BTW

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Hmmm, maybe that should be "the light at the top of the hill" or some other analogy that implies continuation.  The end of the tunnel sounds like ... it's all over, it's all better, we're out of the darkness now forever and ever amen.  And I know that's not true.  I will go into darkness again.  Up and down and up and down, but hopefully each time becoming less and less dark as I cry and heal and bring light to my darkness.

Anyway, for the moment, I'm coming back up.  I'm rising.  I'm cresting the hill, I'm feeling the sun on my brittle bones, reviving me. 

It's hard to see one's own up and down -- forest / trees, etc.   The biggest sign to me that I'm UP again is that I feel like talking.  I want to share my questionable wisdom, I want to blah blah blah, and I need a venue, many venues, ears to hear me, places to speak, share, write. 

When I'm sunk in the pit, it's so hard to even find the energy to breathe, let alone speak. 

I've basically LOST the last few months to darkness.  My other blog has kept me going.  I've had one pinky finger hanging on there, clinging to it like a tether to the light, something to keep my attention from going completely dark.  The need to find something to post kept me occupied outside myself for at least a few minutes every day, and that was a very very good thing.  And I realize it had to be something like coffee/tea, it couldn't be about myself because when I'm dark, feeling valueless makes it hard to talk about myself.  Pretty hard to believe, I know, but that's why I haven't been posting here much.  What could I possibly have to say that's of value? Well, and of course nothing was able to penetrate the darkness to feed my soul, so it seemed pointless to post here.

I'm coming up out of that now, for a time.  October to March, is that 6 months?  Have I really been dark for 6 months?  Well, I guess it's better ... it's getting better.  The year after mom died was truly a black hole.  I lost that entire year. 

When I say "lost", I don't mean I went to bed and never got up.  Heh, well, some days were like that.  But most days I had to get up.  I had dogs to feed, and bills to pay.  And as much as I wanted to just lie down and die, I couldn't.  But I functioned on auto-pilot.  I was a robot, with very little awareness of what was going on around me. 

I feel pretty good this morning.  And it looks like rain.  That makes it a truly WONDERFUL morning.  :)

Life & Death

Death in a circle of friends -- one of ours died recently.  It's strange having somebody you know - but have never met in bodies - die.  It almost doesn't feel real, except that ... it does.  And it triggers all my own life and death issues.  Fears and body grief.  But I don't feel sad in a personal way.  Not like when mom died.  THAT was a personal loss. 

But in a case like this ... I guess the depth of the grief depends on where our sensitivities are... where our old wounds lie, and which scabs get more easily rubbed raw. 

I didn't cry when I heard A. had died.  But when Kat's doggie died, I cried for hours.  I was devastated.  My heart is more open when it comes to animals, perhaps.  I FEEL more for the loss of a pet. 

And some people are massively triggered by big things like 9/11, and seem to go into real deep personal grief even though they never met anybody who was involved or died.  I was baffled by that.  And some of my friends who were very upset looked at me and thought me heartless for not being as upset as they were.

Society expects certain things from us when a person dies, a certain level of caring and expression.  And I don't respond well to guilt.  I wonder how many people are like me, and don't really feel a lot of grief in a circumstance like this?

Which leads me to wonder about my connections with people.  Or lack thereof.  I looked at my heart and realized there are frozen places in me that refuse to open to human beings, but will open wide to the love and needs of an animal or a child.  I suppose that's why I went into teaching, and specifically why I went into Special Ed.  I would never have been able to work with so-called "healthy" adults, but I could work with damaged children.   I have a hard time loving people.  I have a hard time opening and sharing myself, but I have to be honest here and say, I just flat out have a hard time loving.  I'm a very self-oriented person.

I watched The Big Chill last night, and I had to laugh at Meg Tilly's line -- "I don't like to talk about my past as much as you guys do."  Boy, doesn't that just describe me to a tee.  I like to think it's a generational thing, that folx my age just tend to be introspective and self-absorbed, but I need to be honest with myself and acknowledge the lacks in me, the places where I'm unable to love.  I need to really look at the narrow band of my love. 

I'm not saying that will always be so.  I'm a fervent believer in change.  And as I've cried my heartbreak and fear over the years, I have regained bits of my heart.  So I know that my ability to love CAN grow, as I heal. 

But should I be sorry that I didn't cry for A?  Or is that just guilt talking?

Depression and The Self

Stuff I've been thinking about lately...

Love is a yang sort of thing.  A convex energy.

Depression is its polar opposite.  Some people say love and fear are polar opposites, but I disagree. 

Depression is a yin sort of thing.  A concave energy.  A black hole, sucking all things inward into the darkness.

Nothing matters in that place.  No caring can touch you, no memory of the light ever having BEEN, and any ability your heart had to love is gone. 

The Depression Black Hole is totally self-oriented, but its self-absorption is the polar opposite of self-love.  It says "I have no value, no reason for living, no place in the world.  I am an empty, useless waste of space." 

