++++

There are some wonderful comments and replies accumulating with this June 29, 2012 post:

+SEVERE TRAUMA SURVIVORS: WE LIVE IN A DIFFERENT WORLD THAN ORDINARY PEOPLE DO

What if some magical entity had whispered in my ear as I grew up as a child in a universe filled with violence, assaults, chaos, absolute madness, that single – to me now – most important piece of information I wish I had known all of my life?

I needed to know that I did not stand a single solitary chance of growing up to be ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’.  Every single time I was attacked in some way, which happened every single day – often multiple times a day – for the 18 long years my mad mean mother had complete and total access to me – I did the only thing I knew how to do.  I did the only thing that even now looking backwards from age 60 that was possible – not only during those 18 years but every single second since then:  I moved forward in time the best and the ‘goodest’ way that I possibly could.

I am feeling some aftermath feelings to the reply I just made to today’s comment to the above post.  It is as if right now I hear my own voice echoing along the corridors of every second I have been alive.  “You are a good person, Linda.  You have always been a good person.  You have always done the best you can do.  And AS A CHILD – you WERE A GOOD PERSON THEN.”  I was a good child.

I was EAGER to be good.  This eagerness, I see now, did not come from wishing to avoid the scourge of Mother’s wrath at me.  She was insane.  She was psychotically and viciously MAD when it came to me.  There was NEVER any way I could anticipate what would make her ‘go off’ at me.

Therefore I was left with that only option – which is a combined effort, really:  I moved forward in time the best way that I could and that way was ALWAYS a good way.

Nobody ever affirmed that to me as a child when it mattered most.  Sure, adults seem quite willing to remind other adults that they are ‘good’ people and that they ‘should’ love their self.

I was thinking of that recently.  If someone told someone else in a very self-assured (I am right absolutely) way to go into their house to search it for the valuable diamond that lies inside — where do we get to say back, “You might have such a diamond but I have NEVER had such a diamond.  And furthermore, I will no longer believe your reality as my own.  When I say I have no diamond anywhere in my house – I mean that exactly!  Now, leave me alone about this diamond thing!”

++

What diamond thing?

This diamond to me is this one:  “I love myself.”

No.  I do not have that diamond.  Nothing in my infancy and childhood ever happened to me that would have given me this diamond of self love.

I – again at age 60 – am only now reaching a point where I am beginning to know this.  I don’t believe self love, this diamond that others evidently take so for granted – that because they own one everyone else does and can — is GIVEN to us by the people who we were born to – the people who were supposed to love and care for us, keep us safe and secure, help us find our inner self love (the real kind!) from the moment we were born.

THEN and only then could we have carried this diamond with us all of the rest of our lives.  THEN – as ‘normal’ and ‘ordinary’ people can, we would benefit and appreciate in gratitude the reminder from these same people that at those times the diamond is forgotten or lost that it can be found again.

I no longer believe this diamond ever existed for me.  I did not lose it!  My diamond of the POTENTIAL for self love was stolen from me primarily by my mother – with lots of assistance (enabling and complicity) by my father.  All of society around our family stole my diamond as well by not noticing or caring about the suffering going on in my family of origin – especially to me.

(This removal was permanent for this lifetime.   I further believe that self love is directly connected to degrees of safe and secure attachment ‘circuitry’ that is built into our physiology during critical windows of early growth and development that cannot be later changed in anything other than peripheral ‘non-primary’ ways.)

++

I can act-as-if I have a diamond of self love available to me.  But I will no longer run around anywhere looking for what I know does not really exist in my life.  I can work to learn what it might be like to have such a precious diamond of self love, but the best I think I can do is to try to KNOW myself and to LIKE and appreciate myself, and to attempt to treat myself as kindly as I ordinarily try to treat other people.

But I DID NOT get to grow my own self love diamond.  Therefore it is a silly waste of time to run around looking for it at this point in my lifetime.  My self love – in my belief system – has always been held by God.  I will be given it back when I reach ‘the other side’.  Meanwhile – I want to know my own TRUTH!!

