LOST ITEM: ROSE COLORED GLASSES

Occasionally I find it astonishingly horrible about facing another blank, lifeless editing blog box.  It gathers first in my chest like a fisted hand gripping a dozen straight pins then slowly radiates a sort of tingly yet decidedly strained, prickly sensation out to my extremities until my heart feels drained and even the tips of my fingers seem stiff and nullified.

At this point my brain usually comes to the rescue frantically seeking diversions by seriously entertaining every possible alternative to writing that it can find.

 I realized earlier today that I'd taken a hard hit from my own apprehension when I found myself underdressed and sullen outside in our small backyard with a pail and garden shovel in hand, wading through the puddles of yesterday's unfortunate summer rainfall, mechanically scooping soggy piles of dog poop.

 Could this be any less debasing than pounding out my discontent at this keyboard even if only in verbiage drafted from the dark side?  I think not and question a brain that sees such a distasteful chore and my writing both in the same dim light.

What I fear most is not being heard, which is ironic since I've arranged my life to attract rejection and reflect convention; both of which quite naturally indicate moderate levels of emotional repression as well as heavily edited modes of communication.

You'd think I would have cultivated a more assertive, flamboyant persona and a cunning stable of tricks to make myself appealing.  Appealing people are always listened to even when they are wrong.

When I really stop and think about it, I don't actually know why I want to be heard or even specifically what it is I want to relate.  Nothing within me is fully-formed and the small bits that are remain largely dysfunctional.  I have a great deal of animated half thoughts and a mind bank of partial truths, but I've learned that you can get into a lot of trouble dealing in fractions.

Fractions are only of any benefit if they add up to a whole.  Although that rule would be voided if I were absorbed with the baking of cakes or postulating in the laboratories and halls of science or formulating in the field of mathematics.  But in my world halves of anything means 'not quite enough.'

 Sometimes for no big, overriding reason (but for a hundred small ones that shouldn't matter at all), I find myself lagging at the bottom of the top and barely able to hold my focus long enough to complete a single thought let alone an entire sentence. And even if I do manage a whole, comprehensible thought, I find no valid reason to share it.

But the tides will turn.

With the exception of the very potent ones every emotional ripple flattens out and conforms to the ocean at some point.  There are those histrionic or depressive waves that can often become tidal and tend to wreak a great deal of unhappiness and destruction before finally lapping into some newly formed gully or bay of reluctant adaptation.  However, I think that level of discontent may require restraints and serious medication.

Of course, there is always a risk when you let despondency hold your hand in a moment of weakness.  Your soul gets lazy and before you know it the two of them are necking in the backseat of your brain. By the time you've caught on, they've conceived a full-scale depression and drafted you into surrogacy.

If you're not careful, you'll wind up an unwed manic depressive dialoging with disembodied voices and men in white coats.

I can usually arrest this tendency in the gloaming between melancholy and clinical gloom but it almost always requires an even deeper, lengthier sequestering than is normal even for one so wedded to solitude as myself.  And because I have several crucial roles in this sentient production, I can't that easily bow out and lock my dressing room door without incurring the wrath of my fellow actors nor without some risk to the quality of the play itself.  At least as it is in its present revival.

But that's okay.  It's good to keep busy.  And as for the lifting of this malignant haze, it has already begun.  In the course of my long-winded whining, the sun has come out and with it, a glimpse of hearty rebounding. Who can remain tethered to tears and loathing as birds suddenly appear along with the smattering of green particles of new growth from limbs to lawns?

Alright, so I may be forcing it a bit.  The last thing that could possibly lift me out of any funk would be finding a resemblance between my own words and the mawkish refrains of a Carpenter's song.

I know from past experience that darkness always recedes eventually and in the meantime you just have to hang on to the idea that it is never too late to start over.  We've only just begun.....sing it, Karen....

Today, even that is better than nothing at all.

TERRESTRIAL EVIDENCE OF CELESTIAL PLAN - Part I

Now this is going to be a challenge, and it all gets back to what invariably occurs once I embark down the lane of deep soul-searching space.

It's that old 'ripple effect', and while it is an awesome process at the unfolding, it is rather difficult to encapsulate and articulate without sounding as though I am heavily dosed on Lysergic Acid Diethylamide; which I can assure you I have not ingested in well over three decades.

