Do You See It?

Do you ever see pictures in the clouds?  Do you ever see shapes in the clouds?

I see it all the time.  Either I am crazy or there are perfectly created pictures in the clouds.  I love it!  I love seeing the pictures and shapes.  I find it fascinating.  If there is a way to a shape in a cloud, I think it’s amazing!

Every time I see a shape I just can’t believe my eyes.  It is so astonshing.  It is a marvelous sight!  I just love it!

I wish I wasn’t so tired all the time.  I am such a need of rest, but I can’t afford to rest.  My mind is hurting from the lack of – not just sleep, but rest.

Still, those clouds are amazing.

Writing, Where Are You?

I wrote a short story about the beginning of caring for my mom.  I looked for it today to reread and republish it here again.  However, like everything else in my life it has gone from me.  I thought I had kept a hard copy of it amongst my papers – it seems no is the answer.

I am heart-broken – again.

I want to scream and yell.  I want to cry myself sick.  I want to go on a bender (not really a bender just drink until I fall asleep).  There are only a few pieces I have written in my life.  The time, the energy, the creativity, the mind sweat, the vulnerability, the emotion of it all – GONE!  Like it never existed.  Like I never existed.  Like who I was before today – never happened.

For nearly five years I have lived in the same place, yet I have less than when I moved in.  I have less clothes, less possessions, less furnishings, less of everything.  It’s not about the things, but that’s what people do when they live somewhere – they make it a home.  They surround themselves with what they enjoy, what calms or excites them, or memories they’ve made.  But, even my memories are gone and missing too.  I have less memories than when I moved here.

Worse than a lack of things and possessions, I feel myself becoming dumber.  My mind is not expanding, becoming more knowledgable, or enlightened even.  My dyslexic mind which I’ve worked so hard all my life to learn things the way my mind works – to anticipate, to try to think faster than the next person just so I could keep up with the conversations and the world around me is simply gone.  As if I’ve been lobotomized.  As if both hemispheres are no longer communicating with each other.  Parts of my brain are gone entirely.

Who lives like this?  No one.  No one can live as if their life before today never happened.

I am just so devastated again.  My writing is not great, my grammar is not the best, I don’t follow or know all the writing/written formulas and so forth, but it was getting somewhere.  And, more than anything I did it for me.  I wrote because I decided to write.

This is what I found in my writing:

Just a note before I go.

It seems we don’t know how to end a day without arguing.  I know now why that is.  The time apart and separated from you cuts to the core of my soul with such an unhappy, unpleasant emptiness I find myself lashing out trying to be nearer to you.  For I do not truly exist when you are not by my side.  If today with grave cruelty came to be my last it is the heart of you I will hold onto for it can never be extinguished.  How grateful I am for every moment shared with you!  For the rest of the world is meaningless and pale while we are apart.

Til the end of time back again until the dawn of time.

I don’t even know who it was written for anymore.  I’m not sure I wrote it for anyone in particular.

I do know I held onto that belief of him, I believed was real.  Yet, these last few years have shown me it was not a shared belief.  Worse they were not real moments.

I would rather have died believing.

 

Left Of Me

I am just not the same anymore.

Who I used to be, who I wanted to be, the things I wanted to do and be in my life are all gone from me.

I used to be pretty – not in a traditional movie star or cover of a magazine sense – but, I used to be pretty from the inside out.  I see that now in photographs from my past.

I used to be overweight.  When I looked in the mirror I never understood the person who looked back at me because it never matched the image I held in my mind.  I may have been overweight, but I always saw myself – thin.

I used to have a light in my eyes.  My eyes used to be blue – a brilliant, bright Norwegian blue – just like everyone member of my father’s side of my family.  I’ve lost the color in my eyes they’ve turned dull and gray.  Perhaps it’s just health, malnutrition and stress.  Who knows, but my glow and lightness is gone.

It’s been years now.  My face is hard.  I hold my head like an animal defending itself from a never-ending attack.  My eyes hang and droop from an unspoken sadness unable to be shared or shaken from the heavy hurt.

It’s all-consuming.  I look uncomfortable in my own skin.  It feels as though I am wearing someone else’s overcoat so many sizes too large, unable to bend, and move, or breathe easy.

It is an unrecoverable loss.

Worse still, it feels as though the only reason for my existence is so other’s can watch me suffer.

I knew at my very best I have only ever been average, yet I still held a belief that there were things I could do without thinking.  Like breathing.  That belief that I held and could feel is gone.  Like an emotional landslide swept away.

