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.
Early this morning I woke from a nightmare. A silly common nightmare, you know the kind…back in high school, can’t find my class, hearing snickering behind me as I realize that my shoes don’t match. And I also woke realizing that I am terribly dehydrated. So up, feed the cat, put the coffee on, and down a big glass of water.
Routine is my new best friend. I say new because, well…recently at the doctor we had the conversation about getting a formal diagnosis for ADHD, and trying some medication. I can’t stay focused; I am literally losing track of time. Like a living nightmare, I must admit to myself that this is a typical pattern for me around the holidays. And I am far too old for this.
I’m too old to be just waking up and seeing how debilitating this has been my entire life. Better late than never. I guess. It suddenly occurs to me that this is why wisdom doesn’t seem to stick; I repeatedly have to learn these patterns over again. It feels like psychological amnesia. Hence the school nightmare.
But what I do have is a toolbox, a repertoire of resources, developed over the decades. At 70, I finally have a doctor I trust and love. That only took way too long. I have a therapist who knows me now, 3 years into treatment. A support system of friends. I know who has my back. Those things take a lifetime to develop when you are dysfunctional. And they are precious.
That’s the only gift I have for you this Christmas – learn psychological self care. Learn to recognize when you are being gaslit, yes. More importantly, learn to catch yourself when you are gaslighting yourself. When you are undermining your self esteem, or making compromises that threaten your integrity.
Will I continue to have nightmares of being back in school all my life? I suspect I will. I am certainly committed to being a student all my life. I would never want to stop learning and growing. I would never want to stop being curious. Just a little more curious than scared. That’s all it takes to keep moving forward. As my Mom Doris would say, “move along smartly now.”
You’re in the constant company of God. Act accordingly.
Well…as I am slowly getting back into writing daily, I find myself with a couple of short posts this week. This one is just for the fun of it, and who is more fun than Stephen Mangen? I’ve always admired how he thinks fast on his feet. He reminds me of my brother who was also astonishingly quick witted. My Mother carried that trait into our family, and my son inherited it. I, on the other hand, am one of “those people” who suddenly think of a clever retort at 3 a.m. the day after the conversation.
“If we are lucky not to be displaced by war or poverty, the places we live are like bird’s nests.” – Gloria Steinem
I have long since lost count of how many times I have moved. Here’s a confession few know about me: I have been married four times. Three husbands, four marriages. All four ended in divorce. My first husband was a high school boyfriend. My parents had agreed to send me to boarding school after I threatened to run away – and I did so one summer. I managed to hide out for a couple of weeks in friend’s basements before a friend’s mother agreed to intervene on my behalf. By the age of 15 I couldn’t live at home any longer. I instinctively knew the situation was abusive, although it would be decades before I even began to unravel that situation.
I was 18 the first time I got married, and it only took a few months to figure out that my husband had a drug problem, and a few more months to realize there was nothing I could do about it. So I went “back home” to my parents, but only for a few awful days before finding a girlfriend I could rent a room from. And I never looked back, although I did go back again and again to pack up my younger siblings one by one and move them out. Not soon enough, of course, as the damage was done. Scrambling for survival myself, a safe place to sleep was all I had to offer.
By the third time I got married in my forties, I was no longer enduring physical or sexual abuse. That marriage would also prove intolerable, and not once, but twice. To this day we are still friends, and to this day he yet fails to comprehend any responsibility in it’s failing. As he so often said, we didn’t have a problem. I had a problem. As it happened, he was right, and my problem had a name.
The first fifty years of childhood are the hardest. I survived them by being scrappy. For the first 3 decades of living on my own I was able to find decent work, and when an emergency or large expense threatened my housing and independence, I would supplement my meager income by selling off family heirlooms, primarily beautiful antique furniture. I wish I could have kept it. Only a few small momentos still exist.
But this way of life (which I am only grateful for) leaves it’s scars. One of mine seems to be a deep, simmering grief for the home – THE home – that I have never known. It is truly all I’ve ever wanted for. A home of my own. Safe. Clean. Beautiful. A nest. Perhaps that is why I have always been fascinated by bird nests?!
In October of 1990, House and Garden magazine published an article by Gloria Steinem about her newly decorated NYC apartment, ‘Ms. Steinem on the Home Front.’ I still have that magazine. Somehow weird items have survived all the relocations…but in truth, this article made my heart sing. It has continued to inspire me all these years.
This morning, the 12th of December, 2024, I opened my YouTube feed and found this story. Gloria Steinem talking about her home of 58 years. I am watching through tears. If I had no other inspiration at all, Gloria would be enough.
Both these short videos depict the same home, recently reviewed for a British contest. Apparently you call in your vote. I did watch the others; they didn’t hold a candle to this one, now one of my favorite houses ever. Extraordinary, indeed.