But like anything else, deep thought and introspection have their own protocols, which usually begin with an explosion of small, seemingly unrelated thoughts that don't have any immediately obvious bearing on the question at hand.

The temptation is to dismiss them, but I've found that to be a mistake.  The older I get, the more apparent it is that absolutely everything in the universe is connected; and if that is the case, then the same rule applies to our thoughts.  It is very much like dreams that seem random and wild until closer inspection reveals a viable thread connecting one level of our unconscious thought to another in our conscious understanding.

And so my question is:  Why has there existed throughout my life the dynamic that not only places me outside the interactive loop of relationships in general but also ultimately implodes the rare and precious bonds I am able to cultivate?

In looking back over fifty-four years I realize that almost from the beginning of me extraneous circumstances occurred which set the stage for this specific outsider dynamic to play out.   At various times in my life I have certainly been aware that some force existed beyond anything I could orchestrate and execute on my own, yet it didn't occur to me that these were anymore than random interchanges or unhappy coincidences until well into my teens.

My tendency towards skepticism and cynicism was much more pronounced when I was younger, but it seems that with age I have grown tired of fighting the tides of evidence mounting against my argument that this is all there is, and I have become convinced that as stand-alone human beings, we could never get the job done; that we would never understand why we exist or what our purpose truly is unless some element or power or force greater than we are fed us healthy clues.

The first incident I can recall which infused my sensibilities with a permanent awareness that there was a much more reliable connection between myself and a world unseen happened when I was three years old.

It was winter, and I was appropriately stuffed into a thick, light blue snow suit replete with hood, clip-on-mittens and snow boots.  As warm as this getup was, it severely restricted my mobility so that when I slipped on the icy snow at the edge of the creek I was playing near and tumbled in, I could do little more than flop on my backside and literally go with the flow.

I remember lying on my back and looking up at the sky and the snowy bank through the icy lens of water as it rushed over my face but feeling no fear whatsoever.  In fact, it was quite the opposite.  I experienced a peace as perfectly acceptable as falling asleep.  Perhaps I would have done just that had I not also heard the soft voice of a woman that said simply, "Not yet, Susan".

In that same instant a hand was on my arm, hoisting my water-logged mass to safety.  I don't doubt I was in shock, but even with my awareness temporarily stunted I was busy visually canvassing the surrounding terrain to locate the woman whose remarkable communications skills allowed her to speak to me so clearly under water.

Although I never found her, I  did know my rescuer, Mrs. Sarno, whose house it was that stood on the property.  As she told my mother, she just happened to be cleaning the upstairs bathroom, looked out the window and witnessed my tumble into the chilly waters.  Normally, I would have been playing with her daughters, but for whatever reason that day I was not.  For her to even be looking out that window was unusual since both of her children were inside the house.

But the moment I heard that calming voice, I had the immediate understanding that not only was there a choice involved about whether I should stay or drown, but that if I stayed, it was not going to be an easy ride and that it would often be a lonely one.  However, I also became aware in that I would not be without some avenue of recourse or form of comfort no matter how difficult the journey or how dark it would occasionally become.

How I internalized those complex options at that young age I do not know.  But I do know that immediately after that incident I began to feel an intense connection to this unseen realm, which was necessary because within weeks another accident occurred that signaled my official relocation to that realm 'outside' of acceptable.

It happened on a Saturday and just as any indentured offspring in 1950's suburbia, I was summarily forced to accompany my parents on their round of Saturday errands.

At some point we ended up at a hardware store with large, thick and heavy glass double-doors.

My parent's were at the counter making their purchases, however, boredom had gotten the better of me and I was loitering near the glass doors anxious for the fun to end so we could all go home and have lunch.

I don't remember whether or not I was wearing that cursed, light blue snow suit, but I did have on the horrible, clip-on mittens; and my hands were moist with perspiration and salted with the sandy residue of my earlier attempts to create a snowman in our backyard sandbox.  I was hot and impatient to both eat and play, so when another customer opened one of the doors to leave, I impulsively grasped the stationary door with my mittened right hand.

Big mistake.  Of course, the door slammed shut well before I thought to remove my hand, and it resulted in the quick dismemberment of the top portion of my right thumb.  I don't think I cried right away, but when I witnessed the panic on my parent's faces as they took notice of all the blood once my mitten was removed and discarded, the floodgates opened for me as well.

