Author: auntygreens

Whirlwind. All I can say.

A lot of my pagan friends of a particular branch would tell me that Mercury is in retrograde and to just sort of smooth my way through it. I am wondering how much of my life is actually this, and I ain’t certain no more which is “real” life and which is “the retrograde.”

I walked out of a kind of hell at the end of last November and wow, it’s been a ride ever since. A ride. Not good. Not bad. Definitely dramatic in every sense of the word. Panic attacks left and right. From both annoying or very wonderful occurrences.

I was attracted to a piece of property I was considering for purchase. When I viewed it in person, all I could feel was that the house was desperate, lonely, and needed a hug. And I wasn’t the only one that felt that way. I felt bad that my internal answer was “no” because I could just about tell that the life would be sucked right out of me, trying to get the place to what I would need it to be.  I have businesses to run, books to write, product to develop.  I don’t expect to have a fully packaged gift handed to me.  But I can’t go back on my dreams, either, now that some have actually come to fruition.

I saw a position on line that was oh! How fun! After meeting the owners, wow, I was glad enough to be passed over for the position; so much that I nearly wept in relief.

I met someone that I was considering dating. ME. Dating. Possibly. I realized quickly enough that there would be too much push-me, pull-you.  It was nice, though, to recognize I am actually considering dating again. Another guy that I had a great time talking with, and we both agreed, that had we been able to be in each other’s proximity, we would have had a blast. He wound up being overly sensitive for my tastes. While I am sad about this, as I feel we could have become amazing, very close friends, I am also surprised that anyone would expect, in less than a week, me to sell my house and move 2 hours from where I am now, because he wouldn’t leave his area for anyone.  After a week of just… chatting.

In the middle of all that, a close friend said that it was good to “see that I was getting out of my comfort zone.” I nearly lost it at this point. I had to carefully and fully explain that, after living with the people that I had, my “comfort zone” for the majority of my life was to not have any privacy, to expect to be humiliated and exposed frequently, have my creativity stifled or outright destroyed, and to be forced into a personality that really isn’t my own, because while I do love and care, I am not Happy Susie Housewife. That I had, finally, finally actually HAD a comfort zone. And that I would think that if you live in a place, it SHOULD be your comfort zone.

I’ve hit a milestone with my business. One that I’ve been working for, for 12 years. I was so happy about this, I wound up panicking about it and then it took 5 hours to calm down.

The position I did wind up taking is temporary. I was told it would be “flex,” and that I could set my own hours. Not only was the description of the job not anywhere near accurate, but the two days during the week I had planned to get stuff done went poof. I now work every day in the afternoons, and part of two mornings a week, and have to scramble to get all the other stuff done. I am grateful, mind, for the pay. Always grateful for that. But it is dramatic and politics everywhere.

While this may seem like I am playing “splat” with the mouth at the moment, it does have a point.

Some how, in some way, massive doors are slamming shut on the past. Hard and fast.

That job that I thought was so cool? I would have driven past the cottage I had wanted to buy 12 years ago. The one I am still bitter about not following my own gut and going for, that would have afforded me a completely different life that I have now.

On my way, quite literally, to the interview, I knew it was coming up. How could I not? All I could think was: here we go again. I am right back to where I was in 2013. 7 years ago. And I am. With one notable exception. My ex wasn’t my ex at that point. He is now.

What is even scarier? I met someone, quite recently, that reminded me of my ex so completely, I was shaking hard for three days afterward. So sweet and smooth on the top. So not under that thin veneer. I saw it. So mirrored to my ex and his narcissism. All that neglectful, denial-filled abusiveness, wrapped under a pretty, seemingly innocent and supportive smile. I couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

Sometimes, I wonder. How I was so oblivious to it. And the answer was: I wasn’t. I loved my ex for all the wonderful things he was. Half of him is truly an amazing person. The other half? No. I will have to live with that the rest of my life, because I feel wasted inside. I wonder how I stepped away. At times, I had to fight tooth and nail, screaming, because I had to. HAD to.

I am saying this, in part, because of the posts I see from a friend online. No. You aren’t crazy. I can tell you that that sort of abuse DOES exist.  You and I are not close.  We barely know each other.  I fully support every step you have taken on your journey, MT, and find I am blessed to see your posts, positive or desperate.  You are not alone.  And I am terrified for another friend who is about to go right into the hell it took me years to get out of and I am still unraveling the doubts that were seeded inside my heart and mind. It’s not my life. I can say nothing to stop it. If I try, and I did, I am already getting denials about what I’ve already witnessed.