++

Anyway – this again is a post that I don’t expect ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’ people to comprehend.  I am increasingly liking this fact – actually!  We survivors do have our own reality!  We really DO!!!!

Survivors’ lives are not better or worse than ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ — but our life is very very different!!  How could this not be true given what we have experienced?  Giving myself permission to learn about the ways my life is different because I am different is absolutely empowering to me!!

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

Of course I normally delight in waking to head out into my garden to tackle a project for the day – BUT there is a limit!  As I mentioned in my post yesterday there is one area of my garden I was content on leaving the way it is – until months ago my neighbor on the west tied her large Bull Mastiff up by her front door so she has no choice but to make her ugly, stinking messes right by the fence.  I see this every time I exist my back door on this narrow side of my house/garden:

It gets much worse than this as time goes on.  Often it builds up for months before one of the grown children clean it up – which seems to be happening less and less often.  There is NOTHING physically wrong with this neighbor woman that she can’t clean this up herself!  I imagine her kids must be disgusted and sick of the part they have been playing in this crappy dysfunction!

This woman walks directly past this crap every time she goes in or out of her house – and does not care.  I am not about to try to have a civilized conversation with her to try to ‘manipulate’ her into doing what I want – CLEAN THIS UP AND KEEP IT CLEAN!!!

Nope, I am stuck dealing with this myself on my side of the fence.  This is NOT a project to delight me!  Work, much work, expense — time I would much rather spend on other more friendly projects —

AND YET

I am so reminded of survivors of infant and child neglect and abuse.  We had the CRAP from our abusers dumped onto us from the time we were so little NONE of it belonged to us.

But who is going to FIX the horrible rotten stinky mess?

WE ARE if anything is going to be improved at all.  And this includes building our own boundary fences in the present when we need to between our own beautiful life and the toxic dramas that belong to others.  It also includes detecting and repairing-healing the messes inside of our own self the best that we can that are directly in consequence to the evil treatments we received during our most vulnerable developmental years of infancy and childhood.

So – I will try to keep my attitude positive as I tackle this stupidly necessary job.  The hotter it gets outside the stinkier that ugly mess becomes!  The more it rains now this time of year the more the crap steams when the sun comes out.  There will be no time for the poopdy-doo to petrify in the heat – it just plain is NOT going to go away!

Yes, I feel angry and disgusted at my neighbor!  But I will not change her!

I have a rediculous waste-of-time-and-money job to do and I best get to it.

No complaining in the world, no pointing fingers, no amount of negative emotion, resentment, wishful thinking is going to block out this ugliness.

For as beautiful as the entire rest of my large yard is becoming as I transform it into garden – this sight of CRAP is what first greets me outside my own door 20 feet away.  Trying to find a solution is up to me.

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

That’s the American-Mexican border fence behind the adobe chicken coop – the adobe pathways control weeds, divert water, create and define garden spaces and ELIMINATE the Bermuda grass I despise

More front garden….

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

The more I think about it as I reflect daily on what my experience of being a self in a body is like in the world, the more I realize that what others might choose to attach individual labels to seem to operate as a single ONE THING.

I am referring to (1) Disorganized-Disoriented Insecure Attachment Disorder (DD), (2) Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) (again, an insecure attachment disorder, (3) dissociation which is an integral part of the physiological operation of both these two (which are probably the same Insecure Attachment Disorder in my thinking), (4) and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (complex or otherwise).

When an infant and young toddler, not to mention a child pursuing growth and development through all its further stages, is repeatedly attacked, abused, terrorized and traumatized — that little person’s ongoing reality of self-in-the-world is disrupted and turned into chaos with each attack.

Such a little person does not get a chance to develop what I am thinking about today as being a smoothly functioning transmission system that would allow the child to be able to transition between different states of being — especially between one traumatic state to and through the next one — OR between a state of child-reality interest and peaceful calm while pursuing their life into and through a state of terrorism and trauma.

