March 29, 2012

Voices

___________________

non-subject: Voices
AWW ~ march 28, 2012


I decided to check John Knapp - Johnny Profane's Facebook page again yesterday, March 27.

I forget now where I was at the time, but I had one of my crutches, due to a sprained ankle, under by left arm as I held my iPhone in my left hand. And then I fumbled my phone catching it with my left hand before the phone found its way out of my palm.

Just like two weeks ago on March 13 when I had checked Profane's Facebook page, my fumbling fingers, this time my left thumb, tapped my iPhone screen clicking Profane's "friend request" icon and appartently the "subscribe" icon on his Facebook Timeline.

Unlike two weeks ago, I didn't get frantic; I did feel sick to stomach. I was embarrassed.

I found the "cancel friend request" icon and clicked it. I found the "unsubscribe" icon and clicked it.

His Facebook notifications would show that I'd requested his friendship and that I'd cancelled the request. My request to "subscribe" and then "unsubscribe" would show up too.

Shit, I thought. I don't want him to think I'm stalking him. I don't want him to think I'm playing some sort of game.

I wasn't cyber-stalking or playing games; I was viewing his public Facebook page.

I could hear Knapp - Profane's voice in my head with angry conviciton, "See Carol, you are a cyber-stalker! This is proof!"

I could hear his voice condemning me, telling me just how despicable I am and that I should show remorse for the "irreparable damage" I had inflicted upon him in 2011.

On August 25, 2011, on his then non-profit website, on his Facebook page, on other peoples' Facebook pages, Knapp had posted: "...Today, because Carol’s cyberattacks, bullying, and defamation have not stopped—for over one year, mind you—I have reported the situation to the authorities and am seeking legal recourse for relief in the irreperable damage to my emotional well-being, family life, and professional career..."

I wasn't guilty of bullying or defamation. It's possible the posts on my blog and on the Modern Chat online discussion forum could be taken as "cyberattacks" if a person interprets someone telling their story an "attack." I seldom ever use that word, "attack." It's too alarmist for me. Besides, I doubt I'm significant enough to warrant an "attack."

Knapp's statement, "over one year, mind you," was a lie; I didn't bring Knapp's name public until the latter part of March, 2011. So it had been five months, not over a year.

Logically I knew I didn't cause irreparable damage to Knapp's life; Knapp did that. Yet still his accusations and the angry, rage-filled voice I hear behind them, haunt me at times.

As I stood this past Tuesday supported by the crutch under my left armpit and holding my iPhone in my left hand, my mind heard Knapp's different voices. The rage-filled voice. The victim voice. The authoritative adult voice. The counselor's voice. The understanding voice. The mocking voice. The critical voice. The "so-the-fuck-what" voice.

My heart felt a quiver of panic.

I asked myself, "Carol, what would you do if your fingers Facebook-fumbled on someone's Timeline other than Knapp's? How would you respond to you blunder?"

"I'd own up."

"So why not be Carol now. Don't let fear of this man cause you to behave in a way that isn't true to yourself."

I turned off the voices and sent Knapp - Profane a Facebook message:
"Friend request error, again. Sorry."
___________________

March 23, 2012

Critters in School

non-subject:  "in school"
AWW ~ november 2, 2009

~*~

1995

Joshua came running into the house.  "Mom!!  Mom!!!  Come outside quick!!! Sam found something!!"  Joshua's five-year old voice had that sound of excited urgency; life was happening and it couldn't be missed! He ran back out the front storm door as quickly as he'd run in.  He probably had on his cowboy boots; he was proud of his boots.

"Oh boy," I thought.  "Sam probably pulled some old dead mutilated animal into the yard,"  I mumbled to myself.  I'd been sick of late and my energy was low.  I got up the gumption to go out and see what Sam had drug into the yard.

Sam was a great dog, a mutt we picked up from someone. He'd been abused as a pup and then kept on a chain; he seemed grateful to have a family.  He was part golden retriever, part other brands, and I guess some chow; his tongue was partially black.  He was so protective of our family and his turf, I think he would have given his life for any of us.

I walked down the hall and through the living room on the hard wood floors out into our front yard.  With his nose, Sam was nuzzling a tiny creature.  I was surprised he hadn't eaten it.  Sarah and Joshua were with Sam eyeing the little hunk of life.  I imagine Sam didn't eat the little thing because Sarah and Joshua were so intrigued with it.

"It's still alive Momma!"

"Did Sam bring it into the yard?"

"No. It was just lying here.  I guess it's momma dropped it or somethin'."

I looked at the hairless rodent.  Sam looked up at me with his ever obedient eyes like he was asking what he should do.

The rodent's head was huge. It's eyes were closed.  It was breathing quickly.  It had no cuts or scratches.  I wasn't sure what kind of rodent it was.  A gopher?  A mole?  It had to be only a few days old; it's head was so big compared to its body.  It hadn't grown into it yet. It was ugly-cute.

I went and got a shoe box while Sarah, Joshua, and Sam guarded the little life.  I can't remember now what I put in the shoe box for bedding, old socks maybe?  I took the shoe box outside and in went the little abandoned life.  I pet Sam on the head.  "Good dog."  He liked the approval from his human.

At the time, Sarah was seven years old and Joshua was five.  I had chosen homeschooling as the avenue for their education.  I first heard about homeschooling at a LaLeche meeting when Sarah was an infant.  "You can do that?" was my response; a typical response in the late '80s regarding homeschooling.  These days, in 2009,  homeschooling is pretty well accepted and known, at least in North Carolina where so many families homeschool that the government department can't keep up with them.  I'm not sure of the current North Carolina laws, but I don't think they've changed much from the '90's.

I called the pet store where Sarah and Joshua and I volunteered every two weeks.  It was owned by Jack and his wife.  We really liked working there.  The pet store was where Sarah got her guinea pigs, Rosey and Piglet.  One was a gift; the other we bought.  Sarah took great care of them. Of course they procreated, as piglets do.  Guinea pigs are born with their eyes open and fully furred.

On our way to the pet store with the little life in the shoe box, I was rummaging my mind trying to identify the creature.  It looked familiar; but as it was so young, it was difficult for me to pinpoint.  Then it hit me. "It's a squirrel!! That's what it is!"  Sarah and Joshua's eyes were wide with excitement.

We had a new member to our family; Squirrelly the Squirrel, a very original name chosen by the children.  At the pet store Jack confirmed that Squirrelly was indeed a squirrel. We bought kitten formula and droppers and a bottle.  It doesn't take much to fill a squirrel's tummy.  Sarah would get up with me in the middle of the night for the wee-morning hour feedings.

Squirrelly, who went to Washington, DC, with us because we couldn't find a squirrel sitter.  Squirrelly, who would snuggle  in my shirt pocket stuffed with Klennex.  Squirrelly, who opened his eyes after five weeks or so; first his right eye and then a few hours later, his left eye.  Squirrelly, whom Sam would lick clean, including Squirrelly's private parts to help Squirrelly urinate.  Squirrelly, who rode in a special pocket book stuffed with Kleenex.  Squirrelly who would squeal if he got too far from warm bodies or Kleenex.  Squirrelly, whom was adopted back by a momma squirrel late in September or early October as she picked him up by the scruff of his neck, as momma squirrels do, and scampered off to the neighbor's tree scrambling up to her elaborate, enclosed, leafy squirrel nest.

For six weeks, in our on-the-road, in-the-house, in-the-yard, at-the-park, life-as-it-happens school, Squirrelly was our teacher, and a fine teacher he was.

March 22, 2012

The Sword of the Lord and Bagpipes

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)
________________________

July, 2006: 47 years old. Winston-Salem, NC. I had prayed to God for exposure of what lay deep within my soul. A certain reunion with an ex-Way follower brought a journey into depths that I never expected.
_________________________

Here I was again. Sitting at the computer. Reading on GreasespotCafe. It had become such a part of my life after I'd left The Way eight months earlier. I had exited The Way without my husband and children; they had continued until recently. In that eight-month time frame the anti-Way forum, GreasepostCafe, had become my church. It was life consuming at times, engrossing.

It was so odd. Prior to getting involved with Greasespot, I didn't like computers; I didn't even like email. I'd written a funny Dr. Suess-like poem about that entitled "Ode to Email." Yet here I was with an umbilical cord to this damn electronic screen. Yet so much of my life had changed via the internet air waves.

I had just finished reading a post on GSC about "Do You Ever Think of Past Loves." Now I was about three lines into another post, where a person had shared about the influence of unresolved trauma as a cause for Bipolar Disorder. I had been diagnosed with Bipolar II five years ago.

As I was reading the 3rd sentence of the 2nd post, up popped an Instant Message in the middle of the computer screen. It was like one of those announcements: We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin.

The computer instant message pop-up stated: "Hi Carol. It's Luke. I had to register to send this to you. I check on here every once in awhile, the Corps thread to see if there is any news about old friends from that time. I saw someone was looking for me. I had to read through a bunch of posts.  I figured out it was you.  It'd be great to reconnect sometime."

