My ramble about my morning. This morning’s B-Side: The reminder of one of the many things that are wrong with raising our kids today. The A-Side: One of the last things that sprung from Pandora’s box was hope.
Author: Suzette (Page 7 of 8)
So, it’s been a minute since I post anything, since I’m not always in a place, situation or mood where I can type a post, but I can voice record.
When I started this journey, it was with the intention of offering up some of my experiences/struggles in life as company to others with similar experiences/struggles in solidarity. I have failed to share, so I’m going to try it this way. I know it requires people to listen, instead of read. But hey, that way you too can multi-task.
Feel free to share your thoughts.
“I grew up like a neglected weed,—ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.” – Harriet Tubman, as quoted by Benjamin Drew in his book The Refugee, published in 1856. The quote was read aloud by someone reading an essay in which it was included. As the person read, I found myself drowning out the rest of the reading – my right side of my brain honing in on having grown up as a “neglected weed”. The words resonated and clung, creating an image of the strength of a neglected weed. Frequently I have found myself wrestling from the ground the tall, neglected weeds left to grow because of a lack of caring for the lawn. The less you water the lawn, the less you tend it, the stronger the weeds become. They abound – replicating themselves quickly and effortlessly, as their tiny floating seeds with built in “feathers” help them glide across the yard, into the neighbors yard, and beyond. Left untended, they grow tall, the roots grow deep and the stems grow strong. To me, the image of having grown up as a “neglected weed” provided a different perspective. Neglected living things do not have to grow up weak, malnutritioned, and unnurtured. They can have strong minds, a deep sense of self and a view of things that other, “shorter grasses” don’t get to have.
As my left and right brain wrestled each other to capture the imagery as well as the analysis behind it all I realized these words resonated because they reflected me in a way. Having grown up neglected in many ways, ignorant of so many things, I found that it was being neglected and realizing my ignorance that drove me to want more out of life than what was being offered. I didn’t want to be like those around me, scratching backs so that mine could be scratched and keeping a record of favours done and favours owed. I didn’t want to owe people anything. I also didn’t know what I wanted, nor did I have direction of who I was to be. One can argue then that the “sky was the limit”. However, in the absence of any direction, there is misdirection. The journey back would be long and not without loss. But then, I wasn’t a slave running for my freedom. All realities are relative. But we can find strength in the harsher realities of others, and rise to the challenges of our own life.
As I examined my perspective a bit closer, as well as the remainder of that quote, “ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.” Isn’t that what Harriet Tubman in fact did – develop a strong mind, a deep sense of self, and with a perspective unlike others? Was it this strong mind where she found her strength to move slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad? Was it this deep sense of self that guided her process and her commitment to her cause? Was it her ignorance of freedom that formed an idea of what freedom should be and thus the fight for it? Is it these challenges in our lives, that once faced, allow us to rise again and again? But rise we must, at least once, to have the strength to do it again.
It’ll be four years this June since we’ve been separated. Four years. Who does that? Who waits four years for their spouse to wake up and say, “You know what hunny, I’ve been crazy all this time and I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking when I let you walk out that door.”
Although, I haven’t really held him accountable for a four year separation. It’s been more like we’ve been living apart and because of the grandkids or the step-kids we found these excuses to get together. While not a good time would be had by all – I would begrudgingly be upset that he was there, while at the same time be glad – I would think that maybe he’d see what the hell he was missing and want to work on making things right. Wow! Am I a bit screwed up, or a lot screwed up? Or, just hopeful?
We are weeks away from our four years and I’ve decided that too much time has past, not enough amends have been made and I’m moving forward with the divorce. While I have said this before, it feels different this time. This time I feel the same way I felt when I decided to move out. I felt, well, decided, resolved, without doubt. All I needed/need to do is do it. The other feeling that is lurking around is loneliness. I now feel loneliness. I guess in the past, I’d come home and find some craft to do – a card, a mache bowl, a resin tile, something. I knew that inevitably my phone would ping and he’d find some reason to come over, I wouldn’t deny him, I’d be upset about it, but then not and we’d have an excuse for him to be here and me to have his company. You see – I still love my husband. I love him very much. But I must also have boundaries and limits and I value myself as well. I want to be loved by him like I love him, maybe that’s not realistic, real or possible. But, I also want to be respected by him. And I want him to command respect for me from those around us. He does not.
