Beautiful, Happy, Yellow Roses. At one time they brought me utter delight, at another they brought me despair and heartbreak. A different day, a different situation. Total miscommunication.
I choose just to look at the happiness of the stunning flowers. I accept, though it is hard, that some things just can’t be worked out or understood. No matter how much you want to be heard, some people will not hear you. That’s Life. You tried, move on. It’s complicated.
Tide Pool 003 (Photo credit: Sunburned Surveyor)
A penny flipped mid-air, the sound of dripping water from an old rusty pipe, white pistachio ice cream in an orange, ceramic bowl. Many, many things will happen during the day, most won’t leave an impression, but some will, things you may have not even have noticed consciously. What have you remembered in the corners of your mind? The pop of very dark, red blood on my ankle after I cut myself, fixing the sink without asking for my husband’s help and my subsequent satisfaction, the texture and exquisite taste of lemon cheesecake swirling on my tongue.
Still not feeling happy but not feeling as depressed, it may take a while. Being on this plateau is fine with me, I am not complaining. I am trying to place the world in different compartments. There are parts of myself I do not like, I need to own these. I am less patient than I used to be, I am unkind when pushed straight up against a brick wall, lately, I get angry more easily, sadder too; I am most definitely, flawed.
Relationships, each one, are so hard. Our age must be a part of it. We are the aging boomers.Is it our age? . Not so much peace, love and rock n’ roll anymore. Who has the time, the money, the stress free life? There are no relationship that are easy, they all need work and nurturing. Just what is the right ratio? You only know when you have bumped up against it. Things hurt me more than most but that is something I can’t change, people have called me an Empath Intuitive, for what that is worth. I need to know more about this. Anyone?
I try to let things roll off my back but they get stuck. I am too sensitive, yes I know. I’m sorry. When people show coldness it feels like stabbing to me. Whoever said “karma is a bitch” first is so deadly right but that is how we learn, isn’t it? The lessons we need to learn usually come from within us.
I feel my mood slipping away, as if I were once again, caught in a tide pool of waves crashing around me. For all the majestic beauty of the ocean it can also be terrifying, disturbing and very dark. When I was a teenager I wandered away for a very long time, stayed away for hours, longer than I ever had, hoping that someone would miss me. Many hours later, I came back waiting for the howls of relief that I had returned and the shrieks of “where have you been, young lady?” but no one had even noticed that I had gone.
Where is my energy, (not just because I have Fibromyalgia but even before the diagnosis? Where was my fight, my determination, my drive? I feel like I’m a 33 record in a 45 playing world. (ask your parents!)
My red-brown dog, Lexi, lies against my legs, her show of affection, I still miss my first dog, Callie. You don’t forget love. You can’t, it’s impossible, If only it was that easy. Love lies in your memory and your heart, it reminds you of what you have done wrong and what you have done right. It shows us all that we are fallible and vulnerable. Live your life, but stop and tell the important people you love that YOU LOVE them. Now, before it’s too late while riding the ups and downs of life. I’ve always hated roller coasters. In life, we have no choice but to hold on tight.
Cover of Tea for the Tillerman
Katie remembers clearly that when her older sister, Susan, had bi-polar episodes, more than she could count on one hand, Susan was always so loving to her. She was warm and kind, she would take her trembling hand and stroke Katie’s cheek softly, like a moth circling around soft yellow light. Susan would also apologize to her then, telling her how much she REALLY DID love her and appreciate her and they would be best friends for as long as it lasted.
Now, they fight often, usually on the phone or misinterpret what the other one says on e-mail. Katie takes things too personally, Susan thinks about herself first. It’s been an on-going battle for years.
“I won’t change” said Susan, defiantly. “I am who I am and you are a martyr” and finally, about a year ago Katie said, “I will not take any more pain from you.” It was hard and she cried but she could not stand the constant anxiety she felt when she was on the phone with her older sister, assessing her mood, her tone of voice, her impatience, the thick tenseness of her angry words. The proportion of pain to happiness was so unequal that she wanted to stop the bad feelings altogether.
There was pain, all the time, consistently flaring up old feelings; it felt like the same serrated knife that had plunged in her epiglottis when she was so, so sick except this pain stabbed her heart. Everybody hurts sometime, Katie thought but the pain from her older sister was constant. They had tried too many times to fix it without success. “I’m trying” Katie wanted to scream out, but Susan would not listen or did not hear her. “Look in the mirror” Katie yelled ” I’m not the only one who feels this way.” She was fighting a losing battle in which she felt so emotionally destroyed she decided to finally end the war. However, In a war, no one comes out unscathed.
That’s not to say that there weren’t good times too. In the past, among long bouts of feuding and not speaking, there had been good talks and family fun. When it was only about the two sisters, it was never a safe topic and tension filled the air like a smoke bomb which everybody inhaled, even the cousins.
They had exchanged roles when Kate was 15 and Susan, 21 when Susan first was “sick.”Kate became the older sister and Susan, the child. Even though it was the last place Kate wanted to be, she thought maybe Susan never forgave her for that. Not even when they sat in the back seat of their parents car, holding hands and singing “Sad Lisa” by Cat Stevens together, a song they had both listened to individually. It was NO ONE’S FAULT they all know rationally. No one. If anyone was to blame it was their parents who abdicated their position of decision-making to Kate. On the other hand, Kate had disappeared to them as a child. She was hushed when she tried to come in the apartment door because Susan was trying to sleep, their parents held different standards for the two sisters and it started then and never changed.
Things don’t always come out the way you want them to; it would have been sublime to be one happy family with equal part of love and nurturing. For a little while it was, when their father was alive and he was the moderator, Katie’s soul-mate of a parent. When he died, their mother lost a spouse, their daughters both lost a dad but Kate lost a friend and ally, someone who understood her sensitive personality perfectly. It became a war, two against one and Kate felt very much alone with two strong, self-involved women and herself. She survived for a number of years playing that game; she took it for as long as she could.
One Mother’s Day brunch, two years ago, she slid back from the table, wiped her lightly pink lipsticked mouth with the white linen napkin, collected her matching pink pocketbook from her lap, smiled sadly, and stood up. She would no longer participate in a war she didn’t believe in. She walked away but she couldn’t help it; she always looked back.
Hibernationnow's Blog 