living a small, slow life in a small, slow town and loving every minute of it...please join my journal about aging, overcoming c-PTSD, living with chronic illness, and being creative in spite of it all.
It is eight o’clock in the morning, and I have been up for two and a half hours. Pretty typical these days, and I find that I love the wee small hours. I am loving my sweet little life right now…quiet and serene…just me and my dogs and my imaginings. Upon waking I slip on jeans, boots (yes, we have ice and snow here now), a coat and head straight out the door with the dogs. The wind blows and the crystals sting me in the face as I head into the dark, flashlight in hand.
Last night I showed pictures of my new home-to-be to a friend. When she saw the beautiful park across the street with willow trees hanging over the river, I explained that this is where we will walk every day. She said, “Perhaps that’s the name of your new house, A Walk in the Park!”
Being a creature of contrast, I was immediately reminded that the house I am selling and leaving has never had a name. All of my life I have named my homes…until this one. I have lived here almost ten years. Then I remembered that I TRIED to name it for about the first year here, but nothing ever fit. Anything I thought of seemed contrived – because it was. This was never my home. This was the house my husband wanted, and where we housed any number of transitioning friends and relatives over the years, including foster children, and my Dad – but I have never been happy here. And yet there were many good times, of course; important always to remember that THESE are the good old days.
This was Curmudgeon Cottage…or maybe Castle. It was the old man’s hangout, recliners and big screen TV’s everywhere, cigar smoke, grease on the stove, yelling so you could be heard house. Yuk. My next home will be A Walk in the Park…I wish you the same blessing.
My home just sold. After twenty-some years living in a small mid-western town, I am moving back to a larger city. Never having locked my doors here, I search for a key to give the new owners at closing. The home I will move into has an alarm system. My sister tells me that’s a good thing, as a single woman moving to a strange place. I have two dogs who would feign protection, but truth is, their affections can be bought with cheap lunch meat. Commandos we are not.
Last night’s news told of the growing number of women buying firearms (now, THAT’S scary!) and taking classes with them. I won’t be among them. It isn’t that I begrudge them any sense of security this might provide, it’s just that I can’t believe in it. I suspect that, like violence, fear begets fear. You see, I am invested in overcoming the familial habit of being afraid to participate fully in life…My adorable mother lived most of her life afraid of just about everything, from spiders in the basement to the greedy salesman out to take advantage. At the young age of sixty-nine, the cancer of her fears overtook her.
“In my defenselessness my safety lies” has long been one of my favorite lessons from A Course In Miracles. It isn’t speaking of physical strength, but rather of a conscious approach to life. I have learned through personal failure that I scare myself far worse than anyone else ever could, and I have come to treasure my vulnerability.
For a period of time, I may live with the new security system as I get to know my neighborhood. I doubt I’ll keep it. My gut will direct me to right action. Grief was the tuition exacted for having learned to be comfortable in my own skin, to learn to trust my intuition. I am not about to relinquish my hard earned security to the world.
“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I’ve wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keefe
Another of Doris the Resourceress’ favorites that she used to sing to me as a child…in case you didn’t know how lucky I truly am…
“You may be wealthy with treasures untold, chests full of jewels and coffers of gold, but richer than I you could never be – I had a Mother who read to me.” -author unknown
She sang to me, too…I never appreciated her enough…
Since divorcing two years ago now, I have dated one gentleman who liked to correct me about my “magical thinking.” It prompted me to evaluate what that meant, and whether or not it was a bad habit to be eradicated – like smoking, or speaking poor English. I have now decided: I am a magical thinker.
It occurs to me that magical thinking allows for anything to be possible. It affirms that reality is not limited by the perception of the five senses, but broadly utilizes the imagination to define it’s environment. Magical thinking is intuitive. I am intuitive.
Most of my life people have commented that I was living a charmed life; I never thought about it consciously, and I didn’t know what they meant. They recognized that something quite undefinable was happening: that I would think of something, and it would come to be. I can’t explain that. But I have also met many (mostly men!) who thought of me as unreasonable – because you can’t talk me out of my fantastical magical thinking. It is my personal experience of reality.
Friends would call asking for things they needed or wanted, and puzzled, I would wonder why they were asking ME for these things…”Well”, they would say, “you manifest anything you think of. So manifest me two wing back chairs this weekend, would you, please?” And I would shake my head as if they were looney, and go off to brunch at a co-workers house. Pulling in the driveway, my co-worker and his partner would be dragging two lovely wing back chairs out to the curb in hopes someone would pick them up…and instead load them into the back of my car. An hour or so later I was pulling into the friend’s drive who had called that morning, with her chair delivery. This kind of thing happens regularly. Magical, I guess. Or is it?
I can’t help but wonder if, in fact, this isn’t just NATURAL thinking. It never occurred to me that things didn’t work this way all the time for everyone…until much later in life. If I try to REASON this, it goes away. So, I no longer try to reason. Maybe reason works for some people, maybe some of us are wired differently. Beats me! I’m willing to deliver the chairs…I am an unreasonable, intuitive, magical thinker.
