Loving Luka

F/NF words

What do I have to say here, that hasn’t been said before? It’s an ongoing battle, repetition begets boredom, boredom, depression. I’m weary from all our conversations that end up the same way, one of us hanging up on one another. I can’t do that anymore, I won’t.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop, near your apartment, trying to drink a cup of black coffee in a white mug, my hands shake, while the rain continues to flood the streets. I just think about trying to jump over the massive puddles but I don’t have any more energy in me to even try. When I was younger that was my favorite thing to do. Not now.

View image | gettyimages.com

I feel paralyzed from pain, the pain you inflicted on me. Once, I used to be carefree, like a child, happy and silly and stomp in the puddles.  I am so ANGRY at you. In the past I cared too much and where did that get me? No where. So, instead of being disappointed like I have been in the past, I am turning into myself, safe guarding my heart and not showing it anymore, at least not to you.

I don’t WANT to care anymore, I’m past that point. I’m not lying, I have cared too much in the past, believe me, you know, I wasn’t always like this. People who have known me for years will reassure you that yes, I have changed but I have chosen that change. Why? Self protection. I’m tired of being bullied and pulled apart like a hungry street dog lunging at a piece of a steak.

You know who you are. You blame me but you never look inside yourself. You need ME? That’s not good enough. You don’t treat me well enough to be on your side. You accuse me of everything you do to me, did that ever occur to you?  I just handle it better. I don’t

need to whine and carry on the way you do, I’m an adult now.  Yes, I went through hell to get here but I survived, barely, but I survived and I am strong.

Don’t you see how your view is warped? I don’t live in the past, I do acknowledge it but deep inside YOU are the one who hasn’t moved past it. Why is it that your true emotions only come out when you were bare to the bones, out of your mind? You loved me then, you needed me then. Not since then with all your false bravado. Because if you did love me why would you be so mean to me all the time?

It’s not a big dark secret, it’s an illness. Like diabetes or cancer, get over yourself. I know you think the world revolves around you, you make it that way, you make it that way. Not everybody else does that.

View image | gettyimages.com

I know you put yourself first, well, who doesn’t know that? You admit it with pride. ‘A great quality of yours, I’m sure you think.’ Me? You don’t care about me as much as you think. Because if you did you wouldn’t be a bully like you always have been and you still carry on the same way, even after all these years we’ve been together. You could work on a compromise instead of saying “Well, I  just can’t do it, I won’t do it. ” Maybe you can but you have never tried.

I was happy in the past to mediate to reach a solution we can both live by, I will not be influenced by your outbursts anymore. I will stay away. I don’t trust you since you have broken the rules of our relationship time and again and you know you have.  Deep inside you are a very troubled child. I can’t see our relationship continue on the way it has, not at my expense.

I need to put myself first, to care about me now. I hope one day you will be happy without making others unhappy.

 

FWF, Kellie Elmore. Fire.

 

 

HER

 

Everyone says that teenagers are moody.  I’m not. I’m depressed or nothing. My shrink says I’m in a “Clinical Depression” my parents say I’m very depressed. I don’t care what they call it, I just don’t want to live anymore.

I’m 15, I hate my life or well, I used to, now I just want to leave and not exist. I have no friends.

 

Her (Photo credit: Forty Photographs)

 

Not that anyone would miss me, my parents just wanted to commit me to a crazy hospital and lock me up or drag me to church, every single day and night. My little brother, Billy, well he is okay, he’s five and to him I am,  everything, silly jerk. He didn’t think I was as crazy as a bat but what did he know, he still sucked his thumb.

 

I wasn’t the shrieking, breaking- glass bloody kind of crazy you see on television, or the raging mad screaming in the streets throwing knives and pulling out my gun, feeling ugly angry. Nope, It’s like I lived in the air. I existed, I blended in with the beige lockers in the middle school hallways.

My secret plan kept me going, it was the only thing I had looked forward to for over six months now. Today was November 11th, my favorite day and I knew where I would be  tonight. I knew where I would go tonight after dark. I had the place, I had the alibi, people didn’t care about me and I didn’t care about them anyway. I didn’t feel loved or hated. I didn’t feel anything at all. I read that’s the worst kind of crazy-bad or maybe it’s something my shrink said. I don’t remember.