I will state this clearly. I have been raped. Beaten. Stabbed. Lost my children. Broken bones. Set on fire. Nearly drowned. The worst, the absolute worst I had to deal with was the words. Because those don’t leave marks. There is no reminder. No scar. No rough patch, redness, swelling or bruise on the skin so you can’t deny it happened. The passive-aggressive damaging or destruction of my things- my clothes, my writing, my family heirlooms, and replaced with what someone else thought was more appropriate. The loss of the sense of self. It doesn’t come with a slap. It came with an “oops.” “Didn’t mean that.” Or getting snapped at by co-workers when I was upset with getting flowers, because “at least your man thinks to give you some.” He wasn’t doing it for me. It was so he would get praise from my co-workers.  It came in small cuts.  “Reasonable,” logical, toes-just-up-against-the-line snarks that I knew damned well were wrong but “logically” couldn’t prove because it was “just the once,” and I “was blowing things out of proportion.”  It happened so much I stopped objecting.  Because most of it was meant “to be helpful” or “was an accident.”

To see that, again, so up close, even though it is not my life we’re talking about here, poof. My mind just went out the window.

I am reminded of what I did then. When I was stepping out of that neglect and careful cut down of my Self. I find myself doing those same things, now. The meditations. Listening to the same audio book that I did then, that helped me let go as much as I have been able to.  Watching murder mystery movies.  Getting in touch with not being a block of stone.  Breathing exercises.  Not eating every piece of chocolate I can get my hands on, and instead, munching on yummy broccoli salad.  Realizing that I am in my forties.  I don’t have a sitting-duck mom to worry about and protect anymore.  Realizing that life isn’t a redo at this point.  It’s just a “do.”  Feeling blessed that, even though I miss the hell out of my dead family- parent, sibling, and children- I haven’t been stupid enough to even attempt to replace them with another family, just to prevent the empty-nest syndrome or from having to face the fear of being alone or be forced to deal with the emptiness.  That I am more than just being a mom or caretaker.  While that might insult some, I find it just as rude to have to deal with the constant snobbery when I have to say, “nope, don’t have kids” as though that is the sum total of who I am.

I’m spending time with my living sister.  The way she said she would, years ago.  We are having a blast.  Binging on TV shows.  Popcorn, like when we were kids.  She brings me children’s books that she loves and I don’t know what I think, but I wind up laughing, in a weird kind of way.  She gave me one of the best christmas presents.  Cut up soda bottles.  I had plans, several summers ago, to make the bottoms of soda bottles into flower garlands for the porch and the flat middles into plastic slats for makeshift greenhouses.  She cut dozens of these for me.  I have already used some of the bottoms as little seed planters for my hydroponics lab.  I’m making a sweater for the first time in my life, when I could crochet just about anything, but my knitting was absolute crap.  It’s completely free-form.  I have no idea what I am doing, but having fun with what is coming off the looms.

I have gone back to writing.  Full writing.  My white boards.  Plotting out story arcs. I’ve been saying it for weeks. I could feel it coming on. I know I promised Willow to come out by now. But as I am going through this whirlwind, doing the final edit, I find that, while I was amused with her last October, Willow has become a pragmatic ass and I want to choke my own heroine. Since editing Beth and Ash for hard copy, I am seeing how poor my writing became, trying to eek out a storyline while I had been in that secondary, all-consuming hell I finally left in November.  I should have had the smarts to do after a month, not over 18, considering what I had been through with my ex.  Even though it wasn’t a “romantic relationship” being referred to, there.  I made every excuse in the book, felt just as helpless, for a variety of reasons, and had become just as angry as I had in a 17 year loveless relationship.

Jana, I love the cover you have done. And it will still fully be the cover graphic. My dear, you were so right to kick my ass when I wanted to give up writing. All of it. Willow desperately needs a kick in the pages and I have decided to give that my all. Not just to knock the willies out of my head. Because that book IS a turning point in the series and I let it slide into blah muckiness.

If I have to deal with the memories of all that crap, all over again, I may as well put all that feeling into prose. You don’t know what’s coming in Hawthorne. You didn’t when you read Willow. I am going to let that anger and sorrow out. So, while I am sickened for what is about to happen to someone I love and watch them deny it and try to “prove to me otherwise,” that whirlwind is also giving me a chance to finally put more of that yuck in its rightful place.

Bless you all. May you find a silver lining in every dark corner of your mind, if that is where you wind up going.

I have to say that yesterday’s dancing has led to an interesting… series of events.

First, it’s been awhile since I have gone bananas like that.

I can say that if you want an experience in torture, start a Plank workout. I did this last week. Well before the dancing. I thought, 3 minutes a day? Cool. I can do this. There’s no jumping so I won’t put any vertebrae out like when I started Tae-Bo. It’s not quite yoga, which I needed a break from. It’s not belly-dancing. Which I do find fun. No. I was looking for something I could just do for a few minutes, like jumping on the stationary bike, but would be for the whole body.

I read through the reviews. I read that half the time, you wind up resting. I thought- how hard can this be?

Ha.

I have decided that I will at least attempt 1 plank workout a day. The rest will be the remainder of a routine I had started a long time ago and wound up having to leave behind for work because it took too long.

In the middle of the first workout, I was shaking. Hard. Breathing. Hard. Actually panting as though I had been on a treadmill for several minutes.

