no matter how you slice it, a sandwich is as a sandwich does

this morning ...manure manicured finger sandwiches are being constructed as we speak in my kitchen.

can't hide and can't deodorize their stink.

gotta dig quickly and deeply into mommy-roots and pull up the strongest ones

and wrap those suckers around my head until the words of positivity and strength and self idealization emerge,

encrusted and slimy and damp and ugly

almost forgotten

almost buried treasure, unexplored.

family trees are the hardest to see through.

the forest may run for miles and be transparent as the lace worn on my wedding day

not THE tree

ghosts of unknown relatives line branches, adding weight

separated, thin saplings reach out for extra light and the girth widens

difficult to prune

impossibly unmanageable

connections and origins and budding confusion

dry and cracked, brittle by years of wind storms and lightening strikes, and fallen beneath the forest's canopy

 farther away from belonging and hope,

remembrance and pride,

respect and delight;

or hang precariously and alone 

awaiting the boy to visit and randomly choose his newest fishing implement.

Read below an earlier post, written years ago, when I opened my heart, opened my soul, and shit sandwiches were served on platters to the ones I loved.  I'm perfecting my recipe, just in case you want it...

can barely see through the tears

must write to feel

must write to sort and think and see through

reality tears

acceptance of what i declared

and what responses followed

will follow

more to come

sure thing

reality

admitting purpose has price

to pay

in real time

with real people

real feelings to hurt

real intentions make real consequences

rather throw this keyboard through that window

rather hide

i'm good at it

hiding from reality

and bites

incompatibility of self with you

fit into one and not the other

help and hurt together

wishing i learned this already

might be easier

might not

reality bites

hard

"my heart can't wait to meet you on the other side"~mmj

where's that confounded bridge?

monday

“You don’t have to yell!”

…after I exuberantly say hello to the creature clutching the computer in the corner of the couch.  Nice greeting.  Status quo for sure.  Sarcastically disrespectful and full of fire.  Spoiled brat mumbles under breath, believing his diatribe represents respect.  I squeeze together threads of patience and talk my gut out of stirring and convince my eyes to stay dry.  Home.

wednesday

Three nights alone.  Three days silent.  Invitation to dinner accepted.  Uncomfortable sighs and intentional body language received.  Excuse me as I remove my ego from the table.   Breathe deeply  the pseudo self confidence and quickly compose my mind’s mixed messages into an appropriate rendition of restraint.  Serenity now.  Serenity now.

Night four begins.

thursday

No line on the horizon this morning.  Only the familiar muddled shades of grey shuffled between green needles of pine.  Step out.  Look from behind the north face and over the rising moon.  Enjoy the thrill of the meet, the hunt for understanding.

Visualize your view.   Only yours.  Keep it simple and kiss it hello. 

Allow today to enter through your mind’s eye, ahead of the unconscious scrum of ancient messages.  Intend.  Intentionally push suspicions away.  Useless to imagine thoughts, feelings and expectations unstated.  Observe your ego.  Talk yourself up.  Use reminders.  Conquer triggers.  Stomp stigma.  Hope. 

Step onto the tightrope, the one parallel to your horizon.  Your line.  Your walk.  Your decisions.  Balance or hit the net.  Then mulligan if necessary.

peace

namaste

shalom

~L

humpty dumpty sat on a wall...

Child molestation is not a happy topic, especially when an American college football coach is in the middle of the scandal. You've probably heard enough about the man they call Jo Pa, too much in fact. His kingdom is crumbling and he is partially to blame. I have no sympathy for him and the wall of lies built around his unhappy valley.  I want to know where are the stories about the traumatized children and their families?

  

I am enraged.  I am sickened.  I am embarrassed, once again, for our country.  We are socially inept.  We've proven this in several ways.  We claim to help the world, yet at home, our residents are flailing.  Morality and ethics are lost a midst team jerseys and statistical polls.  Blinders must have been on sale this past decade, on the shelf next to the foggy glasses and rosary beads. 

Yes, I'm referring to the Catholic mess.  The entity who raped my generation of dignity and trust.  The church I trusted to teach my children about honor, respect, loving one another, and helping those less fortunate.  My fault, I didn't read the disclaimer:  'priests may seem holier than they appear.'  The Vatican cover up and the Penn State cover up are huge.  Two powerful, public, influential groups who have been revered and praised for good deeds.  Two groups of human beings choosing to look the other way, brush under the rug, deny, create excuses, and harm.  Once wronged, shame on you.  Twice, shame on me.  Action is needed.  

