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}

^{___________________________________________________________}

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

___________________________________________

 

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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Perspective

noun

• [mass noun] the art of representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other
• the appearance of viewed objects with regard to their relative position, distance from the viewer, etc.
• [count noun] a view or prospect.
• Geometry the relation of two figures in the same plane, such that pairs of corresponding points lie on concurrent lines, and corresponding lines meet in collinear points.
• a particular attitude towards or way of regarding something; a point of view
• [mass noun] true understanding of the relative importance of things; a sense of proportion
• an apparent spatial distribution in perceived sound.

Origin:
late Middle English (in the sense 'optics'): from medieval Latin perspectiva (ars) '(science of) optics', from perspect- 'looked at closely', from the verb perspicere, from per- 'through' + specere 'to look'

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/perspective

___________________________________

At 3 AM, pain is terrifying. When I wake during the 3 AM hour, as I have the last few evenings, curled into myself with my abdominal muscles (yes, even my fat body has them somewhere under the rolls) and my upper and lower legs in tight cramps, I'm terrified. I don't wake as though I've had a nightmare. I don't wake remembering anything from the dream I'd assume to be the cause. Still, I wake anxious and upset and hesitant to go back to the sleep I'd like to have assuming I'm able to straighten my body out in a way that the cramps can be eliminated.

When the alarm goes off at 5:55 AM, and I stand for the first time, I'm given an instant reminder of 3-something AM, courtesy of the then-tight muscles from a few hours before. I still don't have a sense of what started them curling in the middle of the night. I wake exhausted.

As I near 10 AM, sitting at work or doing whatever the weekend plans dictate, anxiety sneaks in.  Like the cramping, I don't have a sense of where it comes from. All I want to do is lay down. The 3-something muscle tightness is replaced by a pervasive dance of negative thoughts and fears and it becomes a 10-something tightness in my breathing. I find a full breath rather difficult unless I deliberately make an effort to breathe one. Shallow, nearly non-existent breathing is the default. It isn't that I can't breathe, it's that my body won't let me have a breath until I somehow will my body over my mind.

As I near mid-day, something in me eases. That ease becomes exhaustion by 2-something. By 3 or 4, the 10-something is back again and it fluctuates for the rest of the evening. As I start to feel sleepy, it eases, pushing me to get changed and head to bed. As soon as I lay down, 10-something is back until my body wins over my mind and the victory lasts until I wake up with it replaced by 3-something, when my mind controls my body against my conscious will.

From the lens I attach to my attempt at understanding, various pictures develop.  But what does one do when the camera that is your understanding is defective?  What if the tool to which you attach those lenses--the same tool you've been using since you've been 5--doesn't do a good enough job?  What if its perspective is too narrow or too toy or too old or too colored by someone else's vision? 

In truth, what happens is that a perspective emerges--a familiar perspective--and the familiarity of the perspective is comforting but the picture from that same perspective is upsetting. 

While I look for a new tool, I attach various lenses to the old one. 

Lens #1-- The sick lens
Lens #2-- The fat lens
Lens #3-- The flashback lens
Lens #4-- The overtired lens
Lens #5-- The you're-not-worth-more lens
Lens #6-- The mental-patient lens
Lens #7-- The bad-mattress lens
Lens #8-- The maybe-it's-job-stress lens
Lens #9-- The I'm-just-like-my-mother lens  
Lens #10-- The you're-just-dehydrated lens

When I look at 3-something AM through each, the images hold at least partial truth.  Almost without variety, though, the image snapped using each looks the same.  All capture something closer to waste film than an actual image.  And I recognize the familiarity of waste.  I collect them, add them to an old album, and turn page after page after page after page seeing the same thing.  It is this constant backdrop-- a constant story where dates and ages and times don't seem to matter as much as they should.  I view waste film. 

When the tool you have is defective but you're still looking to fix a problem, you first try different lenses.  When the different lenses don't work, you remind yourself the tool is broken and you set out for a new tool.  You carry the album with you.  Your body and mind try to find something in the waste film images, each working to different degrees at different moments, but nearly always resulting in the same picture. 

And believe me, please believe me, I do look for different tools.  I do look to be taught how to use different tools.  When I find them or use them they feel so wrong and I worry about offending the new teacher as I express doubt and so, I try to stay silent because offending opens options for the offended to retaliate against the offender and I am that person unless I'm quiet. 

Say nothing...always say nothing... or say it and then take it back.  Go back to your old tool.  Keep playing with different lenses... and remember insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, means you're either looking through lens #6 or lens #9. 

Metaphor

noun

• a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable
• a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract

Origin:

late 15th century: from French métaphore, via Latin from Greek metaphora, from metapherein 'to transfer'

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

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Always have soft mints on your table and an animal to pet.

I've been thinking about the metaphor of soft mints and pets for about a week now. When the phone rang last Monday morning letting me know Aunt Fran, at 92 years of age, had passed away less than an hour before, I felt relief on her behalf. After waiting 25 years to marry and having only 13 married years with my Uncle Bill before he died, I knew deeply that she longed to reunite. I watched the spirit gradually sneak from her eyes over the last few years. Though she never rushed away from this life, she carried a strong faith in the life waiting for her on the other end of here.