You would think that, after this being so fresh in my mind, as I went, in three days, from 2 completed and 1 attempted, to one attempted Plank a day, that I would have remembered that level of pain. I did not.

I woke in the middle of the night, with my feet crying out- WHAT DID YOU DO? And that was the least of it.

I was still exhausted when I woke this morning. I won’t explain to what, as any pet owner would understand. But it became *perfectly* clear that I needed to wash every ounce of bedding I have.

This would be an all day project. Which will be a topic on another Smashed Potatoes.

I did feel good, though. Inside. I decided to play with the cookbooks I got out of the library in between shoving things out of the washer and dryer.

I’ve talked and told stories about this for years. That Mom, when I was little, would pick a country out of the atlas and we would make a recipe from that country. I have attempted to do this on my own over the course of my adult life.

(Feel free to roll your eyes here.)

I wound up having to give that up, for the most part, because my ex could eat chicken and green beans three times a day for a month. He did not like “alternate foods.” Just as our relationship ended, after 17 years, he decided to start getting into exploring. I can’t tell you how bitter I am with the comments he made, after all the fighting and feeling oppressed I went through.

It’s been five years since then. I have tried, many, many times, to get back to that happiness I used to feel. “Just start,” I used to tell myself. Each time, I would have a day of happiness and then… blah.

Today, it took. I decided to make something. Just… make… something. Even though my body was basically giving me the finger.

Oh, what a disaster! LOL. I have been laughing all afternoon. I decided to make rye pasta. My first attempt at making pasta. Without a pasta maker. And something that isn’t even the “norm.” But this is me. In with both feet. No clue. No safety net.

What came out was not pasta. It cooked. But I can’t call that pasta. Nor a dumpling. I had the best time. I didn’t have the right flour, so I substituted buckwheat instead of all-purpose, on top of the rye. My rolling pin has disappeared completely. I think I had to throw it out and forgot that I did and needed a new one. I wound up using a thick glass jar. The dough was too dry. But that’s okay.

My sister had come over. She was so happy to hear the enthusiasm in my voice, that I finally felt the urge to DO, not just weep about what I had lost and given up. We chewed through what she said looked like dried out strips of liver (which she would never eat) covered in pesto and hamburger crumbles. She would eat it again. Maybe not in her top 100 to repeat, but she’d eat it again. If the pasta was rolled thinner.

In the process of this, we played a word game. She could not remember the word “badminton,” and was thwapping her hand around in the air, as though hitting a shuttlecock.

We wound up giggling very hard. All because of the fake pasta.

I love this. This is the gift my Mom gave me. Us. My sister and I. A sense of adventure and fun.

My feet hurt and my gut feels like it’s full of rocks. But it’s a sparkly day, after all.

Today is Imbolc. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a major holiday. One of eight on the Wheel. I got out of practicing these holidays a long time ago.

This year, I started at Samhain- New Year’s. Leaving the door open to forgiveness. To letting my heart be open to change.

Yule, I went on a massive emotional roller coaster and decided, again, to leave the door open to forgiveness. It was not the easiest decision I have made, because usually, when I actually decide to give up on something, I don’t ever open that door again, because it has ripped so much out of me that I can’t go on.

This morning, I woke to someone I love very much getting in touch. A goof. It was nice. The chat, over a while, turned to absolute crap, and I wound up back in bed, because I had just so many regrets sneak up and smack the willies out of my head, like a drunk playing knock ’em down with mailboxes and a 2×4.  So many things I couldn’t say.  Today or in the past.

It’s taken me all day to remember that it’s Imbolc.

I decided to let go. I have made this decision many times. I was so upset, remembering that I don’t have to take someone’s crap because they’ve had it bad. As bad as I have.

I wound up, in bed, reading a book.

It was a better use of my time and my day.

At the end of the book, it came to me, as it has before. Because I need these little lessons to cut and dig through me owning shit that really isn’t mine.

People do stupid things, all sorts of stupid, hurtful, selfish things in order to prevent from being alone. And that isn’t mine to take on.

People convince themselves that they are in love when they just want someone to take care of them or their kids or parents, that they have to win the approval of someone that will never give it, that they have to be “good” and perfect,” destroy friendships to prove they are a badass and don’t need anyone, do their damnedest to look at only the good from someone who goes out of their way to be destructive, or judge others so harshly there is no possible way of being human afterwards.

There isn’t anything I can say to any of that. Well, there is, but… I have to stop feeling guilty about what I didn’t say. Because living in guilt or living in fear or living in anger isn’t healthy for me or anyone around me, and all it will do is destroy any chance of happiness I could have. And because there were things I needed to hear that no one bothered to say, using excuses not to.

I have been that candle in the darkness, for others. I have to remember that, too. I have to remember that I don’t have to be a fruit loop- overly sweet and pointless- in order to “prove” to someone else that I care and “am worthy” and that, yes, I do love a lot of people. I am just not willing to be a doormat, as I have said, quite frequently. That it’s okay for me to be passionate.