Naturally, my father drove us immediately, albeit somewhat recklessly, to the hospital where they promptly sent him back for the mitten and the missing portion of my thumb; the hope being that it could be reattached.  Unfortunately, thanks to my earlier sandbox exploits, that hope was dashed; but they were able to perform surgery utilizing skin grafts and after many months of painful, weekly bouts of cutting and sculpting at the doctor's office,  I was left with a pretty decent thumb.

It is decidedly shorter then it's left-handed mate and has a permanent divot at the tip that tends to crack and bleed when the weather gets cold or my hands get too dry, but it serves as a perpetual reminder that I am flawed, fallible and vulnerable and had better curb my impulsive behavior or I'm liable to lose an entire limb.  It was a blessing that I was able to grow a fingernail, and although it is a tad crooked and tends to fold over when it gets long, it readily masks the obvious.  Few adults have ever even noticed it.

Unfortunately, children are far more attentive to these sorts of macabre details then are adults, and once the word got around the kindergarten classroom of my appalling abnormality, any hopes I might have entertained about fitting in and belonging were dashed.  No one wanted to touch my hand and cootie shots were liberally dispensed whenever the teacher or the circumstances mandated someone do so.

The playground was another matter because there was no acting authority present admonishing the students to 'play nice'.   I grew to anticipate and loathe the rhyme, "tick-tock the game is locked and nobody else can play."

But it was during those playground sessions that I mastered the art of entertaining myself by initiating those deep, soul-space journeys into the vast cosmos of inner thought; and I accustomed my heart to the fact that, although the other kids were not opposed to speaking with me in class, sharing pencils and papers or even inviting me to their birthday parties; there was a line that I was never to cross and it involved physical contact, specifically as it applied to my right hand.  

 I'm not looking for sympathy here.  That is not my point.  I had a pretty good childhood and although my teens and early twenties were tumultuous at best, they were nothing I could not handle as evidenced by my sitting here writing all this today.  In fact, a good portion of the turmoil was completely self-appointed, and I take full responsibility for those lapses in sanity.

As you will see, if I explain myself clearly, the salient objective here is not to illustrate how sad it is to be placed on the outside of the in-crowd or to indict anyone else for ostensibly holding me there.

In fact, it is precisely the opposite.  It is to show that every single life has a plan, and if you truly want to know and understand what that plan is (or to accept what it is not), you need to be open to recognizing patterns and the deeper truths behind them.

I use myself as an example only because I have intimate knowledge of my own life and the patterns as they have revealed themselves, plus I have given myself permission to expose them. ( It is an unwritten contract but legally binding, which states that if I step on my own toes, I cannot sue myself for liable.  However, I am fully entitled to regrets and some harsh self-recrimination, if necessary.)

If I take my desire alone, I would say that overwhelmingly it indicates someone who not only aims to please but who wants to 'right' everything.  Growing up I was always bringing home stray animals from lost dogs to wounded ducks; and as I got older, I switched to people.

My desire to be involved in and to 'repair' what I perceived as broken superseded all logic, fear and sense of boundaries to such an extent that, if I were not forcibly remanded to the outside of the ring, I would not only have placed myself heavily at risk (not everyone is nice, duh), but it is a safe assumption that I would have gotten so embedded in the mire of humanity that I would have lost all sense of objectivity as well as have wasted a lot of time.

However, because throughout my life circumstances have continually dictated my placement being along the rim of relationships rather than in the middle of them, I've been in the fortunate position of being able to study and explore anything I wanted to.  Had I been more socially acceptable I would not have had the time nor the inclination to devote the hours I have to art, writing and all the various courses of study I've had the privilege to dive into.

And if I hadn't indulged myself in those areas, I wouldn't be who and what I am in this moment.  I would be living a more distracted, interactive life too preoccupied schmoozing, gabbing and filling the world with fluffy smiles and finger sandwiches to leave room for much serious introspection or spiritual exploration.  Not that there isn't room for smiles and finger sandwiches, those are always welcomed.  But I'd like to believe that my art and my words might have slightly more lasting and transformational potential then would a toothy grin and cucumber and creamcheese sans the crusts.

