IMPERFECT Lady

Gratitude of You.

Imagine if you will, two people with Posttraumatic Relationship Disorder, meeting the opposite person they were usually drawn to, yet forming a bond.

 

If you understand the disorder, we are drawn to people who are not good to us, and can’t seem to be with people who are.

 

My brother and I, even though we were raised in the same house, he and I didn’t share much common ground.  He went his way at eighteen and I went mine.

 

Both victims of childhood abuse, we left home with our Disorder firmly in place and set out into the world fully packed for more abuse.

 

While he left home and got as far away from our family, its religion, the rules and beliefs of our parents, I settled in and set up a home life much similar to my parents, minus the pedophile.

 

We didn’t interact much with each other over the years, there wasn’t animosity, but nor was there a deep friendship either.  We were two grown kids doing the best we could, coming from whence we came.

 

Somehow about 7 years ago, we began talking on the phone.  It was sporadic in the beginning yet an odd but interesting exchange always happened.  We began to explore and to seek a new and better God.  We met again for the first time.

 

Shortly there after, he introduced me to yoga a well as new and exciting authors, and so began this most unusual relationship for us, the opposite of what our ‘disorder’ usually sought. 

 

I now believe it was that fact alone that helped us the most.  I wasn’t his normal cup of tea if you will, nor was he mine, yet by our seeing the ‘other-side’ we were able to see where we stood.

 

This may be hard to follow, but in my mind it is a clear as day.

 

Up and until the time we re-connected we had no one to show us where we were wrong due to our Posttraumatic Relationship disorder!

 

If you have a relationship disorder, you never really get to experience a ‘healthy’ relationship because the disorder won’t allow you to get there!

 

It is simply amazing to me that we stuck it out, well it wasn’t always easy, we did go for months of silence, and had moments of major disagreements, but one thing always remained in the midst of us in the past 4 ½, Reality.

 

Here we were two grown adult with this disorder or the affects of the disorder, learning to create or do a real relationship, the blind leading the blind.

 

Except that I could see what he couldn’t see and he could see what I couldn’t see, so we were the perfect pair!

 

I could see where his mind was confused and he understood perfectly where I had missed the mark.  We both needed the other to make sense of where we were, and even to where we stood today.

Because of our similar childhoods with sexual abuse we were able to understand the unthinkable, to acknowledge the inner trauma and how it affects the body and mind.

 

Where my mind was closed, my body was wide open and held the fear, his body was closed but his mind wide open to remember. 

 

I was continually amazed at our sameness, but the differences we carried.  He remembered all, but his body was numb, my mind forgot all, but my body seemed to hold the memory alive.

 

As far back as I can remember my mind and body were at odds, I would not be alone with my father, yet I couldn’t tell you why. 

 

On December 4^th 2004, I had the answer to a puzzle of 46 years, I made sense, the full disclosure of my life came tumbling out, and with it the aftershocks that left me standing in a pile of rubbish that was my life.

 

The after affects were the knowing that I was with people who hurt me and couldn’t be with people who didn’t, that my whole system seemed to working backwards and upside down.

 

The disorder had made such a mess of my world, I had a lot of relationships to rework or let go of, and in the midst of that my brother and I were both affected personally as well as a unit. 

 

Our new relationship was going to be tried over and over and each time we were forging new boundaries and learning how to be with someone in a new way.

 

He taught me and I taught him, together we stood true to ourselves and our inner truths, we challenged our minds and sought to reclaim a new reality, we shared books and new authors, to the millions of insights that would startle us and have us sitting back in our chairs, the volumes of ways we had it so wrong.

 

It wasn’t a teacher and a student relationship although it was, we just kept changing chairs, sometimes I was being taught and others I was the teacher, it never seemed to matter which, if it was our time to be the student we welcomed the others great wisdom, and when it was our time to lead, we did so with the greatest respect.

 

He thanks me in his blog, “Sister of Kindness” and I was beginning this blog at the same time.  Yet in it’s place came the blog about the Posttraumatic Relationship Disorder.

 

I began a blog and was trying to share how we were the same but the opposites, how we connected in the most unlikely way, and how it was that we carried each other to the finish line while running the same race, and it seemed nearly impossible to write, but now I can see that I had to first read about the Disorder in Dr. Mona Lisa’s book, who we were and why.

 

I didn’t have such a fancy name for our dysfunction, but I knew intuitively that we were the perfect opposites to make our way through.

 

We have literally shared millions of hours on the phone, each in our own personal hell, sorting and labeling, tossing out and lamenting at each new loss, elated with each new freedom and fragment of self we discovered.

 

If you can picture two lost souls buried under a mountain of rubbish, weakened and in total confusion, working in starts and stops to become free to stand tall and walk alone towards brighter future, that is who we are!

 

The mountain of stuff we had to sort out whether it be in the reality of now or in the messed up past or in the vaults buried deep and out of sight in our minds, we have traveled great distances to get where we are today, and greatest feat is to figure out the messes of the mind.

 

How do you do that?  How do you even begin to begin to begin sorting when you don’t even know that what is in your head is wrong?