++

I had another rather innocuous experience yesterday while in conversation with a good friend in which I was asked a question ‘out-of-the-blue’ that required of ME some amount of time passing so that I could look within myself to sort through the vast amount of information that appeared within me in response to this question.  The question surprised me, thus I was not prepared to answer instantaneously – so I could not.

This other person, not being a person that was overwhelmed with early traumas was a person that appeared TO ME to be exceedingly impatient wanting a response from me ASAP — which meant in ‘ordinary person time’.  This person did not – and probably could not – possibly understand that in my body I have to MANUALLY shift my gears!  I have to work my way through what appears to me sometimes – and what would appear to most other people — as WAY too much information!

Today, thinking about this interchange, I realize that how ordinary people process sudden shifts in being must be so smooth, so practical-for-ordinary-existence, so hidden and automatic — that they simply never have to pay attention to HOW they respond – to anything (much).

++

I picture a state of acute trauma that might happen to someone on a (hopefully) rare occasion such as having to react to a vehicle at full speed on the highway swerving into one’s lane — HOW does someone react – in response to all possible outcomes of actions that COULD be taken?

This, to me, is a far more similar example of what ongoing life is often like to severe early trauma survivors.  The reaction of the ‘rest of the world’ to us does NOT help us.  NOW is what ‘they’ want.  Super NOW!!

We don’t have a super now in those situations when some kind of inner deliberation of information being presented by our environment is needed.  We operate in ‘acute trauma time’ which might oddly seem to be very SLOW time compared to other people’s very RAPID time.

Yes, most frequently when a traumatic threat actually appears and is very real RAPID reaction is what is going to save the day rather than long ‘higher cortex’ higher thinking which is very slow compared to the automatic reaction of the stress response system.

But our body-brain never got to develop a ‘transmission’ appropriately to be able to distinguish between our physiological reactions.  We are always in a mode of operation that is accumulating A WHOLE LOT OF INFORMATION – more than ordinary people can imagine — so that we can ALWAYS be prepared to survive in worst possible situations — whether they really exist in the present moment or not.

There was absolutely nothing in my friend’s question yesterday that was threatening or traumatic.  But the way my body-brain was built in the midst of 18 years of terror and trauma — does not know the difference because it did not get to build within me an ordinary response-to-life.

The worst insecure attachment disorders (DD and RAD) (which again are probably the same thing) were built into us because we were developing within extremely harmful, toxic, traumatic and malevolent environments. We cannot go back to the beginning of our life and build a different body-brain.  We have to make it through ALL situations we encounter for the rest of our lives with this trauma-altered body we were forced to develop.

If the world around us, meaning ordinary people, cared enough to learn what life is like for us, and then gave us the time we need during those times we are presented with our too-much-information to sort it all out consciously so that we could DECIDE and CHOOSE the way were were going to respond-react — our own experience of life would be a whole lot easier – and smoother.

But ordinary people run the world here, for the most part.  This is a very good thing, actually.  This means that the REST of the world around us was NOT malevolent – as ours was and appears to be on some level for us the rest of our lives.

So, to me, it is vital that when at all possible especially in relationship with our intimate friends and family members, that we be able to identify when these overwhelming moments happen to us verbally or in some other way using signals that communicate I NEED TIME to process what you have said to me, what has happened here, what is being asked of me, sort through the information I just received in this situation, etc. so that I can find my OWN way through this as smoothly as possible.

What overwhelms our ‘systems’ and when will never truly make sense to non-survivors.  Yet their empathy and compassion, care and patience can help US — and therefore our relationships with others — much easier.  But this will require a different standard of time-passing that will allow us to find our way out of our automatic and often extremely confusing traumatic stress reactions into actions that come from our inner place of peaceful calm.

We are worth this!