I used to want to go to film school so I could write, direct, produce, and act in my own films because who else would hire me?  I had plans to go to FSU.  I even looked into going to a film school in Bath, England.

I used to dream of racing cars.

Nursing schools, visual merchandiser, buyer, masseuse, physical therapy, speech therapist the list goes on and on of vocations and directions I believed I could do well and should be my life.

The problem is I can no longer see a future, nor can I feel me anymore.

This is not a pity part.  I am not trying to be pathetic.  I am not looking for sympathy.  I guess, I am explaining.  I cannot be or play someone else’s idea of me and who they think I should be.

No one will ever be able to understand what it is like living this life on this side of me.  There is a great moat that surrounds and follows me wherever I go.  The distance it creates has deadend me from the inside.

Do you know that I used to feel a connection to man I used to know in college.  I believed it would always be there.  To my great humiliation it has been turned into something ugly, to something more than it ever was.  It has been used against me.  As if believing in someone you once knew is a crime.  The truth is we could barely speak to each other.  When we did speak it usually turned hostile and violent.  Yet, there were times when we looked at each other and the rest of the world ceased to exist.  There were moments filled with so much that I held onto them.

What I understand now from these last few years, I was merely projecting a want or belief that simply was never true.

Perhaps it is this loss of belief that has caused such decay in my soul.  Unfortunately, there is so much to my life’s story one answer is not all of it.

Perhaps it has been this constant theme of three numbers, of people I do not know and have been forced to choose.  This ongoing contest of men’s ego’s that has torn me to pieces.

I cannot stand ego.  Ego is such a turn off.  Constantly stroking a man’s ego while I’m barely able to live and manage my everyday.

I wish I had never been on the monorail that day.  I wish I had never had a conversation with that stranger.  I wish I had never seen him or talked to him after that day.  I wish I never had to see or hear from him ever again.

No one else has to wear my shame.  No one else feels my hurt.

No one else understands what this feels like.

I don’t know how to plan, or prepare my future when everything I’ve known, understood about myself is gone.  Not the same anymore.

I went to my mother’s funeral more than a year ago.  The truth about her death I still do not know.  Her death was kept a secret from me for years.  This is such an emotionally charged event (I don’t know how else to say it) I’ve gone numb, or perhaps I am still in shock.  More likely, I’m unable to react because the truth is still hidden from me.

Then a month later, I gave my cats to my brother believing he was going to take care of them.  I still remember the hurricane we had last year.  Getting supplies and waiting through the weather in this house, I still had them in my mind’s eye as if they were living it with me because I believed they were going to be returned to me.  Only to learn that my brother mislead me, and he did not take care of them.  The destruction of this news sent me over a sharp cliff.

Loss, and loss, and loss, and loss, after loss, and loss and loss.  Loss of even the smallest things is still a loss.

I don’t know how to end this post.

Shame – The Color Of My World

So, what’s the worst thing that can happen when you try dating, or on-line dating?!  You get robbed, raped, or murdered?  Nope, the worst thing that can happen is skin suits.  Someone pretending to be someone else while wearing a skin suit.

I spent a year on-line dating trying to understand why every guy I tried going out with had problems.  It was more than this one was too fat, or this one had small hands, or this one smelled of turnips.

I would show up at these meets and I tried, I really, really tried because I had been so unbearably lonesome while taking care of my mother.  There was a part of me missing, unfulfilled, and unsatisfied.  I don’t just mean sexually.  I mean a part of myself that was sad and dead from loneliness.

Because I really wanted to find a man to spend the rest of my life with.  Because I’m middle-aged I think it’s about time I was important enough to one man he would want to keep me for the rest of his life.

But, these dates were a sham and a total set-up.  So, I couldn’t respond well to them.  Moving on to the next one, but it was the same thing all over again.

Finally, I forced myself to go all the way.  To prove to myself that it wasn’t me that I was ok.  To prove the rejection of one man’s friendship was not the end of me.

Until, I discovered that he was not who or what he said he was.  Worst of all that he was wearing a skin suit the whole time.

Rage, anger, disappointment, hurt, betrayal, sick-to-my-stomach shame and humiliation consumed me and colored my whole world.

I have never been able to get over the disgrace of that event.  I am reminded of it every day.

I have discovered I will never be able to heal from the horror of that realization.  It has been several years now it has caused a shut-down in my entire body, mind, spirit, and soul.

What I once that I wanted to do and be – no longer exists.

The person I once was – I will never be able to be or live again.

