Steady Now

Steady Now

Although things vanish, are what mark our vanishing,
we still hold on to them -- ballast against the updraft
Of oblivion -- as I hold on to this umbrella in a world of rain,

of heavy wet greens and grays dissolving into a new
atmosphere, a sort of underwater dulled electric glow
off everything, the air itself drowning in it, breath

thickening, growing mold. Yesterday I felt the smell
of grass greeting me as across a great distance, trying
to tell me some good thing in an underglaze of memory,

some forgotten summer trying to speak its piece. It is
the way of things and it never stops, never calls a halt--
this knocking and dismantling, this uprooting, cutting out

and digging down, so tall oaks and honey locusts are
laid low and drop to earth like felled cattle, shaking
the ground we've taken a stand on as if it were a steady

establishment, a rock of ages to outface ruin itself, not
the provisional slippery dissolving dissolute thing it is --
which we have against all the evidence set our hearts on.

~Eamon Grennan

Numb

"Self acceptance comes from meeting life's challenges vigorously. Don't numb yourself to your trials and difficulties, nor build mental walls to exclude pain from your life. You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory." ~ J. Donald Walters

I've been feeling numb a lot lately. Dissociated. I'm not sure what the problem is, but it's making it hard for me to generate much interest in anything. Maybe the prospect of writing more about my early life has stopped me dead in my tracks. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

I don't have to write about it.

It could also be because of my pending trip to Houston. I'll see Dr. Kronowitz on December 6, to take a look at his latest handiwork. We're going to have to talk about the necrotic tissue. There is no good answer to the question of what's going to happen next there.

If we're going to leave the hard ridge, I'm going to be very very unhappy. This has nothing to do with anyone other than me. Dr. Ross promised me, two years ago, that at the end of all of this, no one would be able to tell I ever had a mastectomy. Well, guess what? Anyone could tell something terrible has happened.

On the other hand, if we're going to do something about it, more surgery is guaranteed. I don't want to have more surgery. I'll never get back to even a semblance of my former physical fitness level if they don't stop cutting. Then, of course, there's that other thing. Stop hurting me.

I know this seems trivial compared to the possibility of dying from breast cancer. It's not trivial. I'm happy to be alive and well. I'm happy to have hair. I don't want my breast to look like a bride of Frankenstein breast. Not trivial.

In case I haven't said it lately: I hate having breast cancer.

Now. Back to being numb.

Friends

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."~ Henri Nouwen

Dark Matter

When I originally started this weblog, I had a couple of ideas in mind. I lost my best friend of 30 years to a heart attack and this was a means of continuing a "conversation" with her. She knew me when I was an angry, rebellious, hip young woman, when I was still an independent spirit unencumbered by adult relationships and responsibilities. We grew up together. I would write posts as if I were still writing letters to her.

I also thought it might be a good place to examine the path from there to here. I was a strange, isolated and abused child. My future shouldn't have amounted to much other than a life of drug abuse, prostitution and physical/emotional abuse. And yet none of those things have come to pass. Against all odds, I'm a productive member of society, my husband isn't allowed to even raise his voice to me. I earn my own money (even though I do so in Crazy Land). I've never been addicted to anything other than Diet Coke and nicotine. The only prostitution I've ever engaged in was limited to renting my soul to Crazy Land (or other wonderland places I've worked).

The only way to figure out how my trajectory landed me here in this moment seems to be to retrace the arc of my life. It's a tough path to follow, dark and disturbing. Sometimes I'm unable to wade through the underbrush to get to the seminal moments that lead to this present. Many memories are lost to me, buried away by trauma. It's also been my hope to reclaim some of those memories, no matter how brutal that unearthing may be.

Last week, my therapist reminded me of that intention. It was as if she'd wakened me from a deep slumber. However, I think my heart was already leading me back to my original path. My ongoing examination of the events leading up to my father's death fit into the original plan. Aside from breast cancer, nothing has defined the latter part of my life so much as his suicide.

Some of my friends who are kind enough to join me from day to day have read the posts from long ago, when I was trying to set down the bare facts of my early life. Some of them have come to know me during my two-year (and counting) breast cancer ordeal. Some of them love to visit Crazy Land.