My first cat was a calico kitten my Mom got me at around the age of four. I wouldn’t remember why, of course…perhaps I was grumpy about having a new sibling. I named her Patches. I do remember Mom and I sat very still on the floor peeking in to watch her giving birth to a litter of kittens in the bottom of my wardrobe, and being heartbroken when I couldn’t keep them all.
At the time my parents had a boxer named Duchess who kept getting out and terrorizing the neighborhood. She jumped through the living room picture window once and took off down the street. I remember the woman who came to pick her up when Mom found her a new home on a farm. But I was very sad. She was soon replaced with a Cocker Spaniel I named Blackie, because, well, black. Apparently my imagination was not yet fully developed. And so began my life-long love of animals. Growing up in a family with five children we always had cats and dogs and birds and fish and my sister had a horse. Most of our pets lived long luxurious lives I’m happy to report.
Many years ago I lost my beloved cat Polly (Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day) and I was devastated. It doesn’t get easier to lose a pet as you get older; it gets harder. I would never replace her – she wasn’t replaceable. Now I know that. I didn’t think my heart could survive much more loss. I was wrong.
But I did get a puppy a few years later. A Pembroke Welsh Corgi, precisely because I was unfamiliar with the breed. She wouldn’t remind me of the dogs I had loved and lost. When she became older and was slowing down my husband and I adopted a rescue Corgi looking for a forever home, Oliver. And when we lost Christie and were still grieving a year on, my vet insisted I adopt another Corgi rescue in need of a loving home, and we brought home Hariat. With each loss, still devastated and depressed months later, I would adopt another dog hoping to help my aging dog cope and find a new lease on life. My last was Odie, a miniature Beagle from the Kent County Animal Shelter; he was the first Beagle I had ever known. I couldn’t open my heart for another Corgi.
Hariat and Odie are the reason I live where I am now. I bought a house for my elderly dogs. Priority requirement: no steps out into the yard. We had been here several months when I was asked if I could help out a family member by cat sitting Chewy. The dogs have been gone for a few years now, but I still have Chew-chew.
The name has never suited him. He is regal, probably mostly Maine Coon. He deserves a sophisticated moniker befitting his royal presence, but I would never change it. He was already several years old when he came to my house. There was no period of adjustment necessary. He immediately became one of the dogs. He’s a cat-dog.
Is he actually quite different from cats I have known in my past, or am I different now? It’s the latter, of course. The longer I have interacted with animals, both wild and domestic, the more they have taught me over the decades. Not only are they sentient, but incredibly intelligent.
Feline Chewy and canine Odie were inseparable until we lost Odie to cancer shortly after the pandemic began. Since, I’ve begun to suspect that Chewy has felt he carries sole responsibility for my well being, and has had to become my assist animal. He will often wake me at night when I am having a nightmare or my breathing is erratic. Last night he was buggin’ me buggin’ me buggin’ me, as he often does in the middle of the night. Wake up! Did he want food? No. In a weirdly unusual move, he tried to knock my water glass off the nightstand. I poured some fresh cold water and he took a sip, sat back and gave me “the look.” It’s intensely judgmental and rather implies my utter lack of understanding; the telepathic message is one of impatience.
Then he jumped off the bed and walked over to his water bowl, sat and looked down at it, and then looked back at me. I said, “I will if you will.” And we both drank water at the same time. We hoomans are dim-witted and hard to train, aren’t we?!
So, I am a cat lady for life. I miss the dogs terribly. But it’s just going to be Chewy and I for as long as I can possibly keep him healthy and alive. We are a team. Are you a cat lady? If you know what a privilege that is, you just know. Judith Potts knows. She has her confidant, Jasper.
Recently I posted a journal entry about being diagnosed with ADHD, and while that is true, the writing sounded whiney to me. Have I mentioned that I am now coming out of a depression? I’ve been back on antidepressants for almost a month. I feel like a different person. Truthfully, the SSRI’s don’t take away the sadness or gloomy outlook – and I wouldn’t want them to. I know when they are working because I first have a physiological response: my shoulders come down, my chest expands, I breathe easier. My joints ache less. The nightmares abate and I can sleep restfully. I’m calmer in every situation.
And then the healing can begin. My thinking begins to untangle – not unravel like a dumpster fire in a flash flood! But untangle – and make sense again. I can follow one thread to the next in a cohesive way; I can think straight again. I can think. I can reason.
Next come the creative urges. Beauty excites me again…I hadn’t noticed when that had stopped happening. Ahhhhh….I have inklings of delight again. The medication allows me to relax just enough to sleep, to dream, to imagine. And that is how it works. It doesn’t take away my frustrations, my difficulties, or my grief. It allows me to cope with them. To sort through them, prioritize them, and plan for productive change. I can love my life again.