Look, living large in the outer limits definitely has its advantages;  one of them being that you can develop a talent for letting go and moving on plus an insatiable hunger for understanding and an appetite for wisdom that is often a natural consequence of being alone so much.  I think it is a cosmic law or something.

And I suppose that the lesson in the radical dissolution and redefinition of these more recent and important friendships of mine serves more as an admonition not to place too much emphasis or depend too heavily upon such relationships because, in the end, they might wind up being counter productive;
especially given my predilection for hyper-focusing and overkill.   In other words, I'd miss ten thousand opportunities for growth for the sake of one.

All I know is that every morning I wake up with a festering apprehension that I have nothing more to say or to paint or to write or to create, or to live for; and every day I am proven wrong.

In the end it becomes a choice to host optimism and to continue to listen to and trust that internal voice that still says, "Not yet, Susan."  As long as I can do that, I'm golden.

PHILOSOPHICAL FISTICUFFS

For those whose dissatisfaction with my friendship led to its dissolution, it's okay.  Yes, my feelings were deeply dented and my ego, heavily bruised; but I don't have a leg to stand on if I claim never to have dented or bruised the inner arc of love and trust within another person either, so I clearly am not wishing to appear martyred in any respect.

Perhaps had it not been the for hard reality of losing my three closest and most long-standing (or perhaps 'long-suffering?') friendships in such short order over the last three years and all in that remarkably similar and unforeseen bloom of sudden defection, I would not be feeling anywhere near this driven to exhume the root causes and examine the larger picture.

 One loss would have been devastating enough, certainly, but more easily compartmentalized and held within more reasonable emotional boundaries of grief.  However, circumstances being what they were, a scenario was created in that as soon as I had fully processed and adapted to the loss of one, I was squarely ambushed by the next;  and as exhaustively as I had believed I had probed and contemplated the underlying foundations on both sides of the relationship in question which might have precipitated that particular crisis,  the successive one compelled me to take in yet even more factors and sit on even more pain.

By the time of this most recent sad and surprising dissolution, critical mass had clearly been reached and consolation was much less likely to be found through logic,denial or even animosity.  The edges of my courage and confidence were markedly frayed and the temptation to pile on heaps of morose self-pity  was becoming dangerously appealing.

Of course, one avenue suggests I consider "What would Jesus Do?"  But fact, for fact, that doesn't work because Jesus seemed to have a knack for knowing beforehand just when to duck out of a potentially unpleasant situation and head for the hills and some healthy alone time (which only makes the sacrifice he made for us that much more remarkable).  While I, on the other hand, am apparently clueless until the ax handle is firmly in the executioner's meaty grip and leveled a inch or so above my thick skull.  And outside of Mary Magdalene and His Mother, I'm not sure how much time Jesus actually spent dishing with the girls, so I've got only His larger message to draw from.  Naturally, that works, although a bit more circumspection is required to perfectly adapt it to these pedestrian melodramas.

At this point I have really only two choices:  I can surround myself with bitterness and self-righteous anger and forever sport an invisible, whiny violin that provokes a pity-party whenever the names of these people are mentioned or a memory of them, resurrected; or I can stuff some kleenex into my back pocket and climb up out of the well of human drama and view the whole invidious interface from a higher, more objective vantage point.

I choose the latter, although admittedly, it was not my first nor a reactive choice.  The ego is a strong machine and it yearns for attention, drama, and to win what it perceives as its due rewards.  It clamors for vindication and salivates over revenge, and it thoroughly enjoys playing the victim; a role we have unfortunately featured in this 'me-go-centric' world.

 And given our propensity today to overly laud and praise the worldly achievements of our race, as well as our protective/defensive practices of dividing the winners from the losers based on our own subjective, temporal and fickle standards; it becomes a major challenge not to follow the misguided examples of our bipedal ancestry and feel fully justified delivering a knock-out blow once we've been sucker-punched.  The old, "Eye for and eye, tooth for a tooth" mentality, you know?

I really had to go deep and try the best I could to divest myself of my excessive emotions and sense of betrayal regarding these losses and to see if I could recognize a greater pattern here that might help to both explain why this sort of platonic de-combustion and resident outsider status have been the norm for me to a greater or lesser degree for my entire life; as well as to aid in redirecting my tendency to hold onto my resentment and to chafe at the idea of complicity on my part.