Because I've grown to care about so many of the people who visit me here (and whom I visit regularly), I've become reluctant to expose them to the past. Most people can't tolerate knowing about much of it. (My best friend was one who could.) Nonetheless, I'm going to try to retrace my steps and get back to that original intention. It requires a lot of inward focus and, though I always try to be entertaining, sometimes I may not be.

Crazy Land will always be with us. I don't anticipate being freed from the asylum anytime soon. And let's face it, if I didn't write about Crazy Land, it might cause me to have to make an involuntary visit to a long-term mental health facility.

Some days I won't be able to walk backward into the darkness. I'll no doubt find other things to talk about. Some days I may blither on about what's going on in my life outside of Crazy Land. Who knows? Heaven forbid that I should be rigid about this.

I'll always want to hear from you. I can't tell you how many times, especially lately as I talk about my dad's suicide, that comments from you have made me pause and rethink things. Comments have caused me to question my own assumptions and conclusions. You raise my spirits and make me laugh. You renew my faith in human beings. You, the new people to whom I speak, are treasures beyond compare.

Because of that, I wanted you to know that the nature of the blog is going to shift a bit. Be forewarned. I know that some of you carry your own traumas and I don't want to add any more to your burden. If some of you choose to let go, if things become less entertaining or so weird that you must turn away, I'll be very sorry. I would wish it not to be so, but I will understand. I will continue to visit you in your own weblog worlds.

If you're interested in my previous posts about the past, please take a look at the following links.
Just the Facts, A Timeline
Sexual Abuse, Again
The Past Falls Away
Just the Facts, Part 2
Just The Dreary Facts, Even More
Deeper Into Darkness
A Small Bright Spot
My Own Good Reasons For a Suicide
Pariah
Torture
Alone
Nothing Left Untouched
You Just Can't Make This Shit Up
The Baby Comes and My Father Finds Someone Else He Likes More Than Me

Well, this is about all I can do today. If you've made it through this many posts, you're a real trooper. Maybe I can finish tomorrow.

The Decision, Part 3: I Hardened My Heart

"Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless and strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt." ~ James Arthur Baldwin

I did as my father asked and called Shannon. I left a message on his voice mail and he called me back a couple of days later.

Several months earlier, my father showed me a recent photograph of my half brother. He looked startlingly like my father. I wished that I had never seen the image. I wished that I could destroy the memory it created in my mind. When I heard Shannon's voice on my answering machine, I wished to obliterate the sound. Hearing it awakened all the old demons, the memories, the rage. The images unfurled themselves behind my open eyes. I hated him. I'd never met him, but I hated him.

Shannon's mother had taken my own mother's place in my house. She had attempted to make me treat her as my stepmother. Grace. Her name is Grace. Amazing how even typing the name is almost more than I can bear. If I hated him, I hate her a thousand times more.

I called him back and left another message. I told Shannon exactly how to get in touch with me. At that point, playing phone tag was a very expensive game for me. I needed to just get it done, get the contact over with so that I could get my father off my back. My illness left me with little energy to get through my day and the pressure was eating up all I had left. I was exhausted and enraged. I tumbled through flashback after flashback as I moved through my days.

Meanwhile, my father was still haranguing me about talking with Shannon. The only thing that would have made him happy was for me to get in my car and drive there, wait for him outside his house and have some big, fake happy family reunion with this person I'd never met. The more he goaded, the angrier I got.

I made myself clear. I called Shannon. I told him how to get in touch with me at work and at home. If he chose not to call, that made him a coward. You know, if you want to talk to me, then do it. Otherwise, leave me alone. This is what I told my father. I had done as he asked. I refused to pursue Shannon any further. The suggestion that I might made me want to set a building on fire and watch it burn.

My father dropped the issue for a while. Then he called me in the middle of a chaotic afternoon and demanded that I call again.

"No," I told him. "Not only will I not call him again, I don't want to hear from you, either. Ever."

My father was astounded. I'm certain he never expected to hear those words from me. I was prepared to enforce the separation. He continued to try to negotiate with me, but he'd finally gone too far. We ceased to have regular contact.