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Suicidal Reflections

I’ve promised myself to write today – and it’s not been an easy thing to accomplish.  My days, these days, are filled with grandchildren and children and mundane worries about laundry and homework and bedtimes.  Mostly.

Still, nothing takes out of my head the worries that I have about other things that aren’t so trivial.  Things like, “What does being ‘in love’ really mean?  What will I feel like at the exact moment of my death and, come to think of it, how will I die, anyway?  What would the lives of my children look like if I’d had the proper resources to devote to their educations, and what if I’d never met and married an abuser?  Why did I get my parents, and why was I born where I was in North Georgia, and not in Africa as some starving infant?  Why don’t human beings put more value on, and show more respect to, things that are alive?”

In the mind of The Deneen, there is always a litany of questions and a mountain of analysis going on.  I just can’t seem to shut the damn thing off.  I try, very hard, to be in that “state of being” where I’m just in the moment.  That creates problems for me, though, when I can’t see time as that linear.  I’m not sure if that’s a manifestation of my DID, or if it’s just that some of us are more aware of the fakeness of time.  The ludicrousness of it.  I just have to ask myself what it all means and what it all is for.  What is all this living?  What are all of these moments?  What are they even FOR?

Some of you are probably saying right now that being in the moment, one is not aware of linear time anyway, so there shouldn’t be a conflict where this is concerned, but I’m not so sure about that.  I’m not sure that we can ever just totally leave any moment.  It seems far more likely to me that we are pulling in all of our moments to us, so that we are everything that we ever are and could have been and are going to be, all at the same time.  That’s a LOT of beingness, and I’m just not sure that more of “being” is really what I want and need right now.

A couple of months ago, I decided, once again, that I’d had enough of this “being”.  Once again, I faced a time when I no longer wanted to be alive.  Sometimes, when I’m feeling like this, I can talk myself out of it.  I can remind myself how futile death is because of how futile life is.  I remind myself that I am but a strand in the great web of the Universe – but that every strand is there to hold others together, and integral to the intricate design and execution of the whole.  I think of the faces of my children and my grandchildren, and think of the legacy that I would leave them if they had to say, “My mother/grandmother committed suicide.”  I think of Denise.  I mentally bring up the pictures of the people filing past her coffin.  I replay the voices, full of pain, of those who talked to me about how horrible it was that she had taken her own life, how she hadn’t understood how loved she was and the emptiness that she was creating in the hearts of those she was leaving behind.

The truth is, and this is something that people who’ve never been that low don’t ever seem to understand, that when you’re feeling so worthless, helpless and hopeless, it’s hard to imagine or believe that your life, or death, has ANY impact on the world as a whole, much less individual people in it.  This popular idea that is today being put forth that suicide is selfish is misguided.  One can get into a state where one has no real sense of self.  One only has the sense of PAIN.  Pain, sometimes, that one feels one’s existence brings upon others.  Even saying this, I realize that to think that one can cause pain to another does represent ego, and that does represent a sense of self – but what I’m trying to get across here is that the person who is wanting to die is not wanting to die in order to get back at or torture anyone else.  They simply want the torture to stop for themselves.  They want the pain, the dysfunction that their life has become to come to a close.  A stop.  They don’t want to go to heaven.  They don’t want to go to a better place.  They don’t even want to rest.  They simply want to NOT BE!

Trouble is, after One has “been”, and since time IS artificial and everything that ever has existed exists infinitely, there is no UNBEING.  There is NO escape.  Not even in death.

I think this is the one that gets me.  That’s the one that keeps me here.  Death?  It’s like drawing with a yellow highlighter on bright yellow paper.  You’ve not accomplished a damn thing.  It’s still just yellow.

Posted in My Life Today, Where Am I Now?.

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Blood Cousins

Veins

Veins  by Jim Dollar Photography

I won’t tell her name but some people will work it out.  It’s not that I’m trying to expose her, or anything about her life.  Really, I’m trying to expose myself.  I’m trying to understand my part in all of it.  I want to unbraid the tight bindings of that night – including the knots around my vocal cords.  I want to break them open, and unfurl my voice into the silence of the night when I had my first remembered taste of penis.  She is integral to the story because she is also a victim of the story; a victim of our shared circumstance, our shared family fucked-uped-ness.

She really is amazing, this cousin of mine.  She has the most beautiful natural breasts of any woman that I’ve ever seen, and they emphasize this tiny, tapered waist and slim, firm bottom.  She bears dark, brilliantly flashing brown eyes, topped off with the dark hair of our shared Cherokee ancestry.  She has long beautiful fingers that might, in other circumstance, play piano well, or hold an artist’s brush.  Her skills aren’t applied or tested in that regard.  Not in any regard, really – except in that of staying alive and in comparative safety.  Compared to what, I don’t know.

The parties at her family’s house are infamous, and rumors abound about what had gone on there behind the closed doors of my beautiful cousin’s not-so-beautiful childhood.  It is said that there was copious drinking, a movie camera, a projection screen, fists….  Suspicions abound regarding the imbibing of lots of Cannabis, along with harder things.  Lots of hard things.

“When I was a little girl, I used to crawl out my window and hide in the woods,” she tells me.  “I had to get somewhere safe to stop Daddy’s friends from trying to touch me.”  I suspect that the “trying to” part has long since passed from her life and that she is watering the circumstance of her story down for me because she doesn’t want me to have to hear the painful stuff.

We all tend to do that.  Water down our stuff so that other folks aren’t made discomfited by our pain.  Maybe that’s why I split into different people.  Maybe I needed someone to hear my pain and I didn’t want to bother anyone else with it, so I made more of myself in order to give myself an ear.  She is doing that.  Trying to protect me.  She is always trying to protect me.

She is a little older than myself and so full of joy and life!  She remains joyful, even as childhood leaves her.  She’s to become the sort of woman that simply lights up everything around her!  Especially the men!  She is one of the little survival story miracles with which I fill my head to remind myself that none of us have to have our light and goodness destroyed by our circumstances.  I like to think that she and I have that in common.  That our common history intersects with the good and the bad things that come from being who we are, with the genes that we got, having grown up in the soil in which we were planted.

I am fourteen and she lets me come to her house and try on her clothing – including the pants that my mother’s religion disallows me to wear.  I pull on her bluejeans and turn a slow three sixty, checking out my ass in the mirror while wondering what it would be like if I were a normal kid who was allowed to wear them.  I wonder what the kids at school would think, and if people would think I’m attractive, or that I have a nice figure.

She has hats and pretty shirts and jewelry!  She has wonderful lacy bras that can’t go through the regular wash and have to have special care.  She has good smells and bubble bath and a stereo filled with fun music.  As two teenagers playing together, we put her jeans on me and a button-down shirt to knot up under my breasts, showing my tummy.  She hands me a hat and I grab a hairbrush to use as a microphone.  We crank up the pop music and dance about on top of the bed, singing along while checking ourselves out in the mirror atop her dresser.

These are such fun and innocent, memory making times!

I beg to be allowed to spend the night with her.  The infamous parties at the house of her parents have long since gone, and her house is considered a safe one.  Since she is older, she already has a boyfriend.  He is older than her and very cute!  He looks like Sylvester Stallone’s little brother.  I admire her.  Envy her, even.   Everyone tells her how good her life is, and how lucky she is to have such a brilliant boyfriend who is so good-looking.  I certainly think she is lucky.

Having run through all of the arguments against it, giving in at last, my mother tells me that I am allowed to stay over with my cousin for the night.  We have a fun night planned!  We are going to put on clothing and maybe even try some makeup!  We are going to search for new songs that we like and practice our dancing.  We might even get a visit from her cute boyfriend!  I am so thrilled that my heart is fluttering with excitement!  I like practicing for being the grown-up that I am trying to become.

On the night of our slumber party, only a couple of hours in, our visit is interrupted when she gets a phone call.  It’s her boyfriend’s sister.  He isn’t coming to see us.  In fact, he apparently isn’t even thinking about my cousin at all.  He is drunk and “riding around town” with some other girl!  “I like you and I want you to know because it’s not right for him to treat you this way,” the boyfriend’s sister says to my cousin.  I wait with baited breath as the two exchange more words via the phone line, and I see my dear cousin’s face contort with pain, and she tears up, her voice chocking with emotion.  At the completion of the call, my cousin slaps the phone back into it’s cradle on the kitchen wall, turns to me and says, “Come on, Deneen!  We are going!”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going there and I’m going to find that son-of-a-bitch and find out.  If he’s with another girl, I want to catch him!”

At that, I hear this nagging voice inside my head.  It is the voice of my mother.  I wonder what she will think of it, my going clear to a neighboring town with my cousin in order to chase down her boyfriend.  It will be dark soon and my mother is probably already in bed.  My right to even be here has been hard won, much less my chance of gaining permission to leave the home and drive somewhere else!  I could ask my cousin to take me by my mother’s house and drop me off, and something inside of me tells me that this is what I should do, but I’ve not yet learned to recognize that Voice of God inside of me, and sometimes, I don’t want to listen to it even when I do recognize it.  This is something with which I will continue to struggle.  I think that all Human Beings do, and that some people never even learn to hear the Voice of God inside of them at all.

Deciding that I will take the risk of angering my mother by coming along, I get into the car with my cousin, and we begin the climb up the long and winding country roads that lead to the town where her boyfriend lives.  The altitude and tree-covered mountains cause the radio to keep fuzzing out to white noise, and my cousin turns the dial with irritation, searching for new stations as she fusses and complains with a worried look, talking to me about her boyfriend.  He is an alcoholic, she tells me, but he’s promised her to stop drinking.  She put up with her parents’ drinking and she doesn’t plan to spend the rest of her life with a drunk.  He’s been seen with other girls since they have been dating.  This isn’t the first time.  She is going to find him and give him “What for?”!

Eventually arriving in the neighboring town, an entire twenty miles distant, we pull into the driveway of an old large, white, multistoried Colonial style house that her boyfriend shares with his family.  “Wait here,” my cousin tells me, exiting the car and disappearing into the house.  She isn’t gone long.

“He’s out riding around, driving drunk!” she angrily exclaims.  “I’m going to find him and find out if he’s with that girl!”

Spinning fast out of the driveway, we travel a little way down the street before joining the other cars that are driving in a loop, up and down the middle of the pretty, tree laden small town.  Dusk is falling, but there is still enough light to see.  In the middle of everything here, there lies a railroad track, slicing the roads in front of the mom-and-pop shops into one-way streets on either side of itself.  The scattered houses boast people on front porches, leaning on railings, sitting on rockers, even in front of the shops, waving to one another in friendly fashion.

I’ve rarely been to this town, and I’ve rarely participated in this activity called, “cruising”, or more often where I am from, simply, “ridin’-’round-town”.  This is what young people do in small towns in order to be seen, and to hook up with one another; like a social club on wheels.  One starts at one pre-designated spot and rides in a circle, going up and turning around at another pre-designated spot and riding back the other way.  Over and over and over.  Different people choose different turn-around spots, and even where one’s spot is can be the jump off point to further conversation between bored folks in an otherwise sleepy town with not much to do.

In this town, cruising is more of a challenge because the railroad track sometimes block one’s vision.  People have to wait until there are flat areas where the roads are closer together, or one has to see the people in the other cars at the unofficially designated turn-around spots.  It is at one such spot, crossing the rise of the railroad track, that my cousin spots her boyfriend.  He has a passenger in the car.  She floors it, and we’re off!  She spins the car around in a parking lot in order to catch them up from behind, and as we approach, we can see that the person in the car with him is another man, a lean, nice-looking black man, not the woman my cousin is expecting.

Honking her horn and yelling to him, my cousin gets her boyfriend’s attention.  He pulls over in a parking lot and comes stumbling out of the car.  Slamming on her own brakes and jumping out to meet him, I can hear my cousin saying, “What are you doing?  You are drunk!  You stink!  Why are you driving around and why are you drunk again?  Did you have some woman in the car with you?  Your sister called and told me!  Yes, your sister!”

I can’t hear his side of things, and he is slurring his words anyway.  Eventually, they both approach our car, and I see his friend walk around to the driver’s side and get under the wheel of the other car.  Leaning down to my open car window, my cousin tells me, “He’s going to be riding around with us for awhile,” and she opens the door, allowing her boyfriend to slide into the back seat, reclaiming the driver’s seat for herself.  Taking off more slowly this time, we drive away, resuming our laps through the sleepy town.

My cousin is very angry, and that is putting things a bit mildly!  Her face is tear-stained, and her thick mascara is running rivulets down her cheeks.  She is asking her boyfriend, “Who was the girl you were with?  Who is she?  What do you even want with me?  Do you even care anything about me?”

He is replying with barely comprehensible, slurred words, “Damnit!  What are you fucking talking about?  There was no other girl, Baby!”  Now, calmer, “Come here, Baby!  Come here Baby!  I’ve got something for you to take care of, Baby!”  He’s doing his best sultry whisper which, in his current inebriated state is actually pretty pathetic.  His hand is on his crotch, and its easy to see that he has a raging hard-on, straining against his zipper.

His attempts at seduction are temporarily halted when he spouts, “Pull over, pull over!”

My cousin complies and he opens the door, half falling out of it, vomiting onto the pavement of the parking lot.  I’ve never seen anyone this drunk before.

“Oh, God!” my cousin wails.

“Oh, God!” her vomiting boyfriend slurs.  Then, “I’m okay now, I’m okay now.”

My cousin, who’s jumped out of the car, calls through the window for me to hand her a napkin from the glove box.  I comply and she passes it to him, along with more insults.  He pulls himself back into the car, clumsily wiping at his mouth.  My cousin helps him shut his door, slides back behind the wheel and immediately resumes her verbal throttling.

“You are disgusting!  Look at you!

“Who was she?  Did you do something with her?” she asks.

He’s looking at her again, staring into her eyes through the rear-view mirror, the lustful look returning to his face.  Throwing the soiled napkin into the floorboard, I see him return his hand to his swollen crotch.

My cousin also notes the action.  Her driving is erratic and I am a bit afraid because she is paying more attention to her boyfriend than she is to the road as she spits back at him, “You are disgusting!  You just want somebody and you don’t care who it is!  You don’t want me!”  She looks over, noticing me in the front seat beside her as if she’s forgotten I am there.  “You probably don’t care if it’s me or Deneen who gets back there with you.  You’d probably be just as happy with her.”

His eyes turn on me.  He’s looking at me with the same deep, carnal look of desire that he’s been projecting at her.  He grabs hold of the back of our seat with his hands and pulls himself forward, closer to my face.  “Yeah,” he says, in a way that’s as sultry as his current inebriated state can muster.  “Send her back here.  You!  Come on back here!  Come on!  Come on, Deneen!  Come on back here!”

“Yeah, Deneen!” my cousin insists.  “Just get on back there!  Let’s see what he’ll do with you, just get on back there with him!  I just want to see what he’ll do.”

I sit forward on the seat, twisting my body back and looking back and forth from one of them to the other.  “What do you mean?” I say quietly to my cousin.  “You really want me to get back there?”

“Yes!  Yes I do!  Go on!  Get back there!”

What am I thinking?  Why do I crawl into that back seat?  I wish I hadn’t done.

Do I feel some sense of loyalty to my cousin and her “investigative opportunity” to see whether or not he WILL try something with me?  Have my previous experiences with Lib and Ray and the games that we have played together led me to think this is a normal request and will somehow be okay?  Have I been so conditioned to follow orders in unquestioning fashion that I do whatever is asked of me without thinking?  Am I just STUPID?!  Do I think he is cute?  Do I miss the touch and attentions of the boyfriend who dumped me and think the touch of this man would be better than no touch at all?  Am I a little turned on by the idea in my head of what might happen here, or do I have this weird fantasy that he might really LIKE me because of the look of desire that he is boring into my soul?  Do my naiveté and youth make me vulnerable?

These are hard questions, some of which I don’t want to ask.  Some of which I don’t want the answers for.  I feel a deep sense of shame and responsibility in that I don’t say, “NO!”

With another long look at my cousin to make sure that she knows what she’s saying, and being unsure about what it’s supposed to accomplish, I begin the climb over the bench front seat to the back, where her boyfriend sits.  The car is still rolling along the highway, and she is watching his face in the rear-view mirror, but he’s not looking at her anymore.  He’s totally focused on me.  He takes hold of my arms to “help” me into the back seat, and he’s looking into my eyes with a face filled with longing, his breathing deep, his touch sexual and clingy.

As soon as my bottom connects with the seat, his lips are on mine, his tongue in my mouth.  With my boyfriend I had done a lot of elaborate kissing, and French kissing was a part of that experience – but this is very different.  For one thing, this is my cousin’s boyfriend, not my own, and my cousin is watching and what is taking place here is hurting her feelings.  For another, this is aggressive and forceful – like Onion Sandwich Guy had been.  This time, the tongue in my mouth is tainted with an alcohol/vomit mixture.  Her boyfriend is not a bad kisser.  He’s a good kisser in fact, but the circumstances make the experience very unenjoyable.  Feeling my negative response and my hesitation, he reaches up and places one hand on the back of my head and pulls me into his mouth while his body tenses and wriggles.  As he stops the kiss, he pulls my head back a little and places his mouth close in to my ear.  “Here,” he says.  “Suck it!  Suck me, I want you to suck me.”  I realize what all of the wriggling is about because his zipper is down and his erect penis is exposed.

His name escapes my lips with a begging tone.  I’m begging him not to ask this of me.  I’m begging him not to want it.  I’m begging him to stop the tears of my cousin and her pain at having her suspicions confirmed.

Taking a firmer grasp on my head, he shoves it down toward his crotch, lifting his hips up to meet me.  He leans his head back against the seat, closes his eyes and lets out a soft, deep moan as my lips connect with the tip of his penis.  His moan soon turns to one of frustration as I keep my mouth closed, and he’s pushing against my lips and sees that I’m not fully cooperating.  His head snaps back up, his eyes pop open and he starts talking to me again.  “COME ON!”  His words now bear a tone of irritation, and his wandering eyes fall on the back of my cousin’s head and he seems to tune in to the fact that she is distraught.  She’s crying and wailing.  For some reason, this enrages him.  “SHUT UP!” he orders her.  Pushing me out of the way, he focuses his attention on her and, sitting forward on the seat, he releases the hold on my head, balls his hand into a fist – and with no further warning, smashes it into the side of her head.

Jolted from the blow, she screams, as the car swerves dangerously, and he begins to pummel her, hitting her about the head and shoulders, both fists in full, if badly aimed, swing.

I am only frozen for a couple of seconds.  How I come back around so fast, or how I think what to do, I can’t say.  Perhaps it is another personality, coming out and helping me.  Perhaps it is the fact that I’ve been with men like him before at some point in my history and know best how to calm them – though I’m not consciously aware of it.  Perhaps some survival instinct kicks into my being, or the voice of God whispers suggestions into my mind from way down in the depths of me.  Whatever it is, wherever it comes from, I get the idea that I have the power and can stop this.  Sitting forward on the seat beside him, I put my mouth up close to his ear – no small feat since he isn’t holding still.  I say his name, touch him at first gently, and then with growing insistence, calling his name more loudly and pulling his face around to mine, searching for his mouth with my own.

He responds, and I feel his arms go slack as he looses interest in hitting my cousin, and begins to slouch back in the seat, arms ceasing their swing to wrap around my body, pulling me back with him.  Taking hold of my hand, we together put my hand on his cock, and I begin to stroke and play with it, while kissing him deeply, pressing myself against him.

Soon enough, this doesn’t keep his interest, and in his angry stupor, he notices my cousin’s crying once again, pushes forward and renews his attack.  My cousin is screaming and we are swerving from one side of the road to the other when I suddenly realize that we are running a stop sign!  Brakes slam on and I’m thrown against the seat in front of me, our almost having crashed down a deep gulley.  We are off the road and now, I’m really scared!  I think that we should all exit the car and get off the road!  This situation is serious!  My heart is pounding faster than ever!

The boyfriend responds to this new circumstance by yelling at my cousin and telling her she’s crazy and blaming her for having missed the stop sign.  His face is contorted with anger, and red and I can see his fists balling up again already.  I realize that I need to step up my game.

My cousin is looking back over her shoulder, backing up the automobile, and she’s gotten control of her crying for a moment.  I think that she is probably scared, too, and I don’t understand why we are still driving.  “I’m taking you home!” she announces to her boyfriend and a sigh of relief passes through me as I know that this ordeal will come to a close.

“No.  You’re not,” he counters – and I move into action.  Putting on my best sexy attitude, I place my body between his and my cousin’s, blocking his view of her and placing my face in the line of his vision.  “Hey,” I say softly, and I lean in and plant a kiss on his lips, steeling myself against the tastes in his mouth as I hold his head in my hands and slip my tongue inside.

He forgets my cousin, reaching up to grab my head in return.  His eyes close and he again begins making little noises of pleasure as I press myself into him and slip one of my hands down, grasping his penis.