It’s always the same. We talk it out. We lay out the concerns – mostly mine. He voices understanding and agreement, vows improvement, and within a few days or weeks we’re back to square one. I tell him I’m tired of going in circles and ask him to leave, only to do it again a month or so later – for FOUR years. Only this time, this time I’ve surrendered and I know that what I’m asking is beyond him to give me. There is something beyond needing to be a better husband that is driving his choices. Something with which neither I nor he can compete. Maybe he knows what that something is and he’s just not open, maybe he doesn’t. I don’t know what it is. But if a four year quasi-separation hasn’t brought about salvation for this marriage, then it’s time to let it go. I do not want to live my life waiting to be a priority for my husband. My husband can’t live his life waiting for me to settle for what he can give.
I’m in no way ready to move on and find myself another guy. But I’m realizing that I’ve been without a guy for four years. The sporadic week here and there and occasional mediocre sex does not a relationship make or a marriage fix. It’s been this weird boyfriend/girlfriend, 14-21 year old type of make-up/break-up/makeup “thing”. Every time we start back up and break back up we start the healing clock again.
It’s time.
So, I was listening to a news story about how the latest round of lost electricity in Puerto Rico has impacted life on the island. A woman shared the impact on her business, a local coffee shop, and how it’s had to close early, or not opening at all. One of her customers was interviewed. As he told his story, he focused on how the closing of the coffee shop has effected his daily routine. While I understand the larger picture of the story was the continued loss of power on the island and the ill-effects of that reality, what I clung to was his telling of getting his cup of coffee at the end of the day. He reminisced that it’s what one grows up doing from the time you are a little kid – at the end of the day, you drink your cup of coffee and you stay up late. I found something so familiar in that. I guess we do.
I grew up making coffee every morning for my grandmother. The morning ritual was to make the coffee, boiling the water very hot, leave it on her nightstand, next to her cigarettes, and empty her pee bucket – full of pee and cigarette butts from the night before. That way, when she woke up hours after I left to school, there, on her nightstand would be her two vices and her empty pee bucket. She would know if I boiled the water “bien hervida” if the coffee did not have white foam nesting on the top. If you’ve ever made a cup of instant Sanka you know to what I’m referring. At the end of the evening, I would again prepare the cup of coffee. I can still that almost translucent white cup with a brown border along the rim.
As an adult, when I started waking up to making my own coffee, I’d arrange my cup next to my spoon, next to my sugar, and I’d wait for the water to be “bien hervida”. I reflected that I may have turned into my grandmother – although I don’t use a pee bucket at night and I don’t smoke. But it wasn’t until I heard this man, with his Puerto Rican twang, talking about his late night coffee that I realized, Aha, that’s it. It’s not weird like so many point out, “Won’t that keep you up all night?” “How can you drink coffee at this hour?”
At a time in my life where so much is still changing, nothing has yet settled, and I’m finding the time to identify my identity, this tiny blip on the radio – this man sharing his loss of drinking his late night comfort cup of coffee made me feel connected. There are others out there that share my love of a late night cup of coffee and staying up late – even at the end of a long day.
It’s these tiny blips on my radar that keep me sane. Understanding and realizing that I live in a space where there are few like me. I find solace in these blips. I’ll keep a look out for more.
Moon Jelly
Finally pulled out my “history bin”. You know, that little box in which you keep some of your past locked up – the past you won’t let go of and you refuse your husband permission to throw it out. The box that sits in the back corner of your closet shelf or the bottom of your closet behind everything else. Mine is a plastic bin and it holds “journals” filled with drunken rants, reaches at poetry and stories that someday wished to be told. The following is an undated entry written circa 1997, since that’s when some of the other entries were written.
