It's the simple things in life

Where is my magic crystal? Does it come back to me when I need it? Apparently not, but maybe it’s time to find a new crystal, find a new witch. The heart wants what it wants, the heart doesn’t know what it wants. The world creeps up on us, startles us, gives us what we need, takes away what we want. How are we supposed to know, how are we to learn, and when are we good enough?

Mud pies with stones in them, weren’t they the best thing ever!! When life was simple and pure. “Here, I made you a cake and it has jewels in it!” What a feeling, what a moment that is in life, when imagination and love are all that exist.

Trying too hard, not trying at all. Two extremes that equate to the same thing. Opposites attract. We base that on the life of magnets?

Maybe it’s all some cosmic joke, some amusement for those of higher intellect than we can attain.

I wish I understood anything. I wish I understood everything!

March 10, 2009

Thus begins the journalling process with one of the most difficult days in recent history. Where do I begin? Travelling back from the cottage, having our breakfast sandwich = lovely. But the apprehension begins to build in me before I'm even in the city. What! How? Okay, get a new cell phone that I can't seem to figure out how to work. Put it aside, need to do some work, bills to be paid, renovations to be done.

Periodically, an outburst from G about M's dishes in the sink, jerry-rigging a light over his pot-growing operation. Shocking, horrifying stuff. Have run out of conciliatory things to say. With both of them lately I feel like, "Just do whatever you want and leave me out of it", but that's not fair, not fair to them, not fair to me, not even fair to the universe at large. This angry boy with this strange sense of entitlement, I put him on this earth and it is my responsibility to somehow attempt to straighten him out. It may be out of my reach, not within the scope of my powers … oh yeah, I have powers … but I have to try.

G takes the jerry-rigged 400-watt lamp off the strange garbage-bag-and-metal-rod-pot-growing-operation that is in my son's room. Note to self: How did that happen???? Who am I? He calls me upstairs to show me the monstrosity of it, to ask me out of love for him to express my shock and dismay and support, which I attempt to do in a rather feeble way, because I am just too exhausted, my body hurts.

The best is yet to come, though. Quite clearly, I mean the worst is yet to come. Just my sarcasm breaking the surface trying to shield myself from reliving this even in the writing of it.

M returns home, finds his pride-and-joy to have been somewhat damaged and freaks out, "Fucking G, fuck you mom, I hate you, what the fuck are you doing, fuck, fuck, fuck". I feel like all of my organs are fighting each other just to try to get away from this, to try to get away from me, my life, out of my body. No such luck, however. I try to settle him down because I fear, I feel, this is all going to be too much at some point for this man who seems to love me more than anyone has ever loved me, this man who looks at me the way I have wanted somebody to look at me for as long as I can remember, and I must try in some way to shield him from the horror that my son seems to have become.

I go upstairs, M is still screaming, he's got his phone in his hand … right, it's my phone that I can't seem to get back … and he's calling HIS FATHER. "Can I come and live with you? Mom and G are fucked, I fucking hate it here." "Sure" says this man who has never been there for his children, was never there for me, who is a splotch on the face of humanity. Is my hatred showing?

I take the phone from M and say, "You need to know what's going on here first, F". Oh, guess who's figured out I sold the house and he's not getting anything!! He responds, "I have nothing to fucking say to you" and hangs up the phone. I know that what he meant to say was, "Thank you for bearing two beautiful children inside your body, devoting over 20 years of your life to raising them without any help from anybody. Thank you for all that you've done for them, and thank you for everything you ever did for me that I spat on you for?" That must be what he meant to say. Let's leave that aside for now because, sure enough, the nightmare continues.

M is now throwing stuff around the house for real, with the force of a sinewy 6-foot, 175-pound 19-year-year old body. Crash, kaboom, glass breaking! The force of his anger has caused the light fixture on the floor beneath to break from the ceiling and smash to the floor in a million pieces. The look on G's face!!! Please somebody save me from this. The pain I am feeling, I can barely breathe, my heart is beating out of my chest. Is this abusive young man really that beautiful boy I look at in the pictures all over my house? How long can I cling to that before all of this wipes my memory clean. Please, if there is a God, if there ever was a God, don't let that happen.

He screams at me, "When was the last time you made me a hot meal?" My own anger rises to the surface. I point out that I make dinner most every night (or buy it), in fact I often feed his friends. I yell back, "When was the last time you made me a hot meal? My birthday? Mother's Day? When I've been sick? Never." He moves on to a new tactic, "What did you think would happen when you left everybody?" Now I'm not just angry, I'm genuinely confused, stymied really. What is this monster talking about? Then I see, he's hurting, something hasn't straightened itself out in his head. Every now and then he believes that I'm the one who left, not his father. I have to say the words, harsh as they may be, because he's a young man now:

"It wasn't me who left, my boy. Your father left nine years ago. You didn't seem to care when he was sleeping with every skank in the region. But I find somebody to love, somebody who loves me, and you're angry? What did you expect? I would be your nursemaid until you didn't need me anymore and then go die under a rock? And, when I left, I brought you with me. Who exactly did I leave?"