“Yes!” he breathes against my mouth.  “Come on!  Come on, Baby!  Suck it, Baby, suck it!”  This time, I don’t hesitate, swooping down and opening my mouth over the bulbous head of his circumcised penis.  I learn quickly that if I suck hard at the top and continue the action down the shaft, forcing him all the way into my mouth and pushing past the gag reflex in my throat, he becomes totally focused in on what I’m doing and the sucking and stroking I’m applying to his cock.  Any hesitation on my part, or if I begin to apply my oral manipulations with less vigor, his attention begins to waver and he shoves his body forward so that I can feel, more than see, the tightening of his fists again, his eyes returning to glare at my cousin’s back, preparing their next assaulting strike.

There begins this surreal, dissociation that is a dance between my paying intense attention to his sexual body language, his distracted, balled-fisted violently potentialled body language, and my own feelings and responses to the sexual act that I am performing on him.  I try to suck for only a bit, and then come up to get a breath and gather myself for the next gulping.  I find myself unable to shut off my mind, or my thinking or my processing of the information bombarding my heightened senses.  One of the things that is happening is that I am finding myself comparing the differences in this penis and that of the boyfriend with whom I’ve recently split.  His skin had been lighter, near translucent, his penis lined with beautiful blue, pumping veins, the shaft long and thinner, curving back toward his flat, hairless tummy.  The man with whom I now find myself is darker skinned, his member red and ruddy, setting thick and straight amongst copious dark hair.  I note the difference in their movements, the subtle change of thrust from the hips, the tonality of the sexual moanings.  It hasn’t occurred to me before this instance that sexual acts, sexual organs, sexual expression can be so different from one man to the next.  I find myself experiencing this profound sadness regarding the fact that I’d never even performed oral sex on my boyfriend, that I didn’t know, would never know, the taste of him and how it might have been different to have performed this act as a loving expression instead of a manipulative necessity.

From my position, head down in the man’s crotch, I can’t really see what is going on with my cousin, or where she’s looking, or where we’re going, but I eventually hear her declare loudly, “There’s your car!”, and even as I am too frightened to stop my machinations upon her boyfriend’s member, gratitude fills me as I realize that I will soon be released from this impromptu and necessary duty.

In a bit, I feel a couple of turns, and we slow, pulling into some place to park.  The minute the car stops, I remove my mouth from his dick, slide across, away from the man, reaching for the door handle with a desperation that I somehow manage to keep from showing.  Popping open the door, I spring out and say a silent prayer of thanks as my feet hit the pavement.  It’s over!

My cousin exits the driver’s door, opens the other back one, and our companion stumbles out.  Immediately, the two begin arguing.  In the parking lot of the gas station where we’ve come to rest, I see the car from which we had retrieved our passenger what seemed like a lifetime ago.  The door of that car opens and the tall, handsome black man who’d been riding with my cousin’s boyfriend approaches us slowly, standing back from the main action a bit.  I find myself instinctively gravitating toward his calm presence.

“Deneen!” my cousin is shouting my name.  “Deneen, come on and get back in the car!  I’m going to take his drunk ass home!”

I shake my head, “No.”  Inside I’m thinking, “NO way in HELL are you getting me back in that car!”  I’m very confused about why SHE would choose to do so.  I can still taste his cock in my mouth, feel his saliva coating my tongue.  “No way in HELL!” I think again.

“Well, what are you going to do then?” she asks, angrily.

“I’ll stay here,” I say.

“Okay!  Do whatever you want!  I’ll come back and get you when I get him home.”  With that, I watch my cousin open the door and pour her drunken lover, who for one horrid moment had been mine, into the front seat, climbing in behind him and slamming the door.  I watch in frightened-for-her silence as the car takes off down the street at break-neck speed, wobbling between the lines as it goes.

A few minutes tick by, and I note the silent calm descending.  I turn to the friend, the guy who’d been left standing in the parking lot near the abandoned car of the boyfriend’s.  He smiles at me shyly, ducking his head a little due to what seems a sudden interest in his feet.  “Well,” I drawl out, “I guess its you and me.”

“Guess so.”

We stand in silence, and I hug myself with my arms because I’m cold.  I say so.  “I’m cold.”

“Well, I am, too.”  Another pause.  “I don’t have the keys, he took them with him, but it might be warmer in his car – even though I can’t crank it up.  He didn’t lock it.”

“Okay,” I agree, and we walk slowly over to the car.  Trying the handle on the passenger door and finding it also unlocked, he opens it for me, lets me climb in, closes it and walks around to the other side, climbing in beside me.

We sit in silence again and I find it peaceful and a welcome break.  My pulse is starting to slow.  Except for the cold, I’m comfortable.  “Sorry,” he says, “that I can’t put the heat on for you.  He didn’t leave me the keys,” my new friend explains again.

“That’s okay, “ I say.  “I’m just grateful to be out of that car with them!”  I want to tell him what happened, but I’m afraid to speak of it.  Plus, this is his friend.  “Does he often get like this?” I ask instead.

He grunts a sort of  “Uhhmmm-hmmmm.”  He seems as shy as I am.

We continue sitting in awkward silence for a long time.  “Do you think she’ll come back for me?  My cousin?”

“Man, I don’t know what to expect!  Prob’ly she’ll eventually show up.”

Several more minutes pass by, feeling like hours.  My newly slowed pulse begins to quicken again.  I’m wondering if my cousin has wrecked the car!  I’m wondering if she is okay!  I’m wondering what will happen if I’m left abandoned here!  I’m wondering how I will ever find a way home and what my mother will say.  “I think,” I say, to him, “that I want to go to his house.  I’m afraid something has happened to her.  Do you know where the house is from here?”

“Sure.  You can just about see it.  I’ll take you over to the road and show you.”

“You wanna’ come along?”

“NO!  I don’t wanna’ get nowhere near that shit!  When he gets like this…” he shakes his head, looking down again.

Climbing out of the car, we walk over to the street and he points down the road.  “Right there!  Past that last house in the distance.”

“Thanks!” I say.  “I’m just very worried about her!”  I begin my walk up the sidewalk, looking for a place to cross the road.  Rubbing my arms and hugging myself trying to keep warm, I’m worried about what I’m going to find.  Looking back over my shoulder, I see the young man’s eyes still on me as he throws up a wave, then turns to head back toward the parked car.

With my brisk walk, it doesn’t take long for the big white house to come into view.  I breathe a sigh of relief that comes out as a cloudy, cold mist in front of me.  Redoubling my pace, I walk through it, and notice my cousin’s car sitting in the driveway, remarkably unscathed.  In my haste, I almost pass the automobile by on my way to the door of the boyfriend’s house, when I notice movement through the frosty window of the car, and muffled sounds coming out from behind the fogged glass.

In horror, I realized that my cousin is screaming for help from inside the vehicle.  Seeing me, she beats at the window to attract my attention.  Time slows down as I step towards the car.  There is blood running down her face.  He is sitting there, staring down at her, holding her nose between two fingers and twisting it, oblivious to all else around him.  “Let me out!  Let me out!” she’s yelling.  “Deneen!  Help me!  He won’t let me out!”  His free hand grabs the fist that was banging against the glass, holding that as well.

Horror creeps through me as I realize that she’s been here, trapped in this car the entire time.  Past that, I don’t even have to plan what to do.  A slamming noise directs my attention to the front door as a porch light snaps on, illuminating a short, stout, blonde young man.  He is barging through the front door from the inside, on approach to the car which holds my cousin captive.  He’s wearing nothing but tidy-whitey underwear; not even socks.

My mind seizes up as I become a spectator, dissociated, ghost-like.  I realize that I’m looking at the boyfriends brother.  My cousin had described him to me, saying, “He’s a blue-eyed blonde and I have the dark one, but they are both so damned good-looking!  You’d really like him!”

Here he is, standing in front of me.  He notices me, but only gives me a cursory glance.  His target is the car.  I don’t know how he got here, how he knows to come – but here he is.  He’s banging on the car window, yelling his brother’s name.  “Let her go you Son-of-a-bitch!  Let her the fuck go!  Unlock this fucking door!”

Amazingly, his brother complies, and my cousin comes tumbling out of the car.  The blonde youth reaches in and grabs hold of his older brother, pulling him out behind her.  The boyfriend is so drunk that he can’t stand up.  “His brother punches him as he’s lying on the ground.  “Get the fuck UP”, he says, under his breath.  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?  Take this shit in the house!”  He pulls him up by his shirt, and man-handles/supports him to the door, dragging him through it.  Like the automaton I’ve become, I walk behind them, stopping short of entering the door.  The men disappear from my view.

“Come on, Deneen,” my cousin is walking past me, from behind, into the house.  As I step hesitatingly through the door, more family members appear:  a mother, and the sister who made the initial phone calls that brought us here.

My cousin’s face is swollen, there is a horrible combination of blood, tears and mascara coating her beautiful features.  Her lips are busted and poofed all out.  Seeing her face, the women cry out.  “Did he do this to you?”

“Yes,” she replies simply, too tired or to numb, even to respond tearfully.

“Don’t worry,” the chorus of the women’s voices say.  “He’ll get his.”

I’m far enough in the house to get a view of the interior rooms now, and I begin to comprehend what they mean by their statement.  On the tile floor of the kitchen are the two brothers.  The one whose penis had recently been inside my mouth is on the bottom, lying, helpless, reacting to the blows that are falling on his face, his stomach, and other areas of his body.  His well-muscled brother is atop him, raring back and delivering fist after fist full of quiet rage.  I want to feel sorry for the nearly unconscious man on the floor – but I don’t.  At that moment, seeing my cousin’s face, remembering why my mouth is tinged with the taste of alcohol and vomit, why the musky scent of cock still floods my nostrils from the residue left on my own, swollen lips, I’m glad.  I’m glad that he is being made to suffer.  I’m glad that he will awaken with his own mouth large with swelling from the hits he’s receiving from the end of his brother’s fist.

After a time that the mother deems appropriate, she steps into the room where her two sons are entangled on the floor.  “Alright!  Enough!” her voice reaches her youngest, and he responds, if slowly, pulling his fist back, but stopping short of delivering the planned, next blow.  He stands up, and steps away from his brother, his body trembling with spent emotions, his breath coming in shallow bursts, rippled chest heaving and glistening from exertion and perspiration under the dim glow of the kitchen’s yellow light.

Later, the next day, I walk in the door of the home that I share with my own mother and my own siblings, and I find my mother waiting for me.  She is visibly angry, and I can see trembles underneath her surface.  She addresses me with a loud and accusatory tone as soon as I enter the door.

“Deneen, I heard you was with a black man!  Your aunt called me and told me that ya’ll went off last night.  Did you think I wouldn’t find out?  She said that ya’ll left and that your cousin was with her boyfriend and that you was with this black man.”  My mother’s voice chokes with emotion.

“You probably had SEX with him.  I’ll bet you had sex with him.  Did you have SEX with him, Deneen?  What did you do with that black man?”  She stands towering over me, her five foot ten to my five foot four, and spits the words toward me with her upper lip curled up in disgust, her shoulders slumping forward in defeat, eyes alternately glaring at me, then casting downward.

“NO, Mama!  I did NOT have sex with him!  I just sat in a car with him!  I just talked to him, Mama!”  Inside I’m thinking, “He was kind to me, Mama.  That black man was kind and friendly and made me feel safe.  Why don’t you ask me about her boyfriend, Mama?  Why don’t you ask me if I had sex with her boyfriend?  Why don’t you ask me what his white dick tastes like Mama, or what it feels like to have a tongue tinged with alcoholic vomit shoved in your throat?

“Why don’t you let me tell you what its like to watch someone you love beaten in the head with fists and to be powerless to stop it except for placating the perpetrator, distracting him with your mouth around his ruddy and ready dick?

“How could I ever tell you about what I have let happen to me?  How can I forgive myself for going with her, for climbing into that back seat in the first place?  For not biting his penis when he first tried to force it into my mouth?  How do I get over THIS, Mama? What about THIS?

“Why, Mama, are you not asking the right questions?  Why can’t I tell you about what actually happened to me instead of denying the false reality that you’ve built up in your head?

“Why, Mama?!  Why…?”  I don’t dare speak.  I don’t want my mother to have excuses to keep me from hanging out with my Beloved Cousin.  I am worried about her, and though I’m afraid of what else might happen while I’m in her company, I don’t want to hear my mother say, “I told you so,” regarding how safe it is to hang out with her.  I don’t want to confirm my mother’s fears in regards to that fact that I WASN’T safe.  I don’t know why.

Looking back, I can’t exactly tell what the particular emotions were that my mother was experiencing.  The entire time that she was yelling at me, she continued trembling, her muscles all bound up tightly.  Anger was certainly one of them.  Shame, too.  Probably some guilt was thrown in because she probably thought that she was responsible for whatever unacceptable behavior that she’d believed me to be guilty of exhibiting.

I have kept my silence with her on this point to current day.  For one thing, I don’t like making other people suffer, and it’s not an easy or a fun thing for me to be sharing these stories with all of you.  It just feels like a necessary thing.  The silence is WAY too deafening, disabling, disorienting to live in.  I don’t want other people to have to carry these sorts of secrets and burdens inside of them.  Whether we like it or not, the shame of having gone through these sorts of experiences and feeling that one can’t talk about them is damaging to us.  For some of us, it damages our spirits, and we live while dead inside, or may decide not to live at all and take our bodies out, the way that My Denise chose to do.  For some of us, it damages our physical bodies even if we chose life, manifesting in all sorts of aches and pains and cancers and illness.  For those of us who are like me, it manifests in mentally disabling conditions that blank us out from a reality that bears too much pain for us to live with.  Where would I be today if I had allowed myself to share and process OUT of me this inner pain?  Well, I wouldn’t be writing to you all NOW about it, because I’d have no great and paralyzing need of healing.

All things in their time.  All things to their own purpose.  If I can turn the events of my life into something positive and helpful for others, to show inside the depths of the tunnel that has trapped other Human Beings that there is a way up and out into the light, well, then I can be the meaning-making machine that God has created me to be, and I can put into perspective and positive viewing my made-up reasons for what I’ve gone through in my physical and spiritual growing.  This turns my horrible circumstances on end, turns them inside out to the point of their being a blessing.

Weeks after the above incident, my Grandmother greeted me at the door of her house.  “Deneen!” she exclaimed with elation.  “Yer cousin and her boyfriend have got engaged!  They’re agonna’ get married!  I’m so happy fer her!  He’s from a great family ya’ know.  He’s got a good mama.  They’re agonna’ get married!”

“Really, Granny?  That’s great!” I heard some shell person say with my mouth while I waited deep down inside.  Not speaking.  Fearing.  Not speaking.  Inside myself I was saying, “I will not go to bless that union.   Never.  It is an evil thing.  I will not go.”  And we (the we that equals myself and the others inside of me) didn’t.

I was told that it was a big wedding and that the bride was very beautiful.  I kept imagining her in her wedding gown, bruises covering her face, her nose bloody, streaming mucousy red fluid down the front of the white lace.

I didn’t go because I loved her.  I didn’t go because I am forever imprinted with the taste of his cock in my mouth, the taste of alcohol laced vomit transferred to me from his tongue.

We couldn’t have borne it.  We didn’t go to the wedding.  We stayed home, thought of our love for her – and prayed.

The following poem was written on a napkin at an all-night Café one late night, and inspired by the recollection of the above events.

Five Second Rule

This writing is dedicated to my dear friend Karen Lowe, who encouraged me to drudge up whatever needed to be remembered and, “Damn Gurl! If you know this is what God is tellin’ you to do, just start damn writin’ sumthin’!”

Thanks, as always to Jim Dollar Photography

Posted in My Inheritance, My Loves and Lovers.

Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , .


The Male

Wright Dairy Farm

DAIRY FARM Jim Dollar Photography

The following post was written by the male personality of Deneen Ansley, with her blessing – and thanks:

Hey everybody.  I’m somebody new and somebody you all haven’t met yet and Deneen and I are trying hard to work this all out so that she can let me come out and talk to you.  It’s not that she doesn’t want us to come out, or that she’s being selfish or anything like that so I don’t want you all to get that impression.  She’s just real crazy about this writing stuff and she thinks its her “purpose” and all that – so she gets real finicky about letting us mess with that (I wanted to say “fuck” with that, but she still hasn’t shut up totally to let me talk and she told me to change it.)

Trying to work this out so that I can talk to you all in this mode is not an easy thing.  You see, I’m not even sure if I know how to type.  I know how to write.  I mean, I learned English and I’m old enough to know about writing and sentence structure – and to know that I don’t always wanna use proper grammar and stuff.  What we’re having to do here, and we is Deneen and me, is that she’s having to let her hands click and clack this out on the keyboard while I talk in her mind.  It’s a weird bit of stuff this co-consciousness.

So, I don’t have a name or anything.  She just calls me, “The Male”.  The only time that she is usually aware of me usually has to do with a lady.  I guess I’m a typical guy that way.  There are just these certain girls that attract my attention and…well…I start think about things I want to do with them, and things I want to say and how I want to say these things.  That’s when I start to talk to her and tell her what I want.  Oh, I know it’s confusing for you people but when I say “her” I’m talking about Deneen unless there’s some other girl I’m talking about in the sentence.

She did allow me to come out once because she wanted to play a sexual game with someone who wanted to be with a man.  It was the first time that I’d ever tried to come into alignment with her body and use it on purpose while she was still there aware and in it.  It didn’t go so well for me.

I’m awkward.  I guess the way a teenage boy is awkward.  I’ve never gotten to use the body or get used to it.  Then I have the hips that sway and these boobs of hers that I don’t know what to do with, and that don’t feel like me, or how I envision myself to be.

This person that she wanted to have sex with me (I mean, her), they laughed at my awkwardness and I kept running back to the safety of her mind and she would have to take over running things, and then I’d try to pop back in.  Kinda’ like wearing a shirt that doesn’t quite fit, ya’ know?

I wanted to be in the body, and I wanted to be able to express myself, but it was just….  I couldn’t get it right.  It made me feel bad about myself.

This person who wanted to have sex with her, this person laughed at me, too, so that was pretty ego bruising.

Let me also tell you about what is happening as I’m writing here.  She, Deneen, has told me that she’s going to allow me to write and tell my story, but she won’t shut up and stay in the background and let me do it.  She keeps wanting to edit things because she hasn’t trusted any of us to be a good enough writer to tell our stuff in any way that she considers “quality”.  That’s her word for it anyway.

I personally think that she outta just let me go to write how I talk and how I think and that this is what all of you really want to see is the real “me”.  You know her.  You don’t know me.  You don’t know how I feel, or what its like to be inside of her, trapped in and wanting to live, but wanting to do it in a way that helps the host body.  Without her being healthy and being able to live and be happy, well, I can’t run around in here doing my thinking and my dreaming and my existing.

I like that she’s a lesbian because we get to meet a lot of women that way and I like me a lot of women!  I mean, I REALLY like women!  I like those fem ones.  She goes for those butch types, and I’m not really sure about all of that.  To me, they look like boys and I don’t look at boys like that.  I try to think of them as my brothers, and as friend of hers, and I try to divorce in my mind that thing where she has sex with them and their hands are all over the body that we use and stuff.  Kinda grosses me out.

Just like her, I can dissociate and go away, though.  I’m not sure where I go.  When I’m not here, I’m just not here.  I’m blankness.  I’m a lack of existence.  Like being in hibernation, or being something dormant that only comes up out of the ground when a seasonal rain hits.

See there!  I can write all flowery like, so she needs to just back off and try to go to sleep and let me do this here writing thing.  After all, she is me, and I am a part of her, and neither of us is as good without the other.  I’m not sure that either of us can exist without the other, and I guess I’m a weepy and romantic kind of guy in that regard because I love her, and I love her for caring about me and about my existence inside of her.  I appreciate the fact that she is trying to help me to get what I need, and that she isn’t rejecting me in this integration thing where we’ll be able to be each other at the same time.

When I am here, I wonder what that is going to feel like.  It’s scary.  I wonder what she is going to feel like when I am inside of her.  What will happen to my disgust at the butch women’s sexual touch?  What will happen when the part of me makes her want to lay down with a really pretty feminine girl?  I hafta believe it will all work out, but like with anything new, it’s kinda scary.  It makes me nervous.  This whole idea of it and what I’ll feel like.

She talks to me about it.  I mean, we discuss it together and we try to imagine it.  When she rides the rollercoasters, I try to tell her to let me come along and that we can practice this “coconsciousness” thing, and we can try to learn together what it feels like to both be present in the body at the same time.  I’ll be there, but then she’ll forget and tense up and won’t let me have the body and I have to tap at her awareness and say, “You’re not letting me do this.  You need to let go.”  Then, she’ll relax and let me slide into the space where she is, where the body control happens.

