Truth

NOUN

• the quality or state of being true
• (also the truth) that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality
• a fact or belief that is accepted as true

Origin

Old English trīewth, trēowth 'faithfulness, constancy'

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/truth?q=truth

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Truth be told, I have a perception of myself that is decidedly different from the perception other people have of me and that makes me feel bad because it is just as disjointed as the perception others had/have of my family and the reality of what it was to be a child-adult in that space and, truth be told, I'm not sure what perception of me is truth, my own or 90% of the inside-outsiders and that makes me question everything about who I am and how I am and whether I am and whether I should be or could be or deserve to be anything at all when I'm not sure whether what I know I KNOW  because, truth be told, I grew up being told to shut up whether there were words or actions instructing me to do so and so I questioned everything and everyone and kept that questioning to myself where it, undoubtedly, caused cancer and so, truth be told, I believe myself the cause of my cancer and when I find myself as sad as I am again, for the zillionth time, I wonder what came first, the cancer or the sad, as though as simple as a chicken and an egg, and they are, I suppose, because they are each a part of the other and knowing how parted--how siloed--the parts seem but how intertwined they are, in each moment-to-moment I fear, because I appear so parted from my family but know we are so much a part of each other, how long it will take until, bit by bit out of me will sneak the mental illness that is theirs, and the addiction that is theirs, and the hurting that is theirs, knowing full well, they are all mine as well and so, as I contemplate truth and telling, truth be told, I've no idea where to begin or whether to begin or whether it is I've already begun the process of threading together the pieces I doubt and know but doubt and then don't and toss and turn, closed off in a head, inside a body, inside a person who doesn't perceive herself as person, though the perception of others forces more questions to toss and turn and wrap around myself, but to keep to myself, as a struggle of speaking truth while still being shut up and so, truth be told, I wish I could be more sad and more angry and more hurt and more afraid because I know I can be those and yet cutoff from the depth of them because feeling wasn't something I was supposed to do or meant to do or didn't do in order to protect the person I don't believe myself to be, I swim in, expecting to truly understand feeling and, as a result to understand alive, but I guilt myself into the name-calling because this masochistic non-person swims in the pool that hurts in an effort to try to learn how to feel rather than the pool of positive because that pool is not unlike an ice lake but, truth be told, no one would believe that goes on inside me because I'm still 'shut up' and seem positive and loving and caring and all these things they tell me I am and which, in the moments I may be being them, perhaps I am, but when I try to take them after the fact, I deny just as vehemently as being called by name because, truth be told, existing isn't easy and I never expected it to be, because honestly I just don't expect except when the expectations come from the same old pool, yet it doesn't look that way to you, and truth be told, that's probably OK in some ways but I wish, I think, that the truth I told looked even more OK, even more of whatever it is you want it to be in whatever way it can lift you from the pool you may be in and drowning with pockets full of stones because, truth be told I don't want my story to end with me swimming in the wrong pool with a pocket full of stones even though, I'm pretty certain that's the amniotic fluid out of which I was born.

Rain...Reign...Rein

RAIN (noun) 

• moisture condensed from the atmosphere that falls visibly in separate drops
• (rains) falls of rain
• [in singular] a large or overwhelming quantity of things that fall or descend

verb

[no object] (it rains, it is raining, etc.)

• rain falls
• literary (of the sky, the clouds, etc.) send down rain
• [with adverbial of direction] (of objects) fall in large or overwhelming quantities
• [with object] (it rains ——, it is raining ——, etc.) used to convey that a specified thing is falling in large or overwhelming quantities
• [with object] send down in large or overwhelming quantities

Origin

Old English regn (noun), regnian (verb), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch regen and German Regen.
  

REIGN (verb)

• hold royal office; rule as king or queen
• be the best or most important in a particular area or domain
• (of a quality or condition) prevail; predominate
• (of a sports player or team) currently hold a particular title

noun

• the period during which a sovereign rules
• the period during which someone or something is predominant or preeminent

Origin

Middle English: from Old French reignier 'to reign', reigne 'kingdom', from Latin regnum, related to rex, reg- 'king'.