He has no answer, he feels the weight of the abuse he hurls at me and continues to pack his things. I can take no more, I wander through the apartment. G tries to hug me, but I can't be comforted, I won't be comforted. It feels like the world beneath my feet is crumbling. Too much, too much, too much. I need peace, I NEED TO BE TAKEN CARE OF!

It continues. He goes out the iron gate, slamming it with inhuman force, breaking it. Our tenant comes to inform us that M is now attempting to scale the gate and has injured himself on the spikes on the top. G, wonderful unfathomable G, grabs his tool box and goes to fix the gate.

Okay, I'm ready to let him take his things to his father's now. I go to my bedroom, our bedroom, because I can no longer stop the water that is streaming from my eyes, the gasps that are escaping my lips, the pain that has now become physical. I wait it out. But, no, knock on the bedroom door, M all humble now, "Bye mom, I'm going now". I say, "Good luck, M, you're going to need it". "I don't want to go but you told me that I had to." He's breaking my heart. I reach out to him, I hug him, I tell him how much I love him, that he doesn't have to go, but he will have to make peace with G, he will have to apologize to him.

Off he goes downstairs to be – at least one more time – the boy in the pictures scattered all around the house. Will this ever end?

Laugh a little

That ray-of-sunshine in my life, the beautiful S, tells me that my blogs are always too serious. This is true and characteristic of my personality. But I can be funny, I think. People often tell me I'm funny. I wonder why, when I sit down to write something, it all comes out so dark and depressing. Is that the true inner me? I don't think so. I just use this to vent all that stuff that you can't say to anyone out loud. I've been reading a lot of other blogs lately and it's become clear to me that we're all doing that, saying the things that we can't quite say out loud. Some of you are just better at making them humorous than I am. Okay, you're a lot better at it.

Honesty is a scary thing, but it's where I feel most comfortable. Not sure what that sentence means at all. But here's an interesting thing: Out of the blue, I get contacted on Facebook by somebody who makes some reference to me stopping traffic and wearing a bikini to paint a house when I was in my 20's. I think it was when I was in my 20's. I really have no idea, absolutely no idea.

I remember that I lived in Brantford for a couple of years, I even remember that I stayed in a room in a house owned by this old couple. Well, I didn't remember it until she told me, but now I remember it. But that's it. And the memory exists for me this way: Was it a movie I watched? A book I read? A story somebody told me. I have detached from all of this so long ago that it has nothing to do with me.

Whatever happened, all the things that happened, I left my past behind and I built a life "of sorts". Wish I had a past, more of a past that I remember, but I just don't, and I'm not willing to try anymore to remember it. What I do remember is how fucked up and miserable I was and that's enough for me. I was floundering in the dark for way too long.

I suppose the eve of my nephew's wedding, that Ian-Bean who I love, has brought out the melancholy in me. Those are years I do remember, years that I treasure, but I don't get to be a part of it, not even a small part. They tell me that my ex-husband is their uncle. I have all kinds of intelligent responses to that, but my immediate one is pfffftttttt. Let me say this "out loud": Every birthday present, every Valentine's and Easter chocolate, every homemade treat, every sleepover, every Christmas present = made by me, bought by me, wrapped by me, delivered by me. He's not your uncle, he never was your uncle.

I did the unspeakable, the unthinkable two days ago: I woke up crying. Yeah, you could have knocked me over with a feather on that one. I woke up with tears running down my face and all these thoughts running through my head. Because I want to fix it, I want it to be better ... yes, better for me, I guess. That's selfish, I know. So, here is the only place that I put my thoughts, my feelings about this, because, if I say all of this out loud, I would disgust even myself, let alone the people around me. There is no fix for this, no band-aid; just push it down and, when it rises up, push it down again.

But the beautiful S ... and, OMG, she is so very beautiful ... will represent, and that handsome boy of mine will be her escort. Wow, they validate me. Accckkkkk! I shouldn't say that even if it is true, should I? But they do. I bask in their shadow, I admire them from afar and up close, and I will remain devoted forever.

So, I'm going to end this post with a joke just to prove to that beautiful girl that I maintain a sense of humour:

A blonde was driving down the road listening to the radio and was quite
upset when she heard blonde joke after blonde joke. A little way down the road,
she saw another blonde out in a field rowing a boat. The blonde stopped her car
and angrily jumped out yelling,
"You dumb blonde bimbo! It's blondes like you that give the rest of us a bad name! If I could swim I'd come out there and give you what's coming to you!"