I was stunned. Luke was my ex-lover from over two decades ago. He had been the father of the life I had sucked from womb by a cold plastic or stainless steel medical vacuum. Luke and I had loved and laughed and cried, lived and moved the Word together. After around two years, our passionate bond was severed. Like that life in my womb, our relationship was aborted for me when I AWOLed from The Way Corps, the Way International's elite leadership training program. After my shameful act of AWOLing, I had felt unworthy of Luke, who was still Way Corps at that time.  Now he was no longer with The Way; he'd left close to two decades ago along with other faithful followers.

I immediately responded to the Instant Message. Luke was still online. We met in the GreasespotCafe chat room and chatted for a few minutes. We exchanged phone numbers.

I sat there after we finished staring at my computer screen.  Stunned.

My god. I had prayed for full exposure of my soul, but never did I imagine this would appear.

I called my psychologist. "Luke got in touch with me." My psychologist knew some of the history and significance of this event and whatever may follow.

He replied, "When do you want to come in?"
___________________

Shame and Anger

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

non-subject: most shameful moment
AWW ~ 9/13/09
1977, 1980, 1992: Various times of deep shame.

_________________________

That is the subject Fred threw out as a springboard. Or a plank, perhaps depending on one's perspective.

What is my most shameful moment? Dare I write about it? Do I know it?

Is it my promiscuous years? Is it the time I put the pillow over Heather's face wanting to end her life? Is it the time the pistol lay on the sofa beside me? Is it when I AWOLed from the Way Corps, breaking my spiritual commitment and leaving my responsibilities high and dry?

This is a subject I'd rather run from than address. So, Carol what is it. You could write about anger; you have had anger at times. Remember the time you threw the Tupperware cutting board down on the floor so hard that it broke in half? Or how about your hate letters to your husband? Why are you writing in second person?

Shame feels like such a dirty nasty word. It makes me want to go take a shower, and wash away the debris. Drown the little gremlins that chatter in the dark parts of my mind accusing me of the awful person that I have been. It scares me.

****************************************************

I went to see Marty, that summer of 1977. I think it was July. I was 18 and he was 17. Marty and I had previously talked about spiritual matters. He invited me to come to his home and stay a week. He would introduce me to some friends of his that were Wiccan and I could attend a Wicca gathering.

Of course I was interested. I was exploring all sorts of spiritual avenues. I had recently graduated from high school. Around that same time I had broken my relationship with my fiance and called off our wedding date. He was 4 years older than I. We had been living together in a small cabin at the foot of Rocky Face Mountain, near Taylorsville, North Carolina, in the community of Vashti.

After moving out of his place I had moved in for a few weeks with Tula. Tula was in her 80's and I was helping around her home. Every Wednesday was wash day. Tula still used a wringer washer on her screened-in porch. She was a delightful little lady.

From her place I moved onto the Randall's farm to lend a hand. Margaret and her husband had moved down from New York to homestead, in a sense. I lived in the trailer in the cow pasture. The mobile home had an inviting covered, raised wooden porch deck that wrapped around it. I loved sitting our there, viewing the pasture and the mountains. Cows would often wake me in the morning, scratching their backsides on the porch. It must have felt good to them, indicated by their cooing moos.

I'm not sure where Marty and I had discussed Wicca. Marty lived over an hour away from me; it's not like we talked regularly or saw each other often. Perhaps there was a  reunion, or maybe we saw each other at a funeral.

Marty ended up having to work when I went to visit that summer. I spent most of my time with his mother.  But I did see Marty in the evenings.

Marty and I related on the spiritual level and would discuss it when we were alone. While visiting that week we discussed how sex was a spiritual experience. It was 1977, on the heels of the sexual revolution and free love.

One night during my week-long visit, Marty and I were lying on the floor in his parent's den. Apparently his parents had already gone to bed. I recall the dim lighting in the room. It was carpeted. Perhaps Marty was sleeping there and had given up his bed for me as a guest.

Though I wasn't promiscuous, I had been sexually active from an early teen. Sex was always a serious matter to me; not taken lightly. It was "making love" not having sex. So I'm sure the blow job I gave Marty that night was given wanting to please and make him feel good. I dare not have intercourse; Marty and I were blood relatives. I have a feeling I'm the one that initiated the act. Marty was shy and somewhat quiet.

At the time it wasn't a shameful act.

I would see Marty occasionally over the next 30 years. At first I chose to not think about the incident; to pretend it never happened. Sometimes I'd wonder what Marty's thought processes were when we would see each other at gatherings, the visual images in his mind. We had never discussed the incident after it happened. We didn't discuss much after that. I had entered The Way and life had simply changed; it's like I lived in a separate world or on a different plane or something.

After 32 years, after I'd been out of The Way for over 3 years, I approached Marty at a gathering and apologized. I felt I had perhaps been the initiator. It mattered to me, to not have this hidden secret that was never acknowledged.
_________________________

Private Eyes

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

non-subject:  "rooms in the house"
AWW ~ 12/10/09

________________________

The bathroom in my parent's home, the home in Hickory, the home they moved to in 1961 with the three of us children.  That home that was built in the late 1930's before the neighborhood grew around it.  That home that my mother told me was dingy and old when they bought it. From her description my mind has always pictured a dark, damp house with spider webs for decor. My parents bought it on a whim and gave it a face lift.  They must have remodeled, at least cleaned and painted.  But how much did my mother do, even in picking out what paint to use? After all she was institutionalized at Broughton in Morganton, North Carolina, when I was a toddler, not long after we moved to Hickory. At least that is what I've been told.

Until I was in my mid-thirties, I believed Mom was institutionalized for mental dysfunction due to a car wreck. A wreck in which she broke her neck.  The wreck was in Florida, in or around Daytona, sometime between May, 1959, and before sometime in 1961.

According to Mom, we were on our way to the movie theater to pick up my seven-or-eight-year old sister.  Mom, of course, was driving. I was an infant at the time; Mom said I was in the back seat.  My brother would have been five or six years old.  He was in the front seat and refused to take off his football helmet.  My sister awaited pick up at the theater.

In route, the back of a trash truck opened up and dumped trash all over our windshield.  Mom couldn't see, and we wrecked.  I wonder what we ran into?  My brother supposedly went through the windshield; the football helmet, which he had adamantly refused to remove, protected him.  My baby bottle supposedly broke and covered my face.  Mom supposedly turned her head to look at me in the back seat.  She witnessed her baby girl with no face, and she went into shock.

I wonder what kind of car seats protected babies in the late 1950's and early 1960's?  I wonder how Mom could turn her broken neck?  Perhaps she moved her eyes to the far right, her neck already maimed and facing the back seat where I lay. I recall during my preschool years that Mom used to wear a neck brace.

Mom was first sent to Emory in Atlanta; that was when we lived in Florida.  After we moved to North Carolina in 1961, she again had to be put away, but that time was in Broughton.  Both times were to help her get her memory back.  The story she told me was that she couldn't recall her name, our names, how to eat, how to function in daily life.  All due to the car wreck and part of that was the shock of seeing me with no face.  The faceless infant.

Up until my mid-thirties I believed she had gotten well because Dad had decided to bring her back home from Broughton and that her familiar surroundings helped her regain memory and function.  But we were in a recently moved to home; that part wouldn't have been familiar. What would have been familiar to her? Dad, me, my brother, my sister, Hickory and the surrounding area. Mom had grown up in Catawba County. Dad had lived in Hickory when he and Mom dated; they eloped to Gaffney, South Carolina, in 1942 and got married.

I wonder if one reason they moved back to North Carolina, after living in New York and Florida for almost 20 years, was to help Mom regain memory? To reintroduce some of the sights and sounds of her formative years?  To help her learn to function again?

Until my mid-thirties, I had been told the wreck story.  As far as I recall, Mom was the only one that told me.  Perhaps we discussed it as a family; I don't know.

In 1995 Mom tried to commit suicide; I found her on her kitchen floor.  I was around 35 years old. She had called me before the attempt. I called my neighbor when I got the call, the cry for help, from Mom.  My neighbor watched my two young children so I could drive to Mom's alone.  I found her passed out on the floor.  She was breathing and had a pulse.  I called 911.  The hospital staff said she would have died had I not come to her aid. Through the following years I'd sometimes wonder if I should have ignored her call.

It must have been a day or so after Mom's suicide attempt that my sister, myself, and Mom's younger sister sat in the ICU waiting area at the hospital.  My sister and aunt were discussing Mom.  I listened to their conversation and was stunned.  Apparently, Mom had troubles even as a teen. She wasn't institutionalized back when I was a baby because of the car wreck, but rather because of manic depression.  She received her first shock treatments in the late 1950's and/or early 1960's.  But Mom had always told me her problems were due to the accident.

The bathroom, the original bathroom, where I grew up, at the home in Hickory. As far back as I can recall, I used to hide in that bathroom; the bathroom was the only room that had a lock on the door. I hid there when Daddy would get angry; he had a furious temper at times. I hid there for privacy.  One time I couldn't get it unlocked and Daddy, I think it was Daddy, had to drill a hole above the glass doorknob to reach through the door and turn the old-fashioned thumb-turn lock.  The bathroom window was too high up for me to open in order to let someone in through the window.