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

I posted a music video in the comment section of my last post titled

+IMAGINE

My thoughts expanded after listening to this song several times to include what I remember of my father’s tenor voice and his singing.

Musical memories from our infancy and childhood can inform us even further about the state of health or sickness within our homes of origin.  Just like the existence or absence of communication as a whole, of personal equity and encouragement of personal story telling by all members of the family from the first words a child understands and speaks, and the quality of play within the family, the patterns of musical appreciation and expression also can guide us on our journey toward understanding the bigger picture of where we came from – our ORIGINS.

++

The stories about my parents’ singing were repeated for as long as I can remember – and they were not particularly pleasant.  In fact, these stories spoke of the ‘culture’ each of my parents came from, and of their youth and inability to understand how hurtful words are when used as weapons against anyone else no matter how old they are.

The great musical divide between my parents seemed to have happened very shortly after their marriage.  My father tactlessly – who knows?  Perhaps even aggressively told my mother that she sang through her nose.

NEVER after the instant that those words passed out of my father’s lips (according to Mother) did she ever sing in the presence of her husband again.

NEVER, also – perhaps by some strange and sorry arrangement, did my father ever sing in the presence of my mother after that, either.

SO SAD!

Such a reflection of the deep woundedness (in my opinion) carried within each of these two people right into their marriage was this unrepaired rupture in my parents’ musical relationship.

Using the idea that the prosody – the rhythmic and musical component of spoken language – speaks of personal songs within us with every word we speak — and speaks of the personal songs within someone we are hearing every time they speak and we listen — there is no dividing line between attitudes expressed about a person’s voice, their singing, their speaking, and the content of what they say.

++

I will never be able to remember anything about my mother fondly as abusive to me as she was – and as psychotically insane – though I wish her no harm wherever her soul may be.  This includes any positive remembrance of her singing — though I do not especially project my truthful negative assessment of Mother to the actual songs that she sang.

She was a fan of singing:  “One flew over the rainbow,”  “The white cliffs of Dover,” “The man on the flying trapeze,” “Que Sera Sera,” or the “Aleutian lullaby,” “Don’t fence me in”  — etc.

Father sang his mountaineering and cowboy songs.  He had a flowing perfect-keyed lovely tenor voice though never did I hear him sing from his gut.  His singing was melodic in my memory.  Mother’s – in my memory – singing was narcissistic, on the edge of where old memories become hysterical, invasive to the listener as in “I am singing you darn well better listen to ME,” sharp and saturated with unhappiness just past the edge where most people could hear it.

I could hear it as a child or I would not be telescoping my adjectives about my parents’ singing in the way that I am at this moment – though I have no intention of moving my memories of either parent any closer to that morbid, toxic past that was my infancy and childhood.

++

I write of this because a longing for my ‘other’ father arose within my heart yesterday listening to the tenors sing (as posted above).  I know that my memories, my BODY memories, of the sounds of my parents’ voices are as old as I am.  I listened to them before I was born – and after that, most unfortunately, most of my listening TO my parents’ voices no doubt turned into listening FOR the sound of my parents’ voices.

The forced isolation and seclusion that was a massive part of Mother’s insane abuse of me (keeping me in hell in place of her) led to me being in danger and under threat of danger from Mother from the time of my birth.  Being left in a crib, alone, behind a closed door — I KNOW I listened into the silence for sounds that could help me understand what was dangerous when — when it was coming – where danger did not seem to exist — such as when I was alone and the sounds of my parents and my 14-month-older-brother in other areas of the home and yard were mulling themselves around in sounds that floated down the hallway in my direction.

The sound of Mother’s stomping footsteps, for example, the sound of her hand turning the doorknob and pushing open the bedroom door – included with the sound of her brutal and brutalizing voice and body movements – well, not a non-music any infant-child should ever hear.

