sitting here listening to my night-time music mix, most of the songs are from that brief period of life when all things were equally happy. strangely, i don’t miss it. maybe that sounds weird, but i’m beginning to settle into the whole ‘moment’ thing and it’s kind of interesting, the effect.
laely, instead of trying to come here and ‘say something’, i’m just letting my mind go where it wants and recording it. ‘thousand years’ spins up now… oh, memory. several layers of memory in this song. some recent, some not so much so.
my six month anniversary at work comes up next monday. it is the first time i’ve had a job more than three months since i lost it all back in ’99-’00. looking back, briefly, i’m surprised it has taken this long to get to a place where i felt i was ‘recovering’. frankly, other than the stellar domino run of disasters, i find i don’t recall a lot of the two to three years immediately afterwards. not going to try. just noting it.
i recall ’03 through late ’04 feeling like i was just hiding out and licking my wounds. doing more than shuddering in the corner didn’t come about until almost mid ’05, and by the end of it, i was back in georgia. funny part is, other than my daughter, i have absolutely no reason to be here. the life long dream of making it to the northwest remains out of reach… but perhaps someday. that trip to seattle in ’98 really set the hook. i will make it there. eventually.
on a personal note, i’m back to that ’empty’ feeling. not in the bad way, in the good one. then again, weird week is coming, and the 41st birthday… so no telling what’s next in the emotional rotation. i chuckle at myself for it. whatever will be.
there was a blip on my radar from my younger sister a couple of weeks ago. during a visit with my daughter, she mentioned that sis was hopeful of resuming a relationship with me. long story there. one of the four from whom i had to turn and i don’t know if i have the energy just yet to deal with her.
if i haven’t mentioned it previously, i’m the milkman’s daughter. found out some years ago that the man i knew as father/monster wasn’t really my dad at all. wrong blood types. genetic screening revealed this and other confirmations. it felt like a gift from the universe and it also explained why it is that i seem to have largely escaped the psychosis that runs rampant in ‘the family’.
let’s see… mom was riddled with anxiety disorder. ‘paternal’ grandmother was schizophrenic. ‘father’ was manic depressive, as is younger sister. i spent much of my life in fear, waiting for the day when my brain would finally knot up… and when it didn’t seem to happen, fearing then that perhaps i was insane and just didn’t know it. hard to explain the pressure and strain it was… today i realise i may well be quirky, but there are leagues between me and insanity. relief. most profound.
i digress. my younger sister has, all her life, refused help, refused therapy, and refused to in any manner ‘deal’ with life or her issues. i was always the one trying to keep her from shattering, failing frequently, then feeling like shit for being unable to make it better. took me a long time to accept it wasn’t my fault. took me even longer to finally realise that, if i didn’t do something for myself, extricate myself, she would take me right down with her.
it was the most painful thing i had ever done at that time in my life. i truly love her, i just can’t take the constant drama, the constant anguish, and the constant weight of pain to watch her cut herself to pieces and then, wallow in the fresh pool of blood.
it was my third time facing the reality that i could not, no matter how much i wished otherwise, do it for her. i had actually told her at one point that i was almost at the end of my tether. that i couldn’t take much more. it never phased her. too lost in her own labrynth.
a pattern that has repeated now four times in my life. someone i care deeply for, someone i love, cutting and cutting and pushing until there was no choice but to admit defeat and give up trying. it still hurts. mostly because all i ever wanted was to help… but also because she was the only family i had by this time, and i really needed her.
family. belonging. embrace. mutual care. love. a short list of things i’ve been missing all my life and it has always rankled that no matter how hard i try, it just seems that’s the way it is supposed to be. for a long time, i thought it was me. that something must be very, very wrong with me that it seemed to always wind up this way.
i realise more deeply in this moment that it was never ‘me’. for whatever reason, karma, i suppose, i have a life where abuse, neglect, and abandonment are key and recurring themes. for all there are moments in which the pain of it spasms tight and heavy and hurtful, it isn’t as devastating as i once thought it might be to embrace. it is as it is. it doesn’t have to destroy me. i don’t have to cling to it.
for the most part, i haven’t. clung to it, that is. here and there, moments when i’ve tried, but in the end, somewhere inside, a pure inability to keep my fingers wrapped around any something made of only razors and without any wish to more than to cut.
never feels good to give up, of course. but i suppose even the pain of being forced to it is better than feeling nothing at all… and for a good number of years, i did that, so i can say without doubt this is true.
out of words suddenly. just sitting here listening to Sting sing about the book of life… ‘though the pages are numbered, i can’t see to where they lead, for the end is a mystery that no one can read, in the book of my life…’ timing. heh.
i can’t but feel the universe is trying to teach me something. and i’m feeling kind of dense because whatever it is, i’m not getting the message. or at least, i don’t think i am. what? is the message ‘don’t care.’ no. sorry. not going to happen. maybe it’s just ‘don’t care so much.’ but i don’t think i can manage that one, either. just not the way i’m built. maybe the message is ‘care more wisely.’ but that doesn’t make sense, either. it’s easy to care for people who don’t require care. but what about the ones that do? bah. i go off on this tangent and i’ll be sitting here thumping the keyboard all night.
the snake once said to me that my wish to help and heal others was misguided. i never thought someone so great a fool as i did him in that moment. that he could even voice such a thought boggled my mind. that he could manage the warped ‘logic’ that would lend to a conclusion that a wish to help and heal could, in any way, ever, be a bad thing.
i’ll end here with just one thought — if indeed it is, may i be forever so misguided.