Debts and Forgiveness

You say that I owe you. And, by “you”, I definitely mean you. When I finish writing this, I’ll decide if I’ll send it or if writing it alone will satisfy this need to vent.

Last night, running through my head was a list of things that I owe you. So, here goes, in no particular order of happening and/or importance:

(1) I owe you for slapping our 14-year-old daughter across the face in front of her best childhood friend, and terminating that friendship;

(2) I owe you for walking out on your family rather than trying to be a good husband and father.

(3) I owe you for leaving your son with such a permanent sense of rejection that he operates from a place of never feeling good enough.

(4) I owe you so very much for all the pain and tears I have seen in our children’s eyes over the years by the things you have said and done.

(5) I owe you for the years you spent sleeping with every skank in the Peel Region.

(6) I owe you for meeting my best friend for dinner to tell her what a bad marriage you were in, and both of you keeping it a secret from me, and thereby ending that friendship.

(7) I owe you for barely putting in an appearance at my father’s funeral.

(8) I owe you for thinking you still have a right to be a part of the family that has rejected me my whole life. And you know it!

(9) I owe you for continuing to poke your ugliness into my life every chance you get, never allowing me to forget.

Nine seems a good number, like ten would be too much. Yes, I owe you, but none of this is my debt to pay. I believe in the universe, I believe in goodness, I believe that good temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that you will never truly be happy because of all the pain you have caused, that it floats in the very air that surrounds you. Ah, to heck with it, here’s 10:

(10) I owe you for being a bad father. Not just a negligent, uncaring father, but a BAD father to these two beautiful people. You are not entitled to their respect or their love; you needed to earn it. You cheated yourself, you know, but I don’t care about that. You cheated them, you hurt them, and for that you will never be forgiven.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places

Ernest Hemingway said that. I've always liked that quote, and thought that I was strong at the broken places, but I'm discovering that I'm just broken these days. Feeling like I don't have many more hits left in me. Even the small ones now seem to take me down too easily, too hard. I'm scared by that.

Most of the time I'm able to feel the joy at the simple things in life. Actually, the only things I've ever felt joy about are the simple things. Moments. Moments where the world seemed right. But the world isn't right. I think somewhere in my heart I've always known that, and that's what is getting harder to take.

Here's the story and, if there's anyone out there who is reading this nonsense that I write, and you feel you can offer me some insight, some perspective ... or just fucking help me ... then shoot, fire, do your worst, do your best.

I grew up in a family that didn't love me. Oh yeah, I know, that sounds too sad, too ridiculous. It's true, though, and I don't know why, I've never actually known why. I've tried over the years too many times, too hard, but I've always failed. Can't seem to get it right, make it right. Was I too tall, too stupid, too insensitive, too smart, too pretty? Did I screw up too many times? Probably all of those things at various points, but isn't that when your "family" is supposed to love you? Isn't that what "family" is, the people who love you anyway? I guess not. Okay, that's the end of that story.

Then I married a man who said he loved me, but he didn't. He yelled at me, he called me names, he belittled me, eventually he started throwing things at me. Never really knew why either. Couldn't predict it, couldn't stop it, couldn't fix it. Finally ended it. Still for years took what he would give, in terms of financial support for our children, or in terms of ever being there for our children. I mean, in the course of eight years, he never took them to a doctor's appointment, rarely took them overnight. And, by "rarely", I would say a dozen times in the course of those eight years. All of this ate away at my self-esteem. I mean, I have a lot of bravado, I pretend I'm confident, but I'm not. I am self-aware. I know that I am a capable person, I know that I am a person who loves too deeply. I love my children too deeply. From the moment they came on this earth, to this day, to the end of my days, they are my soul. Maybe because I lost mine somewhere, and they gave it back. But I would die for them, I would take a bullet, I would brave the darkest night (and I'm afraid of the dark), I would fight the fiercest monster. This world would cease to exist for me without either of them. I could not live.

Okay, so finally I meet a man, a partner, a friend. And he is wonderful, no doubt. But even that was a struggle at first, a big struggle, a struggle that ate at me. In the beginning, when I thought it was just the two of us trying to build something, it turned out that that wasn't the case. I had to fight harder. It was worth it. It is now something I can count on. But do I have it in me? Sometimes I don't think I do. Times like now, I just want to be alone, I just want to be left alone. I can't take any more hurt. I know we all say that, but I am really there.

My ex-husband rears his head again. Now he wants money from me!!! He wants me to pay him for the house that we lived in, that I have lived in with our children for the past eight years, and he is going to take me to court to get it. I don't have the strength for this fight, I don't have the money for this fight. I just want to lay down and close my eyes. I'm so tired. I'm bone-tired, I'm soul-tired, I'm heart-tired. I don't have anything else to give.

