Chronic

 

I knew getting older would probably present some difficulties, but I wasn't prepared for what I've experienced the past few months.

After injuring a muscle in my back lifting a table in July I have had an ongoing thing. My back doesn't seem to ever really recover and if it feels that way I am quickly reminded that I can go to the store, or do laundry, or any number of other things, but only one per day!

Add to this the number of debilitating problems with my toes, feet, ankles, knees and neck, and it is dumb founding! I go to bed fine and wake up unable to bend or put weight on this or that joint in my body without excruciating pain.

One might think I was out running marathons, but I am only tottering to the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom most of the time. I am not even rearranging furniture, which is bad because that has always been one of my major forms of therapy.

If I can't rearrange my life, I rearrange my furniture.

Well, now my life is great except for these various aches and pains and I can tell you that chronic pain wears on one after a while.

Trauma

I still find myself feeling a sense of impending doom occasionally.

It is a feeling that has followed me from childhood when I never knew how my mother would respond to whatever was going on around us, to adulthood when my husband replaced my mother as the unknown force that could disrupt any moment at any time.

My experience with the scammer only reinforced this feeling when, after months of euphoria and feeling loved, I discovered it was all a ruse.

Now I am like the dog who has been rescued from the pound. Everything seems unbelievably wonderful, but what if I'm wrong and someone is still waiting to kick me when I least expect it.

Every bit of mail is suspect until I have perused it carefully. Every email is the same. Everything is dulled by the possibility that it is not the good thing it appears to be.

I just got a notice to come re-sign my lease agreement because my rent is going down. I went with trepidation that I might not have understood something. Nope! Rent went down! That's wonderful!

I got notices from both my car insurance and health insurance and had to make phone calls to be sure they were not zingers I had not expected. All is well!

Seventy five years of zingers is hard to recover from because they always came when I least expected them and ruined perfectly good moments.

And yet, I am really an optimist. Maybe that's what makes it so terrible. I expect the best, but I've learned it doesn't always happen.

I think it is going to happen more and more now and I am excited.

Drifts of love

 

I seldom listen to music anymore, but last night I listened to some that touched my heart deeply. 

For as long as I can remember hearing music, some of it has affected me profoundly.

It is as if my soul is tuned to these sounds and they make me ache for something I do not understand.

Listening to them brings up memories I do not have; of times I cannot remember, but still feel very deeply.

If there was a case for reincarnation in my life it would have to be this music.

Some people find music makes them feel romantic, or patriotic. It makes me long for what I cannot quite put my finger on.

When I first begin listening it feels good -- like coming home, but soon it turns into a homesickness that is almost unbearable.

Of course I love the music made by the people I love, Jim, Bobby, Corra, Andy and John. But that is music of the heart. It is endearing and lovely and something I never tire of. 

But the music I heard tonight is old. Older than I am. Older than my dreams. With it come drifts of love deeper than life itself, almost too painful to listen to.

Fear and frustration

 

I am sitting in the living room of the house on Douglas Street, a house I spent most of my growing up years in.

I am sitting in my mother's chair watching television, but I hear someone playing guitar on the sun porch. I also hear someone coming downstairs in the hall behind me. For some reason I am filled with fear.

My mother comes around the corner and she is furious. I tell her the guitar did not bother me. Then, thinking I needed a reason, said, "I think I got used to them when I was away at college."

We are hungry. My grandmother and aunts are here and we go into the kitchen to eat breakfast. Someone has set up those large brown folding church tables. Packed together into a huge square, they fill the kitchen so completely it is hard to sit around the edges to eat, but we try.

My mother is in the kitchen behind this kitchen, cooking. My niece, is eating on the floor under the table and my sister refuses to make her sit up on a chair to eat. I am furious. My grandmother sits at the corner of the table fake smiling and trying to make everyone else do the same. Keri keeps eating pancakes with her fingers, under the table.

I leave and go back where my mother is now cooking scrambled eggs and sausages like a short order cook. It makes me angry that she is not eating with us and I tell her that. We go back into the kitchen and all the tables, except one, have been removed. My mother sits down to eat now and my grandmother is still there. My sister is there too. 

I want to sit down but now I realize there isn't even any toast and I am, once again, furious. I get up and tell them I'm not eating without toast and I go to get the toaster, which is on the sun porch. As I walk out there, I know my mother is following me and I am filled with fear again. She is angry.