It’s up to me to feed happiness. Mine. Others, if that person is important enough to me.

So, tonight, to celebrate Imbolc, the restarting of the spark of life, my life, celebrating the halfway point through the darkness, I am dancing. Giving voice. Breaking the silence. Howling out my heart. Lighting my candles. Looking at the five books I have in hard copy waiting for me on a table. Listening to Yuma Yuma Guy and Hamster Dance on YouTube. Down with the Sickness. Demons. Radioactive. Loves me like Jesus Does. Dirt on my Boots. YouTube’s Fallout 4 Soundtrack. Watching Yuma Yuma Guy again, because he’s just having a grand old time and nothin’ else matters.

Tonight, I dance. And accept the reset of the sparks in my heart.  Tonight, I celebrate that I am strong enough to speak plainly.  Without ceremony, practiced elegance, agenda, or hidden messages.  That love is love and I will love without fear.  That I will love without the cage of fear dragging me back into blackness.  That I will stand and be.  That I will dance.

I had this whole other thing I was going to post today.  About how discouraged I’ve been feeling.  The number of panic attacks I’ve had lately.  How I decided to stop feeling like I’m the mosquitoes juice box and only connect with positive messages, even though I know what I have to deal with.  Watching AGT videos and reinforcing the good in life, seeing other people go after their dreams.

I am making lasagna rolls today.  Not turning out very presentable, but they’ll be delicious.  Instead of getting down about it, since I make these all the time, I had… an experience.

I dropped one of the noodles on the floor.

You know something?

When you watch your 3 month old kitten, who has just had 2 bowls of food, by the way, be brave enough and willing enough to battle the evil robot vacuum and prevent it from stealing said lasagna noodle,

1. there just isn’t much you can say to that.
2. anything you might have said pales in comparison.

Goodie, goodie, goodie!!!!

Jana sent me a pic of the finished cover graphic for Willow.

This is a HUGE milestone for me.  This will be my 6th book out.  I don’t know why it’s exciting me the way it is.  I don’t care.  HAPPY DANCIN’ HAPPY DANCE!

Where’s that hamster?

I should have Willow out by the end of January.

It will be a while before Hawthorne comes out.  I wasn’t able to write for a couple of years.  But I am editing now!  As fast as can be.  Oak is half done, and I have the basics for Holly started. And yes, I will be getting back to Lamp Light and the Haven Point series at some point in 2020.

I was not in the greatest mood waking up this morning, but right now, after dealing with some nasty whatevers, I decided to change it to a good day and I have hands raised in the air, my cats are looking at me like I’m completely nuts, and Leaf (my kitten) is going bananas.

Hamster Dance and Numa Numa.  That’s how I am celebrating that Willow will be out soon.

I am so glad this movie about Mr. Rogers was made.

I remember making snarky, awful jokes about Mr. Rogers when I was a teen that I realize now weren’t all that funny.  More important, I remember watching Mr. Rogers as a child.

As I’ve gotten older, and see more despair, grief, frustration, politics, it’s things like this that get me through.

I’ve just come out of a rough working situation that annihilated a chunk of what I have been trying to build for a long time. I believe in kindness, which I very much doubt most of my recent coworkers would know. It’s incredibly hard for me to reconcile that not everyone believes in kindness or its power. What really turned it for me, at this place I worked, was an argument I had when I simply said, “Thank you.” I was told: “Don’t thank me. It’s my job and that is a waste of time.”

My own frustration with the situation that went on for far, far too long, was compounded by the unwillingness of people to understand what changes were happening and why, to help, even if it meant grabbing for their own patience and keeping things stable.  I wound up becoming just as negative and critical.  This place sucked the life out of me.  I know what was wanted.  We were 80% there.  But it had been an uphill battle the entire time.  There are “wolves” in the world and, even though I don’t tend to like that term,  we need to learn to deal with them.  Making everything soft isn’t always the most helpful.  And, yeah, I know this goes against some of what I’m saying.  I’m also saying, we don’t have to become rabid or constantly turning on one another.  Being patient and kind doesn’t mean I have to be a doormat or do what is wanted, taking on extra, just because someone else feels like being lazy.  I think this is why most people stop.

Another place I worked at, it was in a room full of very unhappy people, and I ended that contract as soon as possible.  Every one had their mouths on how stupid their children were, how awful their spouse was, how dumb the outside public was, the crowded parking lot.  Yeah.  It’s easier to tear something down or apart than to build it.

I may not believe in blowing sunshine up anyone’s backside, especially when they are being a royal whatever, but every person has beauty inside them.

There’s a lot of times I take things too seriously.  I do.  I know where it comes from and I’m not getting into that here.

At home, to cope with the world at large, my own feelings of helplessness, and feeling like most of the people around me think I am only here for their needs, I keep a few things in mind.  A good chunk of them, I learned from watching Mr. Rogers.

Differences aren’t there to be places of contention.  Point and counter-point harmony aren’t the same as melody.  They are all used in combination.