And here's the thing that I've been getting to with all of this. This ex-husband, this father of my children, likes to tell them that one day they're going to find out the truth about their mother. I keep asking what that truth is. Even I don't know. But it's something I've heard from this so-called "family" of mine before. Please, please, please, tell me the truth. What is it that I am? What is it that I don't see about myself? Why do I keep feeling like I'm a bad person. I try to be good, I really do, I fight to be good. I give to charity all the time. I have a World Vision child, I'm a member of the Sick Kids Miracle Network, I give to Green Peace, and I give to the Lung Association. All because I'm a bad person? I do this every month and have for years. I truly care about every human being I come into contact with. All because I'm a bad person?

Here's why I'm scared: Because I do think I'm a bad person. I don't know why or how or what or where or when, but I believe them. I mean, I never had any training to be a good person; maybe I'm just pretending, maybe it's all an act, maybe nothing is real.

I'm sad, I'm scared, and I'm falling.

Lest we forget

Remembrance Day today! Odd that it's never really meant too much to me, because it should mean something to all of us, shouldn't it? I listened to Stuart McLean yesterday. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to be in the car when he's doing his Vinyl Cafe on CBC. What a treat! For the first time, I felt Remembrance Day, I felt the lives of all of those who have believed in something with all of their heart, fought for something and paid the ultimate price - their lives.

Mr. McLean ... yes, I'm going to call him Mr. McLean, because I have come to respect this sincere, heartfelt human being ... talked about a man named George Lawrence. George Lawrence, Mr. McLean informed, was the last Canadian soldier killed in World War II. George was 24 years old when he was conscripted into the army, and he was 25 years old when he died. He died two minutes before the Armistice was signed that day. I chose this Remembrance Day to remember George Lawrence, to remember the life he sacrificed for all of us.

We take so much for granted every single day, and most of us know that. But George Lawrence, we shouldn't take for granted. George gave up all the simple things that we enjoy. He relinquished his right to have his own family, to enjoy a homecooked meal, to feel rain on his face, to watch the first snowfall. I believe (or I certainly wish) that I will remember George Lawrence every single Remembrance Day for the rest of my time on this earth. He symbolizes something for me. In a world where every other story on the radio is tragic, sad, confusing, frightening, I want to remember the George Lawrences.

And the Stuart McLeans!!! You make a difference, Mr. McLean, in the lives of so many, I'm sure, and you certainly do make and have made a difference in mine. Thank you for that.

I love humanity - I just hate people!

I keep promising to make this blog a little less serious, but I guess I'm on a bit of a "serious bender". But then again, when do any of us get to be serious anymore? Sure, all day long, people say, "Hi, how are you", but, from your local barista to your best friend, most of the time nobody really wants to know the answer to that question. They want you to say, "I'm great, sunhine, rainbows, puppy dog tails ..." I have one word for that, blecccchhh. Blech to insincerity, blech to fakeness, blech to over-the-top "love you", "sweetheart", "honey", baby" calling everybody. Before you go thinking I'm too judgmental, I'm definitely including myself here. I've found myself falling into the whole rhythm of this new-age-way-of-life, i.e. Met somebody twice, call them darling, say "love you" when you part. I mean, saying it the first time would be downright gauche, but you've met twice, right!

Sometimes I think I would like the world to return to common civility. Does that sound victorian of me? Oh, well, I keep on thinking that manners, that true gratitude are worth striving for.

I always get a little off topic, though, because this particular blog is about lying. Yes, lying. We all do it. We all claim we do it to save the feelings of others. That in itself is the biggest lie. I cannot recount one single time in my life when someone has lied to me to save my feelings, or, conversely, when I have lied to save someone else's feelings. We lie to protect ourselves, to shield ourselves. And not just from the consequences of our actions. No, no, it's not that simple. We are complex creatures. We lie in part to shield ourselves from the reflection in the eyes of the people we're hurting. Every single lie hurts somebody, every single one.

I know, I know, you're thinking, what about if somebody asks me if I like their new sweater, and I hate it. Do I say, "No, I hate it"? Come on, be a grown up, there's a big difference between honesty and blatant meanness. You can probably say, "Beautiful colour", "Nice neckline", or find something else that's "true" to say. Just don't lie.

Don't you think it would be a better world if no one lied? Come on, be honest :)

Think of all the possibilities!!! The best one, the most important one, is that we would get to live in a world we could believe in. Good or bad, good and bad, it all goes together, it all works together. We all are weak, we all are strong, we all are good, we all are bad. Wouldn't it be nice to achieve that commonality? I mean, sure, there are the Gandhis, and the Mother Teresas of this world, but, for most of us, we're just ordinary frail, flawed people.

Okay, to the point. This is coming from a serious place. How do you continue to believe somebody who lies to you? How do you find a place in your head, in your heart, where you can do that. No matter how much you love them, how???

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." Martin Luther King Jr.

But, in the meantime, here's a rainbow for you :)