My interest is twofold.  I am a mother.  I am a psychiatric nurse. Protective maternal instincts cannot be matched.  Like the wild animal charging the invader too close to her babies, this mom feels like kicking butt and taking names.  My patients have shared horror stories of child molestation and abuse, sometimes  at the hands of their loved ones, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles...stories that explain the psychosis, dissociation, self-hatred, and self-harm of adulthood.  Where does the cycle end?  How?  When?  

I promise each of you this:  if I see an adult sexually molesting a child, I will be talking to 911 dispatch sooner than that predator can pull up his pants.  Period.  No second thought.  I knew this 22 years ago when my daughter was gracefully growing inside of me.  I know this everyday and forevermore.  Help is my middle name, even when I may be requesting, I can feel others' pain.  Maybe there in lies the motive for my anger today.  Maybe my anger is ever present because I so strongly feel the hurt around me.  I hurt for the children unnecessarily put in contact with predators, unhealthy adults who were given multiple chances to prey, given permission from their bosses, their confidants, their elders, their bishops and cardinals.  I hurt for the children who lost their youth and live daily with doubt, and wonder why they deserve their horror.  I hurt for the students at Penn State who do not understand the severity of their university's indiscretions, their judgement clouded by the pedestal's shadow.  I hurt for the believers who follow doctrine, blindly and unquestionably, their muteness deafening.  

Yes, to be human is to err.  I, of all humans, am a walking err.  I will not cast the first stone.  Too late for that pebble.  I'm looking for a rock to chuck, a boulder to roll, a stick of dynamite, anything I can use to awaken senses and knock heads.  Wanna' join me?

go green!

peace and love

~L

how many rejections does it take me to get to the center of my soul?

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confidence cracked

you know what pisses me off?  friends who don't act like friends.  friends who tell you they always make time for their friends and don't.  friends who ignore you.  friends who are happy to see you until they realize you don't fit into their life.  friends who don't reply to your email, not even one word.  friends who comment on everyone else's wall except yours.  friends who encourage you to open your heart and subsequently crush said heart.

you know what also pisses me off?  how angry i am with my friend and how important this friendship is for me...why are my eyes welling with tears now?  how did i get here?  once hopeful and energized by friend and now frustrated and regretful.  rejected again.  rejected by an old friend, one whom i never thought i would talk to again.  one who reminded me of happy me, pre-depressed me, innocent me.  one with whom i share common interests.  or so i thought.

damned if i do...be myself, tell my truth, feel appreciated.
fuck this world and the horse it rode in on.
too tired to climb the emotional ladder
tired of looking through rose colored fun house mirrors
distortion persuading my heart to peek
look, just a little, maybe this time will be ok
persuading my soul to unlock prayers
and go to bed before I wake
again i fail, fall, frustrate my forward progression

what happened?
no answer
was it something I said?
no answer
one too many emails?
no answer
intrusion of public privacy?
no answer
expectation higher than yours?
no answer
will you please contact me and explain?
nothing
i hear you loud and clear.

i hear gentle crackings, like the iced lake removing itself from the warming shore
that's my confidence
that's why I'm pissed
at myself

my so called lifeline

October 4, 2010

My doubt, self doubt, grows exponentially with my silence.  When I tell him that I don’t think I can satisfy him, what am I really saying? Am I asking him for help or asking him to bail?  He’s heard this over and over and it’s ingrained in his thoughts of me.  He says he needs me to tell him what I want. Now.  He needs me to tell him that I want him or that I don’t want him.  That I want to fight for this relationship or that I won’t fight for it.  He wants and needs to hear me include myself in the fixing of this partnership. Or he needs to hear the alternative.  He wants to stick.  God tells him to.  

I am confused.  I am hurt.  I am sad. I want so many experiences and I don’t feel close to my partner.  Did we ever feel close?  When did we think the same and dream the same dreams?  When did we share our desires?

I know I am growing and exploring who I never got to be.  I have consistently been the work-on-it gal.  But maybe my work hasn’t been for the good of closeness.  Have I been working toward strengthening our togetherness or our separateness?  What are my goals now?  What do I have the capability of working on?  Toward?  What do I want to work on?

