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Tag Archives: healing

Armloads of Anger

30 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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angry woman, healing, neighbor, sorting, Universe, wisdom

It is two AM and no one is helping you move another armful of what appears to be sweaters down to the U-Haul truck. Glare at me all you want, baby, but you reap what you sow.

Sea green doors, bright yellow walls, white highlights … pagodas in a narrow courtyard lit by soft orange light. People come and go here where I live, revolving doors, no surprise living in a military community while others stay for a long time. I observe everyone (and myself) from the balcony or pagoda or water’s edge when it’s not too hot and not too cold ooh baby it’s just right. I observe kindnesses with each other, our plants, our dogs, our stray cats, and the not-so-kind things like when you let the door slam behind you that shakes my apartment. I’ve seen the mixed bag that is humanity, mostly for good, and I try not to dwell on the nuisances.

Since the first day I saw you I knew you as an angry woman. I’m no bubble of joy, so noticing your anger wasn’t hard. I marked you down as Recognized, Noted, Proceed Accordingly. Still, I waved or nodded or tried to make contact with you, as we all did, but you refused basic neighborliness and concern in general. Eyes forward, stomping ingress and egress, always. Every time I saw you walking from the parking lot to your apartment with your (husband?) all I could hear was you berating him and swearing terribly at him while he just looked forward and took it all. He disappeared and there were rumors. All I know is that I don’t see him or the little french bulldogs anymore and your demeanor has not changed. There were many social gatherings here at the apartment and you did not partake but were always welcome. You remained aloof and angry every day of every year I’ve been in your orbit. Just seeing you has been stressful which is not your problem but mine.

This afternoon a U-Haul truck pulled up and I watched as they moved your furniture. I was surprised you let them move most of that in the bathtub-fulls of pouring rain and wind. Later I saw you and said, “Hi. Looks like you’re leaving us?” Question mark, trying to be nice. She fixed a laser-beam gaze on me and said, “YES. I AM,” as if I was the reason for her pain and need to leave. It was an unexpected reaction, it confounded me, and I’m writing it out here now: Hey girl, I’m not the reason for your pain and suffering. We gave you ample opportunity to relate but you kept your door closed. I’ve been watching you for hours move boxes and bags and armfuls of “stuff” and I wonder where did you put it all in these tiny apartments? I can feel your anger in every box you walk out to the truck — by yourself. Where are your family and friends to help you move? I did that when I was a teenager: “I’m going to pack all this MYSELF and I don’t need YOUR HELP and FUCK YOU VERY MUCH. I’m going to take armloads of all my stuff out to the truck all day and night without your help because I don’t need you!!” She saw me on the balcony and gave me that “Fuck you” look again, and I just can’t fathom why, we’ve only had three words between us. The landlord will need to repave the balcony from the venom she’s dripping behind.

I am typically grumpy and crabby but not always angry. At least I am approachable and I will laugh and smile with you. I recognize my demeanor and try to keep it tamped down so I can be socially acceptable in public while at home I fume and steam in the four corners of my room, alone. It works out pretty well. You, lady, are a steam train that cannot be stopped and no one wants to.

I should light a candle for your brokenness. I should let it be water off a seal’s back. I should ask the universe to show you a way to heal and ask it to help you let that shit go. It’s not hard, but all I got now is just, “Good luck wid dat, hating the world. That’s the stuff that gave me chest pains. Maybe someday you’ll figure out you reap what you sow.”

The Queen Wears Saffron

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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ask, death, dogsong, friend, healing, help, listen, love, peace, Saffron

“They left me. The dogs. The afternoon!”  I cobbled together what she meant. I heard the panic in her voice, but that didn’t stop me from brushing my teeth and buying her a Slushie before I pulled into her empty driveway.

I entered the house, de-pursed and -jacketed myself onto her sofa. I took note of the state of her home. It wasn’t until I reached the second stairway that the dogs decided to make a fuss, but the herd did not murder me as she always fears. The dachshunds are a noisy lot but they know I’m not afraid of their “yeah just you try it” eyes and ivory teeth. They flop over and let me love them like the pussies they are.