Self-love would never be self-absorbed, because ... it wouldn't have to be.  Self-love would feel its value, the energy of it would reverse, become convex and active and outward. 

Some folx have tried to combat the self-absorption of depression with self-sacrifice, as if that sort of "acting out" of love will pull you out of your downward tailspin.  It doesn't really, at least not long term.  There is no substitute for self-love, not even caring for others can make it real.  All you're doing there is stuffing down your own feelings (thereby reinforcing that your feelings have no value, no right to BE) in favor of somebody else's needs, somebody else's suffering, as if that will make you a loving person.

There is no substitute for self-love.  REAL self-love.

That's what I think today.  Subject to change tomorrow...

That Competition Thing

The recent foo-foo-ra about MC/AT being a finalist for the Best of Blogs made me think and feel and remember.  And since self-reflection is good for the soul, I just kept on...

On the surface, the growed-up part of me says stuff like "it doesn't matter, it's nice to be recognized and I appreciate being appreciated". 

Yeah, right.  Isn't that special...

But just under the surface is a whole LOT of stuff churning.  Little soldiers fighting in the Self-esteem vs. Self-hate war.  More evidence of my yin / yang imbalance.  Which is good, I need to see these things. 

It always floors me how people strong in yang can walk through life seemingly not caring what others think of them.  Lord, please, I want to be like that when I grow up.  At one point in my ruminations I was tempted to say that yang-strong people don't tend toward self-hate, but I don't think that's true anymore.  They just manifest it differently.

Anyway, I realized I have had two other experiences in my life with public "competition".  Both experiences were negative enough that they served to reinforce my fears about self-aggrandizement.  Or rather, about being judged as self-aggrandizing.  I need to make a distinction there.  But I guess the term itself is pejorative, so I need a better word to express a self-loving kind of self-promotion. 

Anyway...

The first incident happened when I was around 7 or 8.  We moved a lot when I was a kid.  That year we had run away from a violent stepdaddy - literally left with nothing but the clothes on our backs - and were temporarily back in  Seattle with the grandparents.  I entered the 3rd grade already in progress at the school across the street from gramma's house.  I was in a rocky emotional state, constantly afraid stepdaddy would show up and hurt us, and just generally fearful, especially of other kids.  I was desperate to be liked, but had almost no social skills, and lacked the kind of confidence that makes kids like you. 

The first week I was there the teacher announced we'd be doing a play, and we needed to pick parts.  The part of the  princess needed to be a blonde, she said, and so she had all the blonde girls come up to the front of the room.  My hair, normally brownish, was sun-bleached from living in the sun in California, but I didn't think of myself as blonde.  But the teacher called my name, and told me to stand up front with the others.  The trauma of standing in front of the rest of the class was awful enough, but then the other girls started whispering about how I wasn't really a blonde and so I had no right to be in the running.  I could feel my face getting redder and redder, and I remember wishing I could fall through a hole in the floor and just disappear. 

I don't remember how the choosing happened.  But somehow I was chosen.  And my status immediately shifted from being the New Girl to being the Stuck-Up Phony-Blonde.  I had a gaggle of instant enemies.  The most popular girl in class was blonde of course, and all her friends hated me for her sake.  Through the next few weeks, I learned how horrible it is to be visible and to be hated, especially for something you can't control and didn't ask for. 

But the funny (sad?) thing was, I didn't remove myself.  I didn't go to the teacher and ask to be replaced.  I realize now that part of me was glorying in it.  I remember flipping my long hair around during rehearsals, trying to act and look like I didn't care about the sniggering and whispering in the back of the room. 

I did care, but ... it was an untenable choice.  As much as I wanted them to like me, I also wanted that position of being the center of attention, of being the chosen one.  There was no way to really win, not for me, not emotionally. 

The second event took place much later.  I was singing in a band, and one night we all went out to a local bar where they were having a Karaoke contest.  On a lark, I entered, and I sang Crazy by Patsy Cline, a song I did every night with the band and knew well.  I never really thought of winning, it was just a lark.  And it never once crossed my mind that I shouldn't be entering the contest at all, but ... well, apparently others thought it wasn't fair. 

When my name was announced as the winner, the protests started.  Somebody on the other side of the bar shouted unfair, and some other people went to the host and complained that I shouldn't have been allowed to enter the contest.  The poor man didn't need that kind of hassle, and I was immediately sorry for it.  But he said that it was fair, that singing professionally gave me the same advantage as a non-professional who took voice lessons or sang all the time or was practiced at a certain song.  Getting paid to sing had nothing to do with it, he said.  I was grateful to him, but I couldn't take the glares and whispers, the angry energy pointed in my direction. 

I left shortly after that.  But I also left with the $20 prize money.  I didn't turn it down, I didn't pull out of the contest.  Part of me gloried in having won, in spite of the backlash. 