Remember when you were a little kid and you threw a temper tantrum in an attempt to get your own way? Why, your very survival depended on you convincing the adults to see things from your point of view…smarter parents smiled compassionately and responded, “Drop the act.”
Congratulations on your successful acting debut…but sadly, over time, you convinced yourself your act was real.
It’s now five-thirty in the morning, which last week would have been six-thirty. The only reason that fact has any significance at all, is because last week I would have been so glad to have slept this LATE. Maybe I did get a decent nights sleep after all…
I woke worried about my brother. Yesterday my sister told me that he is about to become homeless again; he called her to ask if she could take his old dog for awhile. As it happens, he had left me two voice mail messages, but I haven’t listened to them yet. John leaves me messages all the time. He just says “I love you. Peace be with you.”
I am the eldest of five children, and for a few months yet, we are all in our fifties. How we lived this long is nothing short of a miracle. Our household was so dysfunctional, it would make The Prince of Tides look like a Disney fantasy. My first inclination was to call my brother immediately and tell him he could come here. My home is about to sell, and I don’t know where I will be living a couple of months from now…and never mind that it has taken me the last three years to extricate myself from the abusive clingings of other family addicts.
Like my four siblings, John has overcome alcohol and drug abuse. He’s even managed to quit smoking – several times. He works hard everyday. He drives truck and delivers concrete, and although he makes a decent wage, he can’t pay his rent and utilities. He is addicted to Maria and her young children from a former marriage, and Maria is addicted to prescription medication for her chronic pain. And when he gives her the money to pay the bills because he is working six days a week, she spends it and forgets to pay the rent. They have lived without electricity for months now, but winter is about to set in.
I woke hearing myself talking to my darling brother, such a good-hearted man. “Your emotional attachments will keep you living in hell. They don’t exist in the Kingdom of Heaven. God has no use for your emotions, and is not interested in reconciling them. Neither is God interested in healing your physical pain, or in saving your life as it exists here now.”
“God does not care what you are thinking. You have been brainwashed into believing that your thoughts represent you, and nothing could be further from the truth. Thought does not exist in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
There is only one mind, one consciousness. I use the term the Kingdom of Heaven, but it means enlightenment, freedom, PEACE. God, as consciousness, is waiting to welcome us into this state of complete freedom from our physical pain and mental turmoil and emotional upheaval, to will us the Kingdom. We squander our inheritance when we cry and plead for our way, for God to fix our circumstances, to help us feel better, to help us continue to exist, and to dysfunction ourselves. Our adoring “father in heaven” smiles compassionately and says, “Drop the act.”
What does this mean in our everyday struggle? It means specifically that we must overcome our addiction to BELIEVING that anything we think or feel could possibly lead us toward enlightenment. Will I still ache with arthritis? Yep. Will I still get angry when you wrong me? Sure – to the degree I am invested in the belief that I can be wronged. Some days I’ll let it go sooner than others. I’m living one day at a time, and to the best of my ability, I’m gonna drop the act.
Withdraw your attention from your thoughts and emotions, and do not participate in any decision or behavior that you think is going to make you feel better or because you should or because anyone thinks you should. Now that’s easy for me to say, I realize…I am just learning myself. But I know we must stop trying to figure it out. Just stop, dead in your tracks, and listen for that still, quiet whispered prompting from your SOUL…from love. Not need. Don’t listen to need. Tell need to move to the back of the bus, “Get thee behind me.” It will lead you astray every time.
It will appear to most that you have lost your mind (oh, we can only hope!) and become lazy, uncaring…and when some person says to you – and they will – “God helps those who help themselves,” laugh and walk away. God isn’t interested in our petty preferences. He is completely invested in our freedom.
Learn to trust your inner voice, your truth, by giving it a chance. Stop trying to get your little way in the world. You have outgrown this behavior. Drop the act.
Now just a few months shy of coming full circle in my year at home, I whittle away at the enormous task of putting my house right after the Smoking Sociopaths moved out and the potential sales have all but evaporated…
Thank You Nancy Allen for sending me the Apartment Therapy article about ridding the house of cigarette smell…daunting, but I have incorporated most of these helpful methods, and it is abating…next week our weather is due to be, once again, unseasonably cool. I will use the suggestion of running the furnace with it’s new filter and all of the windows open. I have had all the carpets replaced or cleaned, the duct work cleaned, have thoroughly scrubbed down all of the ceilings and walls with vinegar, and have now repainted…since the above mentioned moved out just three weeks ago. It has been a lot like work.
Let me just mention that as the profit from the house sale will be my payment for this labor, I am sure to be losing substantially…lucky for me, I LOVE THIS WORK!!! Well…I love the painting and I love the sheer joy of arranging and putting together interior environments…I feel like I am gluing together one big delightful collage to live within…with purpose – the purpose of supporting and encouraging the creative life of a budding artist- in this case, me…(Insert big smile here.)