But the sounds of that rich and gentle tenor voice that belonged to that man who I belonged to as his daughter.  That voice never hurt me.  All that I have later come to understand about how that man did not protect me — did not did not did not ever intervene against the monster he married that attacked me — I don’t in my memory evidently ever wish to attach/associate the sound of Father’s voice to that man.

++

I have a very clear ‘song stopper’ memory of my own that must tie to my preteen or early teen years.  Somehow the whole family must have been momentarily fooled by a good mood of Mother’s.  We were all in our Jeep heading down the Alaskan mountain one bright and shiny morning – myself and my two sisters feeling safe enough to sing, “Lemon Tree, Very Pretty.”

Uh-Oh!  Like Mother’s permanent ban on Linda ever playing safely within her sphere of knowledge I learned that day that my singing was equally forbidden.  Just as the Jeep made the first turn on the road down the mountain that put our house out of sight, it happened:  “Linda, stop that horrible singing RIGHT NOW!” Mother shot over the back of the front seat into the shared sister space of singing for us 3 in the back seat.

“You have a HORRIBLE voice!  You sing through your nose!  You are ruining your sisters’ beautiful song!”

Whether or not she actually included, “I don’t EVER want to hear the sound of your voice singing again as long as I live,” that was and is the message I have attached to this memory.

++

I have one other singing memory from when I had left home and was about 20 years old.  I always felt even as a young adult that everyone else was better than me.  I did not understand normal human bonding, so whenever I was in the presence of groups of people who were solid friends with one another, I felt vastly outside the group and interpreted this in my hidden inner places that this division of me from them existed because I was less of a person than all of them were.

A friend’s friend’s sister – who had left the small Minnesota town where she was born and raised (the one this event happened in for me) for the GLORY of a stage career of some kind in NYC had returned for a Christmas family thing.

There was one of those early-70s coffee house sing-a-long from a short un- embellished stage at the local college taking place one evening – and I attended with the ‘alien group’ of friends.

And – daring of daring – I AGAIN for the first time since the Lemon Tree had crashed and burned, dared to open my mouth and SING!!

Sing I did.

At the end of all this ‘jibber jabber’ in song this big-NYC-woman turned to me and remarked, “You sure have a strong voice.”

Forty years later this scene and this woman’s words still slash me.

“What did she MEAN,” I still want to know – because I am human.

I REALLY do wonder what she meant, and never again since THOSE words have I sung again in front of another person.

++

I know enough now that I have my keyboard that I do hear and can hit notes in perfect pitch.

But I feel inside me that the Singing Linda has had all the life-flowing juice sucked and leaked right out of her and there’s nothing left by some dry, shriveled up, immune-to-life-restoration flaky (at best) frail and fragile and ugly bare shadow of a Linda-Self — that COULD have loved to sing.

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

I have written more than a thousand posts (this one is the 1201 post to be exact) during the lifetime of this blog, but never so far have I titled one to match the frontispiece image – IMAGINE until now.

Looking toward the past, looking toward the future – my daughter is days away from the birth now of my 2nd grandson.  IMAGINE if that little one came into the world and had no people there to greet him?

And I mean that – children with people – without ‘a people’.

Readers who find this blog and resonate with its words know what that means just as I do – what it means to be born and raised – and then in one’s heart to feel forever more what it is like to always be lonely for ‘our people’.

I say that to myself today loud and clear in my inner places that give silent voice:  “I am lonely for ‘my people’.

Who are my people?  Where are my people?

I don’t know.  But if I did know, and I could find them, I would know THAT because this feeling I always have that I miss them would go away!

I know my people when they post comments on this blog – me and they, we – are one another’s people.  I feel that special connection when a special piece of vast empty loneliness is filled as I see myself reflected back in the words of my people.

Infants – from birth – are meant to see their own self reflected back to them by their caregivers, especially their mother – and their father – the infant’s people!

To be cared about and to be cared for – by our people.  Didn’t happen to those of us so terrorized, traumatized, and left so alone.