As a young child I used to wonder if Mom watched me through a secret spy hole in the bathroom wall; the wall that was between her bedroom and the bathroom. In reality, there is no spy hole; yet, as a child it was like I could feel Mom's eyes watching me as I would masturbate on the bathroom floor.

I wonder why I call it "her" bedroom?  Didn't Dad sleep in that bedroom at the time I write of, in my early childhood? Yes, I'm sure he did. I wonder why I never thought Dad spied on me?

Mom caught me masturbating once, when I was around five years old.  It was up in the loft of one of the shacks at the Balls Creek Methodist Camp Meeting Grounds.   I knew I was doing something that was nasty and private. She didn't say anything, but she saw me.  I stopped when I knew she was watching.
________________________

March 21, 2012

A Flash

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

non-subject:  "like it didn't happen"
AWW ~ october 9, 2009

________________________________

I feel small.  I want to hide.  I want to cry.  I want to pretend my damaging actions never happened.  I want to rewind this afternoon and tape over my dumb, stupid rudeness.  How could I be so insensitive?

I was sitting on the back deck in the blue lounge chair.  The sky was crystal clear blue, crisp and heavenly; that magic Carolina blue sky that I have grown to love.  The temperature must have been around 68 degrees. A breeze blew, stirring the air, reminding me again that autumn was here.

I noticed the figs on the fig trees that grow right beside the deck.  Some hang heavily, awaiting harvesting.  One fig is split wide open, its inner meat exposed, the insects enjoying it.  I set my laptop down, arise from my chair, and go over to pluck one of the ripened fruits.  I thought it would fall off easily; instead I have to work with it. I twist and pull on it. Most of the fig detaches; the stem with a bit of fruit flesh clings to the tree.  "Oh well, the bugs can have that part."

Helen seems to be having a good day, seems carefree.   Last night she'd asked if I had any children's books around.  I'd shown her my closet filled with children's play items: stuffed animals, puppets, books, wooden train track, pattern blocks, drums, percussion instruments, board games, and more.  I love children's literature and playthings.  The closet contains my leftovers from homeschooling my children and from years of teaching preschool music.

Helen's mood today seems similar to last night, carefree.  She's been having more good days; I'm glad for her and for us.  Earlier she said that she'd had a good session with her counselor today.  I know she has plenty more layers to go and a lot more work.  I have compassion for her; I can feel her pain but can't take it away.  I don't try to take it away.  I simply sit with her during those waves.

As she sat on the built-in picnic-type bench that is attached to the deck railing, she began to peel a grapefruit.  I paused a youtube music video, Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall."  I was listening to and looking at it deciding whether or not to embed it on a blog post I was writing.  Helen and I exchanged some cordial conversation.

I wanted to return to my blog and the youtube, but didn't want to be rude and wanted to respect that Helen might appreciate the beauty of the outdoors more than hearing Pink Floyd. "Do you mind if I finish listening to this song?" I asked.

Helen chuckled and replied jokingly, "No Carol.  You cannot be yourself at you own house."

The line caused me to chuckle.  I thought that when I am really myself  I like to walk around in the nude.  Helen and I had had that discussion at least once, the how-it-feels-good-to-walk-around-in-the-buff-in-one's-own-home discussion. I jokingly replied to Helen, "Here!" and flashed my naked breasts.  Point being, I'm really myself. 

Helen's eyes got big.  "Oh!"

"It was a joke, a stupid joke,"  I said realizing how very dumb it was.  I had made her uncomfortable.  I had only flashed one other person in my entire life, and that was in the woods at a photographer, who laughed.

Helen nodded and picked up her cell phone and began to look up a number or text someone.  I went back to my youtube and she walked inside.  I finished typing my blog, embedding the video.  I should go check on Helen.  How could I be so stupid.
________________________________

Part Two: Flash Recovery

Flash Recovery

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

october 9, 2009
Continuation of "A Flash"

____________________________

I walked from the deck through the screened porch into the kitchen and up the hardwood stairs to where the bedrooms are.  I wanted to apologize to Helen, but her door was closed.  I heard her talking on the phone. I'd have to wait until she comes out.  Maybe the incident didn't bother her.

I went to the kitchen to prepare asparagus to eat.  While I'm getting the fresh garlic ready, Helen walked down the stairs.  I told her how very sorry I was about my dumb joke.  I overly apologize and I really mean it.  It was stupid, stupid, stupid.  I explain to her my antic and thoughts behind it, about really being myself.

I would never do that in front of a guest or my children.  Helen had been living with us for five weeks; she felt more like a sister than a guest.  Yet I realized afterward that my uncouth goofiness may have triggered her.

It had.  Again for the third Wednesday in a row, we were heading down some sort of enmeshment road.

Helen was distressed and recoiled.  She elaborated on what my inappropriate joke had done to her and how it had triggered her.  I again apologized, knowing that I couldn't undo the damage.  After we discussed it for about 15 minutes she said she understands, she doesn't want me to feel shame and like I need to go into a shell, and that she accepts my apology.  Still I realize that doesn't undo the damage my awkward anecdote triggered and her feeling the need to run.

She was still distressed. I asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"  She wanted to buy some wine and facial cream.  I drove and we rode to the store in silence. I waited in the Explorer while she bought the items.

On the way home she says, "I wish you had some Tarot cards at your house.  Tarot cards always help me space out."   I feel the statement brings up the incident again;  the anxiety it caused her and now how she needs to rid the anxiety and that I don't have the tools at my house to help.  I want to say I have regular cards and animal cards and Greek/Latin vocabulary cards but I don't say anything.  By the time we get home,  it's a bit past 6:00 pm.  I've been mainly quiet since our initial talk when I apologized.

She has a glass of wine and brings up the incident, in a sarcastic way kind of like she is trying to laugh it off. She also mentions children, and how she, or maybe she said "we," are adults and don't play with children's toys.  I wanted to say, "I do," but remained silent.  I figured she was alluding to last night. Her sarcasm hurts, but I remain quiet.

I must keep my own emotional health well, acknowledging what I am responsible for and letting go of that which I am not responsible for. Yet, inside I feel that familiar feeling that I can do nothing right.  I'm a klutz.  I'm responsible for other's emotions. I'm stupid. I should learn to keep my mouth shut.  I scare people off.  I begin to feel shut down and like a child.  Oh no, now I'm getting triggered.  I remain quiet. 

I want to hide.  No.  The writing workshop starts at 7:00; I don't want to hide. 

I tell myself I'm allowed to be human; I'm allowed foilables. I am trustworthy; I am thoughtful.  One incident doesn't make me otherwise.  It seems when I screw up I really screw up.  God, I feel so very stupid.  Yet I did own up and I am genuinely sorry.

Helen said she accepted my apology, but I feel that deep down maybe she hasn't?  I wonder if unconsciously or unintentionally she wants to cause me pain; not necessarily me, but rather someone she feels (or felt) she can trusts?  Perhaps it is a lesson regarding trust and humanity?  Ultimately each of us is all alone.

Why for the past three Wednesdays has drama come up right before the writing studio?
____________________________

Recurring Story

non-subject: a recurring story
AWW ~ march 21, 2012


(Type Carol, irregardless of the effect of the oxycodone you took an hour ago for the shooting pain from the inside of your ankle.)
________________________

I started drinking alcohol when I was in at least 9th grade, when I was around 15 years old. I don't recall the first time I drank. But I know I was in at least 9th grade because that's when I dated Dale.

Dale was 19 years old and used to drink almost every day. On nine different occasions he hit me after he'd been drinking too much; he always hit me because of jealousy, out of fear I'd cheat on him or that I had flirted too much or that I was showing too much leg.

I was athletic and petite in 9th grade, and I was a cheerleader. When Dale attended a game where I was cheerleading in my sky-blue-and-white-striped short skirt that revealed my sky-blue flesh-filled bloomers and bare thighs when I did a kangaroo jump, his eyes would be staring at me from the bleachers where he sat. His eyes owned me; they owned the flesh inside my bloomers. Most always he would have been drinking.

When I'd see his eyes, I felt wanted. I felt desirable. I felt I pleased him with my body and my faithfulness to him. He'd smile. My heart would quiver. I'd become moist. I knew what we'd be doing later in the back seat of his gold-colored Cutlass Supreme that had a black vinyl roof.

Often his drinking buddy, Scott, would be sitting with Dale in the bleachers. Sometimes when Dale had his eyes fixed on me, he'd say something to Scott. Scott would chuckle. I figured Dale said something about me.

But Dale was quiet, not a loud mouth. Our love life was private, wasn't it? I mean, we were an item; everyone knew we were dating. How many knew I put out for Dale? How many knew I'd put out for Marshall in previous years? But I only put out because I was in love and they loved me too; at least they said they did.