Weird.  Life's repeating patterns.  No wonder my surface consciousness wants to say it doesn't matter.  No wonder I'm afraid of self-promotion.  It always seems to come back on me in a negative way.  I hear the voices saying I don't have a right to it, or I shouldn't have been in the running, let alone win.  I feel the hatred coming at me.

I know this is a reflection of *my* belief that I don't deserve it.  And since I don't deserve it, being chosen will always mean somebody is going to hate me.  It's a horrible conflict.  The heart can't win. 

So mostly I try not to put myself into competitions or contests.  I try not to put myself forward that way, no matter how much I also long to be forward. 

I want to be chosen. 

I guess we all do.

Mom's Birthday

Today is my mom's birthday.

She would have been 67 today.  I would have called her up this morning, maybe woken her up, to sing Hippo Birdies into the phone.  She would have laughed and said how old she feels, and then maybe she would have come up for coffee.

She's been dead for almost two years.  This month is the month it all started, two years ago, the month when we found the cancer.  It had been growing inside her for a long time, but she thought it was her colon, a dietary issue, something she could fix by eating right.  She told me she went to a naturopath and they thought she had food allergies. 

Food allergies.  Good god.

What she had was cancer on her cervix, which by the time we got it checked out, was the size of a cantalope and had invaded many other organs.  She told me she'd been back to the doctor.  She lied.  She lied to me, because she didn't want me to worry, because she had only part-time work, little money, no medical insurance.  She made too much to qualify for the Access program which passes for medical relief here.  And she thought she couldn't get Medicare until she turned 65.  So she waited, tried to ignore the pain, lied to all of us about how she felt and what she was doing about it.  I had offered more than once to pay for a doctor, but she knew I couldn't afford it either.  She didn't want to be a burden to anybody.

This month, 2 years ago, I made some calls and found out she could get on Medicare right away, didn't have to wait for her birthday, and so we started the ball rolling ... on the 10th of October.  Began a series of doctor's appointments and phone calls and forms to fill out, and it was then I realized how bad it was for her.  It had become bad ... seemingly overnight.  Was it that the cancer suddenly erupted and blossomed inside her, or was it that she'd been holding on with gritted teeth for god knows how long and now that relief was in sight, she let go? 

She had always had such steely self-control.  And she had a very high tolerance for pain.  So I know it must have been really bad.  She couldn't make the phone calls.  She couldn't fill out the forms.  She couldn't drive.  I took on the jobs, drove her to appointments, sat with her to hear the news, took notes, asked questions, did research on the net to see what was what and what could be done ... none of which helped in the end.  There were no options.  They shouldn't have bothered to remove her uterus, it didn't help.  We put her body through that horrendous surgery... for nothing.

Two months to the day.  October 10th we started this ball rolling.  October 21st we celebrated her birthday at the doctor's office, then went to a restaurant to try to recapture moments we loved together, over coffee, which she couldn't drink, and brownies, which she couldn't eat.  She became fragile.  November 10th she went in for surgery.

I stayed with her in the hospital while she "recovered", a full week spent on a cot, helping her to the bathroom, worrying that she wasn't getting better.  I listened while the doctors explained about Stage 4 cancer, as if that term was supposed to mean something to us.  We didn't understand, and I'm sure they thought we were dummies.  They finally said she could go home, but she didn't seem better to me.

All the empty reassurances we tried to believe.

She came home with me, and I thought ... we all thought ... she would recover, and then she could start chemo therapy.  That's what the doctors said to expect, that she would recover, that she could beat it.  We were wrong.

December 10th she died.

These three months will never be the same for me.

Fall Memories

I really wish we had an actual "autumn" here.  We go from way-too-hot right into winter, it seems.  And although there are a few trees in the city that change color, you can tell they're struggling against the tide.  Waiting for a chill night cold enough to help the colors change.  Some years they just go brown and drop off.  It's sad.

When I was a kid, this was a hard time of year.  We moved around so much that we were rarely in the same school from one year to the next.  I wasn't an outgoing child, so it was hard for me to make friends.  I tried to be the "good kid", doing whatever the teacher's wanted.  Coping skills learned in an alcoholic family don't always translate well to the real world.  And being "good" didn't set well with the kids, of course.  I got shunned a lot as the teacher's pet.  Although, actually, many of the teachers didn't like me either.  I suppose brown-nosing is annoying, no matter how old you are.

They didn't understand the precariousness of my existence.  And I didn't understand how to get people to like me.  When by chance some kid happened to take to me or try to be my friend, I was baffled, confused, and desperate to keep them.  I didn't know what made them like me in the first place, so I was always scrambling to figure it out and do it right so they would keep liking me.  Which came across as more brown-nosing annoyance, I'm sure.