She once said that if I could have cried, “released my inner emotions” maybe it would have been better but I had no inner emotions that I knew about, nothing that I was hiding, no conflict or cover-up, no tragic past. I felt nothing, bad or good, I didn’t complain and I didn’t want attention. I was just empty, all the time.

All I wanted was to go to sleep forever, and I loved playing with fire. I wanted to leave this world in a way that made me disappear for good. I wanted a quick death so months ago I stole a can of lighter fluid from the hardware store. My plan was to spray my clothes and jump, go poof up in flames.

The fire was still burning strongly, I opened the can of lighter fluid, smelled it and it made me cough. I hadn’t squirted it on my clothes yet. I walked closer to the fire, just a tiny bit. The long hem of the left leg of my jeans caught on fire as I edged closer accidentally but instead of jumping in all the way I instinctively fell to the ground and smothered the flames.

What the hell just happened?  I didn’t know, why did I do that? Why didn’t I just go into the fire as I had planned 1,000 times and burn to a crisp? Couldn’t I even get death right?  I really was a loser, I couldn’t even succeed in offing myself.

 

I had been waiting all along for a sign WHEN to jump in. Could that have been the real sign? I told myself, that if I was supposed to die I would have. I wouldn’t have instinctively dropped like my old doll, Raggedy Ann, on the ground to get rid of the fire and save my life. THAT was the sign! I started feeling strongly about this. I moved away from the fire and after sitting there a while, I made sure the fire was out. I was not feeling happy but I was feeling something. It was a lot more than what I started out with.

 

I felt like I was in a daze, confused but I knew deep down I think that I wanted to live. I started walking up the hill, eating a granola bar that was in my pocket,to get to where I parked my car. I sat there for a few minutes.  I took a few deep breaths and drove home really slowly. Before I got to my room, I opened Billy’s door, he was wearing his favorite cowboy pajamas and yes, still sucking his thumb. I tiptoed over to him and ever so gently, kissed him on his head.

24-Hour Crisis Hotline – The Samaritans

samaritansnyc.org/24-hour-crisis-hotline/

• The Samaritans of New York

   

  Samaritans 24-Hour Crisis Hotline (212) 673-3000. With the goal of helping people in distress and preventing suicide, Samaritans free, confidential.
  

•  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haiku Heights: Grass

Photo of a pair of shoes in the grass. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Burn over burn (Photo credit: U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Northeast Region)

Slivers of burnt green

now brown, maudlin, droopy, still

no love, death, hope lost.

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

Shoes covering feet

where once toes played in the sand

utter confinement.

Plinky Prompt: Are You Good At Reading Maps?

• 
• Are you good at reading maps? See all answers

• Edit answer |
• July 12, 2012 by hibernationnow

• Where Am I?
• Is This The Right Map?
  Map What’s a MAP? Just kidding, I know what they are, I grew up with them piled in my father’s car, folded (just so) and housed in crevices in the doors of our old cars. We got them at gas stations. I couldn’t read maps way back when and I still can’t; a skill my husband finds abhorrent. He still reads maps and enjoys doing it. I prefer “Jill” my GPS even when she is incorrect. I rely on Jill because I have NO SENSE OF DIRECTION. None. Nada. Bupkes. I get lost going around the block. I can go to a place one hundred times and get lost each and every time. I’m not bragging, I’m confessing. I asked a doctor about this once. He reassured me, some people have a sense of direction and some don’t. Some like writing, some like math. Enough said.

Alone

Description unavailable (Photo credit: physiognomist)

Two bitches, foaming at the mouth, always ready to pounce on me. I feel their saliva dripping, I am close enough to feel their hot breath on my skin, I want them to back off, I scream for them to leave me alone but they stop short of biting me and tearing my face apart with their sharp, pointed teeth. I am bleeding, all over, yet they can’t see it or they don’t want to acknowledge how much pain they cause me. It’s easier to blame me.

I know nothing will change. I have fought this battle so many times before and I still feel empty, scared and I am hiding in bed. I don’t want to talk to anyone, see anyone. I feel sick, my stomach is in knots, I drink tea with milk and honey, a sure sign of my malaise. There is sunlight coming in through the window but I don’t see it, I turn to the wall instead where the shadows are dark; the door of my room has been shut tight all day. There is no one I know that can make me feel better; it’s been non-stop stress for weeks and I feel like I want to run away.

