Words to dream by....

Made of Gold and Steel

2010-05-07T15:36:00.001-07:00

ER nurses are a rare breed, its not a easy to understand breed necessarily either. We come with at times, terribly tough exteriors. We've grown hard on the outside because its necessary, its essential to our own survival - what we see come crashing through our doors has the power to break us physically but more importantly, more critically - it can tear us up mentally...and so we learn our ways to wall up, to stay safe, for our own protection and for yours.

And yet, underneath that exterior, those facades of brick and at times titanium, you'll find some of the most amazing examples of human compassion you will ever see.

Its nurse appreciation week.

At this moment a friend of mine, one of the most amazingly compassionate nurses i know lies intubated in the micu 3 floors above our ER. We held her hand as we tubed her, we took her badge and her belongings and we wheeled her together to the icu and we hold silent vigil waiting for the day she'll walk out, we know she'll walk out, she has to, she's one of us, she's a fighter, she's tenacious, she's life and spirit and well - she has to. This week, as we celebrate, we together here, worry, and we remember what it takes within all of us to be what we are. It has been demonstrated so clearly within these halls. I love my friends, i stand humbly in deep admiration and gratitude to those i work with and i pray that she'll be back among us soon in all her cynicism and sarcasm.

Hug a nurse this week.

The End of an Era?

2010-04-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

For the last 10+ years i've not sat still more than 18 months....Hawaii was the longest and who can blame me, with the trade winds in my hair and the hope in my heart, it was as close as i've come to making a new permanent home in a long time.

I chose Tampa with that hope...of finally laying roots, and though i made the choice and took the job and rented the apartment, though i have friends here now that mean the world to me, i've resisted laying anything deeper.

Today the challenge was laid...

And it sent my world into a tailspin,

my mind into chaos...

Can i leave my travelling ways behind...can i, do i wish to, will i overcome the fear and make something more permanent in hopes of other things more rewarding, more permanent as well?

I am going to try....

Some people think change is scary...

For me, the potential of the lack thereof is terrifying

Leave your bar high, just accept that you can't always stand that tall....

2010-03-09T10:25:00.000-08:00

We sat outside the ER in the cool air of the morning. i'm sure he could see the tears pooling in my eyes....i know he saw the breath that pushed them back and away. He laughed, in that quiet and assured way he has, that way i've come to enjoy.

"If you only knew the ones i've watched cry around here he chuckled as he drew on his cigarette. You're still standing kid....what are you worried about? And they're only tears, if you must let 'em go, tomorrow will be another night, and there will be another after that."

It wasn't that his words were all that reassuring necessarily, but simply that he accepted where i was, maybe the knowledge that he'd been there before, that he'd watched others in the same place, maybe it was the sweet smell of nicotine slowly wafting in my direction but there was comfort there.

I hate not playing at the top of my game, i hate losing face in front of people that are supposed to respect me, especially doctors. I hate sounding blonde, ever, in front of these people. There is one realm that I keep control in and that is within the walls of that hospital.....last night i barely kept my head on straight, barely kept control and almost at some moments lost it completely and became a mess of frustrated tears, pushed too far, run too hard. I find it hard to forgive myself for that, for not being better, for not running faster, thinking smarter, catching on more quickly. I owe that to my patients.

Deep down inside me somewhere i know i'm holding the bar too high at this moment simply for the right to beat myself over the head with it. It wasn't meant to be easy, this whole move, this change. This is a whole new scope of practice, not just a new specialty but a whole new paradigm of nursing for me. Of course i'm supposed to be instantly perfect at it and never miss a step - i'm really good at setting those realistic expectations for myself.

This will pass, give it a few weeks and i'll settle into what this is like, alone in the ER amongst the insane fray of what this job now is. There will come a day when i get back my control. Funny for a girl that generally hates having it when it comes to work i can't stand losing it.

In time i'll reach my own bar again.....and inevitably find some way to raise it higher.

Such is the beautiful challenge of life.

I truly am a masochist at heart... *shakes head*

Prude or Proud

2009-12-26T00:35:00.000-08:00

i find myself wondering in recent weeks if in my old age, if i'm becoming a prude. (oh my god i turn 30 in May *weep*) (please know there's a good bit of sarcasm at calling myself old, but it mixes with a good deal of angst over turning 30)

i even inquired of a close friend that knows well of my kink about this. He laughed heartily, then spit back amongst laughter the retort, "You a prude? That's almost as laughable as calling yourself a virgin!". i was somewhat comforted by this reaction, it came from his gut, he didn't have to think about it, for these type of reactions i treasure him deeply.

Anyways, to the point, the world of quick sex, one night stands and the like seems to be relatively far behind me now. I understand, respect and appreciate those that live by the Ethical Slut ideas, however i have come to understand through time, trial and heartache (joined with a good number of smiles and laughs, and some really amazing moaning) that it is not a code i personally can live by. My heart is too tender, too longing to go to another to make this type of lifestyle something i can comfortably live. My psyche simply cannot handle it. Sex for me is tied to intimate emotions, deep feelings coming from my heart. Submission is so much more so.

Before anyone flames me because they read the above statements to mean that those that are "ethical sluts" do not have tender hearts. i make no assumption of who or what anyone else is, i am simply understanding what i am, what my mind and heart at this time and place are able to feel and survive.

So back to the idea of being a prude. If one desires to ride the ride long enough, they will realize that inside this prude who cannot just give her body to win a moment of sexual gratification without connections and strings, is one of the most vivacious sluts out there. i have always been and remain proud of my slut title. However, understand that my slutdom is reserved for the one i love, trust and feel connected to, i am a slut for my One, not the world.

Now, understanding this for myself and practicing it in the real world, especially in the real world of BDSM seems to be exceedingly difficult. I've been told at times that my refraining from sexual activity in the early stages of getting to know someone is not submission, i've heard a number of lines lately....all in regards to giving up my body to get to that trust and relationship-y stuff. i'm monumentally tired of the expectation that because i'm a submissive i should put out early and earnestly and then i might see the return. Where is the respect in that? Why is that seemingly in this day and age a requirement of a submissive. If you'd like to see my submissiveness there are many beautiful ways to elicit it without me on my knees sucking a cock.

If a Dom, if a Man cannot take the time, use their imagination and believe i am worth that effort, i'm not inclined to put out. Does this make me a prude? Does this mean i'm trying to hold control that as a submissive i should not hold? Or does this mean that i'm a woman and a submissive that respects herself enough not to give my body until something real has formed, until the trust and communication i have come to believe are so fundamental in BDSM relationships has at least a chance to take root. Has my heart become too guarded and i hide it behind reserving my body?

These are the questions i'm struggling with. Now my previously mentioned dear friend, when posed with this same line of thought and questioning explained to me how he'd romance me. I must say, he made me swoon for days over the ideas he put forth. He speaks of wining and dining and woman he cares about, dropping careful hints and innuendos, teasing, making strategic Dominant moves to elicit the submission he desires. He speaks of treating me as the woman he respects and desires and slowly, carefully, quietly demanding the submission we both need until i'm falling to my knees begging for Him to take me.

i've had no success in finding this type of Man, this Dom who is willing to endeavor in this type of investment, waiting patiently and quietly for the sexual gratification, knowing the taste of some things is far sweeter when you've worked for and waited for them.

So, i'm curious, what do you think? Prude or proud? Have i set the impossible bar, do i ask too much, or have i settled for too little before....

Some Hurts You Cannot Take Away, Somethings only time heals.

2009-06-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

For as long as i can remember i've been a caretaker, a provider, a shelterer and a protector. At times its gotten me in trouble but for the most part i've found it the only beautiful way i know how to live my life. My heart was born and made to soothe, to comfort and to love and i've left what i consider, a beautiful legacy, of doing these things. I may never make a huge impact upon the world, but i've impacted people and it is enough, it is often overwhelmingly enough.

But there are things one slowly learns they cannot heal, breaks in the heart and the facade of our daily armor which no amount of soothing or outpouring of love can take away in an instant. Pain is the building block upon which we learn to appreciate our joys and savour our happiness, a necessary part of life, an inescapable reality and no matter how much one longs to soothe, to please, to help and to take away the hurt in this world, it is an impossibility.

It is not in the moments of my own pain that I generally run into the most trouble. I have learned through time and trial to attempt at the very least to look outside my own moments of suffering and to attempt to appreciate them more for the character building and lessons learned, such an outlook, while sometimes completely unsuccessful, generally eases the burden at least by a few stones. It is the moments however when i look upon a loved one's pain, their hurt, their fear and know that no measure of love, kisses, hugs, soothing or even medication is going to dull the excruciating ache that bears down upon their hearts and their lives. It is an intolerable moment, that longing to take away something which another must go through, the need to relieve suffering that cannot be relieved.

It has been my greatest stumbling block, the feeling that drags me into the deepest pit of heartache, to watch those i love suffer and stand by ineffectually offering what i have but knowing it is insufficient to relieve. I loathe this feeling, i long for more control, more ability, more correct words, more angel touch.

But sometimes only time heals wounds, sometimes one can only stand by and offer to wipe away tears. Sometimes I have to realize that even i can't be superhuman and relieve the pain of all those around me. I don't like that realization.....i wish things were as simple as kissing away a booboo. I wish this didn't hurt so much.

Its a Phish Day....

2009-04-20T05:33:00.000-07:00

Because its fun, and its lovely and its silly and its one of those kinds of days.

Maybe.....

2009-04-09T20:48:00.000-07:00

i remember the day i fell in love with him, like it was yesterday, like it hadn't been marred by all the nasty stuff that got in the middle. No part of me has ever forgotten for much more than a moment how much i've loved him, though i've often questioned why or questioned what i was supposed to do with that. it continues to escape me even after all this time, how i'm supposed to get over him, and that, well perhaps that's the scariest part.

i remember the first time he sang my lullabye, and the last. i sing it softly to ani sometimes now, watching how her little breath slows to a regular soothing lullabye of its own, and i wonder what it would have been like to rock our baby like that.

And now his voice whispers in my ear again, and remember how, once upon a time, i was almost his baby and that was the only place i longed to be. I remember how much this song meant to me, how it was one of the few times before he drew so far away that he was able to express true emotion. And now he says all the words, all the things that were necessary so long ago and were never said.

And i cannot help but to be confused.......

i've never loved like this before......and i don't know how to stop, nor do i know how to go forward.

Musical Gifts

2009-03-09T19:20:00.001-07:00

Someone gave me the gift of this song awhile back. For a long time its been on my play list, on my ipod, i keep it close. I never looked up the words until last night in a fit of curiosity, i just knew, that it made me feel good.....

i love it more today...and i thank the one who gifted it to me.

English translation:

Life changes its beauty all the time
Sometimes it’s a shade, sometimes life is sunlight
Live every moment here to your heart’s content
The time that is here may not be tomorrow

One who loves you whole-heartedly
It is difficult meet that person
If there is someone like that somewhere
That person is more beautiful than all
Grab onto that (person’s) hand
He or she may not be so gracious tomorrow
Live every moment here to your heart’s content
The time that is here may not be tomorrow

Taking the shadow of your eyelashes, when someone comes near
You try to reason with your crazy heart
Your heart just goes on beating
But think, that which is here now
That story may not be here tomorrow
Life changes its beauty all the time
Sometimes it’s a shade, sometimes life is sunlight

Live every moment here to your heart’s content
The time that is here may not be tomorrow
The time that is here may not be tomorrow

I believe in Fairytales....

2008-12-13T02:27:00.000-08:00

I like romantic movies, of the sort where the perfect man and the perfect woman still exist, and momentarily they do something stupid, but you can see how perfect they are, and it all comes out just perfect in the end. I don't care about the impossibility of it, that men aren't that sensitive, that women don't communicate ever for 2 hours without the use of passive aggression; it makes me feel, for a brief moment of time, warm fuzzy sweet hope. Hope in a world that loves these days, to be entirely too bleak and pessimistic.

I like love letters read from old musty books and gallant men on white horses, i like the idea of the damsel in distress that gets rescued by their white night or her strong, gorgeous "good" vampire hero. I like to believe, while you're rolling your eyes, in the inherent good in the world too.

Call me naive.

Maybe its just what keeps me hanging on when my heart wants to shatter against the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, movies and a silent hope that there is in fact something different hidden somewhere in the world. But that's okay - it keeps a smile on my face and much more warmth in my heart, that perhaps, in vain shred of belief, so i'll keep it. I'll believe in fairy tales and glass slippers and gallant men, i'll believe in the possibility of hope and less suffering for the good guys, and that karma slaps the bad and my step will remain a little lighter, and all will be okay in my world. And if i'm wrong....well...so be it....a little hope never hurt no one.

So if you're inclined to burst my bubble....don't....maybe you should build one of your own. Its not that i'm not aware of the possibility i believe in unicorns which could never exist in this world...i just choose to believe anyway and maybe, they'll come to life.....

Grown Up Christmas List

2008-12-07T03:48:00.001-08:00

It will be for many an especially difficult holiday season. Be it financially or for other reasons - many will struggle through and to those my heart and my thoughts go out to you. May we all do what we can, in this season and year round, to lighten the hearts and the lives of those who surround us.

This has long been one of my favorite christmas songs....someone just made it a little more poignant with the video. I hope you enjoy it too.

2008-11-15T14:51:00.000-08:00

Sometimes i wake up, drowning in a sea of sweat, reaching for him as the tide pulls him under one last time.

What a dream it was that all it would have taken was for him to reach out his hand just once and we could have danced off into the sunset. It was a beautiful dream.....

Taste Life....

2008-10-27T16:24:00.000-07:00

"Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted... unbidden... it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us... passion rules us all, and we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion maybe we'd know some kind of peace... but we would be hollow... Empty rooms shuttered and dank. Without passion we'd be truly dead.” Joss Whedon

Passion is my ruler, long has been and long will be....and for such i am greatful. My heart leads fast and furious, my head sometimes lingers behind but not so far behind that i'm reckless or careless, i may get my heart broken from time to time, but my heart mends well and the joy i've known in love has always been worth the risks. It is that empty room, that shuttered dank that i fear, i fear it more than any heartbreak. I know how to heal from the wounds, i can trace each scar upon my heart and with atleast a faint smile and recount to you how it came to be, there are sweet old memories behind each one and i choose the joy in the memory not the pain that left the scar to move forward with.

Some may look at me and call me silly, i still feel that patter of my heart from time to time, the beautiful rush of hope, of potential......i fly high on the beauty of maybe. And yes, that sets me up for a great fall...so call me humpty dumpty. Let me fly....god how i love to fly - if i fall, my pieces will reconnect again i assure you, i will not be dashed so completely i cannot repair, but i need to soar every now and again, just to remember that i can touch the sky. And maybe...someday.....i'll stay up there.

I know you want to protect me, and i want you to, ground me where i need ground me and slow me where i need slowing, but share with me the joy too please, i beg you. When i called today i did so because i am passion, i am excitement, i am a little girl all a flutter with something i haven't known in a very long time.....so please, understand just a little and play with me in my big field of daisys.....i'm dancing, dance with me too....i want you to feel this joy i'm feeling. If i fall down and cry tomorrow i won't make you patch me up if that's what you want, i'll let you say i told you so, if that's what you need, just please, dance with me a little, today. Oh because i so want to dance. Does it make sense? Can you understand?

i hope someday you do understand

because its the cornerstone of who i am

as honestly and truthfully as i can put it, and maybe someday you'll get that......

i'm not confused, i'm not flighty, i'm not risky....i'm just...passion, open and true and free.

2008-10-18T23:53:00.000-07:00

Chewing Potato chips with your mouth open within my earshot could likely lead to your demise.

Honestly, chewing potato chips at all within earshot is risky. I have an anger management issue around hearing people chew. Its perhaps one of the reasons my ex N and i are ex's - well no, its not one of the pivital issues, there were lots of them, and we're better as friends, just plain better. But there were nights we had to eat dinner in our 3 story duplex at least 2 stories apart with the tv on so i didn't strangle him over the chewing noise. Sad but true.

Okay that's really not what i came to blog about - but there's a pansy ass float nurse from the ICU who is dressed adorably in pink and almost had to return to her unit as a patient - i wrote, she lived. She's now finished her bag of chips and moved on to her myspace page - which is also adorably pink. I'm not sure she's actually interacted with a patient all night - sometimes those ICU nurses don't know you're expected to do that down here - you know, where the patients are conscious and all....*rolls eyes*

Alright i'll stop being snippy - i just checked and all her patients still have pulses, i even put them on telemetry monitors so i can make sure they stay alive all night...no, i doubt she'll realize there's no order for this.

Anyway - enough about that....

What was i really here to write about....

You know tonight is just one of those wierd nights. There's a Red Sox party at my house, i'm at work. 10 people in my apartment overlooking the city, and here i am instead hanging blocks from Fenway at the hospital hoping someone leaves my keys at the concierge desk and maybe a beer in my fridge.

I spent an hour this morning trying desperately to procure Phish tickets, i wrote the weekend of their reuniting concert into my next contract, i had such high hopes until he called this morning and said he'd forgotten the tickets went on sale today. Of course by the they had sold out. Maybe just maybe some will fall in our laps and my trip to Virginia to dance like a hippie goddess won't be only a pipe dream.....hey not that i don't love my little pipe dreams...but this one i really would have liked to come true. The land of lizards has long been my happy place, and i love my round room and the velvet sea. Its not too often i really want to go to a concert, but it would have been nice to see them....to spark one up and float away and remember how free it can feel.....

I met a man tonight who has possibly lost everything...he's lost his his job, he's lost his chance most would think at a wife, at children at most normalcy. He's lost his voice to cancer and now his ability to eat. Yet he smiles, and we laugh, and we figure out a way to communicate in mime and lip reading and sign language.....he teaches me how to feed him, how to suction his airway, how to talk to him...and together we unravel the mystery of his happiness. And i am blessed. He doesn't grumble at being woken every 2 hours, he smiles and thanks me for the kindness of my care, and somewhere inside he breaks my heart and rebuilds my spirit. We watched the sox game together and i made sure his surroundings were exactly the way he liked, and we talked, in our own way, in every spare moment until he fell asleep...and maybe for a moment, all was right in both of our worlds and everything lost....didnt matter one bit.

i'm still afraid...afraid of letting someone in, afraid of not...but i'm taking baby steps. Protection feels good, and maybe honestly, i forgot that someone was there to do that - please understand Mami its not meant to offend when i say that, its not a reflection on you - i've just relied on myself for a very long time. Old habits die hard...i've wanted to believe that someone else was there to protect me and hold me and love me for so long, but in the end there it was..the bottom line, the protection...was me.

Yeah it would definately be time to shut the hell up....

Sitting Waiting Wishing.....

2008-10-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

i loved him.....but this song was the theme song of my life...

and now,

i sing again.

But this time i live, and either you understand, and we grow, and we get through this, or
i'll skip on down this path alone.....i love you, but i won't lock up and die again, not for anyone.

The offer is open, live life with me, not against me, but i will not cease to live.

When whoever's in New England's Through With me....

2008-10-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

The warm weather and water of the gulf coast awaits.....

i signed today with a Florida hospital along the gulf coast...and let the traveling again ensue. When the snow starts to fly just after the holidays i'll pack the car and find myself on a week long road trip, visiting a few friends on my drive down the eastern seaboard and across to my new home for 3 months. The job is a new challenge of skills and a building of self, and i return to a land of sand between my toes and warm waters and palm trees.

The idea of leaving always comes with mixed emotions....but i know in 6 months the winds will blow me back to this side of the world again and the amazing people here i call family....maybe a little bit of self and sun and sand is what i need in the interim......i miss my tevas.