Everybody wants to be liked.  It's not unusual.  But for yin-polar type people like me, it seems to be an accutely painful thing.  Folx with more yang energy seem to have a stronger sense of self, and don't seem to care so much what others think of them. That's a great quality, I always wished I could be like that.  But how do you make yourself stop caring about something that FEELS so desperately important and scarey? 

The fact is, the more you want and need other's approval, the less they give it.  You're seen as desperate, needy, clingy, false, cloying, blah blah etc etc. 

When I became a teacher, Autumn meant a different kind of excitement and fear.  I almost didn't make it to my second year.  In spite of all my education and training, when it came right down to it, I wanted the kids to like me.  And as any teacher can tell you, being liked shouldn't be your first priority.  I left myself open to all kinds of problems.  I ended up my first year teaching close to a nervous breakdown.  I had spent most of my time in a state of high emotion, with the kids out of control and taking advantage of my desire to be liked.  I, of course, thought I had been hiding it, but kids see through you.  They see through to your most hidden and secret desires and weaknesses, and they pushed all my buttons gleefully. 

I almost didn't go back the second year.

But then my principal, bless her forever, pointed me toward a summer class that focused on discipline and structure.  That was without a doubt the best thing I could have done.  The most important thing I took away from that class, the biggest jewel on the PILE of jewels the class gave me, was the notion that you must build a structure first, and be the bigbadmeany within that structure, and then from within that structure, you can relax.  Once the structure is in place, the teacher told us, you can and will be liked. 

I was stunned.  She was addressing my biggest most secret fears.

I had to confront a lot of old demons to pass through this fire.  The first month of teaching this "new" way was hell for me.  The kids were surly and unfriendly.  I struggled to maintain the structure.  Every time I enforced a rule and a kid got angry or huffy or cold toward me, I panicked.  I went home and cried in the evenings, wrung my hands, hollered at the ceilings, and went back the next day with my spine firm again.  Standing tall and putting your foot down was a very hard thing for me to do.  I had always wanted to be liked more than anything in the world.  But my "issues" were getting in the way of being able to be a good teacher, so I HAD to learn a new way, and that meant dealing with the old baggage I was carrying too.

And then a miraculous thing happened. 

The kids DID relaxed into the structure, and the DID start to like me anyway.

And after the second month or so... I started to be able to stand up without effort, without fear of being disliked.  And without anger.  The structure was the structure, the rules were the rules, and there were both consequences and rewards in place.  Those things were separate from my feelings, and separate from the kids' feelings too.  Once that was accepted, we could all relax and be ok with each other.

I still have trouble with wanting to be liked.  I still find old demons rearing up at odd times.  But those years of being a teacher helped me begin to develop a backbone.  It was the first step for me, of learning to say no, of going inside to find where my fears were and healing them.

The next step was discovering what *I* wanted and liked.  Amazing to think that had never occurred to me.  All my life before that had been spent trying to figure out what other people wanted, how to be what they wanted, who they wanted.  It was a matter of survival, and I had been stuck on that looping pattern for a long time.  Stepping off the loop, I suddenly realized that I had needs and wants and likes and dislikes of my own.

But I guess that's the stuff of another post.

Making a List

I'm determined to post something this morning, but damn this is hard. 

I haven't been able to find anything to feed my soul lately.  Nothing really brings me joy or sparks creativity.  I feel overwhelmed with badness and despair.  I was appalled to realize that there were quite a lot of bogus sites taking money for Katrina victims, bogus "charities".    It's appalling that we have to have people to watch and keep tabs on the charities and keep them honest.  That we have to be so on guard all the time. 

Who can you trust?  There are sharks everywhere, ready to take advantage of every situation for their own benefit. 

Why was I even surprised?  I don't know, but I was.  I guess I thought this kind of tragedy would get us all rallying around to support each other.  And some folx are, some folx have.   But it's still a shock to the heart to see how much heartlessness is out there.  And it's a shock to realize that - as dark as I am - I'm still shock-able.

So I retreated to my own back yard, sad and depressed.  But I know how quickly and easily this can become a black hole for me.  I have to pull my head up and look around.  I have to try to find something positive in the darkness.  I guess a list is in order. 

1.  It's cooling off, finally.  We've been hovering right around 100 for a few days now, and the mornings are quite cool.  Thank god for small favors.  It'll be another month before the days are tolerable for me to be outside, but at least I can go out in the garden in the early a.m. 
Reminder to self - flowers feed your soul.  Green helps.  Be in the yard whenever possible.

2.  The lovebirds are still coming around, though in smaller numbers.  I thought they were all gone, but this last week a few greens showed up, and yesterday, one yellow.  No blues, sadly.  I think the bulk of the flock has moved on, and I'm hoping these few stragglers will stay for the winter.  It's funny that I look on these birds as a sign of hope. 
Note to self - try to find nesting boxes that will hang in trees.  What do lovebirds like?

