMAIL TO DON

My internal world is clamoring for boundaries with three remaining siblings that did not touch me in a criminal way but were silent by-standers and co-conspirators. Once too anxiety ridden and fearful of rejection to express my truth and outlining boundaries, it is time. Especially after Don added me to an email list of an attacker’s relatives. Don was once a father-like figure but that was long ago. Grateful for his help then, he is not same person now.

_______________________________________

I am not an invisible, compliant, worthless doormat. What happened was real. It is not in the past; it is my every day. I must manage the damage done daily because I was permanently hurt in many ways. Sudden noises or movements cause a heightened scare. No trust for others, just fear. No happy sex life, just thoughts of rape.

The extensive damage is not only from the attackers but the rest who knew and did nothing to help or stop it. You and Seth knew. I told Seth, “Danny fucked me.”

A little girl with that coming out of my mouth which must mean Dan said it to me while he did it, but it had to have been so violent that even now my psyche will not allow it up. Aunt Ruth knew. These days, as a school nurse, she would be required to report it, but not then.

I still am expected to be compliant and silent. No. Co-conspirators cause as much damage.

The insensitively of giving my name and addresses like you did shows that the love you profess for me is conditional, based solely on whether I interfere with your plans or not, that of collecting a clan or ‘family.’

That was no family for me. It was a place of terror and trauma, ongoing, relentless, and severe. I was expected to be quiet about all of it making the damage permanent because unprocessed trauma stays in the body breaking many systems beyond repair.

Then you become buddies with Tom, his attack horrific, but more horrific was the way he treated me the rest of my life, causing so much more damage to my self-esteem than any attack by all 4; his sly put-downs, sneers, and nastiness spoken around everyone about me, done so slyly it was hardly noticed by anyone but me.

No one defended me or said anything to correct him. I was put in a bad light in everyone’s eyes without anyone really being aware that his treatment of me tainted their view of me-useless, less than.

What did you do to help or stop it after you ran in the bathroom when I was 8 or 9? I was screaming in the bathtub because it “‘hurt down there.” (my exact words) You left looking disgusted. That was right after Dan raped me when no came to comfort me, give me medical attention, nor stopped 3 more from attacking me.

Would you expect your daughter to cozy up to Chet’s relatives if he had committed years of attacks on her? The same with your closeness with Tom?

No. I am supposed to be quiet and compliant, and be muscled by your acceptance with compliance, or rejection if not. That is not love.  

I want to love you, and I do, but I do not trust you.

SHATTERED- CHAPTER 21: MATT

A Memoir by Patricia Grace- Available on AMAZON

Therapy with Matt began the same spring Mom moved to the city. His office happened to be very near her new apartment. Over summer, during my sessions with Matt, the tearful well emptied. With the support therapy provided, I found employment as a nurse again. I stuck with Matt six years, the same length of time I worked as a nurse, and not coincidentally. I needed someone in my corner to handle the stressful job, but during the course of therapy both the job and Matt became liabilities. I finally mustered up the gumption to tell Matt over the phone I wasn’t coming back.

“I don’t want to compete with your cell phone anymore,” I barely squeaked, calling him to cancel not just the upcoming appointment, but our whole arrangement.

“What?” he said.

He couldn’t hear me? Or he heard me but couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t possibly be speaking up. I had locked myself in the bathroom away from my kids and husband. This was private, and a big deal, huge, pivotal. I needed to be alone when I finally took a stand. I felt embarrassed I hadn’t already.

“What?” he asked again, sounding shocked, not sure he had heard right.

Even after a long year of interruptions, as he went through a divorce, once taking a call from his car repairman, I kept quiet. I needed him. Without him, I knew I couldn’t continue with my job which stretched me to the breaking point and beyond. He knew it too.

Our call continued awhile.

“Margaret, a few doors down, is a very good therapist,” he suggested. Instantly I knew why he had suggested her, but I didn’t say it.

