Standing In Pain

There was a time when no one cared if I was hurt. No one could be bothered. There was no one to comfort me. Being so young I watched those around me for cues on how to stop being a victim.

I decided then to stop allowing others to hurt me. I decided if someone swung a fist at me, I would be swinging back.

This led to an all-out-assault on humanity. Occasionally a friend or loved one would see the sweet girl still left inside, but at some point they would become the target of my viciousness.

Abandonment ensued.

Spending most of my life in this pattern has led me to fear abandonment and betrayal.

The last few years with Steve have changed my life dramatically. I've learned to be honest, intimate and to trust. I've learned to feel real emotions again, other emotions than longing, loneliness and anger. I've learned to go back to that girl who made the decision to swing and help her learn a new way.

Recently I've been practicing "staying in the emotion". This involves addressing pain or fear as it arises and staying there until it passes, not allowing it to move into another emotion. In the past I move to anger or controlling. I with either beat the shit out of someone or try to jump in and fix everything.

Today I was attacked and hurt emotionally. Being able to stand in the hurt and accept that these people hurt my feelings and I couldn't stop them was incredibly painful. But I was able to do it with the help of my husband. He held me, comforted me and soothed me through the pain. He validated my feelings and assured me that I didn't deserve to be attacked.

This will pass and I won't allow it to turn into hatred or anger. For me, this is the greatest achievement I've made in my emotional growth this year.

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We Should Have Taught Them Anarchy

I think I know what they're missing.

The kids in my daughter's generation, the Gen Y, have learned how to work within the system, how to work the government. I've often heard them referred to as the "Entitlement Generation". But it's not their fault really. It's ours. The parents who raised these kids after watching obsessive moms like Hope from Thirtysomething insist on child-perfection and the art of coloring within the lines. We've grown so reliant on government that we raised generation of self loathing, self involved, socially selfish citizens, veiled behind the "one for all and all for one" concept. They only believe they are entitled to something because somehow, this is what we taught them.

What they weren't exposed to were the hippies and the anarchist of the 1960's. The law breakers, the shenanigans of Lenny Bruce, Larry Flynt and George Carlin. Those demonstrators that staged peaceful sit-ins, the drug users of Woodstock, and the crazy rebels who burned their draft cards. Our parents, whether they agreed or disagreed with the hippies, spoke of the mindset of the Peace Love Dope era at the dinner table and we learned.

In the 1980's we wanted to rebel against our parents, as do most generations. We grew up choosing to make money, to fight wars, to take a hard stand against Russia and put our faith in the government who was trying to protect us from the Red Scare. What we were choosing was to put more power in the hands of our government. From that, we taught our kids to turn to government rather than turn away. We didn't teach them to break the rules.

The pendulum swing from the wicked wildness and vehement demonstrations of the 60's swung our society back to another 10 years of "The Conservative 80's", in which we returned to the family values the Ronnie Reagan was selling. Alex P. Keaton was the epitome of a buttoned-up-go-getter that we all wanted to be, hoping to grow as rich as Gordon Gecko. But we would do it right. And we would pass these values onto our children.

As teens they came to idolize the Grunge Gods of the 90's. Kurt Cobain is their dead, self-loathing icon, Britney Spears taught girls to value their pre-teen sexuality as a commodity (nothing new) and the characters on "Friends" blathered on with incessant whining about how life wasn't fair, regardless of their amazing good looks. The closest this Gen Y crowd has come to rebellion has been the cartoon characters of "South Park" and the outlaws of "Sons of Anarchy", a greatly fictionalized saga which is nothing more than a motorcycle-gang-soap-opera.

As our society becomes more socialist than ever, embracing the mentality of "why doesn't someone give me what I deserve" whining, it has become painfully apparent that we forgot to teach these kids one huge lesson.

Life isn't fair.

We should have taught them to stop relying on others, including government, to reach their full potential and meet their goals. There is no fair share, there is no level playing field, and we all have challenges to overcome. Relying on oneself isn't a bad thing and there's no crime in being a contributor to your own success. And the more we as a society try to regulate every aspect of our lives, the tighter the noose becomes on us all.

Instead of teaching them to become rule breakers, we taught them to become rule makers. We should have taught them anarchy.

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I Hate Christmas

I hate Christmas.

For my family Christmas was just another reason to party.

By party, I mean get drunk and high.

The images of happy families around a tree, opening piles of gifts seems as fake to me as canned snow. It was all a facade, a display to impress others who were as joyless as I was. It was yet another thing out of my grasp of which I envied and imagined was real for everyone but me.