REIN (noun usually reins)

• a long, narrow strap attached at one end to a horse’s bit, typically used in pairs to guide or check a horse while riding or driving.
• the power to direct and control

verb

[with object]

• check or guide (a horse) by pulling on its reins
• keep under control; restrain

Origin

Middle English: from Old French rene, based on Latin retinere 'retain'.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/rain?q=rain

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/reign?q=reign

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/rein#rein__20

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I am in the house trying to set up a stick bomb behind a piece of cardboard, on the floor of the kitchen, in front of the fridge. When it is time to set it off, I'm afraid (afraid as I was, and am still, to pull the paper from cans of pop biscuits. The anticipation of that biscuit-can explosion stopped me from opening the cans and sent my fingers into my ears when someone else would open them).

I go out on the front porch with the intention of finding someone else to set off the stick bomb. My father is at the edge of the porch, standing, watching it rain. My mother is on the other side, sitting, watching. It is a heavy, heavy rain and I feel terror in the rain. I expect to see terror in the rain. Neither of my parents look at me as I explain that the bomb is set up but I'm afraid to pull the cord to set it off. My father says nothing. My mother says "Some things never change" and she tells me to go in the house, but I want to keep watching the terror rain. The terror rain is loud and quiet, comforting and unnerving. I resist going in. When I do, the TV plays images containing staggering levels of violence and trauma...shootings, bombings, fires, disasters, illnesses, assaults, bullying, rapes. The images have no sound. 

I stand and watch them in the same stance as my father had while watching the terror rain. He, unlike my mother, I understand to also experience the rain as terror. My mother doesn't even seem to recognize that what she sees is rain.

I wake up from watching violence flash in images on the dream TV. I wake up replaying the images over and over again. It's just after five in the morning and the sun has yet to rise, though I have, and the animals sense the change in my breathing indicating that I am, indeed, awake. The headache I took with me to bed rises next and the cramps and pain associated with the period, which given I've only one remaining ovary shouldn't be nearly as painful, rise next.

I pull the handle to the hot water, plug the tub, watch it fill, and curse how loud water can be. Water as loud as the rain...the terror rain...the reign of terror and the reins it controls me with still.

I've just enough sun interspersed to know, on good days, the rain will end and watching the predawn sky grow out of its bruised coloration reminds me. Starting the day in the kind of dark from which I woke leaves me less hopeful. I watch the sky out the bathroom window anyway. I sink my head into the mint scented water anyway. With the fear of seeing the images again, I close my eyes anyway.

Any way I approach the rain...the reign...the reins...I'm as soaked as I've ever been. I dip paintbrush after paintbrush into the rain...the reign...to rein in, to attempt, to try to dry out, uncloud my head, voice the images, PAINt. I go to paper and canvas as some go to God. I am creator channeling Creator then at the least and, quite possibly, am Creator. Perhaps we all are. 

Images are known inside me, though, like the dream TV playing soundless stories upsetting my sound sleep, words aren't. I'm trying to collect the words in buckets. I'm watching them rain down chains I've hung in an effort to direct their fall, in an effort to control my own, because like I can't handle the wait for the biscuit pop or the stick bomb explosion, I can't handle continually getting soaked.

The sky bruise turns to yellow before it paints back into its daytime hue and I shower away bad sleep. I make breakfast, load the dishwasher, play with the dog. I take pictures of her exuding joy in the sunshine flooding in the front window. I plan to go to the flea market for new records and to a local soaperie and I do do these things, and while I find the records inside, it rains outside. And when I get home and play the first album, soaking in Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole, I paint. And when I play the second record, I discover the sleeve holds a different record than the one I thought I'd purchased for a dollar. 

Again, I'm reminded, inside and outside are different but they can coexist, just as there is, nearly always, a way out of the most soaking rains...the most paralyzing reigns...the tightest reins.