 

Our messes were created or began by little children, left alone in our minds without adult supervision, so we created and labeled and sorted out things as a child would, but then called it our truth.

 

That inner truth was a beacon that led us down roads most would fear to go, in places and with people that were as messed up as ourselves.

 

It is indeed amazing that you become color blind to the fact that you are both a mess. There is no one healthy person to compare your self too, no bright light of normal.

 

Normal too is a fallacy for what is normal?  I have always said I went in search of normal but way overshot the mark.

 

I am not normal in the general definition, but I am way normal for me.

 

I am normal to me and my brother is normal to me, coming from the road we have been on, we are perfectly normal.

 

We are the perfect example of two souls caught up in the disorder and the perfect pair to tag team and to work ourselves free.

 

What a journey my brother and I have been on, one that required the fearless, a seeker of the truth no matter how shocking it was.

 

We stood bravely and with courage without any idea what we stood against.  We were walking into a mad mad mind!

 

A journey with my brother, wow what a road we have been on.  Thank you brother for being there, for being you and for walking the path you had to walk, because of it I can see.

 

When you think that all your pain and suffering was for naught, it wasn’t, it was all for me.

 

There is no word big enough, just Gratitude of you.

 

 

The New Feminine Brain.

“The New Feminine Brain” by Mona Lisa Schulz, M.D., Ph.D.

 

Posttraumatic Relationship Disorder;

 

Childhood sexual abuse, incest, or adolescent rape can rewire the brain circuits for love, bonding, trust, and intimacy, so that women tend to love, bond to, trust, and be intimate with people they should in fact fear, people who resemble the perpetrator of their trauma.  And they tend to FEAR those they could LOVE, those whom they could actually have a trusting, secure, healing relationship.  In effect, with PTRD, the fear and the love circuits get crossed.

 

The same can happen with monkeys that have had both amygdalas removed, a key temporal lobe area that is important for encoding and detecting fear, anxiety and intuition.  When monkeys have had a bilateral amygdalectomy, they lose the capacity to feel fear in frightening situations.  The monkeys run and hug laboratory workers in white coats – people they should be frightened of.  They also try to have sex with inappropriate partners.  These monkeys, called Kluver-Bucy monkeys, are said to have psychic blindness, a numbness.  Their fear and love emotional circuits have switched.  They lose the capacity to make correct choices even though all the indicators are clearly in front of them, right before their very eyes.

 

Posttraumatic relationship disorder alters the amygdalas and the other brain areas so that women tend to have ‘psychic blindness’ to dangerous situations, especially relationships.

 

Prostitutes are more likely to have survived childhood sexual abuse.  Rape victims are more likely to be raped again.  Women who have experienced physical abuse as a child are more likely to be in a physically abusive relationship as adults.  Pain and stress are more likely to be recorded in body memory by the temporal lobe’s amygdala, where it evokes physical health reactions, like digestive complaints and heart palpitations.  The hippocampus, the memory system that puts fear into words and creates conscious though, is less apt to lay down traumatic memories.  When a woman has had a life-defining, emotionally traumatizing experience, the frontal lobe-hippocampal circuits are disconnected in a way so she is less likely to talk about it.  She will however, reenact the trauma – not in art or play therapy as a child would – on the biggest playing field: relationships.

 

Previous traumatic experience is very likely to shape your unconscious behavior, and your personal choice in mates, jobs, and social contacts.  You are less likely to understand why you feel the attraction that you feel, because during traumatic stress, stress neuropeptides norepinephrine and cortisol disconnect the left-brain “talk” memory systems, but simultaneously turn up the volume on the right-brain “action” memory system.  Your brain and body are primed emotionally to return to the relationship “scene of the crime” and react and reenact that past traumatic relationship over and over.

 

Baby mice who are raised in a locked box where they are repeatedly shocked tend to return to that box when set free as adults.  Despite the genetic differences between a woman and a mouse, unfortunately, we do tend to act similarly when it comes to trauma.

 

Previous traumatic experience preheats and warms up the brain pathways, increasing your chances of having the same type of relationship again and again.  Even if you think it through, and say to yourself, “I am never going to fall into that trap again,” you may be pulled back toward it like a moth to a flame.  Your frontal-lobe reasoning circuits murmur, “think this through. You don’t want to go through all that pain, do you?” But your temporal-lobe amygdala, body memory circuits scream louder.  What would you more likely hear?

“He’s so exciting.”

“She really just understands me.”

“Being in his arms feels like I’ve come home again.”

“I feel like we’ve known each other for years and years, even though we just met.”

 

The greater the trauma, the more inescapably stressful it seems, the longer it lasts, and the greater its intensity, the more likely the feminine brain-body circuits will be shaped into creating a chain of relationships that mimic the trauma.  Unlike the male combat veteran who has flashbacks, visual memories of the trauma, a woman will replay the memory over and over again in the cinema of her life until she gets the proper help to stop the pattern.  Alone, she can’t prevent herself from being attracted to reenacting the trauma anymore than an alcoholic can stop drinking by himself without proper treatment.

 

Each time she chooses the “loser,” the “creep,” that “bum,” whatever “prototype” can play the part of the perpetrator, the deeper the pattern gets engraved in the memory network of her brain and body.