It was like going from kindergarten to grad school in the space of a month.  To go from the knee-jerk, ego-based reaction of "Gimme all my stuff back!" and the histrionic outcry "How could you?  I've been such a loyal and generous friend!" to "Thank you and bless you for the gift of yourself and of this valuable lesson." and "Forgive me for not being more sensitive to and aware of what you were truly feeling."

Whoa.  If I were an odds maker in Vegas, my money would probably be on the other guy.  But the bout ain't over yet.

As is usually the case when deep thought is applied to any single area, there is often a ripple effect.  You don't notice it at first, but slowly you become aware that you are no longer defining your thoughts by one, small issue nor are you confined in your awareness of what it all means.

Suddenly, there is the realization that something quite beyond the scope of your stunted and prejudicial nature is enlightening you to great and noble truths.  It didn't come from you, but it exists within you; and it is only through the good sense you have to remain quiet and open that you actually notice it is there.

I believe in our vernacular 'it' is referred to as an "AH-HA" moment, or, in more classical terminology, an "EPIPHANY."  Either way when it happens it always brings a profound sense of peace even if the miraculous understanding comes bound in anguish.  The only significant challenges that result from these epiphanic episodes is to take whatever knowledge or understanding was gained and run with it.

I've had quite a few of these startling epiphanies recently, but not by accident.  I am not one of the blessed among us who walk with such a high and sparkling level of Grace that they see more with the eyes of their soul then with the ones lodged on either side of their nose, but I do have my moments and I don't mind at all that I have to work so hard for them.

 As my grandmother would say, "Struggle builds character."  Although she also convinced me not to alter my crooked tooth in spite of the way it photographs as a black void when I smile giving me that "Ma Kettle"-look because, she said, it gave me 'character'.  I suppose she was right if you like that back-woods-no-account-down-and-out appeal.  I think she must have meant that it would keep me humble and thereby create character.  I should have listened more closely.

But the process of finding and building character is universal.  It begins with our fallibility and that leads to mistakes, which bring on pain, that opens up wounds, which demand reckoning, that is either of human design or divine inspiration, which defines who we are, and it either builds character or propagates more mistakes.   The choice is always ours.

Right now my choice is to continue this in another blog, attention spans being what they are and all.  Hopefully, you get the idea being that I've been involved in a boxing match between growing up,  grasping wisdom and getting over it and the local earth favorite, getting angry and getting even.  I wish I could state unequivocally that the odds are in my favor, but in spite of my advanced years I still struggle with that impetuous, immature little bully whose taken too many blows to the head but still refuses to go to her corner of the ring, and every once in a while she lashes out with a left jab to sensibility and inner peace.

I'm working on shutting her down.  In the meantime, I'll continue training for the next round.  Maybe next time I'll see that right hook coming.  Then again, maybe I benefit more when I don't.

TRUE FRIENDSHIP, And Other Impossible Dreams

"Friendships are complicated affairs.  They are so richly layered and textured with emotion and supply such a smooth and subtle stream of underlying gratification that they often go unnoticed and unappreciated.  We tend to think of them as a kind of backup support for the mainstays in our lives like family and career, and because so much of the time we are focused on ourselves within these seemingly more prominent domains, we tend to underestimate their influence and their importance in the overall design.

And like any type of relationship some friendships have far more depth and power than others.  Occasionally, there comes along a person who seamlessly folds into your life so completely that it is difficult to recall what life was like before they arrived or to imagine what it would be like if they were ever to leave.

These are the ones that exist at a level that is utterly ineffable.  While it is true that they are still subject to the necessary and unavoidable shifts and passages that we experience as we live, age and grow and have definitive waxing and waning effects; if at the core they remain solid, those temporary lapses are easily accepted and readily forgiven.  There is never the concern that the friendship will fail because, aside from committing an outright, egregious and conscious betrayal of trust or respect, there is the sure knowledge that nothing in this world can prevail against the bond and cause it to rupture."

That was how I began my response email to one I received a few months ago from a woman I was under the impression had been my closest friend and confidante for the past quarter of a century.  In her email to me she basically stated that, not only does she no longer feel she has a connection with me, but worse still, that she began feeling this way nearly fifteen years ago!