3.  Working so hard the last month has paid off, I have enough money right now to pay my bills AND feed the dogs.  I have a little extra money to do some stuff around the house.
Reminder to self - making things pretty feeds your soul.  It doesn't have to be expensive stuff, and a creative "fix up" project can help keep your head out of the darkness.

4.  I've been feeling a little better physically.  Less pain, a little more energy. 
Reminder to self - yoga in the mornings is a GOOD thing.

Cripes, is that all I can come up with?  I've been sitting here for 10 minutes trying to think of something else, and I'm stumped.  Well, I guess that's enough for today.  I can't expect too much on the first attempt, don't wanna suffer from too rapid a rise, decompression and all that.  Heh.

Monday Monday

I think gravity was extra heavy today.  You know it's going to be a bad day when you start out with energy in the negative numbers. 

That's not uncommon for me anymore.  But I really needed the extra brain cells today.  I had a ton of work to do and it was the kind that required maximum brainage. I managed to haul myself up to average speed by way of large doses of caffeine.  But "average" just means the ground doesn't slope upwards anymore.  I sure miss the days when the slope went down and the ride was easy.  You never know what you've got until you don't got it anymore.  I didn't value my health or my energy levels, I didn't think old age or illness would ever happen to me.   

It's no good complaining.  But it's a scary thought that I'm getting older, and I don't have anything to fall back on.  I don't even have kids to go stay with when I become decrepit. 

And how far away IS decrepit, anyway??? 

On the good side, I did manage to finish the project I was working on, and the code all works.  Now I feel all buzzy, sitting here looking at the remains of my third double-shot of espresso, wondering how long it will be before I crash.  I have to try to make to bedtime.  Stopping for a nap now would totally mess up my sleep cycle.  But I feel it creeping up on me, the lulling fingers of sleep reaching me through the remnants of the buzz.  I am falling, fading, feeling the backlash.  That which goes up, even if it's only to an artificially induced "average", will come back down. 

Alas for the days of youth when I could go all night and all day on very little sleep.  *yawn* 

*YAWN*

Those days are definitely ... zzzzz-zzzzzz-zzzzzzzzzzz

Creativity & Inspiration

Quote for the day: "Whatever coaxes us out of hiding, to write, record, and express, is a revolutionary act. It says that we believe our lives count: our lives do count." - SARK

My god, yes, yes, yes!  I needed to hear that.  I found this on Take a Deetour... just what I needed this morning.  I had no idea who SARK is, so I did a search and found another page of quotes about creativity: Creativity Portal: Creativity Quotes.  And another SARK quote:

"Invent your world; surround yourself with people, color, sounds and work that nourish you." — SARK, Living Juicy

Excellent.  Yes.

S'wenyway, I finally found SARK's website, and went into a sort of sugar-shock-overload.  I think my instrument just can't handle too much cheerfulness and upbeat inspiration.  I was really uplifted by that first quote.  I really liked the second quote.  But ... well, maybe I'm just too dark at my core.

The thing is, I was just thinking about inspiration last night.  I watched SeaBiscuit for about the hundredth time.  There's something so inspiring in the movie, and doubly so because of the real backstory.  They put some hollywoodish twists on the movie to make it swell and move, but it doesn't matter to my tear ducts.  I always cry, I always get a heart-rush when the races are won. 

Of course, there are all the standard inspiration speeches and analogies about the depression, and the little man, and keeping on even when the chips are down and all that.  But the most important parts of the movie, the parts I watch over and over and OVER again, are the parts where inspiration happens quietly.

I see Howard as the father-figure, a stand-in for all the archetypal father figures.  He draws all the players together, and he gives them a chance, by his acceptance of them, to be who they are more fully.  By seeing their value, he inspires their beingness, if you will.  That's the best kind of inspiration.

Which brings me back around to the first quote above -- value and inspiration and creativity are interwoven together. 

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here.  I guess I need to let it simmer a while longer.

The Purpose

I feel like I slipped down into a fog there for a while.  The last few weeks have been very dark.  It happens periodically.  Not as often as it used to, but it still comes and goes, the darkness. 

During the dark days, I forgot why I started this blog.  I forgot all about "the purpose".  The whole point, in fact, was to try to find a reason to live, something that I could enjoy, that would give life meaning and bring back the feeling of joy that feeds my soul. 

When my mom died - cripes, almost two years ago now - I went to a very dark place.  I wasn't conscious most of the time.  I mean, I walked and talked and ate and slept, but I wasn't truly conscious.  I cried a lot.  I longed for death.  There didn't seem to be any point to life, reasons and meanings and purposes were all bleak and dark and pointless.  The biggest reason to wake up every day was that somebody had to take care of my dogs.  They're my babies, and the thought of leaving them alone and afraid was ... too awful.  It gave me a reason to keep going.  Not that I could have committed suicide.  I don't have the courage.  But I thought about it a lot.  Mostly I just gave up and stopped living.