 

In fact, the brain’s visual and attentional pathways that could actually direct her to healthier mates fall into disuse.  Abused women are attracted to the same people who mistreat them because their brains become molded in such a way that’s the only kind of person they tend to notice.  The nicer, normal men and women don’t seem ever to make it on the screen of relationship radar.

Posttraumatic Relationship Disorder is a long name for what I believe I had or have. 

 

Just knowing there is an actual word or words to describe me is an awesome thing.

 

What I recall saying is that it was like changing the DNA of who I was, to undo and step away from habits that seemed were there for generations.

 

The psychic blindness is my mother to a Tee, and me of course.

 

I am half way through this book, which has a subtitle, “How Women Can Develop Their Inner Strengths, Genius and Intuition.”

 

I would highly recommend this book for any woman who is not totally balanced in mind and body.  It may be interesting for you to see why!

A no to you is a yes for Me!

If someone said to identify yourself how would you do that?

 

What do you consider your identity?

 

We can’t use our bodies, or our titles, but our own inner identity, what would that be?

 

How do you explain your own inner identity?

 

I am sure self has to be connected with identity, or otherwise we would be describing something outside of us.

 

It is not our bodies, it is not our brains, our thoughts our minds, is it the heart of who we are?

 

Is it our passions, our joys, the things that make us smile, laugh and do what we do?

 

What is our identity that gets stolen with abuse? 

 

Dr. Robin Smith spoke of this on her radio show about addictions.  That little children who get abused lose their identity.

 

What happens to us at that time, what leads us on a life of addictions, of being cold and treated like an object? 

 

I have been trying to write about this, but damn this seems like a puzzle with no answer, that the more you look and the more you twist the less clear it becomes.

 

If I can’t use this body to identify myself, then how do I do that?  My actions?  Do they point the way?

 

What is taken out of us so that we are left a barren vessel that we will use and abuse trying to get back what was stolen!

 

When a two year old learns the word “mine” is that how we begin to identify ourselves?

 

But usually the child is referring to an object that she wants.

 

It seems we have many ways to prove who we are by credit cards, driver’s license or social security cards, but does that really tell us our identity, for when a small child is abused, she has none of that, so how do we identify our self?

 

Stolen identity is when someone creates a false life using our identity.

 

Did my father steal who I thought I was, and replaced it with his idea?  Did he take who I thought I was and make me into a new thing?  Did I go from being his daughter to something else?  Is that what Dr. Robin means?

 

Did I change from being a little girl into a thing that no little girl can describe, but a little one who is used for things that she can’t comprehend? Is that how it was stolen, my young little innocent girl identity was stolen from me?  I then became a part of a twisted dance.

 

Instead of seeing myself free to be me, I am now an object for him. 

 

How did I let my identity go so easily to be replaced by something so sordid?

 

Why was I so easy to convince that this new me was a better one?  What did he do to win my approval to make me lay down my own sense of self?

 

Did he threaten me, shame me, blame me, did he convince me that this is what I wanted to, to be this new me?

 

It seems hard to go back to that point in time, to the innocence of a being such a small girl, to put my big lady self back there, in that land that is even hard now to view.

 

We have to picture an innocent girl doing acts that are way beyond her years and understanding, with a man who holds the label father.

 

Maybe his identity is what really changes, maybe he no longer looks and acts as a father should but convinces me it is.

 

Perhaps Dr. Robin is partially right in that we lose our identity, but we also lose the father’s identity too.

 

He no longer acts nor behaves like a father, but instead of changing our identity of him, we change ourselves.

 

Is that what is meant by our identity getting stolen?

That being a loved and protected daughter dies, and is replaced with one who is damaged.

 

Not loved, not protected, no longer good enough to handle with care and compassion.

 

So the loved and protected part of me, the trusting part was stolen and it was replaced by the opposite.

 

There is a small book I picked up a few years ago called “when I love myself enough.” 

 

After living 40 some years in a body without love of self inside, I now am able to speak of what I need, what is good for me and what I want.

 

I am free to move away from people who hurt me and treat me like an object, I no longer see myself that way.

 

I see myself as love.  So the identity inside is Love?

When love disappeared, I lived in Fear.

 

Reaching forever outside in fear trying to grasp on to the love that is missing inside.  That makes sense in my experience. 

 

I also heard Dr. Robin speak of boundaries, and that once they are trampled down as a little child they remain down until we build them back up.

 

So we are walking around in fear, exposed and vulnerable with no inner sense of love and boundaries, easy prey to be manipulated and tossed about.  It is no wonder our bodies are forever anxious, for no one is minding the door, there is no inner guard, we are wide open for abuse again.

 

This is very intriguing to me, it explains my lack of knowing, my lack of control, my lack of love, my lack of boundaries, it explains how I built a mental lady identity.

 

When I look at myself now, I can see how I slowly erected boundaries, each little no set this in place, each time I refused to attend a gathering of folks with lost identities, I succeeded in gather more identity for me.