And at least my little peanut's other grandparents live only a few hours down the coast - i'll see her during these months - a strategy to my location choice - she grows too fast to go any great length of time without seeing. My house as always is open for visits.....and i have no doubt there are others that are lining up to come too - warmer climes tend to attract wintertime visits. Will i be seeing you among the sand and the palm trees? I make a mean mango mojito.......just leave your flip flops by the door and come on in.

Close the door, hang up the phone and fold your cape.

2008-09-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

Its 2am on one of those rainy weekends, the type in New England that have always left me restless anyway - pacing, itchy.

And among the things weighing most heavily on my mind tonight is the changing of a phone number. Now it doesn't matter that i don't have a Hawaiian exchange anymore - the cool "Hawaiian" part of me doesn't need an 808 area code to live on. I'm not worried that my friends on the islands will cease to call - cell phone calling plans still work the same there - and nights and weekends remain free. Its not even the pain in the ass of trying to make sure everyone that needs to knows the number has changed, actually its a good excuse to talk to some old friends.

Its that with this change i look behind me and hear the permanent closing of a door. There is one person to whom there can be no call to say, "i've changed my number, here's the new one". With this, i have withdrawn the final life raft and be it true or not - in my mind i have written the final mark of failure on years of a relationship i longed to work with every bit of me.

And now i have left him to sink or swim completely on his own
the last tiny lifeline, pulled up and overboard and gone.
in the form of a changed phone number...

and it makes my heart hurt...almost enough to pick up the phone and call

almost

if i didn't know the monster he's become could destroy me again in one breath

its time to walk away
shut the final door
failure or not
maybe someday i'll learn
it was never in my power to save everyone....
and sometimes that means, not even the ones you love the most.

You can't be a superhero - when no one gave you superpowers.

2008-09-25T01:40:00.000-07:00

i was meant to love you....

i've known that thought...i've felt it, to the core of my being...
and i've known how its felt to watch the reality of it crash into the rocks and dash into a million pieces.

It sounds melodramatic and perhaps it is..but that is part of the reality of loving with your whole self, you pour all you are into something, and you hope on the other side, you remain standing.....

i do, i remain standing...because i have chosen to do so...to love without loss - of course the ultimate outcome of loss or not, well its not so much in my court...the ball tends to roll out on the other side.

So what's the lunatic ranting about.....

i love her, and yet here i sit wondering what has become the tone of our relationship. I said months ago i could be quiet and patient and be a friend, and a friend i'll always be. But there was supposed to be more there, we still exist in part as if more is there...yet is there, will there ever be again and does she want there to be?

They are no longer small questions...and be it unfair or insecure - i can no longer quell the fear alone that the one way i desperately need her to need me, is the one way she no longer even wants me at all.

And i'm scared to ask the question...for the answer may be more than i can bare....but i don't know that i can take not feeling wanted like this again....

its a musical week....

2008-09-18T04:33:00.000-07:00

There's comfort in music this week.

When i first moved home i'd listen to a lot of Jack Johnson, especially on the long drives between Maine and Vermont when i was torn between places and the landscape would remind me just the slightest bit of my old home in Hawaii as i drove through the mountains. Jack would take me back a bit and with some wind through my hair i could feel calm and cool and a bit of the tropics again.....

Bubble toes made me giggle - my little princess had the most beautiful eyes and fat bubbly toes and somehow this song was just meant to be our song. And i started to sing it to her in our dancing hours - and one day, out of the blue - she agreed in a most startling way for an 11 month old, she sang it back to me. Much to the amazement of her mother and father and me, when the song finished she started singing la ta da da da da....much too much in rhythem, and she's done it ever since, breaking into a huge grin every time i put her song on. So she and i, we sing, and we dance, and we smile together, and that pretty much can make anything okay...

And Maybe if you'd just listen
you'd realize what you're missin
you're missin me.

Rainy Sundays and a little musical interlude

2008-09-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

It makes a rainy sunday a little better....i can't help but laugh a little watching the video and it reminds me of someone i love very much.

2008-08-26T14:01:00.000-07:00

He watched me last night with a curious look in his eyes, as i rocked her, my little borrowed miracle to sleep in my lap. She'd fought slumber all day in that tenacious little way she has about her, and as she finally succumbed in those late hours of the night, and we rocked together in a quiet happy bliss he watched us from across the room. I've never seen that look in his eyes, and i wonder what was behind it.

I suspect its a thousand dreams that may or may not ever come true, his dreams for me, flashing behind his tired eyes, mixing with love for the beautiful little precious bundle whose eyelids slowly lose the battle against sleep.

i had my beautiful blonde headed boy once, whom i nestled in my arms and i loved with all my heart....and then years later for a brief time i fell in love with another child i would have given everything to. i have missed my little princes - and my heart is full with the knowledge that somewhere in the world they are hopefully healthy and happy and maybe they remember just a little how much i love them, how much i always will.

As for children of my own...that's a story yet to be written and perhaps a page always to remain blank, i do not know if the fates will ever be kind, or even if such remains a true possibility given certain medical history. For now i'll simply be content with the amazing little gifts i've been given in my life. i've been privileged to know the gift of being called mom, and though i ache at times for that feeling once again.... well, maybe someday....an answer that doesn't satiate two anxious parents who long for more grandchildren and a settled married life for their daughter.

I wish at times i could be simpler, that i could settle down and be the daughter they pictured in their dreams........when i was a little girl bouncing on his knee long ago.

Writing to heal.....

2008-08-25T19:01:00.001-07:00

It would be easy perhaps to regret him....
But i've never lived my life that way - and there's too much beauty in these past years to resort to regret in light of what's happened....and besides, deep down i will always love him - as much as in some moments i want to curse him, hate him, hurt him as deeply as he etched scars upon my heart.....in the end all i can do is glance with a certain sadness back at a shadow of the man i fell in love with and wish that something might have been different, wish him a different path than i see him walking down and believe that somehow this is how its meant to be.

What becomes difficult now is forgiving myself for the outcome of these years....that ultimately the decision to walk away was forced into my court, for my own sanity and welfare i had to allow the distance to accumulate emotionally between us, i had to shut the doors. The physical distance is happenstance, but it added another layer of insult and injury on a wound that little needed more salt rubbed therein. He is no longer the man i fell in love with, he has spent a long time diving deeper into his mourning and misery until i can barely recognize the shell of the man that is left....yet occasionally i could still see that old twinkle in those eyes, those eyes i longed once to be lost in forever...oh and that nose i loved to kiss. It was my epic dream...he was my epic love....and none can say i didn't try so very hard to make it work.....

And the nightmares come now - more frequently than i can bare sometimes and i find myself walking in the early morning hours simply to be free of my bed and my dreams. In night terror i see what i have long feared, the ultimate loss of him. How many times over the last two years have i heard him beg and plead and long for his own death i wonder.....the peace he longs for is the thought i cannot bare....and it haunts me. Life did this to him and he chose the path, he pushed me away despite my attempts to stay close, to love him, to fight for that - maybe someday i'll let all those arguements actually absolve me of the feeling of responsibility for his happiness, or at least his survival.

I spent many years hoping, trying, praying that i could bring him back from the misery that he wished to swallow him. I don't know how any parent recovers from the loss of a child - and the light went out in his eyes and in his heart that day when his took his own life. i don't think i've ever found it in me to truly blame him for what happened between us - not even as ugly as it got at some points - maybe he shouldn't have gotten the ultimate get out of jail free card - but if you ever saw the tears in his eyes in the morning, or on a holiday, maybe you'd understand - just a little bit of why i would have done anything - why i almost let myself drown in the misery before i couldn't go any further, before i walked away.

i have learned many things from him and in part thanks to him, i have learned the true measure of my strength, the beauty of my commitment, i have shown myself and the world just how tenacious and self-reliant i can be, he opened up a new world to me, and i lived it, breathed it, drank it in in all its splendor - and i will never be able to repay him for all that he gave me, in many ways he set me free and showed me my wings to fly. He gave me hawaii, he gave me home, my rainbows, my history, my waterfalls, memories of my Daddy holding my tight in sweet tradewinds......he gave me history and science and politics as i sat adoringly at his feet.....he gave me my lullabye, and once upon a time, a long time ago, for awhile, he gave me his heart.....before it turned to stone.

But there are a few things i must fix that he left me with, a vulnerable voice afraid to speak at times, afraid of the rejection or the anger or the mocking which were constant in those later days. He left me with a fear of putting this heart on the line - a fear which makes me angry inside because i've never been that person before. i became prickly, defensive - with walls much higher than they've ever been.....

I walk on every day - and every day i glimpse back wondering if he's okay. That's who i am - he won't believe i loved him - i haven't stopped loving him since the very first day we met. There are other things i'm meant to do with my life now - i'm not meant to drown in him, but it makes me endlessly sad that he refuses to grab the life preserver and that i must swim away in order to live.

I write to heal.....maybe i'll sleep tonight....maybe....

I watched you today

2008-08-08T23:10:00.000-07:00

I watched you...

i watched you work,
i watched you play,
i watched you laugh
and be for a moment
truly carefree and happy
i saw your strength
and your beauty
and your humor
and your love
and your passion

i watched you
and i knew without any doubt
why i love you
why i kneel

Home

2008-07-28T07:38:00.001-07:00

It happened almost too quickly, with a fluidity i was not prepared for, enough that it makes my heart quiver in my chest, it makes butterflies swarm in my tummy...it makes a smile jump and play upon my lips to think upon it.

I have come to realize through the years that home is a place far more relative and and a word with far more meaning for me than many others will ever come to understand it as. Yet it is not a word to be used flippantly or carelessly, home is a treasure, a brilliant word with many facets, bestowed upon a place or person or family....

And now, what took nearly 2 years and the event of my moving away to happen in a tropical paradise to truly feel, happened again so quickly in this place that it squeezes the air from my lungs to think about. When te words slipped from my lips, when i called it home the other night, i gasped.

And i've been perhaps strangely quiet since.....i don't know if i can stay here, with these people that have made me so at ease, who have invited me in, held me close, made me feel special and sweet. I don't know where in the coming months my world will go, which way it will turn and where i will follow the path. I do know that in moments now i find myself longing to stay, to sit in the cool evening breezes and listen to the talk, to toss back a few more drinks at a cozy little bar, to laugh and sing along with the radio. The quiet comes because the heart strings tug, and i long to capture time or make it stand still.....i like this home.

I have received a great gift here, they have given me a new home, a new precious lovely place in my heart, in my world, where i can hang my hat and hang my heart, where i can prop my feet up on the coffee table and throw my coat in the closet and know, i am safe, i am loved and i am just where i want to be.

I miss my Mami

2008-07-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

Its one of those days
and in the midst of too many goodbyes
and with a heart that is torn
i just miss my Mami

But hopefully it shall all be right soon
and i adore you Mami
*throws kisses across the water*

Crazy For You

2008-06-27T19:56:00.000-07:00

Swaying room as the music starts

Strangers making the most of the dark
Two by two their bodies become one

I see you through the smokey air
Can't you feel the weight of my stare
You're so close but still a world away
What I'm dying to say, is that

I'm crazy for you
Touch me once and you'll know its true
I never wanted anyone like this
Its all brand new, you'll feel it in my kiss
Im crazy for you, crazy for you

Trying hard to control my heart
I walk over to where you are
Eye to eye we need no words at all

Slowly now we begin to move
Every breath I'm deeper into you
Soon we two are standing still in time
If you read my mind, you'll see

Its all brand new, I'm crazy for you
And you know its true
Im crazy, crazy for you

How Badly Do Your Feet Itch?

2008-06-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

I grinned into the phone, she felt so good and so comfortable, i had forgotten, silly - to have forgotten such a thing. She made a high pitched eeking sound - her usual excited emission - and i launched into giggles again, and she asked when I'd be arriving, the 4th I said...and another series of excited utterances tumbled forth.

God it felt good...and my feet do itch. I forgot just how well she knows me. She asked how long i had had the apartment packed up and empty, about a month i replied, in near hysterics. "Wow that's about the longest goodbye you've mustered yet, must be killing you." Oh god, i replied, there's not a thing left i can pack at this moment! She launched into a series of of topics about how the baby won't stop asking about me at the oddest moments and the summer line at the shop, and then she asked....can i come?

Huh? Well, on the 4th? LOL You have 7 children and you want to drive to Maine for the 4th of July, are you nuts? God I love you!! Can you do my hair too? And of course her answer was yes, she'd bring everything and the wax and she'd fix everything...and i just wanted to jump through the phone with my itchy feet and kiss her. She knows that the lake house will be a swamp of people, she knows my mother won't hardly let me out of her sight for a week, but god love her she'll come anyway with bags packed with color and scissors and wax and all the fun stuff and toting the littlest one on her hip....and after all this time...we'll be back together again...and i adore that she can't even wait until i'm off the plane a day.

I called my mom and asked if i could bring a friend or two home with me on the 4th....she laughed and said the house was pretty full, there was only my bedroom left to book - i said i'd take the couch. I guess I've got quite a welcome home party planned...who knew....

I think my heart is about to explode right now I feel so loved.

Aww look she's all mushy and gushy and stuff - isn't that cute!

Doubly Blessed

2008-06-22T20:54:00.000-07:00

"You sound sad" He said...
I hadn't really thought about it...

I guess there was something profoundly sad in the undertones of my voice and yet....i feel, almost neutral but stretched, stretched is a good word for it, like a favorite hobbit of mine once said...".I'm beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel thin. Sort of stretched, like butter, scraped over too much bread" ~Bilbo Baggins LOTR

You see its not a bad time, I choose this, not out of loss, or a need to run, or really that there was anything profoundly lacking here that never would have come in a mere matter of time....but it was the choice of one dream over another. It is essentially one of the most beautiful places a person can find themselves, torn between beauty on both sides - now granted it may be as well one of the most agonizing at some moments...but when faced with such choices one must sit and realize - how lucky they truly are to be there.

Here I have paradise, landscapes and weather the world envies every day, i have culture that fills up my soul and overwhelms me, i have learned so much. Over 2 years I have grown into a far better person than i could have imagined for having been here, and I am soo grateful that I came, and that I lived and that I loved, and that i have done what i did here. I would not trade a moment, from the earthquake to my relationships to my work, to skydives and parasails, to sunsets on the beach and whalewatches and moonlit skinnydips, not any of it. I wouldn't trade those moments of being hated for my white skin, for they have taught me humility in the face of adversity, nor would i trade the moments of being embraced by families and friends of every ethnicity i could imagine. Tears and smiles, rainbows and raindrops....two years of amazing experiences.

And there...family, a mother and father who are love's inspiration after all these years and still going strong. My support and my shelter. My niece who I am dying to hold and to teach hawaiian, and to dress like a little wahine and smell, i might just inhale her. My friends I have long missed and the multitude of children they have produced in my absence - jesus they need me back just so i can keep them from copulating so much or they'll be overrun by offspring! My darling Cesca of course! And then there are things like seasons and interstate highways and no threats of tsunamis. Snow....we're listing that under positives today get back to me about that come December.

So yes, I'm sad....i'm sad that it takes leaving one to have the other. I'm sad that you have to close some doors to open other windows. But I'm okay.

You are not leaving, you are arriving.....

2008-06-18T21:25:00.001-07:00

The Journey

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens
so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that
small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving.

~ David Whyte House of Belonging

_______________________________

And so they have been found, the right words for the page to finally start this journey. The page that has been blank for nearly a year, waiting for the right words to come, the right moment. I would not start this page in pain, i would not start it at a run from something, i would not start it in ugliness, but simply when it was right. Now, is right. Now, it has arrived. Here, i am.

To what end? That remains to be seen...perhaps this will finally be the collection of the wise words i have uttered forth to this moment and never actually used, that i might actually employ a few of them, and continue to write new ones...who knows. I suspect i will forever continue to ignore a good many of my own sage words, even as i spew them forth to others. It is, after all, always easier to give good sound advice than it is to take it. For some reason the mechanical engine of the passionate heart drive has never run well on sound advice, its fancy seems tickled by the most audacious and self-destructive direction sequence most of us can contrive on a daily basis. Oh well, it makes life, if nothing else, action-filled (please note my swerve around the use of the word drama there).

So from a great sky, from ashes, from a multitude of beauty and pain, from rainbows and waterfalls, from hardwork and heartbreak from laughter and walks on the beach, from a multitude of things i now emerge into something new and with it emerges a new blog home....wiser, tanner, sillier and perhaps a bit more guarded than ever, here i am.

Let the rambling continue!

Late Night Ramblings

2006-01-31T13:59:00.000-08:00

It's not about your definition
It's not about your power or someone else's pain or perception or words or semantics or any of the bullshit. It's not about the movies, the story of O, about tradition, it's not about costumes or chains or floggers or the right equipment. It's not about formality, or title, it's not about capitalization, it's not about perfectly arched backs and and Nadu.

Its about the power of the moment that sears through you. When a connection is made and it means something to you. When two feel together as one. When it feels right. When the magnet's power draws you uncontrollably toward something and you flow like liquid metal toward it with no hesitation, oozing into it...Its about living it, not defining it, feeling it, inhaling it, tasting it, diving into it and letting it drown you, consume you, devour every last inch of you...and never wanting to come back up for air, never wanting to escape it. Whatever "it" is for you.

Do you know what it feels like to drown there, in the sweet intoxication of it all....in that sweet beautiful connection of souls? Can you fathom surrendering yourself to another, completely, how does it make you feel, does it make you feel vunerable? free? afraid? serene? What is the tensile strength of love?

Sumissive or Slave

2005-08-11T18:22:00.000-07:00

8/11/2005 6:22 pm
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Last Read:
12/25/2009 8:27 pm

I recently delved into the matter of semantics with an old Master. We had the difficult conversation after one of my great epiphany restless nights. They're the nights i hate but need, alone in my thought, about out of my mind in chaotic mood shifting primal muckity muck.

There's an essentail difference between a submissive and a slave. I used to engage in this discussion long ago and purely dismiss it to a matter of semantics but its really not necessarily so. You see the submissive always realizes that there's an element of self gratification in every act. There's mutual benefit to all of it. For the slave this must not necessarily be so - not the true slave. The Master that seeks a true slave does not require that in the action He takes there be benefit to the slave. The Master that seeks a submissive will always seek mutual benefit for Himself and the submissive.

*i* am not a slave. i have never been able to rid myself of that self-serving element. i seek mutual positive benefit from my action. It was a sad conversation for me...after all under the guidance of this Master i'd come to pen some of my greatest works. He helped me to channel my energies in ways i'd be unable to harness them under my own devices. He provided disciple i longed for and with that freedom amazing things flowed. But He asked me for things which denied self. To put another before self is submission, to deny self is slavery. i will not deny myself.

Now why this discussion.....In response to my post essence its been asked if my submission and my idealism are not contradictory. How do i pursue my idealist thought as a submissive? It is implied that i cannot. I emphatically say i much more so pursue it as a submissive. Furthermore i'm free to because i'm a submissive and not a slave...

The pursuit of intellectual enlightenment takes many paths. Many people seek guides and partners along the paths. Not because they cannot journey alone but because they prefer other views and some company along the journey. Its not a crutch i seek when i say that long for a Daddy to share in this journey of life, or my journey as a submissive, my journey as an idealist in the realist world. If this Daddy should never come along i'm quite convinced i'll find my way and do quite well on my own volition. Meanwhile i'll have shared the path with a good number of quite amazing souls who have been good enough to hold my hand and laugh with me, share a few sage words and make this an amazing jaunt.

Submission does not mean close me up in a box and make me useless to the world and myself. Submission doesn't mean just play with my head and fuck me hard up against the wall like a dirty naughty little slut toy (though that's kinda fun

Submission means push my limits and take me somewhere a little bit higher, a little better and little further. Help me grow wings and fly with me. Its intensity, its idealism perhaps itself. Striving for it....take me harder......past the last breath....