Testing my limits by going to school and listening to him doubt that I made the right choice without him.  
Testing my mental health by submitting to illogical expectations of a psychotic boss and resigning before she canned me.  
Testing my self confidence and if he is right about my nursing ability.
Getting blindsided by my own confidence.
Feeling like a fool at the mercy of strangers.  
Falling into similar traps at a job without foundation.  
Exhausting myself to please and push for more and to fit in.
Ignoring the signals of security as I watch the walls crumble around me.
Running away before the explosion begins, setting myself up for self implosion instead.

How did I get here?  Where did I come from?  Why do I think this way?  Where is God?

I have felt lost in the last year or two, crying because I was hurt when he didn’t think well of me.  I recall the times he told me that my way of thinking is wrong, that my way of expressing my thoughts is wrong and inefficient and is not worth his time.  So I shut up.  I stopped expressing myself to him.  I stopped trying to explain myself and where I was coming from and how I felt and what I wanted.  I gave up.  After all, I did not want to hear that the man I loved thought negatively about me.  I did not need him to reinforce my self doubt.  Why put myself in a position where I knew I would hurt?

Our conflicts became broken records of despair and futility.  One negative word or head shake or rolling of the eyes or fuck you,  and I’m gone.  Out the door.  Out of the house.  Out of the city.  Out of my mind. Out of reality.  Out of myself.  This is the truth.  I’ve been living outside of myself.

Depressed enough to give up my license.  Depressed enough to say I’ll work for minimum wage.  Embarrassed enough to tell him he was right about me being a nurse.  Frightened enough to lie to myself and hide from the truth.  Until the sunshine blinded my insecurities for a brief moment of clarity and WTF-ness.

I didn’t want to be Rainey anymore.  Rainey is not taken seriously.  Rainey is a baby and frail and frustrated and fragile.  Rainey doesn’t know how to stand up for herself and speak her thoughts and commit to decisions or make and pursue goals.  I want to grow up and be L.  I want to make my own decisions and speak my mind and joke in public and cheer loudly at the games and talk about passionate subjects and tell my family what I really mean and not take their shit anymore.  That includes him.  No more shit sandwiches.  No more crybaby.  No more sulking in the corner.  No more caring what they think.

And I landed softly.  I landed safely.  I carefully caress my nursing career in the home of mental health.  And I feel confidence anew.  I am a nurse.  I am helping and learning and teaching and growing.  And God is with me.  The dance of life continues in the next room.  Please join us.  Please take off your shoes and get comfortable for this ride.  We welcome you back.  We missed you. Now get to work.

What I believe is truth in this room are lies inside the other room.  How I perform here is different than what I perform there. The train tracks switch in between and my mind does not always follow.  Which way do I turn?  Which way do you want me to turn?

I’m taking my meds.  I’m writing and sorting and releasing stress my way.  My way may be the wrong way.  Wrong for this family.  Wrong for these kids.  Wrong for my parents and his.  

He tells me the way I should do this.  Live.  Relate.  Speak my mind.  Listen.  Form goals and work toward them.  Parent.  Partner.
He suggests and helps when he notices my confusion and frustration.  He advises me to do what he does, because it works for him, has worked since he was a kid, 12 or 13 or 14 years old.  Good for him to be confident in his habits and confident in his patterns and with his goals reached and processes of getting there.  Good for him to rely on consistency.  Good for him to keep him afloat through the dark ages.

When I was 12, 13, 14, I was watching my parents split up for some unknown reason and placing me in the arms of a stranger without skills to know how to relate with him.  Placing me in a different world, switching scenes without telling me I had to follow.  Changing the expectations and allowances of my pre-adolescent hormonally developing mind and soul and heart.

Choices stripped.  Opinions banned.  Extraction from comfortable and forward momentum.  Forced into unknown and unsupported.  Doubted and divided.  Slapped and insulted.  Stifled and censored.  Ignored and injured.  Where am I going?  Where are you taking me?  What am I supposed to do now?  Who is leading me?  Where am I?

