SON SHINE, The Next Step

Yesterday I made the last of my long drives through the Kansas flatlands to a rural, Dairyqueen-town and to the dilapidated detention center where my son had been in residence for the past five months.

The sun was high and seemed to rally around my subdued consternation with an early-fall display of buttery light.  Even the scattered bunches of Lazy Susan's stacked in wiry clusters among the high and faded jade grass flagged my passage on either side of the highway with a cheery, yellow reception of solicitous regard.

Had my destination been of another sort, this would have been a felicitous seasonal homage to perpetual optimism, which I would have wholly appreciated.

But yesterday I was neither going to visit my son nor to reclaim him.  I was simply going to collect what personal possessions were mandatorily left behind when he was transferred to a maximum security prison last weekend.

The institution housing him presently is run by the State Department of Corrections.  In addition to being used as a Reception and Diagnostic Unit where every inmate received into custody is evaluated and processed before being sent to another facility to serve out his sentence, it is also where they house those inmates facing capital punishment before sending them to another facility where they will be executed.

Whether a prisoner is to be remanded to another penitentiary to serve time on earth for his crime or to be summarily banished to another dimension altogether, is of little consequence to the system itself.  Either way, each man will commence his earned castigation from within that same violently indifferent fortress.

In this facility evil, ignorance, addiction, avarice, the weak and the misbegotten are all treated to identical doses of distain and cowed into subservience by guards with a brutal and detached mastery years in the making.

Provocation is a necessary tool.  It identifies the potentially violent offenders from those whose psychology limits their destruction to the bewildered contents of their own souls.

This eclectic mix of criminal dysfunction is handled the way the human species always handles the detritus that is necessarily a part of our lives through the balance of light and dark:  It is separated and contained.

Within the cycle of a twenty-four hour day, twenty-three of those hours are spent solitarily in a small cell.  In that way the risk of cross-contamination or injury to one inmate by another is greatly reduced.

Because compassion and consideration are no longer extended to those whose choices have led them to this constructional purgatory and because their loved ones are regarded as merely an extension of the bane these men have become, no notice is given to families when an inmate is moved.  It was only through the two letters I received from my son three days ago that his whereabouts were made known to me.

What I now also know and wish I did not is the harrowing demographic of this particular facility.  I learned this through my own exploration but did so after his letter revealed that upon orientation on his first day they were shown a video on how to avoid prison rape as well as being asked to sign a "corpse release form" against the possibility of an "untimely prison demise."

From the small window in his cell, he writes that he can see only the "razor white walls topped with gleaming coils of barbed wire."  He writes that the facility is massive and the noise level becomes almost intolerable towards the end of a long, restless day of pacing, ruminating and regretting.  He tells me that he is terrified.

This is not summer camp or boarding school or a protracted stay at a youth hostile.  This is not even the blackened but tolerable inconvenience of a county jail.  This is hell.

And the sun that shone down on me, however brightly, as I drove along the highway and that shone down on the docile fields of thriving crops and on the vibrant wildflowers peddling their organic nobility and on every free individual who has brokered a better arrangement with life, is not able to penetrate the thick walls of his prison cell or to alleviate the rattling instability of my own apprehension and the abiding despair over both his broken psychology as well as his immediate safety.

I was planning on writing another narrative today; one that surveyed a more confectionary landscape of  normality with gleeful injections of humor.  I tried repeatedly, but the potency of these images and the complexity of my emotions were insistent and unwilling to step aside until I gave them their due.

I suppose my best hope is that if I write about these baleful passages as they unfold, I will one day reach a point of great strength and acceptance and that beneath these sobering fibers, a new and resplendent tapestry will unveil itself;  a tapestry that can hold up under the revelatory beams of the sun and reflect the successful conclusion to our lives, spotted as they have been, by challenge and imperfection.

I am on the outside now.  But like the sun, I will do my best to hold the light and to process my startled maternity until it resembles a bright orb of resolute promise.

My son is depending on me, and I am not going to fall from the only sky providing him some measure of daylight.

And on it goes.