When I was younger, long before Aunt Fran lived in an assisted living facility near my parents' home, when she was still living in Philadelphia with Uncle Bill, we went to see them frequently. Aunt Fran would serve crackers of some kind and tiny glass bottles of 7-Up. My Uncle Bill sat in the other room smoking his pipe, a smell I still love. When we'd all sit in the living room, I sat one of two places-- either in front of the stairs to pet Max, the 'family dog' or in front of the coffee table from which I ate soft, pastel mints out of a glass dish.  I'd pet Max for a long time.  I believed he was real-- the alive at night kind of real.  I recalled him as a heavy, concrete statue that I never lifted.

I recall my brother and I getting dressed in our Halloween costumes and loading into the car to go see Aunt Fran and Uncle Bill, and later just Aunt Fran long after Uncle Bill's medical bed was removed from the dining room. We'd sit on her front porch and watch Philadelphia-- watch the neighborhood breathe in and out in a way that neighborhoods aren't living and breathing any longer. I'd run my hands up and down the iron railings, feeling the swirl of them twist my fingers. When we'd leave there, we'd drive to see her sister, my Grandmom Grove, where the scent of cinnamon brooms and Wizard air fresheners, in seasonal shapes, filled the air.

When Grandmom Grove died, my mother sent my brother and I to school on a half day before we'd return home to attend the funeral. When we left the funeral home for the cemetery loaded in the limo, I started to cry. It was Aunt Fran who put her arm around me and told me to let it all out.

Though I'd done reasonably well  maintaining composure this past week, the day of the funeral was far more difficult than I imagined it would be. I cried, quite hard, complete with giant tears and lip quivering. 

As I listened to the chaplain speak, and then my mother speak, and then recited along with the prayers, I thought of Aunt Fran's fascination with the sponge creatures that grow from tiny gel capsules and how she'd laugh at an Easter toy-- a bunny, that would hop until it would stop and do a back flip.  She laughed, surprised, every time. 

Sometimes I hear that laugh come out of me.  It is the only time I experience hearing someone else's voice come out of my own body.  But it is her voice-- her laugh.

At the service, the chaplain spoke of Aunt Fran's wit and hospitality, the warm twinkle in her eye, and her love of music and animals.  In a few short months, Aunt Fran passed on all the beauty of the things I loved most about her to the chaplain and many of the staff and residents of the hospice unit.

The mints and the pet, then. What of the mints and the pet metaphor?  

• Always have something soft for those you love.
• Expect that loved ones will be there but don't expect that they'll stay too long. 
• The longer, sometimes, you need to 'chew' on something, the more it 'sucks'.  Sometimes it's better just to get a taste of what you 'chew' on knowing that, when you'd like more, there are always more 'sucks' in the dish. 
• Stay 'fresh' and true to yourself.
• Smell like mint and you won't have to put up with the smell of other people's 'shit'. 
• Welcome people, unconditionally. 
• Believe in, and be, real.
• Sometimes we assume things heavier than they are because we are afraid to pick them up only to find later that they aren't.  And sometimes, it's all from the perspective of the moment. 

With Aunt Fran's passing, I've lost the last connection to family beyond the immediate family of my mother, father, and brother.  For 35 years, Aunt Fran has been a fixture in my life.  She's been what's made family time feel as you'd hope family time should.  She was a buffer-- a witty, sarcastic, tough-cookie buffer-- to my mother's interactions with me especially.

A couple years back, Kim and I went to my parents' house for Christmas Eve.  My father went to pick up Aunt Fran not long after we arrived.  It was, to say the least, a difficult evening.  My mother, exhausted and supremely over-medicated, continued to pass out and slur her words as she talked to us.  Not long after that, she got angry and stormed away to the bedroom.  We decided to make the best of it and try to have a peaceful, loving family dinner.  My mother ended up angrier that we would have dinner without her.  She screamed and yelled and turned into a person I remain terrified of.  I did my best to diffuse the situation.  Aunt Fran, sitting in the confrontation chair (the chair I would always sit in when I was 'brought up on charges' as a child) turned to me and said, as though she was five, "I'm afraid."  I told her I knew...I understood... and it broke my heart.

So, as I move forward, I'm going to try my best to remember that arm around me telling me to let it all out.  Because as much as I hear Aunt Fran's laugh slip out of my body every now and again, that day I heard my fear--my voice--slip out of Aunt Fran.

I'm going to do my best hold the metaphor of soft mints and pets.

P.S. After the funeral, we went with my parents to Aunt Fran's apartment to see if there was anything there I might want.  The only thing I knew I wanted, if it was still around, was Max-- the aforementioned 'family dog'.  He was still there, guarding the front door. He is not concrete.  When I first held him I was shocked at how little he weighed.  When I returned home with him later and picked him up again, he felt so much heavier.  'Weight' is part of the metaphor.   

P.P.S. Aunt Fran was buried wearing a wristlet of 6 pink roses-- one for each of her animal family members-- my brother's dog, our four cats, and Meg.  With Max, our family has grown by one, and he sits in my space.