I want to be like my childhood friend who lives for herself, wherever she pleases, dining, dancing, enjoying life. I am not enjoying life right now, I am barely getting by. My body hurts, my heart hurts and I’m questioning if my soul is even alive anymore or if it is even attached to my body. I don’t think it is. I saw a professional who was the opposite of professional, she, a nasty, cold, devil who did more harm than good. How can you abuse a patient? I just recently let her go but her words still ring harshly in my ears, there are many bad doctors in the world, untrained, shameless, heartless with just initials after the name to claim their worthiness. It’s not enough.

I’m wounded but not like a soldier bravely marching back to duty. I feel defeated and empty, in despair. My stomach rebels with a hard knot and pain on the back of my lower right side. I don’t eat, I’m not hungry. I am more than sad, less than suicidal; I’m a tightrope walker without a net. I don’t remember ever feeling like this before. I wish I could hate it so I could claw my way out of it but I don’t have the energy or the will to do so. I am tired but not sleepy; I am forgotten. I don’t know who I used to be just how I feel right now.

Does Anyone Still Care Who Jennifer Aniston Is Dating? (Pop Cop)

Image via Wikipedia

Come on people, do you really still care who Jennifer Aniston is dating this month? Wait, let me guess, is it a co-star from a recent movie? Every month it seems that there are articles on who Jen is dating and who she is not dating and whether she is still friendly with Friends co-star Courtney Cox.

FRIENDS WAS OVER IN 2004! I cared about the show, I will always like the show but the actors that played the characters? So over. If we are talking a Friends reunion, I admit, you have my undivided attention and interest. Janice’s presence is absolutely required along with another rendition of Phoebe’s Smelly Cat song. Until then, don’t bother me.

I admit I was surprised when Jen and Brad broke up but after that I kind of got over myself. I was heart-broken when Tom Cruise divorced Nicole Kidman again, not my life. I watched Friends over and over with my daughter. Every single episode again and again. My daughter would actually quote from the show, use references from the show but even she went on to Charmed, Lost and The Office.

She grew up, can’t we? I don’t need to look at magazine covers about whether Jennifer is adopting a baby or not. How about the media, the paparazzi leave her alone and let her figure out her own life?  How about not photographing her anymore; it’s just not cool. It’s also old. I’m not saying she’s old, but enough already.  Courtney Cox and David Arquette are now separated, gasp! Hang on to your BFF’s ladies, they will always be around for you, husbands, boyfriends…you never know, especially in Hollywood.

One more thing, I started a blog years ago called “Jennifer Aniston and Halle Berry Need To Get Over Themselves” (Halle is not known for her solid relationships either) but I decided against it. Instead, I know, I wrote this.  How about we follow around really good philanthropists or people who have made a positive difference in the world. How about People, Us Weekly, Star and all the other magazines, show us that you won’t cover Jennifer Aniston and Halle Berry for a whole year. Concentrate on real people, not actors or actresses or models or rockers. Show us only good examples.  Dare you.

I know, fat chance.

P.S. If Julia Roberts ever divorces Danny Moder I may just have to give up on the sanctity of marriage..not my own of course but everyone else’s. I admire them.

Like We Used To

Image by 'PixelPlacebo' via Flickr

It’s a different page in the book, the old chapter ended abruptly. Now, there’s a new chapter that really doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest. But, since I have no choice but to continue reading, whether I want to or not, I will learn something in the end. I’m not sure if I will like the ending or if I will hate it but it is not an ending that I get to write. Not anymore. It’s no longer my story. I’m so low on energy today with the temperature and the humidity so high it hurts to breathe and I am feeling daggers of chest pain. Tears are sliding down my cheeks but I don’t bother to wipe them away; it’s all out of my control. I wish I could hide away somewhere, or go on vacation alone and relearn who I am.

It would be nice to be able to talk to my eighteen and a half-year old son with the same ease, joy, warmth and humor that we used to have. Now, he is readying himself for camp and college and independence; I understand that but still, sometimes what he does or says sting. I am sure he will come back, at least that’s what other parents of older children have told me. I’m his mother, I will wait. New words entered our vocabulary last year, things like beer pong and prom, girlfriend, college, admissions and honor programs. Maybe there is still a little kid inside him also trying to deal with changes too. Maybe he doesn’t know how he’s acting or how different he seems. It’s a little rocky in the beginning when things change so dramatically but eventually we all learn to adjust to everything. The ability to adjust is what keeps people alive; we have no other option but to adapt.