A few years later, when I was 17 and was living with Frank who was 22 years old, Frank used to introduce me to his friends as "This is my lady, Carol." I always liked that, how he called me "his lady."
________________________

March 10, 2012

Protecting the Gulity ~ Part 2

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

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2006, 2007

Within about four months Naomi ended up dumping Nick, never telling him the whole truth; the whole truth being that, after their second face-to-face rendezvous, she didn't have the feelings for him that she thought were real.  She told Nick that she wanted to end the relationship because she wanted to try to work things out with her husband; after all, John and Carol had worked things out.

Nick was devastated. He felt jilted. At the time he expressed to me angrily over the phone, "How could I be some dumb!?!"

Naomi's reconciliation attempt with her husband lasted a month or so.  During that time Drew, a Greasespot Cafe member, had started exchanging online dialog with Naomi. Naomi lived  in Oklahoma and Drew in Idaho. Naomi told Drew she couldn't get involved with him; she was married and was trying to patch things up with her marriage.  Drew pursued anyway; he was single.  He listened empathetically as Naomi began to open up and trust him. He wooed her and she again found herself in another affair, head over heels.

It's human.  People are lonely.  People have needs. People look to get those needs met.

After three or four months, Drew dropped Naomi.  Still their exchanges continued back and forth for awhile. It was hard on Naomi; she'd been smitten and was now heart broken. She felt jilted and lied to. Her marriage was continuing its descent into dissolution.

Sometime after Drew ended things with Naomi, he apparently decided to pursue Vida who was also a member at Greasespot Cafe.  Vida was married at the time. Naomi had caught wind of this pursuit and decided to warn Vida via a personal message, which is similar to an email, through Greasespot Cafe. The message didn't name the man, Drew; the man whom Naomi was warning Vida about. Naomi simply warned her to be careful of "a guy in Idaho." Somehow Vida figured out, or perhaps Naomi told her, that Naomi had had some sort of relationship with "a guy in Idaho."  Of course Vida knew that "a guy in Idaho" was referring to Drew, who was then in pursuit of Vida.

Vida had gotten to know Nick through the GSC forum. Since she didn't live far from Nick, they decided to get together for a meal; a platonic, not romantic, supper. At that meal Nick learned from Vida about Naomi's liaison with "a guy in Idaho."

And now Nick was on the  phone with me, irate and demanding to know if Naomi had dropped him for another man other than her husband.  Naomi had told him she was going to try to mend things with her husband, that that was the reason she left Nick. That was partially true, but not the real reason.

I listened to Nick vent; I couldn't blame him.  Naomi had never come clean with him letting him know that her feelings simply weren't there for him.  She had withheld that truth; she was afraid of hurting him.  I didn't feel it my place to tell that to Nick.

I then answered Nick's question with a half truth, "Naomi did have a short relationship with a guy, but it never went anywhere." I told Nick it wasn't my place to answer details; that was between he and Naomi. However, Nick and Naomi were not on talking terms.

Due to Naomi still working through so much duress with her marriage and emotional pain from the break-up with Drew, I waited to tell her that Nick knew that she had had some sort of relationship with another man after she had dropped Nick. After I felt she was doing better emotionally, I called and told her about what Vida had told Nick, about Nick questioning me and my answer to him.

Naomi was irritated with me and she was angry with Nick. She asked me why I had told Nick.  I explained again that I hadn't, that Vida had.  I asked her, "What'd you want me to do, lie?"  Naomi responded, "Yes." I was stunned.  Naomi followed her affirmative answer with, "I can't tell you things because you can't lie."

I was speechless. I didn't know how to respond to Naomi's statement. I felt guilty for not lying, realizing later that I had lied; I had told Nick a half-truth.

Should I lie for friends? Is that what friends do for each other?  Should I lie out of loyalty?  I found myself perplexed. It reminded me of when I was in The Way and I'd be afraid to examine doubts closely or to ask questions; leader's hearts were right, weren't they? Shouldn't I cover for their humanness, their errors, their hollering at followers?  Wasn't that part of tough love?

It reminded me of The Safety Net, another online forum. Membership was by invitation only; it was a secret club initially established for ex-Way women who had been abused, a supposedly safe place to converse online. Members of The Safety Net were to tell no one of its existence.  I had failed, broken my word and told someone the forum existed though I never revealed the name or contents of the forum. I probably should have covered with a lie, never revealing the forum existed.

And now, I had failed again; I hadn't covered for Naomi. I wasn't sure of what was right or wrong, what was allowable, how one should cover for others.  In The Way we were taught about the lockbox; we were taught that the love of God covers a multitude of sins. I felt stupid, unwise. I felt confused.  Besides, I knew I could lie and had lied on various occasions.

Naomi's statement, "I can't tell you things because you can't lie," was loud as it replayed over and over in my mind. It silenced me and again stirred self-doubt with which I so often battled.  Yet I couldn't imagine ever asking a friend to compromise their integrity to cover for me, to lie for me.  That seemed too heavy a burden for friendship.

Naomi never did come clean with Nick.

A Different Version

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

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AWW: 9/24/2009
Non-subject: "a different version"

Version. Virgin.

Dictionaries. Bibles. Translations. Stories.

The first time a story is lived is its maiden voyage; it's maiden version. Every maiden is first a virgin, a version of her later years.


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July, 2007.

As my life was being revealed to me, I became bothered that I couldn't remember the event of losing my virginity. I know the boy. I know my age. But I don't recall the actual event.

Janet, my therapist had been working with me in other areas. Abandonment. Abortion. Grief. I would bring up how I don't recall losing my virginity. I had brought it up with Dr. McColloch too. But nothing, nothing. I had decided that if it is something I was supposed to remember I would. Maurice was dead, so I couldn't ask him. I had thought about it. If he was only alive I could get in touch with him and ask about it, that year we were both 13 years old.

I recall writing love letters to him, about the size of his penis. And drawing pictures. I recall that I was going to marry Maurice. We would sneak out and meet in the woods, sometimes with a radio as Roberta Flack would sing "Killing Me Softly" through the air waves. Sometimes I'd sneak into Maurice's house late at night and hide in his bed with him. I'd sneak out and be back home in time for school the next day.

I was a latch key kid, so Maurice would come to my house after school. We'd make love in the den, in the back of the house. If Mom would happen to come home early, she'd always ring the doorbell before entering. She'd wait enough time so that Maurice and I could get dressed. She and I never discussed sex; but I thought it was cool that she gave us time to get dressed.

I loved Maurice. He was a drummer and his family had money. His father used to look at me with such tender eyes; I felt like he was a father to me. Every moment I had free, I spent with Maurice. He was handsome with an effeminate side. Maurice mom, Ria, was usually drunk or high on something; her speech would slur. I used to think Mr. Morgan, Maurice's dad, was running around on Ria.

Maurice had baby blue eyes and wavy hair. He was so tender. But I don't remember our fist time. What was it like? Did it hurt? I wish I could remember. Certainly Maurice was the first. Sometimes I wonder; I draw such a blank. The nothingness. I can't dwell on it much. If I do I don't seem real, or I feel like I make things up.

At 48 years old, 34 years after my 1 year of love with Maurice, I attend my 30th high school reunion. It's the first reunion I've attended. I'm a bit nervous; not sure how to act. But my husband is with me. Two of my old boyfriends are dead. Others are older than I so won't be at the reunion.

The evening is a wonderful time. Debbie and I sit together. She tells me about going to boarding school her senior year of high school. I don't remember my graduation, other than I drove home alone and threw up on the way up the mountain. I was living in Taylorsville with Wayne at the time. He was 24 or 25 and I was 18. He didn't come to graduation. I guess my parents came, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, Debbie came to the reunion because she would have graduated with us if she hadn't been sent to boarding school. Debbie and I were friends in elementary and middle school, before I got so involved with drugs. I never knew Debbie became so wild; I had moved beyond my 'wild' side by 11th grade.

The reunion evening was filled with chatter, good food, great music, drinking and dancing. There were at least a couple hundred people in attendance, maybe around 400.  I love to dance, so John and I hung through the last song. Most folks had exited the hotel ballroom. The band was packing up. It was after midnight.

Across the room Andie sat at one of the round tables. The tables were covered with burgundy table cloths; I think it was burgundy, with some sort of elegant center piece. The evening had felt rich. Each table could seat 8 people. There must have been 50 tables in the room.

"Carol," Andie called to me. My husband John went on out of the ballroom. I walked over to Andie.

"Carol I want to introduce you to Martha. Martha this is Carol. She was Maurice's first girlfriend back in the day."

Martha and I exchanged greetings. "So you were Maurice's first girlfriend?" Martha said to me.

"Yes," I answered curiously. What the fuck was this about. I hadn't told anyone I'd been wondering about that year with Maurice some 35 years ago, perplexed and blank about the details of my life at the time, wondering about something as significant as my first love and losing my virginity.

Martha's husband was a drummer. He and Martha had been friends with the Morgans. Her husband and Mauricehad played together in different bands.