I step back to hide in the foyer and she passes me by still heading for the sun porch. I wonder what she will do when she gets there and I am not there. Then suddenly as she enters the door to the sun porch, her body is jerked back and falls on the floor. I am horrified to see her head land right in front of me! She has been beheaded and I immediately feel like it is my fault, but I know she walked into an electric cord so hard and with such force that it decapitated her. I wonder if I should call 911 for an ambulance since I know she is dead, but I don't know what else to do and decide that is the right thing to do. I dial the number and while waiting for someone to answer I feel like it is my fault my mother was beheaded. If only I had not dared to go get the toaster.

I keep waiting but no one answers the 911 number.

My cell phone rings and I wake up from this dream, maybe the worst one I've ever had. The feelings were real. They were the old feelings of frustration and fear and guilt, but the story is not a true one.

Empathy vs Reflection

 

There are people in this world who have no concept of empathy.

They have learned to respond to the feelings they see, but other's actual pain is unknowable to them.

They can only relate to their own feelings, their own pain, their own concepts of what is going on in the world around them.

I'm not sure why this is so. I suspect it is because as children they were taught the safest way to make other people happy was by doing what was expected. 

Therefore their own feelings were often neglected and they assume other people deal with life the same way.

These people often respond in inadequate ways when trying to help others. It is kind of like being in charge of a furnace, but never having a thermometer to measure the heat being put out. It could be too much or too little. It could even be fatal.

They are not easy to spot unless you see them quite frequently and they will never understand the difference if you try to explain it to them. That part of their reasoning atrophied many many years ago.

Haunted

 

In the deepest dark of night

when ghoulies creep and 

ghosts set flight

there is one haunted

whose child was bright

but beauty flaunted

set her sight

on things ephemeral 

that were not right.

And now that child 

is of the night.

Common sense

 

Some people love learning new things. 

For them life is a puzzle with an infinite number of pieces to put together and their job is to find the combinations that suit them best.

Other people hate learning new things.

For them it is intimidating and difficult and something to be avoided at all costs. Their lives are long sequences of repetition, making the same mistakes over and over again, because they refuse to try something new.

Mistakes are part of life. It's okay to make them, but they are meant to be learning processes, not ruts to be mired down in and cherished.

If something is not working, it needs to be changed. 

I don't need to repeat the old quote about people who keep on doing the same things while expecting different results. 

Common sense should prevail.

Depth

 

Everyone has their own ideas about how they want to live.

Depth of character is measured by the truth of those ideas.

If someone truly believes that what they are doing is the right thing, the best thing, then they must hold themselves responsible for the consequences of those beliefs.

To espouse a belief in something and then to complain about the consequences is asking people not to hold you responsible. Those two actions are in direct conflict with each other.

Each of us has the right to live the way we choose, but we do not have the right to expect other people to agree with that, or live with it, nor is it their responsibility to make us feel good it if they do not agree.

People can like us without agreeing with us. Asking them to pretend they do agree with us is neither fair, nor realistic, so sometimes it is just better to avoid those issues we know are in conflict with, in the name of peace.

Wanting everyone to like us and everything we do is a childish dream. As adults we choose what we want to share with those who are important to us and steer clear of those things we know we are in direct conflict with.

 The depth of our character is anchored on our ability to accept our own choices and their consequences.

Faith

 

Why must there be an authority figure that forces us to be good, or threats of damnation if we aren't?

Why does the word faith imply a belief in some kind of creed or religion?

Goodness is a part of nature that lies deep within all things. 

It is not always easy, or simple to access it.

True faith does not require anyone or anything to manifest it for us. We are the fishermen of our own souls.

Faith in simple goodness requires enormous strength of spirit, but that spirit is within us from the moment of our existence.

Finding it can be a life's work.

Forever

 

I have always loved my children so fiercely that it was sometimes terrifying. I had to cultivate a sense that they would be alright. That I had given them everything I knew to help them make it through this world.

I also believed that our connection was so strong that if they were to cry out for me from anywhere, I would hear them.

I was not always the best mother, but I always did the best I knew how.

If they did not come home on time, or call, I told myself that my worrying about them would not keep them safe. And yet I sent out signals to the universe to keep them safe, to help them find their way. Whatever that might be and for whatever good it did.

Maybe it was only good for me in the long run, but I tried.

It isn't easy to allow adult children to be who they are and find their own way. But love is so strong that anything is possible. Nothing can ever sever the love that ties me to each of my children..

Nothing.

They are as much a part of me as the heart in my chest.