 

I am amazed, grateful beyond words to have this inner Love.  My words and actions match what is now inside, I no longer feel so out of control, to be whipped around in the wind in a thousand directions for my long lost love.

 

Instead I stand with my Love in hand, looking out at the world, with the greatest understanding and awe at those folks who are still empty inside, I know, for I walked there, “forgive them, they know not what they do.”

 

I recall telling my brother that it felt like I was walking out of rehab, that each time someone asked me to go back to the family with no boundaries and lost identities, it was like a drug that I had to resist.

 

Now I way know why.  They were my drug of choice, my responsibility for them was my drug!

 

Addicted to responsibility. 

 

I am a recovering addict, I am recovering my self, my love and my control, I am outside of the rehab and now the real walking begins.

 

A no to you is a yes for me!

 

 

my hand is reaching.....always.

When I seen the date today, I felt the need to explore where I stand with the brother whose birthday it is today.  He is the oldest in our family with me coming in a year and a half later.

 

We were different in so many ways, where I felt responsible and took care of the siblings, he seemed to rebel and go his own way. 

 

His life was separate, often in his own room, drawing Art that was very intricate in detail but in a twisting and mixed up sort of way, black lights and posters of darkness.  He seemed to stand alone and aside from our family in a defiant sort of way.

 

He rebelled in school, about rules and things the teachers were teaching, always challenging the norm.

 

He wasn’t afraid to be the loner or to be the odd man out, in fact he seemed to try and be outstanding but in a unique way, yet never really catching on to our disapproval, for he was just being himself.

 

He feels that it was my fault that his childhood is now tarnished with deeds from a father towards a daughter, that I totally wrecked what he considered an average childhood.

 

His memories are now twisted and mixed up like his drawings of past, perhaps his sub-consciousness was the Artist back then.

 

When I first discovered that I was a victim of my father, that he was a pedophile, it never crossed my mind that my owing that would affect my relationships with my siblings, that it  would come between brothers and sisters.

 

My brother felt that the ‘victims’ would get all the support and that his poor father would stand alone, so he became the one to step up and be with him. 

 

So he was the one who made sure he had a good lawyer, that he was bailed out and a place to live, first at his house, until I called the Court, letting them know he was in a home of a young girl, and then to his camp. 

 

As he stood steadfast by my father’s side, I slipped away.

 

It was odd to fear a brother, to lock doors with a racing heart, not knowing what such a confused person could do.

 

I was the one he stood against, me his sister.

 

What do I do with that?  How do meet him and keep this part of him separate and not allow it to come between us?

 

I fully believed the children would unite and form a close front, that we would heal, and deal and commiserate together, a rag tag crew, broken, defeated, upside down, dragging each other across the finish line of normal.

 

They say what doesn’t break you makes you stronger, our family broke, well it was already broken, but this just made the crack wider and even more jagged. 

 

The relationships between the 14 children, varied between ages and the span of years that separated, whether you had kids or not, whether you lived near each other, and even if you had similar likes, but at the end of the day, I assumed when trouble hit us, we would cling to each other and become a better family because of it, instead it seemed to stretch and rip an already weak thread that held us together.

 

We all, each one of us were not strong enough to paddle our boats through the rapids while carrying and holding on to another, it seemed it was each man/woman for himself.

 

And maybe that is the way we all grew up, separated and it was for survival of the fittest, doing what needed to be done to get us through.

 

I really don’t know how he felt justified to stand beside a man who hurt little girls, a man who was so self- absorbed in his own addiction, but that is what my brother did.

 

All I can now do, is honor his choice, allow him the freedom to spend time now with his dad and my perpetrator, and in doing that I also get to have the freedom to step away from that relationship.

 

There is no common ground between the way we two handled this crisis, the way we rowed our own boats, his headed deeper into the swirling dark waters, while I paddled like mad to put distance and space reaching for land and the safety it would offer.

 

He and I literally are heading in opposite directions, I guess like we always have.

 

Funny he now steps in and is responsible or feels responsible, to stand by his father, like we are in a mental relay, he grabs what I release.

 

I am letting go while he is hanging on, or picking up what I am putting down.

 

Happy Birthday Brother, if I had a gift to give you today, it would be the gift of release, of surrendering and no longer carrying of others and their lives, to be able to create wonderful art, without the twisted subconsciousness emerging, to be free and unique, in peace and joy, just to be.

 

Free of the dark swirling waters.

 

If and when you change direction and start swimming towards land, my hand will be reaching….always!

 

 

I walked free.

My brother and I are having discussions about choices, why we make them, when we make them, how we make them, and even if it is Us making them!

 

So first of all I had to look up the word Choice in the dictionary.

 

Choice:

1.    the act of choosing: Selection, finding it hard to make a choice.

2.    power of choosing:  Option, you have no choice.

3.    the best part: cream b. a person or thing chosen, she was their first choice.

4.    a number and variety to choose among, a plan with a wide choice of options

5.    care in selecting

6.     a grade of meat between prime and good.

 

Also, the synonyms of Choice are; option, alternative, preference, selection, election.

 

In reading what the Webster Dictionary has to say about choices, a few things popped out.  The Act and Power of choosing.