I can’t tell you like she does how we work it out, or how we switch it out, or who decides who is going to be there.  I don’t understand any of it.  I only know when I am needed and when I am awake.  One of the reasons that I’m typing to you now is that I recently woke up because she needed me.  That’s when I started talking to her and we started communicating in a real way.

Deneen has got this problem.  At least I see it as a problem.  She doesn’t think it’s a problem which is part of the problem.  She flirts a lot.  She likes to flirt.  She’s got this idea that it makes her better somehow if people are attracted to her.  I don’t feel like that and it wouldn’t do me any damn good if I did because I don’t get to come out and use the body to flirt with, and if I did, the girl would have to be a lesbian to like me because the body is a girl’s.  Deneen’s body, I mean.  Which is the one I use.

I guess I don’t mind it really.  It doesn’t really affect me when I do come out.  I remember one of the times that I used to come out was to play with Deneen’s little brother.  That makes him my little brother, too.  He had all of these sisters.  Three sisters.  Then the Daddy who didn’t stay home much or do much with us.  Well, he did take us fishing and do bonfires and stuff like that, and I got to play with the bonfires, and Deneen let me handle the worms and stuff, but then she’d come back and take over and do girlie singing crap, and run around laughing and scare all of the fish away.

She and her Dad also took us on the river sometimes and I’d be there for that.  Whenever Deneen got scared, like if there was something physical to do that might be dangerous or that she thought was yucky, she’d step back and I’d come out and be there and do it for her and enjoy it.  We didn’t really know that was what was happening, but now I can see that it is how it was.

On the farm, there was a lot of people daring people to do things.  Deneen got us stuck in a tree before, too, and she was just screaming and crying and panicking and I couldn’t do anything to help her.  She has to relax into me to let me come.  When I do, I smooth the fear out of her and think about things logically.  The adrenalin doesn’t affect me the way it does her, and I don’t freak out.  I’m not scared.  I like doing things like jumping out of barn roofs or down banks, or across creeks, or riding bikes really FAST!

So, her brother, he wanted to be able to do boy things and play with frogs and bugs and all of that.  I can remember it so vividly.  Deneen would look at him and wish that he had someone to relate to and who could play with him and she’d look at the bugs and wish that they didn’t bother her, so then she’d think about being brave enough and in a place where she wasn’t grossed out by them and…then I’d wake up and go play with the bugs and stuff with her brother.  We spent a lot of time in the yard hunting in the grass, and a lot of time on the old back porch between the two freezers because Deneen’s Mother wouldn’t want us to take our stuff in the house.

The smiles on her brother’s face were just precious, and we both loved him a lot!  I miss him, too.  We don’t get to see him anymore much, and he wouldn’t even know who I am anyway – but I’ll bet if I started talking to him about what we used to do together, he’d remember it, and even though it wasn’t really Deneen, he wouldn’t know the difference.  Well, I guess it was Deneen since I’m her.  It’s just weird for me sometimes to think of it like that.

I was trying to tell you a story and I keep getting off track, and pardon me if this isn’t as good as the stuff that Deneen usually writes, and if it goes off on these tangents and stuff.  I’m asking her not to edit this, and though it makes her uncomfortable, she’s kinda agreeing with me.  She can’t write for me.  It won’t be me then.

The story is how I am getting to write here to you now, and how it came about that Deneen and I are talking so closely now and trying to make sense of this all “becoming One” thing.  We even dream about it.  She does.  I don’t know if I dream, or if her dreams are my dreams.  I have more questions than I have understanding of anything at this point.

Now I’m going to attempt to stay on track with you here and tell the story.  Deneen went on a visit to a rollercoaster theme park and while she was there she got upset a couple of times.  One time, I didn’t have anything to do with.  She had a flashback when she saw a little girl, but that’s her story and she will tell that to you eventually.  The second time became my story.

Deneen has had a lot of people treat her very badly.  I try not to think about it.  Especially because that means it happened to me, too, and frankly, that’s just not something that I’m equipped to deal with at this point.

Lots of these people were mean to Deneen about sex.  She’s really fucked up (sorry to use the word “fuck” Deneen, but I want to).  She’s fucked up when it comes to sex.  She also is flirtatious in ways that I think are inappropriate and dangerous sometimes.  She can’t see it the way I do.  I feel bad for saying this about her, but she’s broken somehow in that way.  She’s divorced from the reality of things that way.  She doesn’t respond in normal ways when it comes to flirting or even sex.  Not that I’m always there for that or anything.  If she’s having sex with a man or a butch, I try my best to stay away.  If it’s a fem girl, well, then I peak out if I can wake up.  She doesn’t want me to tell that because lesbians are funny about men and she’s afraid that if she does date a fem lesbian in the future, they may think a man is looking at them.  I think she needs to stop worrying about what I say because the stuff she does is way more dangerous to us than this stuff that I’m saying now.  This stuff just affects her ego.

I don’t want to crush her ego – but I want us to be safe.  I NEED for her to be safe so that she can keep the body safe, and keep the mind working.  Otherwise, what happens to me?  I am only here to help keep her safe.  US safe.

In the theme park, someone made her react and made her feel threatened.  She was being her flirtatious self, and I think that’s what caused it, so, yes, I do think she is responsible for that.  I’ve told her that I think she needs to be more careful about that sort of thing and get a handle on it, but when she’s out, when she’s there, she doesn’t see it at all!  She didn’t see it this time and didn’t think she was doing anything wrong.  I don’t know that I would judge her at all and say that she’s doing something wrong, but I don’t fully understand why she does what she does and why she doesn’t understand that this can be dangerous to all of us in here.

So, she flirted and then the person crossed some imaginary line that she had drawn god knows how with god knows what and god knows where the line was and she freaked out!  She needed to go run screaming into the bushes and hide from everybody because some of us in here got scared.  I can’t speak for them, but I can say that a bunch of people woke up and were screaming.

So, Deneen turned her attention in, to all of us.  “I need to go away!” she said to us.  “I don’t want to ruin my time and everyone else’s time so I need somebody to come so that I can go away.”

I woke up and I came out, so when she backed out of the place where the body is controlled, I slid in, put the body on like the ill-fitting shirt that it seems to me, and I took over.

When I was present, I was able to get the situation under control.  It was hard and, I’ll admit, a little bit touchy, but I managed to somehow figure it all out and navigate it.  Thanks a lot to some of the great friends that she has.  There’s more that I’d like to say about that, but she’s asking me not to talk about it so I’m honoring that for her since she’s agreed to let me talk for myself at all.

I won’t let people pick on us.  I won’t let people harm us.  I’m not afraid to speak my mind, especially to other men, or to butches.  Deneen won’t speak up because she can’t.  Its part of her being broken.  I don’t give a damn what people say about what women should or shouldn’t do because I’m not a woman.  That’s why I can protect us and not worry about having to be social or make people happy.

This day in the park she was really scared that I would mess things up for her.  There was this girl there that she likes, and she thought that her going away and my taking over would freak the girl out.  Me?  I don’t get that.  I don’t understand why that’s so important, and if somebody likes her, they’re gonna like her whether I’m there or not.  Hell, they’ve gotta like me too, or at least the parts of me that are going to become a part of her.  Otherwise, what’s the point?  We’re stuck in this situation, and we have to be there for each other and the people on the outside have to deal with it or not deal with it however they want.

She didn’t feel that way about it, though and she freaked out inside of us trying to make sure that I talked to this “girl” (who, by the way, doesn’t seem like much of a girl to me) and explain what was going on.

Uh, oh!  I think I’m telling the stuff that she doesn’t want me to tell.  Well, all of it is out in the open now anyway.  Some of her friends got to meet me and one of them even talked to me.  Tried to anyway.  I only figured out later that I was confusing them with my talking because I kept calling Deneen “her” and they didn’t know who I was talking about because I was talking with Deneen’s mouth out of Deneen’s body so they got lost about it all for a bit.

The thing that I liked best about it was riding the roller-coasters!  Deneen stiffens up and fights the turns cause she hurt our neck once, or our neck got hurt anyways, on a coaster.  I’m not scared of them, though and I lean into the turns and I relax my body and I just like, meld into it and float with it.  I really liked it, and it was great to get to be fully in the body and be able to decide what to do and how.

I also had to pretend to be her, and to pretend to be interested in the things that she would have been interested in.  For that part, I wasn’t the only one there.  I had other people giving the sentences and working the mouth to speak them while I sat back inside the main core that of our awareness and watched and tried to be vigilant and on guard in case there was any danger that I had to move us away from.

In the end, it all turned out okay, and now she and I are talking better, and she’s getting used to the idea of my traits and how helpful it will be for her if she lets me be awake inside of her all of the time.  She has to get used to the idea that she can take up for us in the same way that I can.  I have to get used to the idea that she and I aren’t really separate, but that it’s some sort of wall we’ve built to keep us distanced to serve a purpose to keep the main core of all of us safe.

I don’t know where I will go.  How it will end up for me.  I rather think that it’ll be like when they talk about all of the spirits joining together with God in the end of the time of people here on this earth.  You know, spirits aren’t supposed to lose anything of themselves when they all join up to exist with God and to be one with God.

Now, I’m not saying that Deneen is God.  I’m just saying that the process seems to me like it might be similar.

Still, when I think about going away, I do get sad.  I don’t want to get sad, and I guess that it is the only thing that scares me.  I just want Deneen to be safe and I don’t want anyone to hurt her anymore and sometimes she just doesn’t have good damn sense!  She freezes up and blanks out and then we have to be here, not just me, but all of us, to rescue her, or animate her, or take the words and memories and roll them away from her, or even to put down the body until we can make sure that she will stay alive.

She just has so much fear and pain in here.  So many of us have so much fear and so much pain.  We have to be here for one another.  We have to be here for Deneen.  One day, she won’t be broken anymore.  One day, I think she’ll flow her awareness from one of us to the other without the walls up, and I just hope that we are still alive in some way, but not hurting.  I’m not hurting, but some of us are screaming all of the time, and it will be very nice for those of us in here when all of that can come to a stop.  It’ll be worth it for whatever sacrifices I need to make for Deneen for that to happen for her – which really is what is happening for me too because I’m her too.

I know it probably has confused all of you what I’ve said, but maybe some of you will get some little pieces of it.  Maybe some of you will be nicer to people like us, and people like Deneen, and maybe you’ll understand it more.  She’s getting better about talking about us, and about talking to us even though I know she’d rather pretend that I’m not here, and that we are all not here.  That’s one reason that we don’t have names.  And theres the reason that she wants to get us all together as one and not name us and make us be other and more separate people.

Well, I’m going to end with one thing that I noticed and one thing that I liked.  I liked the fact that when I was on the rollercoaster and it took the picture and I looked at it, I could see that it was me and not her.  She always is smiling and she usually has her mouth open.  Actually, usually she is talking.  Some of us are very quiet.  Not her, though.  I don’t really think I look good using her face, and I think she is very pretty when she is smiling and not so pretty when I’m there and she’s not.  But I’m a boy, and I guess I’m not supposed to be pretty anyway.  So, I liked it.  Seeing myself.  Having control of the body while riding the rollercoasters.

Deneen is saying that it is like therapy.  Like rollercoaster therapy and that we should write it off as a medical expense.  She thinks she’s so funny!

So I’m gonna go and stop talking now and I hope that some of you out there have liked what I have to say and that I explained it like you could understand a little.  I kinda want to talk while I still can.  While I can still be somebody that’s her but not her.  We are on our way to all being Her.  Her without walls.  That sounds a lot like a rock group “Her Without Walls”!  As many of us are in here, it’s a shame we don’t play an instrument and then we could make a band all by ourselves.  The integration would break up the band, then, and that would be sad.

We’ve had enough sadness.  Enough, enough, enough!

I’ll be seeing you if you like my writing, and if I have more to say, and if she agrees that I can say it.  Thanks for acknowledging me because it can get lonely in here, and god knows I’m not going to get a girlfriend or have any sex or have a family except for Deneen and who she gets with.  Maybe it will be a good thing when I’m out there instead of in here.  I hope so.

Be seeing you!  At least on the coasters!

Special thanks to: Jim Dollar Photography

Posted in Dissociative Identity Disorder, My Personalities.

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Little One

Mist Bound

Mist Bound used by permission of Jim Dollar Photography

I met another of my selves today.  I’m not sure why she came to me and asked for me to acknowledge her.  She and I had been watching a program that had to do with our Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), but I hadn’t known that she was watching.  In this program, they were covering the subject of how memories eek out from an alter self into the main self.  That must have been one of the triggers.  Perhaps she had watched from behind my eyes and said, “I think I can make that happen and then she will feel what I have felt and be aware of me.”  This is my paraphrasing of what she sent to me with feelings, because she didn’t have much language, her being a very teeny-tiny, young thing.

Perhaps another trigger for this new (who is really an old) self, is that I am in a space that I consider to be a safer space now.  Emotionally, I am in an environment where I can comfortably BE.  Where I can be my selves, even my crazy selves, and there is no judgment or ridicule or fear.  This Little One, and I’ve just now decided that this is what I’m going to call her, was brave enough to try to make contact with me.  She trusted me enough to tell me a little bit about herself, and what she is always feeling while existing as an emotional placeholder, deep down inside my inner being.

All of my Others use emotions to speak with me.  This so much more efficient than words.  Since they are inside of me, it’s easier for them to send forth a billowing burst of feeling into whatever conscious awareness holds the part of me that is speaking to you now.  When I become aware of communication from them, I turn my attention inwards.  I send back emanations, mainly in the form of questions, until I get back the affirmation that I have recognized and understood what they are trying to say.  They don’t say, “Yes, that’s it!” with words.  It’s more as if a feeling of peace settles into me when I come into alignment with them.  They somehow know when what they are feeling and trying to get across, and the receiving space in which I am dwelling, are One.  It’s a key fitting into a lock; a river finding its banks; a child latching on to and suckling the breast of its mother.

In this instance, I guess that I am The Mother, truly, because this entity is one of the infants who holds for me some of the memories and experiences of the child that I was.  I have become the default mother to all of the children inside of me.  Whatever the reason, this particular child either needed to come forth, or trusted me to be in a stable enough place to allow her to come forth.  What she has to tell me is not pleasant, or fun.  I guess that we both have to be in a place of readiness for any connection to be made and information exchanged, and somehow, this morning, as I lay sleeping in a bedroom that is still new to me – that happened.

For as far back as the me who is speaking to you now can remember, I was aware of this vague memory.  It wasn’t a comfortable memory, and it had formed at a time when my brain really wasn’t yet good at making memories, forming words, or being exactly aware of the mysterious workings of all of my physical surroundings.

Here’s the memory:  I am very young.  Perhaps, a toddler.  Perhaps, not yet even able to walk.  I am on my stomach sleeping with my butt in the air.  I keep waking up because I have this feeling of exposure and fear.  Every time I wake up, this image comes into my mind of a giant hand that is so big that it looks literally like the Hand of God.  This hand is so powerful that it reaches down from the sky, through the ceiling, and into the bedroom where I am lying.  I know that if I lie with my butt exposed like this, I am in danger from this hand because it will descend, hook it’s thumb up into my butt – and lift me up, off of the bed.

That was it.  That was all that I had.  I had always believed it to be some irrational sort of creative imaginings on my part.  I’d even been amused by the ability that my child self had to come up with things like this to worry about.  There was this deeper sort of nagging feeling about it, but I pushed it aside as we humans are wont to do.

Last night as I was dreaming, Little One came forward and she reached out into my consciousness and took my symbolic hand in her small one, pulling me into her experiential memories.  She took my awareness and melded herself into it and she showed me new images, expanded me into her Feeling Self.  What she showed me was this:

She and I are One Being lying upon the bed in the mobile home where we live.  It’s the middle bed in the center of the home.  We can see the cheap paneling of the walls, the open doorway, and the open window with the curtain billowing about with an entering breeze.  It is daylight and we are trying to nap.  We like to sleep on our stomach, with our knees drawn up under us.  This is the position that we find the most comfortable – but, this position causes our butt to be exposed, sticking up in the air.  This fact makes us panic.  Our little heart flutters with fear.  Lying vulnerable like this is a bad and dangerous thing.  We somehow know this.  The image of a hand coming down is in our mind, and we know that hands come down and lift us up.  We can clearly see the hand, but it stops at the elbow and seems to float, disembodied, in the air.  We know that we need to sleep on our side, no matter whether or not this is the most comfortable for us.  At least it is more comfortable than feeling the slight parting of the cheeks of our buttocks that leave our anus open and vulnerable when we are on our belly.

Falling asleep, we keep waking up in a panic, realizing that we’ve rolled to our tummy again.  Each time we awaken with racing heart, we look to the open door and plop down, forcing our butt onto it’s side, pointing toward the window.  We know that this is the safe way to turn.  Toward the window, not the door!

Over and over again, we keep waking up, adrenalin pumping as we find ourselves on our tummy.  Scared, frustrated, we stubbornly keep flopping down on our side, practicing this new style of sleeping, butt to the safety of the window.  We are very determined and we know that we CAN eventually learn to sleep this way and not leave ourselves open to the terror of the giant hand.

The Me of today, woke up in the middle of this remembering, sharing this panicked, frantic, frightened state.  Every neuron and cell of my being seemed to be activated into a highly aware state and I felt like screaming out – crying for help; doing all of the things that she had not been able to do for us as a little, baby child.

Feeling Skeleton Man knocking at the door of my consciousness, I knew that my body was about to shut down and go into a state of catatonia.  The last time that one of my really young selves had come forward, I had been hospitalized for days, unable to function or regain control of my body.  Realizing that I was in trouble, I picked up the phone and started dialing.  That’s what I do.  It’s one of my tools.

I don’t have just one person to call, I have a network.  These people are my adopted family and they know about my disorder and the problems it brings, and they will come to help me if I need it.  I always have a running list in my head of which friends are available at which times, what their work schedules and familial obligations are, and whether or not they are in any current crises themselves.  I call until I get someone.  I just keep calling with the most logical person first in the call line.  While I’m doing this, I have this expectation that I will find someone, and I have this absolute certainty that there are people out there who love me and who will come.  It is such a blessing and a relief to have a life built with people like this in it!

I appreciate them, and I am cognizant of the fact that I have a responsibility to honor their own lives and feelings, and not to overwhelm them or trouble them when they have been otherwise drained of resources.  “It takes a village,” I’m fond of saying, “to take care of The Deneen!”  There’s more truth to that than I sometimes want to admit; but I’m okay with it.  It’s how things are, and it doesn’t make my life a bad or negative thing.  In a way, it’s turned my life into a fantastic and wonderful, on-going miracle.  It’s given me the opportunity to let people love me, to allow them to be the hero and come to my rescue and feel good about themselves, and to allow me to feel good about them in return.

On this day, the person who picked up the phone first was my new housemate.  She was at work, but she usually has access to her phone and can pick up quickly.  When I heard her voice, I dissolved.  I tried to speak – but couldn’t.  My sobs kept coming forth and overwhelming me, and there was copious snot and drool from where I’d lost control of my body as Skeleton Man and Shaky Girl knocked at the door of my consciousness, making me aware that they thought it was time to put my body down.  I fought.  I fought to stay present and to maintain control.  I talked.  I spoke to these Selves and tried to convince them that we could get through this without shutting down – but they are Me, so they know me too well, and knew that I had doubts about my own assertions.

It’s a very hard fight!  It’s like trying to move while being underwater with weights applied, and while getting no air and not knowing how to walk.

My friend had known that I needed someone, so had left her job to come home to see what was wrong in-person, since I hadn’t been able to speak when on the phone.  As I forced myself to grow calmer, and when I’d concentrated enough to regain control of my body, I began telling her about what had happened to me, and what I had remembered.  She sat on our couch and put her arms about me and held me tightly and said, “Well, you know that you are in a safe space here.  None of that is happening now.  Now, you are with me in the present moment, and you are safe.  We don’t let people hurt people here.  No body hurts babies here.  You are safe, the baby is safe, and no one is going to hurt either of you.”  Just hearing that brought forth so much peace inside of me, and I could relax a bit.

After blabbering on about all of the things that Little One had shown me, I moved on to subjects  about various things that had happened to women of my family via not only my father, but other male family members as well.  My roomie listened with rapt attention.  “I never knew anybody”, she said, “who was molested when I was growing up.”

“Well it is common,” I say.  “Some statistics report  that at least one in every four women are raped or molested.  And that’s reported statistics.”

“Four?” she repeated with her thick English accent.  “One in four?  That’s a lot!  What the hell is wrong with you Mountain People?”

I’m aware that this phenomenon is not limited to Mountain People, or  Southern people.  Having stated that, however, I must concur that it is quite prevalent in the culture from which I come.  Not only that, but in the culture of my experience, it was okay to laugh about things such as this memory of mine, and this image that my mind holds of a gargantuan hand coming from the sky and through the ceiling, all for the purpose of sticking a thumb up the ass of the infant me and lift her, by this method, up, off of the bed.