"I thought you might be interested to hear what Martha knows about the Morgans. She used to spend time at their house." Andie began filling me in.

Martha looked at me. "Do you know about Maurice's dad, Wilson Sr.?"

"Well, I always felt he was a womanizer." I had heard that Mr. Morgan had died some years back, I think he died after Maurice. Apparently Maurice had died in his own vomit when he was 33 or 34. Mr. Morgan had died probably in his 60's, from what I'm not sure.

One of Maurice's older brothers had been a wife beater, so I'd heard. I didn't doubt it. Anna, his wife, had died of an aneurysm I think.

I had wondered about Maurice's dad, wondered if he ever hit Ria. He seemed to get irritated when he drank.. When I was in high school Ria had died from a fall down the stairs. I had wondered then if it was a suicide or a drug overdose. Another one of Maurice's brothers committed suicide while I was in high school; blew his brains out with a pistol while at the beach. I think he was at the beach. Barne. That was his name. Sometimes Barne and I had gotten high together. He and my boyfriend at that time would sometimes deal drugs together. Barne had those same tender baby blue eyes, but Barne was overweight.

Martha looked at me and said, "Wilson Sr. was a child sex offender. Maurice followed the same pattern as his dad."

I felt nothing. I just stared at Martha.

I don't ever recall Wilson Sr. touching me inappropriately. But then I don't recall much regarding that time, other than the woods, the letters, my house and Maurice's house.  Barne had to come get Maurice and I from the woods once; we had slept till sunup and needed to sneak back in our rooms. I remember wondering how Barne. knew where Maurice and I were.

"Wilson Sr. used to get young teen age girls, ages 15 and up, to come home and have sex. Maurice joined in the fun. Sometimes when we'd go on the road Maurice would bring young girls to the hotel where the band was staying. He was almost 30, the girls would be 14 and up. We told him it was wrong. He said that the girl's wanted it. We eventually had to split; we couldn't be responsible for that stuff."

"Wilson Sr. used to beat his 2nd wife. Did you know about her?" Martha continued.

I did know about her and that she and Wilson Sr. had a child. Martha and her husband had heard Wilson Sr. beat his second wife, when they had visited the Morgan's home. I don't recall now the rest of the story in regard to that.

As Martha relayed this information I pondered searching my mind and my body. Had sexual abuse taken place in the family, when Maurice and I were 13? I mean Barne committed suicide a few years later. I'd always felt Ria's death was a suicide or an overdose. Was Maurice molested at a young age? Did he approach me to have sex, or did I approach him? Did he teach me things? When was the first time? How? Where?

A blank. All I draw is a blank.

********************

March 8, 2012

Rituals 3: black holes and badgers

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

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october, 2009

James shares via chat that he is having a health problem.  I don't give advice, but I let him know that rice water has helped me before. He wants the recipe.  I look it up in one my nutrition books and type the information back to him.

While I'm chatting with James, Darcy comes back out to the porch.  She is now off the phone.  She walks over to the smoking area, her space where she often sits to talk on the phone and enjoy the surroundings. 

"You cleaned up my ashes, " she states with disappointment.  She becomes upset and sounds angry.  "This is my space.  I'd thought of writing you a note to not touch my things; I should have written the note.  Never put my cigarettes on my papers. Those are my papers.  This is my corner.  You said it was my space."  She is angry, but contained.  She isn't hollering, but firm.

I respond firmly, "Darcy, I cleaned up my porch."

I have no idea what she means about putting her cigarettes on her papers; I hadn't done that.  Perhaps she means the small decorative saucer for an ashtray that has the 1/2-smoked ciggie in it?  I don't ask. I did tell her it was her space; I guess she took it literally.  I feel guilty but hide it.

She abruptly grabs the items from her space and walks with a determined gate into the house.  I think she feels violated.  I tell myself I didn't do anything wrong; all I did was clean my porch.  I'd even thought she might appreciate it; that must have been naive of me.

I go back to chat with my good friend James, from Australia.

After a few minutes I hear a dish break, outside, down in the driveway. It sounds like it broke in the garbage container, the big one that we put the house trash in for sanitation pick up. Did Darcy just break my dishes?  I hope she didn't break my tiny decorative saucer she was using as an ashtray.  I turn to the wooden end table; the saucer is still there.  The other items (her papers, her cigarette packs, the sage bundle, and the china bowl where the sage was placed) are gone.

Somehow I communicated to James or he picked up that something was going on.  Maybe I told him that I think she just broke my dish.  I tell him I'll be right back.

I walk into the house.  I feel confused.  Do I check on Darcy?  Do I dare look in the garbage container?  Do I walk out the front door and around the house?  Do I go back out to the porch and walk that direction? Do I pretend I didn't here the dish break?

I decide to go out the front door, around the house, and look in the garbage container. There is the china bowl, shattered in the bottom of the container.

Darcy walks out as I am peering into the container.  I'm not angry, but I need to let Darcy know she is behaving abusively.  I can't let this incident pass.  She needs to come to terms with her behavior.

I recall to myself when years back I realized I was being verbally and emotionally abusive to my husband; I'd even started punching his arm, though his firm physique hardly felt my petite punches.  It was the physical punches that helped me realize my own behavior at the time.  I'd get angry with him because he wouldn't emotionally respond.  When I realized I'd fallen prey to my own emotional vandalism, I went to the bookstore and found a book on emotional abuse for abusers as well as the abused.  There were lots of books for the abused, but I only found one for abusers.  When I began reading it, not only did I recognize myself but also The Way, under Martindale's reign.  At the time, I was still too blind and loyal to The Way to see the emotional blackmail and other tactics prior to and beyond the years of Martindale.  Eventually I came to see those too.  I worked with the book's exercises and with my psychologist to help me stop the abuse I was laying on my husband.

"Darcy, why did you break my bowl, a bowl you never even asked if you could use?"  I tried to keep my tone of voice level.

Darcy becomes angrier and hollers at me as we stand in my driveway, "Your bowl?!?  That bowl was on the back deck with dirt in it!  You wouldn't ever eat out of it.  It's not like it was a good bowl."  She grimaces as her voice inflection fluctuates, it's almost like a growl.  I thought of my mother, the times she would glare at me with almost a fierce hatred or jealousy in her eyes and voice.

"Ah, I didn't realize it was that bowl."  I respond, tempted to apologize; but I don't.  Regardless if it was dirty or not, she still shouldn't have broken the bowl.  Perhaps she had dropped it.  But she's not dropped other items since she's been here.

I take a deep breath.  I feel that I need to confront her behavior head on.  "Darcy," I pause.  She looks at me and I at her.  "Your behavior on the porch was abusive," I state seriously but not angrily. I feel as if I am speaking with an adolescent or young teen in a tantrum.  I had felt that way before with Darcy; so had my husband.  I don't think ill of that; I've felt like an adolescent for decades, until the past eight months or so.  Sometimes I still feel that way, but not as often.

Darcy becomes livid with my statement.  She walks around me, off the driveway and into the back yard.  She begins yelling at me, backing away from me into the yard, pointing her finger at me, screaming, "Carol you are the one that's abusive!!!  You are abusive for calling be abusive!!  I'm afraid of you Carol!!  I'm afraid of you a lot!!"

I contain my composure.  I can't allow myself to engage and get pulled into this emotional battle. "Then it's time for you to make arrangements to leave,"  I state firmly.   I am really trying to keep tabs on myself to not respond emotionally.  I do feel some anger, and that's o.k., as long as I don't act out.

Her eyes get big.  She is in a state of disbelief that I have told her it's time for her to make arrangements for departure.  We had discussed in the past weeks about her leaving and that if things got to be too much we wouldn't throw her out, but would let her know she needed to make arrangements to leave.  I had also told her she could stay up until six months, unless my daughter needed to come back home or something.  This episode had crossed a line, a line that scared me.

The flame became a bon fire.   Darcy's voice continued at high volume.  I was concerned her rage might escalate.

Somewhere in the commotion I went back to my computer.   James was still there in chat and had typed to me, "I just tried to call you."  "I didn't  hear the phone ring," I typed  back. "I'm leaving my house. Will you be around in 30 minutes?"  "I'll be here," he types back, "I've opened the private area at the forum so we can discuss what's been happening."

James was again holding my hand through a tumultuous flare-up with someone, Darcy, recovering from cultic  and abusive lifestyle(s).  He understood the scenario and typical symptoms and has held my hand, online and on the phone, a lot the past two years when I had dealt with my own flare-ups and with others'.  I had done lots of work with myself and had pretty much rid myself of these toxic-type relationships.

Darcy follows me to the porch as I clear my ritual bill-paying area; I never did get to paying my bills. I don't recall the exact order of events, but I do recall some of the accusations and her throwing my faults at me. I don't know how much time elapses, I just know I need to get away. I address some of Darcy's words and try to communicate with her, but to no avail; emotions are too heated.  At some point I start responding with smart-ass comments agreeing with her blame and  fault-finding toward me, but I don't raise my voice.  I get the feeling she wants me to engage; my smart-ass comments are the closest I come to the engagement.