 

There is a book, “The Eight Habit- From Effectiveness to Greatness” by Stephen R. Covey that I read.

 

And what I discovered while reading that book was the space needed to make a choice.  It seems that those of us who were raised in a dysfunctional environment, we have a very small window for choice.  That something happens and we have a knee jerk reaction, and not a response to what is happening.

 

It is the space where I believe the difference lies.

 

If you have space, an open area around life, where things happen, but you are able to respond instead of react, your choices are much wider.

 

Once we begin to respond more than react, the space gets bigger, not smaller. 

 

I may have to re-read that book.

 

In my humble opinion, I believe that the more empowered you are, the more whole you are, the more in reality you are, the more choices you have available, and will chose the one that best suits your truth.

 

My brother’s blog, www.messyguru.typepad.com gave an example of a Rapist, that he doesn’t have a choice that is what he does.  Just as an Artist does Art, a Rapist does Rape, and a Homeless man has no Home.

 

We can all agree that a homeless man has no house, but can we agree that he is making that choice?

 

I used to be a woman without power, a powerless woman totally out of control and needing all things in control.  I was the ruler of this mental land, and It all had to be perfect so I could react perfectly.

 

It was the problem, not me.

 

If only was my mantra, “If only the kids would be this way and that way, then I would be a good mother, and not have to scream.

 

It was so not my bad choice, but the kids.

 

If I only had perfect children, then I could be a perfect mom.

If only they would learn what makes me go mental and avoid doing that.

 

They had the power over my buttons, not me.

I was a victim of my children.

 

I just heard Byron Katie say on the Sirius Radio, that all victims are violent.  And boy do I agree.

 

When I slowly and painfully began to realize that my children were just simply children, that it wasn’t their job to groom me, I was no longer a victim of their behavior.

 

I was free.  I was responsible for my own buttons, my own actions or reactions, my responses and choices I made, and it left them free in theirs as well.

 

It was their job to do their lives, be a child, be a daughter, but it had nothing to do with me, for me or about me. 

 

When I landed in my business, when my mouth was mine to control, when my words were mine to choose, I then had a full time job just being present with me!  To watch what I was doing, saying and being!

 

There have been moments that I was literally screaming at them, that I am not supposed to do this, but I don’t know how to do this any other way! 

 

I had to wrestle myself out of the reactions and walk into alternatives, but my very first thing I had to do was to realize that I was not a victim.

 

I wasn’t a victim of my children, that they did not have the power to make me mad, to make me scream, to make me totally lose control of my words and how they rained upon them. 

 

My hollering was like a shower of dysfunction that rained and coated them with layers of feeling unworthy, for they couldn’t behave well enough to make me kind.

 

Isn’t that like blaming the girl for the rapist’s actions? 

 

When I realized and was in shock and awe of how backwards I had this world, that the world had to calm down so I could calm down, the world had to be loving so I could be loving, and when it failed I railed at it, screaming to change the outside, so my insides would calm down.

 

Again, it is like blaming the little girl in the molestation, and in the mind of the perpetrator he does!

 

He too is a victim of that little innocent girl and until he realizes she isn’t the problem, he is, there will be no freedom from perpetrators of violence.

 

All they are trying to do is get love, and they don’t know how else to get it.

 

Does this sound mental?  Take it from me, it was such a violent world before I understood this, I was so violent inside that at times it scared even me, the strength and volume of anger and rage I held inside, victims indeed are very violent people. 

 

I was a victim as a small child, and it was the theme I carried forward and what I learned about life. 

 

When someone was able to steal my love, my trust and my faith in myself, I was left alone and empty inside, and I then moved forward seeking to regain it back, to steal and wrangle it back from anyone or anything in front of me.

 

My choices then were all very selfish and manipulative, I did so much just to get my self back, my love back, my trust back, I did it all for the sake of me!

 

It had nothing to do with them, they were just collateral damage along my path, new victims being born, all for my desire to get my love back.

 

When I could see myself, my mental self, I could also see the ones who paid the price, the damage lay all around, my children bore the brunt of my mentalness.

 

I sat in tears in an office of a physiologist, bawling about the fact that I had ruined my kids, I wrecked them, my mentalness left marks upon my children.  What can I do now, what can I possible do to undo the years of damage?

 

I recall her saying that what I was doing, was going to heal them all.  That by staying in reality and by making better ‘choices’ I am undoing and showing them how to be a survivor and not a victim.

 

I am still not sure if this answers the question of choice, but what I know for sure is that victims will make choices at the cost of others, and those who are no longer victims will make choices based on the truth of self.

 

My truth of self, is that I am whole and complete without needing to steal love from others, I no longer feel that others must act a certain way for me to be happy, I am happy without them or in spite of them!

 

I am no longer a of victim of this world.  I am now just an imperfect lady who knows what it is like to live as a victim or not.  I much prefer the non-victim status.  In my own imperfect way, I walked free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Web Called Life!

I now know what it is like to come home from a long day of work, to be relieved of the stress of wondering if your car will make it through the day, (my breaks are barely working) ready to sit and sigh, and instead be assaulted by the mail.