Another example of this misplaced humor revolves around one of the first kisses that I ever received.  There was a friend of the family who was a little younger than myself whose house my family often visited.  I quickly learned that to get caught in a room or hallway alone by him was not necessarily a good thing.  If there was an accidental meeting, he would glance around to see whether or not we were alone.  If the coast was clear, he’d look at me and break out into a big grin, pregnant with meaning, and close in on me.  My natural reaction was always to freeze.  I’m not sure why I always froze whenever men approached me to get use from my body.  Something inside of me figured that this was the safest, best, most expected response.  My survival self kicked in, and it told me that what I was to do in order to survive was to freeze – and often, dissociate.

This boy would trap me up against whatever wall was available, closing-in until I was pressed flat, arms at my side, or his holding onto one arm with one hand and pressing his body forcefully against me to trap the other one between us.  He would bring his face in, close to mine and start talking dirty as one hand would grip hold of my skirt and methodically gather the fabric until he could slide his hand underneath, fumbling around trying to make his way inside panties with hard, sausage fingers that hurt the delicate tissues of my vulva.  I wonder now if he thought that we was being sexy.  I wonder what in our environment made him think that this was the way to treat women, that this was an okay thing to do.

The boy wasn’t bad looking and he had these big, really ironically soft brown eyes with some of the longest dark lashes that I’ve seen to this day.  I would be reticent if I did not admit that there was also a certain element of thrill and danger that came into my being whenever he was around, and as I tried avoiding him in the hallway, watching closely, attempting to dart, unseen, through the house.  At those times, survival adrenalin would send a rush to my system.

When I was caught, there was usually no kissing, because I would turn my head to the side and he’d have to chase my lips with his, and he was far more interested in what his hands were doing.  One day, where the kissing is concerned, I was very unlucky!  Before I could get my head to the side, he trapped my mouth with his own, and the minute that he gained access to my lips, he shoved a thick and slimy tongue into my mouth.  The sliminess was enhanced by the fact that he’d enjoyed one of his favorite foods right before accosting me.  An onion sandwich!  I have to say that, hands down, this tops my list as my GROSSEST kiss EVER – and I’ve accidentally had a dog’s tongue slipped into my mouth, so it’s not as if I don’t have anything with which to compare it.

This all was complicated by the fact that my Mother was sitting outside waiting for me to emerge from the house.  The fact that everyone else was out and in the car made it easier for him to trap me alone.  I was in a hurry, and I was grossed out, and he was being particularly aggressive.  As I struggled to pull away from him, I fought waves of nausea, and his fingers raked across my body as I slid down the wall, pushing at his hands and making my break for it.

As I hit the door, I automatically slowed down to a regular, walking pace so that nobody would notice that anything was wrong.  After all, I was out in the open now and in no danger.  I could still taste and feel the impression that his tongue had left in my mouth and feel where his fingers had been on my body.  I didn’t like it, and I thought about ways that I might be able to make this stop.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “maybe your mother would be upset if she knew what was happening.  Maybe she would protect you.  Maybe she would make it stop.  Maybe you should talk to her about it.”  I decided to give it a try.  I began to staunch my reserve and I think my heart beat even faster than it had when I’d been trapped against the wall only a few minutes before.  My mother didn’t talk about troublesome issues.  She did sometimes talk about sex – but mostly in the vein of what kinds of it were sinful.  I wasn’t sure how she would react to what I was about to reveal so I decided to go with an “opener”.

“Guess what!” I exclaim.

“What?”  I have the attention of everyone in the car; my mother, my siblings.

“I just got kissed.”

“You did?”

“Yes.  I got caught and pushed up against the wall and kissed.”

My siblings gasp and announce, “I’ll bet I know who kissed you!”

The boy is named amongst squeals and giggles.

“Yes!” I exclaim, feigning an absent lightness in my being.  “It was really, really gross!  He had been eating an onion sandwich!”

My sisters dissolve in gales of laughter.  “OOOHHHH!  An onion sandwich?”

My mother is laughing along with them.

“I didn’t like it, it was gross.”

“So-and-So likes Deneen, So-and-So likes Deneen!”  The sing-song chant fills the car.  My heart sinks.  They aren’t getting it, that it’s not a GOOD thing that So-and-So likes Deneen.  It’s really NOT a good thing!

Now, I’m aware of the fact that there is a huge difference in a boy my age feeling me up and taking a kiss, whether against my will or not, and the sexual abuse of a small child, and I’m not trying to equate those two things at all.  There are, however, common elements flowing through these acts.  One of those is exemplified by the reactions of the people from the family of my origins when they are told stories involving improprieties.

Here is a classic example:  The boy who used to trap me has a sister who is also friends with my family.  She and I have spoken about various experiences that we have had with men and sex, and about how and what we were taught as young women.  Even as sensitive as she is about these issues, she still laughed when I related to her the story of my memory, and how my baby self was worried about having a thumb hook up her ass and lift her from the bed.  I think the fact that this image is one that seems to invite ridicule is one reason that I’ve had trouble exploring it.

Phone tucked under my chin, my friend on the other end of it giggling about my recent revelations, I call out playfully to my housemate.  “Hey, I’m trying to tell her about my memory and she is laughing at me!”  I’m kind of uncomfortably laughing, too, because…well, that’s what we do, many of us Southern Women of Georgia.  We don’t want to face the pain and discomfort.  We don’t know what to do with those things – so, we laugh to break the tension.  It’s a learned response.

“Laughing!” exclaims my English friend.  “That’s nothing to be laughing about!  There’s nothing funny about it!  We don’t do that to babies!  We don’t pick babies up by sticking our thumbs up their bums and she shouldn’t be laughing; there’s nothing funny about it!”

Bless you, My Friend!  You’re right.  We shouldn’t treat babies like that.  – And you’re also right, that in spite of the old, conditioned, uncomfortable giggling of my friend and myself, there is nothing funny about it

“We don‘t treat babies that way – and there’s nothing funny about it.”  Please, let this be the new covenant for my descendants.

“We don’t treat babies that way.”

What about my Little One?  What do I do with the baby inside of me who is so frightened, so panicked?  All that I know to do is to go inside my consciousness and hold her and rock and tell her that she can sleep any old way she wants.  To tell her that there are no mean hands that can penetrate the ceilings of our safe little house.  Where I am now, where I have brought her to be with me, we don’t treat babies that way – cause that’s wrong.   And whether you’re trapped on your own bed as an infant, or against the wall of someone else’s home when you’re a teenager, in spite of the learned laughter of culture, there’s really nothing at all funny about it.

Some things are just very hard to unlearn.  After all, at night, even in our safe little house, Little One and I, we still sleep on our side.

These girls use their musical talents to battle Child Abuse: Someone’s Sister

Here are some links to actual statistics regarding sexual abuse:

Child Sexual Abuse Statistics

College Statistics of One In Four

Sexual Abuse of Women:  Explanations

Statistics of Sexual Abuse

Sexual Abuse Victim Breakdowns

With special thanks to: Jim Dollar Photography

And to: Mike Bernier, whose gentle ear, over many hours, made the telling of this tale possible

Posted in Dissociative Identity Disorder, My Life Today, My Personalities, Where Am I Now?.

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It’s A Hard-Ache

Moon Over Ocracoke

Moon Over Ocracoke used by permission of Jim Dollar Photography

We’re standing in the bathroom that we’ve shared for two-and-a-half years.  Our arms are wrapped around each other and tears are running down our cheeks.  “I think it’s easier,” I say, “when you don’t like the person anymore; when you’re mad at them and they’re you’re enemy.”

“It is!” she says.

“This is supposed to be a healthier way,” I say.

“That’s what they say,” she replies doubtfully.

“It doesn’t feel that way, does it?”

She doesn’t answer, but doesn’t release her hold on me, either.

“It’s just hard,” I say.

She nods agreement.

She’s never had a lot of words.  I guess I ought to expect that sort of thing when I become involved with introverts.  I’m drawn to all sorts of people, but introverts provide a special challenge for me.  I used to be an introvert myself, so it’s not as if I don’t understand them.  It’s just that I’m tired of NOT talking about things.  Most of my life has been spent NOT talking about things, and I find it an unhealthy practice.  I’ve not yet honed my telepathic skills, so I have to have people tell me out loud about themselves and what they are thinking.  Sometimes, I can FEEL what they are feeling, but I don’t know WHY.  That, I need information for.  Shockingly, I’ve discovered recently that not only do some people not know why they are feeling something, some people don’t know that they ARE feeling something.  Seems strange to me.

In bed at my new home, I think about what I’m feeling.  I’m thinking about the romantic relationship that has just ended, and my mind suddenly begins to meld from one woman to another and I recognize the similarity in scenes.  Pain hits me, deep in my gut.

“It’s just hard.”

Denise, the last time that I saw her alive.

“I’m sorry!” she’d said, tears streaming down her face.  “I’m sorry!”
She’d come in, being an ass.  Showing her ass.  Cursing and slamming things around.

She had ignored my granddaughter, who she usually adored and who was trying to get her attention.  “Honey, Denise is just upset right now and she’ll talk to you later on.” I’d said, believing it.  “Why don’t you go inside the bedroom with your Mommy and Daddy.”

Denise was packing up her things, not talking.  Just cursing, throwing out accusations.  Lashing out at everyone and everything around her.  Typical, overwhelmed Denise.

Her tirade finished, ready to walk out the door with the last of her belongings, she’d leaned in to the chair where I was sitting and tenderly kissed my cheek, the tears falling from her face onto mine.

“It’s just so hard!” she’d said.

Straightening up, she’d turned her wet face from my view.  I could feel the shame coming off her.  She was ashamed that she was crying.  She was ashamed that she had shown her ass.  She was ashamed for her very being.

That vision of her was the last one that my eyes would see of her physically “alive” self.  That kiss was the last one that I ever got.  Less than two weeks later, she was lying in another woman’s bathtub with a bottle of liquor in one hand, a shotgun in the other.
“It’s just so hard!”

This ranting is not about My Denise, though.  Hers is a complex and tragic story that deserves it’s own, dedicated stage.  This ranting is about endings – and beginnings, and how we deal with them and what they mean.  Specifically, how I deal with them.

My first ever ending of a relationship was when I was a very young girl of about eleven.  We never really even broke up.  He’d been avoiding my glances and seeming unhappy.

“Hey!” I’d queried.  “Do you want to go with me or not?”  He and I had been “going together”, which really hadn’t meant that we ever “went” anywhere.  It had just been a declaration of interest, and a public pairing up as boyfriend and girlfriend.  We never even sat next to each other, held hands or kissed.  We’d just looked at one another shyly with big-ass grins – and I had giggled.

“I don’t know, Deneen,” he’d replied.  “I just don’t know.”

I had turned away in disgust, knowing that “it” whatever “it” had been, was over.  This was the first in what would prove to be a very long line of breakups in my life to come.

I’ve left three husbands with whom I took vows, and divorced one to whom I’d never actually been married (thank you, Georgia common-law).  I’ve left two wives, two have left me, and I’ve parted with another who was never really ever “with” me for either of us to leave one another in the first place.  All of this is complicated by the fact that I’m unsure about whether or not I’m using correct gender descriptors in order to categorize these relationships since some of these people were transgender – which has nothing to do with anything except that I like to honor the gender with which people identify when I speak about them.

At the beginning of any of these relationships, I was always “in love”, and always thought that it was going to last forever.  Somewhere along the way, communication always broke down and it always broke my heart.  Even when I was the one who was leaving, it was my broken heart that had forced open the door through which I made my exit.

I have this extreme envy for people who live their lives with the same person for years and years and years.  Working in cemeteries as a Family Service Counselor, I encountered a lot of older people who were putting to rest partners with whom they had spent their entire adult lives.  They had only ever loved one person.  One person as their lover, their companion, their confidant, their rock.  The deepest part of me thinks that this is what I was meant for; built for.  I’m not sure whether or not this is something that each human being feels.

In our society there is a lot of talk about the people in these dedicated, monogamously bound relationships.  We call them “Soul Mates”, and we spend a lot of our time looking for our own “One”.  I’ve come to the conclusion, however, that most of us must have lots of “Soul Mates”, and that it’s possible that there isn’t just one “One”.  That’s how it’s been with me.  It would be easier if the traditional view were accurate, and if I’d gotten to live it out.  Sometimes the easiest thing is not the truth of the matter.

I’ve been “in love” many times in my life.  I’ve been in love with women.  I’ve been in love with men.  I’ve been in love with more than one person at a time.  Still, I’m not even really sure what it means, this “in love” thing.  Every person that I have feelings of love for, I feel differently about.  I’m not sure what the difference is.

At times past, I’ve thought that the love might be based on feelings of whether or not the relationship was one of monogamy – but I’m now convinced that relationships aren’t any deeper or better just because of monogamy.  As a matter of fact, I’ve often seen relationships where I’ve thought that the opposite was the case.

Whether or not people have open relationships have to do with the people in the relationships, not some universal rule regarding how relationships should, or should not, be, or some unbreakable law of how romantic love works.

In just getting out of yet another relationship, I’ve had a lot to contemplate, and a lot of inner peace to which I’ve needed to grab-hold.  As often happens when I am faced with tumultuous times such as these, I was sent a vision.  This vision was about the correlation between our fear of death and our fear of the ending of relationships, also a death, with those who we think are “The Ones”.

I don’t think that when our physical bodies die, we lose our connection to the consciousness that inhabits us here on earth.  I think that when we die, we join other consciousnesses, and that our sense of self expands and grows outward to encompass MORE than this one life.  We don’t lose anything.  So it might be with relationships.  It may very well be that there’s not going to be any single person who completes me, but that I have a network of people who perform different tasks and fulfill different needs in me.

What I was shown is that I’m lacking nothing if I can but mentally combine my relationships with all of the people who love me.  I don’t have to have everything in ONE person, no “One” in my life.  Even My Denise was not THAT for me.  Yet, I find that I never walk alone.  There are always people with me, and I’m not just speaking of the ones inside of my head.  I have in my life the most amazing people, and I have more love sent my way in any one week than many people have in their whole lifetimes.  I’ve gotta’ be okay with this walk that is mine to do, even if it means I don’t have a “better-half” to lean on.

At times, I am too much for any one person to handle.  I am so changeable, and I am so complex, and to most, so incomprehensible.  I must be content to focus on the big picture of all that I have to do, appreciating the connections that I have, and not long for that constant companion at my side.  Apparently, I’m not built for that, in spite of what I said earlier, and in spite of want to believe about my deep self.  The good news is that I don’t have to be.  A minister friend of mine is fond of saying, “Some of us are built for singleness.”

Perhaps I’ve missed my calling and I need to accept that the pieces that I need in a companion are represented in a myriad of people in my world and always will be.  Maybe I could give up on the whole idea of a partner and spare myself some pain because, when I’ve invested in it, thrown myself into it and it has all fallen to pieces, and I have fallen on my face again, it’s hard.

“It’s just so hard.”

When I’m hurting, I always reach for that connection of what-ever-is-beyond-me.  I carefully recognize the beauty of nature, and I spend a lot of time looking for metaphors to remind me that creation and destruction are all a part of the same force.  Death brings about negative feelings in me, and though I intellectually realize the necessity and balancing aspect of it, I’m still uncomfortable with it.  This includes the deaths that come with the ending of relationships.  One mourns the death of self, in bringing to a close the person that the other person helped us to be, whether that was a better or worse self.  One mourns the passing away of the future life that one has dreamed up, the breaking of the ties to an established “family”.

When I’m in the emotional waters of these changing tides, I find it comforting to visit settings that connect me to the natural world, and the power of the forces beyond myself.  Beaches are one of the great places that I’ve found on which to meditate, contemplate and open myself up to clearer meaning.  Standing out just beyond the break point of the waves that are crashing to the shore, I get this huge connection with God and all of the workings of the larger Universe.  In the midst of the forming waves, allowing them to lift my body and take me where they will, I become one with the pull of the moon upon the earth.  I feel the power of that connection inside of me.  My mind begins to ponder the wonderful scientist that God is, and I think about the most popular theory about how Earth and Moon were formed.  It is believed by many that these used to be two different bodies who were set on a course from the very beginning to get in the way of each other.  That destined impact decimated both, making them molten and malleable, all the way from their deep, hot cores to their liquefied crusts.  What kind of worlds were they before their fateful meeting?  What could they have accomplished, what life would they have brought forth if only they had been arranged in different and safer seeming orbits?

Once those two heavenly objects crashed, it impacted the entire solar system.  The Sun no longer had two different and separate things, but one larger planet and its satellite.  When the debris from the devastation settled, all of the plumes of material that had been flung out away from the major impact became the moon.  When I first learned of this, I thought, “Poor Moon!  What must it be like to crash into something and have layers pulled away and stolen so that one is reduced to just a small little body, trapped into the orbit of one’s destructor!”  Looking up at the moon, so tiny in comparison to the Earth, it is easy to think that the moon lost in the collision; that the bigger, badder Earth won the battle and maintained its form and recovered.  That’s not at all what happened.

The moon is made up of parts of both worlds.  Earth?  She is the same.  The moon’s influence is not at all small on our planet, either.  Some scientists believe that Moon’s influence on Earth may be the very thing that caused life here to evolve so easily, creating unique environments brought about by the tides that rock our oceans.

When we experience changes, even catastrophic ones, it’s good to bear in mind that the ending of a thing truly IS the beginning of another thing.  Once we’ve entered one another’s spheres, there’s no going back and being what we once were.  We are forever altered.  We are forever a part of one another, and that effect is eternal.  So, there actually is no “leaving”, but a “growing”.  Knowing this doesn’t make it easier, and I don’t plan to stuff my pain and mourning over that back into my inner self, nor do I plan to ignore the effects that another person has had on me – good, or bad.

That day that Denise had left her teary kiss on my cheek and walked out of the house that we had shared, I’d went into what had been “our” bedroom and found her robe lying, neatly arranged, on the end of the bed.  It was a dark-blue, terrycloth men’s robe, that wrapped around to close in front with a belt.  She and I had once shared our lives with another woman who had competed with me for Denise’s attentions, and the wearing of Denise’s robe had been one of the “prizes” that she and I had vied for.  In spite of all of Denise’s showing of anger, and all of her acting out, I knew that, in her heart, she still loved me and wanted to intentionally leave a piece of herself with me.  I had picked up that precious robe, cuddling it to me, and cried.  I still have it today.

In my now-life, my ex-partner sits, sorting through our laundry, still all intermingled in the same basket.  She looks small and hurt and vulnerable.  I pray for God to send someone to love her and take care of her and to be compatible with her in the ways that I could not.  She is deserving of someone who can better deal with her quietness.  Who is not so demanding.  Someone who is not mentally ill; who doesn’t scare the hell out of her or make her feel incapable.

I’ve turned to walk away, but I think better of it and say to her, “I’ve left Denise here with you.  Her ashes are still here, so maybe she can help watch over you while I’m gone.”

“Why haven’t you taken her with you?”

“I’m just going to leave her here with you a little while.”

“Ok,” she shrugs.

As I walk away, I glance back at our bed and notice my own robe lying there – a floor-length, light-green colored, feminine thing with pink flowers embroidered into the large lapels.

I step around to retrieve it, preparing to bring it to my new home.  As my hand reaches its terry-cloth softness, this feeling of sadness washes up my fingers and through me as I think of how my partner used to form it into a pillow shape and hold it against her body on nights when she found herself alone.  Nights when I was off traveling or playing rescuer.

Glancing through the door of the bathroom, she’s still busily sorting laundry, unaware for now that I’m even still in the room – but I know that she’ll be aware later that I’m not.  I gently place my robe back on the bed and, turning away – walk out the door.

“It’s just so hard.”

Here are some links for those who are interested in reading more about the theories regarding the collision of Earth and Moon:

The Day The Moon Was Made

Earth And Moon Interactions

If We Had No Moon

Wikipedia’s Impact Hypothesis

With Special Thanks To:  Jim Dollar Photography

For:   Allie

Posted in My Life Today, My Loves and Lovers.

Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .


What Mothers Do

“Deneen, why didn’t you call me?  I heard about your friend that died and I’m sorry.”  My mother is on the other end of my phone, talking to me about the suicide of my lover.  Denise’s death happened weeks ago, and I’ve only now gotten the courage to talk to my mother about it.  “I know what it’s like,” she says, “to go through a death that is violent and so close to you.  You know that, of all people, I know what that’s like.  The nightmares stay with you forever.  I still have them, you know, ever once in a great while.  I still see the blood.  It’s awful!  Sometimes, a period of time goes by that I don’t think about it, then something will trigger it, and it just plays over and over in my mind.  You’ll probably have that happen, too.  People just don’t know what it’s like.  People don’t understand how hard it is.”