I am not wrong
I look around me and question the actions which provoke me
The actions which provoke my thoughts of rebellion and disgust
Disgust with the way they manipulate peoples lives, peoples thoughts, peoples feelings
Feelings which are not wrong when they are from the heart
Feelings which are turned around by those who do not like to be seen through
I respect those people
For what they are is a product of what they have been through
But I cease the vicious circle which they are a part of
I will not let myself be pulled into that circle which surrounds the souls of the innocent and pretends to be their protector and enslaves them to a truth they do not know
A truth which is not existent in the world of the few
Only in the world of the many
They are made to believe what is inside this prison and made to evangelize that truth
A truth which many cannot see through
Only the few surviving
But they are constantly threatened by the deceivers of the circle
A circle I will not be a link to
I will not let the chains bind my soul
I am not wrong
I will continue to look through those which surround me and try to imprison me in their hold
telling me their truth
Their truths which are my lies
I will not be made to live inside their world
My world is small and few live within it
But we are not blind
We are strong
We see through their walls
We see through their circle
I am not wrong
I am not right
I have respect for those people
For that is all they know
Some day something will change
But for now – I am not wrong
He Was Just Opening His Locker
The Baby
It All Runs Together – Part 2
It All Runs Together – Part 1
The Cashier Said, “Hello”
Nothing Officer
Halloween
Get The Fuck Up
Why
Luminarias
Be Careful With The Baby
The Baby
The Baby
The question continues to be, how do we heal?
Do we turn our back and simply keep walking?
Do we confront and fight our offender?
Do we take in, digest, process, understand, forgive, move on?
Do we coil away and hide, ashamed of our reality?
All of the above?
These are my stick figure sketches of a time in my life. I’ve accepted that now. I’m no longer ashamed. No longer quiet. But the healing has only begun. And before it gets too far, others will be effected by the process. But that is not my doing anymore. It was done long ago and the time is here to confront and walk away. Once and for all.
Who am I?
In what do I believe?
What matters?
How do I find peace after all these years?
Sometimes, in order to find oneself, we have to shed the layers of others that we have taken on. It’s complicated. But not really.
Are we not the sum of all of our parts? And do our parts not included parts of others? How then, do we find who we really are – at our core?
When we’re born, we can be anything that we want to be – minus the limitations placed on us due to physical or mental handicaps. The remaining limitations are placed on us by those around us, our parents, our leaders and mentors, our society, our culture, our friends, lovers, spouses.
If we are lucky, we are either born with a strong spirit and a will and determination that drives us to achieve and be our best or we are fortunate enough to find someone that helps us see our ultimate potential and encourages us to strive. If we are not, look around and you’ll see much of what is wrong with society, any society – industrialized, civilized, uncivilized, first world, third world, “fake” world. We end up becoming what someone makes of us. Perhaps we become guerilla children in a nation fighting for “freedom from the oppressor”. We grow up believing that the other person is the enemy, no matter the color of his skin. Sometimes the color is the same. Perhaps we grow up hiding behind window shades and dark curtains afraid to look outside because someone told us that outside was dangerous. Or maybe, we find comfort in becoming. Becoming whatever someone wants us to be, until. What happens when that someone decides that our becoming isn’t enough? What happens when we wake up one day and discover that becoming isn’t enough? What then?
Where do we begin to piece ourselves together? What is ourself? One day you wake up you look in the mirror and you do not recognize the face that is looking back. Maybe you just find yourself crying for no dam reason. Maybe you automatically go through old routines only this time you don’t even remember that you went through the motions. You need to stop. Just stop. Stop and look back at that person in the mirror and stare. Stare into her eyes (or his) and take one minute to say, “hello”. Maybe, just maybe, take a moment to listen to the person that answers back. Who we were born, that majestic individual that rose from an egg and sperm, is in there. All you have to do is find her. But how? Take a minute. Take a minute and realize that part of the reason you don’t recognize who is looking back at you is because the skin you’re in is not yours. It’s whose ever skin it was you needed to be until you needed to find your own. And now, now you need to shed his skin.