My submission will never take me out of this world or hide me from it. If a Master ever has intent of that then He won't own me. i'm not a slave and i'm not a fool. My submission is about growing........the One that shares it with me....will know how to nurture it.

2005-05-05T18:29:00.000-07:00

life is just a series of moments
live this one
enjoy it
drink it in with all its juices
roll them on your tongue
taste their sweetness
don't spend all your moments
waiting for the next
you'll miss this one darling

2005-02-12T11:19:00.000-08:00

For as long as I can remember back now,....its never felt like that.

All the missed notes in the world didn't matter, bad counting, no formality of style. None of it, I simply no longer cared. What came from my fingertips was music, free, unfettered by discipline adn training, unfettered by fears of what others would say upon hearing, no judgements. Just freedom.

I played for nearly an hour, a volume hugely longer than I've played in years. I just let it trickle from my fingers. And for a moment...I was free.

2005-02-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

If you look at something for long enough, really look. You will find that no matter how much it may have looked like a perfect circle to begin with, you find, upon closer examination a wide variety of angles. These things not appreciated or considered on first glance. Its along the same lines of not judging a book by its cover. If you look at something or someone too fast you will fail to see something, you will often fail to see what it might do you a lot of good to see.

There's a lot of that going around in my life right now. For example being sick like I am. Now on the surface the whole thing just sucks. I'm tired of having this constant headache that's been throbbing along making me irritable and frustrated for months. Its cost me money in medical bills, its severely complicated school and work and even friendships which I once thought were strong. That's just an angle though. I can definately focus on it like that, but I'm trying to see some of the other sides.

Its a learning experience. Though I wouldn't wish to go through this, with each increasing frustration, each new test, each bump in the road, does my capacity for compassion not increase? Is this possibly not the worst and yet best, training for my nursing career? Maybe the next person presenting in front of me as a patient will get more understanding and compassionate treatment from me since I've been through this. Maybe I'll have better words to say to someone when they need comfort. Walking a mile in someone else's shoes certainly improves ones ability to act with a new understanding.

Beyond that...what a host of blessings have been shown in my life through this. Old friends, new friends, family all coming to my support. Sure, some get it more than others and there are pit falls here too, but I'm trying not to linger on the down side. My parents have been astoundingly supportive and helpful, even my dad tries, though his emotional stunting makes it difficult. I've renewed or tried to open some links with my brother. I've tried to be more mindful of the family that i'm likely to soon move away from again. I get some time with my mother, though we all prefer that it was under different circumstances, but still its connection, its support, its love and its all here, blessing me and helping me right now.

And then there's that special person, who shows his strength and his amazing capacity to love me and support me and care through this difficult time. We grow together through this, I becoming assured that his love is not for the good only. He gives me so much and he never stops, he shows me how much he cares, he puts up with me when I'm crazy frustrated, he holds me tight even when his arms can't reach across the globe to hold me physically.

So its not all bad. :) Its a lot of good....with a headache in the middle.

There are other things I'm examining more closely, aspects of things and people that i'm seeing for a first time but I think they're part of a separate entry. I feel pretty good right now about things...I think I'll leave it at that.

2004-10-15T18:43:00.000-07:00

I have transcended beyond what i once was into a new being, freed from the shell that bound me eternally to a world i failed to understand. Here new life has taken hold, i am something free, as free as the wind. The laws that governed a world i once knew hold no relevance, no truth here. Welcome to this world, travel with me and i'll show you the depths of what grows here, what thrives here, what makes my very heart pound here. Take my hand, its alright, i'll be at your side......come with me...

2004-07-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

The difficult thing about life is that you don't get the answer to the why's any other way but waiting for time to show you the lesson you have to learn.

So something bad or difficult happens and you have to wait a lot of times for the revelation...the greater meaning behind the suffering you must go through. Sometimes this wait makes you want to pull your hair out, sometimes it makes you want to give up.

I've been there, hell somedays i think i live in that place of existence where the why's are just too consuming. Where it would be easier to forsake so many things to ease the pain and difficulty of life.

Sometimes life gives you little answers to these questions that seem to only bring up more questions. In a time i'm trying to let go of the longing for my grandmother here on this physical plane i have to wonder why the reminders of her life have to be so plentiful. And then it comes down to looking at the glass half full or half empty. Do i cry because i don't want to remember and hurt or do i smile because her memory remains so strong beside me, her spirit so vibrant in my life?

In the middle of a horrendous shift there sits a person who sees my name tag and asks, are you Bill's Grand-daughter. And suddenly there it is again, the memories or my grandparents dearly departed dancing around in my head. Why now? Why do i meet all these people now coming forth with memories i've cried for all my life? Why now when she's no longer here to prod her for more. I don't know. I don't know how to process this sometimes, there's such a mixture of feelings within me about the fact that this has happened numerous times over the past few weeks.

Truth is i don't want to be sad anymore at the memories, longing for corporeal things that are no longer but I'm just not ready to let go of all the grief. But i suspect the answer to this why which will someday come is that these things, these moments were gifted to me specifically so that i might learn to keep the memories close, realize their spirits within me, know that from wherever they exist away from this earth, they know i will make them proud.

There are other questions, the whys that run through my head in every day. I guess the trick becomes to accept a quiet patience, that the answers come in time and that is the journey of life, amazing as it is.

After all, there are questions that have been answered with amazing amazing things lately....that gives hope for future answers

2004-07-21T19:29:00.000-07:00

Life is a journey, there's no escaping it, no getting off the bus when things get too hard, there's no real hiding even.

Sometimes you're just ready to curl up for awhile, wishing you were a catapillar and the day had come for you to take refuge in your cocoon in hopes of emerging in the future as something more beautiful.

But there's no such reality in our lives. We don't get to cocoon, what is there must be faced and there's little room around it, and if you find your way around it....you won't emerge as a butterfly.

butterflies...

faeries.....

the little girl dreams i've held flutter from my hands. It makes me sad, it makes me want to curl up and hide.

I feel like i walk through life on the other side of a mirror, watching in horror at some of the things happening right now, but i cannot reach through, i cannot effect change. As if my life is lived by another beyond my reach and i cannot even scream to stop it, for no one hears.

Its strange...it hurts...its confusing. I don't particularly care for the feeling to be honest. There are some things that are going really well, perfect, like a dream. I have the best friends now that i've had in years and thank god for that. I have a person i can depend on no matter what, who i can trust beyond what i'd ever thought i'd trust again. So why all the tears? Why all the fear? Why all the confusion? I don't know

Sometimes there are parts of us we cannot control. Sometimes emotions can't so much be reigned in. Sometimes we simply have to hurt and live with it

2004-05-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

2004-05-14 - 5:44 p.m.

So 5am tomorrow will mark the beginning of my 26th year wandering this earth. Its just another day, so why is it obvious to anyone around me that i'm struggling with something?

Its not the age - hell if i start fretting over my age at 26 i'll have to just off myself by 40. Nah that's just a number. Maybe i have a few less claims to the innocence of youth in dismissing my mistakes, but oh well, you have to grow up sometime.

The real issue...what is gripping at my heart beyond all rationalization i've tried to produce. For the first year of my life she won't be there.

Its been over a month now i've had to grieve, to understand and get used to the idea that she won't be here, she isn't here, not physically. So why on this stupid little day does it hurt so badly?

2004-04-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

2004-04-06 - 8:16 p.m.

The time comes when you must put sorrow aside, let the simple moment be enough, no worry or sadness for what tomorrow may or may not hold, no misty eyed memories of the past just live in that exact moment and find the joy in it.

Today i did that, forget all the memories that have made a constant run through the synaptic terminals of my overactive mind these days. Forget the hours of flooding tears over weddings she won't attend and grandchildren she'll never know and boil it down to a simple moment.

We had one of our new "fights" ..no words this time, just the simple clinging to a tissue as if it were the last life vest on titanic. And suddenly you realize, until her last breath she will still be that stubborn, obstinant, frustrating, wonderful woman she's always been. She can barely form a sentance for fatigue, opening her eyes seems a painful chore and yet this darling woman has the audacity to play a game of hide the tissue so that her little treasure can't be stolen.

For years, she's had a problem with a tear duct in her eye. Hence gave rise to the ever present tissue or paper towel tucked inside the right hand pocket of whatever garment she wore that day. There would be a pocket and there would be a tissue, this was a constant in a world where the only thing constant is change.

And the change hasn't come yet. Maybe its her one little way to remind us that she's in control, that she still has some measure of independance regardless of what her failing body forces her to let others do for her.

And all i could do in that moment was laugh, and know, that somehow it was okay. And i sat down, promised her i wouldn't steal her tissue if she'd put it down and hold my hand, and she let go of it and offered me that soft familiar palm, one i've spent hours softly rubbing as of late, marvelling at the softness of her skin. And there, safe with my grandmother, perhaps for the last time, i fell asleep in her hold.

That's not to say there's not sadness and struggle left to come. No doubt that will still be tears to cry but for one sweet moment i'll never forget....i knew it was all okay.

2004-04-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

—Harriet Beecher Stowe

I'm not sure i'm ready to be here writing this.

On Tuesday March 30, 2004 Frances Carr, one of the most amazing and wonderful people in my life, my Grandmother, suffered a massive stroke. On Monday April 5th we removed all life support as were her wishes. The next few days will be our final goodbyes to a woman which we all wish we did not have to let go of in life so soon.

She's 86 years old, if she hangs on to life until Saturday she'll be 87. She lived a long, good life. I think in some ways we all wish that the stroke had taken her in an easier manner. That the choices that have befallen us in the past few days were not ours to make and that her death had been quick, with no measure of suffering. But, she never did do anything the easy way. There were words remaining to be said, and in the past few days, even through garbled speech and a body that was failing her, she relayed her love to her family, she gave us the peace to accept her passing, she told us that she was reaching out to Grampy, 22 years since he left her in death and now she'll finally return to his side.

I don't think i would have chosen to spend the last days of her life taking care of her the way i have, changing her clothes, lovingly washing her frail body, but maybe she knew that i had to feel that i'd done all i could, that i needed those last little moments of doing all i could to care for her to feel okay. I don't know...all i know is that i don't want her to suffer anymore.

Someday there will be my wedding, her great grand children, so many things in my life that i wish she could be there for, but the memories and what she has accomplished in her astounding life won't be forgotten. And though her great grandchildren won't know the feel of her arms around them, i swear they will know of this amazing woman.

I'm not ready yet to face the thought that she won't be there in every day. That's too close, i'm just not ready yet for that.

For now, may we all find peace that her suffering ends, find sweet memories in a life well lived and the blessings of our time shared with her.

God's finger touched her, and she slept.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

2004-03-11T15:29:00.000-08:00

She stood in the middle of the woods, unsure why she had come here, confused as to what had drawn her back to this spot after so many years. She shivered in the cool autumn air and drew her jacket tightly around her. She wandered among the trees, her feet leading her instinctively to that old place, the mossy bed that had long been here at the foot of this massive tree. As she had in childhood, she sat down on the bed of moss and curled up a bit to stay warm. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the tree, as she did so she heard a soft voice whisper, “welcome home”. Her eyes popped open and scanned over the area searching for the origins of the voice, but no one was there. She dismissed it to the wind and her imagination and closed her eyes once more, drinking in the crisp fall air and the scent of the woods around her. The old tree had always cradled her like a baby; she had sought refuge here many times before.

It is time that you realize”, she heard the voice speak again. She laughed out loud, I’m wandering through old memories, coming to hiding places long forgotten and hearing voices in my head today, she thought. “You are of the trees”, the voice whispered, sending a chill down her spine. She spoke aloud into the aloneness, “great, I’m finally cracking from the stress, now I’m trying to convince myself I’m a tree.” She laughed again. The voice spoke once more, “You are not a tree, child, you are of the trees, and its time you realized.”

She jumped to her feet, “alright”, she said in a strong voice, “who is out there, this really isn’t funny, following me down to this place, show yourself, now!” She was met only with silence. She looked around but there was no sign that anyone had followed her, she hadn’t heard footsteps behind her as she walked the path and the fall leaves on the ground usually gave the presence of another away. She sighed and returned to the moss-bed.

“Quiet child, there is no one here but the trees, it is us you hear.” The voice was soft and soothing as it spoke to her. “Ok, I’ll humor you” she spoke back with an annoyed tone, “I’m talking to trees because I’m of the trees, never mind I have no roots, nor branches, nor bark, I don’t grow leaves or shed them in the fall.” The voice chuckled softly. “Child, you have roots, though they are not in earth and soil, your roots grow in love and compassion. You have branches, they are the many desires and loves and wills and wants of your heart. You also grow leaves my child, they are the people that adorn your life, that make it rich and full and in your autumn you too shed them, though not as we do. You are of the trees, you are not a tree, child. When you realize, you will find ease to your pain in life.”

She leaned back against the tree and thought about this, the sun started to slip low in the sky. After many minutes she spoke again, “How will realizing I am of the trees ease my pain?” The voice did not speak immediately, she rolled her eyes and threw up her hands, I have been talking to myself about being a tree, I ought to be checking into a psych ward, not sitting in a forest, she thought.

“Patience child”, the voice finally uttered. “You must learn patience.”

“Patience will ease my pain? I doubt it.” She laughed.

“No Child, patience is needed in this conversation; understanding your being of the trees will ease your pain. A tree is born to live and die many times in its life, as you have already lived and died many times in yours. A tree however, does not fight this life and death as you do Child. A tree has learned to accept that true life is a cycle by which one must live and essentially die and renew over and over again.”

The voice went silent for a long while; she nestled in the moss and drifted into thought. “As you have already lived and died many times”, she pondered these words. She felt as if she’d lived at least a dozen lives already in her 25 years. Those lives did not pass easily and quietly as those of the trees did, however. Maybe there was something to what he was saying.

The voice spoke again. “Trees live their year in peace, a normal cycle of rebirth and growth in the spring, a summer of fullness and joy, their branches covered thickly with rich leaves. In their autumn their colors shine brightly in brilliant hues, their gifts offered to the world in a rainbow of leaves and then their season closes as they are bared before the world and stand alone and exposed in a near death until their next season and rebirth. So do you have your years Child even though they do not follow any calendar but your own. You must learn to live like the tree and accept these seasons for what they are. A tree finds peace in all seasons for they know that the season of rebirth will come. So you must make a choice in your life Child. Will you wake each day and linger in fear of the season when you will lose your leaves and stand bare once more before the world? Live instead Child as the tree does, with the knowledge that for each season they stand exposed and naked they have been granted the gift of glorious memories of their brilliant color and the fullness of their leaves; and then look forward to the promise of a rebirth to come.”

“Such a choice may be easy if you’re a tree.” She scoffed. “I, however, am not granted such an uneventful life with such sweetly predictable seasons, with pain that can be planned for and accepted.” She spoke harshly back to the tree, offended by the insinuation that she lingered too long in her own pain and self-pity. She was strong, she had faced so many things with such perseverance and she was entitled to hold her pain.

“Arrogance does not become you child, you know well you are not the only one to suffer, you would be wise to not forget such things.” The tree spoke in a voice of rebuke, and then his tone softened. Never assume Child that you know the pain that may or may not come to another creature. Each tree in its time will have seasons of difficult growth, where sun and wind and rain do not fall favorably upon them. Storms come and as the storms of life cause you pain so do the storms of the earth bring pain to the trees. They find their branches torn and twisted in the cruel elements, their leaves blown away too soon by unrelenting winds. Consider child, their physical pain echoes those emotional pains you know. You are of the trees child, you too must suffer the storms of life, the seasons where the sun does not shine enough upon you and your leaves grow sparse. Some of your years will be glorious and in the fall of those years you will shine with the brightest colors, but other years your tones will fall muted and quiet among the others as you struggle.”

Once again she lapsed into contemplation and there was quiet between them. The forest danced its usually twilight ballet as her mind drifted. She softly spoke once more, "are all men and women of the trees?” she asked.

"No, Child", came the response. Those that are born of the trees are a very special and select few; they are born to live a life of sacrifice, of servant-hood. You see, the trees are called upon to provide protection and nurturing to all, they provide shade from the harsh sun and a blanket of warmth in their fallen leaves. Those of the trees, similarly, are born to serve, to protect and love and nurture those around them. Even in their autumns as their leaves fall they give of themselves and that which is left behind will always carry a portion of them, to nurture and care for the future. Everyday and in most everything they do, the trees and the children of the trees give of themselves, sacrifice of themselves and offer all they are to the service of others. It is a hard life child, one that you were born into and one you cannot escape. You are of the trees Child and you cannot deny your true nature, which comes from that.

She sighed softly, “so I must spend all this time and energy giving of myself to others, as I always have, feeling burned at how little I receive in return? That’s hardly a life, no, I deserve more.” She spoke with a quiet sad tone, a voice that knew tremendous sacrifice, too much loss and too much pain.

“If you choose to see it that way child, then yes.” Came the answer.

The moon rose in the sky as they sat there in absolute silence. With a scowl on her face she watched the moments of pain and sacrifice in her life pass through her mind like a movie, her mood growing darker at each scene. The night was strangely black, only the outline of the moon could be seen behind the clouds and it seemed as if not a single star remained in the sky to light the way. Time drifted on as she lost herself in despair and the stillness of the forest; she drifted off to sleep quieted by the lullaby of the trees and the night faded into dreams.

Her eyes sprung open as the leaves in front of her rustled, a soft warm breeze met her face as she gazed upon the form of the child in front of her. The child was so tiny, so frail, but with eyes that held such beauty, sweetness and innocence. The little girl’s hands were held forward, cupped, the child kneeled and bowed asking, begging, silently. She looked down and she saw in her own hands the pieces of gold, reaching forward she placed these in the hands of the child and wrapped her warm in the coat from her back. The child shed a small tear, bowed once more and turned, disappearing into the day.

The air felt warmer, the day lighter now, as she had nestled back against the tree. She had rested for only a moment when the form of an old man stood before her. His face was weather beaten and wrinkled with eyes of a man who had seen and done a great many things in his life. His clothing was tatted and his body sleek, bones showing through. His look said hungry, begged for mercy. She looked down into her palm once more and there was more gold, she took it and placed it in his palm moving to hold him tight for a moment, as if to say, it will be alright Sir. She then took the shoes from her feet, they weren’t much but they would help him, she passed them to him as well as the socks. He needed them more. His long face turned up into a smile and for just a moment his eyes twinkled, he turned and disappeared into the day.

She looked out over the distance and she realized now the line that stood before her. It disappeared somewhere on the horizon far far away. The line was filled with men, women and children each with their own need, and as they came to her one-by-one she took the money that appeared endlessly in her hands and wrapped it snuggly in their own palms, embracing each sweetly and then taking whatever extra she could of herself to give them before they disappeared. As each one went she felt lighter, freer, happier and she greeted the next with a new exuberance, a new joy in her heart. The day turned to night and on to day again and she could see the end of the line now, her excitement grew, she danced with the people, sang with them, cried with them, gave them all of herself in so many ways.

Finally the last man stood before her and she looked down, but there was no gold in her hand. She looked at herself; she stood naked before him, not even a stitch of clothing left to give. She dropped to her knees and cried before him, all I can give you Sir is my song, my dance, myself, I have nothing left beyond that I can give to ease your pain.

He raised her from her knees and lifted her head to look at his eyes, they were filled with love. You have offered all I could ask child and your heart smiles and gives more freely because of it. Go, play and be happy.

She smiled broadly and scampered off into the field to run and play with more joy and freedom and completeness than she had ever known.

The morning sun shone down around her when the voice came, “it is time to wake child”. She stirred and rolled in the bed of moss as if the voice was merely her normal morning alarm and the moss of the forest her warm soft bed. A certain new peace loomed about her, as if the joy and contentment of her dream had filled her heart and set her free from some larger burden. She stretched and realized with a bit of a start her surroundings.