Of course, I don't fully believe her, and I have reams of emails, memories of phone calls and visits, and hundreds of letters between us over the years that tell a different story, but the bottom line is that she believes it or at least that she wants to.  Faced with that, I've precious little leeway on my regular route, 'Overlook Highway', and so I am forced to acquiesce and coast over a few lanes onto the off ramp.

Now, as hard as this was to take, it was not the first out-of-the-blue-pink slip I'd been handed.  A couple of short years ago I was given the old heave-ho by yet another dear compatriot whose friendship extended back to our early teens.  This platonic armageddon ostensibly resulted from a differing of opinions regarding the state of world affairs moralistically, but again, it was not the stuff to prompt a radical dissolution and so it came as a complete shock when it led to that.

Both of these heartbreaking implosions of amity have something in common in that both were ignited by the same combustible vice, and I don't know whether to characterize it as competition, envy, covetousness, or a combination of all three. But at least in one case there was a forthright admission that ' ludicrous levels of contempt' played a huge role in the schism; and as difficult as that was to learn, I was grateful for the honesty as it enabled me to put the pain to rest and slowly reconfigure a more realistic dynamic between the two of us once tenable amends had been made.

But it was these two startling and painful platonic breakups  (along with other, unrelated but equally rattling situations and circumstances),  that have prodded me to further examine what it is in me that can neither see nor predict sincerity when it comes to friendships with women.  Even more, why is it that when I am aware of disquieting elements, I choose to ignore them?

I mean, I have spent decades reading books on and taking courses in the study of graphology as well as having read countless books on body language and face reading.  When I was fourteen I began intensely  studying the Bible along with the teachings of the ascended masters; and later on, astrology, numerology, lives of the saints, and tarot among many other things.   One of my favorite pastimes is reading books on psychology and Quantum physics as the theory relates to spirituality as well as the universe - not that I totally grasp all of it, mind you.

 I am proficient in most of these areas and have a better than average knowledge of the others, and yet I repeatedly set myself up for betrayal and disappointment when it comes to my friendships with other women.  How can I chase all that psycho-spiritual, esoteric wisdom and still be at once so appallingly ignorant that I either cannot tell or will not accept that every bone in my foot is being pulverized as I have it firmly planted on the threshold of the friendship door while it is being violently slammed shut?

Come to think of it, I have a very real and graphic memory of that exact situation going back to when I was four years old and my younger sister, Colleen, and I had been sent to stay with a family with five (or was it five-hundred?) older kids for a few days while my mother was in the hospital giving birth to our bother, John.

Unfortunately, the miscreants in this clan had a decided preference for my adorable baby sister and they expressed their preference by making dunce caps for me and place them on my bed in the middle of the night or intimidating me into eating the raw cake batter that had been stirred with Lincoln Logs from their grimy little Easy Bake Oven set in the middle of the day.  (Of course, they also wrote my name and other disparaging things on these paper caps, which made them look considerably more ignorant than I, since I could not yet read;  a fact that later served as some small consolation.)

 But  one day I was following my sister into a room where our juvenile hosts were gathered around the television.  One of them came to the door, hastily plucked my sister from the spot and then just as quickly slammed shut the door on me catching my big toe and ripping off the toenail.

However,  I said nothing to anyone about the incident.  I just went into the room I'd been assigned and rocked back and forth on the floor.  I don't believe it was until I had been returned to my parents that the injury was discovered and bandages were applied.

 Unfortunately,  no bandages could fix what I retained from the experience, which was that for some reason completely unknown to me I was not worthy and had better keep a steady supply of Bactine and Bandaids on hand at all times.

What this appears to illustrate is that from the very start I didn't know how to handle the barbed edges that come naturally to us in life.  I could neither consciously anticipate nor adequately refute them.  And it is a theme that has reiterated that same message right up to the present day; although up until these most recent and sudden drop-kicks off the friendship train, I had rejected it's validity.

I think I must have been frequently dropped as an infant because none of my siblings suffers this appalling deficit in their abilities to read social cues and recognize insincerity when confronted with it.  In fact, they were and still are very popular, well-loved individuals with cache's of good and loyal friends on several continents.

 My sister has lived in London for a couple of decades, and when she turned fifty her friends organized a luncheon for her that my mother flew over to attend.  My Mom was deeply moved and delighted to find over forty women at that luncheon celebrating my sister's presence in their lives, and was moved to tears as they went around the table with each woman relating a story about my sister and her immeasurable value to them.