After about a year, I began to come up from the darkness a little.  I still couldn't feel there were reasons to live.  But the heaviness wasn't so oppressive.  I entered an angry phase somewhere in there, and anger is a great uplifter.  I let myself get angry at god and my mom and the world, really let them all have it.  (I have a private room in my house for crying and so forth, and boy, if those walls could talk...) 

Sometime in the last 5 months or so, I came out of myself a little and felt like being "in company", but not fully in company.  Not enough to join a group or forum, not enough to take a class or join a club.  I still have trouble holding normal conversations, and I even lose the thread of emails rather easily.  Heavy grief does funny things to you.  But I didn't want to be totally isolated anymore. 

I also realized I was at a crossroads of sorts.  I was sitting on the emotional fence, and I could either draw myself over to the side of the living, or give up and slide back down into death and darkness.  I made a decision, to at least TRY to live.  It was at that point I discovered blogging.  The world of blogging is an entirely unique thing.  It allows for personal sharing, and interpersonal sharing in an entirely unique way.  I could be both external, and still be internal and the demands of interacting wouldn't be too heavy on me.  And I could post about things that interested me, which would help draw me into life and living.  I would have to try to find things that fed my soul, that give me joy, that cause my heart to spark. 

Coffee and tea seemed a good first beginning.  And this blog was born more for the random stuff that feeds my soul - art, drawing and painting and photography (newly discovered)... writing, which I still haven't been able to get back to. 

The reason I'm cogitating on all this is that last night I started to feel silly for posting all this bird stuff.  And then suddenly I remembered "the purpose".  Silly girl, says I, that is THE PURPOSE, post anything that feeds your soul, lest you forget that there's joy in the world and a reason to live. 

And these birds, these beautiful birds are a splash of color and noise in an otherwise brown and gray world.  The desert isn't a very pretty place to live, although I know some people really like desert landscape.  I don't.  I keep trying to create something green and lush and colorful, but in the heat my flowers fry. 

So, there you go.  I remember now, the reason for this blog, the purpose, and I guess I'll just go ahead and post any little silly thing that feeds my soul.  The darkness is always so close, and I need every spark of light I can find.

Needs of the Soul

I continue to think about my romantic heart part that surfaced again a few days ago.  Pardon me if I speak of her in the 3rd person, but it's easier that way. 

There are some needs that can't be met directly.  I can't reach my mother anymore, and that need just continues to ache and burn.  I can't do anything about it.   Sometimes the person you love doesn't love you back, and that need is just an ache you have to deal with.  And I can't get this need for romance met with my current mate.  There are other things I get from him, the relationship is still valuable to me and there's a lot of love there.  But this little pink fairy girl has some pretty intense need for love and romance that I can't get met with the hubs.

So, we watched some movies together, Pink Fairy and I.  And we cried a little, felt a lot of longing and sweet melancholy.  She speaks for hope and trust.  A fresh view of love.  She believes in heroes.  Other parts of me ... don't.  Bitter old women and starving, battered children, parts who have been betrayed and abandoned and hurt.  They don't believe in heroes or the goodness of man. 

Pink Fairy would fall in love with Russell Crowe in the Gladiator, Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, and Kevin Costner in The Postman.  My bitter parts are appalled and outraged at this feeling of hero-worship... and for a movie star for god's sake!  Appalling.

It's been a strange couple of days, with all this stuff surfacing.  Internal wars raging between hope and bitterness.   

I tried to meet her needs as best I could.  Watching movies was pretty satisfying.  I think a big part of the satisfaction came just from the fact that I acknowledged her needs as legitimate.  The core / parental me - just acknowledging her.   Letting her grieve and cry and mourne and long-for, and knowing I was trying to find a way to give her some relief.  She has been alone a long time.  Locked in a room, fragmented from the rest of me, scorned by the bitter parts. 

If I was going to build a Hierarchy of Needs, the first need of the soul would be for acceptance.  It's an interesting idea, a modified Hierarchy, starting with Maslow's but using my terminology.  Well, it would be interesting to me anyway.  :)

What Book Am I?

Found this on Nancy's blog and had to try it myself.  Sort of a personality test, for book lovers...

You're The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!
by C.S. Lewis
You were just looking for some decent clothes when everything changed quite dramatically. For the better or for the worse, it is still hard to tell. Now it seems like winter will never end and you feel cursed. Soon there will be an epic struggle between two forces in your life and you are very concerned about a betrayal that could turn the balance. If this makes it sound like you're re-enacting Christian theological events, that may or may not be coincidence. When in doubt, put your trust in zoo animals.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Heh.  Given my recent ponderings, this seemed a little ... eerie.

Flower Final

I think I'm calling this one "done".  I'm not 100% sure, but probably.
 

This has been a really good experiment, I learned a lot about myself and drawing/painting.

