DEPRESSION- PEACE

What happened to just wanting peace? Seems to be converted into just wanting not to feel depressed. These months have been dark, the lack of sleep making them darker. A very hard winter, but there’s light, true light. Longer into evenings, earlier in mornings, and the robins? They are back as depicted on last night’s news, I just NEED to see one.

Peace.

That is the one thing being searched for and found after working so hard towards it, and felt miraculously in many moments. Yet this dark thing holding a grip on my emotions, thoughts, and spirit has been deadening.

Talking to Samuel about the ‘whys’ of living, especially now that all purpose seems over. No more rush or stress over kids, jobs, or paying bill. Our life of frugality has made us comfortable without having to worry about money. After a life of that constant nagging concern, shouldn’t I be happy?

He said, “The alternative is going home to Jesus.”

That quieted me, what do you say to that? Although, you go to Jesus, I go to Mother Earth in ash form.

Walking down past my friendly pines on a day the snow began to melt in the meadow, a song from long ago played through my mind, ‘Jesus Loves Me.” The memory of my early divide from male dominated religion took hold as a child at the same time siblings were attacking me. We children sang it at summer camp, but I couldn’t and instead said, “Not me. Jesus doesn’t love me.”

Horrified, adults ushered me into a little room all by myself for a talk. Sitting there alone, waiting, feeling so scared. Do-gooders doing bad, harming me even more which would be almost impossible considering what was already happening. But shame on shame buried me further. At the picnic with all the children running, laughing, and having fun on a sunny day, the path to the rest of my life began… dark, so very dark, and shamed.

So many times people knew and could have stepped in to help, but didn’t.

I let the song run through my mind on this bright blue day letting the words sink in and feel love, because my belief is, whether you call it Jesus, Muhammed, Allah, or Moses, we are all one in same, and loved by the same source, an internal one. Though mine has abandoned me of late feeling hollow as a empty shell.

All that work these past few years with success, yet while coming up the other side of the meadow my shadow was scorned. My life of self-hate still there- still needing work by continuing to turn over the dark parts and love those too.

BOUNDARIES

As days accumulate without contact with any origin family, the more space and safety that is felt. There is also a burgeoning of self-esteem without the nagging feeling of being ganged up on and kept silenced when trying to fit in to this newly formed dysfunctional clan. Keep me down so that you can pretend there is a family to be had. Include me so that you feel good but disregard me.

But for me it is much safer to be apart feeling freer, authentic, and autonomous. Giving in to the pressure when others finally wanted to include me made me vulnerable. Because there is love, but it is not possible to both love and interact.

Feelings of love and hate eat internally because each still interact with the last surviving attacker who did the most destruction to me with his continuous cruelty. And never, not once, an apology or remorse.

To love from afar and not be drowned in memories, or the feeling of being held under without being able to breathe or feel free. It is harmful, deadly, and a very bad choice.

I was pushed into something unwanted, too easily done because doing what you want if you bug me enough works. Expensive gifts given by me, treating others to lunch on an outing, invites, visits. I tried. But again, and again it takes away all growth in a snap. Suddenly I am that child all alone in agony. Regret sets in, feeling weak with the wanting of family that just won’t be.

Give me my space to grow, love the ones safe to love, and be me. Give? I must take what is needed by setting boundaries. The wish that there’s a supportive family is not happening in my lifetime. It didn’t then, it won’t now.

My family is one I made, nurtured, and grew.

Wise Moves

It was a wise move to delete Seth’s response without reading it. Then I’m able to proceed with what I need to say unencumbered by negative, hurtful, angry, defensive responses which were what came from him after sending a link to my book. I wrote the following to him this morning:

I wish good things for you. There is a sweetness about you I have always loved. We share the same passion for nature and animals which touched me and made me smile so many times via emails. And you uplifted me when I was down, which was a lot.

Yet in spring an email was sent to Tom with our photo at the Mill after camping. It was only this past year that I finally asked both Don and Stevie not to add me to emails he was on. I didn’t think I had to ask you.

But after the criticism about writing the book detailing horrific abuse, the realization hit that your shame about what others in the family had done outweighed my need to finally have a life I wanted to live.

That you didn’t answer my email for a very long time? I was the victim, not you. For much of my life I’d lament to Samuel that I didn’t want to live. He finally told me how hard it was to hear that. So I changed it to, I wish I had never been born.

It wasn’t until after Mom died that I finally faced the truth and let it up. Before then I couldn’t destroy her fantasy family with the truth we both knew to be true. With it came the joys of childhood too. One chapter horror, the next one joyful. Because when one is suppressed so is the other.

I am not ashamed of writing the book. And you should applaud me for the courage in doing so. But it seems you want a fantasy sister. One who didn’t go through such horrors.

But in seeing only what you can handle, you deny the existence of who I really am, and the strength it took to get here.

I don’t want to give up the sweetness we shared, but I also cannot pretend to be this fake ‘Sis’ you seem to see me as.

You were there for me as much as you could be throughout life, uplifting me with humor and positivity. I am thankful for that. I don’t need anything from you anymore except to see me as I really am which includes the horrors you seem to need to pretend didn’t happen. As if hearing about it is harder than my going through it.

I’ve grown to see just what exceptional qualities lie inside of me. Something I’ve never seen or experienced before.   

HEAVEN

It has taken an entire week to come back to a place where peace had cupped me in her arms. A week to come back down from severe PTSD affecting all systems dramatically causing real illness.

Without understanding why, the sad truth is that origin family members are like drinking poison. Go ahead drink it, but the sickness comes after…. every time. It was OK for a while when meeting with one at a time, but becoming so immersed with all three, as Seth’s wife was indisposed, became overwhelming.

They talk about another not there. If you have something to say to someone, say it to them. It does no good to discuss it with others. More importantly it’s disrespectful along with cowardly.

There is still a part of me wanting to do what others seem to do so easily. Attend a brunch, go on a spur of the moment camping trip, whatever. But again, no, my body will not comply splintering in a million pieces.

Coming home it took days to unwind. Finally peace seeps in fully. The sweet scent of blossoms are noticed, my breath is felt, and the songbirds fill me. By the creek the gift of a graceful heron fans her enormous wings as she glides past over the water looking for another fishing spot.

Heaven is again discovered as the sun shines down warming like an embrace, right here in my back-yard.

HONESTY

Tensing up when Criminal T comes on the news, whether concerning the upcoming impeachment, or anything else illegal he has done that keeps getting dug up the more others dig, mostly it’s relief causing my shoulders to un-crunch and relax.

Honesty, honesty leads the way. Not only in the oval office but in every institution the criminal sullied and turned into a sham of its former reputation.

Now there is freshness and hope. When a new director of each federal institution speaks- it is truth. If for some reason it isn’t, they will be gone in a heartbeat.

Honesty. My heart feels happy, lighter, and gay with it.