The conversation opens up like this, in such a trusting manner, my mother vulnerable and sharing her own pain about the difficult deaths she’s had to bear.  I start to share mine, telling her more about the suicide of my lover.  I tell her how it happened, the horror of it, the good that I’ve managed to glean from it.  “God sent me visions,” I say, “to help me get through it.  The night she died, even before I had confirmation from anyone that she was actually dead, I saw Denise’s spirit wandering about.  It was dark, shaped like a person and outlined by a red-orange, glowing light.  She was walking in a field of black.  Then, I saw the separation point of this world from the next.  It was a white, brilliant line laid out against what would be the floor of the darkness.  On the other side of it stood a glowing figure, also in the shape of a person, but it was shining white and totally filled in with the glowing!  Somehow, I knew that this was the spirit of her father.  She approached the energy line and he was there.  He put out his hand and took hers, helping her step across.

“Later that same morning, God sent me another vision. I saw Denise’s soul meet Uncle Albert’s soul, and they were talking together.  I felt that they were talking about me, and this great sense of peace came over me, entering at the top of my head.  It went all the way through my body.”

“Now, DENEEN!” my mother hrrumphs.  “You know better than that!  There’s no way you could have seen that because you know she went to Hell and your Uncle Albert is in Heaven!”

I get that familiar, sinking feeling in the depth of my soul and immediately want to die.  I begin to Dissociate and fight to keep myself present, forward-facing and engaged in the conversation.

“Mama?” I squeak weakly into the receiver.

“At least, I think he is.  I wanna’ believe he is.  I don’t think God would have sent him to Hell….”  She is still talking, but I now have “tunnel hearing” and everything is far away and I can’t make sense of her words anymore.

“Mama?” I interject again.  She’s still talking.  She hasn’t heard me.

“Mama?” I’m louder this time and my awareness is traveling back through the tunnel, returning to a more settled position into my physical self.  “Do you think that you can ever learn to just listen?”  She’s still talking

At last, realizing that I’ve said something, she pauses.

“What?”

“Do you think that you could ever learn to just listen?”

“What?” She sounds confused.

“Mama, sometimes, I don’t need you to tell me things, or explain them to me.  Sometimes, I just need you to listen.  Do you think you could ever learn to do that?”

A pause manifests that’s undoubtedly the longest one that I’ve ever experienced in conversation with my mother.

“Well,” she drawls out at last.  “I guess so.”  She’s actually pondering it.  “I THINK I could do that.”

“Sometimes, Mama, that’s all I need for you to do.”

“Deneen, you do know that I love you, don’t you?  You are so precious to me and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.  I still remember when I had [gave birth to] you.  You were my first born, and I will always love you!  I love you with all of my heart.”

“I love you too, Mama.”  Tears are starting.  My head is spinning with a confused mix of joy and caution.  My mother has never expressed this kind of love to me, and this coming out of her on the heels of a quasi-argument centered around religion is even more surprising.

“Deneen,” she adds breathlessly, excitedly, “I know you think I don’t claim you, but I do.  When I’m talking to people about my other kids, I include you right along in there with them.  I name all four of you!”

“Wow!” I think.  “How am I supposed to respond to THAT?”

*****

I bounce back and forth from this understanding of why my mother is who she is, to this feeling of longing that every little girl must have in just wanting her mother’s arms wrapped around her, loving her, and telling her that everything is going to be okay.

As a little girl, the thought never occured to me that my mother would one day all-but disappear from my life.  Not until I was sixteen and pregnant, frightened and lonely, married and moved out, did I realize that I wasn’t really a part of “that” family any more.  When I left my mother’s house, it was as if I had moved to another planet.  I guess I’d had dreams about how things would be once I was on my own.  I’d dreamed of frequent visits, talking every day, my inclusion in all holiday celebrations.  Things didn’t really work out that way.

“I love you, Deneen, but I don’t like your ways.”

My mother may “love” me, but she hasn’t “liked” me in a very long time.  That attitude of hers seems to have begun with the divorce.  When she didn’t have a husband to argue with, it’s my belief that she had to put someone else in that behavioral “slot”.  Unbeknownst to me, my mother and father had argued a LOT while I was growing up.  Either they hid all of that from us kids, or I had another personality come in and listen to the arguing.  I have no memory of the arguing.

Hmm….someone inside of me says that there was a lot of arguing in front of me and that I got scared and blanked out.  Seems reasonable.  Both of my parents can be scary when they are angry.  Of course, to any short, newly born person, any big, loud adults are intimidating.  Some part of me glimpses arguments in cars while driving down the road with the family.  I can only access the beginning of loud voices, my eyes widening with fear and my body tensing, then – nothing.

I’ve been in therapy most of my adult life.  I’ve gone through a number of differing professionals.  These therapists have all had their own, unique views regarding what is wrong with me and what I should do, or not do, about it.  My diagnosis have run the gambit – from bipolar, to clinical depression, to borderline.  My therapists have argued with my psychiatrists, my psychiatrists have argued with me….  Everyone has had their own opinion about what is wrong with me, and everyone has had their own idea about how to fix it.  In spite of these differences of opinion regarding my particular illness, there has been one point on which all of the mental health professionals have agreed:  My mother is bad for me.

I want to say that again:  My mother is bad for me.

The reality of that causes me such deep pain.  Of all the pills I’ve been asked to ingest throughout this journey toward mental and emotional wholeness, that has been the hardest one to swallow.

I love my mother.

I want to say that again:  I love my mother.

One’s love for one’s mother is a special thing; a unique thing; an inborn-instinct kind of a thing.

It was explained to me during a recent conversation, “The reason your Mama doesn’t like you is because of what you’ve put your kids through.  The way that you’ve allowed your kids to be hurt and all that they have gone through because of bad decisions you made.”

Okay.  Point taken.  I have made some very bad decisions.  I have made some horrendous decisions – some of which have had terrible, life-altering consequences for my children.  But – I’ve lived long enough and heard enough people’s stories to know that I am not unique in that.

One of my therapists did give me some pretty terrific advice which still helps me to this day.  I told her about all my great regrets regarding the life that I had given to my children.  I shared with her my internal anger over what I had allowed to happen to myself, and them, my frustration in how I was repeatedly reeled in and mired in the quicksand of abusive relationships.

“Did you know,” she asked me, “that these people were going to be abusive to you or your children before you began relationships with them?”

“Well, no,” I admitted.  “At the time, they seemed like good choices.  I thought I was being very careful and choosing well.”

“That’s right.  You made the right decisions based on the information that you had at the time.  How can you hold yourself responsible for information that you didn’t have?  If you had known what was going to happen, you would have chosen differently.”

About my mother she said, “I don’t think you should have any contact with her.  She is toxic to you.  Whenever you think of calling your mother, I want you to envision the skull and crossbones on a bottle of poison.  Now, if you pick up that bottle of poison and drink it, you are willing participating in the destruction of yourself.  This is the mental image that I want you to keep in regards to contact with your mother.  Whenever you feel weak and you think you want to talk to her, I want you to bring up that image of a skull and crossbones, and remember what you are really doing to yourself.”

You see, more often than not, conversations with my mother have made me want to die.  Even though that is the case, I still love my mother, I still want her in my life, and I choose to bear the pain of the negative things in our relationship so that I can glean the positive ones when they are present.

At one time, I was the only one interested in maintaining our relationship.  Lamenting how things were with my mother when I was a young mother myself, I asked my therapist (a different person from the one above), “How do I have a good relationship with my mother?”  I was crying.  “I just want us to be able to get along, and I want her to be in my life and I want her to love me!”

“Deneen,” he said gently, “it takes two people to make a relationship.  She has to be willing to meet you part way.  You can’t do it all yourself.  It’s simply not possible.”

As she’s gotten older, since the decline and death of her own mother, my mother tries much harder to keep things amicable with myself and my siblings.  She strives not to hurt  feelings, and she has gained a lot more skill in learning when to open up, and when to be quiet.  She doesn’t get it right every time, but none of us do that.

It’s never been her intent to make me want to die.  She doesn’t, I’m sure, sit down and say to herself, “When Deneen comes to visit, I’ll see what I can say that will make her wish she was never born.”  When I was a teenager still living at home, she once said to me that if she’d known in advance how miserable I would be in my life, she’d have never wanted me to be born.  By this, she meant, I think, that I was such an unhappy person that it would have been more merciful to me if I’d never existed at all.  In my battle with depression and with suicidal thoughts, I’ve often agreed with this sentiment.  I’ve now moved past that sort of thing to a greater and more healthy understanding of the act of suffering.  This isn’t to say that I don’t slip back, sometimes, into thoughts of wanting to die.

When I think about my father, I become suicidal about things that he does, events and hurts that have happened at his hand, but I rarely become suicidal about things that he says, or his opinion regarding me.  He is a sick and twisted individual who has hurt a lot of people, but he isn’t very verbose, and he can’t put together words in any sort of effective way.

My mother is a different story.  This gift of writing that I have?  It flows to me through the genes of my mother.  My mother is a great writer.  My mother is intelligent.  My mother is expressive.  My mother can wrap words around any old thing to make it beautiful – or to tear it down, destroy it, point out its flaws and devastate it.

I guess I should give her props for being honest and sharing with me what she truly feels.  I just wish that what she felt about me was different.

Once, I asked my adult daughters, “How do you think you would feel if you had a mother who didn’t like you and didn’t want to have anything to do with you?  How do you think you would deal with it if I felt about you the way that my mother feels about me?”  My daughters looked at me blankly.  The youngest said, “I can’t even imagine it.  You’ve never been like that so I don’t have any idea.”

I’ve always wanted and loved my children.  I can’t remember ever not liking any of them.  Sure, I’ve been angry with them at times.  Certainly, they’ve all made decisions with which I have disagreed, but I feel that my children are a gift to me.  We’re only lent them for a little while.

The first memory I have of holding an infant is when I was ten years old, and that is the day that I fell in love!  I fell in love with children!  I feel this deep and abiding love for those tiny, pure creatures so full of life and laughter!  My entire internal being cried out that I wanted one of those one day.  It was a deeper feeling than a simple, biological urge.  To this day, I am certain that the God part of myself KNEW that I was supposed to have children.  That I was supposed to pass on my genetics and the temperment of my spirit.  I didn’t know to what end, but I was certain that there was something that needed to happen in the world, and that it somehow needed to manifest through me, and through my descendants.

Today, when I look at my children and how wonderful they are in spite of all of their difficulties, when I see their intelligence and their openness of heart and of mind, when I see how they live their lives and how they handle themselves while traversing this path we call “living”, I am so very, very proud of them!  The Universe has gifted me with such wonderful, strong, marvelous children!

When I look at my my granddaughters, I imagine what their lives might bring to this world, and what the lives of their children and their children’s children might bring.  This, for me, is not just a question of biology.  Every one of us is capable of giving birth and bringing things forth into this world.  We do it with our ideas, we do it with our careers, we do it with our friends and with our colleagues and with our families.  We don’t have to have children in order for our influences to manifest in fantastic ways upon our world.  Some of us are built for tasks other than procreation.  It is important that each of us find the things that we are called to do, and that we do those things to the best of our abilities.  One of my callings was to bear my children, and I have done it with the best of all that is in me.

Years ago, I asked my children how they felt about what they experienced growing up.  I got different responses.  My son, who is the youngest, said that he doesn’t think about the things that happened to him when he was little.  He said that he doesn’t believe it affects him at all; that it has no bearing on his life, today.  I have always disagreed with his assertions, because I’m living proof that abuses and trauma can get buried deep within us and take on lives of their own (in my case, literally).  More recently, my son has admitted that he thinks some of his behavior IS greatly influenced by events from our past.  It’s good that he’s seeing those links now, because it bodes well for his ability to one day purge those negative influences from his psyche.

My eldest child, a daughter who is now a parent herself, was very mellow and easy going about things.  She said that she was certain that I had done my best, and that I shouldn’t feel guilty for her past.  At the same time, she stated that she felt that she had brought a lot of the problems upon herself.  No matter how much I tried to convince her otherwise, she continued taking on responsibilty for things for which she is not responsible, and still does, today.  She is that much like myself!  This worries me for her sake.

The youngest was, and still is, very angry with me.  Most of her anger rests in the fact that she can’t tell me about her pain and have me hear it.  Having a dissociative disorder makes this rather hard for me to accomplish.  When my awareness comes full-on, face-to-face with the agonies that my offspring have experienced due to bad decisions that I’ve made for them, I crumble.  My dissociation kicks in and I want to die.  I can’t honor my children’s pain by sitting with it, listening to it, feeling it with them and getting past it.  Sometimes, The Screamer, my primal, reactive self, tries to manifest.  Sometimes, Shaky Girl, the state of being who takes control and shakes my physical body in order to release pent up trauma, knocks at the door of my awareness.  Other times, Skeleton Man shows up and opens a doorway for a “shell person” to animate and react the body (but I’m not truly listening; not the aware “me”) until he can get it to a safe place and put it to sleep and keep me from harming myself.  I have to fight to stay present in any meaningful way.  So far, I’ve not succeeded.

When I react to a thing with the kind of pain that is too intense for me to bear, I can feel the mental cogs of my mind start to turn.  It’s as if a big “machine” wakes up.  I can see the mouths of the people before me moving, and I know that the sounds that they make are forming words, but there are protectors inside of me who roll forward into my mind and snatch up the meanings of the words and then roll back into my inner being with them, removing them from my consciousness.  Even this, I punish myself for.  What type of mother can’t sit, listen to, remember, and honor her child’s pain?  I have a responsibility to do this, and working toward that goal is one of my most important.  I will be able to do it one day.  All people deserve the right to express to another how they feel about what has been done to them.  Not with hate and blaming, but as a measure of their self-worth.

With all of these personality switches and disabling reactions that I have, I find it miraculous that I was even able to take care of my children and provide financial support for them.  I sought therapy, read books, tried medicines, talked to friends, searched diligently for ways to help me deal with how “crazy” I sometimes got.  The first time that I ever admitted myself to a hospital due to my mental illness was after my children were all adults living on their own.  This was only after all of my tools and self-talk weren’t working anymore to keep me from wanting to die.  I was aware, by this time, of the fact that I had other people living through me and helping me; that I wasn’t one stable entity.  I don’t know where all of my protectors were, or if the people inside of me who wanted to die had overruled or incapacitated them, but I do know that I had two choices.  I could head toward drugs that would kill me, or toward a hospital that might keep me safe.

I’ve done enough research, survived enough suicidal desires to know that life will always improve if I can just keep my body alive long enough to get to the future.  Since I couldn’t trust myself to keep myself alive, I chose the hospital.  It was the right decision.  The hospital was nothing like I’d imagined, and not at all like the horror movies depicted.  It was full of caring people who wanted to help me.  It was full of other broken people with whom I could relate.  Truly, it was a safe place and I am quite grateful for it.

During the time that I was hospitalized, I did not speak to my mother.  I hadn’t spoken to my mother in a long time.  We had nodded politely and said, “Hello,” when finding ourselves both in attendance at a couple of family functions, but that had been the extent of things.

Our communication had stopped shortly after I’d moved to North Carolina, leaving the rest of my family in Georgia.  My mother and I had maintained contact via telephone for a few months.  Throughout previous years, I’d worked hard at establishing a good and healthy relationship with her.  To be fair, I think she’d worked hard at this, too, being careful with her wording and our topics of conversation.  We’d somehow established unspoken boundaries and both labored to adhere to them.  After my having only been out of the state for a few months, I received phone calls from both of my daughters.  Both of them were very hurt, and they were hurt by events that had happened regarding their grandmother – my mother.  Having my mother cause ME pain was something to which I had grown accustomed, and something about which I have never confronted her.  Having her hurt my children was another matter.  I felt that a conversation was warranted.  I called and attempted to have that conversation.

My heart was beating fast and my palms were sweaty as I picked up the phone.  I was in a full-blown panic attack before I dialed her number, but I forced myself through it.  I can’t recall how I began the conversation, but I eased into it, telling her that I wanted to talk to her about something.  “Mama, I am two states away,” I said, “and it is still getting back to me about things that you have done that have hurt my girls’ feelings and…”  That’s all I got out.  We didn’t get to have the rest of the conversation because my mother started screaming in my ear.  The me who is writing to you now doesn’t remember what she said because the words were taken away from me.  She continued screaming at me for a little while, and then she slammed the phone down.

I was devastated!  All of those years of careful re-construction, of having gotten along together, had flown away with one act.  I redialed her number.  She picked up and I could hear her speaking loudly to someone else in the room, and then she hung up again.  Sobbing uncontrollably, I dialed her again.  She picked up and hung up again.  The next time that I called, the phone was busy, and it remained so, as I frantically dialed my mother’s number over and over again.

I had just broken one of my mother’s cardinal rules.  I had asked her to talk about a problem.  My mother doesn’t talk about problems.  She doesn’t talk about deep issues.  This, and other factors used to lead me to believe that my mother was a cold person.  It was easy for me to come to the conclusion that, “My mother has no real feelings”.  What I have come to believe more recently, though, is that the opposite is true.  My mother is more like me than I used to ever imagine.  It isn’t that my mother doesn’t feel.  It’s that my mother feels too much.  When she is overwhelmed, she also dissociates in the same manner that I do.  I go into another personality state.  She cuts off conversation and contact.  It’s the same response but manifesting in different ways.

I’m not sure what the emotional state of being is that was manifesting itself during the crisis that arose in me over the telephone call, but it’s a state that I readily recognize as having taken me over whenever I’m emotionally overwhelmed with feelings of despair and helplessness.  I felt that I would die if she didn’t talk to me, if we didn’t fix this!  I felt compelled that I HAD to know that she loved me!  That she cared about me!  That she wanted me in her life!

Hysterical, with no friends available and desperately needing an ear, I called my mother’s minister.  When I was younger, he had been my minister as well.  His wife answered and called him to the phone.  Once I heard his voice, I ranted and raved and cried and hyperventilated, spilling all of what had happened out to him.  He was very calm, and very comforting.  He did help me a great deal to get a hold on myself and stop the crying.

In the end, he said, “I don’t know why your mother acts the way that she does and does the things that she does sometimes.  I just know that she’s going through a lot right now.  Your mother has had a very hard life.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “she has.”  I thanked him, and we hung up, my having returned to one of my calmer states of being.  After that conversation, I sat, meditating on all that had just happened, trying to figure out what it meant for my future with my mother.  I didn’t see how I could forgive her for hurting my children and for not even being willing to listen to what it was that she had done, for not feeling sorry for hurting them.

“What about us?”  Pondering the minister’s words, I thought, “What about ME?  I’ve had a hard life, too!  What about my children?!”

My children were very good about not letting my mother’s actions get the best of them.  They had lots of practice in wrong-doing by watching my reactions!  When they were young, it was common for me to have at least two hours of straight, suicidal crying before I could get myself calmed down after a conversation with my mother.  There were times that Skeleton Man would come in and send my body to my bed.

My children once told me that when they were little kids visiting with my mother and my siblings, terrible things were said about me to them as a matter of course.  My being aware of how this made me feel, and how it made my children feel, I try to be mindful of what I say to other people about their parents.  It’s a lesson for which I’m grateful.

I once asked my kids how they felt about my mother, how they felt about her disapproval of me.  One daughter replied, “I know that Nanny says she loves me, but that is because she doesn’t really know me.  If she knew the real me, she wouldn’t like me at all because I am a lot like you, and she doesn’t like you.”

It’s this same daughter who placed a telephone call to me the time that I’d admitted myself into the hospital.  She asked me all of the polite questions regarding how I was doing, and then she paused.  I could feel the panic in her.  “I have a message for you,” she said at last, “and I’m not sure how you are going to feel about it.”

“What?” I asked, my mind racing in circles trying to fathom what sort of message might be producing this sort of stress reaction in her.

“Nanny wants me to tell you that she knows that you and her don’t get along, and that it would be hard for both of you and that you would both have to try really hard, but that she would if you would.  She said that if you don’t have anywhere to go when you get out of here, you can come and stay at her house as long as you need to.”

The phone went silent on both ends as my daughter waited to see what I would have to say.

This was the woman who had always expressed to me that she would NEVER live with me again because I was “impossible to live with”, who’d said to my teenage self, “This family would all be good and have peace and get along fine together if you just weren’t in it!”  This was the woman who had called especially to tell me that I could not come and live with her (though I hadn’t asked to) after I’d announced that I was taking my two babies and leaving my first husband.  This was the woman who had refused to let me come to her home when I was being released from the hospital and ordered to stay on bed rest when I was in danger of miscarrying her grandson (I paid a friend to look after my two young daughters and myself until I was allowed back on my feet).  This was the woman who had ordered me out of and away from her house time and time and time again.

Slowly returning from a shocked silence, the phone’s receiver gripped tightly in my hand, I spoke: “I have no response to that.”

“What do you want me to tell her?”

“I guess tell her that.  ‘Mama said she had no response to that’.”