We HAD no people – or very few (I had no one – part of my specialty in life, I guess – but I had the Alaskan wilderness – which counts powerfully in my survival).

++

Feeling alone in a crowd – said like some kind of familiar cliche – true not for everyone.  I don’t believe that it is.  Those who say it and know what this feels like – well, there’s no doubt something tragic in their early years – they had no people.

I am simply musing.  And imagining.  What would it be like if suddenly I FOUND my people as my people FOUND me?  Will I ever know in this lifetime?

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

Not complaining – just saying – in my entire universe growing up there was ALWAYS SOMETHING WRONG that involved me – in my entire universe I on occasion forgot this fact ’cause I was really just a kid.

It was obviously – in my kid world – Mother’s JOB to remind me there was ALWAYS SOMETHING WRONG that involved me at these times when I accidentally forgot.

Because my abusive mother was INSANE, psychotically insane, I never knew beforehand exactly what it was that I was doing wrong until I ‘made her’ (‘poor mother’) TELL me in every way that she could exactly what it was I was doing or had done wrong.  Unfortunately for me, her need to remind me was so continual, so constant and so brutally abusive in every way — every biochemical and nerve and cell in my body now remembers her ‘lessons’ as being real.  It is now ONLY my conscious mind along with my inner soul that KNOWS this entire set-up was ALWAYS a lie.

Of course Mother was more than psychotically crazy.  She was hyper-vigilant, as well.  It was the task of her inner madness — assigned to her in her early childhood that exploded into being while I was being born — to make absolutely CERTAIN I did not and could not escape the HELL she HAD to keep me contained within – in place of herself – so that SHE could escape and be free of her HELL – BECAUSE I WAS STUCK IN THERE, IMPRISONED AND TORMENTED/TORTURED instead of her.

And I better not EVER forget this was my place!  I better not EVER accidentally forget and be a kid – which is essentially what yesterday’s post was all about:  +Age 7 – mid-1959 – The ‘baby bottle’ and mid-night beatings

++

I mention this because I noticed again today that a part of me does not any longer allow me to FORGET that there is something wrong – always somewhere – even if I temporarily forget this fact — in my life for one reason – one reason only – one reason that was pounded into me every day of the first 18 years of my life — that one reason being there was always something wrong in MY life — because I WAS/AM IN IT!

(Which was the same thing as saying in Mother’s ‘crazy-think-speak’ that there would be nothing wrong with HER life if I wasn’t in it — which was the same thing REALLY as saying that there would be nothing wrong with HER life if HER OWN EVIL-BAD child self was not inside of HER — which of course at this point since I had succeeded in being born and since she had survived birthing me was the same thing as saying that the EVIL-BAD child that was HERS and that she entirely was successful at projecting onto/into ME was……..  Well – here’s the picture!!!  ACK!!!!  BLECK!!  Talk about crazy making.  Talk about TOXIC!!!)

I don’t fool myself into believing that I will ever escape what this kind of brain washing and conditioning did to me.  Any reprieve I get comes from consciously determined and inform intent and effort to try to step out from under — away from — this chronic, constant sense of eternal foreboding that was so built into my body-nervous system-brain.

The best I hope for is that on a superficial MENTAL level – with perhaps some minor (software rather than hardware) kinds of adjustments elsewhere in my body – I can create a kind of peace inside myself during segments of my days and nights.  I have to be very careful about what I think, how I handle my feelings, what I expect of myself, what kind of people and circumstances and challenges I let close to me in order to keep the chronic state of ‘something is wrong even if I don’t know what it is at this moment, even if I temporarily forget it simply because I exist in my own life‘ at a little bit of distance from myself.

I was blamed – insanely so – for EVERYTHING that ever went wrong in my parents’ home while I lived in it.  If I chose to remember and could remember what I could list in this regard — which I don’t and won’t — the things I was blamed for would fill a book all by themselves.

My older siblings know exactly what I am talking about.  My experience was with a worst kind of persistent and vicious terrorism committed by my violent, insane captor.