I felt restless in the little bathroom, going around in a circle, finally putting the lid down on the toilet, then sitting, agitated, as if the seat was searing hot. Yeah, you would recommend her, someone who, if I leaked out your unbelievable treatment, would know what you’re going through and understand. You’re having a difficult time, so of course it’s okay to interrupt every ninety dollar an hour session with phone calls from your lawyer, kids, and goddamn mechanic! My anger rose as these thoughts ran through my head, stuck in my belly, and clogged in my throat.

The only thing escaping my lips was a barely audible whisper: “I don’t want to compete with your cell phone anymore.” It was so quiet I might not have said it at all.

But I did. And he heard me. I felt his fear prickle across the phone lines. He knew he had done wrong and didn’t want anyone else to know. His defense? He probably believed he provided a great favor sticking by me, despite the interruptions, because at least he didn’t abandon me. The imaginary conversation that I should have had—needed to have—repeated over and over again in my head like a rat stuck in a wheel.

I answered his protests of the imagined rally. “I never left you,” he would object.

But you did abandon me every time you took a call! And each time you answered your GODDAMN cell phone, getting up, leaving me, going down the fucking hall, with me sitting alone, twiddling my thumbs like an idiot, waiting for the GOD of therapy to return. The very thing I was there for, working on, struggling with, SELF ESTEEM, plummeted, dropped to below zero, dropped to center of earth, to hell, every time you took a GODDAMN CALL!

Oh, how my gut ached to voice the necessary fiery explosions yearning, scraping, clawing for release, but couldn’t. The bars of childhood held firm, locked tight.

The things that needed to be said, the anger that needed to be expressed, remained unsaid. And like most things unspoken, hungering for expression, they lay waiting instead, simmering, repeatedly turning over in the brain until the lava cooled or another drama took its place. 

I spent the weeks between therapy wiping up the spills of his arrogance, or dragging myself up by the scruff of my neck telling myself it was okay. At least one of us thought we were great. I made excuses for him, and for me, especially for me, because I tolerated it. Too long I did this, making it hard to live with myself. I kept my job because he stuck by me, but lost self-worth, or the tenuous, tiny amount I possessed. As a child I had no power, but as an adult in therapy? My need for him and what I permitted tortured me. After the repairman call, I knew I had to go, but it took another full year. I let go when I could.

He did warn me. But an ethical therapist wouldn’t just be clear about the intent to frequently disrupt therapy by accepting calls. An ethical therapist would have ended sessions; because it did end when he gravitated to his phone, more present with the device attached to his hip than the therapeutic hour. I became his therapist. He should have been paying me; I became his crutch, the tree that money grew on. A cash cow.

I listened to stories about his new dating scene, every nuance, his newfound “love,” the nights out dancing, and on and on, too many details about him, thrilled that my hotshot therapist confided in me. But all the while I piled on weight, gaining back a substantial amount that I had lost and kept off for ten years. Forty fucking pounds. It took a lot of poundage to keep “it” down, my rage at him, my fear.

When I first began seeing Matt, a crucial red flag rose that I didn’t pay attention to. I needed him too much even then to walk out. He didn’t have time to read the literature I offered from my weekly weight loss group that helped me not only lose seventy pounds but keep it off.

He said, “Those groups aren’t the way,” tossing the pamphlets down like trash. “I won’t have time to read them anyway.”

I felt shocked. “What?” I asked. “The group teaches me so many things…” My voice trailed off.

I looked at the parcel of information timidly handed to him, lying on the table where he had casually discarded it, as if discarding me. The group meant so much, a place where I fit in, a place where I found others who used food for reasons beside physical hunger. A place where, over time, I had succeeded at something I had long failed at. Being fat had haunted me since the age of eight after the rape, when my skinny kid frame blew up like a balloon. Fatty Patty became my name.

I stopped going to my group that felt like home, his voice stronger than mine, more important. He had to be right, I barely questioned it, ignoring a tiny voice inside that knew different, even as the pounds came on. His offhand rejection of my tested, successful weight loss group zeroed in as if he were a learned man in the subject and I knew nothing. But his thoughtless off-the-cuff remark, became the truth I had yet to discover. It solidified as the way to be that I had yet to become, like him, fully present, eyes blazing with life. He believed himself to be knowledgeable in all areas. I believed it too.