“Okay,” my daughter said, nervously giggling a bit, hesitating.  “Well, I guess I’m going to hang up now.  I love you Mama.  Call me if you need anything.”

“Okay, Honey, I will.”

Gently placing the receiver back on the phone in the dayroom of the hospital, I lay my head against the wall, closed my eyes against the bright lights – and cried for a long, long time.

I don’t know what I was crying for.  I guess it was a mixture of things.  It was the painful awareness of my mother’s journey, my mother’s pain all mixed in with the pain of myself, with the pain of my own children.

Do I forgive my mother for her part in any of my pain?  There’s nothing to forgive.  She has loved me and treated me, continues to treat me, as well as she is able.  I am quite positive that she has given me all of any kind of love and acceptance that she is capable of.  I don’t blame my mother.  She has been more open with me than her mother was with her, and so on, back through the generations.  My grandchildren will do even better with their children, and my great-grand-children, well, perhaps they will one day rule a peaceful world!  Our only task as parents of people, ideas, or inventions, is to try and correct any mistakes that we can so that all of humanity can become more enlightened and balanced as our species moves forward.  Overall, I think humanity is doing a pretty good job.  I see a lot of people who step up against injustice, sometimes at a massive, personal cost.

Life is just hard.  That’s why it’s so important that we all stick together, holding one another up instead of blaming one another and tearing one another down.

Somehow, no matter how difficult it is, we have to get to that place of love, even when we can’t yet get to a place of peace with one another.

I’m still traveling toward that end, and my mother, she is with me, even though she may not know it, even when she is kicking and screaming against it.  If we can but remember the love, forgive the mistakes, process the hurts – peace will come.

I have to believe that, even if I’m dragged kicking and screaming to an unpeaceful end.  I’ll still always, stubbornly, believe that.

Posted in My Inheritance.

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It’s Gotta’ Be Girls!

Sometimes, it takes a person a LONG time (read: “me”) to figure out what they like having in their bed.  Not like satin versus flannel, down comforter versus bedspread, I’m talking about what goes between the sheets.  In the way of a partner.  A sexual partner.  One would think that it would be a simple thing to know what one’s sexual preference is, but it’s really not as simple as it seems.  (Of course, my being a woman, it makes sense that I would make this more complicated.  Just keep reading!  I’ll explain.  In fact, I’ll probably over-explain.)

While I’m writing these memoirs of mine, I thought I’d better give a shout out to all of my lesbian readers who are following me in this journey.  So, as you are reading the story of my life, you might need to cover your eyes (you’ll have to work out for yourselves how to keep reading that way) ’cause, and here’s your warning:  Prepare yourselves for some GUYS!

Yes, I’ve had some.  When I say “some guys”, I don’t mean it in the way that most lesbians do, trying on a few, just to make sure they don’t fit before sending them back, or that I’ve dated men for cover.  No, I did a LOT of guys for a very long time and, sometimes, I even liked it.  So sue me!

I didn’t do them on purpose.  Honest, I didn’t!  It just took me a very long time to figure out that I was a lesbian.

When I was growing up, I knew about gay people in a vague sort of way.  I knew that they existed, but I think I only really had the image of gay MEN in my head when I heard the term.  I knew there were women out there who had sex with other women.  I’d read about them in my father’s dirty books (and even I don’t understand why my illiterate father had dirty books with only words in them).  I’d seen ladies with one another in the fold-out pages of his colorful catalogues.

I’d also seen naked men in these pictures, but they always looked, well, kinda’ gross a little.  Between the legs, anyway.  Their equipment was all foreign and veiny and hung at odd, asymmetric angles.  Sure, I got all tingly when there were the pictures of the men, but then they were usually poised atop some lovely woman or other!  It took me a while to work all that out.

As a matter of fact, I was in my second marriage and had two children before it occurred to me that I liked women in a more-than-a-friend kinda’ way.  No one was more surprised than me!  I finally realized that those hot and bothered sensations that I was getting when I was reading or looking at porn were coming from an ATTRACTION to the women.

When I look at girls, I feel what guys feel when they look at girls.  Well, guys who aren’t gay, anyway.  I’m sure that it’s somewhat different because I don’t have a penis that I can stick into them (not “a” penis; my bureau holds several), but I get that desire to reach out to them, to touch them, hold them, take them, make them mine; I get that.

All of those years, drinking in women with my eyes, their tantalizing curves, their promise of softness, the feeling of the fire that they lit inside my loins, I hadn’t figured out that meant I liked them “that” way!  Seriously.

I know, I know!  My IQ is WHAT?  I learn how freakin’ slowly?

Living this adventure that is my life, I have met some really fantastic guys.  First rate men.  Some of them have even looked good naked (and if you’re a guy and I ever dated or slept with you then, yes, I’m talking about YOU!) .  Some of their junk was, well, let’s just say that the junk that men have can be just as lovely in it’s own way as the junk that we women have got.  If you like that sort of thing.  At different times, in different parts of my growth, in some of my personality states, I’ve liked that sort of thing.  I’m not going to deny it.

The thing is that sleeping with guys was easy for me.  It wasn’t important to me.  It wasn’t hard to accomplish.  If I was in a bar, I looked around, surveyed my prospects and went for what I wanted for the night.  I knew what to say, what moves to make.  It was formulaic, really.

Men are simple.  Men will always tell you what they want.  What they want is to stick their penis into something.  There are usually some bonus events built around this desire, and some conversation and game playing that goes along with it, but the goal is always the same:  I want something to stick my penis in.  It’s simple, and kind-of refreshing.  Often, a person can skip all of the built in, build-up-to it stuff and go straight to the sticking in…of “it”.

Some men even engage their secondary head BEFORE they stick their penis into something.  They think about consequences, the feelings of the other person, the safety of the act.  (We often call these men “effeminate”; i.e., like a woman.)  All this thinking?  It’s all based around the goal or consequences of …say it with me, “Sticking their penis into something.”

Women are NOTHING like this!  Women think about EVERYBODY ELSE’S feelings all of the time.  There are exceptions to this rule, and women are born with hormonal abnormalities (read: should be “normalities”) that cause them to care about their own needs more than others (we refer to them as “butch”, or masculine; i.e. manlike).  Outside of these rare examples in nature, the type of woman who is worried about her own needs first is CREATED – with time and loads of therapy.

Women who’ve asked a new person over for a visit might worry simultaneously about things like the house being too clean, so that their date might think them uptight and rigid (read: “frigid“), or not clean enough so that their date might think them slobs (read: “whores”).  Trying to work out the balance of absolutely everything, adding in all of the possible consequences, things that could go wrong, etc., quite frankly, it’s exhausting!  It also makes us (women) a bit mad.

Even now, after years of practice, when I go into a lesbian bar I have no clue how to get a girl to go home with me.  Even if I get her home, that’s no guarantee she’s putting out.  She might have just had a really bad breakup and be needing time to get over it.  She may have a doggie and be worrying about whether or not the sitter remembered to take it’s special blankie.  Her best friend may be texting her in the middle of our making out, seeking advice on her latest lesbian dramafest.  She might be having her period.  I might have a yeast infection.  Come to think of it, it’s a wonder that lesbian sex ever happens at all!

Wait a minute.  Isn’t it better for a person’s brain to continually work out puzzles?  Maybe that’s the task of women, to continually provide a challenge for our skulls in order to keep us young in mind!

I have a friend who’s heterosexual son has just started dating (poor thing).  He comes to his mom and me for advice, thinking that since we are women who love women, we should be able to give doubly-wise advice.

“Help me understand her!” he begs us, referring to his girlfriend.  “She says this and this and that, and there’s no logic in it!  I can’t figure out what she wants because what she says and what she does, it doesn’t make any sense!”

“Right,” his mom and I both agree.

“What?”

“You’re right.  What she’s saying and what she’s doing, none of it makes any sense.”  We nod in agreement.

“That doesn’t help, me,” he protests.  “I do what she says she wants and then – that’s not what she wants!”

“Let me explain this to you, simply,” his mom tells him, leaning forward and speaking slowly.  “It’s not supposed to make any sense.  It’s not going to.  You’re dating a woman.”

Women are not simple.  Some may be “easy” in terms of getting them in the sack, but sooner or later, one has to leave the bed and that’s when the REAL work begins.  While men are a joy to hang out with, play ball with, have a giggle over a fart with, it’s the women who have given me the most deep and meaningful relationships of my life.  I’m not talking about just women with whom I’ve been lovers.  I’m speaking of grandmothers, aunts, co-workers, ministers, friends, the list goes on and on!  The complexity of women may tax my brain, but it can also quicken my heart!

In contrast, I once had a man have sex with the personality state that I call “Skeleton Man”.  Now, bear in mind that this is a non-responsive state of being who shuts the functioning of my body completely down.  When a functioning me later asked the man what he was thinking, he said, “I didn’t know what else to do.  I thought it would make you feel better.  You like sex so much.  Don’t you?”  Stupid boys!  You see, I was broken, so what did he think to do?  Stick his penis in me – which brings us back around, full circle, to confirm the point that I think I was making earlier about boys and what they’re looking for.

What I’ve decided is that the relationship I like best is the one that I have with my vibrator.  That’s it!  I’ll start a trend by become the first, “out”, vibratosexual.  I’ll make my life’s work coming up with batteries that can outlast the sun, and a motor so quiet that one’s sleeping grandmother won’t hear it, even when sharing the bed.  I’ll lobby for my right to marry my vibrator and claim it as a dependent on my taxes.

That is a bit problematic, though.  One might become dependent on one’s vibrator, but is one’s vibrator really going to return that state of dependence?  One can’t have an emotional attachment to a vibrator, and it can’t have an emotional attachment back.  I can’t build a family around it.  I can’t set a place at the table, don a frilly maid’s uniform (read: “nothing but a lacy apron”) and impress it with my culinary skills.  Well, I could try, but it would look pretty silly to have a dildo sitting at attention behind a plate of creamed potatoes and green peas.

So, if I’ve got to choose, and it can’t be my mechanical friends (yes, that’s plural, but “sssshhhhhh!” none of them know about the others!), I mean, if I’ve got to choose between girls and boys, or if I don’t HAVE to choose but I WANT to.  If I want to be in a relationship that’s going to inspire me, challenge me, frustrate me, sexually satisfy me and send me into that blissful emotional space where I find pure love, well, it’s gotta’ be the girls.

Beautiful, mysterious, glorious Girls!  It’s always been the girls.  I understand that now.  And that’s perfectly, delectably, incredibly…finally – – okay!

The above post is dedicated to Patricia Crocker, who unselfishly relinquished her usual guise as the rock at my side, to don the garb of “muse” for this particular bit of foolishness.

Posted in Feedback To My Readers, My Life Today.

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Wanting

Middle Saluda River 01 by Jim Dollar Photography

Middle Saluda River 01 by Jim Dollar Photography

The names in this story have been changed, to protect the innocence or guilt of the parties involved – that, in itself , a matter of  perspective!

The breeze blows through the windows of the gold Chevy Nova and across my bare arms, cooling them down from the heat of the sunlight.  Outside, it is quite chilly, contrasting the late spring day that the calendar touts.  Smells of damp, awakened earth float in to blend with that of the interior of the car’s leather as towering trees surround me on the hilly road that is winding through government forest lands.  Lobo is on the radio, our having inserted his cassette tape, its sound coming through cheap speakers giving a muted, sensuality to the words crawling forth, “Me and you and a dog named Boo, traveling and living on the land….”

My best friend is at the wheel, her dark, straight hair whipping about in the wind.  Every now and then, I look over at her and with white, even teeth, she flashes me a smile that’s echoed in her dark-chocolate eyes.  Her boyfriend sits between us, long, lanky legs sticking up and presenting blue-jeaned, jutting knees.  He plays with tendrils of her hair, comments on her driving, teasing her and then laughing, the sound resonating from his chest like the light, but deep babbling of a slow, pure brook.

This weekend, I’m free!  Free from the drudgery of  my “normal” life.  I’m with two of the only people in whose company I’m allowed unsupervised.  The two people on earth with whom I feel the most FREE!  Probably, with whom I feel the most loved.  My mother and father have been very guarded regarding allowing me to spend time away from the family.  Hers also being a bit protective, my best friend and I have had to spend a long time building up our relationship and the trust between our mutual families.

The car’s strong motor suddenly sends a vibration along the chassis, up through the metal springs of the long, bench, front seat, and through my buttocks with a delicious rumble as my friend stomps the gas and banks the car hard against a right curve.  Her boyfriend comes tumbling my way, putting his arms out and around me to brace himself against the door to keep from squishing me flat.  Amidst the laughter and flailing limbs, I look over and complain, chiding my friend for “Trying to kill us!” but I know that she’s playing, and it’s quite obvious that she has complete control of the powerful car.  I can feel the soft blue eyes of her boyfriend looking down at me with affection.  As he shuffles over, reclaiming his spot between us, he keeps his arm around me, pulling me up close, tight against him.  Looking past him, my friend and I lock eyes.  There is this loving, playful challenge at life flowing between us.

Thinking back over our long friendship, I am unsure of what bound us together, how I found myself here with her; how we’d found each other amongst all of the other people in the world.  She says that she felt sorry for me because I was so helpless and unable to defend myself against the constant harangue of bullies that tormented me at school.  She says that she got tired of having people pick on me.  I must defer to her memory regarding this, because I have none of my own when it comes to our early time together.

Lib looked much older than her fifteen years.  In fifth grade, she’d reached her full height of six feet and developed full breasts.  I secretly believed that she was six feet, one inch, but that she fudged on the one because her sweetheart was only six feet tall and she hadn’t wanted to be taller than he was.

At school, everyone called her “Lynn” – but I didn’t.  After the first couple of years of friendship, she’d confided, “My middle name is Elizabeth and my family calls me ‘Lib’.  I want you to call me ‘Lib’.”  At first, the name felt like the taste of a foreign food upon my tongue, and it took me weeks of feeling strange about it before I could marry in my head the visual image of my “Lynn” with this person “Lib”.  Eventually, my brain made the transition, and even a reversal.  It became as if she’d always been “Lib”, and hearing others refer to her as “Lynn” brought about this feeling that they were referring to a stranger; that they didn’t know this person that I was privy to.  Realistically speaking, I don’t think they did.

Lib’s family was one that existed way below the line of poverty, as did my own, so that was something that we had in common.  She stuck out because of her height and seeming maturity.  I stuck out because of the weird religion that my mother practiced.  Even though we were both shy, both smart, both outcasts, and both poor, when measuring amenity for amenity, her family existed below my own when it came to levels of household comfort.

I soon learned that to live inside Lib’s house was like living inside an adventure!  The name of the particular adventure was survival – but it wasn’t fought with some desperate sense of why-me-ness.  Her parents may have been poor – but they were also happy – and proud.  In spite of a disabling back condition, her father worked odd jobs and refused to take charity for himself or his family.  He considered any government help, charity.  While I ate at school using the free lunch program, Lib’s father would have none of that.  Each day, he reached into his pocket and carefully doled out money to her, a quarter at a time, so that she could pay for her lunch at school.  Full price.  It was the first time that I’d encountered such behavior, where a family refused help.  Her family’s way wasn’t better or worse than my family’s way.  It was just different.

Lib went without the comforts that most of us take for granted.  The house in which she lived was a bit of a family legend.  It sat a little askew, flanked by trees atop a hill that was a main artery off a very long, gravely, red-dirt road.  Her father had built it with his own hands, for himself and his new bride, Lib’s mother, when they had both been young.  Finding themselves in need of a home, the couple had been given a bit of land by parents.  Lib’s dad scraped and scrounged and worked until he built out of the dirt hill, a little home for them.  In the daytime, he worked for another man procuring a wage.  At night he drove home and started in on the second phase of his working day.  When the sun went behind the hills, he pointed his Chevrolet Bel Air at their emerging structure, using the headlights so that he could continue his work long into the night.  When he’d exhausted either himself or his materials, he would join his sleeping young wife inside the long, roomy seats of the automobile.  Sunrise woke them, and the process began anew.

The home was long since completed and well aged by the time I got to visit. There was still no paint on the roughly hewn boards that made up the outside walls.  No fancy décor or landscaping.  That’s not to say that there weren’t flowers or shrubs, because these grew everywhere, in abundance!  There was just no thought out or planned beauty.  No, the beauty of Lib’s home, and the people inside of it, was the beauty that comes from rustic nature, that arises when pure love is allowed to grow and roam freely.

Lib’s home had hot running water – but it was limited to the kitchen.  In that kitchen, there weren’t any cabinets to speak of .  There was one antique cupboard, and most of the dishes were stored in the drain that was also used for, well, draining.  The family had a refrigerator – but it wasn’t technically in the kitchen.  The fridge was outside, butted up against the house to the right of the door that connected all with the outside world.

There was no bathroom in the house.  There was an outhouse for daytime use, and at night, there was a chamber pot under Lib’s bed.  She once confided to me, “I always make sure that I take that thing out and empty it before Ray gets here.  I wouldn’t want him to see me carrying it.”

The bed itself was a marvelous thing, piled high with handmade quilts and soft blankets!  All of the beds in the house seemed to be piled high with quilts and surrounded by crude racks holding all manner of things, including clothing.  All throughout the house, things were stored where they were used.  Closet building had been a luxury when Lib’s father had been constructing, and as a result, there were no storage areas to speak of inside the house.

There were two double beds in the bedroom where Lib and I slept, and we had to snake through the bedroom of her parents.  There was no hallway of any sort, and no other way to get there.  One bed in Lib’s room was occupied by her younger sister.  The other was reserved for Lib – and for me to join her when I would come to stay overnight.

When my mother had finally agreed to let me stay an entire weekend, that’s when I learned the secret rites of how bathing was achieved in a house without a room officially designated for  it.  On Sunday morning, Lib announced that it was time for a bath.  Her boyfriend, Ray, was coming over to pick us up in the afternoon and take us out.  Entering the little ramshackle kitchen she retrieved a big metal bowl from atop the tall cupboard.  Approaching the large, old ceramic covered, cast-iron sink, she placed the basin inside it, turning on the hot water spigot and the cold water spigot.  Though these were two separate spigots, the pipes holding them were pulled next to each other and wound all about with wire to hold them in place.  This made the stream of water a mixture of hot and cold when running both sides…even though the stream was, admittedly, more cold and more hot on either side.  This adjustment had been Lib’s idea.  I thought it ingenious!

From the floor underneath the sink, Lib produced shampoo, and stuck her head underneath the flowing water, dipping it into the filling bowl until her hair was saturated.  She turned off the water and applied liberal soap from the shampoo bottle.  “Here, help me!” she begged/ordered.  I dug my fingers in gladly, playing in the soap, massaging her scalp.  Lifting her head out of the water, she stood up and began to make silly shapes in her hair with the suds, making silly faces to match.  This got the both of us laughing so loudly that her mother and her sister had to come in to see what the ruckus was all about.  The laughter in that house was infectious, as always, and I even heard her father’s deep and reverberating chuckle emerging from his customary chair in the living room.

Once Lib had finished playing, and had rinsed her tresses, it was my turn.  I soon discovered that Lib’s skill at keeping her head from being either burned or frozen as she’d passed underneath the running water was one hard learned.  For me, it was far easier to stick my long brown locks into the basin and swish back and forth.  Where as Lib had been breaking her back to bend over the sink, my five foot, four inch frame left me on my tiptoes.  Applying shampoo, Lib also helped with my hair, and the combined feeling of the warm water, the hot breeze creeping in the backdoor and up my exposed neck, and her nimble fingers manipulating my sensitive head, well, it was almost too much!  Chill bumps of pleasure crept down my spine and across my arms.  Lib saw them and began to tease me, asking if I’d gotten cold on such a hot day?  Her questioning forced an embarrassed squeal of protest from me.  I insisted that I was in no way cold, and took over the sudsing of my own hair.  Lifting my head out of the sink, I copied her earlier shenanigans with the mounds of soap, and everyone laughed at me with the same enthusiasm as they had for Lib – but my heart wasn’t in it.  I just felt it necessary to perform for them, partially to distract myself from the pleasure that I’d been experiencing from having the attention of Lib’s hand upon my scalp.  I didn’t feel that getting pleasure from the touch of another human being was okay.  I felt terribly found-out and guilty about it.

Once my hair was pronounced by Lib to be thoroughly rinsed, she emptied the metal bowl and caught fresh, warm water for us.  We then made our way to the bedroom, towels around dripping hair.  On the way, she stopped at one of the many stacks of things beside her parents bed, picking up two more neatly folded towels, and from a corresponding stack, a couple of wash cloths.  She handed a set to me and I noticed how, like the towel I’d been given for my hair, all of the laundry here seemed very stiff and flat.  These weren’t at all fluffy like the towels that I was used to from my home.