I am just saying – not complaining – while I have never been a fallen warrior I do have a perpetual physiologically built-into-my-body massive dark cloud that falls around me continually UNLESS I am making personal continual effort to create some space where it cannot enter.

This work will last for my lifetime in this body.  I consider myself very fortunate that I DO at least have some times now where I can periodically temporarily escape the awareness of the influences within me of having experienced those first 18 years of traumas.  I know that other severe early abuse survivors know exactly what I am writing about today.

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

Having been raised and abused by a mother who was at best psychotic I find that as I ripen with age (turning 61 end of this August) that I have increasingly little tolerance for ordinary people’s neurosis.  There seems to be a lot of that in the world.  People seem to not only accept what appears to me to be unnecessary and ridiculous neurosis in one another, they appear comfortable with it, perhaps expect it, and do nothing visible over the years to improve the quality of ordinary life as it appears to operate in normal American culture.

I know a great deal about what non-sense is.  Readers of this blog know that I know — and that they also know – from years of experience living in a chaotic non-nonsensical world.

Personally I find nothing redeeming – or even remotely interesting – in preserving a phony status quo just because folks delight in turning a blind eye to the truth in their own life and in one another’s.  I do not nor do I intend to ever again ‘walk on eggshells’ or pussy-foot around so as to not threaten other people’s reality.

Yet every single person does – obviously – have the absolute right to be who and how they exactly wish to be.  It is not my job to judge or to criticize — but after those terrible first 18 years as a witness-watcher-observer — I do see what I see and know what I know.  Pretending otherwise does not suit me.

Maybe growing up in the way I did, which spared me even the remote ability to pretend to have anything like a public persona — is some kind of blessing.  I remain a social outsider.  I have always been an outsider even during the many years in my adult life that I did all in my power to fit in and to belong somewhere.

So watch I do — and people appear in my life and fade away just as simply.  Perhaps it is true for all adults eventually that in time only quality will continue and anything else will simply disappear.  Perhaps this as it really should be.

I tolerate clutter in my home where I live alone — but oh my do I NOT tolerate clutter when it comes to human beings!  Clutter in a creative person’s environment comes with ‘the territory’, is part of the proverbial ‘whole ball of wax’.  (!! on that one!)

Just saying — giving myself permission to be both who and how I am in the world?  Well, of course I have tried to apply that model to others.  But I don’t have a choice not to tolerate myself.  I do, however, have the choice to be mighty mighty picky about anyone else being a part of my life, also.

Just saying….

++++

Related post on not being ‘a people person’:

*Age 15 – MY ‘VISION’ – ALONE NAKED IN THE WOODS SINGING

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

As long as today is already a day I’ve found myself digging around in my word pantry after days of having my left verbal brain’s back turned on my right very busy OTHER kind of brain (I think the back turning is quite mutual, actually) – I might as well write another post today so that I will be able to back my way out of that pantry for some time to come — mostly wordless – then without feeling much guilt at all – or much fear about whether or not my word abilities will return on that ephemeral some-other-day.

Truth is, even though I can at times dash around the word world while wielding syllables and sounds as if I am a native – I am so NOT a native.  I can’t say ‘intermingled’ – hummm – I will say enmeshed?  No, not the correct word…..  Intertwined as in intimately and irrevocably interconnected with?  Inextricably bound up with the horrendous abuses my psychotic Mother invented for me with her supreme bizarre talents were the thousands of hours of isolation in corners and in beds – etc. – that she also expertly placed me in the middle of — meaning — most of my childhood I was alone in a world where words held no place and therefore no meaning whatsoever to me.

In my native land I had no native tongue.

Silent, as a facebook friend so kindly and recently pointed out to me contains the same letters as does the world listen.

Meaning – what, exactly?

Circumstantial evidence, I assert!!

And yet – in this book that I found and doubt I will ever read —

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++