Guadalupe, Jesus, and Me

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.