Where to begin? Think back, as far back as you need to think to remember what you wanted to be when you were five or six. Think back to remember at whom you stared at because she was beautiful, amazing, awe inspiring. How did she dress? Classy, simple, ostentatious? What color was her hair? Did she style it? Did she wear it down? Was it short? Long? What color lipstick did she wear? Now, find the pieces of that awe inspiring person that fit you, and begin to replace the pieces you need to shed with parts of a new you. What next? Listen. Listen to the voice inside your head – it’s the universe talking. It’s saying, “the answer is right there, all you have to do is listen.” Steal moments to listen. Five minutes, ten minutes, thirty seconds. Silence the noise outside and listen. Sometimes silencing the noise means making louder noise or changing the noise or listening to noise that is slightly lower than the voice inside. How can you hear it? You’ll hear it. The moment isn’t working. Then try harder, force it. Finding yourself sometimes is like looking at a piece of wood or a ball of clay or a blank canvas and asking it, “what do you want to be? how shall I shape you?” And then, you sit back and you wait to be inspired. Or, you begin, with no idea, no clear picture in your mind. You just begin and slowly your piece of wood or your ball of lay or your blank canvas begin to take shape, and then, you see it. You see a familiar feature, a curvature that reminds you of something, you mix a color and another and another or it takes a life all its own and you allow it to go and see where it takes you.
How do you know what his skin and what’s yours? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can move comfortably in it and that when you look in the mirror you see more of what you recognize as you than you see of what you became for him. In each of those little pieces of skin from the past there were always pieces of you. That’s how you were able to survive. Those are the ones that will show you the way to yourself. You’ll never be completely rid of who you became. After all, it’s who you became. But you can be comfortable in the knowledge that you decided which parts to keep as your sum and which to discard.
Finding you is not about forgetting and being embarrassed of what once was. Instead, it’s about embracing, owning what once was, welcoming the new you and not being afraid to show it.
Why did we moved so much when when the kids were kids? Rent Increases!
Well, at first it wasn’t all about the rent increases. At first it was about taking advantage of the opportunity for a larger apartment at a not such expensive monthly rate.
Our first place, after the second divorce, was a little one-bedroom in a courtyard style apartment complex. I’ve fond memories of that apartment. I loved the courtyard venue, the fact that it had a front and rear door and you could cut through the bathroom “hallway” to get from the kitchen to the bedroom – it was open. My two younger children shared the bedroom, I slept on a futon in the living area. The apartment had these great glass door cabinets in the “dining area”, which essentially was a large room where you would place your table on one side and your couch on the other. After a few years of living there, a two bedroom opened up in the complex of one of our elementary school friends. It was affordable, I was in college working on my bachelors and financial aid was helping me afford the move. Here is the B-Side…
Next door to this lived a handsome young prince…not really. But, there lived a single father, who was also a parent at our elementary school. After a few months of living there, we got closer and at the end of my lease he asked to move in to his place. So, I did. Turned out he was a little more Prima Donna than I had initially identified and this did not go well. So, within a short period of moving there, we were moving out. My framework for living and moving was simple (so I thought): 1) always to keep my children in the same school; 2) work near where we lived; 3) moving had to happen when the kids were with dad for the summer – they were already having to deal with a new space, they didn’t also need to deal with “packing, moving, and unpacking”. They too were unhappy with the living situation, as the little boy had some very interesting behaviours, which no one understood. The balancing act was magical, and timely of course.
Degree in hand, I started looking for an apartment and a permanent job. Lo and behold, I quickly found both. Life was never easy, but things always worked out – don’t tell me the stars do no align. They do. Mostly.
The apartment I found was another one bedroom, but I didn’t care! It was ours, it was in another amazing little apartment complex, and it had a back patio and a pool. The other thing it had was lots and lots of trees. Turns out, trees to which both my son and I were allergic! It was the worse allergy and asthma experience of our life. We both ended up in the hospital on multiple occasions thanks to these outbreaks of attacks. It wasn’t until this point however, that we realized that we were allergic to grass, elm, cat and dog dander, and god knows what else. So, now what? We now have to move, again! Ugh!
