It must be endemic to humanity to say the opposite of what a person means. Thank G-d, when the worst has occured-that is rationalized as we can't know the larger scheme of things...what may seem the worst might be in our best interest.
Really what this is about...is dancing with death. Not the fear of it, but the love for it, the desire for it.
Being drawn to it and never understanding why. There were incidents when I was a young child that any parent might have brought before a professional for discussion, but mine were busy restocking the liquor cabinet or sending out to by Pall Malls by the carton.
So at age 19 I get on a small motorbike, the ground is slick from rain, its fall and leaves are all over, wet plaster on the pavement as I start at the top of a hill where the bike shop was and dont even have to press the gas the bike is flying, literally on its own so fast I waited to see what death was like.
Smoking....drinking...pills that are not mean to heal but to numb and addict, pushing needles into your veins or between your toes. Not my life, but along the spectrum of seducing death to come closer these are all tools.
I was listening to Amy Weinstein's war cry of no, no, no, her voice was so extraordinary in that she didnt have to seduce death, he had her and she staved him off only when she sang.
We are a world filled with contradictions now, we cannot say what we mean and rarely mean what we say.
I must tell you I am fillled with hope for a glorious future to walk the streets of PA alone, with my new joint replacement. If I say truthfully that I hope the anesthesia works so well I never wake up to feel the hole of loneliness throbbing in my chest, that would be against common civility.
And so, I have withdrawn in preparation for surgery. Hired a cat sitter since my adult children pick and choose what calls and messages they respond to and caring for animals requires more discipline and routine.
I will call a taxi and alone to the hosptial around 5am to sit with families or couples comforting and speaking quietly to the patients going in for surgery. I will come out of surgery and begin the process of how do I return home and what lies will be necessary to allow doctors to discharge me since patients are required to have a relative or someone stay with them a day or so.
I will return return home and find a way to navigate up the porch steps with 2 canes so I can return inside where it is safe, where the cats will be happy I am home for them.
In my private thoughts, the truthful ones that I dont dare speak out loud, I think of those who had the courage to choose death, rather than expend unendless years in a slow death by cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, food, none of which remedy the desire for death, which is loneliness.
I've run out of people to reach out to. Spoke to a woman yesterday, who I knew and like while married to first husband we traveled and stayed overnight in their small farm house. There are women it seems who can make a nest no matter where they are. Curtains go up, there's food for unannounced guests always available. But I havent seen her in 30 years. In my feeble brain, there is no time that has passed from when I left CH until now as I try to reengage. In the meantime the rumor mill has had plenty of grist to grind, so the burden of conversation fell on me and toward the end she said "your daughter mentioned you were moving here, some months ago..." Well, I guess she was too busy to find out if I ever arrived.
As the poet once wrote "People live, they have lives" and assuming that anyone, a child or another adult would drop whatever to come be a friend borders on idiocy or worse. Of course she might have had to check with her husband to ask if I'm someone they're allowed to speak to at all.
Since most women in similar marraiges remained married to raise their children to become wives and schluchim, I am a pariah even 30 yrs later for having left my marital home and 5 young children in the care of their father and his extended family. Its not his fault he and his parents etc. did a shitfaced shameful job, its all on me, a mother who loves her kids never leaves.
I am seeing a kind of Janus where one face shows a state of emotion and the other face, something wholly different. So now as I enter a phase in life where I physically need some help I find everyone scarce, not taking calls or responding to messages. This is why I hired a stranger, gave her my keys against every bone in my body and will allow her to come in so the cats get fed and cleaned. There is no one to count on. To say you need help, you are ignored, told you obsess too much (planning is obsessing) or appointments to come by are not kept.
In a sense I understand this is payback-this is how it felt when as toddlers their father forced them to take the phone when he called and pulled by their ears and all I could hear was screaming and crying, begging me to return home. This sense of me being deaf to their pain, although I was not, is what holds them from responding to anything I need.
But they are young, they are filled with hope and years in front of them, its unlikely from what I hear and see between them that death is the same constant friend for them, as for me. It's a different pain for them, something that will heal with therapy or finding a decend spouse and making their own family.
I came into this world as a Girl Named It and unable to have friends at home (we had to keep everyone away from 'your father') and going out was not allowed either. I was once invited 3 blocks away to a simple party, no drugs, a young Hendrix was supposedly going to be there and she said no, you cant go. I went and she came 45 minutes later once she found out where it was and asked at the door for me. "Your mother's here to pick you up" these are the words a 14 yr old wants to hear after finally connnecting past the saddle shoes, over curled perms that were Afros....
Its not a matter of telling the truth, the truth dont mean anything, because no one wants to hear it, Truth doesnt get you on the subway, buy you a paper or pay your bills. It doesnt explain why I left, what I did what I did, there's no free pass, no return and while one may say 'oh we got over it long ago' thats the biggest lie of all.
As much as time stood still for me, it remained frozen for them as well. I was to return a young vibrant mother who could go around town, meet their friends, share their lives in some way. But none of that has happened. A sick older woman needing help showed up and is told, 'get a life'-but the thing is I've done most of my lives already-I've passed over Jordan repeatedly and been to Egypt and came out alive more than once...I've lived many lives and am at peace realizing that it is not me now, but the finger pointers, gossipers and finger waggers that haven't come close to seeing and knowing the worlds I've seen and experienced, it is truly the Other, kids included, that have to come to terms with me not living up to their expectations.
I apologized to my mother for years, as the opening line in any conversation, same thing at work, "I'm sorry but..." Excuse me for living but may I just tell you...