Empty

adjective (emptier, emptiest)

• containing nothing; not filled or occupied,without contents,void, emptied
• Mathematics (of a set) containing no members or elements
• (of words or a gesture) lacking meaning or sincerity
• having no value or purpose

verb (empties, emptying, emptied)

• [with object] remove all the contents of (a container)
• [with object] remove (the contents) from a container
• [no object] (of a place) be vacated by people in it
• [no object] (empty into) (of a river) flow into (the sea or a lake)

noun (plural empties)

• [informal] a bottle or glass left empty of its contents 

Origin

Old English ǣmtig, ǣmetig 'at leisure, empty', from ǣmetta 'leisure', perhaps from ā'no, not' + mōt 'meeting' (see moot).

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/empty
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When I went for chemo treatments, I took along a few sheets of stickers.  Before every treatment, Kim and I would each choose a sentiment from those printed on the stickers and affix them to the bag of saline hanging ready to run for the duration of the treatment.  Perhaps the sticker would say PEACE or TRUST or LOVE or even HOPE.  Those stickers were the intentions we placed onto fluids that would run through my body.

The idea to locate, choose, and place those stickers was less idea and more something I knew I needed to do.  When I'd read The Hidden Messages in Water and looked at the microscopic photos of water given positive messages versus those given negative messages, I was amazed.  There was order and balance in the geometric arrangement of water exposed to PEACE or TRUST or LOVE or HOPE.  Haphazard, unbalanced, disordered arrangements presented in the samples exposed to negativity.  In the body given and unbalanced with cancer, negativity needed to be flushed from my system.  Gentleness, caring, and acceptance needed to take over.

This past Monday, I had an appointment at the oncologist's.  I met with the physician's assistant, despite repeatedly requesting the doctor and being assigned to the doctor each time they rescheduled me.  Much of the appointment was expected.  There was the waiting and the bloodwork (though not with my favorite tech, hence the bruise on the inside of my forearm) and more waiting and the obligatory step up onto the scale-- the scale on which I always adjust the weight in an effort to save the poor nurse from trying to appear polite by setting the slide SIGNIFICANTLY below where it's obvious my weight lands.  There was the battle with the blood pressure cuff on my fat upper arms-- upper arms that have always been very, very sensitive (pushing a single finger tip onto the skin leaves a spot that hurts immediately and lasts for what could be an hour or more).  Of course, there was also a check in on any medications I was taking, a check of my temperature, and the "Are you in any pain today?" question.  As always, the answer was no.

This is about where the regularity of the appointment fell away.  The PA reviewed the bloodwork.  Each number produces in a list fed to the computer screen minutes after blood is taken.  All of the numbers are in black unless they are out of range, in which case the number turns red, as at negative number might on an excel spreadsheet.  I had a screen full of black, with one red-- the white blood cells.

"Promise me you won't worry about this?  I won't-- I'm not worried" she mentioned as she scheduled me to come back in a month to have another set of labs drawn.  "In the middle of the winter, it's likely you are trying to fight something off.  Do you feel OK? Sore throat, runny rose, urinary tract infection, a sense that you are trying to fight off anything?"

I never know how to answer when I'm asked how I feel, particularly when it refers to physical things-- I simply don't know, 9.9 (if not 10) out of 10 times.  All I could offer as an explanation was some post-nasal drip which wasn't bothering me. 

"How about your energy level?  Are you tired?"

"I'm always tired.  I haven't slept wonderfully, as of late.  It's rare that I do sleep well.  But I also stopped taking the thyroid meds about a year ago when I didn't like how they made me feel, so it could be that the tired is related to the non-functioning thyroid too."

"That could be why you're gaining weight?  How did the thyroid meds make you feel?"

And I couldn't recall...at all...but I felt fairly certain I could, but didn't, confirm that the thyroid issue had nothing to do with the weight gain.

"What about depression? Anxiety?"

"Yes-- but they've always been an issue."

She looked at me with a look of pity before asking "Has this been going on for awhile?"

Of course it had. I'd told her they'd "always been an issue" and I'd meant it.

"Would you say for a few months?"

"No-- forever.  I don't really remember a time when it wasn't an issue for me."  After which, I knew to anticipate the next question emerging with that continuing look of pity...