I did learn that one person can change their world, for the betterment of all, even though the opposite is the norm.

Random acts of kindness and “pay it forward” are two ways of bringing chaos to your own life, breaking out of stifling structure or emotional ruts.  Rules are good to have.  We need structure.  But too much will kill the spirit.

For me, it’s easier to turn off the news.  Turn the radio station away from those who spread negativity about our cold, blustery NY winters, instead of connecting what’s good about it.  Those choices are mine to make.

Seeing someone tired, walking through a store, who probably have just come off a rough shift, those are the people I look for.  Because I know how that feels.  If I see something I like, I say it.  Nice hair.  I like that shirt you have on.  Love the color of that streak of hair.  Beautiful scarf.  What funky boots.  Because you can find beauty and joy is the damndest of places.  I don’t care what race someone is, what culture they come from, if they are old or young.  I say it.

That kind of joy?  You have to look for it, in order to see it.  To become attracted to it.

I’ve learned to count those joys in the world and to tune out blackness and bleakness that there is nothing I can do about, because people would rather complain, just to have something to talk about.

I have a huge sock collection.  Funky, soft, fuzzy, warm, silly, weird, obscure, and slinky.

I watch cartoons.  I canceled cable because I don’t like reality TV.  Instead, I watch my old favorites, and collect those dvd’s.  Including things like the Muppets and Bugs Bunny and Mr. Rogers.

I stop listening to people who shout all the time.  It’s made me a calmer person.  I have more patience and I steer clear of those who don’t posess that quality.  I am happier because of it.

It’s going to take some time, getting all of this back, settled in my day-to-day, the way it used to be.  As I’m searching for work again, I know what to step away from now.  What to look for.  How to assess, because interviews aren’t just for the employer.

I’m going to go see this movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, because I need some of that magic, that every day magic, back in my life, where it used to be.

I’m sitting here and I know I have to go to sleep soon.  So much has happened in the past week, my head is spinning from it.

Severe pain, to joy where I am unknowingly singing and humming through my day, and within 24 hours, back to severe pain and wondering what the heck just happened.

Sometimes, I wonder why I care about anything.  Sometimes, I wonder if I can ever care about anything again.

I’m actually avoiding a writing project tonight.

I learned how to make homemade playdough.  I’m kicking myself, because I’m tired and I made a major blunder on such a simple halving of a recipe.  The dough was for some game pieces I will need soon.  I’ve tried lots of different materials before hitting on the dough idea and nothing is quite working out right, so messing up the first batch, when my kitchen is my lab, was sort of, no pun intended, the icing on the cake.

But, way cool that I learned how to make playdough.  What I’m actually doing isn’t playdough, but learning how to frost and make shapes.  I’m going to avoid my writing project again tomorrow by trying a different dough recipe and see if that does what I want.  I’m thinking the flour gluten is too gooey and maybe tapioca would work better for what I want.

Lots of stress in the homefront because one of my cats almost died two weekends ago.  He has a major infection, and I don’t know the cause of it.  I think it may have been the burst pipe and some major fall housekeeping kicking up yuck, but I’m not sure.  His health is inching back to normal, but I worry.  Of course I worry.  The incline is too slow for my liking.

So, in the other hospital room in my house, I have a cat that has a back injury.  It’s permanent, poor thing, and I don’t think it’s safe to ever let him outside again.  We have laser therapy a couple of times a day, which he thinks is just plain fun.  It’s been two long years but this babe finally can move around without his back legs going out from under him all the time.  My vet, who is just amazing, by the way, can’t see what’s wrong.

I mention these two, because I have a lot on my mind.  Major, life altering stuff on my mind.  And, of course, I am thinking about all the things that went wrong in my long term relationship.  Sometimes, I wonder if I will ever not feel the effects of that.  There’s too much going on right now that is paralleling the past.  I can’t help but feel it.  Different people, vastly different circumstances, but I wonder, just how different is it, if the pattern is the same?  I have to remind myself: different.  And how different.  Not to judge two people by the same stick.  That it wasn’t all bad, way back when.  And I kick myself because that’s how the start of talking myself into not leaving when I should have started.  Each and every time.

I don’t like some of what I’ve turned into, due to a couple of long-term, hopeless, helpless situations that had no end in sight.  Yet another parallel.  And I wonder, finally, there is a possible ending to one of them, was any of it worth it?  My answer is still mostly coming up no, even though I didn’t have much choice at the time.  I have more of one now.  Because I stopped caring.  I wonder how the other one will turn out and I just can’t process that information anymore.  It hurts too much.

So, a third cat I have is incredibly old.  18 or so.  He came to live with me as a kitten-ish.  He’s had a chemical imbalance.  Poor thing.  He can’t handle stimulation and was mostly hated by the other cats in the house.  He does not move or sound like a normal cat, either.  He chirps, whistles, howls, clicks, and spits.  None of the other cats would or will play with him.  Even now.  We bought him a couple of stuffed animals, which have made it through the washes all these years.