She follows me inside the house and out to the garage as I collect my things to leave. Again, the glare in her eyes brings to mind my mother's glare some years after Dad had his wreck.  I'll never forget Mom's hateful glare with jealous piercing eyes that caused me an internal shutter.  When I was a child, I recall thinking Mom was Alfred Hitchcock in disguise.  These feelings were lurking within me as Darcy continued with her verbal goads.

I feel like a badger's prey.  I feel like a floating cosmonaut that is trying to avoid being sucked into a black hole, a black hole that wants to be filled, that wants to be whole or implode.  I feel like a contaminated piece of DNA, a lump of ugly fat; yet so very small compared to the vastness of a great dark void trying to pull me into dangerous territory.

Once I drive out of the driveway I begin to tremble. I shed a few tears.  My voice is shaky as I call my counselor. I get his voice mail.

I go over the scenario in my mind, the accusations Darcy screamed at me. My responses to Darcy through what just took place.  I go over the past seven weeks, the highs and the lows. Red flags that I had dismissed in what I had thought were acts of empathy and compassion. Were they?  I question myself wondering if I've been abusive, not understanding enough, not tough enough.  I don't trust my own judgment.  I don't feel safe. I feel guilty for telling her she needs to make arrangements. Red flags that I can no longer ignore. But hell, I just had to leave my own home.  I'm confused. I review the things I know about abuse, how it works, the patterns.  Red flags that I can no longer lower, no longer rationalize as someone injured going through layers of grief and healing; the price was too high for me and my family.

It was around 5:15 PM when I left.  I didn't return home until after midnight.
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Rituals 2: ashes and webs

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

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october, 2009

I go back to my online chat with James.

After starting the percolator, Darcy comes back out onto the porch and sees that I have cleaned up the cigarette area.  She again sounds angry and irritated, "What'd you do with my ashes?"

"Darcy, I cleaned up my porch.  That's all," I answered firmly but not angrily.  I wasn't angry.  I felt Darcy was reacting because she was tired and perhaps because I'd touched her things.  But it is my porch.  She has said repeatedly that she wants me to be myself around her.  Sometimes that has been difficult because she gets triggered.  When that happens I sometimes get triggered.  But when I get triggered I don't usually holler and yell; I withdraw and become silent.

There was an incident shortly after the first week that Darcy was staying with us; she had a really tumultuous day, one of those tsunami-wave-hit days.  I won't say it's been the toughest day; there have been many.  But this one day, well it was night, around midnight, I took her for a ride in the country to help her calm and get eased.  We were out by the Yadkin river at an access area.  The night was crystal clear with stars twinkling.  The star-gazing helped her.  After she calmed we talked, mainly about grief.  But a certain thing I said triggered her and she got upset with me.  After calming down from that she asked what I was thinking.  I took a deep breath wondering to myself if I should tell her. I did, "I'm afraid to say my thoughts."  She really got triggered by that and walked away into the darkness yelling profanities at me. I was like "all the fucking rest of the people!"  I recognized her response as suppressed rage, not necessarily toward me but others of her past as well.  Still, my internal response was that of silence, along with other internal distorted thoughts of my ill-perceived inabilities.

Earlier on this day of the porch incident, I had taken note of how I was feeling, that I wanted to get back to being more myself.  I was becoming aware that I was behaving differently, in a subtle way.  I was still me, just more subdued, or something.  Darcy has been living with us for over six weeks at this point.  This week she had seemed to be fairing better, until the flash incident two days ago.  I was being myself then too.

I try to be sensitive around her, especially when she is having a difficult day; I would do that for most people. Sometimes my sensitivity radar isn't too good; or is it that Darcy jumps to conclusions and judges my motives?  That's how it feels sometimes.  Am I changing my behavior to accommodate Darcy?  I'm sure I am; but is it too much?  I have felt emotionally attacked by her more than once; she'd apologize later and usually I would too.  But should I be apologizing?  Am I doing her a disservice by not bringing up these things?  I feel if I bring them up, she'll get triggered and I really don't want to cause that.  Am I enabling her by being too sensitive?

I understand that she is in deep emotional pain and some physical pain as well; buried grief, which includes rage, has been resurrected.    I know what it's like to peel through layers of grief and when the waves or tsunamis hit.  I'm o.k. with that if she doesn't attack me.  Yet, when people hurt they will lash out at those they trust.  That said a person still needs to be accountable and responsible for their actions and words.

She walks back inside and I continue my chat with James.  James is a good friend and I let him know my house guest is upset due to my cleaning up the porch.  He asks a few questions, and I answer them as well as I can on chat.  I trust James.

I can hear Darcy talking on the phone inside the house.  She sounds jovial; that's a good sign. I wonder if she is talking with her brother?  With the receiver to her ear she walks out onto the porch.  Smiling she motions me in to show me something; she seems excited.  I let James know that I'll be right back.

I follow Darcy into my living room, to the bay window.  She still has the receiver to her ear as she points to a spider outside the window busy in its web.  I grin big; I like spiders, well the big kind that spin large webs in the fall.

Darcy continues her phone call in the house and I go back onto the porch.
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Rituals 1: porch & papers

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

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non-subject:  "a time cut off from time"
october, 2009

I know I am afraid to approach the subject.  I wonder that if I write what I really feel, what I really felt, what really happened; I wonder if I am gossiping.  Or distorting. Or breaking confidences.  It scares me so; to the point I tremble and cry.  Why does it scare me so?


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It was Friday afternoon.  The responsibility of dreaded paperwork had arisen to the top of the to-do list.  I excel at procrastination, especially when it comes to paperwork and even to correspondence.  Sometimes I feel detailed to death; so many god-damned details. Such a part of modern life.

Paying bills, catching up on correspondence, and such; I like to do those tasks on my screened-in back porch.  The openness of the porch eases the tension of the sealed envelopes which I neatly open with my silver letter opener. Sitting on the porch I can peer across the deck and out into our back yard with  its fig trees; the giant pin oak; the once beautifully tended landscaped areas with hostas, various perennials, and now naturalized black-eyed suzies and (considered by most) weeds because I suck at yard work; the two garden plots now home to weeds and grasses and volunteer blackberry bushes; and the tile-roofed shed surrounded by mint, a huge butterfly bush, and a couple azaleas.  Zoysia grass, the kind of grass that  feels like the grass of a golf green or thick lush down, covers at least 1/3 of the back yard. The rest of the grass is just grass, and clover sprinkled with some tiny wild strawberries.  I like clover.

The backyard slopes slightly upward as one walks the 200-feet from the deck to the wooded area with its tall swaying white pines amidst oaks and elms and dogwoods, some wound with poison sumac. The woods are thick with brush under the trees, scattered with poison oak and ivy. Birds abound in the treetops.  An occasional deer makes itself known even though we are in the city; well a city for North Carolina. Our property goes another 150 feet or so into the woods, to the street of the next neighborhood.

I walk out onto the porch.  It's around 4:00 on a beautiful mid-October Friday, 2009.  Darcy isn't up yet, at least that I've been aware of.  I was up from around 8:00 AM until 10:00 AM, then fell back to sleep until around noon.  I've not heard Darcy rumble since I've been up.  I'm not concerned as, like me, she has sporadic sleeping patterns.

The Formica-top porch dining table where I do my paperwork needs wiping. I always clean it and the vinyl seated metal chairs before taking my perch to embark upon the onerous task of bill paying.  On the table sits a left over 1/2-drunk cold cup of coffee with a spoon in it; beside it a few stain drops of the liquid lay on the cream-colored Formica.  A few ashes have landed as well.  We don't allow cigarettes in the house. 

I take the leftover cup of liquid into the kitchen, pour out the remains, and place the green soup-sized coffee mug in the top rack of the dishwasher.  I wipe down the Formica table top, my pre-paperwork ritual. I don't mind cleaning up the coffee cup, its remains, or the ashes.  I straighten the chairs. 

An old brown wooden end table sits between two metal outdoor chairs next to the brick wall behind which lies the dining room. The brick wall  is the only solid wall of the porch.  The other three sides are lined with screen with a metal roof over top.  Wind chimes of various varieties play a harmonic symphony when the wind stirs strongly enough.

On the wood end table are remains of Darcy's cigarettes.  In the small decorative china saucer I found for her to use as an ashtray are two to three butts with their ashes.  On the wooden shelf beneath the wooden table top is a china bowl.  Eight to ten cigarette butts with ashes are in the bowl; there are lots of ashes, too many it seems for the cigarettes. Darcy didn't ask if she could use this bowl.  No big deal; it's not a good bowl. Still I'm somewhat surprised she hadn't asked to use it.

Beside the bowl are two open packs of cigarettes and a 6-inch long, 1-1/2 inch diameter, 1/2 burnt bundle of sage.  Ah, that must be where the abundance of ashes came from that are in the bowl. Earlier in the week, Darcy told me she had burnt some sage.  There are some ashes spread a bit about the cheap wooden table.  No biggie; I'll just wipe it clean.

