They're Baaaaaack ...

The mind goblins have returned and with a rage. They’re sucking the joy and vitality out of me, cell-by-cell, fibre-by-fibre. My life has become a point of convergence of late, a convergence of several major life events. I feel stretched. I feel devoured. I feel dissolved, dissolved by the dark shadow, which the goblins cast over me. The goblins have encased me in an event horizon. No light can get out of me, or in me. And all I can do is take a short-acting Seroquel to weaken the horizon, then sit on the shower floor and sob hysterically while scalding hot water pelts down on my head. But I do have a love in my life, a passionate and gentle man. And for that I feel so very grateful.
If I had to imagine what a mind goblin would look like, this would come pretty fucking close ...


GOBLINS by ~fobiapharmer on deviantART

Nancy

I wrote the following about my sister, Nancy (from whom I was estranged for nearly 10 years prior to two weeks ago) in May of 2011. This girl is so very beautiful, inside and out. And a kind of soul mate. No words can convey how much love I have for her, and always had. I simply adore her. And that's an understatement. Best friend, comrade, confidante, sister ~ she is all these things to me. I am so happy to have her back in my life. This time I will not let go. 

You know that I love you? From the moment I first saw you, I loved you, a beautiful stranger, my sister. Even the very sound of your name, sparks my heart to skip a beat. Even when it's not you, but someone else with that same name. Yes my heart flutters at the very sound of your name, at the very thought of you, sister. Ah, but I, a mere child, and so naive, could not understand where you'd been, the things that happened to you, and the hatred and rage which festered in your heart. I grew up watching our mother grieve for you, her lost little girl. And, so, I could not imagine how you couldn't know that she loved you. I thought that love, mine, could make us sisters, real sisters, such as I never, ever had, but always dreamed about. How could I know that, some of that hatred and rage, you'd saved for me? How could I know, in my child-like way, that you hated me simply because I had what you did not ~ our mother? How could an awkward little girl like me envision myself a symbol of your painful, love starved childhood? I want to beg forgiveness for my childish naivety. I want to beg forgiveness for all the things your child-self suffered, in the absence of a mother. I want to beg forgiveness for every moment in your life that starved you from the most basic, life-sustaining element ~ love. But how should you forgive me, for the sins of others, others who have long left this earthly life? I want to understand this thing, this force, that both draws us toward and repels us away from each other. It defies logic. Love defies logic. And the more I loved, the stronger my anger became. Anger at your rejection of me. Anger at learning that love cannot and will not repair everything that has broken. You entered adulthood with a bruised and broken spirit, believing that blame would bring you healing. And when you finally found your scapegoats, did the healing begin? Only you can answer that question. Just as only you can reconcile the fact that you've spent so much time angry for the pain and deprivation of your childhood, time that you could have spent reveling in that one thing you have so longed for ~ a mother. I love you still. I suppose I never stopped, though I believed for a long time in the mutual exclusivity of anger and love. I suppose I had yet to learn that anger doesn't exist without love. Now I know. My heart has always had room enough for ambivalence. And so, I love you. Still. Even if only from afar.

Scintilla Day 14 ~ Out of Control

Image credit: Public Domain

This post inspired by The Scintilla Project's Day 14 prompt B ~ We exert control over ourselves and others in many ways. Talk about a time you lost that control. This can go beyond the obvious emotional control into things like willpower, tidiness, self-discipline, physical prowess… any time that you felt your autonomy slipping away.

I went around the bend. Like, completely loco. No shit. I'd waited, for four months I'd waited, for this day. And kicking myself, all the while, for having ever left him. I could't wait to feel myself back in his arms once more. Could. Not. Wait. The flight felt like a slow motion one. My extreme excitement and anticipation meant I felt waaaay to wired to sleep. And, then, finally, touch down. Mad exodus from the plain. Everyone. All at once. In a blur I make my way to the Border Control Immigration desk. The man behind the counter asks me how much money I have on me. I tell the truth and respond, "Oh, about a dollar." Wrong answer. 