She stood and stretched once more, her mind trying to grasp the events of the night, the conversation, was it real? She had fallen asleep so sad, so resigned to a life unfulfilled and yet the night’s rest seemed to have made the world of difference. She slowly remembered the dream. She sat down against the tree once more and contemplated the surreal events. Could it be that a life called to such service could know such joy, that from sacrifice would come the greatest rewards? She looked out over the field in the sweet soft morning light and she knew in her heart that she had been led here to understand.

The voice of the tree spoke one last time. “You have learned as the trees must learn, child, that you must lift your branches to the sun. Even when the weather has seemed to harsh and the day too long, keep lifting your arms and the sun will give you life, shine upon you and care for you. If you do not choose to seek the sunshine you will know great darkness, the other trees will choke you out as they reach toward the light and leave you to a quiet dying realm of somber darkness. You are of the trees child. You will shine in brilliant autumns of life and bring so much to so many, giving of yourself always, with a smile because you reach for the skies. Go now child and live your life, you are a child of the trees, understanding has eased your pain.”

She smiled softly, no longer in need of questioning all that had happened, all that would happen. She skipped off across the fields and disappeared into the woods to a life that would do great good in the world, a life of smiles, love, joy and service. She was a child of the trees.

2004-02-19T18:04:00.000-08:00

2004-02-19 - 6:04 p.m.

I held you last night

So small and tender in my arms

Your little smile, tiny hands

The way smiled when I looked down at you

The way you suckled on my breast

My eyes wept silent tears

Tears of joy, tears of sorrow

My eyes could not leave you

Not for a moment, so beautiful, small, mine

I tickled your tummy softly

And you giggled, the little bubbles of spit

Drippling down your chin

I rocked you softly, singing lullabyes

You drifted off to sleep in my arms

And I watched you in peace

You woke and began to cry

I could not silence you, could not give you comfort

I held you, crying with you as you disappeared

Child that may never be mine

I would have loved you all my heart

I would have smiled at your smiles

Dried your tears

For long nights I would have rocked you

Sang to you the sweetest songs

Given you all in love and nurture a parent can give

I held you again last night

So small and tender in my arms

Your crooked smile, your freckled cheeks

The way you accepted me

The way you called me mommy

My eyes wept silent tears

Tears of joy, tears of sorrow

My eyes could not leave you

Not for a moment, so wonderful, so sweet, my child

I tickled your sides and you fell into a ball

On the floor at my feet

We fell into giggles and played

Until spent you fell asleep

And I watched you in peace

You woke and began to cry

I could not silence you, could not give you comfort

I clung to you crying, as they took you away

Child that was once mine

I loved you as if you had come from me

I loved you with all my heart

I smiled at your smiles

I dried your tears

Long nights I rocked you

Sang with you the sweetest songs

Giving you all the love and nurture I knew how to give

2004-01-28T21:03:00.000-08:00

2004-01-28 - 9:03 p.m.

Main Entry: ka·lei·do·scope

Pronunciation: k&-'lI-d&-"skOp

Function: noun

Etymology: Greek kalos beautiful + eidos form + English -scope -- more at IDYLL

1 : an instrument containing loose bits of colored material (as glass or plastic) between two flat plates and two plane mirrors so placed that changes of position of the bits of material are reflected in an endless variety of patterns

2 : something resembling a kaleidoscope: as a : a variegated changing pattern or scene b : a succession of changing phases or actions

- ka·lei·do·scop·ic /-"lI-d&-'skä-pik/ adjective

- ka·lei·do·scop·i·cal·ly /-pi-k(&-)lE/ adverb

I found it somewhat amusing today as I cleaned up the clutter of my life that's been irritating me as of late, that I came across the gift he gave me in those brief days when he adored me so.

I looked into that kaleidoscope and twirled it before my eyes watching the myriad of colors twist and spin and morph. I drifted back in time to remember the collection of kaleidoscopes my mother had...including one, which contained no pre-determined set of objects to reflect and morph but rather the onlooker would see in it anything they gazed upon changed and beautified by the mirrors.

I realized, the beauty i thought I had seen in him was indeed like that brought about by a kaleidoscope. I gazed upon him in wonder, seeing the beautiful changing colors that I perceived as him. I lingered in amazement at the depth of the hues before me and even reached out a few times that I might touch. Only in retrospect can I see that when I reached out to touch the illusion faded as it faded completely over time as well to reveal that the beauty was the product of mirrors, skillfully aligned, carefully pieced together to create a beautiful illusion before me.

I've ceased to look through the kaleidoscope at him anymore. The feelings of disgust and shame and vulgarity of what was done wash over me in honesty now, the knowledge of his deception and dishonesty lingers in my mind, but in time it too will pass.

He seemed so beautiful that even I sometimes now wish to look at him again through the glass...but there is no returning to that. The illusion is shattered, the mirrors broken and the sharp pieces of glass lay only as hazard around the ugly figure of truth.

2004-01-16T20:57:00.000-08:00

2004-01-16 - 8:57 p.m.

And a woman spoke, saying, "Tell us of Pain."

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

______________________________________

and so tonight I know pain, and if I were disciplined I'd sit and watch it move inside me and discover more about myself, but i do not wish for discipline tonight, I wish to linger in this pain, soak in it, rot in it...let it consume. I don't want to be strong in my pain tonight. I don't want to close my eyes and see the children I once knew as almost my own, the life I lived oblivious and happy.

Why after 4 years do you come back to take more from me? Did you not take enough when your sceming further eroded my trust in all people and tore two precious children from my arms?

All these things I'd locked away in their safe little compartment, safely stowed in the past and you have to come back and take more and unlock the chest of long ago memories so that I might shed more tears for them?

The Wise One says let anger take you here, do not allow yourself to dwell in grief and sorrow but embrace the strength of your anger and rebel against the memories that threaten your tranquility. I am not a creature of anger....it is fleeting only within me. What lies within is a soft and tender child who cannot stop the hurt tonight.

2004-01-12T20:59:00.000-08:00

2004-01-12 - 8:59 p.m.

Sometimes in life we go so long absorbed in our problems that we forget to see the blessings. Sometimes we forget the blessings we've taken time to see in the past and the lessons those moments of realizations have taught us. During this time when there's so much turmoil and change for me I tend to forget these things. Tonight I had the opportunity to be reminded of one I take far too much for granted.

You see, whatever power exists above this world blessed me with a person in my life who has known many roles, yet probably never consciously realized any of them beyond the fact that she loved me, she missed me when I wasn't around and always had a hug to give me. Nancy was my best friend when I was child, we played in her school house and dressed her dolls and colored and sang and were silly. I never saw her graying hair back then...not in those early days.

Then I grew up, and sometimes I became embarassed by her. Friends would look and giggle sometimes when my grandmother or parents brought her to see me perform in a school event. I didn't want to play with her dolls or in her school house, now I saw her graying hair and didn't understand fully why she wasn't an adult. Or perhaps more-so from my own mis-placed embrassment I didn't want to see.

As an adult I've seen quite clearly at times the blessing she is in my life. The things that her existence, love and happiness have given me that I wouldn't have had otherwise. Nancy is mentally handicapped, she will always be the child I long ago stopped being. Perhaps her life is more richly blessed at times for that fact. She doesn't see what I see in the world. She doesn't often stop smiling either.

I've been exploring the idea of impermanence and I realized tonight by some odd twist that this is the exact state that most of the time she lives in. Tomorrow exists, so does yesterday but much more important to her at almost every turn is this moment, today, the person she's with and the activity she's currently involved in.

When I thought about these things tonight a bit of shame came over me. I don't give her enough of my time, I don't share her smiles enough, I don't try to create them enough and in that I fail to say thank you for all she's done in my life.

When you look at a handicapped person what do you see? I can honestly say that through all my life what I have never felt for Nancy is pity. I'm proud of this fact. You see Nancy doesn't need or desire my pity...to her there's nothing to pity.

I don't know where I was going with this, I just felt like I had to say it. Thank you Nancy, for being just who you are. I wish the world could all know you and the lessons you've taught me.

2003-10-28T12:40:00.000-08:00

2003-10-28 - 12:40 p.m.

I'm tired of living today. I'm tired of pain and being endlessly exhausted from it and medications. I'm tired of wondering when they're going to let me go here with a mix of hope and dread. I'm tired of worrying about everyone. I'm tired of carrying the facade of the strong one when I'm so very weak inside. I'm tired of hurting.

If it weren't for the absolute luscious moments of friendship shared with a few select souls in my life I would succumb to the urge to sleep and lay down my soul for a long hibernation.

Do you wonder why we have built our lives the way we have? All the control to shape daily life was ours throughout history and this is what we made? I world powered by the energy of people rushing so fast to get to the next thing they have no time to stop and live the moment.

I want to stop and smell the roses. I want to spend entire days talking with my friends and being lazy and holding them and kissing them and braiding daisys in their hair. I want to smile at the dew on the grass and the sunset and the little precious moments we all forget, not rush by to get to work to make a paycheck to buy things I don't need to make me happy. Taste my laughter...does it tickle on your tongue? Feel my smiles and my heart break and hold my songs in your hands. Stop and turn your world of what is into a world of what could be and just stop. Let it be.....and then climb inside what is and explore it in ways you never have before.

Corny I guess...idealistic, yeah. Wrong? I don't think so..

2003-10-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

2003-10-01 - 10:49 a.m.

In childhood we ran in the fields together, we laughed in the snow, we cried and hugged and laughed and played together. Do you remember the gumballs in the snow? Do you remember the ill fated snowmobile ride before church? Do you remember sneaking across to the cove on the canoe and being bad. Do you remember that time my mother caught me, sitting on the back porch of the camp taking a drag off your cig? Do you remember climbing the trees and looking for mushrooms? Do you remember the night...when we stared at the news for hours unable to believe it was real, do you remember when we sang him goodbye? Do you remember the games of pool? Do you remember speeding around the lake on the boat and singing at the top of our lungs. Do you remember ice fishing in shorts...and the day my grandfather came to love you. Do you remember the rings, and the vows of friendship, the long nights of crying, the suicide attempts, the drugs the alcohol, my motherish ways. Do you remember how I loved you?

It seems an eon ago now that you cast me off, left me by the rode as you walked on with another. Callously you toss me without a care to whatever tomorrow may bring me, after I guarded your tomorrows for so very long.

If life were fair it would no longer burden me to love you, to care, to wonder. Yet, fair life is not. Maybe it was a gift you gave me those years ago when you left my side, a freedom to no longer have to clean up after you and love you and have my heart break because of you....

I don't know, nor do I know why today I expend this energy wondering, why you're crawling through my mind. Why are you still here when you're so far away

2003-09-28T07:57:00.000-07:00

2003-09-28 - 7:57 a.m.

You're here again....I feel you on the breeze. Will you forever haunt me?

My own shadow frightens me now, is that not enough for you?

Your control, your trickery, your timing impeccable. Oh but I thought I would win this year, my mind braced to be strong against other hardships, my spirit strengthened by nearly a year now of interflection and growth, time spent alone growing in myself. But as if you control the universe in all its darkened ways, you have broken me down.

I check the lock on the door 1000 times a night it seems, sleep comes only in short moments tormented by memories and with screams I wake. The cold air of fall once my comfort and relief seems to take hold on my throat and press like the silver shining blade you will never let me forget.

The wind taunts me, in its whisperings your voice sings mockingly. I wrap my clothing around me but the cold forever penetrates and my very soul shivers unable to find warmth.

Will you ever leave me be, have I not suffered enough?

2003-09-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

2003-09-26 - 8:48 p.m.

There’s a clump of daffodils that grows just across the yard; on a summer’s day the beauty of them against the luscious green lawn is breath-taking, if you only take the moment to appreciate it. I’ve sat on the top of these steps with their chipping blue paint a million times, but today I see so many things I never saw before.

There’s a woman in my life who has nurtured me and loved me since those very first days, and yet it took me 25 years to realize just quite how amazing she is. She was born in Canada, 86 years ago in a world so different that I wonder if I can truly fathom just how much has changed.

She watched her husband, their marriage vows just barely taken, go off to World War II. It was only a few months ago that she told me the story, how they were unwed when he was called off to war. She married him before he left, she would not choose to stand by him or not should he return injured or changed, whatever came to him in this war, she would be there to help him through when he returned.

While he was away so many things changed in daily life. It wasn’t like the wars I’ve known, it wasn’t just there in the media, she felt it every day. She went to work in the shipyards, “Rosy the Riveter”. She came home to Falmouth at night after a hard day of work to a home she’d barely yet shared with her husband.

The war ended, he came home in one piece, and they truly began their life together. They raised four children, all amazing people in their own rights. It was a time when society had not yet grown to accept the differences of people, when those who were handicapped were often segregated from society, institutionalized. When she learned that her first child was mentally handicapped, however, she refused to give in to the societal “norm”. I can only imagine the struggles of a mother, facing the tragedy of a child with handicap and fighting to give her a normal life in a time that just wasn’t done.

With a small group of like-minded mothers she helped form the basis of Friends of Retarded, an organization that would later be the foundation of other programs for the handicapped in Maine. She fought for the rights of her child, and for so many people with handicaps. What she helped to start will long be remembered here, though most will never realize just how much she struggled to bring about such change.

The children had grown, and the first of the grandchildren played at the bottom of those steps with the chipping blue paint, not far from those daffodils, when that man she pledged her love to before he went off to war, went home for good. She buried him close to the home they had shared and she held her head up high and went on with life. She has watched her children flourish, watched her grandchildren grow. She has given countless hours to countless numbers of causes, giving more of herself than most people could comprehend. Habitat for Humanity, AARP and so many other organizations, have known the pleasure of her service. So many lives she has touched in her 86 years. So many lives she still touches.

May you look at the daffodils of your life, see them for all their beauty, appreciate them before the cold of winter starts to whither their leaves. May you not wait and rush in those cool days of fall to savor the beauty, as the frost threatens to steal it away with every nightfall. May you cherish the amazing splendor of those flowers in your life and not let the moments slip so far that you fail to see what is there before the blanket of winter snow takes them away.

Written in love and respect for one of the most amazing people I’ll ever know, Frances Carr. I’m sorry I waited until the crisp days of autumn to see all you are and how much you mean to me

Essence

2003-09-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

When you look deep inside yourself, pass the pre-defined notions of your day to day life and the person you have become, the mold you have poured yourself into...what do you see?

Deep inside you somewhere is the very heart of your person, many will never know what this heart truly says, what it longs for, what it can give, for they ignore it, push it away, deny it life and breath.

Deep inside me in compartments that long have been shut and covered with dust there is a woman who desires to serve. I've always known in some way she was there, always drawn to put the will and want of others before myself, to be kind and soft and loving and compassionate....and yet...

the world told me to grow strong and hard, to give but only in extreme caution, making sure the return was at least mutual if not to my advantage. And so I pushed the part of me that longed to serve and give and sacrifice deep inside, I learned to love the objects of comfort and the stature of my life, the power, the impressed looks on the faces of both friends and collegues.

and something broke, for all that there was a hole deep inside, something missing, a need unfulfilled. And when the walls of falsely built towers fall the hole left inside is painfully exposed. It cannot be denied, must be addressed, must be recognized for what it is.

for I am a submissive, a woman created with a heart meant to serve, a body that craves to its innermost core to please and love and care for others. for a submissive the very moment of freedom comes when others would say she is most jailed, most kept. At the moment that all the trivial worries and inhibitions of daily life have been removed the submissive becomes free, every movement, every gesture and every sound a work of art, a moment of purest contentment and love

2002-08-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to set your soul free...to fly uninhibited...unencumbered by the weight of this world's worries. To watch it soar high above teh clouds of self doubt and fear. Watch it fly into eternity on gossamer wings with nothing to pull it down into the mist which covers a grey world lined with darkness.

Did you ever desire to see the crimson flow of freedom coursing from your veins into a wild chaotic world.

When I was young I dreamed that the world was fair and just and there was good in the world.

As I grew I refused to become jaded, even forsaking my pain to believe that the inherant good of man was stronger than a draw to greed and evil.

And I suffer because I want to believe in something that is not there that does not exist. A good that is so far removed from our lives and our wills that it is the myth that powers my life and causes pain at every step

I am the most naive of hte niave..I still stand here wanting to believe in these childish notions I once thought were law...knowing they are untrue and yet begging with all my soul that one day I should see them.

I was failliable too...

the river flows red now...with the life of my innocence.

2002-05-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

2002-05-04 - 9:59 a.m.

You came to me in my dreams last night. After all this time you arms finally wrapped tightly around me, your lips touched my skin, our hearts soared together at last and I knew completion. It was as if my other half had come home, as if the part of me I've longed for throughout eternity was finally returned to its holy shrine in my heart.

All of life's hardship, all of the ghosts of the past, all of the wounds of my heart were healed in your return to me. I was whole again.

Many many things happened in the dream, some which I recall vividly, some which fade from memory too far to describe. But I woke with that feeling of completion, for a few moments I revelled in the calm, the wholeness and then I slipped back to sleep.

And in the waning hours of the night the choice came. The price had to be paid for the joy we had known. Great tragedy came to those we knew and a choice was set before you. In the breaking light of day my other half was torn once more from its shrine and a wall was erected that would eternally keep us in separation. My heart and soul were doomed to walk eternity incomplete and broken.

I awoke with tears. For a long expanse of time I knew not that these were dreams that had come to me. The ache inside me was real in those moments. My pillow is still damp with the tears.

Fully awake now......I know what must be done.

2002-03-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

2002-03-26 - 10:25 a.m.

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

—C. S. Lewis

Do you know me? Do you think you do? Do you have any idea what is inside me...what makes me feel and think and act? Can you even begin to fathom the mess that is me...the strange entanglement that controls the very essence of my being?

I want to close off - to retreat to things that do not hurt..to close my life, my love my heart to those that would be careless in their actions towards them. I want to hide deep in a cave of solitude where no force can make my heart shatter like the laugh of one I once loved can...I want to escape to some reality where the cry of a child does not make me bleed where the deceit of a kindred does not tear my soul where I can be safe. But there is no such place for me to hide.

And even if there were...

I would shrivel and die there for the very essence of me which I hate with such passion for its vunerability is what makes me live with vitality and passion and gives me joy and smiles and laughter. It is a cruel paradox.

2002-02-08T01:46:00.000-08:00

2002-02-08 - 1:46 a.m.

Its in the air

You're nearby - I can smell you - taste you on the wind.

My heart beats rapidly...blood pulsing through my veins and my temples ache sensing you.

Every turn of my eyes every glance I expect to see...but you're elusive. This is your game

You're taunting. How do you know when I'm happy so you can come back and put the fear in me again? Why? Why...

Its a game of cat and mouse and I'll forever be the mouse. I wish you'd catch me and kill me...but you play...batting at me with your wretched claws only wounding and amused watching me run.

I glance behind every second...in mockery I feel your hand on my shoulder but its only teh breeze. I can smell your scent, no one else can.

And you live on my fear...you thrive on it. Its your life blood and you return for it. Is it sweeter when I have almost attained happiness? Is that it?

Is your goal to suck the life out of me...to make me fear happiness for its association wiht you so that I might never seek it again?

i can see the rain...the tattered clothes...the rope marks on my arms again...the shining knife....I can hear my own cries. Torment me not - aren't memories enough?

Is there nowhere to hide? Can I ever escape you? Your gaze seems to know no limits and time and time again you're there...like a shadow.

why?

2002-02-07T01:23:00.000-08:00

You can't help those that won't help themselves so its time to not stress over it.

Its time to go out and chase my dreams.