And I ran.  Toward acceptance of the negative sort.  From strangers who barely knew me and who I didn’t have to reveal myself. I didn’t have to hold back my passion.  And I flew.  Into trouble and insecurity of the adolescent kind.  The trouble of who do I like and how do I deal and what if I’m rejected?  Trouble of trying to ignore my home life long enough to feel like I could be happy otherwise.  Pretend to like yourself or don’t and pretend others do.  Release and reject.  Revive sanity temporarily.  Act two roles.  Isn’t that what I was taught?  Be someone you’re not in order to survive?  Be what they want you to be in order to be accepted?  In order not to get hit or hurt or doubt yourself more?  
Don’t ask questions. Don’t lead with ideas.  

 
August 8, 2011  (10 months later)

Full circle.  Right back where I started.  I’m at it again.  The last paragraph is my story.  The only one.  The missing link in my lifetime of sorrow.  No rusted links, only shiny like new, strong as ever sharp, cold metal connections, from my ten year old happy-go-lucky fourth grader to my presently fucked up self.  Breaking hearts and taking names by accident.  The accidental tourist of my own life.  45 years take away ten real good ones and 35 links later, I’m the expert avoider.  Just call me super sucka!

Therapist on board.  Not holding back from the fears thrown at me.  I’m taking strikes until my bat makes contact, until I feel the spark of energy, the mass of force pushing me through the motion by the release of weight off my shoulders.  When I watch the homerun ball soar above us all, it’s arch predetermined by my positioning, and see the open sky smiling, I will know. I will know.

And since I have no idea how that Babe Ruth-esque moment will feel, or when clarification will arrive, I’m grounded in my garden dugout, watching weeds pop up out of nowhere and wishing a giant hand will reach down to pull me up too.  

panic at the disco

I had an anxiety attack today.  In my own home.  With my family present.

I felt my breath revving up and my heart pounding.  Almost as quickly as the thoughts running criss-cross my brain.  Thinking was my enemy and I longed to erase each thought instantly.  STOP!! I yelled inside.  The tears came anyway.  SHIT!! I yelled out loud.  Don’t talk to me!  Leave me alone!  I have to get outa here!  Suffocating…

Trigger today?  Unsure.  De-escalation?  Forcing myself to do what I did not want to do.  Tough self-love.  A little air conditioning at Meijer helped also.  Damn, I hate humidity.   Let’s call humidity the trigger today, just for the hell of it.  If we come up with something better later, we’ll adjust.

So the sweat forming underneath my hairline suffocated my senses.  The interactions with my husband distracted my rationality.  The irrational thoughts of that which has not happened and may never, brought me to my knees.  Objectively watching the rerun of my temper tantrum…speechless.

My dog has panic attacks too.  She started last spring and they went away after we turned on the a/c for the summer. Hmmm. This spring she’s begun to scratch at the wooden screen slider door that my husband painstakingly repaired last week.  Yep, she carved herself a doggy door in our kitchen, and forgot how to bark or whine or nudge humans to communicate her needs.  Our dining room carpet sports a fro in one corner, ala ginger’s creative clawing.  I believe our 11 year old canine is adjusting to decreased senses, increased peripheral shadows, and amplified neighborhood noises through open windows. Not even the invitation to jump onto our bed with us will soothe her. I understand.  I want to crawl under the desk sometimes too.

Over stimulation.  Noise.  Noisy, negative thoughts inside my brain, amplified under stress.  Where is it from?  What do I do with it?  How can I get away?  If I cover my ears or close my eyes or scream, will it stop?  If I scratch at the floor or jump on the door or cower in the corner, will it stop?  I wish!  I stroke ginger’s head and her breathing relaxes.  I remain calm and reassure her I will always support her.  Sometimes I get pissed off at first, sure.  She can’t help her reactions, they’re instinctual.  She’s an animal.  I’m an animal.  Fight or flight.  Hang tight.  Look for the light.  Lighten up.   

to be continued, I'm sure.

hiding

can barely see through the tears

must write to feel

must write to sort and think and see through

reality tears

acceptance of what i declared

and what responses followed

will follow

more to come

sure thing

reality

admitting purpose has price

to pay

in real time

with real people

real feelings to hurt

real intentions make real consequences

rather throw this keyboard through that window

rather hide

i'm good at it

hiding from reality

and bites

incompatibility of self with you

fit into one and not the other

help and hurt together

wishing i learned this already

might be easier

might not

reality bites

hard

my heart can't wait to meet you on the other side~mmj

mellow music repeated

one song

one sound

one circle closing

all things comin back round

upside down

beginning to ending

end to begin

possible?

ready?

really?

supporters in place?

very needy

very moody

very scary

help please.