So they pull me aside for further questioning. Something broke inside me. I could feel it, just feel that I would not get to stay, that what I'd waited for so long would slip through my fingers. I couldn't deal. Particularly since they put me in this room with glaring fluorescent lights, very uncomfortable plastic seats and a door that locks from the outside. I wait. And wait. And wait some more. They question me. They're mean, they crazy make just because they can. They send me back in the room. I start ripping the newspapers to shreds. Some Immigration Officer bitch comes into the room and tells me to stop. So I stop. And I go into the washroom, where I unravel the toilet paper and watch it spill in a pile onto the floor. I scream. I want a sharp object. Anything. Anything at all to stop this pain and torment bleeding into and through me. I'm out of control, mad as a hatter.

They kept me in detainment at Gatwick Airport for 26 hours before transferring me to a detainment centre, where I slept and slept before being sent back to Canada.

Colour

 Goethe's Colour Wheel

What is colour? Is it intrinsic to the object or a creation of neural processing? An article I found here entitled Colour Plays Musical Chairs In Our Brain intrigued me. 

"One view," says Noë, "is that color is a property of the surfaces of objects, not the property we naively think we see, but maybe something like a disposition to absorb and reflect light of certain wavelengths... another view is that... color happens to us. The leaves in the tree are not green. Greenness is just something that happens. In me it’s a kind of sensation that is produced thanks to the activation of my nervous system by those leaves." 

 So, what do you think? What is colour, anyway? 

Dear Sylvia

This post inspired by DVerse ~ write a poem about an imagined conversation/interaction with a famous and/or historical person of your choice.

image credit: Miss Cartier

"An owl's talons clenching at my heart." 

I have found no way out of the mind, either.

Did he annihilate you? Did he crush your flesh?

Why did you and I desire the thing 

that would destroy us

in the end?

Why?

Why did you do it?

When did 

thick and sluggish
cease to become
enough?

Why did so many people

fail you?

Why could no one

see

your despair anguish,

piercing through 

that veil of

paper thin feelings

which weighed so heavily 

in your mind and on your soul?
Could no one see through
the veil?
I think, perhaps, 
many,
finding it tiresome, 
chose not to.

How do we banish

that dark, shadowy thing

which lurks within?

Oh, how I wish

I could talk to you.

How I wish

I could 
touch you,
through your words,
sodden
with your pain.

Is it wrong of me,

is it schadenfreude
or perhaps, selfish,

to want to experience 

your pain and despair

through words
you've written

so that I feel

less solitary

in my own

pain and despair?

The Scintilla Project, Day 7

image credit: Rubber Slippers In Italy

This post is inspired by The Scintilla Project, day 7 prompts ~ (A). Write about someone who was a mentor for you and (B). What have been the event horizons of your life - the moments from which there is no turning back?

(A). Write about someone who was a mentor for you.
He watched me, from afar, for at least a year before we spoke, before we first met. I, a naive 17 year old catholic girl did not think it creepy to have a married man stalking me. In fact, it made me feel special, pretty, important. I liked the seemingly random sightings at the shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon. It didn't take me long to figure out his schedule and make sure to take the same bus home from school. Yes, I was still in school; grade 12 to be exact. An entire day centred around one very small moment, in which I walked past him on the bus. This stranger, he consumed me. Suddenly my whole life revolved around him, around his timeline. I never thought it dysfunctional. I never considered the appropriateness of a thirty-something year old married man making the moves on me, a 17 year old girl who'd never been kissed.

We met. In an instant he grabbed my heart with such a fierceness, never to let go. I loved him so intensely and obsessively. It hurt to love him. I raged at the confines of our relationship, caged as it was by his familial obligations. Parts of me wanted to let go. Most of me simply could not. I could not let go of this relationship anymore than I could survive without a heart beat. And so I hung on. And while I longed for some one true and steadfast, as I watched my friends, one by one, get married and have families of their own, this entrapment of a relationship felt quite safe to me. He never demanded sex, in the way that men do when they feel they've earned it. 