And me, with my sleeping issues, tried just about every white noise generator out there, to try and stay sleeping for more than a couple of hours at a shot.  Just before Kitten-Ish had moved in, I found these sound tapes.  One of them is the jungle, and there is a soft soliloquy of birds, humming insects, frogs, brooks.  Quite soothing.  Just as you are beginning to relax, a howler monkey comes on.  Rather loud, in the foreground.  It’s completely unexpected.  I laughed so hard, the first time this happened, I actually fell out of bed.

I think this CD is part of how Kitten-Ish learned to “talk.”  Because he howls like this monkey.

Anyway, it’s fifteen years later, and Back-Trouble Kitty, who had been thrown out of a car, by the way, right in front of me, moves in.  As I am beginning to nurse him to health, and hopefully find a new home, guess what happens?  This new household inhabitant also howls like a monkey.  I have two of them now.  They sing the song of my people, quite frequently, and my very old Kitten-Ish has finally found a playmate.

They sing the same song, speak the same sort of crazy, and have a blast.  Kitten-Ish has been a most clingy companion for most of his life, sitting on my lap, shoulder, dashing out to tap my feet, because I have been his primary playmate for so long.  He leaves his play mice on my pillow.  But this past year, no.  He wants in with Back-Trouble Kitty.  All day.  All night.  He comes out to sit with me every once in a bit, but he wants his buddy.

My heart sings with the joy of it.  And I have some hope left inside of me for my future.  Because I have, occasionally, found people who speak my kind of crazy, and I will again.  And in the meantime, I now know how to make play dough.

So, I’m sitting here today, working on two different writing projects, and cleaning up the mess in my kitchen, and what’s really going on is a re-education in absolute love.

This current portion of road I’m on started what seems like eons ago.  It’s part of why I stopped blogging.  There’s too many places I could call it’s starting point.  So, Imma gonna pick about 2 years. 

I found a path that I thought would carry me through several years of my journey, one that I need to have in my life.  It was challenging and met, I’d say, about 80% of my needs of this portion of who I am, in stability, creativity, and my skillsets.  I jumped for it.  I opened my heart to this path, attempting to make the best of a past that I can not change and need to accept there is not really a good way to fully step off the highway, but maybe I get to pick the lane that best suits me.  It has, unfortunately, turned out to be a major source of drama and disappointment.  So much so that while I was meeting the needs of that path, I wound up, once again, stepping off too many others.

There was a second path I had begun that I thought would carry me through several years of my journey, that met the needs of another portion of who I am, in so many ways, I’ve actually lost count.  Opening my heart to this I thought would create new paths, heal old ones, allow me to travel back to myself.  In many ways, it has.  It has, unfortunately, been a major source of grief to me, as well.

The lesson I am getting in Life is one about Denial.  Again.  Denial is a powerful force, almost impossible to deal with.

I fight against this concept and have such a hard time letting go of the psych-ward-style concepts of: that if we just talk things out, everything will be okay and dealt with.  That if someone can just hear the right words, in the right combination, then… the door will unlock and Life will smooth out for a bit.

I am snorting in sardon-ez at the moment, because that very thought, that very concept is the denial I’ve been dealing with, from others that has taken away both paths that I thought were the two major portions of my own.   I feel like screaming and weeping.  I have, for days, because these were two major components of the life I was trying to build for myself.  Not top of the rainbow stuff.  Not the win the lottery dreams.  But good, healthy, every day, this is what is going to be my day-to-day life dreams that give me x, y, z and a really good banana split.

I feel the burn, because, in less than six months, in three different situations, a person simply does not get that the very thing they are bitching about, the very thing they have injected into my life and are objecting to, is the very thing they are doing to me.

Denial sucks, and it doesn’t matter if its from your boss, a coworker, a family member, your best friend, or a client.  People can’t hear, for whatever reason.

It stings.  I have a hard time letting go, even though I am giving the same advice to me that I give to others: Give it three tries.  After which, you’ve done your best.  If they can’t hear you, do both of you a favor and cut it loose.  The only time to break that rule is when they at least try to communicate back, because those are the only ones to ever keep anyway.

I learned that one the hard way, six times over, and I have bled through the nose for long enough.  It sucks when someone basically makes you wait until someone they care about passes on before “they can fully be themselves around you.”  I fell for that one, big time, with all the other lies that went with that, just like if they’d been a married spouse not willing to get divorced, yet still in the dating pool without permission.

I keep going back to the movie, “He’s just not that into you.”  About half way through watching this one, and several times after the fact, it hit me that anyone worth “it” is willing to do the hard thing, and it doesn’t matter what relationship type it is.  It doesn’t matter, really, how that communication happens, or if it’s perfect.