Inside the bedroom, Lib let down the curtain to the doorway, affording us the only privacy available, and then opened one of the drawers of the dresser, the lone piece of furniture in the room, other than the beds.  She dug around, searching, then proudly lifted out this little cardboard box.  She smiled as she showed the treasure to me, putting it beside our bowl of water.  Opening up the lid of the box, she revealed that inside, there was a bottle of perfume, a women’s razor, nail clippers and files, and a pink box bearing the label “Caress”.

“Ray bought this,” she said.  “He likes the way the soap smells.  He wants me to have nice things.  I keep this hidden because he gets it just for me.  You can use it, of course!”  She opened the end of the box of soap and dumped the partially used bar into her hand, all smooth and pink-flowery-smelling.

Lib initiated things, liberating her hair and tossing the towel to the bed behind her, pulling her shirt over head, and then, reaching behind her back and unhooking her bra.  I was grateful, because I was very shy and not used to nudity.  It wasn’t allowed in my own home.  I hadn’t been sure how to begin bathing in a room with another person present.  I began undressing too, and soon enough, we were down to our underpants.  Lib had stopped removing clothing at that point and I followed suit, leaving my panties on.  My heart was beating quickly and I know that my face was red because I wasn’t used to having so much of myself exposed, especially my breasts, or seeing the breasts of another person.  Not a female person, anyway!  Boys were always going without their shirts in the South, but we girls were not afforded that same freedom.  Lib’s breasts were very pert, shaped kind of conically; like a real life example of the pointy bras of the sixties.  Her pink nipples stood erect within large pink areola.  Her skin was very white.  She was lily white all over, quite Anglo-Saxon looking in spite of the very straight black hair and the black slightly-slanted-eyes that her Cherokee Indian heritage expressed in her.

I giggled nervously, and that made her begin giggling as well.  We were always transferring to one another like that.  Knowing that Ray was on his way, I knew that we had to actually bathe, so I was grateful when she, again, began by dipping her cloth into the warm water.  We swirled the soap around inside our washcloths,  creating a terrific smelling, soppy, soapy mess that we spread all over our glowing, youthful bodies, glancing up at each other, continuing the giggling all the while.  Once we’d soaped and rinsed all of our exposed bodies, Lib hitched her thumb under her underwear, pulling them off in one swift swoop, and washing those delicate parts of herself.  I stopped giggling and tried not to look as I copied her actions.  She had a much fuller growth of hair than did I, its making a perfect furry triangle, and her firm, round buttocks bore this one, dark mole, like a beauty mark, high above one cheek.  Thoroughly embarrassed and afraid that my own body was ugly and immature compared to hers, I washed as quickly as possible without trying to give away the fact that I was doing it quickly.

Soon enough, to my relief, we were both clean, fresh smelling, and dressed in new underclothing.  Before she put on her usual blue-jeans, Lib took out the razor, applied another coating of soap to her legs, and ran the razor in tracks up the long, lean lines of her legs, rinsing the detritus away in the water of our basin with a shaking motion.  I watched her in stark fascination!  I’d never before seen a woman shaving her legs because our religion forbade it.  I loved the sound of the razor, the soft sounds of the sloshing water, the look of her long leg stretched out, made even whiter by the soap, even the look of concentration on her face.

Once Lib was satisfied that her shaving was complete, she stood in front of me, prancing around a bit in her underwear, reveling in the feeling of having her body newly clean and fresh!  She chose a pair of jeans from a pile to the right of the dresser.  “I hate how my jeans feel when I first wear them!” she exclaimed, struggling her long legs into the fabric.  “They always feel better after I’ve worn them for a day or two.  I alternate my jeans,” she offered in explanation.  “I never wear the same pair two days in a row because I don’t want people at school to notice that I only have three pairs.  My mother only washes ever Tuesday and it’s such hard work for her!  My sister and my brother’s wife all bring their laundry and they help her.  She’s got one of those old-fashioned roller washers.  Have you ever seen one?  Does your grandmother have one, maybe?”  I shook my head negatively.  “Oh!  Well, that has to be pulled out in the yard, and then they have to fill it up full of water for the wash, and again for the rinse.  Then everything has to be rolled through the rollers and someone has to stand there and feed it by hand.  It’s a lot of work and you have to be careful and pay attention.  I got my finger caught in the rollers once and it hurts like the dickens!”

That day when I’d had my first ever bath with Lib had been a day much like today.  Ray had come slowly rolling into the yard not even an hour after we were ready, off to swoop us up on some adventure or another.  As the time for his arrival had approached, I’d felt Lib’s excitement building, and her excitement had become my own.  Their relationship was fairly new, and I was meeting him for the first time.  The picture that Ray had painted upon his arrival had not been disappointing, as he’d climbed out from behind the wheel of his clean and shiny gold Chevy Nova.  He was older than us by a few years, sporting a nice tan and a tight T-shirt across an athletic frame.  His legs were long with a slight bow in the middle.  Sun glasses adorned his face, wavy, dirty blond locks catching the sunlight that filtered through the trees.  Whipping his sunglasses off, he’d appraised us as we’d approached his car, flitting glances across our faces, our outfits, our hair.  “So,” he’d smiled with his voice along with his mouth, those sparkling baby-blues taking in the purses on our arms and the cooler that we had in tow, “you girls ready?”

Indeed; had I been?  Was I?  That scene in the front yard of Lib’s parents’ house had happened years earlier.  Throughout all of my ensuing adventures with Lib and Ray, I’ve never been as close to him as I now find myself.  Making no effort to hide from his girlfriend the fact that his arm is around me, he casually throws the other one about her.  I can feel the muscles of his arm tense as he squeezes the both of us.  He lets out his characteristic sound that means that he is happy, and that all is right with his world.  “UUUMMMMM, UUUUmmmm, uuummmm!”  It is the sound that one might expect to hear after having someone bite into a really amazing apple pie.

Ray’s smell is intoxicating.  I am getting drunk off of it, and my skin is becoming super-sensitive, sending little electric-shocks through me at every point where our bodies are making contact.  I don’t know what to do with my hands.  My left one decides that its place should be on his denim clad leg, and that’s where I leave it, in full view of Lib.  She doesn’t seem to be worried over it.  In fact, she continues her wild driving up the elevating road, the curves getting sharper and more numerous, her hitting the accelerator in them hard, tossing us all about amidst fits of laughter.  I squeeze his leg, hanging on to prevent my getting thrown back against the door.  I can feel the taunt muscles of his thigh flexing under my hand as he also struggles to keep his footing, and my place inside his arm, intact.  Through it all, Ray doesn’t let me go, and I feel this sense of safety and being cared for; something that I’ve never felt before from the touch of any man.

Reaching our destination, we scramble out of the car and toward the picnic tables, my body already missing his warmth, though it had only been present for a small while.  Rightfully, that might have been due to the fact that it is COLD in these mountains!  Ray had tried to tell us that it would be, but being young, being stubborn, and being women, we hadn’t listened!  I found myself longing for a sweater – or for Ray’s body draped back against me.  That wasn’t to be!  He and Lib are off on their own.

They are arguing a bit because he hadn’t wanted to come here.  It is cold and overcast and not at all fit for an outing.  I am jealous of their closeness, even though they are in a disagreement, and my aloneness feels more pronounced as I watch the two of them.  She is sitting on the top of one of the picnic tables, and he is holding her hands, standing partially wrapped inside her long blue-denim wearing legs.  She looks up at him with her large doe eyes, and he is staring back, so obviously smitten that it is a tangible thing that accompanies them everywhere.

In spite of my feeling of aloneness, I can’t help but be stricken by the wondrous beauty of the place where we have landed, and I find myself glad that Ray had been overruled in regards to our destination!  We were at a public park high up in the mountainous areas of government land.  The wood of the spattering of picnic tables is covered with green and yellow lichens, softening the look of even the man-made things here.  The ground is blanketed with new sprouts of grass with tiny wildflowers peeking out, all green and yellow and pink and dark purple.  There is the noise of a trickling stream, and as I make my way toward it, I find myself walking along a deep green carpet of fuzzy moss.

On my approach, I discover more of a bubbling brook than a stream, and there are moss covered stones in the bottom, surrounded by pebbles of tan and brown and black, peeking out from the clear waters.  Looking up along the bank, I spot these magnificent stands of tall, odd mushrooms!  Now these are surely enough to warrant interest!  Calling out to the other two, I invite them to come and share in my discovery.  Hand in hand, they approach, the attentions turned from their argument to the fascinating mushrooms, ensuing lots of guesses about what type they are, what they will probably do to people and animals who ingested them, and the like.

The rest of our time is spent exploring the little creek, and walking along fallen trees.  Sometimes, they bridge the water and add a thrill as we teeter along at the risk of falling in.  All is peaceful and right!  Except for this nagging little tinge of jealousy that I get when seeing my two companions kissing, holding hands and holding each other.  It isn’t really a feeling of being jealous of one or the other of them.  I am jealous of their situation, of the fact that they have someone to love while I walk along in the chilly mountain air alone and, well, cold!

As the sun begins to disappear behind the trees, we make our meandering way back to the car, none of us seeming to want a return to the real world.  On the way, Lib begs to be allowed to drive home, prancing around like a puppy in search of a treat, and without much resistance, Ray agrees.  As we all pile into the car in a repeat of our previous formation, Ray returns his arm around me.  There is no pretense of need.  It surprises me, and I can feel my heart speed up, and my body automatically becomes tense.  My reaction isn’t out of not liking this attention, but he’d almost seemed to be avoiding touching me as we all played about in the park, save one time when he’d offered his hand to help me across a difficult bit of the stream.  Perhaps it is the magic of the Nova!  Maybe it is the spell of the night.  It could be that he figures once allowed, forever allowed – by his girlfriend and by myself.  Whatever the reason, Ray plants himself between the two of us, arms outstretching along the seat-back, hugging us both to him.

In contrast to the way in which we’d earlier arrived, the ride back down the mountain is slow and languid.  The heat in the car is going  full blast so that Lib can ride with her window down, though I’ve chosen to shut my own up tight.  We all breathe in the crisp, mountain air while our thawing toes take on the advancing warmth.  On the cusp of when day is giving over to night, a stillness falls across everything.  It is a feeling in perfect harmony with the sound of Lobo’s voice, creeping out in soft tones from the speakers behind us.  Ray joins in, his quiet voice laying it’s deep rasp against the falling night.  He finishes the song with a soft laugh, looking back and forth from Lib to me, and pulling us together in a huge hug, emitting his signature “UUUMMMMM, UUUUmmmm, uuummmm!” into the approaching darkness.

Lib fusses at him for interfering with her driving, but she does it gently and with none of her earlier anger.  Ray reduces his grip on her and she sits back some, away from him and more directly underneath the wheel.  His hand doesn’t leave my arm, and I feel that arm begin to tingle as he slides up and down my bare flesh, fingers tapping time to the music of a newly beginning song.

Not knowing what to do with my hands again, I return my left one to Ray’s leg, and apply gentle squeezes, in time to the music.  In the darkened interior of the car, I can feel, rather than see, him smile.  Turning my body in toward him, I lay my head down on his arm, resting and curling into him, placing my other hand on his stomach.  I can feel him adjust himself closer to Lib, stretching his arm back out around her.  His breathing changes, becoming deeper and faster, and I can feel it in the atmosphere, tell it by the rise and fall of his belly underneath my hand.  His touch on my arm becomes, somehow, different.  I feel a fire run through me, originating underneath his fingers and ending somewhere, deep in the pit of my belly.

So, here I sit:  Curled into my best friends fiancé, his arms around the both of us and her fully aware of this fact.  I am beyond confused, and the fire in my belly isn’t helping!  My nose is bare millimeters away from his neck, and that scent that had intoxicated me on the way up the mountain is even stronger with the heady sweetness of perspiration gathered on our trek.  I come to a decision that is of the type that I’m to find myself oft repeating in my life, and not always wisely.  Turning my body a few degrees and shifting myself forward, I lay my lips against the bare and vulnerable skin of his neck.

The moment my moist and slightly parted lips embrace him, I feel the sharp intake of his breath.  His body stiffens and turns.  His arm doesn’t leave my friend, but he somehow rolls himself deeper into me, pressing into my mouth, hard and welcoming.

I feel two thing simultaneously.  The first is guilt.  I’ve gotten the impression that Lib is okay with what had gone on with Ray where I was concerned throughout the first part of the day, but I don’t know how she will feel about my having kissed him.  Sure, it’s only his neck – but a kiss is a kiss and I am initiating this.  I am being a very bad girl – and an even worse friend.

Secondly, I feel ecstatic!  Electric shocks of  pleasure and desire are shooting all through my young body – and those shocks are about to be tested, all the more.

Once feeling his response, I don’t stop with the action of my lips upon Ray’s neck.  I work my way up slowly, bit by tantalizing bit, to the base of his ear, and take it within my lips.  He actually lets out a little moan, and I’m not sure how loud it is, but he is no longer satisfied with what I am doing, because he turns his face to mine.  He has a five o’clock shadow, and being blonde, his whiskers are soft, but they still graze the tender skin of my face as he presses into me, searching for my mouth with his own.

Our lips meet as if we are two people devouring each other – but quietly, stealthily with stilted movements on the down-low.  I don’t know what he is thinking.  I don’t know what Lib is thinking.  I have stopped thinking.

All through the ride home, Ray and I make out.  Sometimes, he turns his face to Lib, leaning away from me, I feel him pressing into her body, clinging to her, and I can hear the passion in their kisses – but he’s never long away before presenting his neck or his lips back to me.  While I’m dissolving into passion with him, I am distracted at times by hearing Lib’s voice singing along with Lobo, the incoming wind from the open window stealing away whole syllables.  I can feel her looking, glancing over at us.  I’m not sure how much she can see, or hear, in the dark.  I’m not sure how much I want her to see or hear.  I’m not sure what I am feeling.  Except desire.  I have become a pulsing, non-thinking ball of it.

As I curl my fingers into the hair at the base of her fiancé’s neck, pulling him once again to my starving lips, it occurs to me that the adventuresome spirit that I feel in Lib extends far beyond that home of hers.  Perhaps the adventure isn’t about where Lib comes from.  Perhaps the adventure is Lib, herself.  And Ray.  And me.  And what the HELL am I doing?!

Whatever it is, whatever is to become of this, I am sure of one thing:   I feel ALIVE!  I feel wanted.  I feel loved.  I am desperately clinging to this rare moment of happiness – and I am sure that I am in for one FANTASTIC ride!

This post is dedicated to: Lib and Ray, who helped start me on the journey to being my true self.

Thanks always to Jim Dollar for his amazing photographs that he allows us to use in representation our journey! With Jim, there’s always art that speaks to my heart.

 

Posted in My Loves and Lovers.

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Clearing the Snow

As I am cleaning house, a familiar figure approaches.  My heart skips a beat.  It’s my father.  I can see him through the glass of the open screen, the main door to the kitchen left wide to let in the light.  He’s strolling nonchalantly, coming for a friendly visit.  He thinks.  After all, we’ve been getting together for a few months now, reestablishing contact after a long period of not having had any.

The last time he’d left me, there’d been a surprise, late-in-the season-snow on the ground.  My two young daughters and just-past-toddler son had been outside with other children from the neighboring apartments.  They’d been building a snowman and he’d joined in the fun, throwing snowballs, chasing and tossing the kids into the air amongst squeals of delight.  That afternoon had touched a warm place in my heart that had taken me back to my own childhood.

Snowfalls had been a rare thing in the northeast corner of Georgia where I’d grown up.  Our family had maintained a tradition around them, bundling up and heading out into the white stuff whenever we were lucky enough to have an accumulation.  We’d don double socks, stuffing them into our regular shoes.  Then, we’d pull old, salvaged, empty loaf-bread-bags over the entire mess and hold it all up with red rubber bands, strategically placed a few inches below our knees.  We’d pull another pair of socks on whomever’s hands weren’t lucky enough to own  mittens or gloves.  We girls would dress in layers of skirts, our religion forbidding the wearing of trousers, even at times such as these.  It would all be topped off with a button-up sweater tightened over our usual top, then the putting on of our heaviest coats, all wrapped up with homemade scarves about our necks.

Once my mother had announced us appropriately attired, and that could take quite a while since there were four children who had to go through this approval process, the whole family would spill, giggling, out the door, and into an enchanted land!

Outside, it seemed that the Hand of God had touched everywhere making all white and clean and pure!  Behind the forested acres of our farmland, milky mountains rose in the distance.  All of the cobbled together out buildings on our forty acre farm had their harsh edges softened with a dusty covering.  Snow fell into all of the imperfect dabbles of the pasture, smoothing it into swirls that were as tasty to my eyes as powdered-sugar frosting was to my tongue!  Throughout the large parcels of fencing, pearls of snow clung to the barbs of wire, and atop each round of wooden fencepost sat personal tiaras, silvery, glistening, semi-circles of clean.

The long dirt road that wound down the hill to us became a fantastic, alabaster snake.  Birds of all colors lit, outlined against the stark white, pulling at barely exposed tufts of grass, munching the tiny breadcrumbs my thoughtful mother had sprinkled.  The decorative, round hedges underneath the awnings at our windows looked like giant, green snow cones, ready for flavored toppings to be poured out by some heavenly being or other.  The branches of the huge pines in the forest held the snow, curving out and up, creating a shape like the very wings of angels.  We kids would try to copy this theme, plopping down on the upper part of the little terrace in the front yard, flailing our juvenile arms and legs out in huge arcs, making snow angels of our own.

It was always Daddy’s job to make the large bases for the snow people.  We would make a snowman and a snowwoman, and by the time we children had come up with a couple of heads, my father would already have built the large bottoms and middle sections necessary for our creations.  My mother is very artistically inclined, and it was her duty to come up with the items for making the faces, and for choosing the clothing for these newest members of the Hulsey clan.  Yes, we even put clothing on our snowpeople, I don’t think Mama would have approved of their remaining naked, and sank branches in or added extra gobs of snow to sculpt for arms.  The final result really showcased our farming roots, these strange beings of ours looking like some spooky scarecrow/snowperson combos.  We loved them, and proudly posed for pictures around them so that we could capture our creatures on film, for time immemorial!

Once that ritual had been completed, the adults would usually go back inside as we kids continued to romp and scream and play.  I remembered my mother’s fervent call from the back porch, begging us to, “Come on in before you catch your death!”

“Ah!  Mama-Mia!” we’d wail her nick-name.  “Just a little bit longer!”

“I’ll betcha’ can’t even feel your toes!” she’d protest.  “Can you feel your toes, still?”

“Yes!  I can feel my toes,” we’d lie.  At least, I’d lie.

Fun!  Innocent fun.

Innocent?  Really?  My mind “hhrrummphhhs” while I mull that thought over, sitting with the unease it brings.  All of the warm, or in this case, cold, fuzzy memories melt away as I stand as a grown-up, with children of my own, in my own home, waiting for my father to reach my door.

I had only recently begun seeing him again, having stopped a few months prior because he’d grown violent with the unlucky woman who then occupied that revolving space in my life called “step-mother”.  I’d even shown up to rescue her a few times, been the go-between, guard, communicator, whatever role I could fill between my father and herself.  My usual caretaking.

At her urging, my current step-mother and I had enrolled in a local support group for women who were being abused.  The support group would have been of more help if she’d actually stayed for the meetings.  She kept ditching them in order to run off and be with my father.  The whole thing had made me throw up my own hands, and succumb to that need inside of me for having a relationship with some sort of father again.  Until now.

Now, I am angry.  Angry about the rank tint that my dad has spread over all of my memories of yesterday.  Angry about his unacceptable actions in the here and now.  I also feel stupid.  Stupid that I’ve allowed myself to be vulnerable to him again; that I’ve allowed myself the fantasy that I might just be a normal daughter interacting with a normal grandfather to her normal children.

As my dad approaches the back door, this simmering anger welling up inside of me becomes more keen.  I swallow it back down, hard.  I need to keep the upper hand in this.  I have to keep a clear head.  After all, nothing can be done to change the past. I note how stark the contrast in my feelings toward this man when I compare my naïve youth with what I know of him today!

In my mind, I travel back to that day, years earlier, when I’d stood in my father’s kitchen trying to decide whether or not he should die – by my hand.  I had thought myself the only person in the world capable of killing him for the right reasons.  I could get close enough.  I would be doing it as an act of mercy – for the sake of others, but also for his own.  It must be miserable, I thought, to exist, all broken like that.

I’d turned and walked away from him that day in his kitchen, simply walked away, his calling after me, “What the hell’s the matter with you?” and my ignoring him.  I’d not cut off contact then, and that sin had been one of an even more personal nature than this.  Still….

The door squeaks his entry, bringing me out of my revelry.  I look up at him.  The air is thick with tension.  My tension.  He’s as cool as a cucumber.  “Daddy,” I say, “I don’t know if I want to see you, or not.”

He just looks at me, shocked, as I stand there in my kitchen wielding my broom.