All About Creating A Room For My Views

Last night's sleep was riddled by nightmares of nomadic wanderings in all manner of dark places:  Caves, underground tunnels serving full-scale trains rather than the expected subway cars, and above ground places with a covering sky, dark and thick like a sooty, inverted Mason jar.

I was a watcher surrounded by hundreds of thousands of others I did not know,  yet at the same time I experienced an undeniable emotional accord with everyone and had a visceral understanding of all that occurred, all that was felt, all that was missing and all that could never be in this nocturnal confederation of the damned.

This was not my first visit to this place.  I'm taken there regularly by whatever force it is that corrals all those unspoken thoughts and caches of denial and compels me to reckon with them deep in the unconscious night when all pretense and contrivance sleep soundly.  They are the shadows I ascribe to inappropriate or to selfish behavior in my waking moments.   

When I was a kid I had these All About books:  All About Mammals, All About Birds, All About Reptiles, All About Dogs.

I wish they had not stopped there.  What I wouldn't give for a book,  All About Nightmares or All About Where To Go From Here or  All About Building A Righteous Life.

 My conscious walk through the world at the moment feels not terribly unlike those stained, sepia-colored containers of non-being my soul travels to at night and its giving the stoic in me a pretty rigorous workout.    

These nightmarish landscapes of bruised realities that settle over a good part of my mornings like an ill-fitting coat are not always easy to comprehend,  yet I feel compelled to take the time to probe the All About  and the connection between the imagery of my dark dreams and the liberal indulgence of conscience in the wake of my long days.

Many years ago we had our driveway asphalted by this buoyant and wise character named Delacey.  He could neither read nor write and for a time my husband, who is a reading specialist, tutored him.  One day after watching all the traffic clogging a local road, he said something that put it all into perspective:  

"Nobody knows where the hell they goin', but they all goin' like Hell to get there!"

I'm not what you'd consider a 'type A' personality, but there have definitely been periods in my life when I felt that way; that I had no clue where I was going or why but that I was getting there on a souped-up bullet train of discontinuities.  

That is not the case anymore.  Life has slowed, but at the same time I am keenly aware that in order to move forward in this game, it will require a heavy investment of my best intentions and deepest thought.  I've used up all of my get out of jail free-cards and cannot pass Go without one so the game has reached a stalemate.

But as I sit waiting for the bail bondsman of enlightenment to return me to the world of productivity and purpose, I am not idle.  My brain is working overtime and taking me to a non-linear zone where thought all but obliterates despair, as well as keeping reality enough at bay that it loses it's immediate relevance.  

I suppose that if you're stuck in jail, its better that it is the one of your own making.  At least you know your way around the grounds and are on friendly terms with a couple of the guards.

It is not about escape.  It is all about building.

I'm confident that at some point form will again be apparent in my life and around me a structure of clear perspectives and sturdy objectives will once more provide shelter for all these quaking doubts to put them at ease.

 Yet I realize that the process of building a whole new exterior attitude on a house without any walls is going to be challenging.  What will this new building resemble if it appropriately reflects my thoughts?

One thing I do know is that it must have loads of windows and doors without any locks.

I've had enough doors slam on me to recognize the value of open windows and the need for fire escapes.  I want to ensure that plenty of air will be circulating my opinions and ideas from the intersection outside Myopia at the corners of Conventional and Dissenting.

In the meantime I've got a foundation to put down, which could take quite a while to set given the importance of making certain that it is a solid one.

And if I remember correctly, the first step before laying any foundation is to start digging and to whistle while you work.  Good builders are happy builders.

If I had a hammer....

.....and a shovel and some nails, some two by fours, a rotary drill, reciprocating saw, some self-leveling concrete....

Twelve Random Facts About Me of Mild Concern:

1.  There isn't a day that falls to dusk when I don't wish I had done a better job while it was still light. Okay.  Enough of the altruism.

2.  Captain Kangaroo made me really nervous as a kid.  Why would a sea captain make a best friend of a farmer named Mr. Greenjeans and how come Captain Kangaroo looked so much like Mr. McFeely?  I think Mr. Rogers worked for the secret government.  Why did he always have to wear that sweater?