Love is.  And if someone’s going to fight it, fight hearing you, fight seeing what you have to say just because of their own ego- inflated or deflated, then disaster is a self-fulfilling prophecy and it’s okay to say “no” to that.  It isn’t betrayal.  It isn’t that you aren’t strong enough to take it.  It also isn’t anything you have to prove to the other person by crawling through their broken glass repeatedly.  ‘Cause guess what?  Relationships, of any type, take at LEAST two people, and both of them have to be able to say: this is what I want out of it.  It could be something like, “this is what I’m willing to do for a paycheck” or “this is worth me dealing with what I have to do to earn my paycheck, just so I can sit with you and watch Mr. Ed on re-runs,” or “you mean something to me that I can’t quite define and I want to spend time with you but my brain shorts out, can you give me a list to pick from and we’ll go have a blast.”

So, I’m sitting here, with this screaming, weeping feeling, with my brain going 17 million miles an hour, trying to figure out what I could have said or done differently, when I know there isn’t because it does take two people to have that conversation, when I get this lump.

Literally.   A lump.  In my lap.  A tiny squeak.

One of my babes isn’t feeling good and she smells like poo from diarrhea, and won’t let me fully wash it off, and she crawls into my lap, and puts her head back, just the same as when she was a helpless, sick, 5 week old kitten when I found her.

It’s here, and now, that the tears I can’t shed over my life falling apart again finally come.

Saving her, her sisters, and her mother had been hard. I had spent days at the vet. Dealing with my own mother and sister having cancer, on top of it. Dealing with my long term whatever ending. I syringe fed three kittens, seven times a day, dealt with vomit, fever, medicines, shots, the feral-ness of their mother.

And all that love, coming right back at me, when my heart is breaking and feeling like why try again, when people fight so hard not to accept love or kindness in their lives, treating it like it’s garbage, and it comes to me:

This little babe doesn’t speak English. She’s not even human. She has a temper and a will of her own and she definitely has her own likes and dislikes which are quite easy for her to communicate, in or out of her own species. It just isn’t in words. But I understand her, quite well, and apparently, she does understand me, too.

As the tears start coming down, when she’s in my lap and not feeling well, this little babe crawls up my shoulder and just hangs on, purring louder and louder as I finally, finally, can cry. Two beings, both not feeling well, and just holding on through the discomfort of it all, and that is all anyone can really dream of in this Life.

When I get beyond this feeling of loss, I know, I know, she will still be there, making me laugh at her antics, cringe with being woken up at 5 AM, and showing me, yet again, that there are more important things in life than pain, misery, and disappointment, and how the hell to get out of the rabbit holes.

So, the name of my blog is Smashed Potatoes.  For a reason.  Yeah.  I say that sort of thing all the time.  Kind of annoying, huh?

I’m kinda putting this stuff out there right now for a couple of different people, so even tho this may seem disjointed, it really isn’t.  Kind of like string theory.

Life, folks, ain’t fair.  It isn’t math logic.  It isn’t chaos, either, even though it may always feel that way.  I know, because I frequently feel that way.

Those of us who’ve taken the therapy road fall, usually, into one of two categories.  “Hey, I’ve got a handle on this now.  Thanks, Doc.”  And those who fall into “This is what I’m supposed to do to make sense of Life.”  It’s that second category of people I’m sort of talking to at the moment.  I am one and hopefully, recovering from it.

As yukky as this is going to sound, know that I mean it with love and care.  Shut up!  Just… shut up.

Your history is important to you.  Only you.  And you use it as a test to know who is going to be a jerk to you and who isn’t.  The thing is, you’re actually pushing away lots of people.  Because you don’t know how to convert: “hey, I get why this hurts now” into “I’m thinking about pancakes.”  By reciting your rote history, and by now it is rote, you are actually damaging yourself and you don’t even know it.  What you know is that ____ still bloody hurts.  And you just can’t seem to get over it.

I’m telling you.  Shut up about it.  And think.

It probably isn’t that you want someone to actually listen.  Because if you did, your words wouldn’t be a recitation.  They wouldn’t repeat.  And by going ahead and repeating, you are actually reliving what you went through before.  If you did want someone to listen, it wouldn’t usually come in a rush, getting the words in your head slightly out of order because you know the story in your head so well, you have no idea what short cuts you are taking.  And you are still reliving it.  If you did want someone to really listen, what they say would matter and make a difference.  You relive it to the point where it’s a dirt track in your head from all the times you’ve crossed that thought pattern in your mind.

See, those of us on the therapy road or the support groups or prolonged whatever are basically trained to look for patterns of boo-boos.  And that isn’t to make light-hearted comments about that.  Dealing with trauma is never easy.  But I mean we’re actually taught to look for small patterns so we can figure out the big ones.  If we take things apart, identify the problem, identify the wound, then we can heal.  Right?  The problem is that some of us get trained on that too well and we start to think about taking everything apart and we have to identify and we have to label.

Guess what?  The people that hurt us the most are the ones that deny that in the first place.  The very action we need to learn to adopt in order to transfer that hurt into “Mmmmm… pancakes.”  Some of this is called desensitization.

Guess what else? Half the time, that is training even more of us that we have to ritualize the desensitization with even more analysis and labels.