I close two cigarette packs.  One pack is empty, but I've learned that Darcy is very particular about her things.  I'm never sure what to throw out and what to keep, or even what is permissible to touch. So I close it and place it neatly under the pack that is 1/2 full.

I empty the ashes and butts from the saucer and bowl, except for one cigarette that looks like it was prematurely snuffed and maybe is going to be puffed again later. I clean and sanitize the two pieces of china that held the butts and ashes.  I place the prematurely extinguished ciggie on the edge of the now cleaned decorative small saucer; I place the 1/2 burnt sage bundle in the now freshly cleaned china bowl.

Darcy has two papers on top of the wooden end table.  I don't read them; they are not my business.  I move them to wipe the table and then neatly put them back using a candle and the pretty saucer with the 1/2 smoked ciggie as weights to keep the papers from blowing on this breezy fall day. I place the china bowl, with the sage in it, beside the two cigarette packs on the shelf just beneath the table top.

There, all feels good.  Time to dive in.

I bring out my laptop, my paperwork, my portable plastic black file caddy, the ceramic outgoing mail container, and the recycling box for paper.  There is always lots of paper to recycle; I hate junk mail.  I set up my computer to catch up on some emails and to maybe chat on Facebook, if someone is online who I want to chat with.

It feels very pleasant and fresh, the breeze adding to the mood.  I sit down and check Facebook first.  My friend James from Australia is there.  It's been over a month at least since we've chatted; he's always fun to chat with.  James is an ex-Jehovah's Witness and has been a great help to me.  We've even talked on the phone, all the way from Oz.

Shortly after I get settled Darcy comes out.  She has just gotten out of bed and is disappointed she has "wasted another day."  She again said she didn't sleep all night and has been laying in bed.  I comment that I'm sorry she had another rough night.

She looks at the table and sees the leftover coffee is gone.

"Where is my special coffee?"  Her voice is angry and accusatory. "I made that earlier this morning and was going to finish it." 

I feel myself internally tighten, feeling I again have done something wrong.  "I cleaned up the porch.  I'm sorry; I didn't know it was special.  I thought it was simply left over."

Darcy turns.  Irritated she walks back inside the house, into the kitchen.  I hear the percolator being assembled.

I dismiss my feelings....it's just coffee; she'll get over it. 

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I like the deep tone of buffalo drums...

AWW ~ march 7, 2012
non-subject: a place


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May, 2005.

On a weekday morning, I enter the First Baptist Church in the town of King. Just like any other week, I am here to sing and dance with little people, children ages 2 to 5. Once a week I haul my twelve hand drums in a big dark blue nylon bag with beige webbed handles and a beige webbed shoulder strap. A cover-flap flips over the top and attaches with Velcro to the side of the bag. I have a love/hate relationships with Velcro. I'm thankful it was invented, but I much prefer zippers or latches or snaps or buttons or tie laces.

The big blue bag is left over from the late 1980s when I sold Tupperware. I use to haul the big blue bag filled with plastic Tupperware to home parties. For a period of months during my almost-two-year Tupperware career, I ranked among the top ten Tupperware sales persons in the southeast United States.

Now, in 2005, the big blue bag carries synthetic-headed, wooden, hand drums: six pancake drums, three bongo drums, and three buffalo drums. Buffalo drums are my favorite; they have a deep sound. The bongos have a muted sound. The pancake drums have more of a tinny sound. I love teaching the children about rhythm and pitch.

"Melody is rhythm and pitch, you hear it in a song like this. Melody is rhythm and pitch; you hear it in a song like this. Do-do-do-doomp (slap, slap) Do-do-do-doomp (slap, slap). Do-do-do-doomp, do-do-do-doomp, do-do-do-dooomp (slap, slap)"

The daycare teachers often chuckle the first time we sing that song. They know it is the tune for "The Adam's Family." Usually when I make up a children's song, I have to pick a tune I know; or else I forget the song

Along with my big blue bag, I carry other tote bags. One with rhythm sticks. Another carries an array of percussion instruments. One more bag is loaded with stuffed animals or puppets or some sort of visual aids and probably a book or two from which read or sing the story, a story in sync with the theme we are singing about. I like themes, but not rigidily so. If the kids are excited about a song not related to our theme, we sing it. But I can usually find a way to tie whatever song we sing in with our theme.

On this particular day in May, 2005, I enter the office at the church and pick up my folder in which parents leave me payments and notes. I carry it with me to the magical music room where I set up to welcome the first class of the morning.

In the few previous months, I'd been investigating how to leave The Way. Where would I go if and when I left?

Mainstream denominations and churches were distasteful to me. I could never believe that Jesus is God or that the dead are alive; so how could I go to a mainstream church? The Way Ministry had taught me the truth; and I still believed that truth. But The Way had become so fossilized. I felt so dead inside. I wanted genuine fellowship again; I wanted that sweet, caramel, chewy center of God's heart.

But I didn't know where to turn, or who to trust, or how to move beyond the spiritual dearth and hollowness that haunted me every day, the hole in my heart and gut.

That day, in May, 2005, an envelope awaited me in the music folder. But the envelope wasn't from any of my students' parents. It was from my past friend, Linda, whom I had marked and avoided as was standard practice for Way believers when someone left the Way Household, which I had believed was the true household of God.

Linda lived in Ohio at the time. She and her husband and their family had left The Way sometime around 2000, I think. Linda had written me at the time and let me know about their decision to leave. I had never responded.

After music classes that morning, I open the envelope from Ohio and read Linda's letter. We connected by phone within a couple months.

I never imagined that within a few years of that phone call, Linda's two daughters and I would be working together in North Carolina side by side, packing miniature art to ship around the country, and even across the oceans.

None of us stayed with The Way.

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Related Post: To Hear with Different Ears

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Caretaker, with ten minutes to go

AWW, 3/07/12
Non-subject: caretaker


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January 12, 1988. My husband, John, and I paced the Valley Hills shopping mall hoping I wasn't in false labor...again. My pains and so-called contractrations were mainly in my lower back, in the same area of my back where as a teenager I suffered horrid menstrual cramps.

I stopped walking and pressed my back into one of the large indoor columns along the wide corridor on the 2nd floor of the mall. Pressure felt good.

At some point I decided it was time to go to the hospital.

My first child, Sarah, was born on January 14. I'd been in labor for 36 hours. John and I were both exhausted. I imagine Sarah was too, but she couldn't tell us.

Sarah had had a rough time in the womb. The maximum sleep I ever got while pregnant was four hours at a time. At four hours, I'd awake in the throws of an asthma attack. Sarah must have felt my anxiety and heard the wheezing while nestled in the amniotic fluid. We must have taken at least two trips a month to the hospital emergency room.

Every living thing has no choice about his or her or its birth, nor a choice about where he or she or it is born.

Once born, every thing becomes a caretaker of something.

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March 4, 2012

Love Heals (at the least, eases)

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

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October 20, 2009

I have the next four days to myself, solitarily if I so desire.  I wish I had two weeks.

Last night I drove the two-plus hours to the Greyhound bus station for my husband to catch the bus for the three-plus hours trip south to North Carolina. He wanted to be able to stay up here, in the Virginia mountains near Skyline Drive, but some duties at work called for his attention.

My husband is my hero; in more ways than one.  One of those is how he allows me to be me; he allows me to discover me; he allows me to learn and find my own inner strength.  I'm thankful we stuck through the tough years; those years of critical mass where movement is inevitably forced. Perhaps forged would be a better term.

Forged.  That is how it feels.

Along our drive last night, we spoke about different ideas and relationships.  As often is, the conversation was mixed with dry humor; a humor we both enjoy.  Sometimes I wish I had a video camera to catch the witty exchanges laced with deep affection.  I love him so very much.

Yet, even last night knowing how much I love him, I cried on the way back up the road thinking of my past lover Luke.

Luke. I don't know if Luke and I could have made it through the decades; through my illnesses and my parents.  Mom with her bipolar of which she never did acknowledge, though she took various meds for years or decades.  I guess they helped; the shock treatments helped, at least in the short run.  And my Dad through his quadriplegia.  My husband only knew my father in a wheelchair, though Dad had been in Hubby's home of upbringing once when Dad sold their family a set of books.

In the 70s and 80s, Mom was the district manager for Encyclopedia Britannica overseeing sales in western North Carolina. Part of that time was before I-40 cut through the state;  we had to drive NC Hwy. 70 from Morganton up the mountains to Asheville and beyond.  Mom spent lots of time on the road selling books.  Before she sold for Britannica, she sold for Compton's Encyclopedias.  She was the number one salesperson in the US for several years in a row with Compton's.  Mom could walk in someone's home and be a friend almost instantly; she could sell ice to an Eskimo.

Dad sold Britannica awhile for Mom.  So did my brother and I when we got older. In 1983, after I began dating my husband whom I met through The Way, I learned that Dad had sold Hubby's family a set of Britannica back in the 70s. Our families didn't know one another, had never met, and never planned to meet.  It was a typical on-the-road-four-hours-away sales call.  I happened to meet Hubby almost a decade later and married him. My mother-in-law still has those encyclopedias, becoming relics now with the age of internet.  I wonder when a dark ages will fall upon us; a black out of satellites causing internet services to crash spinning the world, so dependent on computers, into chaos?