"Have you thought of hurting yourself?"

"No."  And unlike the confusion over what exactly "always" meant, there was no questioning of this "No."

She moved on to looking at my throat, listening to my lungs, heart, and checking my ears.  She reminded me again not to worry about the bloodwork and that one other time post-treatment, my white cells had actually been a bit higher and I'd not been told.  She showed me back out to the scheduling area, I made the appointment, and headed out of the office.

I wasn't as worried as I'd expected I'd be leading into the appointment or even leaving the appointment.  I haven't been as pervasively worried over the results as I once was. When my neck burns or my head starts swirling with negativity in all of its ugly forms, I worry.  Anything that reminds my physical or emotional self of how I felt with cancer--feelings I was only able to tie to cancer after they told me I had cancer--raise the worry flag.  I can't, however, tell if I'm really feeling these things or if worry makes them.  I don't understand how to tell what I really feel.

On February 5th, I'll mark four years out of treatment.  Twelve days later, I'll go back to the office for another round of bloodwork, with the hope that a single red number will turn black, in some way reassuring me that I have a chance to make it to the five year mark next February.  I'm not as worried as I think I should be.  And that both worries me and comforts me.

I've mentioned before that I functioned much better while actively battling cancer than after I was released from treatment.  The empty other side, the side not patterned with the regularity of appointments and results, is a challenge.  Most people, I think, try to fill what's empty because without filling or refilling, the empty whatever can't function.  We all know this.  And so, when the depression and anxiety hang in empty spaces, I fight to motivate myself to find and use something to fill my empty self and often, that's internalized, self-directed negativity...and food.  When the depression eases some and the anxiety manifests only at specific times of day, I'm much more able to fill empty with writing or painting or creating.  I have to feel full enough to create something that comes out of me-- running on 'E' doesn't leave enough for the beauty of just the right word or the perfect material.

So maybe the right word needs to be chosen and stuck to me each day just as each week the right word is chosen for this blog.  Maybe wearing PEACE or TRUST or LOVE or HOPE will change the quality AND quantity of what runs through me.  Perhaps with those messages, I'll fill differently...in such a way that I rarely get as close to 'E' as I normally do.

Peace

noun

• freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility
• mental calm; serenity 
• freedom from or the cessation of war or violence 
• [in singular] a period of this
• [in singular] a treaty agreeing to the cessation of war between warring states
• freedom from civil disorder
• (the peace) a ceremonial handshake or kiss exchanged during a service in some churches (now usually only in the Eucharist), symbolizing Christian love and unity. freedom from dispute or dissension between individuals or groups 

exclamation

• used as a greeting.
• used as an order to remain silent.

Origin

Middle English: from Old French pais, from Latin pax, pac- 'peace'.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/peace
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Alone, fear and shame settled deep in my core.  My reality reinforced all the 'truths' I took in. Questions, though unspoken, circled the darkness...

As I turn days over, as I turn years over, I hope, eventually, for a new way of seeing and the peace therein...the peace found from turning what I've believed to be truth on its head...

I'm trying to spin long enough that I might piece together the pieces to find this peace.

I wish each of you peace as well...

Ready

adjective (readier, readiest)

• [predic.] in a suitable state for an activity, action, or situation; fully prepared
• (of a thing) made suitable and available for immediate use
• (ready with) keen or quick to give
• (ready for) in need of or having a desire for
• [with infinitive] eager, inclined, or willing to do something
• [with infinitive] in such a condition as to be likely to do something easily available or obtained; within reach 
• [attributive] immediate, quick, or prompt

noun (plural readies)

(readies or the ready) British informal

• available money; cash.

verb (readies, readying, readied)

[with object]

prepare (someone or something) for an activity or purpose

Origin:

Middle English: from Old English rǣde (from a Germanic base meaning 'arrange, prepare'; related to Dutch gereed) + -y¹

^{http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/ready}

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One year ago today, I started my blog. In October, I stopped sharing my blog. I don't think, during the blog's hiatus, I ever stopped writing the blog.