3.  My math skills are so under par I was exempt from all math courses in high school.  The last math textbook I used contained little cartoon figures named 'Alpha' and 'Beta'  introducing each lesson.  They walked me through the treacherous minefield that was multiplication.  I still know my times tables only up to five and am suspect of all cartoons, which can probably also be blamed on Captain Kangaroo.

4.  I would give anything to be flat chested and go braless.  Jogging and running free have been theoretical since I was twelve.

5.  The Rainbow Connection as sung by Kermit the Frog always makes me cry.  I feel a keen sense of competition towards Miss Piggy.

6.  My ideal man looks like Humphrey Bogart or Todd Rundgren.  I married my first husband based on his strong resemblance to them and parted company eight months later with a visceral understanding that looks are not everything.  However, if anyone knows Billy Bob Thornton, please give him my number.

7.  I have A.D.D. and dyslexia, so if I hastily write DOG instead of GOD, don't take offense.  Spellcheck can only help so much.

8.  I can read Tarot Cards, have studied and practiced astrology, numerology, Chinese Face Reading and Graphology (handwriting analysis) for years. I've attended mystery schools and studied the teachings of the Ascended Masters, meditation, yoga, theosophy and Catholic theology.  I was raised Catholic, taught catechism classes when my kids were growing up and still attend mass.   I'm an equal-opportunity seeker believing that truth is within the person not the practice but that the practice makes the truth easier to find.  Saying 'I love you' is a theoretical application of the highest spiritual principle.  Demonstrating that love is the highest expression of divinity on this earth.  To practice what we preach is the most daunting challenge we will ever be faced with.

9.  I spend most of my days in the company of my three dogs while I work in my studio.  Sometimes I go twelve hours without saying one word.

10.  My favorite days are cloudy and windy.  I resonate with Wuthering Heights and wish I were Cathy to somebody's Heathcliff.  Fully realizing this will never be, I have settled on Mr. and Mrs. Bridges; coincidentally, even to the point of moving to Kansas City.

11.  In my best fantasy, life has a sound track and we each have our own theme song that plays whenever we want to make a splash.  I call dibs on To Dream The Impossible Dream with a second choice of Call Me Irresponsible.

12.  I sometimes wish I'd finished college.  As it now stands I am under-educated and overly-sensitive with a high I.Q. and low self-esteem.  If Alpha and Beta were here, they'd round that out to a moderately functioning example of the logistic equation of Chaos whose sum is greater than her parts with a common denominator of wishful thinking divided by tenacity and squared to the power of there ain't no where to go from here multiplied by tomorrow.

AS THEY LEAVE HOME

The things that I would say before you go

Is always hit the hight notes when you can

And never disappear behind a closing door

Remember every gain is hand to hand

Dismiss beguiling notions of despair

that hold you hostage to your sense of loss

Your worth is measured every time you stand

regardless of which battlefield you’ve crossed

Recover all the highest thoughts you own

and fan them out before you as you walk.

Be mindful that forgiveness has a plan.

Refrain from prideful banter when you talk.

And if a day seems heavy with regret,

recall that shadows only dance in light

Then purposefully begin the waltz you know

It’s best to live with honor than by might

FRACTALS AND FOOTBALL

As Gregg Braden writes in his book Fractal Time, The Secret to 2012 and a New World Age,  "The fractal view of the universe implies that everything from a single atom to the entire cosmos is made of just a few natural patterns." 

These evidences of fractals are also found within time and can be calculated using the mathematical principle of phi or .618.  Using this formula it is possible to anticipate the recurrent patterns in one's life based on the seed event.    

Right now I am trying to understand the existent pattern of fanaticism as it continually plays out within my marriage to a certifiable sports lunatic.  

How this pattern escaped my earlier notice and was able to embed itself in the better part of my life through the seed event of a matrimonial oversight is still a mystery to me.

Nothing is random in the universe and although we each have free will and the ability to turn left instead of right, we are also operating within a larger system of patterns and hierarchies that generally try to steer us in the right direction, if we would only pay attention.

Clearly, I was distracted up until the moment I said, "I do."

But these universal laws and conditions also imply that we are going to learn whatever lessons are specific to each one of us no matter which direction we ultimately take and that the only variable will likely be the circumstances surrounding the ways in which we learn them.