I have pains in my chest; I feel weak and sad and  fragile and everything in my body hurts from Fibromyalgia and my heart hurts too. My body, is stiff and unyielding. I’m tired of being tired and I feel everything and nothing. Today, nothing trumps everything. There were many things that used to make me happy. More importantly, I used to make myself feel happy but I don’t anymore. Does the true essence of my self still exist if I can’t feel it?

The Object Of Being Left

Image via Wikipedia

I sprayed after shave cologne on my wrists today, it was an old bottle with maybe an inch of liquid left inside it. I found it at my mother’s home, in an abandoned bathroom drawer, where she had hidden it after my father died. They were three odd-shaped bottles left, pushed back in a drawer like teenagers hiding beer or vodka. I took those almost empty bottles home with me and today I used one. The smell was so powerful and so familiar that tears immediately welled up in my eyes. I longed to see my father wearing his  soft plain purple and blue striped shirt and feel his  arms hugging me. I willed it to happen, almost believing it and then reality took over and left me alone with a sharp pain in my heart. I miss the one person in our family who knew me best with just a faint wink of an eye or a hint of a smile. I felt lost; I felt alone.

My dad died ten years ago and I don’t feel this way all the time but the pain goes away completely. I can feel fine for weeks or months and then some memory, a scent, the sight of his old shirt crumpled up in my closet will remind me harshly of my loss. When one is young no one tells you about all the pain you have ahead of you. When you are young you think you want to be grown-up and mature but you have no idea what that really feels like. There are times when it never feels good, not even for half of a single second of any one day.

I went grocery shopping today and met a friend whose son just graduated with my son. We talked about how their graduation from High School was hitting us both hard and in unexpected times and places. She said that once in a while she has to pull off on the side of the road to just cry and then, as if nothing happened, she puts her turn signal  back on and continue her journey. I have been on that road too. While I was in the grocery store I passed water guns and felt that same feeling of loss, I wanted to cry but I wouldn’t let myself. I thought about my son and his friends and the water gun fights, one tiny water gun pistol still sitting in the back of our old, big family car, moving from one side of the car to the other.

I came home and marched up the stairs to get to my room, as fast as I could hobble, to reach for my computer and for a bunch of tissues from a yellow box. The color yellow comforts me; it makes me feel happier. I thought about my son, who is a Counselor, away at camp. He left a week ago; I feel bereft. I don’t want to call him, though eventually I will. I’d rather wait to hear his voice on the phone, starting off with the same low-key “Hey.”I am being widely immature and over emotional, part of me knows that. He is not making the transition from home to camp to college easy for me. I wonder, if at college, will he forget about us as much? When he is at camp, his second home, we really do not exist and while I am proud of my independent son, today I feel sad and lonely. Here I am, at home, opening up the window of his musty room, surrounded by half eaten boxes of cookies. Pain, like accumulated  laundry that sits in the middle of his blue carpet, taunts me.

Father’s Day Without Fathers

For those of us whose fathers are deceased or for people who never knew their fathers at all, Father’s Day is tough. Just like Mother’s Day is for people who do not have a mother any longer or who did not know their mother. I am inundated with advertisements and gift suggestions to get my father: electronics, shavers, cologne, new tv sets, ties. I wish I could get my father a gift but I can’t, he is dead. People say “I lost my father ten years ago.” Lost somehow implies the possibility of him being found and unfortunately, we all know that is not true. I did not lose my father like a wallet or a cellphone, he died.

This isn’t a blog for ideas for gifts but rather a suggestion on what you might do to remember your father. Honor them, not with flowers or chocolates (unless your dad had a penchant for some special type of chocolate.) Honor them with your memories. I go to the cemetery around Father’s Day to pay my respects. to clean the gravestone, to rearrange the stones that adorn it, to talk to my dad. This year I went four weeks early because my mother was having a procedure done and I visited the cemetery at that time. It’s okay.  I gave thanks for him being there, in spirit, from signs and messages I received from him.  I knew he was watching, I knew he cared. I don’t doubt that for a second.