She needed someone to take the dogs outside for their afternoon walks because everyone left her. I did my best in shifts and had some success as they relieved their bowels and barked at the breeze inside a plastic white fence. She asked me to stay and of course I did, willing to stay until midnight.

I brought the queen a blue Slurpie because I know it’s what she likes. I walked her dogs because it’s what she needed.  I listened to the queen whose house has been on fire since I’ve known her, Judge Judy playing in the background.

The queen sipped and nipped at food which I found encouraging, her dogs circling her wagon, allowing me on her bed. I complimented the lady on her bedroom curtains not because I felt I had to but because it was sincere.  It seemed to make her happy. I understand now why she says her bedroom is cold: the north wall is one big window that faces the Chesapeake Bay, and it’s hard to keep out the north/northeast wind from your eyelashes this way. The view is beautiful, if only one is okay sleeping under a pile of covers.

The queen was strong enough to ask for help in getting her dogs outside to relieve themselves, yet she wouldn’t allow anyone to delve into why her body is wasting away. I find it hard to ask and receive help, and her cold fingers remind me that I am a fool. She apologized for the current state of her home where she served everyone homemade meals and tried to save everyone from themselves because it was her job. I held her cold hand and noted the “watch it, punk” look in Izzy’s eyes: I told them both, “No worries.”  I left them resting in a nest of clean saffron sheets and a gray throw.

We all let each other down when we do not talk, when we do not speak the real. When we do not truly listen to each other.  My prayer for today is wrapped in saffron and dandelion, tiny pollens stuck to my fingers and nose, that we stop and we listen, and we grant ourselves peace.

You’re Not

16 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

communicate, experience, faith, healing, listen, We Are

I’ve heard it said or implied so many times. “You’re not (this or that) so your opinion doesn’t matter,” and they try to shut down a line of communication.  The gap between listening and speaking is widening, and I wonder if it’s too far gone to mend. I hope not.

“You’re NOT….

an American citizen

a football fan

a military spouse or veteran

a black mother

the spouse of a cop killed on duty

a gun owner

unemployed

a Jew

a woman

starving

a man

uneducated

a Muslim

a terminal patient

a widow”

So, unless I am one of those, or until I become one, it’s better I don’t waste any time thinking about it? I’ll just stand here, nodding or smiling in silence, obedient, because I’ve got no skin in the game?  I may not have had your experience, I will never claim to know what you’re going through. But at least give me a chance to ask, a chance to let you explain, a chance to tell you what I think about that and see if we can make things better somehow. How else can we share this world unless we put aside our pre-existing conditions, ask a patient in, that one of another faith, sex, and skin color, say come in, come share my world. Show me yours. Let’s heal together.  And we can disagree together, too.”

I guess it’s just easier to say “You don’t know how it feels to be me,” that old Tom Petty tune, and walk away.

 

Heal The Woman-wounds, Help The World

02 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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daughter, friend, healing, mother, sister, Why I Marched, woman

We were talking about everything under the sun as friends do when we haven’t talked in a while.  Her conservative views come across casually, and I appreciate her voice:  it helps keep me balanced. I was surprised when she said she thought of joining the Women’s March on Washington back in January, but in the end, she decided against it. She couldn’t see herself marching with a bunch of women who are showing solidarity one day then stabbing her in the back the next.  I hurt so much for her when she said that because I know where it came from.

Her mother threw my friend out of the house when she was a mid-teen. Her mother had been divorced for some time, and her religious views bordered on delusions and aberrant behavior.  My friend figured out how to survive, bouncing from house to house, only wanting to finish high school and move on with her life.  She had no rock, no foundation to stand steady on, only the one she made for herself.  She graduated high school. Went to college, earned her degree, got a job. She’s worked shit jobs just to make ends barely meet, lacking health insurance that she needed and dealt with things few of us ever encounter. She walked and hiked and cross-country skied taking photos, had good times with friends along the way.  She figured out how to survive and remain creative. Her life is better now by her own hand, and I’m so relieved that she has some relief.  She worked for everything she has instead of lying down and blaming the world. She never cried herself “victim” of a bad childhood, the economy, or sucky boyfriends. I am proud of her, and I wish more women could use her story as a lantern, a way to keep going.