And as Mies van der Rohe said, “God is in the details…” Tell ’em, Mrs. Blandings…
Well…it has been just over a month since last I wrote. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever write again…not for lack of material, but for a hurricane of change and transformation. More health issues; huge, huge life changes…it took two weeks to get my father and brother moved and settled into their new place, and the last two weeks putting my house – up for sale – back into any semblance of sanity suitable for showing…
It has been physically challenging and emotionally exhausting, but necessary. Yesterday I drove out to visit my Dad and drop off a few things yet left behind. The few times I have visited since their move have left me shaking and grief-stricken, making the 57 mile drive home difficult. So, as I approached the highway turnoff near his house, I said a prayer for myself, asking for a ray of hope, a sign, that somehow this was all going to work out alright.
When I left there two hours later, I pulled out onto the highway, and I was behind an SUV with a specialty plate that read: RAYHOPE.
If I could reach the stars…I’d pull one down for you…and shine it in your heart…so you could see the Truth…
This morning’s meditation whispered that I am hard-headed and soft-hearted, to the point of my own detriment…I guess it’s better than being hard-hearted and soft in the head…although I do think that is often how others see me.
That is certainly how my family thinks of me. My big, violent, addicted family…I recently saw a bumper sticker – on a pickup truck of course- that said I “heart” (it showed a big red heart) my violent alcoholic family…I need ME one of them!
Those of you who know me or follow this blog know that I have been housing my elderly father for seven years now, since he came home from the hospital with Hospice and three weeks to live. Then my brother moved in after his home was foreclosed upon. They were heart broken and world weary…and haven’t we all been there?
But I attempted to heal them- again- as I had in previous years…along with the other four members of my biological family…and my husband…and child…and stepchildren and countless close friends. They’re dropping out of my life like flies around here lately, and my healthier friends assure me this is progress. It is true that I seem to have lost my codependence recently. Perhaps the healing HAS begun. (See Post of May 27th, 2013)
But the truth is that I am broken-hearted for them. They just cannot overcome their addictions and self destructive behaviors. They can’t seem to help themselves, and their lives become increasingly difficult. I can’t live with them any longer; I have let it go on too long as it is…but if I could find the words or any meaningful action that would effect them, I certainly would…
I see their innocence, their inherent beauty; the lost potential of people born privileged by strong bodies and brilliant minds. Only I know the abuses and cancers they have already endured and overcome. I respectfully hold the secrets they cannot voice in hopes they will one day find themselves worthy of telling their own stories. Meanwhile, they still gamble and fall off the wagon and pick violent fights and kick and thrash against life, and stubbornly live on the edge of destruction. I just can’t have it in my life or my home any longer.
So they are moving out come August 1st, and while I will not revisit this decision, I am sick with guilt and sorrow. I will continue to pray for us constantly, for restoration of our health and to our right minds, and I will keep on dreaming for them even if it breaks my heart…
Hearts are resplendently resilient…what would you dare to dream even if it broke your heart?!
I am an artist struggling with where I belong in the world. I am an artist like Isabel is a witch in the movie “Bewitched”…like Vianne is a gypsy in Chocolat…like Sally in Practical Magic…it is no use pretending to be anything else. Of course, these are movie characters and I am not. It is much harder to actually try to live outside of your nature on a daily basis.
These movies are hilarious and poignant in their depiction of women trying to fit into their surroundings – to be something they are not – because the world is afraid of their power. Every mature woman on this planet knows all too well what THAT feels like. This is why movies about witches are so successful…(that’s my working theory…)
I don’t remember drawing as a young child, but my Mother told me I began to draw as soon as I could hold a pencil…long before I started grade school…I entertained myself, my younger siblings…I explained my world.
But these days I struggle with everything: my health, my emotional intensity, my house on the market, my financial stress…I no longer know my place in the world. I don’t seem to know much anymore…(but I know everything you never wanted to know about moving as my house is for sale!) I am displacing my elderly Father who has become increasingly more difficult to live with. What made me think this could work? I couldn’t live with him growing up, and left home at fifteen – albeit to boarding school. That was an ultimatum that I presented my parents with, by the way. I announced one day that I WOULD BE leaving home now – they could help me with that, or I would simply disappear from their lives and make my own way in world (ha!) As it happened, I confided in my friend Laurie Miller about the abuse going on in my home, and asked if I could stay at her house for awhile…her parents took me with their family on vacation, and when we returned home to Trenton, her grandmother had scheduled me to take an entrance exam at Kingswood Cranbrook School for girls.
I started a few weeks later. I went to school twelve hours a day and took every art class I could, including any at the Cranbrook Academy of Art that the instructors would let me audit. It was HEAVEN to me, as close to Hogwarts as you can get in the real world. My parents agreed to send me if I would come home two weekends a month and TRY to get along…you see, I was the problem.
As it turns out, I have always BEEN the problem. But as Glinda informs Dorothy: “You had the power all along, my dear.” Finally – FINALLY – at the age of sixty, I’m done compromising. Pretending to “get along” was killing me. Too bad it seems to have come down to them or me! But so be it…
I’m going back to being an artist. I don’t know where I’ll live or how I’ll eat or pay the bills; apparently I don’t know how to play well with others, heck, maybe I’ll die…or maybe, the life I have left will become worth living. Ich habe genug.
A Painterly Home 