 

The mail lies on the counter, in a seemingly harmless pile and in the midst I see her handwriting again, I shove aside the bill on top, to expose the recipient’s name, relived, it is not mine.  Addressed to my son, his yearly card, the one time she singles him out, his birthday card.

 

I know that assaulted is a strong word, and that perhaps I am being dramatic again, but it seems that it literally can pierce and intrude into my world. 

 

Her handwriting is like a scream into my house.  I may be over sensitive, but like a ghost from the past, it arises when I least expect it.

 

And then last night she appears in my dream.  In the dream we happen to be reaching for a grocery cart at the same time and she comes to hug me and tell me that my ‘dad’ misses me.  In the dream I move away, mumbling something incoherent to both of us……I wake up, it is near morning.

 

My family ghosts are free spirits, they can and do pop up whenever they please, unleashed and unbounded, they plop into my world and I then bobble for a while as they steal this present moment, flooding it with a jumble of past and future daydreams.

 

While doing this new mail route, I delivered mail to a younger brother, and while sharing that info, the other carrier said that he knew my oldest brother real well, in fact just spoke on the phone to him for a long while.

 

I simply said, “Oh.”

 

The carrier lived near my brother’s place before my brother sold it and headed out of town to live near my dad. 

 

What can I do or say about that?  Luckily my silence was chalked up to concentrating on where the mail goes.  Instead in my head I had to continue to push away the thoughts of him and fight to keep the focus on the mail.

 

Isn’t it peculiar that a mention of a name can open the floodgates of so many thoughts and emotions, that by simply seeing handwriting it brings forth a volume of words that hold stories upon stories?

 

It may be my naivety where the trouble lies, for some reason I am surprised always when I happen upon a sister or hear a brother’s name, or see my mother’s handwriting.  What am I expecting?

 

Isn’t it like being shocked that there are bears in the woods, fish in the sea, and birds in the air.  I live in the same place, and not much has changed physically, just that my relationships have been greatly altered.

 

How divorce parents make it is beyond me.  I guess we will forge this new non-relationship and until that becomes familiar, this will be odd and assaulting to me, until I get used to it.

 

Isn’t that like getting used to being slapped?  How will I become used to that? 

 

Is it better to explain and to point out to strangers that I no longer speak to that brother, for that brother paid the defense fees when my father was in jail for sexual abuse! Isn’t that cruel and unusual punishment to the stranger?

 

What would be a way we can both stand in that spot, this man who seems to like and admire my brother and me who shudders to think how off balance he truly is?  Is there a mutual spot?

 

It always leaves me silent.  How does my life’s drama fit into a normal day learning a new job? 

 

When we enter into new places and are introduced to new people we immediately try and find out if we have common ground between us, and in my case, my ground is unusual at best.

 

You know the term, “it is a small world after all” it truly is. 

 

How the connections continue to spread like a matrix around us, that no matter where you go, no matter what group you attend, there will be someone in there who has ties to your family.

 

There are 16 in my immediate family counting me, so the matrix is spread far and wide, like a spider’s web.

 

Oh the web we weave……I think that was when we are lying, but we weave webs just living life day to day, we make pathways and alleyways, we build and demolish roads, my web has to be a real tangled mess.

 

Instead of the spider that is weaving it, I feel like the fly, or a very dizzy spider, with disconnecting lines!

Do spiders plan their webs or do they just continue going around and around and in the end there is this wonderful tapestry that glistens with dew drops in the morning sun?

 

Do they have a pattern they are following?  Are spider webs like snowflakes, no two alike?

 

I guess we spew out the same tiny threads as we walk along in this life, a matrix is being tied in behind us, we are leaving a trail, by word and deed, a fragrance of who we are, the web called life.

 

 

Who am I?

“Every Man has his own destiny; the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.”    

                                                Henry Miller

 

Today is my last day running Mail, and I will be so happy when I drop the last piece of mail in the box.

 

I am not sure what this says about me, but working full time just isn’t me.   I am thinking it is more the work I am doing not the amount of time I am doing it.

 

It has been a week of working really hard to remember where these people are in the Case as I sort and then to find the correct box and get familiar with roads and sights along the way.

 

It is working really hard to get in a routine.

 

I am wondering if being in a routine is comfortable for most people?  I think back and I used to like living in a routine, and maybe still do to some extent.

 

It is just that this routine would become familiar, but the Me doing it would seem unfamiliar.

 

We get paid well for running this routine, but it almost seems like I am nowhere to be found, but my body and mind are very busy doing this job!

 

I am not required to arrive, just a body that can stand and withstand the rigors of being a mail person and a mind that can quickly fall into the routine of memorizing.  Yet the Spirit of me, the essence of me isn’t really needed there.

 

It seems like a flat line job.  There could be interesting things that you deliver, or maybe different people you would get to know along the way, and I suppose weather plays apart to adding its excitement, but all in all it is routine.

 

Maybe I wasn’t born for routine, maybe my inner soul needs more in life, needs to have things new and different, not the same ole same ole.

 

It somehow feels like I am on a long treadmill when I am made to travel the same exact route day in and day out.