2002-01-28T10:51:00.000-08:00

2002-01-28 - 10:51 a.m.

and the days pass...

with a mixture of meloncholy and smiles I walk on. I cannot say that my life is bad right now, though i maintain it is a little lonely. It is the person I am and though I could change it I choose not to. I'm content at the moment to admire some from afar and revel in myself a little more.

Bittersweet moments fill my days. Remembrances of how things were with lovers, friends and even work. Short glimpses that is may become what it once was again, and then a turn back into the current unrest.

Its not bad, things have to grow and change. I must smile to think of the people in my life at the moment who have done so very much to keep me smiling and happy. I can't regret the turn I've taken towards calmness. Hysterical crying has put itself on the back burner and I seem more even keeled, though sometimes i'm quite convinced its contrived.

For those worrying about me, I am a big girl and I appreciate your concern but I assure you, my strength is rebuilding. Though I hide in my cucoon now I will emerge in the future shining and free. I am not unhappy in this place and its solitude. I am busy growing. And when I move on from this moment I will do so with eyes open aware of my risks and accepting them.

My heart will be hurt again I know. I will survive.

To my shakespeare - ye gods but I love you and am endeared to you so in these past few weeks. None other has shared such a spirit with me in ways that you do and I have spent many an hour wallowing in thoughts of what our friendship is. If I can be a voice that makes you smile in teh darkest moments than I will never regret our friendship for all its ups and downs. I walk by your side though I have never touched your face.

To J, you touch me in ways I thought I would never want again. But there are difficulties and distance and things that cannot be overcome. If I have learned one thing it is not to walk the same path over again and I fear that we may find the path to be very similar to one I have just left. You are my heart...you are my aragorn in so many ways but perhaps the distance will always be a blessing that we might not destroy in eachother the things we so love.

To quivas, my shining friend and lover. How the dark depths of your eyes tore my soul this weekend. How holding you felt so bittersweet, how moments went past when it seemed that it had all been a nightmare. But nothing has changed and our lives must still diverge until perhaps someday when we have grown and learned and changed enough to find one another again. Accepting that if you love something you must let it go, if it returns to you its yours, if it does not, you never had it anyways....has been the hardest thing. We can put no definitive answers down we can make no timeline and we know that waht we once shared may never be so again. It saddens my heart but I cannot live with us both unhappy, it is not fair and its time to start pursuing greater goals. do not frown my pet, my love for we will be alright and through this time we will wander and grow and learn. How it tears at me to remember you lying there, the soul and life seemingly gone from you. My heart has cried since you left for the pain I cannot take away. but we know the reality and we know our love and all we can do is walk on...apart.

To SoulMaster, what can I say but that the days are sweeter for you in them. Never has the sense of love and protection followed me so deep. I know in all moments that you are there and that is comfort even in the darkest of nights. There are so many difficulties so many questions but we will answer them in time. for now the warmth of your embrace and the strength of our friendship is all we need to walk on.

To me...

you are strong, you are beautiful and you are amazing. Let not your fears and self doubt erase this knowledge from you. You have lived through more than you should but regret and bitterness are not the tastes you know and that shall continue evermore. You have a sweet soul so deserving of happiness but we must no lose heart...it will come someday.

No one can love another who does not first love themself.

2002-01-21T00:10:00.000-08:00

2002-01-21 - 12:10 a.m.

We are the original pitiful two...

one can have a good day and inevitably the other is terribly miserable. We make a good pair. Between us life is cruel, unfair and downright rotten 365 days a year. Sometimes we take a break for a major holiday - but its rare.

We spend more energy I swear talking eachother out of depression, swapping the same good advice back and forth like a pair of shoes - problem is we never use the advice we give eachother.

We know our problems, we even have some damn good ideas about how to solve them...but then some of the melodrama would stop. My god! What would life be without the drama?

We're more alike than I'd ever admit...I get these feelings when I know that I just have to talk to him. He doesn't call...I think he has trouble with his ability to dial. I don't care...we both know we're there when needed..its an unspoken law.

But we're miserable...absolutely miserable. To the point - you miss us off if we are made to laugh. How dare you break my grumpy poor pitiful me mood!

Its an endless cycle...and hell yeah it can be fun...especially when we break down and both laugh together. But its a cycle one of us has to learn to break - and then hopefully teach the other.

I don't need a man in my life to fuck me to make me whole or happy. You don't need a woman. Plain and simple right?

Sex doesn't solve a damn thing and love isn't built out of what's comfortable alone.

I ramble entirely too much and I lack your eloquance. I think I lack the ability to spell also.

Ok - I need lunch - that's enough for now.

Don't laugh damnit...we're moping today. Life is utter despair and will only improve if we keep a scowl deeply planted on our lips! man a fuck would solve all this...

W00t - yes I need help

2001-12-27T07:36:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas all..its been awhile eh?

Its been the hardest Christmas I hope I'll ever endure. For a year and a half nick and I have walked side by side, loving eachother, exploring the world, talking, laughing and being best friends and lovers. But life is cruel and the fates crueler..that they would make two people, who love eachother so much so incompatible for the long term. We decided 4 days before Christmas that the time had come to admit...that though we love eachother feircely....its that very love that now must make us part, before life becomes to painful and we learn to resent eachother. We are fundamentally different in ways that cannot be overcome anytime in the immediate future....those incompatibilities drive eachother insane and cause intense unhappiness. So with many tears...much heartache we decided to part ways....and as I watch him leave this house and move towards a different tomorrow without me I could not imagine anything that could hurt more.

After the decision was made my heart cried a thousand times to take it back...but he's set that this is right and what we must do. There's an ache that walks with me through every day...it dulls with time, I can see this already but it will take many moons before it goes away. I must learn to be me again...alone in a world that scares me beyond belief. Its time to grow to be less scared alone. Its a call to change and grow and learn and I will..in time.

My family, my friends - they have been amazing. The friends who saw themselves relatively neglected as I lay quietly in the bonds of my relationship have picked up where we left off, embracing me and loving me and holding me and kicking me in the ass when necessary. I truly am blessed.

And Nick...in time we will be friends...we are in name now but the close proximity is bittersweet at the moment and for a time we must stay apart...keep lines drawn and learn to live our lives alone again. I miss him in every moment..perhaps I always will. Tis cruel to have to wonder if you've made the biggest mistake of your life. But if it is meant to be I can only believe that some day we will find eachother again. And if not then we will have spared ourselves the pain of a potentially broken marriage some day.

He walks through this house still, final arrangements for moving not yet done. His presence is bittersweet. I know he must leave - for with him here my soul will always be captive to what I once had and cannot have any longer. I wish he didn't have to go, I wish he could stay and be my roomate and we could walk on as friends without missing a beat. Such is not reality.

I feel like a failure. O said it last night...he caught what no one else has....he knows my soul too well. Another relationship I couldn't make work...I know it takes the effort of two and this is not my failure but an acceptance of facts and emotions..I know this logically. Someone tell my heart.

2001-11-24T07:07:00.000-08:00

2001-11-24 - 7:07 a.m.

"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways", Yossarian continued "There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?"

Joseph Heller, Catch22

I've yet to turn as cynical as all that...but this quote has been stirring in my mind since I left Maine yesterday and headed back to the safety and security of my life here. In a way, driving the 4 hours back to Massachusetts I felt like I was running away...its not fair to impose that on myself..after all there's nothing I can do, there's nothing anyone can do...there are certain things children and grandchildren should never have to see, never have to go through. I'd give my life, I'd sell my soul to some dark creature, if only I could stop what is happening to my grandparents, but I can't...I can't change it. I'd give most anything to take the pain from my mom, to erase her memories of all this. I wish for one trip there where I didn't have to hear them all cry. I hate the powers of the universe sometimes for all this.... I can't understand where there's some higher purpose to this suffering. I won't.

Thanksgiving day was amazingly peaceful at first. It almost seemed like old times as grampy showed me his rock collection again so we could pick out a stone for my necklace. I passed over the tourmaline and selected a gorgeous piece of malecite and I watched my grandfather's hands shake as he finished the polishing and faceted the new gem into the necklace. It was the benign sign of old age, it didn't hurt like the rest did. We sat together as a family and ate and laughed. For a brief moment in time everything seemed like it had in all of my memories. My heart was quiet and happy...and life seemed at peace. Mom smiled, god did that feel so good to see.

We went to my uncle's for the evening. Ron was recently back from a working tour of the Dominican Republic. He'd been on the same scheduled flight, on an American Airlines Airbus...2 days before that tragic crash. I hugged him tighter than ever and we talked. He told me of his visiting my old ties there...Paston Juan Luc of the Good Sumaritan Hospital. The hospital has grown and flourished since I was there working nearly 6 years ago now. But tragedy is the overtone to everything today...30 of the hospital's dedicated staff went down on that plane. 30 dead and the people of La Romana have once again been left with a hospital with barely the staff to meet their needs. Its hard to understand - why those people? I'm having trouble reconciling events with any notion of a loving and purposeful supreme being. I hate that I question my faith so wholeheartedly these days...after all I was taught growing up that there's a purpose in everything...good and bad alike and that God will never give us more than we can bear. I just can't quite come to believe those things these days.

So my grandparents went home quite early...I gave them about a 20 minute lead and then decided it was time I went to make sure everything was ok. It had been a long exhausting day and I knew the potential for trouble was there. I dreaded driving in that driveway, and my worst fears were met as I stepped out of the car. You could hear him yelling from outside....he didn't miss a beat as I let myself in the door. He was in her face...over her as she sat on the couch pinned, helpless and crying as he battered her emotionally. And once again the idea that my grandfather is now an abuser had to become all too concrete.

The man I knew was always a gentle man. The man I knew was my inspiration and reason for living in so many hard times. The man I knew as Grampy is long dead. Its horrible to say that...it feels horrible....but somewhere in that there's a little peace of mind. I can't accept this new sick man as my grampy. I can't un-dignify his life long legacy by believing this is the same man. The person in his body now is an illness. May none of you reading this every have to hold your mother as she cries and feels wretched over saying - I wish he'd just lay down and die in peace. Its not fair, no element of this is in any way justified and fair. He was so amazing and he always will be to me....but why do these new memories have to intertwine. Why does my mother have to face this every day. What did my grandmother do to deserve this abuse. What did grampy do to deserve such an illness, such agony and suffering every day of his life.

Obsessive compulsive disorder + dimensia + god knows what else and here we are. I hate myself for the tought that life would be better if he just died. Its not a selfish thought - it would spare so much suffering, for him, for the family....but something inside me says its wrong. So much of me thinks it could find a cure, something to help....but I'm rendered powerless by their location 4 hours north and a stubborn family. And I realized this weekend the victem in this I forget. My uncle Ron...always the beloved son in my memories. Today he's been battered and bruised in different ways than the rest of us. This terrible fighting stems from events that happened before I lived....from days gone by when a tired housewife (grammy) worked extra hours in a shoe shop so that they could retire some day. When grampy raised Ron as his own and never reminded anyone of the fact that he'd married my grandmother and agreed to raise someone else's child. I never knew any of this until 4 years ago. Now almost daily I hear how Ron is not his son...how I'm the only granddaughter, how Ron is a rotton unthankful person and how my grandmother is a whore. There are things that a child and grandchild should never hear and see...these are them. May you never see your parent cry as you committ them to a psych ward, may you never see a parent hit and abuse the other, may you never watch as a parent tries to stab themselves to death...may you never see the things my mother and I have seen my grandparents go through.

Friday morning was worse than ever....they went at it with avengance and I needed to slip out and breathe in the air for a moment. Mother was playing referee, she's done it a million times over now...it wasn't fair to leave her for that moment but I was selfish. So I lit a cigarette in teh driveway and listened to the screaming of the same old story from inside the house. Words don't touch him now...this just consumes him. But then the one thing I hadn't witnessed yet...I heard the smack of his hand on her flesh....something inside me broke. I lept into that house and I screamed at the top of my lungs...I got up in his face and I told him to hit me...I said a million things I never could have imagined saying to him.....My heart shattered in that moment. He's convinced her she's utterly worthless...she's bad and she's brought this all on herself. She worked 28 years at that shoe shop, extra hours so that some day they could have a retirement together, and this is how she is repaid. She never once stepped out on him after they were married, but he can never believe that.

Things will never be the same after this weekend, I've had to realize that he truly is dead to me....though I'll still go there. I'm trying to get mom into therapy, she needs help with all this...its more than a child should ever have to go through. I have to make peace with the idea that I cannot stop this. If we take them apart its a death sentance and they'll both be miserable without eachother....if we leave them together its a death sentance and they'll be miserable with eachother. How do you win?

Its not fair...how can a god justify such suffering...such usless pain for two people that have done nothing but the best they could for all their lives. I'll never understand. I hate it every day. I'll always love that man fiercely - but this is not the man I knew.

I think I'm done now...

2001-10-31T11:43:00.000-08:00

2001-10-31 - 11:43 a.m.

How do you hold your head up high when the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

How do you smile and say everything is alright when 5 years of hurt is laying heavily on your heart.

What good is there in reminding others of what you're going through - you only remind them of your pain and get pity. Pity is not what you need, nor is the inevitable feeling of bringing someone else down in the muck and the mire of your depression.

How do you go on when everything that once seemed right and wonderful and beautiful and loving becomes an act of violence and agression and terrible terrible memories haunt you.

Why 5 years later does it still hurt as bad as the day it happened.

Why can I smell the stagnant air and the bodies and hear my own tears from the 2 hour bus ride in tattered clothes with a broken soul.

Why must I remember every detail, the blade of the knife, the harsh ropes, the fabric in my mouth, how it all tasted, sounded and felt.

Why does it consume me...why do I want to take millions of showers when I know it will never wash the dirt off my soul?

Why won't it just fade away.

Every song, every feeling of fall holds it and every year it haunts. I can pretend its not there all I want but in the dark chilling hours of the night I know its there.

And he doesn't feel this, he doesn't know this pain, this suffering, what he caused in my life, what mistakes he pushed me towards, what hours of agony he caused.

There's a burnt pile of cd's under a rock in a hidden place behind Gordon College, there are letters and memories and thoughts that I tried to burn and let go..but they're still there unscathed in my mind.

Must I really be alone tonight?

2001-10-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

2001-10-25 - 3:45 p.m.

Well lets see,

I'm now a highly overpaid technical support worker. I should be happy right?

No.

I'm not a tech support flunky (no offense intended to those that do tech support).

I'm a highly trained coder, project manager and fucking amazing team member but fuck all that...sit me in a cube and make me do tech support bullshit all day...someday I'll quit right?

no.

underpaid for what I'm supposed to be - overpaid for what they make me do. Unchallenged and unhappy I sell my soul everyday for a paycheck.

I missed a better road somewhere.

2001-10-04T23:22:00.000-07:00

2001-10-04 - 11:22 p.m.

What do you do when the world turns upside down? Where do you go and where do you hide when it just gets to be more than you can bear? Is there a god in which you find solace, is there something that can restore your faith in what is good and right and true in this world when it seems there is nothing left that you once believed?

For the last 3 hours I've laid 100% awake, exhausted but unable to sleep. The world runs through my head. When I close my eyes the trade towers collapse in a burning inferno. When I squeeze them tighter to make the thoughts and visions leave I hear the cries of orphaned children and see the starving bloated stomachs of young afghanistani children. And when I open my eyes the big bad world is still there with its layoffs and economic turmoil, with its senseless robbing of the old - taking away their dignity and their very person. And somehow I need to make sense of it all, somewhere, somehow in this senseless mixed up world I have to find some reason some logic to it. But I can't.

I've been all over the place lately...frankly I'm not suprised if people don't know what to make of me these days...not even I do. It doesn't make sense...everything I grew up knowing seems null and void in this day and at this hour. Its not to say all is bad or hopeless. Nick is an overwhelming joy in my life when I just relax and let him be, my family and friends never cease to amaze me with their love....whatever force that is out there has truly been good to me.

Since the terrorist attacks I've been plagued by lack of sleep....its not for fear that the next attack will be my house or even that my comfortable means of living at the moment will be destroyed in the end...its for the feeling that we don't do enough...that I don't do enough.

Hundreds of thousands of innocents will die in this next year. They will starve to death, they will die of medical conditions I wouldn't even worry over here. They will die to rescue others, they will die for reasons that never should have existed. If that's not disturbing enough to think about - its more disturbing about how rarely we really do think about it. Listen to Johnny Cash sometime - figure out why he wears black and really think about it.

And at 7:30 tomorrow I'll crawl out of bed, groan at the sunshine coming in through my window and hop in the shower...all to start another day of designing and implementing another web hosting platform. Wow - now doesn't that seem insignificant. I had to laugh when the company announced after the attacks that they were giving out free webhosting to victems (both corporate and family) of the attacks. Great - I'm sure they were all thinking about loss web revenue as soon as they ran down 100 or so stories to saftey leaving friends and coworkers to die. Its just a small reminder of how insignificant this all is. And I have the opportunity to rise at this company (should it survive). I would have jumped at that chance 6 months ago...more money, more prestige, more success. At what cost? To work all night and never see Nick? To further neglect my friends? To keep me far away from a grandfather who needs me so badly? Money, prestige and power don't seem important anymore. I've proven I can be successful but I never needed to prove it to anyone but myself. So why am I still trying to prove it?

You know where I want to go right now - right into the heart of everything we hate right now as a country. I want to go to Afghanistan and I want to hold and feed as many men, women and children as I can. I want to heal hearts not sit here and watch us bomb innocents. The government can oust the taliban and they can take lives. I just want to heal a few and feel like I've made a difference.

Awhile back Nick and I had a long talk in the car one day about how you can choose to bitch and cry about the world and its atrocities all you want - but if you take no action then you ought to realize that you are a contributor to those atrocities. So in my own inactivity and passivity I have condoned the very things I dispise about this world. Where does one start? Its a big world and I cannot fix everything and everyone, for god's sake some days I can't even make myself work right.

And my mind wanders to wondering how many children could be fed if I sold my computer. How much medicine could children have if I gave up my car or my piano and gave the money to them. Its the only way I have to fight terrorism - give love. I will not hate people, I will not kill or condemn for all these things are the very reason what happened on September 11, 2001 happened.

You don't have to respect what those men did on those planes - hijacking them and killing innocents. I'd never ask anyone to do that. But in some odd way we ought to see that at least these men believed in something and were willing to work for it. Its more than most of us will do in a lifetime. They're not heros - but they didn't have it all wrong either. The US has done this to other countries time and time again, it doesn't make it less of a tragedy or even more understandable, it just makes it that much clearer that its time for it to stop.

I'm only one person - I can't throw every starfish on the beach back into the water...but I pray to whatever forces govern our lives that I remember through my years to throw as many back as I can for it will make a difference to that one.

Do you remember how you felt on September 11th? Did you open a few more doors for your neighbors? Talk to strangers more? Smile and knowing and loving smile at others? Did your heart soften and did you act a bit more generous toward your fellow man? Those actions are a tribute to those that have died - don't let it fade just because time goes by.

We'll never make sense of this world and we'll likely never figure out how to make peace either...somewhere in all of this I'll find my way to reconcile and to move on but my life will never be the same, and that's how it should be. To those that love me, just understand I need this time to grieve in my own way for lives and ideals that are gone now. I feel like I'm standing at a crossway and I can't decide which path to take....no one can show me though, I have to find my way this time alone.

2001-08-13T21:46:00.000-07:00

2001-08-13 - 9:46 p.m.

I've danced in fields of wild flowers

and soured above the silver clouds

I've dreamed unihibited in the sunshine of life

but now it is time for the rain again

It sneaks in on deceptive silver clouds

but it slowly turns dark

the bright sunshine yields to a darker side

and the wildflowers hide among the grass

The silver clouds turn black with time

and heavily burdened with rain

and the water flows

and the soul retreats

afraid and huddled amongst the storm

the storm that rages powerful against the will

against hope

the thunder is loud the lightening strikes close

from time to time the rain lessens

as if a ray of light might break through the gloom

but the rain returns in torrents

It drowns the wild flowers

The memories of the sunshine fade

the soul paces in its silent prison

restlessness, fear, doubt

and the storm rages on.