“I can not BELIEVE that you keep doing such horrible things!  I keep giving you chance after chance, because I love you.  I want to be able to see you, have a relationship with you – but you keep doing these things!”

“What?  What in the hell are you a talkin’ ’bout?” he asks, seeming actually confused.

“You had no sooner left my house last time than…. I KNOW, Daddy! I know what you did to my sister, okay?  She called and told me.”

“Why I ain’t even talked to that little bitch.  What was I s’possed to a said?”

“You see!  You see, right there!  Now, why in the world would you call her a ‘bitch’?  You called HER and asked her to give you a blow-job!”  My knuckles are white on the handle of my broom as I channel my energies there.  “As soon as you left here, after just playing with my kids, you call my step-sister and talk dirty to her.  WHY do you do these things?”

I pause in my, now, furious sweeping of the floor and stare into the eyes of my father.  My breath is coming in fast, shallow bursts.

He stands, just looking at me.  As we lock eyes, my mind wanders, pondering the evidence.

My father has never been convicted of molesting a child.  My father has never been convicted of raping a woman.  That doesn’t mean that he’s not guilty of both of these crimes – and more.  Many girls, many times over, have suffered at his hand – and other parts.

From the moment of my parent’s separation, women began to come out of the woodwork to confess abuses.  Their ages didn’t matter, their looks didn’t matter, nor their stations; my father was a consummate user of women, an equal opportunity abuser.

Once things with my mother were finished, my father married often, or simply “took up” with women, gifting me numerous sisters and brothers of the “step” variety.  With the sisters, it was always the same story.  Sooner or later, usually sooner, he’d have them caught somewhere.  It might be in a car while giving a driving lesson.  It might be in a bedroom at night while their mothers were working.  It might be while taking them with him on some work trip or other to the many flea-markets through which he sometimes made his living.

The fact that he never stopped sickens me.  The fact that he has never been charged with any of these crimes never ceases to amaze me.  Somewhere, in my mind, I want to be worth his being better.  I want him to stop, not just for himself, not just for his victims; I, selfishly, want him to stop for ME.  I want a father.  I want a father that I can be proud of.  I want a father who doesn’t hurt people – partly because he knows that his acts will distance him from ME.  I want a father that it is okay to love.

I think it must be like a drug to him.  Some people drink.  Some people gamble.  Some people light a crack pipe.  My father pins some helpless female against a wall.  Or bed.  Or ground.

Once, one of his wives shared a story with me that left me flabbergasted.  She’d been brought to my house and introduced as my new step-mother, and we’d been left alone in order to get acquainted.  The years had not been kind to her.  Her face probably had been attractive in her youth, because she carried herself in a way as if she expected people to find her beautiful, which only made her come across as somewhat sad.  Her grey hair was sprinkled with a faded brown that washed out her deeply lined face around non-descript, brown eyes.  She seemed shy and awkward, there on the sofa in my usually cozy home.

“Uh, oh!” my internal sensors had blinked.  “She’s in for some real trouble!”

“I just love your daddy!” she’d said, in school-girl-crush fashion.  “I’m so glad that I’ve reconnected with him after all of these years!”

“Uh, huh,” I had replied politely, “me too!  I’m happy for you.”  I hadn’t really meant that, and looking back, probably should have said something different.  We women, though, we are really fools when we think we are in love, I felt that it would have been pretty futile to say anything but that.

“You see,” she continued, “your father and I knew each other when we were kids.”

“Uh, huh,” I said again.  “Is that so?”

“As a matter of fact,” and with this, she had struggled from the confines of the plush sofa in order to lean in with the air of one revealing a confidence, “I used to be scared to death of your daddy.”

At this point, my brain and my mouth said very different things.  My brain had said, “Smart woman!”  My mouth actually spat out, “Really?!” my eyebrows raising in feigned surprise.

“You see, your daddy was the first man to ever have sex with me.  When we were little, we used to all play in the woods together, my brothers and sisters and his brothers and sisters.  Your dad used to tease me.  One day, he chased me down into the woods, away from everybody.  He had scared me real bad, so I ran deep into those woods with him right behind me.

“Well, he was a faster runner than me, and he eventually caught up!  He threw me right down on the ground and had sex with me.  He just did it, right there in the woods!  I was screaming, and screaming, but I guess nobody could hear me, or they didn’t care, or thought we were playing.  I had never been with anybody before and I didn’t know what to make of it!  I guess I was about nine and he was ten or eleven years old.  After that, I was always afraid every time I saw him.

“So, you see, I’ve been knowing your daddy for a long time.  Who would have dreamed, back then, that I would grow up, be widowed, and then marry the first man that I ever had sex with?  I think it’s helping me to understand it all, being with him now.  It’s funny how life works out like that.”

“Yes! Yes, it is!” I’d replied.

Funny, alright – but my kind of funny and her kind of funny were completely different kinds of funny.  I couldn’t believe that she’d just dispassionately shared a rape story with me, that she’d fallen in love with and married her rapist.  I sat in the awkward silence that followed her, now, still voice, and prayed that she had no daughters, granddaughters, sisters, nieces, cousins, no female potential victims of any sort, ripe for my father’s pickings.

I always made sure, in dealing with my father, that I told women to stay in the company of others, particularly other males, when he was around.  I had some warped idea that I could, in that manner, keep them safe and still have a relationship with the man, still have him be a part of my life.  But – situations always arose that couldn’t be planned for, and then, my Viper Father would STRIKE!

As we are standing in my kitchen, I’m finding it hard to continue to meet the eyes of the Viper, and tears are beginning to well up in my eyes, as I come to a slow acceptance and realization that I can’t keep women safe from my father.

As if he can read my mind, and see the pictures running through it, my father speaks, interrupting our shared silence.  “I su’pose you’re gonna say I molested you, too.”

“I don’t remember your doing anything to me, Daddy.  I don’t remember anything.”

We stand at a familiar impasse, sizing one another up.  His hands are on his hips and his stance defiant.  My hands are still wrapped around the end of the broom.  I am slightly leaning on it and thankful for it’s solid round of wood in my trembling hands.  It helps to lend a sense of reality for me.

“Shit!” he exclaims at last, throwing his hands into the air, turning and marching out the door.  I watch as his back disappears.  He climbs into his car.  He doesn’t look back.

Loosening my grasp on the broom, I intake a deep breath, and turning back to the mundane tasks of my life, I slowly, determinedly, start to sweep the filth away.

~ ~ With special thanks to the persons within me who have come forward to help me in the telling of this particular tale, for the words here are an amalgamation of several voices, and I’ve not written them alone.

Posted in My Inheritance.

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The Cohen Doll

I’m lying in bed next to my father.  He is sleeping and I am not.  This is an almost daily occurrence because my mother and my father work different shifts so that someone can be at home with me.  My father works the night shift and then sleeps during the day.  Often, I wake up and I see him sleeping and I sit up in bed and begin playing little games, trying to occupy myself in the manner of tiny children who are left to their own devices.

I’m not supposed to go out of the room or even off of the bed.  I’m supposed to stay where my father can see me and make sure that I’m okay.  I play finger games, play with the patterns on the quilt, sip at my drink or nibble at my snack on the bedside table – and I keep looking over at the Cohen Doll.

The Cohen Doll is my mother’s greatest treasure.  In high school, she had a good friend named Cohen.  Cohen was very talented when it came to fashion and clothing design.  His specialty was taking ordinary Barbie-type dolls, creating outfits for them, styling their hair, putting them on stands, and displaying all underneath a shiny glass dome.  He made these special dolls and gave them as gifts to his dearest friends.

My mother is the lucky recipient of one Cohen Doll.  It is rare.  It is irreplaceable.  Mostly, because, my mom says, “Cohen’s dead now.  He’ll never make another one.  Cohen died.”  I don’t exactly know what this means, but I know that it makes this doll very special.  I also know that the Cohen Doll is the one doll in the house that I am not allowed to touch.  Of course, that very fact makes me want to touch it all the more.  Touch it, I’m determined to do.  I lie here, working up the courage to try.

As my father sleeps, I carefully creep closer and closer to the Cohen Doll.  I’ll have to get around him without waking him if I’m to reach my target, because the object of my desire is on the nightstand next to his side of the bed.  At first, I step over him, but I’m too tiny and I my short, child legs connect with his body.  There’s an uneven break in his breathing, and he stirs, sending me quickly scuttling back to my side of the bed, my little heart racing.  Thankfully, he doesn’t wake up.

Next, I try going around the end of his feet.  This seems to work better, but the bed still moves.  At last, I decide to dismount from my side of the bed and sneak my slow way over, scooting on the floor and peeping over the big bed at my father’s prone body.  I watch for signs of wakefulness. When he stirs, I panic again!  I freeze in place and begin making up stories in my mind to explain to my father why I am where I am, and what I am trying to do!  “I dropped something down here, Daddy!” or “I was just stretching, Daddy,” or “Daddy, I fell off the bed!”  In reality, all that I’m wanting to do is get my itching hands on that Cohen Doll!

After a few days of practicing this, I finally make it all the way over to her!  I’m squatting, uncomfortable and nervous, right in front of her.  I am awestruck!  I just stare, absorbing every detail!  Her hair is light brown and swept up and back to highlight her dainty eyes of blue, and it’s as if I can hear her begging me to run my own brush through it.  Her plastic skin is smooth, peachy and creamy and inviting.  Her dress is this shimmering satin and lace overlay, in intricate layers that beg to be explored.  She is in a glass case, just like Sleeping Beauty from the fairy stories that my mother relates to me at night.  She is the closest thing to a princess that I’ve ever seen, and she is right in front of me!

For days, maybe weeks I practice getting over to the Cohen Doll without waking my father.  At last, I feel that I’ve mastered it!  It’s clear to me that I’m not going to cause my father to awaken.  I grow more bold.

More than anything that I’ve ever wanted in my young life, more than frosting, more than banana sandwiches, more than a tall glass of sweet-iced-tea, I want to hold, touch, caress, kiss this marvelous wonder before me – this treasure that is the Cohen Doll.

I risk reaching forward.  I tentatively touch her little house of glass.  It’s cold and smooth.  I’m trying to be careful not to leave any finger prints and I slowly lift up the bottom front of the wall that separates me from her and I reach in a pudgy finger in order to touch, simply, the hem of her dress.  My father stirs and turns toward me!

Hastily, I drop the top back down and try to figure out whether it is better to run around the bed to get back to my assigned spot, or if I should just jump directly onto the bed and pretend that I have crawled over to the wrong side.  Even though that will get me into trouble, it will cause me far less trouble than would touching the Cohen Doll!  I opt for option one, and run as quickly, as silently, as my toddler legs will carry me to my side of the bed, crawling up and  pulling the covers over me in one fell swoop.  I feign sleep, listening for signs of my father having woken or having spotted the fact that I was off of the bed.  My heart is about to pound out of my chest, and I feel tiny beads of perspiration breaking out on my little-girl forehead!  I’m sure that if he becomes conscious and looks over at the Cohen Doll, my father will see the residue of my presence there.  I’m still not sure how all of these things work, but I just KNOW that he will be able to see where I have been, as if I’ve left the mark of the energy of my intent upon the scene!

He doesn’t wake up after all.  Still, I’m too scared to attempt going back over to his side of the bed that day.  It takes me many more days of resting beside my daddy and hearing the voice of the doll calling to me before I go to her and attempt to give her the interaction that I am so sure that she needs.  I feel sorry for her there, in her glass case, not out with the other dolls and toys.  I want her to experience my loving touch, and I’m convinced that I’m doing her a good deed in providing that.

My courage returns at last, and I am kneeling, in front of her again.  I sit and lift the case up a bit so that I can touch her dress, and her feet, and I gently set it down again.  I do this over, and over, and over.  Each time, I try to creep up the bottom a bit higher so that I can touch more of her.  This becomes my most precious game, and the thing that I look forward to every morning when I awaken beside the snoring figure of my father.

Over a period time, I finally have the nerve to completely remove the case and set it on the floor.  Here she is in front of me, fully exposed!  The Cohen Doll!  Now that our unnecessary barrier is removed, I can at long last touch that soft and perfect hair.  I caress it, ever so gently.  It is long, past her shoulders.  I run my fingers along her exquisite dress from the bottom to the top.  I fluff out the layers, poofing it.  I study how she fits on the stand.

Now, when my father stirs, I sit very still.  He always settles back down again and if I simply wait for that to happen, I have learned that I can slowly make my way back to the bed and all will be well.  I grow even more daring in my shenanigans.  Sometimes, I miss waking up before my father – and then I awaken and his eyes are already open.  These days are sad ones for me because I don’t get the opportunity to sneak playtime with my Cohen Doll!

Through the passage of time, I gain the privilege of being allowed to get down off of the bed when I wake up, and to make my way to the living room in order to play with all of my toys while my father still sleeps.  This is a mixed blessing.  I want my freedom outside of the room, but it also means that I have to be away from my new-found friend and playmate!  This creates quite a conflict for me.

Awake, I lie bored on the bed, torn between the idea of sneaking over to my mother’s beloved, or escaping the bedroom to the larger living room where I can interact with more things and make the time go faster.  Time always slows down for me when I am stealing it with the Cohen Doll.

At last, I think that I have a solution!  I make a “fort” in the living room of our trailer home.  I pull all of my riding toys and my rocking chair and various items around in a circle, and I put all of my other toys in the middle of this circle.  Even though I am doing this just for the fun of it, I do have another purpose in mind.  I get my fort situated, and move silently through the room where my father is resting.  Gently lifting the dome cover, I wrap my fingers about her and claim the Cohen Doll!

My plan is to hide the Cohen Doll in the middle of the fort, and if my father wakes up, I will keep him from seeing her until I can sneak her back into the room.  He’s not nearly as observant as my mother, and I think that this is a plan that I can get away with.  As I play, I am glancing at the front door that will open at some point, admitting my mother as she returns home from work.  I know that getting the toy past her would be harder to do.

Over the door, there hangs this round mechanical device that bears the name “clock”.  I am aware of the fact that grown-ups look at it and can then tell when certain events are going to happen.  I sit, clutching the Cohen Doll, whom I’ve now taken off the stand and am holding, fully (oh, the miracle!) in my clutched, little-girl hand.  I stare at this device and the unintelligible (to me) markings on it, realizing that if I could just figure it out, I’d know when my mother was going to walk in and I could have the Cohen Doll put back and never have her catch me with it.  Alas, I don’t learn how to tell time until many years later.  This point is very frustrating to me, because I want to understand the magic markings, and I wish so badly that I could ask someone to explain them to me – but then, they might ask why I need to know, and what excuse would I give?

These are troubled days for me.  As I lie in the bed with my mother at night, I always glance over at the Cohen Doll and in my imagination, I see the little nuances of difference where I’ve rearranged her dress and her hair.  I imagine the energy of my fingerprints left on the glass.  I lie in amazement beside my mother, wondering how she is not noticing that her priceless possession is being pilfered.  I am overcome by this horrible sense of guilt, but it is not enough to stop me from continuing the behavior.

One day, I have a marvelous surprise!  My slightly older cousin has come over to play with me!  She helps me to set up my fort.  As we sit in the middle of it, all of my other precious toys surrounding us, I say to her, “I have something much better!  Let me show you!”  I do not tell her that it is not really mine.  I do not tell her that we are not allowed to play with it.  I want to pretend that the Cohen Doll is mine.  After all, am I not the one who frees her from her glass jail and loves her and keeps her company?

I scamper off to the bedroom and she follows me down the short hallway.  I stop her at the door and put my fingers to my lips to “SSHHUUUSSHHH!” her.  “Stay here!” I hiss, feeling all cocky and proud.  Following my usual tiptoeing routine, I get my hands around the case of the Cohen Doll, rejoining my cousin at the door.  Giggling quietly, we return to the fort.

My cousin is enthralled!  She LOVES the Cohen Doll!  Who wouldn’t?  She takes her and manhandles her in a careless fashion that makes me very nervous.  She brushes her hair with vigor, and I cringe as I try to figure out how I’m going to make it look like it did before when I put the Cohen Doll back where she belongs.  I always handle her with such grace and dignity, and I’m careful not to disturb her too awful much.  My cousin is older, and I don’t know how to speak up and tell her that she needs to be careful.  I’m not sure how to make her understand how regal and delicate the Cohen Doll is.  As it turns out, I needn’t have worried about putting her back, properly staged.

In my concern for the doll, in my excitement over having a playmate, I forget all about that mechanical device above the door that is ticking away the minutes until my mother gets home.  I forget all about watching the door, so as to run quickly back to the bedroom, doll in hand, hurriedly placing all in order before my mother can get fully inside.  By the time the noise registers on my play-distracted ears, my mother has opened the door, and is already standing inside the living room, peering down into my little, and as it turns out, ineffectual fort.  I have forgotten than my mother is very tall, that she bears the perfect perspective for looking down into the middle of the very short “fort walls” that surround my cousin, myself, and HER Cohen Doll!

Everything goes into slow motion.  I hear my mother scream, and whatever had been in her hands drops to the floor.  My cousin seems frozen in place, looking up at my mother with a shocked and confused expression.  In the clamor that ensues, I’m not sure WHO has the Cohen Doll in her hands at the exact moment of our interrupted play, but the doll doesn’t remain there for long, I can tell you that!  My mother’s hands leave her howling face as she makes short work of snatching the doll up and away.

My poor mother is devastated.  She is in shock.  She is in mourning.  “Oh, NO!” she screams.  “My Cohen Doll, My Cohen Doll!  My Cohen Doll, My Cohen Doll!”  It is sing-songy like that.  Over and over, and I’m not sure how many times she repeats it.  Tears are streaming down her face.  She begins stroking the hair of the doll, turning her over and over in her hands, examining her, and kind-of rocking back and forth.  “Look at her hair!  Look at her hair!  I’ll never get it back looking like HE had it!  Oh, My Cohen Doll!  My Cohen Doll!”  I see the look of pain on my mother’s weeping face and I know that I have done a horrible, unforgivable thing.

At this point, my memory leaves me.  The me who is writing this now went away.  I don’t know where the little girl is who came in and stayed through the rest of these events for me.  I only know what happened next due to anecdotal evidence.

As my cousin tells the story, my distraught mother jerks me up and begins to whip me.  I don’t know if she uses her hand, or a belt, or something else.  I don’t remember any of it, but I’m sure it is very frightening.  I mean, she is very angry, very upset and very sad.  I’m sure that this comes through the blows.  My elder cousin takes off, out of the house and up the hill to fetch my Grandmother.  “Granny, Granny!  You’ve got to come quick!  Deneen’s mama is beating her and she’s going to kill her!  You’ve got to come help her.  You’ve got to help Deneen!”

Whenever I contemplate these events, I remember losing my own temper with my eldest child:  She isn’t even two.  I am nine months pregnant and it is July and I am trying to get her to stay in the bedroom with me, the only room with air-conditioning.  She is being whiny and uncooperative and throwing fits.  I get really angry with her and I pull up her pretty, lacy little dress and pop her several times on her small, bare and squirming legs.  I hit her four or five smacks, purely out of frustration and anger.  I hit her too hard, because my hand is stinging when I stop.  Immediately, I know that I am wrong.  I have hit my child in anger!  I am a terrible mother!  I fall apart, horrified, and begin to cry along with my baby, overwhelmed with frustration and a deep disappointment in myself.  I grab my tiny girl and hold her tightly in my arms and sob and rock back and forth saying, “I’m so sorry!  Please forgive me!  I love you!  I’m so sorry!”  She just tries to squirm away, still angry.

Thankfully, I never remember hitting her in anger again, but to this day, the event still haunts me.  I wonder if my mother did this with me, too, after returning to her senses the day that she found me with her most precious Cohen Doll.  I wonder if she scooped me up into her arms.  I wonder if she comforted me, told me that she loved me.  Somewhere, someone inside of me remembers, and I pray that when she feels safe enough, she will share with me the memories of the rest of this story.

In a recent conversation with my mother, she spoke to me about some of the events from our past.  She’s retired now, her own mother has passed away, and she has ample time for contemplation.

“I find myself sitting here by myself and thinking a lot,” she tells me.  “I look back on a lot of things that I did when you all were little, and I have a lot of regrets.”  She says.

“Like what, Mama?” I ask.

“Well, I think about things like how upset I got over that Cohen Doll.  I shouldn’t have over-reacted like that.  I just regret a lot of things.”

These tiny words from my mother reach back and erase so much of the pain and shame that I felt as that small child.  I’ve seldom been as grateful for any words uttered – for, you see, they also help me, a little, to gain permission to forgive myself for my failings with my own children.

I don’t remember my response to my mother, but if it wasn’t this, it should have been:  “It’s okay, Mama.  I’m okay.  All of us mothers, we are all human.  We all make mistakes.  I know that you did the very best that you could – and I love you.”

And she did.  And I do.

Posted in My Inheritance.

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