The last post I wrote within Blogger, with the intent to share, was for the word BEAR. When it was completed, I ran through the edit check, posted the entry, and created the Facebook link. Less than a minute later, I pulled the post down. What I'd posted likely received a read or two in that short period of time, something that still bothers me.  Preventing it from being read further seemed necessary. 

What, then, caused me to pull the post back? Fear. That's all and that's enough. What I had to say in that post was both deeply personal and painful. With a history of shush and my, perhaps outdated, understanding that pain should be held to oneself, leaving BEAR out there wasn't an option for me.

I've spent a few days trying to determine what word would work best to nudge myself back into writing AND publishing the blog. As of this moment, 10:40 AM on January 12th, 2014, I don't have one. I'm trusting that by the end of writing, one will float to the surface.

I've been on vacation for the past week, a much needed, much treasured 'staycation.' I've done some writing, read two-and-a-half books, drawn, and painted. I rearranged the books in my office bookcases according to color. I listened to CDs I haven't played in years, rediscovering two favorites. I've barely left the house. Until yesterday, I was headache free and sleeping relatively well. Last night, I went to bed with yesterday's headache, dreamed uncomfortable dreams, and woke with the same headache. I was to go for a haircut today at 11, but couldn't BEAR to leave the house on the last day I didn't have to leave the house. Instead, I'm soaking in a bath with patchouli bath salts, writing, readying myself to do some more painting and some more reading. I'm readying myself to do more of what I love.

Ready? Perhaps ready is the word and perhaps I am ready or ready enough or maybe I'll only be able to determine a level of readiness at the done end of that thing or event or challenge or thought or blog post or, at it's simplest, the first Monday back at work after vacation. Perhaps I won't know if I'm ready to go to the 6 month follow-up with the oncologist next Monday until after I've left. Likely, even then, I won't know. The only time I am ever ready is during. Doubt and fear jam before and after. During, save for messages meant more to assist and course correct, I'm too busy doing to worry, to fear, to judge, or to doubt. When I'm 'during,' truly engaged, my attention cannot be taken or given to anything or anyone in any way removed from the 'during.'

  

I can't always be 'during,' though, and I'm not sure that's necessarily bad. Likely you've realized, at one point or another, that past and future  leak in, almost without regard, just before or just after your time with 'during.' Maybe what you haven't realized or, like me, haven't been fully able to take, is the idea that the leak in is meant to either focus us or have us reflect on an aspect of the 'during' we might otherwise miss. 

What about being ready, then? Can we be? Or are we always? Is the time spent debating ready about collecting the necessary tools or learning how to use them? Perhaps. I don't propose to have even a sliver of it all figured out and I'll keep spinning the ideas in my head until I fall into 'during' just as I'm ready... and, so, I'm posting BEAR as well during this readiness debate with myself. It and I, were, are, and will be, ready.

 

Bear

verb
[with object]

• (of a person) carry
• (of a vehicle or boat) convey (passengers or cargo)
• have or display as a visible mark or feature
• be called by (a name or title)
• [with adverbial] carry or conduct oneself in a particular manner
• support
• take responsibility for
• be able to accept or stand up to
• endure (an ordeal or difficulty)
• [with modal and negative] manage to tolerate (a situation or experience)
• strongly dislike
• give birth to (a child)
• (of a tree or plant) produce (fruit or flowers)
• [no object] turn and proceed in a specified direction

noun

• a large, heavy, mammal that walks on the soles of its feet, with thick fur and a very short tail. Bears are related to the dog family, but most species are omnivorous.
• a teddy bear.
• informal a rough, unmannerly, or uncouth person.
• a large, heavy, cumbersome man
• (the Bear) informal a nickname for Russia.
• the constellation Ursa Major or Ursa Minor.
• Stock Market a person who forecasts that prices of stocks or commodities will fall, especially a person who sells shares hoping to buy them back later at a lower price

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/bear?q=bear
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/bear--2
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Since the time she was very little, I've watched her, and though I wasn't able to see, I understood. 