For instance, now that football season has commenced I could choose to exterminate my husband rather than continue my lessons in patience and cooperation over the disruption of all schedules, as they are now based around key games. There is now a complete disconnect between his body and his mind, which will last well beyond Super Bowl Sunday along with the declivitous mood swings resulting from favored teams failing to win the big game.  *The Big Game* I have come to understand, means *every game*. 

Certainly murder would take care of my immediate problem.  

Rather than learning how to endure the protracted broadcast of cheering throngs, over-zealous sports casters, cacophonous expletives and witnessing the inexplicable high jumps off the living room sofa;  I could be learning instead how to construct a shank from toilet paper rolls and calcified bed linens and to coexist peaceably with the other violent offenders in my cell block.

Unfortunately, either way I would still be given the lessons endemic to living among those who confound me.

I must understand that by learning how to see the larger picture and by working my way to a place of acceptance once the patterns within that picture become evident, I stand a better than average chance of transforming these outwardly murderous urges into inwardly rewarding epiphanies, which will ultimately bring me that much closer to who and what I really am.

At the moment my options hover somewhere between the dispositions of Joan d'Arc and Lizzie Borden.

It all does seem rather simplistic - this concept of fractals informing us that everything in the universe can be reduced down to a few basic, natural patterns and forms.

Yet I suppose that much like the outwardly simplistic doctrine of *non-judgement and unconditional love*, abiding by the clear cosmic principle against spousal extermination is more challenging than it first appears.

At the moment I am really struggling against my inclination to render my husband unconscious and deposit his limp body at the local sports bar where he can sit out the duration of the season.  

This ought to be a good indication of just how much further I have to go.

Right now, he is in no danger.

However, he might want to pack an overnight bag just in case.

All Losses Are Not Created Equal

On my bedroom dresser lies a brittle rose long ago withdrawn of life.  I hesitate to touch it lest one petal should crumble into burgundy dust.  Already over a year old, it was given to me by my son the last time I was able to kiss his cheek in gratitude and feel his massive arms about me in that apologetic embrace common of sons whose love for their mothers often exceeds their ability to prove it.

That was on the eve of his arrest.

I have read a great deal about losses today as so many are remembering the horrific events that took place in our country nine years ago, and I find myself crying in spite of the fact that I was not among those whose personal losses came in unison on that brilliantly bright and clear September morning.

I don't suppose that grief and loss are qualified under only one banner or that they suspend time differently for those of us whose fates have made such encounters with them darkly real.

We all hold our breath with the same force of will when confronted by uncompromising sorrow and exhale only out of necessity, driven by the same intuitive need to survive.

Sometimes it is these instinctive motions that are all we have to carry us forward; sometimes this remains so for years.

I find myself wondering about the touchstones of loss and how often they are triggered within each day for those who are forced to sequester abiding grief to some small corner of consciousness while they politely continue to court the relentless progress of time.

We often forget that there is so much bravery within the most casual smile.

I did not lose a loved one on September 11th.  However, it was the last time my family was intact and the last time we experienced any semblance of normal.  Not long after my son began his ardent love affair with pharmaceutical escape and began to disappear.

So, in many respects I have countenanced these nine years with the same acute sense of loss as thousands of others.

Of course, my loss is different.  My son is alive, and although he is now in a state penitentiary, there is the knowledge that he will one day be released along with the hope that he will conduct himself rightly when he is.

It is that same hope which daily counsels my heart against despair.

But there are no sureties in this; nothing that guarantees his liberation from a mindset of self-loathing or from his learned propensity to combat his demons by any means necessary, including those enriched with lies and populated by depravity.

There is nothing that whispers to me that all will be well.  There is only the promise in the possibility and as dubious as that may be based on his past choices, it is all that I have.

There are days when I envy those whose grief is burrowed under losses which are dignified by death.  To most this is an appalling sentiment; that I would find anything at all to envy about a loss so utterly and irredeemably permanent.  But in spite of my best efforts it recurs as an occasional conviction.  On better days my creed is:  "Where there is life, there is hope."

