personal | bloodteethandflame

The thoughts I have today.

I cannot believe that it has been 15 years.

September 11^th 2001 was a day that changed my world in many ways that I will never forget.

And my memories of this particular day highlight many of the personal changes that my life has gone through since.

My oldest son, N, was my only child.

While N had always been an insatiably curious kid, what I remember most about the few months before the September 11^th attack was the frequent conversations that we had that seemed centered upon his newfound life goal to become a soldier, and later, a police officer.

It had become obvious that he had a deep, intuitive respect for those who helped others, as well as those who were willing to put their lives on the line to defend what was ‘right’ and ‘good’ and ‘just.’ For N, it wasn’t just the idea of being a hero, it was the concept that there was a profound meaning to be found in service to others. He admired people in his world who felt that it was important to stand up for others, and he wanted to be one of those people. He saw the future of accomplishing this ideal by joining the military, and he had a deep respect and admiration for those serving – or who had served – in the military.

So, as you may imagine, the highlight of his summer in 2001 was attending our local Memorial Day parade.

I remember him begging me to allow him to stand as close as he could get to the front of the crowd so that he would be able to see those who marched in our local post contingents from the American Legion and the VFW. He spent the next forty-five minutes waving and saluting all the soldiers, sailors and airmen. I watched him sit with quiet, rapt attention during all of the speeches, prayers, and moments of silence that followed those parades. But he had been the most eager and honored to shake the hands of so many local veterans and politicians that day, he’d been barely able to contain himself.

It was a day full of bright spots despite the atmosphere of respect and remembrance.

I remember most of all, the elderly WWII veteran who stood at the podium and spoke of the ultimate and extraordinary sacrifice that his brethren had made in service to their country, and how we as a society must honor them, and we must never forget them. While I can heartily agree with that sentiment, I found myself taken aback by his next point, and his next action, wherein this veteran suddenly pounded the podium, as if in anger or frustration, that ‘young people these days do not understand the price of freedom. People today do not know the meaning of honor or sacrifice, and perhaps we need a war to remind them. Damn your innocence!’

I was shocked and dismayed by the blunt thoughtlessness of this veteran’s comment that day, and even today, I am haunted by that sentiment – as if the only way that society can progress towards understanding honor and sacrifice is through experiencing grief at the loss of human lives, and the damning of youth and innocence.

I do not know what happened to that angry WWII veteran, but I do know the focus of the conversations that I had with my son revolved around that man’s words that evening. My son asked me if America should feel badly that we are not at war. My son asked me if I knew what going to war felt like, if I knew how war changes things. And I was honest with him, and I told him that we had been lucky thusfar, that America was not at war, and it seemed a foolish thing for a soldier – present or former – to wish that a war would occur. I told him that that veteran was likely just upset because he had likely seen and experienced a lot of terrible things during the war in which he served.

~~~

How hauntingly ironic that 106 days later, the world changed.

My son was 7 ½ years old.

~~~

And in the intervening years, my son has gotten to see what America looks like when it goes to war. He has listened to the debates and he has known several soldiers (older relatives and family friends) who have gone to fight, defend, and protect others in the Middle East.

He has seen how his world, and the world outside of us, has changed in innumerable ways.

My son did not become a soldier. He had developed other personal life-goals in the meantime between then and now.

But today, I cannot help but think – likely somewhat melodramatically – have our young people learned enough about the price of freedom?

Do we as a people know the meaning of honor and sacrifice yet?

September 11, 2016

Post-ritual pandoramancy

This is a perfect example of pandoramancy.

I had never heard of this song before – and yet it was suggested on my recommended play list on YouTube – and because I’d left my playlist on autoplay, it played through without my having chosen it early yesterday morning.

But it conveys certain aspects of my feelings quite well.

❤

September 9, 2016

The Other.

<<<<see previous post for context<<<<<<

1 September 2016 – Day 2

The visualization today requires one to look in the mirror and ask oneself:

What is being hidden? What is holding you back?

When I looked into the bowl – I saw myself, at approximately age 10 or so. I was crying, I was cutting – words into my skin.

And then I saw myself (at age 6 or 7) sitting at a table, deep in concentration.

I am making things out of clay.

My mother is there, but she is cleaning the kitchen.

(I am remembering, I am hearing snippets of my mother’s commentary: Stupid little junky things and making such a mess.

These were things my mother hated: messes and ‘junky things.’

And I am making a mess.

According to her, I am sitting there, always making ‘stupid little junky things.’ My mother hated them; but my father collected them. I see them lined up on the top of his bureau, these things I’ve made.