Often when I'm working on a piece that starts to go awry, or that I don't like very much, I just stop / give up.  I can't tell you how many pads I have full of unfinished drawings or paintings.  But since I had set myself a goal and a task with this one, I made myself keep going.  It was more like something I would have done in art class... a project that you have to finish, even though it's not a great work of art.  An experiment in style or color or medium.

And along the way I rediscovered pleasure in the DOING.  Not just pleasure in the final product.  I'm not particularly happy with the final product.  But I enjoyed the process, I enjoyed remembering some techniques I had forgotten.

I also realized there is a positive side to comparison.  I was looking at emcrorie's watercolors and seeing some of the technique that I'm missing, that I need to learn, and suddenly I got it, I felt it, the positive side of comparison.  It was a staggering revelation.  This may seem dumb and obvious to many people, but it hasn't been in my paradigm.

Comparing your work to others' can show you where you need to improve or learn something.  It can show you also how far you've come.  Now, you may decide not to go forward with the learning, but how else can one know where you're going, where you want to go, without comparing your own stuff to others'?

My B.S. (belief system) has said that comparison resulting in any kind of less-than automatically reflects on my value as a person.  Not just that Bozo paints better than me, or Rizzo sings better than me, but that Bozo and Rizzo therefore have more intrinsic value than me.  All that self-hate and self-blame and requiring perfection of one's self is so destructive.  It has kept me from doing many things, from pursuing many pleasures. 

I'm making a dent in it, and this project has really helped.  I may do another one!  :)

Embarassed and Outclassed

I got stuck in one of those comparison loops yesterday.

I followed a link from Nancy's Soliloquy (boy that's hard to type) over to Spun with Tears' weekly photo challenge.  The idea is they give you a word and you submit a photo that fits the theme.  What fun, says I, and thinking I had just the right photo for the word (close, near, snug) I submitted my momma dove picture. 

I didn't have time that day to browse the other submissions (except for Nancy's which is very cool).  I wish I had done that BEFORE I submitted mine.  When I finally had time to go back and see what others were submitting, I felt ... embarassed.  Outclassed.  Deflated.  Horrified, even.  All the others look like they're done by professional photographers, or at least people with a whole lot more talent, skill, and knowledge than me.  Than I?  Whatever. 

I wanted to crawl into a hole.  I wanted to email and say, please remove my link.  I didn't, but I wanted to.  There was still a tiny shred of self-love intact at the center of me, a little calm space at the core of my tornado, holding against the storm of self-hate and shame.  The little calm says "it's ok", meaning, it's ok to be less-than, it's ok to be foolish, it's ok to be visible.  But the rest of me doesn't believe it or feel it.  It's not ok.  It's embarassing.  I feel like they must all be laughing, thinking me pretentious or maybe just delusional. 

So anyway, I spent all day yesterday in this endless loop, depressed, feeling embarassed at myself for putting myself out there so ... foolishly.  And the hubs wanted to know what was wrong, so I took him on a little journey into my storm. 

He's a dear soul.  He sympathized and bent over backwards to convince me that I'm not really THAT bad, or THAT amateurish.  Of course, he didn't see the other pictures, and he doesn't know anything about photography (less than me, even), but his desire to comfort me was very sweet.  And in rather typical male fashion, he went for the physical solution.  What you need, says he, is a new camera (our digital camera is really old, practically a dinosaur), with a good zoom capability and a memory card, so you don't have to take such low-quality shots, and then you'll be as good as them.

What a sweet man.  He's wrong, of course.  But I hugged him anyway, for his heart is surely in the right place. 

And ... well.... I wouldn't say no to a new camera.

Witness for the Defense

Ok, so, working this dad thing through, feeling it through, I realized that even when I DO see good-daddy behavior, there's this little doubting voice in my head that negates it.  The voice says stuff like, "yeah, that's how he is in front of people, but what does he do when they're alone?  What does he do in the night, in the dark, when nobody's looking?"

Because of my early imprinting, I have believed that nothing is ever what it seems, and even a happy-seeming child has bad things happen to them when they go home.  Good-seeming daddies can still play diddly-daddly games in the night, or drink and turn into somebody with a fist.

I didn't realize I had such a belief!  Or such a doubt.

But ... I'm doing some healing here ... and it's the good-water-in, bad-water-out scenario.  If I let the old water out and don't fill my glass with something good, I leave an empty space for god-knows-what to fill.  The voice in my head would fill it with continuing suspicions and doubts. 

Therefore, I call the witness for the defense to the stand.

Tell us, please, in your own words, have you ever seen or experienced evidence of good daddy-ness?

Yes.  There was an uncle, a gentle man, who laughed and played with us.  His hugs weren't draped in hidden meanings.  He seemed to really genuinely like me, and he never did scary things. 

There was a teacher in college. He and his wife both taught early childhood special ed classes, and they took a small group of us under their wing and into their home for special visits and dinners.  This man was warm and caring, but always appropriate, never crossed over any lines.  We had many long talks about children and dogs.  He taught me a lot about boundaries and love ... and that it's ok to make mistakes.