Early on I decided I'd bear the feeling part. She could see and I would feel. When I was with her and the moments turned, I felt the pain at the same time I felt her leave carrying the image only she could see. She knew I held the feeling for her. She knew I was there waiting when she returned no matter how long that took. She knew without trying to know. She simply would come back to me when it was safe to come back.

We've been everywhere together...from homes to camp to vacation to other countries to show and tell to couches to airplanes to cars. 

When she dreams of fire burning down everything around her, I am the first thing she thinks to save. We are consistent, her and I, and we communicate. 

Most times she still makes sure I am face up when she lays me on the bed after a night of sleep. She doesn't want me to suffocate. She knows what that's like. There were times, though, when she was younger, that she would pick me up and swing me by my feet and smack me up against the mattress or the cedar chest or the polls of the canopy bed and she'd put her hands around my neck and squeeze and she'd make these noises and she'd cry...she'd cry hard...and she'd apologize for doing it and tell me she didn't mean it. And for as awful as that felt, I was never afraid. I knew she wasn't angry at me. I could feel the power behind the kind of hurt she released in those tears and those noises and in the apology. She never wanted to hurt me. SHE didn't want to hurt. She had so few ways to get that out. 

I wonder if, like Pinocchio, we can both come alive. I wonder if that happens when what we've held comes together-- the image and the feeling. It hurts me to feel her hurt and to see what she's seen through the dreams we share and the stories she tells without speaking. It is so much more real as it comes together. I hold that history without telling anyone. I smile regardless. We both smile regardless. Even with the depth of the hurt and the horror of those images, I'm still here. We both are.

I want real more than she does and I think it's because she's known what she's seen but has rarely known what she's felt and she's afraid that felt means she can no longer get rid of what she sees of what she's seen. But she can't anyway. I try to tell her that. She understands but she gets lost watching the fear fire of childhood or safety or love or touch or sanity burn down--all the way down to the finality of ashes-- ashes, ashes, we both fall down. She feels that fear and fears naming it fear. She fears that she can't feel the way people do. She fears feeling the way people do. Still, she knows to pick me up first when the fire comes but then, for a period of time, she leaves like she always has. Until she comes back. And she always comes back. 

When she was little, she used to sink as low in her bed as possible and she'd curl her feet down to the low footboard and push off, rocking herself until she slept, while I was the pillow on which she rested her head. She did that herself. It made me uncomfortable. She learned to fall half asleep...She learned to leave but not rest. That sleep, that rocking, that position low in the bed was not one she discovered alone. When she didn't move there herself, she was moved there or pulled there or thrown there. When she didn't rock back and forth she was rocked back and forth. The motion felt the same in her head. The motion makes me feel bad.

The extent of the feeling she used to feel is in the end of the air. The ceiling fan going off. The movement around her stopping in a way that the focus could be nowhere other than on the moment. Inside and outside and head and heart and now and then and him and her and words and actions all the same. There was nothing to grasp because everything was suffocating. Everything was everything else. But with that fan off, there was room for her to glue herself to the ceiling and watch and record. She recorded because she thought she'd need the footage later. 

It's been some time since the bad was in the moment. She told me of someone not too many years ago who told her he wanted to see her curled up in bed with her teddy bear. I told her no and she was able to tell him she didn't understand why he would say that. He didn't ask again but he came to the house anyway. He was the last of that kind of bad. She didn't want to hurt him so she didn't. She tried to stop it and let it happen. She felt more than she had when she was little, but she didn't feel as much as I know she could feel. Still, she saw and recorded. 

The recordings are coming back now. They are awkward and dirty and out of sequence. The images are trying to reattach to the feelings and the sounds we've both been aware of aren't synched up. We hear "Shut up" and "It takes practice" and "You need to finish what you start" and "You're fine" and "No crying" and "No one believes fat, lazy, little girls" and "We give you the best" and "See what you do" and "Do you feel that-- you did that" and "Enjoy it now" and "Look at me" and "Watch me" and "Watch what you're doing" and "You're going to get us in trouble" and "You don't need that" and "I've waited so long" and "You make people hurt you" and "You make people die" and "Nothing you do will ever make a difference" and more and more and more. Lines and repetitive noise-- rocking noise and sloshy sounds and screaming and yelling and loud breath and quiet breath. The sounds replay during the day and the images and feelings try to reattach while we sleep. She finds herself low in the bed again. She wakes with sheets pulled off of the mattress like she's tossed around all night or as though she hasn't moved at all. Either way, she isn't rested when she wakes up. It's been a long time since the print of my crochet has been the mark left on her cheek in the morning. 