By the time Hubby met my father, Dad was permanently in a wheelchair.  I had asthma as well.  So at least my husband knew a little of what came with the territory; though I don't think either of us expected what would ultimately play out.  At 25 years old my fatigue was almost unbearable, I'd turn into a pumpkin by 8:00 at night because I couldn't think; I couldn't function.  For some unknown reason, I'd throw up in the middle of the night a few nights a week.  I remember the blue furry looking spheres that would float in the toilet.  I never told anyone about them. At the time I thought they were Theodur pills that grew fuzzies in my belly.  Theodur, one of the asthma drug I took for over 12 years. It never did seem to help, much. Theodur, in the caffeine family.  Theodur, for which I sat through tests baffling the pulmonary docs because I needed such high doses.  It seems my body wouldn't assimilate it.  I found out some 20 years later that may have been the case; my mercury levels were so high the mercury may have been blocking receptor sights not allowing certain chemicals access to unlock the cells to do their proper work.  But maybe the blue furries weren't from the Theodur because the throwing up ceased before I was finally able to wean off Theodur.

My skin would break out in horrid hives.  I recall once when my mother-in-law saw my thighs.  She gasped; they were swollen, red, hot, and lumpy with welts.   Not a pretty sight; reminded me of alligator skin.  I told her it was normal and her eyes got big.  I'd relieve the insane itching with ice-cold water, sometimes a hairbrush, and sometimes with steroid cream.  Yuck, steroid cream. The hive break outs were similar to the asthma attacks.  They'd attack, clear up, and one would never know I had had alligator skin the night before.

The hives were nothing compared to the internal torture of liquid cement in my lungs.  Or when my sinuses were completely blocked.  Completely blocked, no air passage whatsoever, due to polyps.  I had three surgeries three years in a row.  I'd have the surgery and then within a month, the polyps would grow again.  Those greyish, spongie, alien-like protrusions in my cavities where air was supposed to circulate and process.  The medical folks and I would try all we knew, alternatively and conventionally.  But the polyps would take over, like some sort of Night Gallery episode.  Sometimes I felt like a big piece of DNA mucus.  It's a horrible feeling to be drowning in one's own fluids.  Other times I felt like an experimental chimp with all the drugs, IVs, breathing tubes,  pills, needles, tinctures, syrums, and tests.  So many fucking tests.  After my third sinus surgery it was 10 years before my fourth one in 1996, a couple weeks after Dad died. He died of congestive heart failure after living as a quadriplegic for over 12 years.

Up until eight months ago, I'd been unable to smell for over twenty-five years, except intermittently when I'd have surgery or certain drugs or a certain medical treatment called Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization.  There was one odd time, during which I had an online and phone affair, that I was able to smell for a month;   hormones must have kicked in to clear some passages.

Today, this day in October, 2009, I walked in a field.  My lungs are clear now and I can smell without heroic medical intervention.  It's my first fall in decades to freely bask in the seasonal aromas.  I stood in a meadow this day, just stood and inhaled over and over and over.  I squatted down close to the ground and breathed in deeply.  So many scents, a prism rainbow of delicious melodious fragrance.  Satisfying.  Fulfilling.

I wonder if others notice how very sweet is the aroma of grass.

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entry: each voice matters

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

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journal entry: august 28, 2009

August, 2009: 50 years old.  Woodstock/Bearsville, NY.  Journal entry about the Authentic Writing Workshop.

8/28/09 11:38 pm Woodstock/Bearsville, NY

I'm here, at the Authentic Writing Workshop. It is such an honor to hear the stories of these peoples' lives. So much rich history, depth of life, poignant present, unknown future. Each attendee has a strength that inspires.

Fred facilitates with integrity and a humble brilliance and grace hewn by years of experience. He isn't above the attendees, he is one of us, attending to his own story, sharing it, the same as each of us. I feel that my voice matters. I feel my response to others matters; it matters. It matters. Each voice matters.

Matter. Matter has form and shape and texture. Art.

Matter. Each voice matters; each voice has form and shape and texture. Art.

A bond is made with these faces. The laughs, the tears, the accents, the inflections, the lives, the histories, the present. I'd love to read each person's life's essays. This is what makes the world go round. People as individuals.

Thanks for letting me live. I treasure breath.

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entry ~ behind closed eyes

(March, 2012: Working on indexing/categorizing pieces I've blogged. Transferring this piece from my once-public blog, versions.)

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journal entries: september 26 & 27, 2009

09.26.09 ..late, late, late at night
Saturday/Sunday 
(actually wee early hours of 9.27)

I was thinking today; about writing.  What do I write about next?  I have incidents run through my mind, different scenarios, serendipitous happenings.  It's like a lifestyle for me; these designed-like happenstances.  I've written before that maybe this happens to everyone; events that almost seemed planned, but weren't and aren't.  Perhaps they happen to all of us, but sometimes we are too dizzy busy to notice; or we are worrying; or we are thinking about the next thing to do instead of noticing the moment.

But still what do I write about next?  I don't need to write anything sensational.  What is more sensational than a spider weaving a web?

A web.  So many webs in life. Some are sticky; some are beautiful; some glisten in the morning dew; some are a trap; some cause us to pause and listen, take note.

My mind wanders and it is difficult to choose which chapters of life to write about.  Gosh, it probably wouldn't even be a chapter; it's more like paragraphs of a chapter of a book.  Or portholes in a ship on the ocean.

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I sat in the shopping center parking lot; the one where Moby's Coffee Shop is in Mt. Airy, North Carolina.   I still had the green Dodge Caravan at the time.  It was a Friday, around 2:00 or so, an April afternoon in 2006. Nick was on the other end of my cell phone, masturbating while I squirmed in my car seat at the driver's wheel.  If not for distance we would have been in a bed together; he wouldn't have to be jerking off.  Long distance and me being married with children, made arrangements difficult.

The first words out of his mouth after he ejaculated were a sound of disappointment.  I asked, "Was it not good?"  I wanted to please him, make him feel good.  We had engaged in cyber-sex a couple times starting last weekend, but this was the first phone sex.  Some say an affair isn't real unless the two people are face-to-face in the flesh.  This was very real.

"No. It was great."  He paused.  "But Carol, your married!" He sounded guilt ridden with anguish.

I was married, but it wasn't a marriage.  It was an existence. My husband and I shared a house. We didn't fight; we hardly talked, other than to exchange necessary information.   I was the maid and the cook and the mother of the children.  I was no more special to Hubby than a Way fellowship coordinator.  Hubby was married to The Way, not me.  To the Way and to his job.  I wasn't special to him. 

We had tried marriage counseling in 2004 and 2005; it didn't help.  Hubby didn't care.  I had work where I could make enough money to help support myself, if we decided to separate.  Hubby would help with the alimony and child support; he'd leave me the house so I could care for the kids.  We had discussed all this; but continued living our separate lives.  The aloneness had now diverted into another realm.  I didn't care; I wanted out of the marriage if it couldn't be salvaged.

Nick and I had met in January on GreasespotCafe, the ex-Way online discussion forum.  I was on the computer every day and night, as much as I could be, which meant hours.  I'd stay up into the wee hours of the morning in the chat room.  Nick too was online, in chat, in the wee morning hours.  We had become friends.

Nick had left The Way over a decade ago.  I had left in October, 2005.  Hubby had continued with The Way when I had exited, though he was now on the outskirts.  He had supported me when I exited; yet I think it was more like tolerated my exit knowing that I couldn't continue to live in the dead, fossilized organization.  I had found hot Bible elsewhere, with Christian Family Fellowship, an ex-Way splinter group.

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09.27.09
Sunday

I awoke at 12:30 pm.  I am so depressed. I'm not terribly so...just so.  I feel I have nothing to write about,nothing to say.  That all my pennings are garbage and selfish; that I write for an audience..which isn't true writing to me.  I cannot write for an audience.

But all I can think to write about involves too much drama.  I'm not a drama queen; shit just happens.  Good stuff happens too.  It's not sensational; it's just I think, who would believe the stuff? Why can't I write about ordinary stuff, like the magic of hanging clothes on the clothesline to dry?  Why do things come to mind that are so fucking complex? I think about or start to write and the web becomes too damn intricate.  It begins to sound so very self-centered, or like I'm trying to prove something to someone.  Am I?  Is that someone others?  Or is that someone me?  Would people think I make it up?  I don't make things up.  I may get fine details mixed up at times, but I'll correct those when I learn differently. 

Why do those questions even matter?  They don't, except that is how I feel.  That does matter; how I feel.

Sometimes I wish I didn't dream at night.  I think my dreams affect me at times.  Sometimes I miss parts of my past and the people; the way it was.

It's o.k. to grieve Carol.  It's o.k. to grieve.

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