Going against his better judgement, he became my boss, creating a position for me in the government department branch which he headed. Windows had just come out. DOS was still the norm. Corel Draw was on version 3. He taught me all about computers, the nerdy nuts and bolts stuff like DOS lingo. He purchased my university text books. He proofread my essays, helping me streamline my writing. Looking back, I think he felt like more of a father figure/mentor than he did a lover. And I lied to myself, refused to believe that, as long as I remained, clutching onto him, waiting for his marriage to end, I would close myself off to any other possibilities, to any real chance at true love and devotion.

image credit: Tristam Sparks

(B). What have been the event horizons of your life - the moments from which there is no turning back?

The divorce became final on December 25th, 2011. We filed jointly. When we signed the various documents that filing entails, I knew in my heart of hearts that I'd reached the point of no return. We'd come to a mutual agreement that divorce seemed like the best step we could take to save the we of he and I. You see, divorce didn't end our relationship, it provided a new beginning. A new beginning at which I can no longer reach for that which dissolved into dust behind me. Martin and I see each other several times a week. We live in the same building, on the same floor. We share often share the supper meal together. He remains devoted, as ever, not really needing a piece of paper or jewelry to live monogamy. I realize, now, that he never, ever did.

Still. My divorce has been this dirty little secret I've chosen to reveal to very few people. As in, I could count the number of people on one hand. I so proudly displayed my married status on Facebook before the divorce. Now, though, I've chosen to leave that space blank. I do not feel pride in my status as divorced. In fact, I feel a spectre of shame wash over me whenever I think of myself as divorced. I failed the relationship. I could have done some things differently. I could have been less of a selfish and manipulative control freak. 

Guilt. That's one of those few Catholic remnants in me that refuse to die. Then there's belonging. Society tells those of us who aren't married that we don't belong. Marriage seems like a kind of society-sanctioned co-dependence ~ two become one. Co-dependency had a stranglehold on our marriage. It provided a vehicle for dysfunction to creep into the relationship. Divorce has sliced through all that. We're still together as a couple. We definitely still love each other. And we each have the solitude which our introverted selves require, solitude which tradition married life does not provide. This, I believe, strengthens our relationship. 

“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.” 
 ~ Katharine Hepburn

Scintilla Project Day 2

 

image credit: YamiCHi

This post is inspired by The Scintilla Project's Day Two prompt B ~ Tell the story about something interesting (anything!) that happened to you, but tell it in the form of an instruction manual (Step 1, Step 2, Step 3….)

Once upon a time I loved a psychotic narcissist. I loved him, despite his fits of rage which bordered on abusive, because I believed he filled an empty ache which plagued my spirit. He resembled a grenade with a loose pin. It took me five years to realize how he poisoned my spirit and psyche (and to realize just how abusive he really was!). In that time, I tried so hard to love him better, believing him when he told me, the fault lay within me. I came up with a list of instructions, instructions which answer the question, How do you love a man who resembles a grenade with a loose pin? 

1. Never contradict him, imply that he made a mistake, or imply his culpability in anything
2. The fault always lies with me, and I am eternally wrong and insufficient
3. When he tells me I'm free as a bird, he means a caged bird ~ I am his capture, and live only inside a bell jar of his creation
4. He feels satisfaction only when I behave myself in the bell jar ~ that means making him my world
5. Forget that, when he tells me he loves me, he means it in the same way a fashionista says she loves her shoes
6. Forget about the fact that, eventually his rage will drive him to kill me
7. Never mind that, when he does, he'll lay the blame on me
8. Leave him at my peril ~ when he feels abandoned by me, he'll unleash the full force of his unrepentant rage [see no. 6]
9. Cling to that fantasy-notion of him which I've conjured in my mind, forget about the monster, the grenade with the loose pin; make all the excuses I can for him and his monstrous behaviour
10. Believe his lies, never doubt him, even when I suspect or know of his dishonesty
11. When Police take him away because he is too drunk and belligerent, take that God-given opportunity to RUN, make a clean break from him

Sunrise

“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” 
~ John Muir

“What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out light?” 
~ Margaret Atwood

“You may not be down to your final heartbeat, but you may be down to your last paycheck, solution, or thimble of faith. Each sunrise seems to bring fresh reasons for fear”
~ Max Lucado