I do not even believe it is possible for me to love a man ever again.

All desire has left me.

All want and wanting has left me.

All passion, all emotion, all happiness has left me.

I cannot even imagine a man ever touching me again.

It is worse than being raped.  It is more like living every moment while being raped.  As if my very skin is an announcement of my shame while having to live my life.

I have given up entirely on any notion of men, dating, or marriage.  It has simply gone from me.

Day Off

It was one of the rare days in school where you do not have to listen to the teacher lecture, or read, or do work.  It was an afternoon of paints, plain craft paper, colored pencils and brushes.  Perhaps it was Fourth grade, no, it must have been Third grade when the teacher asked the class to create a picture.

I knew at once what picture I wanted to create…the first thing that came to my mind.  We had this great view in our dining room.  Considering it was a split-level tract home – which I’ve never thought split-levels to offer the best floor plan – it had a view for miles from the dining room.  I could see all the way to Mt. Hood from our dining room.  You could see Mt. Hood from nearly everywhere in our town thanks to its elevation.  I loved that mountain and looking at its splendor everyday.  It’s the only mountain in the U.S. that has snow year-round.

I can still see the classroom from that day the way the flourescent lights had to work extra hard on account of the overcast skies outside.  The room was a buzz with energy from us kids working away on our own.

The whole class ooh-ed and awed over one student (I can’t remember her name – how about I call her Sue) drew a most perfectly beautiful picture of a doll.  Sue had drawn a doll wearing a dress that looked just-so everyone including me was admiring her picture.  The teacher I believe, was the most impressed with her drawing.  Standing at her desk proclaiming how marvelous a picture she had drawn.  There was no denying it was a well-drawn picture of a doll.

When the teacher came to me she looked at my picture and asked, What is it a picture of?

I was so astonished it took me a second to respond – It’s Mt. Hood, I said completely deflated.  See the snow-capped mountain peaks and the trees on the mountain?!  The teacher looked at my painting with a blank look.  I imagined she preferred the pretty doll drawing.

That afternoon must have been just before winter break.  I handed in my painting with resignation.  My painting of Mt. Hood and the afternoon gone from my mind as it was made clear to me how unimpressive I was.

“Here you go”, my teacher said indifferently as she handed me back my painting that had now been framed.

It was the last day of school.  I was so surprised to see my painting again, as well as, how much it seemed my teacher did not want to give me my painting.  I think I must have said something along the lines of, What is it?

Well, it’s your picture you painted.  The frame shop choose your painting from the class.  It’s been hanging up in their shop all this time, didn’t you know?!

How could I have possibly known I’ve always wondered.

All these years later I still have my painting hanging on my wall as a reminder that even when your entire class – including yourself –  thinks someone else is better, it was my painting that was chosen.

It was only my painting that was chosen.

Keep Your Nose Out Of My Black

When it comes to certain things I can be quite basic and simple.  I don’t like overly complicated designs and patterns.  A few years ago I was made aware of how I wore black more often than I wore colored t-shirts to work.  I have been living a tug-of-war that – how could I possibly explain it when I do not even understand it.

My life is simply well beyond my control of any means at all.

I have been taught to believe all things being black have caused such an unpleasant odor/sensation up my nose it has caused a reaction that is borderline hatred.  This reaction is born only out of defense of my own body to not be violated in such a way simply to get a reaction.

Besides when it comes to the color black it is more than a one dimensional color – black is all colors at one end of the spectrum.

For as long as I can remember when asked about my background, heritage, ethnicity, etc. I would respond, I am a darker shade of pale.  End of discussion.

I have been writing in my head for these last few days – well, not writing, blogging.  There is a difference.  I haven’t written anything in years.  The place I reside has everything to do with that.  However, I have been blogging, yet unable to make it to my computer and type because the demand of my time is so incredible.

Let me tell you a little about my growing up, then you might understand why I say I am a darker shade of pale.  For most of my life my father worked nights which gave him the excuse to be absent from my life – to be absent from our family.  Even when he did not work nights he was never around or there.

So, my mother had to be both mother and father.  This is not an uncommon scenario any longer.  It is all too common anymore.

My mom loved everyone.  And I mean everyone.  She loved people, getting to know people, talking to people, helping people, learning about people, sharing stories with people, and so on.  This was never more evident than after her strokes robbed her of her brains ability and function.

Growing up my mom told me stories of her and my father visiting friends in Watts.  The way she told the story I understood it was years later in her life that she understood they could have been in danger in that part of town.  How the Cash’s went to the window when they were inside and gave a signal.  So, that the neighborhood understood the white couple was ok.