His cavalier response exhibited knowledge and experience, but really pertained to lack of time. I sensed it, but disregarded the repeated protests arising, unused to listening to that flicker of instinct, “Look at him, skinny as a rail since birth. What could he possibly know about fatness and what it takes not to be?”

He had other more important concerns that I didn’t know about. I didn’t know until that last year what he had undertaken when we first met. His wife had contracted a chronic debilitating disease. They had discussed how to keep their house, because she could no longer offer therapy in her office down the hall from him, where they had first met. They talked about what to do when the expense of owning a home in their posh neighborhood became too much on one income. They wanted to keep the house rather than move to a lesser one. He would take on more work, up to ten clients a day, as many as he could. Time between clients was not spent pondering how to help them, but looking for more.

And being just one more, of course he would not read pamphlets or have time to think about me from one week to the next. I was one of too many, aware of something not quite right, but not heeding the warning. He took on the load of two therapists, a sick wife, and two daughters.

And then the divorce; she was leaving him. I heard all the details about the therapist he began seeing after his wife left. “Start dating, have fun” was the motto from his therapist. Had he heard the term “counter-transference,” where the therapist lays his own burdens on the client? He had no clue why she had kicked him out, but if he treated her anything like he had treated me, it was easy enough to understand. He took precious time from my sessions describing it thoroughly, her rage, and his wonderment at her rage with no reason why she wanted to leave. He came across as the victim, pleading innocence, looking for comfort while talking. I gave it the best I could, poor pathetic Matt. At least his therapist got paid.

Another component of my regretful weight gain came from the change in him. Upon hitting the dating scene, sexual energy emitted from his being like an open fire-hydrant, as if I’d been sprayed with his musk. Being near him started to scare me. Piling on pounds with no conscious realization of doing so, or why, made me feel safer from his newly awakened sexuality.

I hung up the phone after finally cutting him loose. Dignity slowly crept back into me. I contemplated the fuller feeling: relief instead of the loss I thought I would feel. I collected paper images of cell phones from magazines and made a mobile of them, hanging it up in the breezeway window. I had stopped the abuse, cutting my noose.

Cory noticed the dangling mobile, looking at me thoughtfully, then asked, “Do you really want to remember him that way, Mom?”

At seventeen, his perceptions went deep, more balanced than mine. I took it down. What appeared to be easy for others, saying no, made me fear I might be physically harmed or worse, abandoned. I feared him or even his physical nearness. But over the phone, in a whisper, I finally said, “No!”

SHATTERED- CHAPTER 20: DEPRESSION

A Memoir by Patricia Grace- Available on AMAZON

When eating didn’t suffice to stuff my anger, depression helped. I’ve lost count of how many. But after Raymond left, I managed to survive, surprising myself. I finished that last year of nursing school, passed the State Boards, and landed a job as a newly registered nurse at a psych unit in a nearby town—all without him.

It was night shift, and it fit me well, the quietness. But the next morning, even with thick homemade curtains blocking out the sun, I slept only three hours tops. Maybe I could have lasted longer if Louise hadn’t become the new supervisor. She worked days at a hospital in a neighboring town. That psych unit was somewhat more progressive than ours because they had recently incorporated ECT or electroconvulsive therapy, not something I felt in favor of. It scared me. I knew only the movie, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and what it did to the boisterous character Jack Nicholson played.

Louise introduced herself. The interrogation began.

“I work at Springtown,” she said, puffed up with pride as she added, “and we’ve instituted ECT.”

She immediately noticed my skepticism, not the expected response, as she bragged about the new equipment at her unit.

“You’re not in favor of it?” she asked, already on the attack after I frowned, the edge in her voice pointedly sharp.

I raised a white flag, suddenly fearful of her hackled, compact body, which seemed to have curled in on itself like a porcupine ready to throw a quill.