Yet what the bereaved mourners of the dead possess that those of us whose losses are stained with the moral illegitimacies of brokenness do not is dignity.  Felonious misdeeds tend not to evoke much compassion.

To lose a child to death, even one brought about by suicide or substance abuse, elicits sympathy and comfort from others.  There is relief that is supported by common empathy for the ultimate end that we all share and we are bolstered by that collective understanding.

To lose a child to his own mendacity further couched within the obvious degradation of the penal system has no such soft landing.  There is no dignity shouldering this cross and what honor is possible remains just that until the sentence is complete and fate provides an opportunity for redemption.

But the touchstones that remind us of our losses remain the same:  An article of clothing; a favorite song or movie;  a type of day;  a glimpse of someone walking down the street with the same build, the same gait;  a similar laugh heard in the middle of a party; a birthday or holiday;  a photograph or letter;  the dark bones of emptiness that greet us when awakened in the middle of the night.

Those things are universal.  It is only the permission to resume your life with a measure of dignity and honor that are withheld from those of us whose grieving has become a protracted dance between humiliation and fortitude.

That, and the equally steadfast encounters with penitent reality that can and do come when you are often least prepared for them.

I had one of those today.  My letter to my son was returned to me and cited in large, red letters across the front it said, "REFUSED!  RETURN TO SENDER!  INAPPROPRIATE MATERIAL!"

How my letter, some copied crossword puzzles from the daily newspaper and a copy of a piece I wrote on the birthday of his grandfather could have been construed as being 'inappropriate material' is beyond me; although I can only guess at what our mail carrier must be thinking.

The debasement of my loss is exposed to far more people than you could ever imagine; all without my ever saying a word.

Yet it is not the loss that stirs me to tears.  It is the judgment that invariably follows.  Such judgment rarely accompanies death.  Even under the worst circumstances, death is considered punishment enough.

Sacrifice and loss come in many forms, and I don't know that we can ever fully grasp the significance or ramifications of either no matter how squarely they sit among our days.

The best we can do is to exhale and allow the days that follow our losses to inform us of the necessity and relevance of those that came before.

The restoration of dignity for myself and for my family is a long way off and there is always the chance that it may never return.

But dignity or not, the show must go on and I hold onto my faith that grace will abide to make that possible.

IF YOU REALLY KNEW HER, YOU WOULD BE STUNNED

If you ever met my mother, the first thing you would be struck by is her outstanding beauty.  Although you might be tempted to keep this observation to yourself, it would be best if you did not.  She is deserving of praise even though it makes her uncomfortable and references to her attractiveness always do.

But if you say nothing, the temptation would then be to form judgments.

Based on her native refinement and the way she navigates a room with the casual grace of royalty, you might be inclined to believe she came from privilege; that she was groomed from birth with the high carriage and genteel protocols of affluence and that her beauty was merely the inheritance of pampered breeding.

And if you settled on these assumptions, you would be doing yourself, and her, a great disservice.

To believe that the ease with which her countenance greets the world has come as the result of a life sheltered from struggle and loss would be a mistake, not only because it is false but because it would limit your admiration to her physical beauty alone when what she truly deserves is your esteem for her magnificent character.

When they first meet her most people, particularly other women, are intimidated by her comeliness and because of this, many are reluctant to get to know her further.  It is human nature to close our minds
when we feel threatened and to keep at bay those people or situations that prompt us to look more deeply at ourselves or that challenge our insecurities to move toward a deeper place of self-acceptance.  

But if they took the time to get to know her, she would have eventually dispelled their false judgments and let them in on her history;  of the many illegitimacies that danced around her confidence from a very young age taunting her with the false perception that she will never be good enough.

She might have told them of the social disgrace endemic to being born in a welfare hospital in the early 1930's to a seventeen-year old mother and the abandonment that came six years later on the day her mother abruptly left to pursue a singing career in New York City, leaving her in the sole care of her father; a man too young and unprepared to cope with the sudden loss of one and the full inheritance of another.

My mother, grandmother and grandfather 1938

The story would continue as you'd hear her describe the day her father took her on what she believed was a Sunday drive only to deposit her at St. Mary's orphanage where she was calmly instructed by both he and a resident nun to get out of the car and go play with the other children in the yard.