Make a collage if you like to do that, sit and sip your father’s favorite drink, eat food that you both used to love to eat; eat his favorite food (German potato salad) or something the two of you used to share. Share a memory with someone who cares or just tell it to yourself, or your sibling. Siblings add details to each other’s lives that perhaps one of you has forgotten. Talk to your dad, you can go to a quiet place or you can go to a favorite place that you used to go to with your dad,  it doesn’t matter. After you talk, listen. Be aware that you can get messages from those who have passed if your heart is open and YOU are open to receiving messages.

This year my son’s High School Graduation falls on Father’s Day. I couldn’t be happier. I know my dad will be there with his grandson that he adored. I know that he will be watching him cross the stage for his diploma. His spirit will be there with love and pride, of that I have no doubt. Love comes in many forms, in different ways; leave your mind and heart open and I guarantee, you will feel the love. It can be in a form of a soft breeze on your cheek, the shape of a heart in the clouds, a memory of a time that was special to you and your dad. Honor those who are no longer with you. Hold up a glass and make a toast to the past, to the person, to the memories that live in your heart.

Move Over ESL, Cranky Is My New Language

Image via Wikipedia

It was one of THOSE days. You know the kind, when nothing goes right, annoying things happen and no matter what you try, it doesn’t help.  Made a decision, did you? Guess what, it was the wrong one. It was the day of Cranky. I spoke Cranky, I lived and ate and breathed Cranky. If I had a cat, her name would be Cranky.  I felt irritable with life’s problematic surprises and unexpected twists and I felt very out of control.

My children doused the only piece of furniture that I love, my green couch, with water guns. No, my children are not 4 and 6 years old, they are 16 and 18.  Need I say more? The couch, that I picked out, and the multi-colored  square rug beneath it have always made me happy. Why? Because it was the first thing that I bought with great strength of style and character; I was so sure about it and didn’t waver; to me, it was my own tiny corner of the Museum of Modern Art, at home.

Later that day we drove to a restaurant to celebrate my husband’s birthday. He got lost again and again. Nor did he have the directions with him, he didn’t NEED that, we had been there twice before, silly me!! When I suggested the GPS, he scoffed. He also made an illegal red turn with the (driving) teenagers in the back seat of the car. I was fuming. Dude, what the HELL were you thinking? You’re supposed to be the role model here. At that moment, fuming and cranky became first cousins.

Once seated in the restaurant our daughter, a vegetarian, asked for the chef’s special vegetable plate and we all knew she wouldn’t touch it. She played with her food and moved vegetables around that included: cooked kale and spinach, and fennel and she ate about two bites for 21 dollars. Before she ordered we suggested she order A SALAD  or pasta but she refused. She knew better and at practically 17 anything we suggest is useless. I even said she might want to tell the waitress the vegetables that she DID like but apparently my idea was stupid. Of course it was.

My husband and son shared a steak the size of a lobster pot, it was so large and bloody, it was hard to even take a glance at it.  I decided to have three appetizers: a buttery bibb lettuce salad with a light yogurt dressing  which was lovely, an appetizer of braised ribs ravioli, sweet and soft, the texture of the braised meat contrasting the delicate ravioli casing.  The red velvet cake I chose for dessert was extremely disappointing and tasteless. For those of you who know me, a dessert I don’t like is equal to a symphony of crankiness.

The heel of my left foot throbbed horribly with pain when I walked, the jabbing pain even woke me up in the middle of the night. Not being able to walk comfortably is crankiness personified. I have iced it, wrapped it, rubbed it and have tried at least ten different shoe and old, peeling orthotic combinations, nothing helps.  I’ve had this before and once it starts it takes a long, long time to go away. It’s a stubborn, stupid, painful, cranky, old ailment for cranky, old, me. It’s not enough that I don’t have energy? Now, I can’t even walk comfortably.

I’m tired as hell and just want to lie on the bed, since every bone and joint in my body is not just aching with pain but screaming with it. There are no medications to heal it, or relieve it, it’s something I have to live with every single day and night of my life. I am trying to stay awake and of course I fall asleep, the lights on, the computer on my stomach. I wake up two hours later, annoyed with myself.

The day and night have not gone well and I was glad it was almost over. I couldn’t sleep after my unexpected two hour nap so my night and day hours were confused. I glanced over at my dog who was sleeping happily at the foot of my bed and I watched her breathe and smile in her sleep.  I look at her with love and feel love. My dog is the anti-cranky.