My brother seems to be a good father.  I know he loves his kids.  Sometimes he seems to have trouble expressing it, and he's inherited some of our dad's critical acidity, but I've also seen him be warm and playful and give good fatherly advice.

The hubs ... as damaged as he is ... and as much as he protests that he doesn't like kids, isn't good with kids, blah blah blah ... when we have family gatherings, he's the one outside playing with the kids.  He's the one who comes up with games and ideas for activities.  He's the one who builds the fort, blows up the balls, gets out the walkie talkies.  And he's the one who loved Jake and understood about his damage.  He's the one man that Jake came to love and trust.  The first.  So even though he has no human children, I have seen him be a truly loving dad to the animals.

Defense rests.

Sad About Dad

I've been thinking about what I wanted to post in honor of Father's Day.  I can't come up with anything good.

I never really had a dad, in any positive meaning of the word. 

I had an alcoholic /sexually abusive grandfather. 

I had an emotionally abusive father (for about two minutes) who decided that being a father at 20 was not his cup of tea.  Not that he had ever been very fatherly.  I have a memory of worshipping the space where he wasn't - the chair he sat in, the sweater he left behind - with great crocodile tears... until I forgot him. 

He was replaced by an alcoholic /physically abusive daddy.  We had to call him daddy-Ron. At the beginning of a drunk he gave us silver dollars and tried to pull us onto his lap.  But somewhere in the middle he'd turn mean, and since we never knew where the line was, we were always frightened.  My mom took the brunt of his rage.  She hid black eyes and bruised arms.. and worse, I later learned.  We started going to church, and we learned how to pray.  We prayed and prayed, cowering in the corner of our bedroom while the shouting and crashing went on in the other room.  We prayed that it would stop, prayed that mommy would still be alive in the morning.  And sometimes we prayed that daddy-Ron wouldn't be. 

One time mom got the courage to run, and we fled to the minister's house.  Heh.  No haven there.  He told mom that we couldn't stay there, and he wouldn't help us find a place to go.  He told her it was her duty to go back, to pray hard and try to do god's will, especially to try harder not to make her husband so angry. 

God's will?  Heh.  Bruises and black eyes and broken ribs?  Constant terror?

Seven is pretty young to become so bitter against god. 

The next daddy was different.  He drank too, but wasn't abusive.  He was just foreign to me, a different species, a strange macho animal that had nothing in common with me.  I was timid, shy, afraid of everything, especially pain.  He was fearless, strong, a go-everywhere, do-everything kind of man's man.  He took my brothers under his wing, taught them how to fish and hunt, took them camping and for rides on his motorcycle.  But I was always left at home, hiding, reluctant, unable. I think he wanted to relate to me somehow, but he didn't know how, any more than I did. 

He left when I was 10.  And after that, there were no more dads.  I was grateful, relieved even.  Life was harder - mom had to go back to work full time, and we were constantly struggling and and moving and hungry - but there was less fear.  For me, anyway. 

It's sad.  I don't mean this to be a pity party.  But I do wish I had some sense of dad-ness that wasn't scary or threatening or foreign.  I hear other people's stories, and I watch movies, and I know there must be a remote possibility that some of that is real.  Somewhere there is a dad that isn't mean or hurtful.  Maybe not Father Knows Best, and maybe not Cosby.  But some kind of trying-hard-to-be-a-loving-father kind of man.  Not perfect.  Human.  But trying.

Watercolor Journaling

I've always been a journaler.  Introspection is chronic with me.  I try to keep a sense of humor about it though.  I mean, you gotta come up out of the mirror sometimes.  But who's more interesting than yourself?  As Oscar Wilde says:

"I never travel without my journal.
One should always have something sensational to read."

Heh. That's on the homepage of Watercolor Journaling.  Now this is a kind of journaling that I'd like to try.  Christina Lopp & Gay Kraeger teach classes in illustrated journaling using quick sketches and watercolor, and their website has plenty of examples of their own journals and their students'.  It's wonderful stuff!

Many people who try journaling get stuck in that spinning thing that the mind does, using reams and reams of words.  Nothing wrong with words.  But as it says on C&G's website:

Watercolor journaling helps you to slow down and see the world around you. You can really notice the small details of your surroundings. Whether it be sights that you draw, or smells and sounds that you write about, journaling allows you to take a breather from life and really see.

Journaling slows time down. Because might tend to work from the right side of your brain, you can lose track of time while you capture lifes little moments.

This kind of journaling lends itself more to journeys and travels than the emotional introspection I usually do.  But these are the kinds of journal pages I would feel ok about sharing with others.  The kind of journal I could go back and look at over and over again, not just lock in a trunk and forget about.  Visual memories.  Now, if I can just get my inner critic to sit down and shut up long enough to try this out.