 

There can be a comfort that can be found knowing what you will do day after day.  Yet I guess even doing the mail there are some things that are not for sure.

 

We can see unusual sights and see unusual people and even have car issues along the way.  Maybe it is more the type of work, it doesn’t sing to me.

 

Luckily I am not being asked today to take over a route, but that is in my future.  I wonder what I will say?  I know that for the most part people deliver mail for the money.

 

I guess when the time comes money will be the deciding factor for me as well. 

 

Life really does become work when you are doing what you do for the money alone. 

 

“Do what you love and the money will follow.”  I wonder if that is true?  It seems in this case the money comes first, that is the lure that gets you on the treadmill.

 

Another quote that I heard is “if you do what you love to do, you will never work another day in your life!”  I agree.

 

Looking at the contents of the last few weeks, it is full of work, with little time and effort left for play.  That has to be what many folks are doing. 

 

I guess since I have had the luxury of being a stay at home mom, I fell into a space that allows me to have so much time to be me, this is an odd place to be in now.

 

It is like you lose yourself and become the work instead.

 

No wonder people identify themselves with the kind of job they do.  It slowly becomes them.

 

What seems really weird to me, is I can almost feel myself disappearing or find myself getting lost the more I work.

 

Wow.  To see your self slowly disappearing over time and routine, to become lost behind the busy routine of work, is very discerning since I feel I just found myself.

 

I come alive when I am immersed in quilting, when I am reading or writing about the Self and Reality, about living life as a soulful being on a human journey, and I feel my self retreating as I do the mail.

 

Interesting to know and watch.

 

“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.”   Thomas Paine

 

Who am I?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

....takes two to tango.

“If you board the wrong train, it is of no use to run along the corridor in the other direction.” 

                                                                   Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Once I committed to learning a new route, I was ok being a slower mail lady doing the best she can.  I came in late, but I am confident that most of the mail was delivered correctly.

 

Today I will do the route again, and this time, I will not go as far down the wrong road, or so I hope.

 

I recall the nervousness I had doing the mail the first time, and the mess inside of me, let alone looking around for the correct roads and mailboxes.  This time, I remained calm inside and didn’t have expectations that were way ahead of where I should have been.

 

It is the expectations that get the body all worked up, not the actual job. 

 

Somehow we expect to do the job perfectly or as swiftly as a person with 15 years of experience.

 

I expected to be late, to get lost, to overshoot a road or two and to reverse back to a few boxes, and I did!

 

I met myself exactly where I was at, and continued to be present as I searched for the correct mailbox scanning yards to see their fire number.

 

The first mail route I had, I cursed each box that was not identified with name and number, now this time I understood humanity, some are so beautifully marked, and many are a mystery.

 

The mysterious ones may not have gotten mail yesterday or perhaps someone else’s mail.  We will see today which boxes have the flags up, telling me my guess was wrong!

 

The regular lady had tried her best to mark the unmarked, to tape up the doors of the vacant, to help those who just never got around to labeling their box, to get their mail while I am on the route.

 

She cares, I am not sure the others do.  Part of the agreement with the Postal Service is you mark your box, give us hint, so we can match the mail in our hands to the place on the ground.

 

What happens is we assist others to be lazy, by learning to identify their mailbox by its uniqueness, we become familiar with no label, we allow them to not do their part.

 

One new recruit to backing up a route returned all mail with boxes with no numbers, you would not believe the amount that came back!  He didn’t care if there was a fire number in the yard.  He adhered to the rules, that the boxes must be marked clearly!

 

Who knew there were rules for mailboxes! 

 

Well I am off today to learn to identify those that are mysterious and soon they will not be mysterious at all, but rather clearly marked in my head as being the correct one.

 

How often do we let things slide and just consider that ok because to make others stand up and do their job is harder, so we let them slide and then train the next person to let it slide, until we are all sliders!

 

Surely we can’t blame the sliders, for it takes two to tango!

What a ride....

Today I head back to the Post Office and continue to memorize names and addresses and oh yeah and roads.  It is amazing to me that my head can hold so much!

 

There are multiple same last names, like a whole bunch a relatives converged on one little town, so I can remember the name, but darn if the one I find is not on the right road.

 

And we wiggle in and out of the same highway popping up here and there, after going down one short road after another.  It is hard to keep track of who lives where, until you become familiar with the route itself outside!

 

My head actually hurt after 4 hours of hunt and search! 

 

I read somewhere that after learning something new it is best to sleep so the mind can cement the connections.  Well I will let you know how today goes after a night of sleep.

 

Tomorrow I do the whole route myself, using the mail like a treasure map to know which road to go down!

 

It is truly amazing to end up right back where you started from with an empty vehicle, and crossing your fingers you put the right mail in each box!

 

Luckily they are very helpful as we train and learn this, too bad we don’t have big metal signs on our vehicles, “Be patient with me, I am new here!”

 

This is the fourth route that I have taken upon myself to learn, and there is one more to go.

 

Yes, that is right, the lady on the second route now wants me to learn hers as well.  But it is a little route, only 250 boxes.  The one I am attempting to learn now has 420, and 90 miles of roads!