“I really don’t know much about it,” I answered, backing down too late.

I didn’t want to make an enemy of my new supervisor but the damage had been done, not by my words but with body language.

She lunged into me. “For a nurse, you ought to know better,” she lectured.

I cringed, quietly looking at her, moving back slightly. I didn’t like her or her banty hen stature—tough, small, and overly proud. The way she carried her body, a defense in itself. Things between us didn’t improve.

Her presence made some of the patients uncomfortable too; the worst acting out occurred after she started. One patient bit her and pulled her hair before the three of us could pull her off, the Psych Tech, me, and the security guard, hands tangled so thickly into Louise’s scalp that a clump of hair came out. The smile I must have felt, had I been connected to my humanly emotions, stayed hidden. I had been taught to be ashamed, but there had to be a smile swimming around inside somewhere!

When speaking up in any way but meek or dutiful as a child, Mom contained me. She had to, instinctively, without premeditation; she didn’t think that deeply about things to have controlled me consciously. She had to silence me in order to protect the family’s image of goodness. I had to be manipulated, and much more so than brothers, because I held the secret to their sins. They wouldn’t expose the truth. She needed to work diligently in shaping me. It’s not hard to silence a child. Just threaten to abandon, not in words but in actions. Do this, you’ll be loved. Don’t and you’re not.

The message hit home over time. It took repeated lashings of, “You should be ashamed of yourself” to brand that scar into me, burned so expertly into the template of who I was to become that shame replaced wholeness like a headstone. A death knell, part of me incinerated into ash, blown away to the far winds forever gone.

A natural reaction to Louise’s hair being pulled, only days after her lecture, would have been satisfaction. Why not stifle a smile and forgive my human frailties? Life’s little justices need to be savored, even if guiltily. But I had been trained to feel shame, not pleasure. The sweet guilty reward of her receiving some payback went unacknowledged.

Most nights Joel worked with me. Joel was a Psych Tech, but also my friend. He had been the one to show me the ropes from the start.

“Here, use my hand!” he volunteered, when I needed three successful attempts before drawing blood from patients.

And during my first assessment of someone in crisis brought into the hospital’s emergency room, Joel was there waiting, staying just long enough to tell me, “You can do it!” beaming with assurance.

It took only once, someone who believed in me. After that, I excelled at assessing patients in crisis.

Two RNs were always on duty, even overnight, one as charge nurse, one as PAO, or Psychiatric Assessment Officer. If a crisis arose on the floor, the charge nurse handled it, which meant giving a calming injection in the butt. No wonder no patient took one willingly. They had to be held down by staff, including the security guard who came running from another part of the hospital. If a crisis arose in the emergency room, the PAO assessed the patient, then woke up the psychiatrist on-call at home to relay the assessment and determine whether to admit or not.

One evening, Louise said, “I’m going out to my van to sleep a few hours. I had a hectic day at Springtown. You wouldn’t believe what a day! Make sure you wake me an hour before day shift arrives or if a call comes in the ER.”

Assigned charge nurse that night, I thought, “Are you kidding?” but knew already not to cross her. Nodding my head in agreement, I looked at her steadily, feeling sick to my stomach at her audacity and complete lack of character. My first impressions of her of a cocky, bold rooster dropped to that of a fat, self-serving slug.

Joel, a more agreeable sort than me, said, “Sure,” but gazed at me with a tweak of the eyebrow that said, “Wow, can you believe it?”

Joel went out later to wake her and she chastised us both for waiting too long. She could sink no lower in my estimation, but I never reported her. I should have, but I didn’t know how. I could advocate for my kids, but not myself.

Weeks later, she accused me of being insubordinate and recorded a curt message I had left when I could not fill in for someone who had called in sick. She gathered evidence, tidbits of my disrespect. I did not realize how negatively I had affected her.