Driving down a road my mother asked my dad to pull over because there was a cross, so somewhere there might be church happening.  Only to understand that what they drove into was not the church of love and forgiveness, but the kind that condemns and kills with hooded sheets.  The fear that gripped my mother was still on her face so many years later telling the story.

A nurse would walk into the room, my mom would respond.  She wouldn’t wait for them to check her vitals, or whatever nurse duty they might have needed to do she would start telling them about The Cash’s and all their children telling the nurse all their names, what they did for a living.  Or, she would tell them about the de la Pena’s, and their children.  Sometimes she would start sharing a specialness she believed about them.

Because even a stroke couldn’t take away her wanting to share the gift of friendship.  She was saying – I see you beyond the flesh – beyond the uniform, or hairstyle, or any color whatsoever.  Just to tell them hello, and you’re ok.  To connect with them.

It was extremely intense conversation.  Most people did not understand her at that point.  What most people heard was an older woman who had a stroke, who didn’t speak in compound sentences.  So, I diffused the conversation with the translation.  There were few exceptions where people understood.

However, it was intense speech, talk, and conversation.  Because who starts talking to a complete stranger saying, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you with deep sadness, strength of conviction, and determination?  It was the one she said most often to people.  Who starts a conversation that way?  Who can expect to hear such a thing from a stranger?  Who can respond back to such unyielding, unselfish speak?  From the first moment you meet someone? Even as I pushed her in wheelchair through a store she would respond to someone that way.

So much of that life has gone from me in these last few years.

I wish I had never moved here.  I wish I was still taking care of her,  I placed her in a nursing home because I had become very concerned for my own health being so much heavier then, than I am now.  Yet, had I died of a heart attack while taking care of her I would have died so much happier than if I died today.

I believed my life would start and I would be able to begin living, doing all the things I wished I could not but was not able to do while taking care of her.  My life is still on hold.  My life is even more out of my control than while I took care of her.

Plus, the shame, humiliation, and degradation I’ve been forced to live through in these last several years, I will never heal from.  Not a single soul understands or cares.  It’s unimaginable.

 

So, The Story Goes…

I can’t believe I am retelling this story again.

But, here it goes…

The story is, I was never a reader growing up.  I would rather do than watch which is what reading felt like to me.  I felt reading was passive.  Its’s not that I couldn’t read or read well.

Unfortunately for me, my action orientated mind landed me in a reading-for-the-impaired class when a teacher asked me to read out loud then explain to the class what I had just read.  When I said I couldn’t explain what I had just read, she sent to remedial reading class.  Upon which the first day I was kicked out.

The teacher asked a student to read – I couldn’t believe how low these kids were reading let alone how slow.  This poor kid had a problem reading out-loud a simple word  like – T-H-E – I was so upset with having been placed in this class, I started yelling.  What is wrong with you, You can’t read that word!!!!!!!  The teacher asked me to read next, and I read as fast as I could, I was so upset.  I was told not to come back to that class.

When the teacher asked me to explain what I had just read and told her I couldn’t it was because I was thinking about so many other things other than what I was reading at the same time as I was reading that I wasn’t paying attention to the exact story.  My brain had other ideas in mind other than the science book I was asked to read.

So, I grew up not being a reader until…I became so upset from watching a movie.

Twilight came around and was everywhere.

Ugh, Twilight and vampire, and UGH!

I didn’t want to watch Twilight.  I am too cerebral, interested in culture, the world, and life to care about teenaged vampires!

However, I decided it might not be a bad idea to see why the whole world is in love with Twilight.  I was a care-giver to my mother at the time, so stealing away to go to the movie theater was a big deal at the time.  Sometimes, it was more than six months at a time before I left to go do something just for myself.

I went.  I saw Twilight…I thought, it’s not so bad.  I’ll go see the next movie when it comes out which was New Moon.  I waited and planned for New Moon.

That stupid movie!!!!!

That is how you end a movie with a wedding?!  What?!  Why?!  Ugh?!

I despised the ending!

I was so upset…for days!!!!  I had wasted my money, and  more importantly my precious time.

I tried to figure it out.  I decided there must have been something lost in translation from book to movie and that is why it was so bad.

So, I bought the books.

First book, not bad – easy reading.  Next book, and the next book.  I wanted to read them all because I was enjoying it.

Then, I remembered when he told me we were like Katherine and Heathcliff.  I remember it, but I don’t feel it anymore just like I don’t feel anything anymore.