I watch myself trying not to cry, trying not to listen or to care about what is being said.

I feel defeated.

Suddenly, the words

strong

and

creative girl

run through my head as I consider my younger self in this vision.

It is difficult to see her. I want to push this away.

I want her to be someone who is not afraid to say ‘No’

I want her to be the sort of child who is not afraid to stand up and tell her mother:

You are wrong.

That is not true.

I am more than you know.

I am more than you think.

Where is she? The one who can do – the one who is unashamed – to create, to be, to shine?

She is crying. I am crying.

Suddenly I remember those words, said just a few nights ago:

How dare you dull yourself for others….

I saw a girl who stopped trying.

The girl who gave up, who accepted their words

their ridicule

their anger

feeling like she deserved this treatment.

The quiet girl who simply tried harder to be perfect.

I wanted to show you…the one who decided to accept their opinions rather than creating herself.

This is the one who hid.

This is the one you hid.

And then, I saw a ten-year old girl pinned to the wall of a well-lighted bathroom – disassociating from the humiliation of what her mother is doing.

‘Come here, will you? Stay still! Just let me…goddamnit, I am trying to help you!….’

Feeling ashamed. Trying to disassociate from the pain of fingernails digging into skin; face feeling hot and swollen…. and crying.

‘You know, you’d be so pretty if you would just let me fix…let me get this….’

I feel ANGRY.

This is the girl who holds it all in.

This is the girl who doesn’t complain.

This is the girl who didn’t think that she could win, so she didn’t fight.

This is the girl who acquiesced.

I wish that I could tell that girl that she did not deserve that — she did not have to accept that treatment – she didn’t have to allow her mother to do that.

I realize that this is why I have always inwardly cringed a little bit at those words Accept and Allow.

This is why I Can’t.

Because I realize when I accepted that – I accepted the unacceptable along with the acceptable and I allowed behavior that should not have ever been allowed.

And why? Because I thought that if I was ‘good,’ I would be loved…but I was never good enough.

‘Here. Step into the light. Look at your face…let me fix that….’

Crying didn’t help. Anger didn’t help. Physical resistance only led to escalating altercations that just exacerbated things between my mother and I.

So what did I do — to cope?

I learned to ‘fix.’

Like my mother, I compulsively examine my face in the mirror. I pluck my eyebrows and pick and scratch at the skin of my face, trying to fix.

I am wrecking my skin. I routinely over-pluck my eyebrows.

And she ‘taught’ me how, because at some point, she stopped pinning me against the wall – because I learned to do these things to myself – to fix.

But I always feel so ugly afterwards.

Each time I tell myself that I won’t do it again.

Until the next time, every time that I feel or see an ingrown hair growing crooked or feel a bump or a flake of dry skin. I always think my ‘fixing’ will make things better.

So I spend a lot of time examining my face in bathroom mirrors, looking for the slightest flaws – lumps, discolorations, hairs.

I also pick and scratch and worry the skin around my fingernails and at the tips of my fingers… and while I do not bite my fingernails, I try to keep them short enough so I can’t.

I convince myself that I’ve gotten better, you know.

Because it has to have been a good 25 years since I had gotten so lost in scratching or picking that the only thing that broke me out of my stress-induced reverie was that my fingers were bleeding.

When I’m stressed, I lightly – though compulsively – scratch my scalp. (I still actually find head-scratching rather soothing. Head-scratching is one of the only OCD things that I still do that doesn’t seem to do too much damage, but I can be obsessive about it, and thus feel ashamed enough to sit on my hands on my particularly ‘bad days.’)

It is OCD.

But the important difference between my mother and I – is that I respect the bodily autonomy of others.

And I have been through enough therapy to realize that what my mother did was abusive and wrong

This is hard.

You must step into the light…

But I realize that I am the one holding me back.

2 Comments

September 8, 2016

A Thursday Throwback: Sometimes.

Here’s a Thursday Throwback – from 21 February 2013 – that I am sharing at the request of a dear friend.

Enjoy!

~~~~

“Sometimes, He is not pretty.
Disheveled, stinking of piss and filth.
A frightening homeless man
Shouting at me from the other side of the train station:
The face that you often see is nothing but a glamour crafted to be pleasing to you.
But, sometimes, I am tired of that
face, and you will see Me as I am
An ancient being, whose face bears the ravages of time, and what appalling marks
Grief, pain and madness have inevitably made upon Me.

While it may be easy to approach Me in a finer guise,
Silk cravats and topcoats, leather and flash, I am
Also this, at My core. This is also Me.
I am bloated with rage, and careless
grime settled in the creases, compulsively licking
The blood and the spittle that collects at the corners of My ragged lips.
My yellowed, broken teeth have gnawed and ground down upon the offal and
bones of My very long memory.

I call to you
but you must approach Me.

Would you kiss My mouth?
~~~
And I see Him across the room, and His voice is interwoven with the cacophony of noise that is noon at South Station, Boston.