She would have stoically restrained her tears and gone on to tell you how unprepared she was for this second abandonment by the father she adored as she stood in the doorway of a small playhouse and watched in quiet panic the tail lights of his car disappearing behind the closing gate at the bottom of the long drive.

All these many decades later recalling the dark wound of those fearful nights she can still hear the muted weeping of the others; their small bodies burrowed beneath the chaffing weave of institutional linens, longing for the scent of home and the softness of mother.

She would have gained your admiration as she told you that she survived this pitted longing by telling herself that she was different from the others because one day her father would return for her.  She would be reclaimed and remember how it felt to be loved.

But you would also learn that this would take years and that in the unforgiving time between forsaken and redeemed she was remanded into foster care in order to fill the fiscal and emotional loss in homes where happiness had fled in the wake of the Great Depression.

There she was met by indifference by resentment or by desperation; at one time required to wear the clothes, sleep in the bed and play with the dolls of a beloved daughter taken too soon in death.  Of course, she could never be an adequate replacement and having failed in her surrogacy, was punished all the more for her passive insolence.

She did not cradle dolls in those years, passed as she was from one bleak fireside to the next; she was much too busy cradling hope.

When she was twelve you would have heard that her father finally came back for her.  He took her to his home and to his new bride who, scarcely older than she, held a deep resentment for this pretty, budding adolescent and a hard jealousy for the close bond she had with her dad.

From the time she first arrived until the day of her high school graduation when she was told by her stepmother that she was to leave the house the following morning to go live with her estranged mother in New York City, she was battered by verbal derision.  Daily she was reminded how unworthy, unattractive, ignorant and unnecessary she was; that she was a burden and would never amount to anything.

Whatever chores she carried out were not done well enough and whatever comments she made were simply further proof of her inherent stupidity.  In spite of her father's love for her, he could not overcome his inability to handle conflict and come to her defense and so in her mind she remained not good enough.


The next two years she spent living in New York City grasping at the sordid hem of her mother's massive preoccupation.  Always the afterthought, she nevertheless remained attuned toward goodness and affection and would describe how she followed the decadent whirl of her mother's chaotic life as a cabaret singer with her one desire being only to be recognized and loved by the mother she hardly knew; a mother whose undeterred self-absorption allowed her to walk away in the middle of the day those many years before.

Claire on the job

A somewhat acceptable relationship between mother and daughter would come but never at it's fullest and not for several decades.

Jack and Diane

But she went onto  Cazenovia College, went on dates, fell in love with chemistry and music and, eventually, with a handsome, athletic English major at Dartmouth.  They were married within two years.

At this point in the telling, she might stop, preferring to demur behind the beauty that was her family and  her fifty-seven years of marriage to the only man she has ever truly loved and who returned that love with unquestioned devotion.  Together they proved that abandonment cannot exist within such sacred fidelity.

1960

She will go on to list the accomplishments of her four grown children and of the eleven grandchildren of whom she beyond proud.  What you will not hear about from her is the unconditional love she offered to all of them, of those sacrifices in the name of motherhood, which became the dressing for her deepest wounds.

Christmas 1970

Neither will she tell you that her interior design skills are legend and that every home the family occupied has been photographed and featured in top-selling magazines and architectural jounals.

And if you are out with her in public, she will not notice the perpetual glances and nods her way as she beguiles onlookers with her beauty and grace, but she will have a humbled response to any praise and be quick to reciprocate with a sincere and kind word of her own.

If you got to know her, soon you would know that she is a helpful neighbor, an extremely creative and talented designer, a generous friend, a devoted wife, humble beyond expectations and a committed mother who puts absolutely nothing before her love for her family.

Mom 2010

So to anyone who would meet my Mother and be prompted by envy to assume that because of her radiant appearance she must be shallow, conceited, indulgent or cocooned by the arrogant genetics of aristocracy and not worth getting to know, I suggest you take another look.

Because before you would stand a remarkable and beautiful woman of gracious forbearance, unqualified love and unfathomable courage; a woman who is and always has been far more than good enough.  