So, I read Wuthering Heights.

Which brought me to another time when he and I argued over whether it was Anna Karenina or Anna Karen.

So, I read Anna Karenina.

Not, my favorite story, but there was a story beyond Anna Karenina which started in Volume eight.

In volume eight, Tolstoy shares more of a personal essay into what was happening in his life at the time.  For me, it was a profound moment reading volume eight.  My mother had been tiresome during the night.  I was up all night making sure she was ok, and didn’t have any more strokes.  But, this night she was particularly hard on me.  I couldn’t even stay in the room with her.

I had to finish reading this book.

When…with the reading of seven little words, my world changed.

I nearly dropped the book out of my hands.

What?!

What, just happened?!  Why was he at the center of the sentence?!

Memories, the past, all flooded my mind trying to comprehend.

I had loved him more than I had ever loved any other man in my life.  Yet, I had never been able to tell him, or share with him how thankful I was just to have known him.

I felt a connection to him – at the time – I thought, would never end.

Unfortunately, for me…I don’t feel anymore.  I have a complete disconnection from my heart and have been disconnected for years.

However, had I not read Twilight, I would not have read Wuthering Heights, had I not read Wuthering Heights, I would not have read Anna Karenina, had I not read Anna Karenina, I would not have leaned an appreciation for reading and classical literature.

What Choice Have I Had?!

For so many years now, I have been living a life of one, two, or three.

The truth is neither of them are valid nor have they ever have been.

If a man chooses and makes you live separate and apart from the world just to prove whether you will choose the first, second, or third choice – he is not really a man, or a man worth living for.

I cannot begin to explain or tell you the devastation the first choice has done to me and left me with – he has removed himself so far from me.  I am truly devastated.

The second and third choice have played so many mind tricks on me it is embarrassingly painful.

The truth is what choice have I had?!

Once I discovered their deception I would never choose them again.

But then, what choice have I really had?!

I Want It All To End

I have been lied to by every employer I’ve had since 2013.

All about when the control would end and I would get my life back.

The last few lied about timing.  First I was told six months and it would end – it didn’t.

Then, I was told three months and it would end – it didn’t.

I have been placed in isolation, separated from the entire world since 2014.  My entire surroundings are controlled.  Every person I meet already knows who I am.

This is entirely unfair to me, more correctly it is extremely cruel to do to a person.

I am unable to speak to people, have a social life, or any resemblance of a life other than going to work and immediately home.

I have never been more depressed in my entire life.

I don’t even get to say no.  I don’t get to say this is enough.  I don’t get to say I don’t want anymore.  I don’t get to say leave me alone.  I don’t get to say I do not want a virtual life.  I don’t get to say I don’t and never did want to be virtually fucked.

I don’t get to have a life.

How can a person live without being able to say no and be heard?

How can a  person live without the ability to control their life?

I have been lied to again by my employer which has really hurt considering the source.

I don’t know how to continue any longer when every time I’ve been lied to about a time line and when this will all end where I get to have my life back again where I get to have my mind and my brain to myself alone.  Where no one enters my mind.  Where if someone wants to know what I am thinking they have to ask me in person.  Where no one is able to create pain or sensation in my body virtually.  Where no one can contaminate my food, or the air, or control the weather, or the traffic.

I could tell there was something wrong at my job in 2013.  It wasn’t until the beginning of 2014 I knew my entire workplace was faked, and it ruined me where I could no longer be myself anymore.

I can’t stand looking down anymore.

I can’t stand being walked in mazes and driven in circles.

I can’t stand this fake life – I never could.  I was told it would end in a one year.  Well, this control has been happening going on three years now.

Can you imagine three plus years without having a single friend to talk to in your life?!  Let alone not being able to even have a boyfriend for more than three years?!  To constantly be stuck in a virtual world not of your choosing?!

Changing jobs doesn’t help.  The virtual control remains the same regardless of where I go or do.

I want to live and have a whole and complete life.  I want a man to talk to, to love and be loved in return.  I want to be the love of his life.  I want to be wanted by him.  I want him to want to spend the rest of his life with me.  I want him to find me.

I don’t want to be locked away in a virtual prison anymore.

I want to be set free.  I want to be sprung from this cage.

I don’t want to meet famous people, actors, or celebrities in disguise, or virtually.

I don’t want to follow clues.  I don’t want to choose numbers or sides.  I don’t to be shown or told what to buy.  I don’t want anyone to control my underwear, or the air.

I want an end to this fake life, or I will be forced to end my life.