Truth sits on the edge of a blade.
Really what this is about...is dancing with death. Not the fear of it, but the love for it, the desire for it.
Being drawn to it and never understanding why. There were incidents when I was a young child that any parent might have brought before a professional for discussion, but mine were busy restocking the liquor cabinet or sending out to by Pall Malls by the carton.
So at age 19 I get on a small motorbike, the ground is slick from rain, its fall and leaves are all over, wet plaster on the pavement as I start at the top of a hill where the bike shop was and dont even have to press the gas the bike is flying, literally on its own so fast I waited to see what death was like.
Smoking....drinking...pills that are not mean to heal but to numb and addict, pushing needles into your veins or between your toes. Not my life, but along the spectrum of seducing death to come closer these are all tools.
I was listening to Amy Weinstein's war cry of no, no, no, her voice was so extraordinary in that she didnt have to seduce death, he had her and she staved him off only when she sang.
We are a world filled with contradictions now, we cannot say what we mean and rarely mean what we say.
I must tell you I am fillled with hope for a glorious future to walk the streets of PA alone, with my new joint replacement. If I say truthfully that I hope the anesthesia works so well I never wake up to feel the hole of loneliness throbbing in my chest, that would be against common civility.
And so, I have withdrawn in preparation for surgery. Hired a cat sitter since my adult children pick and choose what calls and messages they respond to and caring for animals requires more discipline and routine.
I will call a taxi and alone to the hosptial around 5am to sit with families or couples comforting and speaking quietly to the patients going in for surgery. I will come out of surgery and begin the process of how do I return home and what lies will be necessary to allow doctors to discharge me since patients are required to have a relative or someone stay with them a day or so.
I will return return home and find a way to navigate up the porch steps with 2 canes so I can return inside where it is safe, where the cats will be happy I am home for them.
In my private thoughts, the truthful ones that I dont dare speak out loud, I think of those who had the courage to choose death, rather than expend unendless years in a slow death by cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, food, none of which remedy the desire for death, which is loneliness.
I've run out of people to reach out to. Spoke to a woman yesterday, who I knew and like while married to first husband we traveled and stayed overnight in their small farm house. There are women it seems who can make a nest no matter where they are. Curtains go up, there's food for unannounced guests always available. But I havent seen her in 30 years. In my feeble brain, there is no time that has passed from when I left CH until now as I try to reengage. In the meantime the rumor mill has had plenty of grist to grind, so the burden of conversation fell on me and toward the end she said "your daughter mentioned you were moving here, some months ago..." Well, I guess she was too busy to find out if I ever arrived.
As the poet once wrote "People live, they have lives" and assuming that anyone, a child or another adult would drop whatever to come be a friend borders on idiocy or worse. Of course she might have had to check with her husband to ask if I'm someone they're allowed to speak to at all.
Since most women in similar marraiges remained married to raise their children to become wives and schluchim, I am a pariah even 30 yrs later for having left my marital home and 5 young children in the care of their father and his extended family. Its not his fault he and his parents etc. did a shitfaced shameful job, its all on me, a mother who loves her kids never leaves.
I am seeing a kind of Janus where one face shows a state of emotion and the other face, something wholly different. So now as I enter a phase in life where I physically need some help I find everyone scarce, not taking calls or responding to messages. This is why I hired a stranger, gave her my keys against every bone in my body and will allow her to come in so the cats get fed and cleaned. There is no one to count on. To say you need help, you are ignored, told you obsess too much (planning is obsessing) or appointments to come by are not kept.
In a sense I understand this is payback-this is how it felt when as toddlers their father forced them to take the phone when he called and pulled by their ears and all I could hear was screaming and crying, begging me to return home. This sense of me being deaf to their pain, although I was not, is what holds them from responding to anything I need.
But they are young, they are filled with hope and years in front of them, its unlikely from what I hear and see between them that death is the same constant friend for them, as for me. It's a different pain for them, something that will heal with therapy or finding a decend spouse and making their own family.
I came into this world as a Girl Named It and unable to have friends at home (we had to keep everyone away from 'your father') and going out was not allowed either. I was once invited 3 blocks away to a simple party, no drugs, a young Hendrix was supposedly going to be there and she said no, you cant go. I went and she came 45 minutes later once she found out where it was and asked at the door for me. "Your mother's here to pick you up" these are the words a 14 yr old wants to hear after finally connnecting past the saddle shoes, over curled perms that were Afros....
Its not a matter of telling the truth, the truth dont mean anything, because no one wants to hear it, Truth doesnt get you on the subway, buy you a paper or pay your bills. It doesnt explain why I left, what I did what I did, there's no free pass, no return and while one may say 'oh we got over it long ago' thats the biggest lie of all.
As much as time stood still for me, it remained frozen for them as well. I was to return a young vibrant mother who could go around town, meet their friends, share their lives in some way. But none of that has happened. A sick older woman needing help showed up and is told, 'get a life'-but the thing is I've done most of my lives already-I've passed over Jordan repeatedly and been to Egypt and came out alive more than once...I've lived many lives and am at peace realizing that it is not me now, but the finger pointers, gossipers and finger waggers that haven't come close to seeing and knowing the worlds I've seen and experienced, it is truly the Other, kids included, that have to come to terms with me not living up to their expectations.
I apologized to my mother for years, as the opening line in any conversation, same thing at work, "I'm sorry but..." Excuse me for living but may I just tell you...
Truth sits on the edge of a blade.
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