More because of my inability to sleep than Louise, I decided to leave the job and put in my two weeks’ notice. Louise arranged an exit meeting with her and Mary Ann, the superior to us both. I guess Louise needed her say, and I knew no better than to do what I was told, so attended it. Louise spewed out a list of complaints, turning the ‘exit’ meeting into something quite different. I needed to agree to several demands if I wanted to stay. But I had already decided to leave, so it made no sense, and I walked out confused about what had just happened. Though churning inside, I remained disturbingly quiet.

Because Louise had orchestrated the entire meeting without so much as a peep out of me, I became a puppet used to quell her need for vindication. Did her hate for me arise because I couldn’t be controlled, or because I looked beneath the person she attempted to portray and saw the real person? I left the meeting and the job dazed. I never said what needed to be said: “How can I respect her when she goes out to her van to sleep?”

It was the same hand that wove its death thread through my family, the needle sewn through my soul. Blame and shame, all mine, and only mine. What happened in that meeting felt familiar. And so in life, the role given to me as a child followed like a dark shadow, tamping down my spirit without mercy or justice. Louise was rewarded with vengeful vindication, and my spirit became so villainously extinguished it would be hard to find and reignite. She was rid of her antagonist, besmirching me in the process. Meanwhile I took the pain deep inside where it festered into Christmas and over winter.

Spring came, but the usual uplift that accompanied it did not. I followed Samuel into the woods behind the garden. The day sparkled, cool, clear and sunny. But the swirling mass rocking in my gut darkened all splendor. Feelings agonized for expression with no release, locking me up completely as if I’d closed all the shutters. The only emotions able to leak out were sadness, tears, and seriousness, robotic and repetitive. I had shut down.

I tagged along behind him while he poked the ground with a stick, looking for the source of the wet earth, hoping to have a spring dug there. I felt desperate for relief from my pain, which made it hard to move, think, breathe, or smile.

“I don’t know what to do! I feel so bad,” I beseeched him once more; too many times to count over the endless winter months.

“Enjoy the day!” he answered.

Was that disgust in his voice, I wondered? I moved slowly away through the trees back toward the house. Why couldn’t I enjoy the day like he did? I knew I was in trouble; I had been there before, a depression so deep I needed help. Raymond. I needed him. Entering the house, I went upstairs and pulled out the drawer in the nightstand by my bed where I kept precious mementos, cards and letters. I shuffled through the papers and found the short list of names Raymond had given me, noticing the one circled.

After pressing Raymond who he recommended more highly than the others, he had replied with some reluctance, “Maybe Matt.”

Studying the neatly typed list, my hands smoothing the crease gently, caressing the white paper as if the movement brought Raymond closer, I placed it back in the drawer. As March melted into April and my birthday arrived, I called Matt’s number.

That began the first of six years of therapy with him. It took many months to stop crying, each week, each entire session. I just cried. Tears flowed down a face already hot, red, and blotchy. The salty tears scalded my scarlet cheeks. The internal lava crushed into silence by rocks of undeserved shame finally found release, erupting in a safe place, flowing each week till the next; tears of failure, loss, rejection, and grief for the voice that had been taken from me as a child.

There Are Friends, and There Are FRIENDS

Attempting to share some of my challenges with a friend who has not experienced trauma is like talking to a rock.

Severe sufferings are minimized, responses are insensitive, not out of unkindness but ignorance of how a life of repressed trauma can impact a person on all levels.

Boundaries. It’s OK you do not understand, those that have not been traumatized in childhood don’t. But I don’t want my challenges minimized. And that is my email back to her, softening it by expressing my hope was only to be seen and heard, not to be mean.

LIARS, MANIPULATORS, DECEIVERS

Very often the weak character of others instills great doubt in me because my tendency is to blame myself. And the hurt coming with being blamed (by me) goes deep as if my insides might crack.

Since beginning the journey of learning to love and accept myself, with it comes a wiser eye to the truth. Others who do not like my truth or my need to tell it, seek revenge in the form of niceties that sound so sweet yet cut to the bone.

That is the social norm; don’t yell, don’t tell the truth, cover it up with lies, but do harm anyway and don’t get caught.