I don’t remember the first time I realized how glad I am to be here now – to have been born exactly when and where I was born. This way, baby. To be exactly who I am. I think it could have been grade school – but certainly by junior high, I became aware of feeling gratitude…and enjoying every little detail of every little thing around me. When my physiology gets turned around here and now get reversed to now and here – which is nowhere. Pardon the word soup, but I can be silly again, too.
By it’s very nature, mental illness is immaturity in action. Acting silly isn’t. The difference is presence. The difference is being childlike, not childish. I used to joke when people said something about entering their second childhood – that I’ve never left my first. Seriously. Never stop being childlike, delighted by every little detail of life.
That was the message I “heard” in my morning meditation. Do my spirit guides know my language, or what?! I’ve been perseverating for days…weeks…months…years – okay – decades now, about doing something…anything…creative or productive or proactive to help myself out of this malaise. “This” malaise is commonly known as poverty. Struggling financially, but more so, spiritually.
The J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) hasn’t been working out so well the past decade or so…you don’t want me to work for you. Everyone I’ve worked for lately dies. Just sayin’…
Over 13 years ago I started this blog in an attempt to write my way out of a nervous breakdown. It worked, and I’ve been writing since. Several years ago I began making videos on my own YouTube channel, Crow Quill Tarot. I have also painted some paintings in that time period; I’ve drawn. Made jewelry. But I don’t feel creative. Getting started is always a challenge and requires a shove. But finishing…well, I’ll let you know when I’ve finished something.
Most of my adult life I have assigned myself a “winter project.” I enroll in a class or two, or study on my own, a new subject or skill I think I would like to master. This fall I decided to study astrology. After all, it’s all the rage. I’ve toyed with going back to making videos on the tarot channel, but there are hundreds (maybe thousands?) doing it, and well. People with far more technical expertise.
And many, if not most of them – certainly the most popular and successful, are incorporating astrology into the tarot readings. In fact, that is how they have “delineated” the collective. And there’s where I got hung up – right there, at delineation. Collective = our common humanity, if I understand it correctly. How we are not only alike, but psychically connected. That understanding I have no problem with. But once I start defining myself and others, and using a fixed set of criteria, I am in the business of predicting the future. I call that fortune telling. And not only has it never interested me, but it is a sad and gross mis-use of the infinitely present tarot.
“The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.” – Indigo Girls
So, I have been struggling to understand how astrology fits for me. I had a teacher in ninth grade who asked each student on the first day of her class what their sun sign was. Some didn’t know, so she asked their birthday and told them. Then she proceeded to assign us into study groups accordingly – that is, those students she didn’t send to the office to transfer to another classroom because their sign wasn’t compatible with hers.
When I listen to tarot readers using astrology to “clarify” messages I break out in a rash. It goes something like this: “this person may be a Leo or a Sag…or a Scorpio…or they could be…” until they’ve listed 9 out of the 12 signs. They have missed the point of the tarot entirely – which is a precise methodology for developing self awareness and hence, intuition. Intuition. Helllloooooooo! How intuitive are you if you need to list every possibility?! Make up your everlovin’ mind! WHAT are you saying, exactly? To me. I’m not listening because I want to know about my mother’s sister’s neighbor’s cousin. It sounds like they are trying to connect with everyone and anyone. Because that’s how they make money. And so, in the interest of learning, I have listened to many different readers addressing all the 12 zodiac signs. And identified with something in each of them. So now what?!
I want to make money. So I keep going back over this in my mind. And this morning I was meditating on why don’t I get astrology? Why isn’t it clicking for me?! And I heard, “because you are every sign.” Yes, yes I am.
And the bubble in my chest popped. I’m every sign. You are every sign. How can this be? Because we are not the past. We are not even who we were yesterday. We have been transfigured. We have risen. We do not need to keep reliving the crucifixion and the resurrection. We are on the other side of that now. It’s over. Pull your head out of your past.
“What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them, and they have changed since then.” – T. S. Eliot
I can’t write right now. Is it writer’s block? Who knows what that even is? I think it’s grief. It leaks out of my fascia and bone and seeps into my veins and skin. It wants out. It wants expression, and until I can sleep a little more I cannot think or type or hold a paintbrush.
But I want to offer you inspiration. Because always, always, deep down inside we know we are never alone and life is patiently waiting for a new day, or moment. It’s coming…
When my son was little one of our favorite movies and soundtracks was The Point by Harry Nilsson. We lived across from a park and in the days after Christmas people would drop off puppies they didn’t want to keep. One day I turned into my driveway and two little dogs sat on my front porch, icicles hanging from their matted fur. I took them in, of course, and although I couldn’t keep them, I did find homes for them. I named them Oblio and Arrow, for the boy and his dog from The Point. It’s a wonderful story for children of all ages.