When I turned fifty, I had to plan and host my own party and scramble at that just to come up with an adequate number to qualify it as one.   And the one girlfriend I regarded as my oldest and dearest friend and who knew about the party weeks in advance announces upon her arrival that she had to leave early to attend the bachelorette party of a co-worker at a transvestite cabaret bar.  

Thirty-five years of friendship, yet I ranked lower than her acquaintances and singing drag queens.  That was a tough one to justify within the boundaries of ego because it was my ego that took the hit; but as always, denial waltzed in and took up the cause granting my grief a stay of execution.

The point of all this is that I should have seen the signs of disinterest or envy or anger or whatever it was that ultimately led these women to decide life was better and easier without me in it, and I didn't.

 Okay, that actually isn't entirely true.  I did see the signs.  Many of them.  I just chose to either ignore or make excuses for them.  It was easier on my heart that way, and quite honestly, I didn't want to believe that my friendship wasn't wanted or appreciated.  I do have some egoistic attachment, after all. But worse still is the fact that when I cannot break through someone else's outer shell or when I feel as though reciprocity is not being equitably expressed, I try even harder and give even more! 

Perhaps it is a result of my early Catholic school indoctrination, but I somehow got it in my head that this was the way to sainthood, and more than anything, I want to be a fair and charitable person who leaves behind a legacy of good in whatever form.

Don't get me wrong.  I know don't qualify for even the third string team of saints-in-training, but I still like to hold it as a realistic and worthy goal especially since I don't have any particularly outstanding gifts or talents to offer.

I mean, sainthood is an honorable aspiration and just loosely defined enough that it offers a fair amount of lateral interpretation, which is a plus for someone who finds authority and limitation a bit daunting.  

Several years ago I penned this little ditty for a drawing I did called THE DIET OF SAINTS.  It goes:

Don't be fooled by labels.

Count Blessings not calories.

Always remember to feed your soul first.

If you still feel heavy,

Give more of yourself away.

Listen, when I was about ten or twelve, I heard the song The Impossible Dream from The Man of La Mancha, and I took it as my lifelong creed.  I bought the whole message, windmills and all; quite missing one of the other salient points of the play being that Don Quioxte was nuttier than a fruitcake!

When my kids were little I used to sing them to sleep at night.  One song was that and the other, The Rainbow Connection, as sung by Kermit the Frog.  Those songs still brings tears to my eyes, and what is even weirder is that, although have not had small children in many years, I still listen to the damn things on a fairly regular basis!  I just slip them into the playlist on a burned CD and off I go chasing rainbows and battling windmills in my '07 Kia Sorento.  Someone should probably stop me before I start sprinkling fairy dust and cause a serious accident.

I'm like the embodiment of that old doctor's joke: Doc, how do I get my head to stop hurting?  
                                                                 Doc:   Stop banging it against the wall, Lady!  

I've been slamming my head against the wall of denial and ignorance for five decades, and boy, are my arms and head and heart and soul and spirit tired!

But I don't think I am alone in this.  I think that there are a certain population of us who simply are not as equipped to successfully navigate the world as are most others.  Perhaps it is the psychological components of healthy paranoia and skepticism that we lack, or the spiritual properties of discernment?  Or perhaps it is an over-abundance of hope and optimism that prevents the darker realities from being clearly recognized, understood or accepted?

I prefer one of these more sophisticated explanations than one of downright stupidity, but with my track record, I won't count anything out.

Alright, I've been about as candid as I can be without stepping on too many toes that don't belong to me.   I have my theories as to why I am this way and why others are, too, but it will have to wait.   I will say that I don't begrudge anyone the right to dislike or become fed up with me, and I hold no animosity towards anyone I've felt wounded by.  I have done my share of dishing out misery, and the walls of my glass house are not double-paned.

  They say that until you become perfect, you shouldn't criticize or judge others.  I think that part two of that is that once you are perfect, you won't want to.  I'm holding onto that one as my back-up goal.  

We all have our lessons to learn, and these incredible women (and they truly are)  are helping to teach me mine, as well as the other way around, I don't doubt.

In the meantime, I still keep an ample supply of Bactine, Bandaids and Tylenol around just in case.