I cannot will my feet to go forward, but I see His eyes, the intense clear blue of Icelandic water, His disheveled hair an awkward penumbra of red and gold, His face unshaven and streaked with the filth born of having slept in the elements upon concrete. He raises a hand, and makes a beckoning gesture. Oh I see you, little one, He drawls. I notice that His fingernails are dark with grime, and He smiles, a grin of wolfen teeth, and He licks His cracked lips, waiting.

For all that He looks, His voice is not unpleasant.

But I am afraid.

I am cold, I realize, and I hug myself tighter, as if my own arms could possibly warm me enough, and yet I know that I am holding myself in. This is me putting up all my walls and fronts.

You have so much shame, He shouts, You have learned nothing….

The rumble of the trains pulling into South Station obscures His voice, His tirade, for several minutes.

There are too many trains, I shout, I cannot hear!

He begins to laugh, shaking His head. He tilts His head, almost menacingly, working out a crick in His neck, as He continues, Oh no, my dear. It is as it is always, with you. You are too cold. You cannot hear. You have a headache. You are afraid….

He glares at me.

He pulls a cigarette from the pocket of His shabby, unseasonably thin coat. Oh, spare Me the details of all of your excuses, He snarks at me, loudly, angrily.

He reminds me of Heath Ledger’s Joker, as He wipes His sore and tattered mouth with the back of His grubby hand, before placing the cigarette deftly on the edge of His lower lip, and lights it.

A lone ribbon of smoke curls and spirals ever upward over His head, strangely unbroken and unbuffeted by the crowd and activity that surges about Him, between us.

Come. Kiss Me. I might believe you.

But I cannot will my feet to go forward. I will have to push myself through this crowd, I am thinking.

The air feels thick and heavy, my head rings with high-pitched buzzing anxiety, and my skin prickles with heat.

Poor little girl, is His singsong sigh, half a sarcasm, half a reprimand, to me, as He shuffles His feet, waiting.

Come to me, He whispers, more within my head than without, and His words seem to reverberate like a humming inward chant, in my head.

Come to Me.
Come to Me.
Come to Me.”

(link here)

1 Comment

August 31, 2016

On needs, noise…and silence.

From 8 August 2014:

I am surrounded by so much goddamned noise.

I get distracted by everything.

Sometimes, I just want silence.

I have always lived in a home wherein others have wanted noise around them to feel comfortable. Whether it’s the constant drone of the television, or talking, or even music, sometimes I feel that I cannot focus on anything for all the effing noise.

(Though I will admit that music is the least annoying of these, as I’ve always felt that there is so much comfort and connection that can be found in music.)

But sometimes, I just need silence…

and so, through some meditative visualization, I built a cabin in the woods, at the base of a mountain, surrounded by trees.

(thoreau.away)

Whenever I go there in meditation, there aren’t so many distractions to focus upon – and that blessed silence brings me peace.

(And even if Loki is ‘there’ – as He sometimes is – there is very little conversation between us, thankfully.)