Living with chronic illness is exhausting, but by far the worst illness I deal with on a daily basis is the OPD. OPD (Obnoxious Personality Disorder) and it’s symptoms are debilitating. When I am miserable, feel like life is not treating me fairly and God has abandoned me, I know where to go for help. I go to church. Right here, today, with Carolyn Myss. She is my spirit animal, and lucky for me, she’s got clues to spare.
And then I channel my inner Elizabeth Bigelow and remind myself what a privilege it is to be alive in the here and now, even if I don’t know how the technology works…
Okay. I’m like the Terminator – I’m ba-aaack…I won’t pull any punches here; the election results catapulted me into an even deeper depression than the gradual slide I had been in. A couple of people suggested that I seemed “kinda bummed.” I’m sure they will recover from my reaction. Let me be clear: I am not bummed. I’m devastated. Absolutely gutted. It’s not just the business of politics – it’s personal.
And I’ll get into some of the details of the day to day hell of the past week with you, but first, let me begin with the healing. Because I have not been able to sleep – or breathe well – I called my doctor yesterday. I decided, a bit late, that I need to go back on an antidepressant. Obviously I am struggling to cope with assholes. That’s what antidepressants are for. She offered me a prescription for a sleeping medication and I declined. They are all habit forming. I have habits. I have bad habits in fact. But I do not knowingly engage in new bad habits. I have enough old ones, thank you.
I have fond memories of my father patiently teaching me to play solitaire at a young age. I still play on my laptop or phone when I’m waiting somewhere, or sometimes even when I’m anxious. It relaxes me. Because I’ve been playing all my life, I rarely lose. Now there are many apps available to win money playing online. I struggle financially, so maybe I should consider playing solitaire for money. It’s not gonna happen. That’s called gambling. And gambling is a known addictive behavior. I have an addictive personality. I am never going to willingly engage in any addictive behavior. That’s called self care.
When I talk about self care (let’s do) I do not mean that I switch from coffee to herbal tea after noon (although I usually do that, too.) I mean that I do not engage in any behavior that risks my optimal health.
Some of you know that I was a roller skater until my forties. Not the kind you clip to your shoes we had as children, but the kind you invest real money in to have custom made. The kind Michael Jackson flew into Detroit to learn dance moves from. And yes, I was a token white person in that sport. I skated with Anita Baker at Detroit Roller Wheels before she had a recording contract. I have maintained since high school that it would have been an Olympic sport had it not been a black sport…but I digress.
When I do enjoy the bliss of deep, restorative sleep, I am often roller skating in my dreams. My heaven is paved with smooth wooden streets. I can’t begin to describe the freedom of being able to dance on skates, the sense of flying when you’re moving fast. The sense of floating when you’re moving slow. The trust of moving through air with your eyes closed being led through a dance. There were enough rinks in the Detroit metro area that you could drive from one adult dance session to another and skate continuously for hours any day of the week. And I did. It was my drug of choice. I also knew I could take my skates and travel alone anywhere in the country and meet other healthy-minded sober individuals (you can’t skate drunk) that I could feel safe with.
But once I had moved to northern rural Michigan I had to give up skating. There are no rinks nearby. I haven’t skated in almost 30 years. Would I try it now? Hell no. I used to love horseback riding. Probably not going to do that again this lifetime…never say never, as they say. I can say with certainty that I am never going bungee jumping. You get the idea.
So why in the name of self care would I vote for a fascist? Anyway, here we are. As it happens I didn’t really have much energy to deal with my reaction to that mess. That is going to take time and enormous discipline to sort through. My cat is hanging onto life by a thread at the moment. And my precious only child is in crisis with his alcoholism. It would be difficult enough to deal with were he not also living in my house. So now I’m dealing with an energy intruder who cannot seem to control his own behavior and is making my life crazy. Kicking him out means he has no safe place to stay. He becomes homeless. He’s broke. He is sick and not strong enough to work consistently. It has to be faced, and yes, I am strong enough to do it. Sadly, I’ve had ongoing experience with this all of my adult life with most of my family members. It is heartbreaking, which is the real reason I called the doctor yesterday. I was afraid I might be having a heart attack. It was anxiety. While I would give my life for my son, I won’t make a single compromise for his demons.
And so I have begun to work the 12 step program again. I have found an online Al-anon group so that I can attend meetings. I will get a sponsor, I will continue to meet weekly with a therapist. I will be diligent with self care.
This is the first morning in a couple weeks that I have woke without panic. My breathing is under control. I managed to get some sleep. I’m not shaking. The sense of dread is not completely gone, but I feel it dissipating. And now my inner warrior kicks in. Jesus, I can be a raving bitch. I’ve had to be, and I’m as good as it as I am at playing solitaire. But the only alternative to being her is to be more protective of my personal space moving forward, a lesson I could have sworn I had learned. But here we are.
A Painterly Home 