People closest to me do the most harm, and go to the greatest lengths to conceal what they do. Flower it with lies that sound believable but aren’t true. There is no way to confront such brilliant masqueraders.

I despise liars, manipulators, and vengeful people disguising themselves as something other that. And no wonder considering what was learned early in childhood.

Tom, who spent his life putting me down so skillfully that even intelligent people in the group of people I was unfortunate to be born into (origin family) didn’t realize they too began treating me badly because of the light cast on me. Tom made it OK.

And Chet who threw the pack of Wrigley’s Chicklets down the hall, “Get it, if you get there first you can have it.”

I did, it was empty, then he plowed into me dragging me down the hall to my mother’s bed half-way suffocating me as he yanked down my pants rubbing his penis up and down on me then ejaculating.

Who would like being lied to after that? Deceived? Manipulated? And everyone does it to some extent, but some are masters at it.

My quiet life suits me. People ARE dangerous.

ORIGIN FAMILY DANGERS

Home-made apple pie for Don & Seth

It’s always a danger asking two siblings to visit from the city, but felt the risk was worth it. And it did kick me in the butt during the night after waking to use the bathroom.

Tossing restlessly in bed for a few hours, going through the moments of the visit. Really? Do you have to? Great effort was put into NOT doing that, yet when soul speaks it is often in the middle of night.

Feelings of self-worth tend to plummet around those called ‘family.’ And this time was no different, crackers in my hand before bed letting the carbs melt on my tongue satisfyingly. Carbs produce happy chemicals neutralizing those negative feelings about ‘self.’

Food has always been about a different kind of hunger, that of self-love and care, a desperate lack of both until recently when gentleness, kindness, and acceptance of ‘self’ magically dissolved the cravings for something to numb that cloying need.

It is hard labor being around those who are loved yet not trusted, and who cause such toxicity in their insistence of treating me like they once knew me; malleable, pleasing, and unassertive for my own needs.

It took herculean effort to stay inside myself, losing that groundedness momentarily but mostly feeling whole.

So, it isn’t an occurrence that will happen often, but this time progress was made. And sleep came finally, waking a few hours past my normal waking time.

The body has a way of giving itself what it needs if my mind makes room for it by cutting through the gnarled jungle of memories and old habits to discover my true (worthy) self, finding peace.  

SUCCESSFUL FAILURE?

Lost in the thicket of my mind, the past, the inability to make the present perfect, or at least better in my own eyes. Rather than failing at a relationship, maybe it is the other person not willing to meet me halfway.

Maybe Don wants the ‘Patty’ of before, the clinging, needing, pleasing ‘Patty,’ not the woman I’ve become today.

It is Don, the twin who survived, who once fathered me, taking me into his home during my early twenties after his twin, sibling Danny, succeeded at taking his own life.

The confusing mess of a family was all over the place, and so was I. Living at home after leaving college one course short of my AA degree. Mom was heavy into alcohol.

Don took me in with his wife and young daughter. Supported me as the pieces of my life were temporarily patched together; a job, signing up for the Army, then eventually my own apartment.

During my mother’s decline and subsequent death 13 years ago there was friction between us that hasn’t resolved, nor is likely to. Taking me out to the hallway of her apartment because I’d said something wrong, he chastised me on making things worse. That moment a rip tore inside me that won’t be mended.

The father-like figure disappeared. There’s not been a way to establish a new balance since. I become a cowering puppy who did wrong. During her last illness I did make things harder which wasn’t my intention. I became frantic losing the only place where a morsel of love could be found, from my mom. It came with strings, but having no love inside myself, it was all there was.

Am I the failure, or is it just to be? That in his gathering of the two other brothers, and a cousin or two, in his efforts to make a ‘family’ which also includes a fourth brother, the last surviving abuser of my child’s body and a torment to my mental health throughout adulthood, that I just don’t ‘fit’ in.

That I don’t want to, because ‘fitting in’ means going backwards, way, way, back to the invisible doormat I once was. I don’t know how to be with ‘them’ and still be me. Every try I become a dithering drooling pleaser.

