one of my mantras is "I have a strong body that I am proud of, pleased with, and grateful for". I climbed these rocks like a she-goat!
18
February 2017 at 1:38 p.m.
Playa
Coromuel in the wind and rain and stunning beauty that is so
regrettably easy to take for granted. Eating as I write – homemade
dill/onion bread with butter, mayo, avocado, and tomato (plus hichol,
of course). Enjoying, as I almost always do, the interplay of colors
on my sandwich. I call it bandera food because it is purposefully
green, white, and red. I have not yet mistressed desserts yet, but
any other part of a meal and I’m your girl.
It
occurred to me as I was brushing my teeth this morning – trite, I
know, but true nonetheless – that The One Love (hereinafter
referred to as TOL—kinda like my version of yahweh and not speaking
The Name…) has sent me the family of three that I need. Dra Daniela
plays Guadalupe in this psycho drama, but first let’s speak of Dr
Roberto, who is so clearly Jesus as my brother companion on this part
of my journey.
When
he signed an email to me with a “fraternal hug” I thought it a
most strange thing for a psychiatrist to do, especially with a very
vulnerable and confused female patient. Then, when I took his hand to
say goodbye the second time, he shook it warmly and then reached for
a clearly fraternal hug – one meant to comfort me and let me know I
was not as alone as I feel. I can put down my sexual and romantic
fantasies about him (now THERE’S a first—being at all drawn to
any of the male mental health professionals I have interacted with).
I can accept with grace and gratitude his support because – another
first – he is also the only MHP of any gender who agrees that my
crisis is at bottom spiritual. He has been sent to me, I believe, for
exactly that reason. He knows how to help me through the psyche and
accompany me towards my true home in TOL.
And
of dra daniela I can say little, because I do not know what I need
from a mother. Daniela tells me that is not a problem! She says all I
have to do is talk to Guadalupe exactly as I talk to her, and then
simply ask her to pass on the message to her Son, because I am not
speaking to Him right now. Daniela says
I should ask her to tell Him that, even though all of us know He
already knows it. She listens; she, too, touches me to calm and
comfort me; she knows when her ability to help has ended and thus
someone
else’s help needs to begin.
2:33
pm notes from recorder
I
have finally come to realize that my otherness keeps me from
understanding how it is for normal ones – in the sense of the
majority being the norm – as much as it keeps you from seeing who
I am, no matter how/how many times I have tried to show you,
individually and collectively.
(I
was recording my thoughts while moonlight sonata repeats --
endlessly, these days -- in the background of my consciousness.
Remembering the comfort of falling to sleep among my five siblings
with mom playing this downstairs on the parsonage piano. Playing
until the last of us begged, with the last of our consciousness for
that day, “play it once more, mom.”)
there
is a very powerful connection between losing that and losing god on
the trip from michigan to connecticut, where there was no piano, no
parsonage, no being at the center of a family that had been at the
center of the rural evangelical united brethren church for three
generations. Instead, there was an unheated summer home on the Sound
that came with the job my father had gotten with a millionaire who
was all hot for entente with Russia (it was called Promoting Enduring
Peace); there was my first crush, on the Dan the Painter Man – he
was so beautiful and so kind – who spent my 12th summer working on
the porch that wrapped three quarters of the way around this
huge-to-us three-story beach palace; there was a school my brothers
and I attended where the students felt superior to us because our
clothes and our lunches were made at home. There was, however, no
comfort of any sort to be found anywhere, save precious moments
swimming in the Atlantic. I have always been a water child, and I was
as delighted as I was frightened the first time an undertow swept me
to the bottom of a big wave and threatened to hold me there beyond my
capacity to hold my breath. (I repeated that experience at Bahia
Asuncion once last year. I kinda think I’m over it—being scared
just for the thrill of it.)
next
recording: the peace that I seek lies at the center of the opposing
tensions of my soul, it has been said, but what happens if those
tensions are exactly matched? Where is the peace in the constant
battle to be either/or? What kind of person would I be if both/and
made sense to me? It may be a la frontera, on 15th street revisited,
it may be in the seemingly unbearable tension of both/and...
next
recording: I believe that Jesus and Mary have come to me; it does not
matter if no one else believes it; the three of us know it to be real
and true. Just as I know daniela and roberto are real and true, they
know me to be one of them in some way I do not at all understand.
Maybe a club of believers who have some sense? Jajajajajaja (and
ooops – my unhealed religious arrogance showing like my thighs
backlit by the sun through the thin fabric of the skirt whose lining
I cut out because it scratched me).
Right
now, standing outside in the rain, two men and a boy. I hope my foto
turns out. In my mind, they are a gay couple raising mr. scowlyface's
son from a disastrous marriage to a junkie. In any case, the three of
them have come to the beach for the same reason as I did, to see the
storm. Many people have come and parked for a few minutes, all
getting out of their cars to brave the wind and rain for the beauty
of the sea.
where I wrote this
315
pm
having
small anxiety about the rv starting in the cold/rain when I am ready
to leave; contingency planning for problems in my mind takes the joy
from now. Prepare for the best until the worst happens; then know
that you can and will cope, there will be help, you will rise again.
BELOW
is transcribed from pages I wrote “feverishly” the other morning…
maybe
this is grampa’s! that’s what karina suggested – along with
noting the eternal gemini conflict within me – when I told her I
was known for being empathic as a child. If I could, indeed, feel
others inside me more than just physically, who is to say I did not
internalize my uncle’s sense of being evil as he mauled me? He must
have told me it was my fault, that god hated me for what “we”
were doing. And I must have believed him because grampa didnt stop
him, and grampa, himself, knew he must have failed his God because he
had been crippled by one of his plow horses. What chance did I have
of believing myself, not to speak of being believed had I told?
anyone But since there was already a game-changing secret at the
center of our family life – my father’s active homosexuality –
I had learned long before the age of six to keep my mouth shut about
reality or pay the price.
I
have known how disabled i’ve been by the “worst” of mom
(passivity, no boundaries, zero self-esteem, except for temporary
reprieves from self-doubt when being praised for service, especially
including food!) and dad (arrogance and self-centeredness), but not
by my grandfather’s faith. Abreaction: spending my life battling
evil on the outside in a desperate attempt to hide the evil on the
inside. From myself, primarily. The line that divides good from evil…
coromuel
noonish 11 feb 17
how
many time can one person withstand being born? All that I am is in
pain, I cannot breathe in here. I am still not speaking to TOL, the
only help for me. But at least I have begun a conversation with
guadalupe, doing as dra daniela suggested and simply asking her to
tell jesus how angry I am. How evil I can be. I dont care that he
already knows. I will NOT BEG the God who let me disappear more than
50 years ago. And no one – not one person – noticed I was gone.
I
know who mary was but not who she is; and certainly not who she is to
me, except that I love the story of juan diego
At home preparing this blog on 25 February, waiting for the effing cable/internet guy for the fourth time in three weeks! So very shocked to reread my previous blog written a month ago. I have no palpable memory today of being that person.