Someday the sunshine will come again

the wildflowers will grow

and these things shall be brigter

they will be more beatiful

and the soul will dance again

wilder and more passionate because of the rain it has known.

2001-06-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

2001-06-18 - 11:44 a.m.

I'm tired...emotionally.

Work has me down - too much corporate bullshit and office politics.

Life has me down - the continuing degredation of American society, the overwhelming ignorance and complacency.

Quivas is feeling the same things and we're both searching for some method by which to break away from it all and search for a new life that can be more fulfilling than this. Anyone have any good ideas? E-mail me.

I've got to put in my 8 hours of face time in the office now. Boring - nothing to do since our group has slowed down and that two-faced cow of a boss I have took over all my work. So I sit here and write and play games and bang my head against the wall. Sometimes I wipe the frost off my toes that collects there due to the fact that someone decided the air conditioning should be set on artic.

People are falling short of expectations, expectations are falling short of happiness. There has to be something else. This isn't depression this is discontentment brought on by awareness. Those that said ignorance is bliss were right because in my new state of political and social awareness (and self awareness) I'm going crazy.

Is it really so bad to think about selling everything and moving to some hut in some other corner of the world?

2001-05-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

2001-05-31 - 10:57 a.m.

Life is a stage.

I have stage fright.

Life is what you make of it.

To make something you need ingredients.

I have nothing left.

When life gives you lemons - make lemonade.

I hate lemonade.

Love is over rated.

So is being alone.

Love yourself its the only truth.

Fuck that - its still lonely.

2001-05-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

2001-05-22 - 10:59 a.m.

In a land far far away from here she danced. It was a glorious place where her heart took flight and on tiptoe and wing she fluttered and spun happily in the streams of sunlight that slipped through the trees. She danced here in this hidden Eden waiting for one of her favorite souls to join her. She wildly anticipated dancing again with him. Bright eyed and light hearted she danced in anticipation of laughter and conversation and that peace of joining souls with this precious one again.

Time went on..she grew weary of dancing. She curled her wings around her and slept fitfully under a nearby toadstool. This was a place of dreams, her dreams. This hidden glen was safe, a haven only she held the knowledge of. A place where few could go...and only when she led them there. She slept happily and peacefully with a blanket of moss.

She awoke with a start...her eyes searched her happy den to find only solitude. Her dear desired soul had not come. She danced once more...but she danced slower at first. Held back by the bitter taste of disappointment. She was inhibited by questions as to why he had not come to her. A tear slipped down her cheek at the thoughts of laughter and friendship and companionship abandoned.

She wiped her tear. She tucked the disappointment under her wings and took up her dancing again. She had grown to quietly accept this dissappointment. She knew how to lighten her spirit and dance again with the others that could share her secret space. She tucked the sorrow away and danced on the wind once more. There was a new chill in the air though.

There are others who get to watch this fairey dance in this magical place. There are a select few who are allowed to see her spirit soar and dance at such heights, in such beauty. They marvel at what they see here. She is amazing. She chose to be here alone this time. To seek out that soul which never came...she chose solitude it seems...though what she longed for was the friendship she once knew.

She danced a long time...and the bitter taste gave way to honey on her tongue...she returned to her glory and danced her way back to the land of other fairies and magical creatures. She smiled brilliantly and flittered among those she so dearly loved. Only occasionally did the pain and bittersweet memory of a soul gone away interrupt her happy thought.

Sometimes she would sneak away to that magical place again. She'd remember what it had been. She would remember how special it was. She would dance with all the beauty and light of days gone by. She wouldn't let the memory fade sour. She danced the same, mostly alone...sometimes with another dear soul..but mostly this place was for her memories now. Sometimes she cried beneath the toadstool..she missed things. She always rose to dance again.

She had many magical places...this was one of her favorites though. Over time she will learn to not dance here as much as the memories can grow more bitter with age. She contemplates how perhaps it is for the best that she dance in the magical realms of other creatures...she knows she is happy..she knows she is free...she knows she is loved.

Part of her will always miss how she could dance in that magical grove in that land far far away.

2001-05-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

2001-05-08 - 12:33 p.m.

My wings long to unfurl

My heart longs to be free

My body aches to fly again into the unknown

To search out a land of a different sort

A land where music lives and breathes

Where my heart and soul can run free and naked in their natural beauty

Where they must not fear hurt

Where their armor can be laid down

And their full glory can be seen.

Its a land that doesn't exist here

no one knows of it

no one can follow me

I can fly there on wings of gossamer and gold

Flittering over tree tops and mountains and lakes and streams

Far past all that is of this world I can fly

to a place so sacred...i long to go

Let me fly there...let me uncurl my wings and stretch them

Let me shake off the years of confinement and slumber and soar in the skies

Let me bathe in freedom

Let me taste the honey of satisfaction

Let me feel the warm cool blanket of absolute serenity

Let me go

I was never born of this world

I was never meant to be housed in its cruel walls

Its chains and shackles were not designed for me

Its harsh terrifying ways have done much harm

my wings...my wings

they were once so beautiful and full and strong

they are fragile now

The rough hands of man and world have torn and tattered their shimmering beauty

I remember the glory that once was me

and everything in me longs to return to that

but I cannot find the key

2001-05-02T04:24:00.000-07:00

2001-05-02 - 4:24 a.m.

When you brought me home

You held me in your big hands

You smiled at me

You did it because you loved me

When I was a little girl

You dreamed for me of amazing things

You cared for me

You did it because you loved me

When I was a scared child

You told me to be strong

I can't remember just being held

You did it because you loved me.

When I was a sick little child

You held me while I had medicine

It was a scary hold

You did it because you loved me.

When I was a hurt child

You told me to stop crying or you'd show me something to cry about.

And the wound got deeper

You did it because you loved me

When I was a child

You didn't say I love you

I thought I could never make you proud

But I know you loved me

When I was a teenager

You didn't understand me

You expected perfection

You did it because you loved me

When I was an overweight teen

You told me to suck in my gut.

The words cut like knives

You did it because you loved me

When I was a dramatic and scared college kid

You passed the phone when I missed you and called to say I missed you.

You don't know how to feel me

You did it because you loved me?

When I was a scared adult

And my world was falling

You never asked me what I was going through

And I couldn't tell you because I loved you.

When I was a shaken career woman

When my heart was breaking

Your humor drove me far from you

You did it because you loved me

When I'm with you

You don't seem proud

They tell me you are

Why can't you

They say you love me

Why can't you

They tell me of my grandfather

Why can't you

They tell me of his spirit

Why can't you

Others listen and don't judge

Why can't you?

I want you to be proud of me

I want you to love me

I want to stop knowing these things

I want to see them

I want to hear them

I want to feel them

And in the absence of all that

you slip away

because you no longer know who I am

2001-04-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

2001-04-21 - 6:45 p.m.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.

"If anything happens to me - I want to be creamated and my ashes spread on the hill next to my home - on that perfect spot where the sun shines, where I watched you play when you were a little girl."

How? How do you react to that. How do you stand in the face of a dying man and listen to those words and not reduce to a puddle of tears on the floor? I have no idea how I did it. I have no idea how I survived what I survived today. A tear has not fallen, it has not set in, it couldn't have.

I woke at 7:30 - an odd energy and need to get home drove me quickly into the shower and I rushed to get on the road. I watched the sunshine overcome the clouds on the hour and a half drive to my parents home. The music played and my heart and voice sang along - nothing could go wrong today. It was just too beautiful.

I arrived at home earlier than expected and we traded cars and my mom and I headed to Dexter. Another 2 hours on the road - a little nap and things were still wonderful. But we drove down that hill and something in the air - something was about to go horribly wrong.

I got out of the car and greeted my grandfather with the usual warm hug. There was a stiffness to him. Immediately it started - the ranting about the old days...how grammy worked in the shoe shop all those hours and how she wouldn't quit even though he begged her to. The whole story rehashed as it has been thousands of times over the past three years of this hell. He's become so convinced that she cheated on him for all those years. The alzheimers makes it worse - he lives in that time - he feels the pain every day as if he were living it all over again. It doesn't make what happens justifiable - just a little more understandable.

He snapped this morning. He hit her. Her face breaks my heart - the memory haunts my mind. She knows he loves her, she knows this is an illnes..she stands dutifully at his side. She feels responsible..for though she never cheated on him she insisted on working. Its not her fault - its no one's fault but that doesn't ease the pain.

I stood with him in that picture perfect day and my heart broke into a million more pieces. Mom excused herself to go check on my grandmother and I walked with my grandfather to the barn. He continued on - not totally with me, rambling, ranting, occasionally kicking or hitting something. You could smell the alcohol on his breath. I never saw him drink in all my time with him growing up. The doctors say that he drinks when the Alzheimers is bad because he drank in that part of his life that he regresses to. It makes him violent...I'm trying to teach him to smoke pot instead.

We stood in the barn and it started - the whole speech quoted above. He told me how much he loved me, he told me where his money was and how to get it, he told me he didn't want a funeral. He hugged me tight and told me that I was his only granddaughter - his love and his life. The he picked up a screwdriver and tried to stab himself in the neck.

A granddaughter should NEVER have to do what I did today. To pry that screwdriver from his hand and hold him....it felt like it went straight through my heart. He wants to die - his life was long and good but now, now he cannot do what he loves for the instability and pain in his body...this horrible disease eats at his mind...what type of an existance is it? I understand why he wants to die, I wish I could give him that in a peaceful manner, I don't have that power. Maybe its just selfish to stop him from doing it himself. I just wish there was a better ending to this magnificant man's life. I know the pain and strife that his death will cause - suicide only makes that worse.

After a few hours we calmed things down. Grampy apologized and kissed and hugged her and doted on her. We ate lunch and grampy and I talked for a long while - he tells me the stories of his life. Around 2 they seemed relatively ok and we started to get ready to leave.

Now - any rational person reading this is most likely absolutely livid about the idea that we'd leave without taking any further action. Its been three years at this and I still say the same thing but I understand and live the reality of the flip side. If he kills himself tomorrow it will be a horrible tragedy and a great peace. If we took him and locked him away (and god how many times that has been suggested) they'd both die tomorrow anyway. My grandparents don't exist apart....they are eachother's last will to live. I can't explain all the ins and outs of why we leave them alone there together, in the end I guess it just comes down to the fact that there is no other humane choice. Please don't judge me for this, just understand.

It was a long ride home. I have to be the rock right now...I cannot cry, I cannot fall down in my sorrow. Mom has dealt with this day in and day out since it started three years ago. She is their strength and she is amazing but she needs strength too....I have to give her that. I can't have her worrying that I'm not ok in all this because she needs her energies to focus elsewhere. I will be ok..I've accepted his oncoming death, I hurt at these times but I recognize them for what they are....it is the least I can do for my mother to keep strong in front of her...I can cry for myself later.

Home finally - I basically ignore my brother and friends who are here and head for solitude. I emerge only for dinner - I should have stayed in solitude. By the end of the night my brother has thrown one of his selfish little temper tantrums over how his sister doesn't talk to him and doesn't love him blah blah blah. I don't know what happened after he started in, when I could hear the screaming from my bedroom upstairs, I took my car keys and escaped.

Thank you Quivas and Shakespeare - you are my steadfast and true friends and I love you dearly. You are there when I need you and I cannot thank you enough for that.

I went to the lake house...I cried in solitude. I'm so flooded with emotion and thought I'm not sure exactly which thing I'm crying over...it just felt good to get some of it out. It was cold.

I returned home and huddled in my car in the yard next door until I saw my brother leave. Amy called - I assured her I wasn't mad at her for what happened at dinner - I started to talk about it - she snipped "I don't want to talk about it." Add insult to injury! On the day from hell when I need a loving friend more than anything in the world - my best friend and roomate doesn't want to talk about it. I can understand she doesn't want to be in the middle but GODDAMN IS EVERYONE AGAINST ME TODAY!

Next line of consolation: Curl up next to dad and cry. Response: What the hell is wrong with you now? Would anyone like to guess how that one was received.

I called Quivas bawling....I want to go home to him, to curl up and cry in his arms and then smoke the biggest bowl ever packed and forget today ever happened. No such luck since no one is about to let me drive tonight.

So here I am...smoking cigs out the window of my childhood bedroom and feeling utterly miserable.

Hope your day was better.

2001-04-11T22:25:00.000-07:00

2001-04-11 - 10:25 p.m.

Crisis of faith.

Someone said those words yesterday - they set off a long chain of thoughts and discussions and feelings. Thanks S..I guess needed a kick, even though you weren't kicking me at all.

I was born to a Christian home. I went to church regularly through my childhood. Church camps in the summer, church pageants, church choir...all parts of fond memories of my growing up at WFBC. I was with other kids, doing things I loved, and worshipping a god I thought I had truly come to believe in with all my heart, soul and mind. I can sing all the hymns by heart, I can recite passage after passage, I can give you academic reguritations of Bible theory and fact. I learned all this growing up..but it was never forced, I accepted it and took it as my own.

When I left for my freshman year of college it was a Christian Campus in Mass that was the only school I had really considered. I had the grades and the talent to go to many other much more prestigous schools, but never a thought. I wanted to be in a place of God and Christ where I would be safe and nurtured in my faith..where I could grow and learn in a righteous setting. Feh!

It turned my prison. In those walls I thought would nurture me I was raped. In the surrounding pool of Christian thought I realized that a whole lot of people don't have a clue why they believe what they believe. I saw many good and wonderful things as well...but the illusion was gone...the atmosphere stifling...and after a year I left.

I still believed in God and Christ and my Christian faith and I searched ferverently to understand and grow and figure out why I believed what I believed. I read books and watched lectures and thought and thought and thought through it. And I came out knowing I was a Christian and when and why and how I believed in God and his Son Jesus Christ. I knew how I interpreted the Bible and why. I knew the life I had to live and how to do it. Another good illusion.

And I stand here today in a crisis of faith. One I have a hard time contemplating and a hard time accepting.

I realize after a long time that those books I read and the lectures I attended - they were geared towards one world view - towards convincing me I had tangible reason to believe the Christian Faith that I believed in. So I've come really to no answers - for I forgot to answer first the fundamental questions.

Can I believe that a benevolent, omnicient god created an earth with billions of people and then gave roughly 2% or less of them the right answer as to his being? Damning the rest to hell for all eternity?

That's the big one. Its a message of tolerance if not acceptance of other religions. Its a knowledge and an insight that I am not so powerful as to pretend to have the answers. So many of the traditions of the big religions align, so many of the tenants and thoughts are common. Why do we fight and die over the logistics? Why do we segregate ourselves rather than come together to worship a greater being in whatever form it may be. Why would a god command his people to kill eachother? Are there two fundamental powers of all existence - Good and evil? Is there a God and a Devil? Was Jesus Christ divinity or just an amazing man of history? We cannot answer these things - none of us, not without faith. So where did we find the ability to qualify that faith with a specific form and nature of god?

And all that shakes to the very ground the beliefs I have grown up "knowing" were truth in my heart. And I find myself in a crisis of walking away from those things. Easter is not far now....I cannot prepare myself for the event in deep prayer as usual as it seems far too hypocritical....and yet a part of me breaks that the holiday this year will pass in such a manner. I spoke to Christ tonight - standing on the porch under the stars. I asked him to show me what was right if this was wrong - and yet by what I've said in the past paragraph - how do I know there's a Christ there to listen? How to I know what is a voice and my head playing tricks - how do I know what is a sign or what is just a convienantly placed coincidence.

Do I believe in Christ and the trinity at the tenants of the Christian faith because I grew up with them and they're second nature - a learned behavoir?

-or-

Do I believe in it because its something inherent, a message from God that fills my soul and tells me its true.

-or-

Because I'm scared of being wrong and going to hell.

I can't answer that and its driving me crazy. My only consolation seems the line from Dogma - "Its better to have ideas than beliefs". And yet that seems oddly painful tonight.

I'm confused. My head hurts.

2001-04-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

2001-04-11 - 10:45 a.m.

I spent last night wrapped in the warm comforting blanket of friendship. I wish I could relay to you how absolutely magnificent it felt to be so absolutely content. The conversation was a winding road with long solemn straightaways and quick turns of laughter and I enjoyed every minute of the ride. I've been thinking about a lot of things in this down time of mine. I've been dwelling and looking internally for things I need to change and work on, but last night wasn't about me, it wasn't about him, it was about mutual care, trust, love and concern.

I've never been a large group of friends type of girl. I've always found a select few with whom I could identify at some deep level and they have held my confidences. I have always had a large number of acquaintances..people I do love and care for but I see and talk to and worry about on a much more casual basis. When I was young I thought this was bad...after all if you have a pool of 3 close friends odds are that they're often busy with their other friends and hence you're left out in the cold alone. By selecting a close inner circle with acquaintances on the outside - the phone rings less often, you have to do more things alone and its often necessary to seek out the others rather than sitting around waiting to be sought out. Over the years I've accepted these consequences to the way I choose to maintain a group of friends...sometimes it hurts more than others. For example: when you're lonely and depressed and just longing for a caring loving friend to call just to see what you're up to. I know they're out there though and that people love me and care about me and that the world in all its chaos has a tendancy to keep us all sometimes from being the friends we'd like to be.

The world tells us all that we're fucked up these days. Many people see their shrinks more regularly lately than their family or friends. I guess self-examination is good...but I think some psychiatrist a long time ago started a damn good marketing campaign to make everyone on earth think that the normal neurosis and problems of life make them fucked up in some way that requires medical attention. Now I in no way mean to downplay the need for psychiatric counselling - it certainly has done its share of good in many situations. I'm concerned however about a certain subclass of human beings who have gotten the short end of the stick too many times and though they may be perfectly normal they find the world pointing at them as if to say - something is wrong with you. So they seek out counseling and any good shrink is going to find a million or two neurosis and uncurrents in your thoughts and actions. For gods sake there is motivation behind everything you do - that's normal. So there's plenty of material to work on if you want to change - but beware you may be changing a perfectly wonderful and sane person into something you may not like. I don't know - its a fine line to walk. I love my friends fully for who they are - that includes all past, present and future flaws, annoyances and misjudgements. If it is a friend's choice to endeavor into therapy I will be more than happy to support them...just think about why you've convinced yourself you're fucked up before you go changing who you are for some perfected version that pops out on the other end of therapy sessions.

I think Shakespeare is teaching me how to be totally non-sequitor.

When I left Jailbate and moved back to New England almost two years ago I was a wreck. My life as I had planned it was gone. I had left behind a relationship, a family and what would have been a marriage and I was alone again. I cried - god how I cried. I moped and sobbed and whined and cried in my own self pity for so long. Everything I did, every thought, every sight, everything - reminded me of him and the children and our lives when they were good. All rational thought told me this was for the best, that he wasn't right for me, that his problems were too big for me to solve and that ultimately I would damage myself settling for someone that was so far off the mark from what I had always wanted. Rational thought is all well and good - it does a great job to get you through day to day conversation. But in those moments when you're alone in your bed at night and the memories and thoughts and lonliness consume - they are no consolation - they have disappeared into the wind. And you're left alone to cry out the heartache that only time will heal. Its a heartbreak I've lived before and likely will live again. Its new and different each time and its as if I've forgotten how I got through it last time (to quote a friend.) The point is I have gotten through it before and I did with Jailbate, and if it is meant to be I will get through it again. No one expected me not to miss and mourn something that had been so fundamental to my life for so long. I had to run a course that would only become easier over time...there's no other answer...there's no reason to beat yourself up for it.