This might seem odd to others — as I am usually such a chatterbox — but I guarantee that silence is necessary.

~~~

It’s odd to think that I wasn’t always this way.

The sound of the television, the radio, the endless chatter and near-constant buzz of activity that surrounded me as a child (being a member of a family of seven) — all of that noise and activity used to be a source of comfort for me.

And today, it suddenly occurred to me as to the reason why I no longer find comfort in being surrounded in a cocoon of background noise.

It’s strange to admit this now, but I think that I was always an empath well before I knew what that word meant.

As my long-term readers may recall, as a child I was accused of being overly sensitive and easily spooked by damned near everything around me.

To give you an example, my childhood home was in a rather rural area, and I can remember feeling startled and uncomfortable – and sometimes even crying – whenever large trucks would pass by on the road, or planes would fly overhead while I played in the yard. And yet, surprisingly…I could not sleep without some sort of background noise. Whether it be the buzz of a fan, the hum of cars passing on the road, or later, my baby sister’s music box playing in her crib, I could not sleep in a silent room.

Rhythmic, ambient sounds made me irritable by day, but I was anxious and wakeful by the lack of sound at night?

This definitely struck everyone as being a rather strange dichotomy.

But I know the reason why now.

And yes it is related to this (which in turn, is related to this.)

Sound can mask energetic activity, and as an empath, the strongest levels of energetic activity (including but not limited to spiritual activity) often occurred at night.

But this is not to say that I didn’t experience strange things in the daytime, it just that the strength and frequency of occurrences increased exponentially at night.

So.

That is my epiphany for the day: it is quite possible that when I stopped trying to ignore Them, I didn’t need to mask my perceptions of Their presence.

1 Comment

August 7, 2016

3 Thoughts for Empaths Who Are Feeling Drained

“…When you’re feeling overwhelmed, like you have given all your energy out to others and need to recharge yourself, always remember:

1.) You deserve happiness; take time for yourself
2.) Your feelings are no less important than anyone else’s
3.) We are all connected – when you hurt yourself you are hurting others”

(Taken from this article by Hilary Gerstler)

4 Comments

July 29, 2016

Trust me, you’ve heard this all before.

I have been wanting to write and I promised to write – it was the reason for this month’s writing project (which was not so playfully named ‘Keeping it 100’*) – but as you might notice, I haven’t been keeping up with it this particular July/Month for Loki.

There are reasons, and I am trying to decide if I really want to get into all of them, because Heaven knows, I had plenty that I’d planned to write about, plenty that I’d promised to write about.

It’s more serious than usual in that not only had I promised myself that I’d carry the project through the whole month, I promised Him that I’d write about these topics and that I would carry it through by writing in this blog every day for a month.

We struck a deal of sorts, and I reneged in the sense that I did not follow through on my part.

I had promised to tell a story that I have not told.

It’s not that I had a shortage of posts, or that I never intended to tell the story. As a matter of fact, I have enough posts sitting in draft as well as several other posts written that only require that I cut and past them from the file folder on my laptop where I’ve stored them. They are in order, as I had planned.

You see, it is not that I stopped writing. It is that I did write but I refused to post, and that was what I promised Him that I wouldn’t do. I promised Him that I would share as much of the story as I could, no matter how uncomfortable things got, no matter how controversial the topics were….and yet…

I have not.

So what happened?

I got sick around the 15th of the month, as I may have mentioned in several of my latest posts.

A few of my friends pointed out that if I hadn’t been keeping up with my writing, of course that was understandable.

If I was ill – and I still am recovering from that double ear infection and sinus infection – that it stood to reason that I should rest and recuperate.

Several opined that I was being too hard on myself to think that He wouldn’t understand, that He would insist that I write anyway.

But I wrote every day. The writing is not the hardest part. It has never been the hardest part. He knew (just like anyone else who knows me well) that the purpose of the project had nothing to do with a writer’s block or an inability to express myself.

In essence, what He asked for was that I stop censoring myself; that I stop hiding – privatizing posts, or posting my thoughts in my less-frequented blog. He was asking for me to make my writing entirely public and highly accessible, to post ‘where it counts’ meaning where people could see and respond to my thoughts if they so chose.

He wanted me out of my comfort zone. It was an exercise to force me out of my social anxiety.

And so, He wanted me to stop keeping secrets, to be authentic and unashamed of who I am and what I am and what I do — for one month.

Just for one month, and then I could go back to ‘hiding’ if I so chose.

He didn’t care (because, if you know me, you know that I argued with Him) if ten thousand other people had written about such things ten thousand times before I wrote about them, before I would write about them.

He wants His people to express themselves fully, and He doesn’t care if you’ve all heard the stories before; He places great value on self-expression.

Perhaps it’s more than that: It’s about self-knowledge. It’s about fearlessness.

He wants us all to tell our stories….or at the very least, be fearless and unashamed about telling our stories.

~~~

*Believe me, you have heard this story before:

And yet, you’d better believe He never gets tired of hearing that story.

~~~

So, as you might imagine, I haven’t any VALID excuses.

5 Comments

July 22, 2016

On a related note…

To this entry.

This song will not seem to get out of my head.

I have heard this song at least a dozen times today, through various channels and means, so I thought that I’d post it….

Y’know, just to acknowledge to the Universe that I’m hearing it.

If anything, it seems to imply that I have some ways to go in dealing with my anger issues.

1 Comment

July 21, 2016

Month for Loki, Day 19: in the deep

What struck me the most about this quote is that is unattributed except for

written by him

The Universe is funny.

When I saw this on my media feed this evening, it had all the earmarks of a message as if it was written by Him.

For it is true, you know:

If you seek Him, you will find Him

in the depths between

All these places you’ve come to know

And all those places you’ve yet to go.

July 21, 2016

Month for Loki, Day 18: Lost…and found.

Since I am still struggling with several overlapping illnesses at this time – ear infection, sinus infection, and general malaise – you may that I haven’t had much of the wherewithal to write these past few days.

Hence the reason that I’ve gotten so behind in keeping up with my daily posts this July in the Month for Loki.

But I have been reading a lot – and this powerful post came across my WordPress feed today, concerning Loki as a God Who is rather popular with folks who have struggled with various forms of abuse, difficulty, and dysfunction in their lives. I agree with her especially in this:

One of the biggest groups of people who tend to find themselves interacting with Loki are those who have been abused in some way. The ones who have lost themselves and need to be guided back – who need to learn who they are again. Loki teaches us that it’s okay to not be okay. He teaches us that it’s okay to be wounded and feel the wound so that it can heal properly.

While my experiences were not exactly the same as those of Ms. Kyaza, I can relate to a lot of her experiences, especially in regards to dysfunctional family relationships.

I can definitely identify with the ambivalent feelings that arise out of having suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of those whom I trusted most to love and respect me.

In fact, there were several occasions wherein I found myself dangerously close to tears while reading her post, as her description of her thoughts and feelings about her mother and their relationship so closely resonated with my own experiences so powerfully.

Reading her post made me feel a strange mixture of feelings.

I felt both a sense of exposure and a sense of triumphant relief in reading this post.

I felt an incredible sense of exposure and shame – as in reading her words, I was so acutely reminded of the immensity of my own desire to please my mother (and in turn, my siblings) who often rejected my efforts by responding with anger, ridicule or outright dismissal. And yet, I remember that guilt, that shame. I had grown up feeling that somehow, if I could just do better, work harder, love more – then finally, I would receive love; I would deserve love.

And yet, while reading, I also felt an undercurrent of strange relief – here was someone who writes so eloquently of navigating emotional landmines that I understand.

I felt understood. I felt heard.

I am not alone in this pain.

I am not the only one.

You see, I have both loved and hated my mother and my siblings – and as a result, in turn, as a woman and as a mother, I have both loved and hated myself. I struggled – and still struggle – with the emotional scars of my upbringing. I crave to feel understood, to feel safe, to feel loved, and yet I have been skeptical of the existence of a relationship wherein I can feel understood, safe and loved. Sometimes, I find myself skeptical of those who have tried to nurture me, so deeply ingrained was my belief that I did not deserve even my mother’s love, the love of my brothers and sisters.

It took me years to decipher that it was not my inadequacy or failing, but the lack of self-love and incapacity to receive love that my mother (and perhaps of those even further back) suffered with that continues this horrible chain.

It affects all of my relationships. I have tried valiantly to be the mother that my own wasn’t, and yet, I still find myself wondering if I’ve fallen short, if I’ve done a disservice to my children. As a person, I have endeavored to be emotionally reliable, compassionate, and kind, and yet, sometimes, I am a victim of my own perfectionism and pessimism, and my own distorted habits and worldviews.

I am estranged from my family, even today.

But the truth is, I am no longer estranged from myself. I am no longer lost.

I had to learn to break the cycle of the past. It is daily work to remain mindful of my emotional responses and reactions whenever I interact with others. (Is it kind? Is it necessary? Am I responding from a place of love and understanding rather than from fear or anger, for example.)

I have learned to be acutely aware of my own negative self-talk and self-limiting behaviors and beliefs. I am learning to accept myself and recognize my strengths and weaknesses, as well as accepting and recognizing that everyone else also has their own struggles with similar issues, with similar emotions, behaviors and beliefs about themselves – and none of us are perfect. Perfection is stagnation.

I am learning to allow myself …to feel vulnerable. To feel angry. To be open to my own emotions and not fear the emotions, reactions, or responses of others. I am learning to be accountable. I am learning to let go of what doesn’t work and focus on what does. I am learning to let go and trust the process. Trust Him and trust myself.

Loki taught me a lot of these things. He has taught me to embrace imperfection, to confront fear of loss or change, to let go of the need to control outcomes, to work with what I’ve been given, and most of all, to allow myself, to open myself to love.

Love the process of living, love the process of learning.

Just…LOVE.

~~~

Hail Loki, God of the lost and…found.

Thank You for finding me.

❤

3 Comments

Category: personal