Yes, me, Private First Class 50 years ago.

STEP OUT OF THAT COMFORT ZONE

“I’m glad you came out of hibernation,” Chris said gaily after our shopping excursion in the little second-hand craft store after a warm lunch.

“Me too,” I said, adding, “Just got in the habit during the pandemic of not going out but can’t stand it anymore.”

“Three years,” she said.

That’s a long time to go without ‘girlfriend’ time. A feeling of full satisfaction sustained me the rest of day after being dropped off with a warm hug and kiss.

The love of friends drifted off into the background during the seclusion of the pandemic, my life already solitary except for the occasional outing with a friend.

But that is so needed, nurturing, and sustaining. It is good to be ‘back in the saddle’ again. As she drove, I was able to enjoy the vibrant trees dotting the roadside and hilly doldrums beyond. The early frost brought out the reds heightening all other hues too, making for a brilliant feast of eye candy.

Becoming so rutted in displeasure at summer’s end, feeling my nose and hands cold much of time, complaining all the while about lack of sun, the splendor of fall popped wide open without me.

With what little time remains it’s my intention to get out and soak it up. A trip to the Apple Farm for cider and a half bushel of seconds for Nana’s well-known applesauce the grandchildren love. Even the ones living in the neighboring state ask for it.

Tis time for our annual trip to the hills along the lake where colors overwhelm in their glory, then lunch at our favorite little soup and sandwich shop attached to a bakery that supplies the crusty bread for the meals.

And just kicking around our own meadow. The back hill has come alive even more prominently than anywhere else. So, like Dorothy in Oz, “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with… There’s no place like home.” 

GROWTH?

 So, another day, another after a day of feeling sorry for myself for sleep issues cropping up again over seemingly innocuous events after a nice lull from them. Having fun with friends?

Our monthly gathering has been going on for years so how could that be? It may be deeper than that, as one friend is causing some doubts after years of feeling secure in her friendship.

She no longer resides on the pedestal I put her on, but is surely as human as me. Though she outlines her life as a do-gooder, it isn’t always good that she does. And at times of late has taken a piece of me with her sharp words of warning.

Is that because she feels that my adoration of her has lessened? That is enough to keep me awake. Feeling more secure in myself improves my ability to see people as they are, not the saints they may once have been thought to be.

Friendship changes over time. We have moved apart, and maybe there’s no chance of recovery other than meeting monthly as a group. We haven’t done anything together in a very long time, other than stopping in at her house a few times. But she has not come here. The pandemic is partly to blame, but there’s more to it than that. She’s just busier, and unless I ask for more, more isn’t coming. So ask.

It’s hard to accept that her time is used elsewhere. That we’ve drifted apart. It feels that way with one brother too. Indebtedness for their kindnesses in the past can’t make for connections now. Could it be that more effort needs to be put in the asking, because both have been invited to visit but don’t. More encouragement, a phone call?

Change, growth, leaps from one chasm to another if dared. But who will catch me if I fall? And who will give the answers about what to do?

TERROR & TRUST

Photo by Patricia

Losing my way, the forest thickens, darkness creeps in. It’s no wonder being scared happens so easily; a toad suddenly hopping before me makes my heart leap, then chastising myself for it.

My world caves in when hearing from Seth in the city, the pull to try to make more of those ‘family’ feelings, to have a family or origin. Swirling ‘ifs,’ all conclusive to one thought of the critic’s choice, you’re fault.

It’s because of me that no closeness exists between Seth, Stevie, or Don. But is it? Isn’t it more so than any interaction with them, and the standard treatment tossed my way, brings me back into the darkness of my soul, a place where most of my life existed?

That terror was the closest thing to me, living with monsters who attack is terrorizing, and those that lived with it and did nothing, even to this day do nothing, certainly do not stand by me in loyalty and testament to what was done- all are reason to be wary of.

Of course trust is an issue. So, take all my love and give it to those who are trustworthy, the family built on my own.