I miss Quivas. I miss S. I wish they could both be with me when I'm so quiet and content - its a rare sight.

I should go entertain the rents *ugh*

2001-04-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

2001-04-08 - 7:39 a.m.

Its absolute bliss and solitude. I've laughed, I've smiled bigger than i have in the longest time, I've made love with more passion than I have ever known. We drove yesterday - first up to Seabrook to a computer show. We mulled around and picked up the necessary parts to build a new computer for Quivas. Then we took a drive up the coastal route to get a lobster roll for lunch. We ate at one of those quaint New England places. You know the type - the ones you'd be absolutely petrified to enter in any other part of the country - but for some reason here its safe. We had delicious lobster rolls and browsed a few of the small shops nearby - god it was fun.

Then we hit the road for the resort. What a beautiful drive it was. There's nothing like escaping into the mountians. The white capped magestic mountainsides looming in front of you - touching the clouds. The beautiful white snow still pristine and gorgeous. The silence, the trees the beauty; it all makes your heart sing.

We reached the resort around 5. We stopped along the way to do a little outlet shopping - after all just about 15 miles down the road is some of the best shopping in this part of the country. And No tax is a pretty cool perk.

The condo is beautiful, moreso than I ever could have imagined. My heart is light, Quivas and I are incredibly happy and for the moment i'm going to go swim in the tub. More soon.

2001-04-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

2001-04-07 - 9:09 a.m.

Rawr!

The sun shines in through my window at this moment and I bask in it like a lazy cat. I love the feelings of this time of year. I love the events...the first home game of the season was played at fenway last night. Soon we'll open the lake house, the parties will start. Soon the snow will finish melting and everything will turn brilliant shades of green. Last night I walked to the store at 7pm, for the first time in months it was warm and still light outside. It feels sooo good. Its a time of renewal and strength for me, and its time to show the world what I'm made of.

I spent a lot of time last night basking in some alone time. Its been a long time since I knew how to keep myself truly content when alone. Last night was somewhat hypnotic - I could lose myself in anything and it was fine. I didn't mind thta I was alone, I missed Quivas, I missed my friends - but it was rather benign - I'll see them today. So I endeavored for me. I thought a lot about a line from a song - "Why are you so petrified of silence - here can you handle this: (5 seconds of silence): did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines, when you think you're gonna die? Or did you long for the next distraction?" The key is I'm honestly learning finally to just think in solitude. Its a daunting task - I've been working on it for years actively...and I finally begin to see signs of triumph. I still have alone time when I seek out friends or distractions because I am inevitably a much more social creature than an hermit, but there's beginning to be more of a balance.

I challenged a dear friend to an exercise in self - esteem last night. I think I'll embark on that same exercise. Think initially of 5 things you like about yourself:

1.)I can be an amazing friend

2.)I am damn good at my job

3.)I have music in me - and passion

4.)I have morals and try to live a good life

5.)I'm good at communicating

Ok..so now - post these 5 things somewhere you'll often see them. Add at least 1 item to the list per day. Read them all often.

That's the first part of the exercise. The second is appreciating the things and people around you and figuring out why. For example - your best friend is always there for you and makes you feel great. Do you return the same to your friends? Thank your friend for all they do and then actively work to make sure you return the qualities and things you appreciate to others in your life.

I don't claim to have it all figured out. I have no idea what it takes to successfully make it through this life - I'm just trying to make myself happy. Its a pretty cool journey - wanna come along?

Vacation - I must finish packing and get everything ready to take off. I'm sure there will be more writing soon.

2001-03-27T20:09:00.000-08:00

2001-03-27 - 08:09 p.m.

The cool edge of the blade

Catches the light cast from a flickering candle

The light jumps and plays happily on the metal

It turns in my hand

The pressure begins slow and steady

The red shows around the blade

Slowly, now faster it runs

The heart beats faster

It flows steadily now..beautiful and free

It runs over the metal down the hand

The excruciating beautiful sensation rings through

My body relaxes

I control this, I start this exquisite pain

It is mine to end when I so choose

The gorgeous flow of red so beautiful

The piercing screaming blue pain fills me

I can feel this when I can feel nothing else

I can control this when I can control nothing else

There's a terrifying beauty to it

There's a horrifying amazing release

2001-03-27T12:06:00.000-08:00

2001-03-27 - 12:06 p.m.

The last 24 hours have been a roller coaster ride from hell. Yesterday morning, for some identifiable reason I began to feel absolutely empty inside. I felt alone, terrified and empty and couldn't determine a cause. I cried to Quivas and he held me tight and he was my saving grace yesterday. He took me home after an incredibly hard day at work - this launch is going to kill me. He held me so close and so tight and in my weakness I think we came closer than ever. It made me think about how hard it must be on the men in my life sometimes. I'm an agressive, headstrong career woman. Now while that's an attractive feature a lot of the time it can be intimidating as well. Perhaps I need to let Quivas see that vunerable side more than I do. I just needed him, I told him, thanked him for how wonderful he was and I curled up in his arms. In the middle of the night we made love with more passion than I think we ever had.

So in my vunerability and weakness I found a gift and I'm thankful for that. His amazing calm and care are still with me this morning. My cell phone rang at 7:30am and I feel like part of me was absolutely crushed. I sit here at work an absolute mess..I'm so emotionally exhausted from this morning that I can hardly keep track of time or task. This is not a good situation with the public launch of the biggest project of my career scheduled for 5:00. Quivas is being a saint again..he checks on my frequently and he's being extra affectionate and sweet and supportive. God I really do love him.

So..back to what happened this morning. My aunt called - I usually don't have a huge amount of contact other than holidays with the extended family (besides my grandfather). So I was suprised to hear her voice. She launched quickly into a discussion which has torn my heart apart.

I'm not welcome at the family Easter celebration. Likely due to this there won't even be one. There's a lot of history behind this which I will explain when I return from smoking.

I'm back. My head just blew off, spun around 3 times and landed back on my shoulders. I guess I should be happy it landed on my shoulders.

Anyway - the history. When the abuse with SelfishOne began to really destroy me and my friends started urging me and helping me to find the strength to leave the situation, my cousin moved in to make matters worse. She has come into my life in the past and taken things from me. She did it again. She came in, wanted SelfishOne and pursued him to no end. He wanted to sleep with her...she with him. When I finally left she did the deed, she taunted me and ground salt in the wound on top of it. She called me to tell me she's christened my old bedroom, my papasan chair that Tim had refused to let me take and my former lover/friend/abuser. Perhaps it shouldn't have hurt as much as it did - after all I was better off without him in my life. But leaving an abuse situation is a very traumatic and the emotions are confusing and extremely difficult. She continued to taunt me and betray me and act like a spoiled child taking delight in my pain.

I was at a place in my life that most anything could have broken me. My only lifeline was my family and my close friends here in MA and they were a godsend. But the betrayal by a family member was more than I could bear. In an effort - a desperate struggle to survive I gave her one last chance to apologize and show remorse for her cruelty. She refused. I told her then that I could not consider her family anymore..that blood only takes an obligation so far. She continued for months to send e-mails or instant messages saying "are you over it yet". They only made matters worse and my decision more firm. I couldn't let a person this vile and cruel destroy me anymore. To me she no longer exists as family.

It was perhaps the hardest decision of my life. I can forgive many many things. My friends have betrayed me and hurt me many times before (we're all bound to do stupid things) and I grant forgiveness freely if asked. Exiling people from my life is not usually an option - in fact I've only done it this once. It feels like shit, I hate it, but its what I had to do.

Anyone that knows me knows full well how important my grandfather is to me. For his sake I attended family celebrations of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I acted civil to her but made no attempts to engage in any conversation. I quietly put aside her gifts to me, unwrapped. I said no ill words, made no negative actions in her direction..cold civility. It was the least I could do for the rest of my family whom I love dearly. It was the best for my grandfather who struggles with enough day to day.

Now I am not welcome at Easter. Cold civility is not acceptable and I'm faced with the altimatum - make up with her or do not come. Call it stubborn pride, trivialize my feelings however you wish. I will not make a move towards her. I cannot, will not forgive and forget cold heartless cruelty. I can't erase the nights she caused me to bawl my eyes out. She's never expressed one ounce of remorse for what she did to me...she continues her games and as a result I am exiled.

What can I do? For my own sake I cannot put this aside, make ammends and go happily to a holiday celebration. I have worked too hard to heal from what SelfishOne put me through..what She in turn put me through to relent..to cave. I feel a double betrayal by being asked not to come. (though on some level I understand my aunt and uncle's dilemma) I cannot ask my parents, brother and grandparents not to celebrate this holiday with them and the great grandchildren, and yet my absence will no doubt cause my grandfather great pain. He won't understand why I'm not there..if I explain the true reasons it will hurt him more.

I cannot win in this situation - I can destroy myself for others or hurt others for myself. I don't even know at this point if I could honestly step foot in their house. They view me as a horrible person no doubt for exiling their daughter from my life, at least I had reason. (they'll never see that though)

I feel like there's a million pound weight on my shoulders. I feel every emotion of the abuse and that situation all over again. I feel like SelfishOne has gained further victory. I feel like she has gained further reward for her selfish deeds. How can I ask anyone to truly understand...my friends and Quivas of course do..but not the family.

I don't know where to go..where to turn..what to do right now. I'm a good person and I fail to understand why such pain is my lot. I don't deserve this. I don't know how much more I can withstand.

2001-03-25T09:01:00.000-08:00

2001-03-25 - 09:01 a.m.

He SUCKS. I don't need to feel guilty for not putting myself through the hell called visiting my brother. I saw him just a few weeks ago. Nothing essentially has changed since then. I don't care to sit around and get annoyed by his attitude and treatment of me. Talking to him on the phone once a month or so would tide me over just fine thank you.

So my best friend is dating him and I'm in close proximity. That does not yeild any obligation to go over there or encourage him to come here. I have very solid plans today to rest and then drive back to MA. There is absolutely no time in that for visiting and getting irritated and pissed.

I hate that he just made me feel guilty. I hate sitting here with that guilt buzzer going off in the back of my mind. What I hate even more however, is that feeling I'll leave with if I see him. I'll be degraded and put down inevitably. I will feel like he has no respect for me and all I've accomplished. I'll feel trivialized and abused. So why would I willingly submit myself to this - especially if its not a major holiday?

No one understands the rift that stands between me and him. Not even him. How could he - he'd have to stop being blind to my needs to ever understand. He grew up with a massive temper that was often taken out on me. He used to chase me around the house never relenting never leaving me be. What he wanted was what it would be or I would pay. He probably didn't hit me much more than any other brother does his sister while growing up but he did a large amount of psychological damage. He cemented in my mind for a long time that anything I said was trivial, that I had nothing valuable to contribute and I was always wrong. Talk about the root of a lot of my self esteem issues. His temper..god to this day I still tremble at some of the episodes.

So there's this massive rift. I can't even let him hug me without cringing. I'm sorry but that's the way it is and I'm not ready to get over it yet. Partly because it goes so deep into who I am but also because he's never recognized what he did to me...how it hurts me...and he still does it. So I have no want..no need to reconcile and be close to him. Inherently because he's family I love him but I do not in any way crave a closer contact at the moment.

I have my life, he has his...if he's healthy and happy then that's sufficient for me.

*sigh* its hard that nobody can understand this.

2001-03-23T16:03:00.000-08:00

2001-03-23 - 04:03 p.m.

Yesterday's rant on disposable things that shouldn't be disposable still stands. Maybe clearer than ever.

I'm worried..terribly worried. He loves her with all his heart and that is so good for him. Wherever he is right now I know he's hurting like hell and I hate that.

He understands what she doesn't...I never wanted to take him away from her in any way. I have always been happy for them in their love. I can see how happy she makes him and I would never want to change that. I only asked for friendship. That's what I gave and that's what I wanted, nothing more nothing less.

I never wanted her place in his life. I never wanted him to part ways with a lover and a child the way I had to. I never wanted anything that threatened her position in his life.

So I'm some online floozy who's come between them now. I don't know wether to run away from his life and leave him alone hoping to make things better or stick around and be his friend through this because he needs friends. I don't know honestly which would be best.

Loving means walking away sometimes and I want what's best for him.

2001-03-22T23:17:00.000-08:00

2001-03-22 - 11:17 p.m.

In the current state of society it seems that most everything has become disposable. We have disposable plates and cups for when you just don't want to clean. We have disposable diapers to make parenthood easier. We have disposable contacts for convienance. I'm all for things that make my life easier, but some of the sectors that have been hit by the disposable craze cause me great alarm. Our society accepts people too many times as disposable. A woman is old and her family doesn't want to be burdened - if you put her in a nursing home and never visit and never care - she's disposable. The murder rate is rising - people are disposable. Big business needs more profit - resources / people are disposable. I'm married but things are rough - divorce is easiest - people/relationships are disposable. I had a fight with my friend today...he was an ass...he's been an ass a lot lately - I think I won't talk to him anymore - people/friends are disposable.

Its disconcerting. The one that's bothering me especially at the moment is the disposable friend syndrome. People don't understand the basic principles of friendship these days. It wasn't designed as an practice by which if you're friends with this person you'll get this personal gain. It used to be a mutual thing...you gave as much as you took. It wasn't designed to be dismissed at a whim - it meant a mutual respect and love and bond which meant you could fight and scream and kick and hate eachother and still come out friends. It meant that sometimes your actions might cause eachother pain - but if your action is making you happy - that pain can be worked through. It meant that I care about you and I want to know what's going on with you good and bad. It meant you shared joy and pain together. It meant that you could know your friend would listen through hours of your talking if you needed them to. It meant you could just laugh together and be happy. It meant you knew that wherever that person was that if you really really needed them you could trust they'd always be there in your hour of need. It meant brutal honesty. It meant unconditional love.

Ok so maybe I'm an idealist and that's my interpretation of friendship. Honestly that's for the most part (not saying I never slip up) what my friends get from me. If you've earned the honest title of friend in my life - not buddy or pal or acquaintance - I have made a committment to give you that.

I'm scared that our society is losing their values. When people are expendable, violent horrible deaths are tolerable because we've become desensitized, we're quicker to sue than hug and people look at you strangly because you're nice....I think we're in trouble. It scares me. It scared me to death when I had the children. It makes me question bringing a child into this world. We're losing sight of what separates man from beast - our sense of humanity.

I've been thinking about the kids a lot. I suspect that is a big part of why I'm not sleeping. They're 7 and 11 now. Catherine is turning into quite the little woman I hear - though she desperately needs a kinder woman in her life. Timmy is adorable and happy and absolutely radiant. That's what I hear. I hope they really are overcoming the world around them. I hope their mom's horrible treatment isn't ruining their chances in this world. I'm scared that things are not as I'm told. I hate that I have no choice but to sit here and wonder with no chance of ever seeing them again.

2001-03-21T19:34:00.000-08:00

2001-03-21 - 07:34 p.m.

It never ceases to baffle me how people respond to a little kindness. I was in a pretty good mood on the way home (despite yet another day of hellish firefighting at work)...I stopped off at a couple of stores and took care of a little plan of mine. Then I stopped by the grocery store to pick up things for dinner for me and Quivas.

In the line to pay I was joking around with the cashier and the bag boy. I like giving grocery store personell a lil fun now and then - spice up their job. They smiled and laughed and said they rarely got customers who treated them like real people rather than robots.

Then I went out to my car and another vehicle had pulled in beside me. I stood patiently while an older woman took her time getting out of the car. When she realized I was waiting she got all flustered. I simply smiled at her and remarked that it was hardly going to hurt me to wait a few seconds and she should take her time. She looked at me like I was from outer space. Then as she walked off I yelled in a friendly voice - "have a nice day". The poor woman didn't know what the hell to do.

Sad that people don't know how to react to a little kindness. So I've decided to make it my little mission for awhile to kill people with kindness. It makes me feel good and it gets some damn interesting reactions. So I'm working on the smile on my face and general good mood. Lets see if I can avoid letting daily annoyances kill it for a bit.

Happiness is a choice no? Time to choose it.

2001-03-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

2001-03-17 - 12:36:48

God's finger touched him, and he slept.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Underlying all the events of the last four years has been the ongoing struggle to face the mortality of one of the most amazing men in my life.

Last night I woke around 4. Restless, I got up and flicked on the tv. I have the habit of watching silly old sitcoms. Last night's choice was an episode of All in the Family. I can't help but think I was meant to wake and see this. Edith is working in a nursing home...she's asked to sit with a woman who is critically ill and the hospital has just sent her back saying there's nothing more they can do for her. In their conversation the dying woman expresses her anger that the hospital revived her. She talked of how she had seen the gates of heaven and her husband calling her to come. She just wanted to die...it was time, she had lived a good life. Edith held her hand and watched her slip into death with a calm and an acceptance.

Four years ago when this all started I fought like with vigour to save him. I couldn't imagine, didn't want to imagine a life without him here on earth. My grandfather has been my closest ally, my strongest role model, my best friend. The depth of our bond baffles everyone. It is one of my most treasured aspects of my life.

Over time I've come to see things differently. I've learned to accept death. I've learned that its not such a scary prospect at the end of a long life. I sit here today and I honestly wish, though I'll hurt with his loss, that he could just close his eyes one last time and in peace sleep forever.

I had a vivid dream after watching that show. I was at his side, the family was there but I sat holding his hand. There was a calm gentle look on his face, the pain was gone, the anxiety and nervousness disappeared. I sat with him and smiled and told him of my life and as I did so he slipped slowly away. My family stood outside...they were locked out. I turned from his bed after a few moments and my eyes and ears opened. They were screaming and fighting and trying to get in. I walked out of the room and they attacked me like animals. Accusations flew and anger and tears were everywhere. They didn't understand why I had let him go...why I didn't try to save him.

The world fears death. I did for a long time. We do everything possible to defy it. We create medical technologies to tear people from the grips of death, we have machines to sustain life when the body can't. While these technologies have their merit...they are also widely abused.

I used to dread losing grampy like I lost GrampyCarr before I even knew him. I used to curse God for never letting me have my other grandfather in my life. I've learned an amazing lesson though. Our mortality is a part of us. Why fight it..if you've lived a good long life...there comes time when you just want rest. You've earned it, you deserve it.

I've come to peace with GrampyCarr's death. I'll always have a measure of regret for never getting to share time with this great man. My father has told me of how much my grandfather would have loved me and been proud of who I've become. My family has told me how much of his spirit lives on in me and I treasure that. I no longer resent his death though. He died at his time...before his body plunged into degredation that limited his ability to work and do the things he loved. He passed away happy and content on a fourth of July nearly 20 years ago. He'd been watching his grandchildren play, he'd watched his business bloom and grow, he'd seen his children grow up and take their places in the world, he'd loved his wife and been at her side for years. And content and happy in a moment he sat on the front steps of his house and "God's finger touched him, and he slept." I'm glad he had all that. I'm glad he never suffered like grampyR does today.

There will come a day in the near future when finally he'll get to close his eyes and go where he longs to go. I pray my family doesn't fight it. I pray I'm there to hold his hand and be with him as he slips into eternity. I'll cry for my loss of him on earth, but rejoice that he's finally resting and I have all those precious memories to go forward with.

To everything there is a season...life's greatest lesson is learning to accept this. I love you grampy...I understand.

2001-03-14T19:07:00.000-08:00

2001-03-14 - 19:07:23

He writes:

"In the winter of that year, I met an angel. Sent to me by God to fill a void. I made the mistake of clipping her wings, of trying to make her mine. No that wasn't the mistake, I think she held the scissors, and closed the lock on her own chains. My therapist and I have had a lot of arguments about that one.

But I did make a mistake, I told this angel that I loved her. I did love her, I still do. I don't think I could ever express what she means to me. No my mistake was to love her without allowing myself to love her unconditionally, without allowing her to share in my shame, I didn't want her to get dirty, to see that I wasn't worthy.