There were few photos taken as an occasional attendee was running from the law. Gifts were sparse and booze was plentiful. At the end of the day the tables were littered with empty beer cans, the floors and couch littered with passed out bodies, and the stench of cheap beer, cigarettes and filth hung in the air.

I knew I didn't belong here. I didn't fit in. I wanted to escape. There was no way to run, nowhere to go, because my mother owned me. My body was her property to sell to her drunken friends for drug money. My only worth was to clean the messes, be her whore, and make her feel worthy.

I hate Christmas. When my child was young I wanted to enjoy it. I didn't want to ruin it for her. All of the years of trying to fit in with others, find joy in the season, decorate, erect trees with handmade ornaments and cookie baking never covered over the agony of the memories.

Now my child is grown and gone and the old memories haunt me more than ever.

I hate Christmas.

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Black Syrup of Pain

I am dark inside and with each passing moment I an only slipping deeper into the chasm.

You reach for me seeking pink, sweet kindness, but I have none.

I am filled with poison. It oozes out of me, my breath, my words, the black syrup of death.

This is why everyone goes away. Because of the black within me.

It lurks in the shadows of my life and pounces on me when I am weak. It eats my soul and regurgitates it back into the prison of my body. The soiled remnants wallow in my mind, taunting me with who I want to be and cannot seem to be.

I will infect you with my touch. The black syrup will spill over you and cause you pain, causing you to reel backwards with disdain. I am black poison. It emanates from every pore, every cell.

I reach for the light, sunshine, goodness, in hopes to feel myself again, to heal myself again. The shroud of ugly, thick, black syrup locks me down and keeps me from the goodness that lies beyond my grasp.

I am bereft of hope. The black syrup of pain engulfs me. It owns me. It shall always be.

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My Time of Dying

The Point of Entry to The Open Space

I sank into the bed after I told them goodbye. Christmas Eve of 2008 I died in the hospital in front of my then-husband and my daughter. I told them how hot I was getting, pulled the blankets away, began to feel groggy and somehow knew I was going.

"I love you. Take care of each other. . ."

Then I slipped away.

Before my body sank completely my soul pushed out of my chest cavity and sprung towards the clouds. The clouds were vibrant colors of orange, yellow, green and blue, flashing one color at a time. As the hum of a vibration I couldn't see changed pitch the clouds changed colors. In the center of the clouds was an opening, beyond which was The Open Space.

I was a vibration made up of three facets; a mixture of a particular tone, a consciousness and of light. The tone was my familiar pitch that I am and always have been. My consciousness was the reasoning, understanding, memory, emotions and comprehension that I've always known. My light was the essence of humanity I gained as a human being. I knew in that moment, free of my body, that I had always been the vibration, the pitch, the tone. But on my journey as a person I gained the consciousness and light.

I laughed at myself. It was all so hilarious how I had worried about all of the wrong things, cared about all of the inconsequential incidents that our days bring and all of the fears we fill ourselves with to feel real. This was real, and it was so funny how I knew it all along, yet spent so much time of my life pretending I didn't.

The opening in the clouds was coming closer and as I traveled toward it, I marveled at the clouds themselves, the puffs of gas that I had never seen before and how they worked in unison with the sound of the surrounding vibration. The gaseous clouds moved and rolled, but could barely be considered clouds by our concept of clouds as humans. These were so vibrant, alive and colorful; they seemed to be the fuel that propelled my soul of light into the next level of space.

The Open Space was far more vast than I have the ability to explain. It was limitless, but felt compact in some inexplicable way. The Open Space was the color of a reflection in a dark mirror, not a color that can be seen by human eyes, so there is no name for the color. Luminescent, vibrant, and alive, it was filled with a type of mist that moved freely, like droplets of moisture hanging in the air.

As my soul, the ball of sparkling light, was moving towards the opening, I could see countless other souls moving beyond the clouds to collect together. This was a combined consciousness, The Gathering we are all destined for. The warmth, welcoming and joy I felt was overwhelming and I found myself filled with gratitude. For a long moment I paused and basked in the gratitude, so pleased to feel safe, weightless, joyful and pain-free. It had been so long since I had been pain-free.

At the center of The Gathering was much like a sun, but instead of the rays of light moving away from the star, The Gathering was all of the souls of light coming into it. I had an understanding come over me that when the appropriate number of souls reached The Gathering, it would implode with gravity and create a new consciousness.

I was heading toward The Gathering when suddenly, my journey was over. Pulled backwards I slammed back into my thick, painful, heavy body and opened my eyes to see my daughter weeping before me.

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