 

I love how the roads up here change names when you take a corner, same blacktop or gravel, and by hanging a sharp right, you are now on a new road!  It makes it more fun when the mailboxes are on one road, but the people live on another.  I can only imagine how delivering packages will be.

 

I guess some people do mind puzzles to keep their minds limber, I do new mail routes.

 

Today is not a bad day, for I am not responsible for getting that one little post card in the right box in the middle of 90 miles, but by learning today, tomorrow will be that much easier!

 

Now it seems like a game to me, to see just how many names and roads and idiosyncrasies of folks I can fit in my head.  Will there come a time when it is full?

 

Below is a quote that was in an email, author unknown,

 

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of Arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to Skid in sideways - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO HOO, What a Ride!!!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beach House.

With our windows down, our expectations up, our swimsuits on, our bodies overheating, we were eager to feel the water.

 

Now this water is not just any old water, it can change from bone aching cold, to shiver refreshing, to huge waves of warm surface water coming to shore, each day it is as if new water arrives, and we so wanted the refreshing kind.

 

As we neared the Beach House, we watched the temps and they remained near what it was at our house.  This could mean that all the surface water was escaping and all we would be left with is water so cold your legs would ache when you walked in up to your ankles.

 

I had been in a mail car without air conditioning, the temps were near 90 most of the day, and I so wanted to plunge into refreshing water, to submerse myself in cool clear waves lapping water!

 

As we drove in the driveway we spot two kids in the water, this is a good sign, although they handle the chilling water much better than older folk.

 

Taking that first step in and feeling it’s refreshing quality quickly erases the struggle with boxes and packages, eliminate the feeling of dying in the heat, overwhelmed by clothing and no air conditioning, all disappear the moment you walk deeper and deeper, plunging at last to be fully enveloped in its clear cool liquid, floating like air.

 

It carries you, cools you, cleans you, and resets your inner peace.

 

Once my inner core seemed to cool down, and I actually was shivering with goose bumps, I sat in the sun on the shore and pondered just how lucky am I? 

 

The Beach House we have access to, just sits and waits for us to arrive.  And in the past two years, due to cooler temps, kids schedules and work, we have not even opened it up and aired it out for summer fun.

 

It looks like a place that hasn’t seen much activity, or attention, the grass is cut, but in a hurry by someone who feels its work.  Weeds grew on the pathway to the lake, where no feet trampled them down.  Driftwood lay in piles where the ice and waves dropped them, not used for summer night fires.

 

There was no evidence of fun, of lazy days and relaxing chairs, no inner tubes tucked under the deck, it was like a ghost of the Beach House lay there.

 

Inside the sights and smells reminded me that no one had been here to open up, clean and then make meals to over lay the musty smell.

 

It was sad to see this house this way, with cobwebs, grit and grim from now two years of no one eagerly coming and enjoy days and nights away from life’s work routine.

 

I recalled the first years the kids so small and the chore it took to get us there, to now see them fully grown and sitting on the same porch, still laughing, still talking and being with each other, how the beach house gets left behind.

 

We do not own this beach house, it is Grandma’s, and even if we did, I am not sure it wouldn’t be in the same condition.  When we were there for days on end, I could keep things up, but when we are not using it, it is harder to do.  I am not sure it is even mine to worry about….an odd place to be in.

 

It is my beach house in my mind, a place that I have been grateful to use, a place to run to when the weather was too hot to bear, a place of refuge, a quiet spot, no phones, no connection to the real life.

 

I spent many weeks on end there when my world came crashing down, sitting by its shores being healed by sunrises and sunsets, swimming carelessly and floating on inner tubes, kids doing their own thing near by, free from the realities of life.

 

We have memories of wonderful times spent there and I hope someday we can afford to own it, to be its caretaker.

 

With gratitude and sadness I sat there, so grateful for all the years of use, 21 or so, for they were looking at beach houses when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter.

 

Grateful to have had the many years of swimming, relaxing and enjoying its wide porch, looking out to many morning sunrises, to see loons floating past, ducking and popping up, to feel the cooling breezes and lapping waves while we slept on the porch in a tent.  What a great part of our history is there, the happy parts.

 

How thankful I am to have had its presence in our lives, how hopeful I am that someday I will once again get to be there all summer….

 

We never know what we carry with us and what we leave behind, and I guess I am being greedy to want more than what I already have had, I have had the best already.

 

A wonderful Beach House where my growing family could share hours and hours of summer fun.

 

Thank you Beach House. It is my hope that if it isn’t my grandchildren scrambling upon your shores, it is someone else, may you not be empty too long!

 

Beach Houses just wait for summer to hear the squeals of laughter and the running of feet, enjoying all it has to offer, may you come alive again soon!  I almost feel responsible for your neglect, for allowing my children to grow up, I feel responsible for not having the time to spend there, yet I know that what I feel most is the tugging of memories and knowing how much I loved being there.

 

Maybe I am sadder than you, for my life is changing, kids are growing and the pace is quickening, maybe I see me in you.

 

If they can look back, like I look at you, I will be forever grateful.  There is much more happiness when we think of you.

 

What a great way to live life, like a Beach House.