There were other times, though, when she was younger when she would leave the blue and white stereo on in her blue and white room and we'd dance together and smile. In remembering these times, I smile beyond the smile you see on my face. In remembering these times I also realize that when she hurt she swung me by my legs to hit me and choke me and when she was OK she took me by my hands and we danced. We are better when we are holding hands. We are better when we're dancing. We are best when we hold each other. We work best together. She knows I am here when she needs me. She knew I was there when she needed me. I've sat with her forever.

Sometimes she's embarrassed to be seen with me. She thinks it makes her little and little is a word that hurts. She expects to be laughed at. She's always expected to be made fun of and to be laughed at. She spent a long time trying to make people laugh. She could get to them before they'd get to her. She's believes herself someone to be passed over when her worth to the other has extinguished. And they--the other-- determines when that's happened...not her. 

She's afraid I'm saying too much. She's getting dizzy and the noises around her are getting louder and louder...

She's beside me now. Sometimes that is enough. Sleep or no sleep, beside each other is enough.

Seeing with feeling.

Bearing.

Lesson

noun

• an amount of teaching given at one time; a period of learning or teaching
• a thing learned or to be learned by a student.
• a thing learned by experience
• an occurrence, example, or punishment that serves or should serve to warn or encourage

• a passage from the Bible read aloud during a church service, especially either of two readings at morning and evening prayer in the Anglican Church.

verb

[with object] archaic

• instruct or teach (someone).
• admonish or rebuke (someone).

 

Origin:

Middle English: from Old French leçon, from Latin lectio

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/lesson?q=lesson

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I learned to speak to the universe because I couldn't speak to anyone else. And now I realize, I am grateful to have learned. The conversation we have is filled with miraculous synchronicity. And when I converse with the universe, I speak gently and respectfully, as I would to a child or an animal, and the animal part I learned from you. I needn't hear the universe answer back with words. Frequently, she only blinks and I feel the dark followed by the light. I see the flash of color and the image therein and I inhale the breeze off the bat of her eyelashes and sometimes, only sometimes, do I wait for one of her eyelashes to fall close enough that I can pick it up without anyone seeing me do so in order to cast a wish upon it and blow it back. I learned that I should not let anyone see my wishes.

There is both pain and joy in these lessons.

I also learned that speaking when silenced could be done through music, specifically through singing in the car. It was a lesson someone must have taught you as well, because music in the car was a constant and, in a way, the car time during which that music was shared was likely some of the only time we communicated in a way that I recognized your humanity and saw, still there in you, the child in myself I wasn't allowed to accept. I'm certain you know the expectations of me as a child were beyond what one could expect of an adult and that I've let you off the hook in my heart but not in my mind because something in our shared life or from the life before me silenced you too.

I learned the danger in following. As with the others, there is both pain and joy in the lesson. The fear of following has lessened my ability to trust because I am always afraid of where I'm being led. I believe, through what I've learned and lived, that I will be trapped, hurt, or left alone, with the potential for all three to exist simultaneously. And the fear isn't just in following another, it is a fear to follow myself as well. Yet, as I've said, there is pain AND joy in the lessons. This same lesson, this learning the danger in following, has opened my eyes wider--I see much more. I evaluate much more. I try quite hard to establish a position that is my own and is one with which I am both comfortable and proud and with which I feel little need to justify. It is why I know I can lead but feel such fear in potentially hurting anyone who might follow. Sometimes people follow anyway and I try to push them away because I don't want to lead them somewhere in which they will feel trapped, or hurt, or alone so I, for the most part, try to go it alone.