What to do? What to do? Well, while all this played out, there was a gang of other stuff going on. I had become “pen pals” with a friend that had moved to another state. The more we penned, the closer we got. The closer we got, the more he realized that he was not happy in his relationship. So what’s our solution? Come back to California and let’s see if this works out. I can’t recall if the decision to move was a result of the coming together or the coming together was a result of my need to move. In any case, move we did. That was after cutting off my entire (tiny) family off for either continued verbal abuse, the use of drugs and alcohol in my home or the attempted humiliation of my son by my father. Moving seemed to solve a lot of problems. We got out of this highly allergic environment, moved into a larger space with plenty of rooms for everyone, new addresses and phone numbers for all, and the start of what promised to be a stable relationship.
Hiccup…
That didn’t work out. Mr. clean and sober good guy picked up a drinking habit. What the fuck! Do I attract men that are prone to drinking? Or do I make them drink? Hah!
Now the rent kicks in. Awesome little house. Monthly rent increases as soon as the lease expired. Move we shall. Remember, kids in same school, move during summer break. Voila! Another alignment of the stars.
I wont burden you with any of the “stuff” that went on here…son stopped talking to father, daughter thought she was old enough to move away (the first time), etc., etc., etc.
Lovely apartment, from which we ended up having to move, yet again, due to rent increases. But this time the criteria was slightly different. My son was miserable in school and we were looking for a better option. So, staying in the same neighborhood could be taken off the table. A friend owned a house and had a couple of rooms to rent out. Again, star alignment.
This brings us to son going off to college, daughter moving away, again, and it now being just me. In order to try to help my son gain some independence, I move and my friend rents him a room (that’s another blog).
That about covers why we moved so much.
The mind reels from all the recall and all the other dirty little messes that come to mind.
Until next time…
Arizona and grandson are visiting for the New Year. The baby is getting over a cold and was coughing, which got us talking about the age old tradition of parents “drugging” their children with Benadryl or Nyquil – to get them to go to sleep. Folks of my generation may remember this as quite the practice at one time. I hope the practice has changed – but I doubt it. I personally remember the “druggings”, except my grandmother’s choice medication was 5 mg. of Valium. Yes, folks, Valium. No, I’m not a drug addict, never became one. I think it was because of her “druggings” that I now seldom take any form of medication. I do have an addictive personality, and that isn’t only to vices, but behaviour as well (Valium, Asperger, who knows). So, I steer clear of whatever vice or behaviour may become a negative – with the exception of alcohol. So, grandma use to feed me Valium. What does this have anything to with “family being fucked?”
My father is/was an alcoholic (don’t know if he’s alive, so is/was). In one of his drunken stupors he decides to confront his wife about her possibly dating someone, although they were separated and heading for divorce. Being the daughter with the idea in her head that she was her father’s salvation from himself, I decide to go along. Little did I know what he really had in mind, and he was not the father to keep me from coming along one of his “wild rides”. We show up to her place of work – an injection molding factory where she worked the graveyard shift. Ironically, that night he almost sent her to the graveyard. Innocently, or stupidly, she comes out and gets into the car – where she is greeted with an attempt to slice her throat. At some point my father unlocked the doors long enough for me to get out and walk down the alley. I squatted near a puddle of water, stagnated in the road crown, which reflected the light of the full moon. I prayed for him to stop. Eventually he did. I ended up back at home where my grandmother turned to her miracle cure, 5 mg. of Valium, to put me to sleep.
Sometime between then and a few hours later, I was summoned when he returned home. There he was, sitting on the edge of his bed, scraping blood from the nooks of his car keys. I didn’t ask. I simply took him by the hand and led him to the basin. There I would run water over his finger nails and similarly scrape the blood from them. Following the Valium protocol and tuck him into bed. The following morning I rushed downstairs to check on my “poor papi”. Except, I would find my sliced up stepmother propped up in his bed, being fed steak and eggs for breakfast. What the hell just happened?
I leave in the middle of the night not knowing her fate and the following morning there she is, wounds cleaned and dressed, being cared for by my father – the very man that did this to her. Both hands were completely bandaged, as those were the shields she used to keep him from cutting her throat. Every slice he threw, up went her hands. When and how she got to the hospital, whether or not they knew what happened, who knows. No one spoke of it, until now I guess.
Hence, Family is Fucked. And yes, I realize there is a lot wrong with this picture. But wait, this is only one of my stories.
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