IT'S OKAY IF YOU DON'T LIKE ME

If I want to be really honest with myself, I have to admit that I tend not to be.

Like most dented and damaged vessels of sullied consciousness, I have lived much of my life mimicking the factions I find most pleasing with a decidedly unhealthy preference for those most obviously cloying.

In short, I want to be liked and have done what it took to make it so.

I would have made a lousy attorney. "Members of the jury, I believe my client is innocent of all charges!  However,  if *you* don't think so, I *totally* understand and sincerely apologize for bothering you. Would anyone like a cookie?"

I suppose I can blame my nearly obsessive desire to achieve mastery over the darkest and most damaging components within my psyche for that unfortunate propensity, but honestly, this taxing and unrealistic quest for sainthood is killing me.

But that is all changing.

While I cannot pinpoint the exact moment that it happened, there has been a shift within me that has been gaining momentum in recent months. What this has meant is that I am no longer willing to tolerate unkindness towards me or to those around me and no longer accepting of the idea that in friendships a lack of equitable reciprocity is normal.

I do admit to owning a dark side and to striking a fair balance between saccharine and sadistic by an equally inborn tendency towards sarcasm, lightly sprinkled with cynicism and festooned with candles of suspicion - not unlike a colorful birthday cake concealing an RDT explosive. 

 And like that cake, I have lain dormant for decades.

Up till now I naively and earnestly extended the invitations, lit up the room, provided the feast, offered the presents and donated the time to party goers who failed to comprehend the sincerity of my affection or to appreciate the effort.

All the while I resisted the impulse to detonate.

 At this point I'm probably one birthday party away from total annihilation but certainly a person that anyone with reasonable access to heart and conscience need not fear. However, for the duplicitous fare-jumpers and bottom-feeding sycophants looking for a free ride, it is party time!

I've reached this point after a grim two-year period of filial eviscerations and the recognition that I'd been summarily scalped and skinned by some long-time friends. Like a feebleminded clerk at a five-star hotel I'd naively offered them free lodging in my heart. They got away with the towels and toiletries and would have stripped clean my soul had I not gotten wise and changed the locks.

And detonated.

But I am not used to fighting back and in the aftermath of this battle for my self-esteem I feel foolish and failed and suffer disturbing bouts of regret for stepping up and saying, "Enough!"  Not because I defended myself - but because it means now that I am not liked.

Too frequently I find that my trust in people has been misplaced, which never fails to leave me grieved over my gullibility and questioning my culpability, and as much as I want to believe that I have survived the wreckage of these failed alliances now that the debris has been removed from my heart and all obvious traces of the relational experience have been wiped clean, I don't think that is entirely true.

It is an odd fact that when souls collide there is an acceleration of curiosity and emotion that morphs into one seemingly solid and reliable bond of unspoken trust and unquestioned devotion. Evidently, this excitement neuters my discernment. I'm a pushover and want to embrace everyone at their word and to rely on my faith that a decency of conscience will provide safe escort through the passage of filial exchange, particularly during the occasional rough seas. I'm currently more than a little confused.

While I'm not quite as embittered or self-destructive as was Heathcliff ravaging the moors and his own soul, sodden with self-pity after the apparent betrayal by his beloved Cathy; I nonetheless shelter a wound that regularly needs dressing, and I've developed a high regard for sleep and for dreaming.

Still, I believe that every little dash of light leads back to the same solar source in the end and that in the meantime there are dreams to be manifested and goals to be met; not the least of which involves the spiritual transformation of the entire planet into a world where division is not an option and love rather than politics, policy and opinion becomes the great unifier.

We'd all be friends then.

For the time being I live with small fissures and tears in my soul and count on my rebounding faith in others as the means toward healing.

I know that if I am really true to my convictions, not everyone is going to like me and I am learning to be alright with that. Whenever I fear that this might lead to a life spent solitarily, I remind myself that being alone is only a state of mind and that being sad about being alone is a choice and one I don't have to make.

Not everyone has to like me.  Respect and consideration do not necessarily mandate affection.

We each have our own work to do while we are here, and often we have to do it without any obvious support, but that doesn't mean that there is none.

It only means that we aren't really paying attention.