Phew, you’re exhausted all the time right?

Right.

So, I’m telling you.  Shut up.  Make yourself matter more than the hurts.    Stop telling people that history that hurts so much to make sure you are around people who get that sort of thing.  Because the *hurt* shouldn’t matter.  *You* should.  I’m not saying ignore it completely. I’m not saying don’t refer to it.  I’m saying, don’t sound like a history book about it.  Don’t live and breathe the pain every waking moment anymore.  Getting to know someone should be about favorite colors, and liking certain cloud patters in the sky, and please avoid mentioning certain superheroes because I can’t deal with it, and I have action movies in common with you.  See?  One in four.  That’s it.  When you get better about it, you will know where your triggers are and can say point blank, “Hey, I don’t deal well with this and I’m not going to put any more energy into fixing it ‘cause I’m not a bleeping robot and I’d rather think about… pancakes.”

This is where the tie-in is gonna happen, so watch for it.

What people really want is for someone to say “I give enough of a ___ about you.”

This is also where most people who are what we call desperate or soul suckers or negative or whatever screw up.  They scream to the universe that they just want someone to love them.  Well, that isn’t true.  They want the people who they care about to stop hurting them.  And it probably isn’t going to happen.  The excuses start happening.  The reasoning starts happening.  The anxiety and pain start happening.  And it repeats, until it builds up into this huge, massive ball of hurt that is incredibly overwhelming.

If I say “I love you” to someone, it means I am willing to deal with chaos, pain, frustration, and illogic.  I’m willing to take the damage your mouth and actions make.  It means you aren’t statistics to me or counting the number of ways we connect or that you fit in a box or paint by numbers any more than I do and I’m not going to dehumanize you by doing that.  I’m going to care about your hurts, large or small.  More importantly, I’m going to still see you as the person you are beyond that pain and do what I can to reconnect those two parts of you.  It means that you are worth it.  I love with the whole of who I am.  Not the finger and elbow.  Not the knee.  Not my paycheck.  Not the three square feet my pillow takes up.

It does not, however, mean that I will let you bleed me dry because you won’t convert pain into “mmmm… pancakes.”  Especially if you put all your time and energy into the people who take you to pieces.  ‘Cause guess what?  A jerk’s a jerk and it doesn’t matter what label they wear for you, be it the clerk at the grocery store, the guy who stole your wallet, the idiot who cut you off on the thruway, or your aunt.

I’m willing to spend all it takes to put you right again.  But not if you’re going to repeat it.  Repeatedly.  If that’s how you want to spend your life, your choice.  Mine would have been to spend it with you, making pancakes and bubbles and laughter and bonking heads and finding common ground, but you obviously don’t want that.  Same exact thought if you put every task in the way.  Because we are not tasks.  We are not math.  We are human beings.

My ex would beg to differ on a lot of this.  Say that I am a complete hypocrite.  As far as he’s concerned, he’s right.  I would be.  Because I used to be one of those people who railed against people not listening.  Especially with him.  I would blather, over-explain.  Because I was trying to get feelings down into labels and math and how to fix.  And I would get pissed that he would never listen.

Idiot me for staying.  He is one of the people I used to be this way about.  “Why don’t you love me?”  Why won’t you listen.  Oh, that’s why you keep me at arm’s length.  I learned to live with less and less.  Every day.  Jokes weren’t about sharing.  They were about him.  Blah, blah, repeat, repeat.

If I had shut up, and I did this quite often and stupidly let people talk me out of it, and instead, listened to what I really wanted, compared to what was going on, I would have left a heck of a lot sooner.  My heart wouldn’t hurt so much.  My entire life would have been different.  I can only partially blame him for being a jerk.  I took that toxic, head on, because when we have that much “therapy” in our lives, we can fix and contol and justify and life will finally make sense.

It does the same if you just decide to like pancakes and focus on that.

To the three people I love most in this world?  I will love you.  I will miss you like crazy and my heart is grieving like there’s no tomorrow.  But I’m getting up again and saying, I love pancakes and that’s more important than the hurt you’ve caused.  You go focus on Life not being perfect and go focus on the family members who treat you like crap and all the things on your honey-do list that will never end.  I’m hurt.  You’ve told me enough times and in enough ways that I’m not important enough for you to give to me what you want so desperately.  If you aren’t willing to say it and mean it, and mean it for more than the moment, well, I can’t help you there.  You can spend the next five years in your toxic.  You can spend the next ten being exhausted.  Loving you in the first place wasn’t wrong and if you want to continue to treat yourself like crap, it’s your choice and my love would never be enough to show you otherwise.  Don’t ask me to hang on when you are too willing to let go, even if it’s under the guise of being supportive.

Me?  I’m shutting up and I’m gonna have pancakes.  Because I get to love me, too.  I’m gonna go look for the honey jar.  And when that’s done, I’m going for smashed potatoes and my cats and my stories and all the things in my life that are pure sunshine.