I tried, on so many occasions to understand where this flaw came from. Today I think I understand. I was simply unable to trust someone else because ultimately I was unable to trust myself. I was looking for a way to correct one mistake while making a larger one... not allowing others to help.

In the end my angel was left with a broken heart, and though I missed her I didn't hurt that she left. Though I know it hurt for her to break free of her chains, it seems I had lost the key to her chains.

Of course there are lots of mistakes. I took out my pain at me Christine's leaving out on the innocent ones. I didn't let my angel touch me, afraid of being hurt again. It doesn't help much to understand... the pain is still there, the sleepless night are still long, and there is still a love for my angel, though different now, that I'll never get the opportunity to express.

But in these last few months as I have come to understand some of these mistakes, I've taken steps to correct the ones I can. Soon I will graduate from school, I talk to my children every Saturday for hours and will spend some much needed time with them this summer. I've reconciled with my Mother and Father, rekindled friendships with my brother and sister. I've repaid my debt to society, and will continue to do so.

There are benefits to this hard and time consuming work, I have a great job (thanks to my education), I have mentors (through my mother and father), I have peers and friends (through my sibs and there children), I once again have love in my life (from all, but most importantly from my children), and I have the respect of my peers in church and school for my ongoing volunteer work.

In fixing all these mistakes I've made, I've found there are some we can not fix. I know in my heart you can't forgive me.... but I have to tell you again how sorry am I am that I hurt you. In all my life I've loved one person outside of my family, but for some reason I couldn't love you enough to trust you to love me back. For that I am sorry, I only wish I could have been worthy of your love, for in your arms I found a gift from God, I found a peace we only find once in our lifetimes."

They're words on a page. Relayed to me through the only form of contact I've left him, an old e-mail address. So why such a profound effect? They could be shallow words...said to ease a conscience...they could be sincere. Am I naive to trust that the sentiments are real? I'm a insane to long for the old comfort of his arms. I'm a mad to hate the now he seems to be the stable adult that I longed for him to be years ago?

I'm not so silly as to remember the time we had together as total bliss. We had huge problems...neither one of us were the adults we were pretending to be. But I know that underlying all that was the love that I've talked about. Do I let him back in somehow? In some way do I reach out or do I turn my tear stained cheeks and run in pain?

I don't know. There is no one that understands. The usual confidants are too jaded by the events that led to my leaving him to listen. My parents aren't safe ground on this one. The people that weren't there in my life through that time can't understand the depths of my emotions surrounding this. Quivas was here a few moments ago..he held me..I cried on his shoulder but I can't reveal to him in this moment the reasons why and the depth to which this is affecting me. Who do I turn to?

2001-02-27T01:18:00.000-08:00

2001-02-27 - 01:18:10

So, Ceasing to exist is a very strong option right now.

Am I okay tonight? No.

Will I be okay? Dunno.

I'm at Quivas' house. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be anywhere. I am here because it seemed the least evil.

Driving over here...ahh whoever thought it would be bright for me to drive anywhere tonight was a few grapes short of a bunch. I left crying. Throwing caution to the wind - I did not wear a seatbelt.

I picked up my cell phone with one hand and lit a cig with the other. Lets increase the odds. So through my tears I pulled out of the driveway.

"I hope you Die" by the Bloodhound gang screams away at top volume. I drive too fast. I almost missed that curve...damn better go faster next time. It would be so easy to drive the wrong way into traffic. That's where it starts. I get off onto 133, I know just down the road is a lake. It wouldn't take much to drive my car off into the water. Car's new...seems a waste of a good vehicle just to drown oneself. I could get out and jump...errr prolly will just bounce off the ice. So I journey on. No red lights to run...figures that's when you'd hit 'em all at green. The car is almost out of gas. I stop...hmmm drink gasoline. I'm not sure I'd be able to swallow enough before puking to ensure my destruction. Hmmm..match in the gas tank. That would be a memorable way to go. Kaboom...too many others would go with me. Unnecessary. I could drive to the office...pick up some rope on the way. I could hang myself in the break room. Statement. Nah...makes me look pretty stupid that I'd hang myself over a raise. Drug store to my left...hmm pills? Nah I'm always a pussy, take the sleeping pills first, fall asleep before deed is done. Shit. No more options...I'm at the house.

Its not today's specific issue that hurts so much. Granted it sucks ass...I'm mad, pissed, hurt. I'm not so silly though to kill myself over it. But its the straw that's breaking the camel's back. I'm tired...too many times in the past 4 years I've been screwed. I pour my heart and my soul into something. Then I watch it fall apart before my eyes. My relationships...my work...my life. It hurts...every disappointment every crashing world. Rebuilding takes more energy than i have. I cry more tears than should be possible. I'm tired. I don't know that I can do it again. I don't have the energy left...the world has taken it. I don't have the will...the world has crushed it.

There's nothing left. There was a beautiful soul here. An incredibly smart and talented girl. A huge heart....rare and precious among an all too uncaring world. But its gone now. The fire burned out...there was no one who cared enough to stoke it....to care for it over time...to keep that flame shining brilliantly. Sure every now and then someone threw on a log or stirred it up. But they warmed by the heat of my flame and then satisfied waslked away.

I'm tired. I want to sleep. I want to never hurt again.

2001-02-21T21:39:00.000-08:00

2001-02-21 - 21:39:31

Ahhh the theatre....

Put me in the audience, dim the lights, start the music...nothing else exists.

There's no one else there. There's no pain, there's no bad thought, all the people and things that have hurt me in life evaporate into non-existence. There's only me, the stage, the orchestra and an experience.

At the theatre I'm truly transfixed. I'm truly home and I'm truly happy.

I'll always spite god for giving me the heart of a true thespian but neither the voice nor the talent to do anything about it. Not that I'm totally lacking talent in that area...I can sing reasonably well and I've got musical talent oozing out my ears. I can act as well as any aspiring high school kiddo on the stage...but I don't have what it takes to make it professionally.

So last night...when I thought my life was crashing down. I've spent the last weeks muddling through a deep depression..grumping about the things going wrong. Last night...the Phantom transfixed me in his music and for several hours I escaped every bit of that.

I know every word, every note of that show. I know it in my head, in my heart and my soul. To lose myself in it was an utter delight. Its better than sex, its better than a warm summer day at the cabin...its better than most anything I know. In that audience my heart sours to amazing heights with the music, my tears flow and I live another life.

So mom just called. She's happy that I'm in a good mood. She sounds rather rejuvinated herself. I tell her I'm writing in my journal about the theatre. Shit...wrong topic of conversation. Gripe 1.) she doesn't understand this online journaling thing...how can you share your thoughts and feelings and deepest secrets with a potential audience of millions. Perhaps its like Shakespeare says...I'm a closet exhibitionist. I don't know. Somewhere in me I like the idea and I'm loving writing here. Gripe 2.) You had the talent. You HAVE the talent. You choose not to employ it.

So that brings me to a whole new world. If I so love the theatre...if it makes my heart soar and can destroy even the worst of moods...why don't I train and work and make it my life?

I'm chicken shit.

I'm scared that something I love so much could be taken away by making it the every day monotony. I'm scared that I'd fail. I'm scared of really confirming that I might never have had what it took to make it. I'm scared of making music my captor and my jail instead of my joy.

Way back in the days of high school music was my life. The piano was my first instrument. I trained since I was 7. My father brought home this beautiful upright. She was gorgeous. She is gorgeous and she still graces that same corner of my parents living room. I love her...I visited her last weekend. I loved the piano. I loved music.

4th grade..I couldn't wait until they let us into band. I took up the clarinet in the great tradition of my family. I loved it. I sang in the chorus, played in the band and excelled in my music classes. I'd found my place.

Middle school..piano and clarinet = life. I was in every chorus, every band possible. It became my identity. Music became the triumph of the pathetic fat kid. I couldn't be the smartest, I couldn't be the prettiest or the most athletic...so I was the most musical.

High school...the competitive edge..the urge..the need to define myself as the best at something compelled me forward in music. I expanded my repetoire...the flute, the saxaphone. Fourth in the state on clarinet. The jazz band..the bit band the youth symphony. Every night every day an endless run of lessons and rehersals.

I was tired. As high school days ended and my last performances drew to a close I left it all behind. In my urge to make my place, to prove myself, to be the best. Music lost everything. It lost the joy it had in my youngest days. It lost the fun. It was a chore...a bore.

So I left it all behind. Pre-med, computer science. Anything but music. Now its a love...a complement to my life.

2001-02-20T21:20:00.000-08:00

2001-02-20 - 21:20:16

I fucking love run on sentances.

I hate commas and proper grammar.

I'm opposed to writing in such a way that I tend to make too much sense.

If you read my prior entry you understand this.

Goodnight.

2001-02-18T19:41:00.000-08:00

2001-02-18 - 19:41:27

I shouldn’t have come here. I should have known that. After two months it was bound to be difficult. Perhaps deep down I did know and that’s why it took 3 attempts to actually make it back to this place. So I’m here now. I’ve made it all the way to 8:30pm on the first day and my feet long to run me so far away that I might never be able to return. Its not the people, God knows I love Mom and Dad dearly. They’ve been nothing but hospitable and loving and I know they want me here. But the place is haunted. Every detail of coming here is haunted with memories from the past. In this conflicted and hurting time for me, the closeness of these memories threatens to drive me over the edge. I push back the tears. They cannot see, they have enough to worry about. If I truly explained all of it they would feel burdened to fix my life and that is not what it is about. As it is mom keeps saying she hates to see me so depressed. She keeps offering to listen and give advice. I’ve told her what I can, more than I should already. She has enough to worry about. She has too much to worry about. She needs to think that everything is fine and wonderful in her daughter’s life, she needs to conserve her energy to heal herself.

Mom suffers, every day she suffers. Some odd medical anomaly where the nerves in her face let off random electronic pulses which torture her muscles. No one seems to know an answer and the pain taunts her daily. She won’t admit it, she won’t slow down or stop for even a moment’s rest. She has to save everyone.

Dad suffers too. Long years of hard work have taken their toll on his body. The scoliosis has him sleeping in a chair in the living room. The arthritis torments him. Yet every day he faces the cold and spends 12 hours working away.

So you see, they have their own burdens. Their physical ailments are only the beginning. If that weren’t enough, they both know that they have my grandparents to take care of. The alzheimers, the cancer, the pain. Its all there at the end of their days for them to face. The long term prospects are hard to deal with. They take care of everyone, including myself.

So I’m here. The realities of my thoughts I cannot fully reveal and the memories around me I cannot admit to the way they hurt. Quivas is far away. Worshipping and paying homage to his “square headed mistress” and Shakespeare…he’s off with the one he’ll always love. I can’t compete. In aloneness I sit. I wallow.

I tried to wish Shakespeare a good night. I couldn’t find the words. I hate that she gets his love, his time, his sweet embrace. She was the one that threw it away. She owns him. I hate it. Funny I don’t really hate it. I only long for it. I could never take it from her and yet I long to. I can’t even hate her though the deepest depths of my soul tell me I should. She has the child….mine were ripped from my arms two years ago. She has the love….the love I have never and will never possess. She has the spirit and the heart….those I too possess but from this moment on... I swear with everything that I am I will let that fire burn out. I will squash it until it burns at barely a flicker…until it is unrecognizable, until there is too little left for it to burn again. I swear.

The fire has burned bright for 22 years. IT has served only to burn me. To burn me until I cannot recognize what is has left me with. The pain burns on and on and I won't let it anymore. Letting it burn out means losing who I am but I think i've already lost that. I don't know anymore. I've lost the urge to figure it out.

Sleep has been my refuge for 2 days now. Let it be forever my refuge. Let monotony and boredom set in and be my constant companions. They cannot hurt me. Only in them will the fire burn out and the pain cease. Contentment is over rated and happiness eludes me.

Goodbye sweet flame.

2001-02-11T06:21:00.000-08:00

2001-02-11 - 06:21:51

"If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that."

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I've been reading these words over and over again. The sentiment is one that has really made me what I am today. The expectations that my parents held me to as well as teachers and peers. If these people had never challenged me to be more than I was I never could have accomplished what I have. But these words, this sentiment does not come without folly.

SelfishOne has been dwelling on my mind lately. It was October when I moved out of the Cambridge residence. Only a few short months that freedom has been mine. I have a lot of healing to do, and as I mentioned in a previous entry, perhaps its time to seek some outside help in this. For the moment however I think I'll engage in some introspection on the topic of SelfishOne and see if I can come to any sense of closure.

It was just this time last year that SelfishOne and I began to draw closer. We had come together at the tail end of my rather tragic engagement in Georgia. (A story for another time) I was a mess at that point, a terrified and wounded child far away from home. At his urging, as well as that of my parents and friends in the NorthEast, I moved home when the fall term let out. I arranged to finish school as a transient student and I moved into my parents house in Maine to "lick my wounds" for a bit.

Soon I began to spend almost every weekend in Boston. SelfishOne became my refuge and he encouraged me to rebuild my life. (With him at the center) I never realized exactly what I was doing.

SelfishOne introduced me to a new world. A world of intoxication and indulgence. A world I now look back upon with regret and say many thanks that I suffer no more than emotional wounds from the experience. So drugs and sexual satisfaction became the pursuits. Every weekend was spent in his bed, drawing from his bong and experiencing a freedom of sexuality I had never known.

I learned to play both sides of the field, it thrilled him to have finally conquered that part of me. He urged me to arrange situations, find new partners for us and stretch my limits in the sexual realm.

I did it. I guess it was the acceptance that I got from him for it that motivated me. Each new experience left me lying pleasured in his arms. The more outrageous the higher the praise and the more 'love' he gave me. (Someone want to hit me over the head with the dictionary definition of love? I don't think this was it)

So that's where it all started. But there are limits to what anyone will do. And over time most anything can become monotonous. So praise dissipated and passions burned with less fervor, and I found myself cast back to my own more frequently.

Ahh perhaps I forgot to mention, I was never his only lover. SelfishOne claimed he was loyal to me in that he always in the end would dump the flavor of the month girl and return to my bed. Too bad that never felt like loyalty as I laid in my room listening to the sounds of sex come from his.

Sex was love right? Well it certainly wasn't satisfying me. When I moved to Cambridge at the end of school I thought life was starting fresh and new and wonderful with him at my side and sharing an apartment.

Things degraded fast. I couldn't do anything right. My job was inadequate and my coworkers absolute dolts. My personal habits were abhorant (I often put the toilet paper on the dispenser the wrong way or left the blinds unclipped. How dare I! Most everything elicited yelling and degrading comments. Hell according to him I couldn't even manage to take care of my cat. (Anyone that knows me, knows that Noah is my pride and joy and that I take impeccable care of him).

Anything could set him off and nothing was sacred. Every facet of my life was subject to his constant scrutiny. Every time I enraged him I could come to expect the sound of another girl in his room. "You're bad..No Sex for You." Sex = Love. "You're bad..No Love for You." (SelfishOne is the love nazi)

So I tried to be different. I cleaned his house, accepted his opinions as my own, adopted his friends, blocked out my own friends and family. His world became mine and my world went black.

Starting to sound like a classic case of emotional and verbal abuse yet?

Well in September it all came to a head. He was pursuing sleeping with my cousin. I could hardly bare the thought. I returned from a 2 week business trip longing to fall into his arms. But when I called to arrange for him to pick me up at the airport he said he had better things to do. I'd met Quivas a few weeks earlier when him and BongBoy had come over to visit. (God did SelfishOne hate that!). So I phoned in a favor and Quivas was there to pick me up.

It didn't take long for us to connect. Quivas seemed so loving and gentle and sweet. He was everything SelfishOne was not. He wanted a relationship..he loved who I was, he didn't care if I was fat or didn't want crazy sexual escapades. Quivas wanted to talk to me, to share opinions, to debate and listen and consider me an equal. Novel concept.

It didn't take Quivas long to see what SelfishOne was doing to me. With a loving and accepting influence by my side (and the urging of good friends at work) it didn't take me long to see the truth of the situation either.

That truth was painful.

Long story short. I eventually moved out. He moved another girl in and lives his Selfish life however he damn well pleases. I'm better off without him.

I'm building my own life now. I don't need anyone to hold me up. Its nice to know that Quivas is there though. (He reminds me I'm strong when I forget)

So why am I dwelling on this tonight? When I moved I cast out most everything pertaining to SelfishOne. All the possessions and memories were left behind, or so I thought. We were at my house the other night when Quivas asked for a sweatshirt to wear because he was cold. I dug through my closet and came out with a hoodie which I handed to him.

It didn't strike me until later where it had come from. I sat there later and just stared. It belonged to the SelfishOne.

Quivas was wearing it again tonight. I don't want to make an issue of it. I'll just take it tomorrow when I go and find a nice dumpster to donate it to.

Blah..long rant...no catharsis....not even entertaining. My apologies.

Perhaps I'll try sleep. Novel concept at 2am

Oops..there was supposed to a point. SelfishOne always claimed that he never abused me in any way. He says he only held me to high expectations in an effort to help me improve myself. There's a difference...and sometimes a fine line between these two things. Remember as you push someone to improve, don't ask them to forget what makes them who they are in the first place. Improvement is not rebirth or recreation, its the building up upon the existing foundation. Build with love, the result is much nicer.

2000-05-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

2000-05-04 - 9:25 p.m.

Odd experience. Contemplating your own depression while living it. I know I'm in a pretty deep depression at the moment. I can see through it in some moments to behave rationally...but sometimes it over rules.

So I've been thinking about it. About how I'm acting. I don't know what set me off on it today but I was singing the winnie the pooh song. Its stuck with me and I downloaded it. It calmed me in some odd manner...it was strangely soothing. It felt as if I were a child again cuddled up safely with a blanket and good thoughts.

This afternoon I was craving a good talk with mom. I called her three times at least.

so I guess I become a child again...with childhood fears and insecurities and longings. I guess I remember finally how scared I used to be sometimes that they'd just stop loving me. I don't know where I got this from. I just know as a child I always dreaded it. As a teen I tried to please them in every way such that their opinions became my own. Their opinions still mean to much to me today. So when I'm depressed....I worry that friends and lovers are going to stop loving me at any moment. I fear being alone, terrified it will be forever.

Goddamn I'm fucked up.

2000-05-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

2000-05-01 - 9:56 p.m.

Ahhh...time my old friend. You do ease the wounds of days gone by. I'm subdued tonight...deep in thought far far away and I'm not sure why. Sitting here I thought suddenly of SelfishOne. I realized, it had been quite awhile since I'd thought of him. Its getting easier...the hole he left is filling in. I hugged myself in the memories for a moment - choosing only the good things. My thoughts moved on.

And there I was with Ted. And suddenly it all makes sense. I've been celebrating my freedom lately..dancing and smiling in the sunshine of this gorgeous springtime. Inside it has felt as if something - some small part of me - is weak and fragile. It all makes sense.

We would have married this year...that was the plan when he slipped that ring on my finger. We told no one...but we silently made plans. It was going to be a fairytale. The 19th of May 20001. How funny that I'll be attending a wedding that day. How meloncholy it makes me that its not my own.

Life isn't a fairytale. Its not all about a happy ending. Its a lot of happy and sad endings woven together into an amazing thing. It just hurts a lot sometimes but if you stand back and look its beautiful.

From time to time I can stand far away and see my white knight in the distance. I can almost hold his hand...I can see through his eyes and find things amazing and exciting and live all the fairytales. Its a nice dream...and I cherish those that let me dream through their eyes and dance with their souls.

I love you O. I love you Quivas. I love you Grampy. I love you Dad. I love you Tim. I love you Ted.

You've all been my white knight at one time or another.