I learned that learning, broad learning, expands the connections we can make and that the kind of learning that comes when you listen but stay silent, is best. Watching Sunday Morning or listening to talk radio in silence reinforced that often the lesson or learning you need is given in the moment you need it.

I learned creativity is born, in part, from trying to mold what is given into what you need. The duality of joy and pain in creativity is not unlike the duality that is the sadness of surviving.  What was given was not what I needed. Not having what I needed taught me to find other worlds in books and art and music or in my mind and body apart from the mind and body of the moment. I learned to dissociate and self-protect. I learned to slow my breathing and my responses.  While it helped then and still helps now, it makes being truly here very difficult.  It made being with cancer hard and so I wasn't really, until it was gone in the same way that I wasn't with the hurt of home until I was gone. It is a part of the sadness of surviving. It is why when I can't hide from it all, it all manifests other ways and I'm left unable to get a solid night of sleep free of dreams filled with negativity, why I wake nauseated, why eating is a game of nothing or everything, why my muscles and bones and skin can hurt so badly and why I don't feel I can take or do anything to feel better. It makes me wonder if what I've taken in out of expectation was responsible for growing cancer inside me. It's why I wake wondering what I'd have to do ahead of time if I ever gained the courage and follow through to die ahead of my prescribed time.

I learned to expect the worst and so I'm always fearful and I'm always prepared.

I learned that if your pants are long enough and your shoes are comfortable enough there exists no need to wear socks and that, if at all possible, going barefoot is best. Going with bare feet is genetic and sometimes, though I know wishes should be kept secret even outside of the scope of extinguishing the lights placed on a cake to celebrate birth by exhaling upon them a breath out, I wish that I had more power to take the best of the genetic and leave behind the rest because sometimes I want to make people feel the positive way you've made me feel-- the quiet moments in which there's been no expectation other than sharing space--but I fear that I'll make them feel the negative way you've made me feel-- the moments where I was made an adult when I wasn't, or when I was made to do things no one should have to, or when I was threatened, or hurt, or left alone, or when I watched the hurt and the anger and the fear they told of ooze out of you.

Last night, I dreamt you gave me a flower not yet bloomed. You told me it would bloom in a month if I had no guilt and no shame. And when you told me, my heart sunk because I knew that this present, this child-flower, would not bloom because I'd be unable to get to that place. You told me if I'd been fair and honest, that the flower would bloom in a month, and my heart sunk further because I've been neither as fair or as honest as someone should. You taught me what wasn't fair and yet helped me believe it was and you taught me that truth should be held inside and that when it wasn't, it wouldn't be believed as truth anyway. 

 

And so I woke, aware that you'd set me up to see that you either believe me capable of tending that flower so that it grows or that you already know I'm incapable and just needed me to know with the definitive proof of the stunted flower. And my head begins the logic-driven task to determine which is true while my heart and body and soul are already busy figuring out how to let the flower die before it's begun to grow.

I learned that it is possible for something to die and that, in the death of the thing, something else can start to live. Because every lesson taught has at least two sides and many lessons are full of striations into which other layers leak.

I am afraid I won't be able to make the flower grow and that you'll know and be disappointed and I'm afraid that, should I figure out a way to make her bloom, that you'll still have the power to cut her down, pull her out, drag her by her roots up the stairs and throw her into the window where she'll die anyway. I'm afraid you'll still be able to neglect her into the place where she's alone when she really wants or needs company because she wants to feel love and support but expects love and support to feel like pain.

I'm watching the day break this morning. I'm thinking about how, years ago, I'd still be laying in bed, and you would put on your work clothes, covered in grease and full of holes, and sneak downstairs while it was still this dark and leave not long after and pull away. When you were gone, I'd sneak downstairs to soak in the rest of the breaking day. I learned the peace that is a morning alone by example. I've also learned that mornings are colder than any other time and that as we try to start ourselves up, many of us die because it takes a certain amount of energy to bring ourselves into the day with the sun. So I wonder if, like years ago, you are up early watching day break or if you are struggling to start up your engine on this cold morning, heartbroken.

 

 

 

 

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