But for all that, my friend is still woman-wounded. The first wound hasn’t healed. It’s hard to trust womankind when your first woman emotionally abuses you and throws you away.  She and I have stories in common of women who put up roadblocks or planted landmines on the job. Yeah, men do it too, and it all seems to come down to survival of the fittest.  I’ll not help you succeed (by answering a simple question) because your success will drown my own. Women have exchanged clans for cubicles, and it has to stop.  I’d like to see women help each other instead of grabbing for some dusty, low-hanging, genetic fruit, hoping to poison the other.

Perhaps you’ve heard the saying that “nurses eat their young?”  We worked with a woman who changed careers from a desk job to pediatric nursing, and oh, we have no doubt she’s going to bully everything in her path. It is her nature.  Some say bullying new nurses girds them for the oncoming stress of the job, but I ask, is cruelty the only way to teach competence and confidence?  Is bullying your child the best way to raise her, just as bullying a classmate will make her more socially viable? Do we secretly hope if they off themselves, we won’t have to carry their sorry asses anymore?  Is the risk of self-pride, self-sustenance, and the clan so great that a woman can’t stand up for another?  Are we certain that kindness and compassion will raise a society of black holes that destroy with no hope of a return?

How about all those times we used subtle words and gestures to hold a woman down, things like he’s not good enough for you (but he is for me), or that job’s out of your league (but not for me). How many times did we choose not to celebrate a woman’s success either in person or social media because it somehow dampens our own light? Are we that fragile?  Apparently so. Where are the stories of women who find ways to shed their fragile shields, allow themselves to receive a kind word without fear of retribution, allow themselves to give to another without fear of the knife?

Madeleine Albright suggests there is a special place in hell for women who do not help each other.  I don’t believe in hell, specifically, but I see the ashy pit that remains of our behavior. Ancestral knives in the back are hard to shake off, a broken trust that reverberates through centuries.  And here is my friend taking care of her ailing mother today.

Healing The Hero

17 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, healing, woundings

“Does this pen write,” she begins in her journal with purple ink, finepoint faint and scratchy.

She lifts her eyes from the page to watch a young man walking back to his apartment, face upturned to the skies. He looked like a man in the middle of a heartbreak needing to hear the answer, and hear it now. She watches him retreat into his apartment, slamming the door.

“Does this pen write,” she asks of her journal once more.

She posits on the page that it’s not a compelling tale unless Bambi’s mother dies.  Nobody wants to read that once upon a time there was a good queen and a good king who raised a perfect prince, that nobody lied and nobody died. Where’s the grit in the reader’s teeth for characters they love to hate, turning pages in hopes it will all work out in the end?  Is our need for grit what drives some literary imperative that the tale must be tragic—or worse–have an ambiguous end where the reader gets to decide?  “Well is it,” she demands her journal answer. It remains silent; a rock instead of crystal ball.

“Does this pen write,” she asks her journal one morning, but the answer was unclear.  There’s a movie reel playing in her head that hisses and skips, showing her flashback scenes from the bad old days that reopens old wounds, and sometimes it plays so loudly it drowns out the world.  It’s what bleeds through the books she’s trying to read, her thoughts as she walks alone. It leaves wet fingerprints on her eyes. Now she wants to know if her Daddy ever read to her because she does not remember.  “Did he ever read to me from a little pink book, soft words that rhythmed and rhymed, trickle tumbling like rain on the pane? Did he ever want his Daddy to read to him,” she asks her journal in black. Silence.

She’ll never know the answers now, but she’s got plenty of time to wonder. She considered making up answers to stop the bloody flow of questions, but what difference would it make in the end if he did—or did not?  She reminds her journal in blue that it does not matter today if Daddy thought she was good enough, and that he’s not here to read the best poem she’s ever written, polished to a nub, and marked with postage. She sorrows to know that no one is coming to wash the sins from her bones, untwist her heart, or bring home some kind of happy ending. Only she and her pen get to decide the hero’s end, and she smiles because she knows it would make her Daddy proud that she just finished the damned thing at all.

“This pen is microscope, it is centrifuge.  It threads the needle to write the story and heal the wound,” she notifies her journal before closing it.  Her journal approves.

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