2013 In Review

With 2014 upon us, I can hardly believe 2013 has passed. This is a 1 minute short I made as I contemplated my very own 2013. 

2013 has been a year of growth, sometimes, but not always, painful. It has been a year of reconnection with my family, in particular my siblings, because my oldest brother fell critically ill. It has been a year of endings, of letting go. Letting go of many of my fears. Letting go of the man I married 16 years ago. Letting go of the pain of the past. 

It has been a year of beginnings ~ I met a man that totally rocks my world. It has been a year of realization for me, of realization of the world around me and that helping others and making things happen is the best antidote for despair and loneliness. I began to take the walls around me ~ ones which I'd erected ~ down: I reached out and made myself a part of an anti-oppression, anti-violence-against-women movement. I decided I wanted to do more than consume this world: I want to make it prettier, more compassionate, and cleaner than it was when I found it. 

I saw my Mum for the first time in five and a half years and I mended fences with a beloved sister after 10 years of estrangement. I extended forgiveness to someone who, so many years ago, had done something unthinkable; this felt so freeing. I learned the meaning of "Love is Louder." 

And that man, that man who totally rocked my world? Well, he’s still doing it. And sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve him. And sometimes I pinch myself, to convince myself this isn’t a dream, that it’s really real, that he’s really real. Because, in so many ways, he feels like magic.



2013 In Review, Redux from Ophelia's Dreams on Vimeo.

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.

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

No Words

I cannot go on like nothing has happened. Because something has happened. 26 lives were taken, 20 of them tiny lights that had barely begun burning, and 6 of them teachers, wives, daughters, aunts, mothers, sisters, friends. We are NOT supposed to worry about our children's' safety when they are at school. Children should not feel unsafe at school. Children should not worry about the bad guy coming back to get them. Parents should not survive their children. This is so wrong, so against nature. I watched the news coverage Friday evening, and it gave me chills. It also left me feeling so incredibly sad.

image credit: greenleaf-stock

This is not the time to talk about gun control, or about the social and moral underpinnings of society or about this culture of violence that seems to have swept across society. This is a time to grieve. Plain and Simple. 40 parents are reeling from the loss of their 6 or 7 year old child. Wrap your head around that. Hug your children and other loved ones. Remember the reason for the season. (Hint, it's not presents or shopping or amassing more and more stuff.) Love. Just love.

The Passage of Time

I've waited ... waited for so long. Four long years. In some ways I find it hard to believe that much time has passed. In others, each moment of each day of each year has felt infinite. My bag has been packed for 2 days now, except for the small last minute bits. I have only 2 more sleeps until I fly. I keep looking at the clock this evening, as though that will speed up time. Time feels sluggish. And it grows more sluggish with each glimpse at the clock.

I Am Still A Child

I made some arrangements with my parents, who live three provinces away, for today---Thursday. When these did not happen, I called Mum and Dad. They weren't home. Since my dad's stroke 4 years ago (from which he recovered excellently, you wouldn't really know he ever had a stroke) he can no longer drive, and so my parents have sort of become homebodies ... in Winnipeg you cannot go far without a car when you are an octogenarian. That's simply the nature of Winnipeg. And so if I call them and they are not home, I wait a half hour and call them again. If they don't answer, I start getting worried, envision myself telephoning the hospitals' patient enquiry numbers and having the operator forward me to a nursing station, where a nurse tells me something utterly devastating, which I find myself unable to handle because I am so far away and feel so helpless and do not by any stretch of the imagination feel ready to lose my parents. {whew that was a long sentence, wasn't it?} Well, I feel very grateful for mobile phones, because that is how I reached my dad on his, to find out they had an outing to the shopping centre this afternoon and were about to call my uncle for a ride back home.

How quickly my imagination runs away on me, totally red-lining it, nearly sending me into an emotional tail spin! The bottom line is I love my Mum and Dad loads and loads and losing them is my greatest fear. When I start to think how it will be like, how it will feel, I get anxious, and a suffocating darkness seizes my soul. A friend of mine once told me, "Roxanne when you lose your mother, you're gonna lose your mind." He based that simply on the ease and depth and intensity of my telephone conversations with her, during the few months he couch-surfed at my flat. No truer words were spoken. However, just because I don't have really long, intense, heart-to-heart conversations with my Dad, doesn't mean I don't love and cherish him just as much. In fact I was a daddy's girl growing up. And still am. In many ways my heart belongs to him, and his to me. Every day I am thankful that I still have my parents: many people at my age (43) do not. I am thankful that I have generous, loving and supportive parents. I miss them loads and loads. And I cannot ever take them for-granted. Ever.

NaNoWriMo, Working in My PJs, Joan Didion and Thoughts on Motherhood

OMG!!! I am some kind of mental .... I've just signed up for NaNoWriMo; I even have a story idea. Woah. You know what's even crazier? That I'm sort of excited about it. I'm also excited about the fact that I've designated tomorrow a stay-at-home day; that's code for I get to stay in my pyjamas all day and work on editing a sh!t-load of photographs and film clips. I might even squeeze some writing in there, somewhere. I read this article about Joan Didion late this afternoon. One of her quotes really resonates with me: I don’t think anybody feels like they’re a good parent. Ouch. Secretly, I fear that I wasn't a really great mother, that I don't have as much to do with my son's success as a human being as I would like to believe. I want one of these. I wonder if the landlord would bend the rules for me. I've been thinking of a Frappuccino all day today. Grrrrr. I'm tired and I have 37 pages to read.

This guy is hilarious. Check him out if you haven't already. (Don't bother if you hate profanity).

image credit ~ Sloth by Mandy Jansen

Day 161

I find myself caught in a maelstrom ~ a beautiful maelstrom ~ the maelstrom of my heart, a heart lined with raging and monstrous love for you. Desperation clamours inside me, foaming inside my every cell, lining my mouth with an acrid taste. Sitting at the mouth of cavernous deception, I have only my own cold self denial to wrap myself, and I savour the stinging as it whips itself across my cheek and into my eyes.

I try standing, I try taking flight, only to fall. Backwards, backwards I stumble, and then, flinging myself far from the barbed ramparts of your stormswept and leaden heart. Backward has become my only way forward. But I feel afraid, and cannot deaden the howling of my heart, which has cleaved itself to yours, and refuses to release itself. And so I turn around, delicately place the veil of courage around my heart, and then creep across this web of grief I have woven for myself.

Cataclysm

I did not see you. Until we collided. In a most breath-taking and explosive way. It tasted of piquant, wrapped in a droplet of nectar. Maniacally, we plunged into one another. Our union, so fierce and forceful, the ground around us shook. Your kisses resurrected me; what delicious anguish, my rebirth. I wanted to drink you, eternally. But, cruelly, you would not let me. I craved your fiery and frightening essence. With each breath, a new lesson. With each teardrop, a new cleansing. And now, like any cataclysm, this us has evaporated, leaving, forever altered, the topography of my heart.

Day 137

I cannot count it, the many hopeless nights when my shadow searched for yours. You thought to punish me, by removing yourself, leaving me filled with this, an insatiable hunger for absolution. I would burn away the world, to feel your lips passionately pressed against mine. And, so, I remain frozen, in footsteps untaken … our footsteps. And I ask myself, was that Dangerous Angel real? Then I feel a familiar ache, the ache of scars not quite healed. And I tell myself the purpose of scars: to remind us that the past was, indeed, real.

Day 135

From the moment I first laid eyes upon you, I felt my heart in danger … in danger of betraying itself. In danger of loving you, my beautiful and dangerous angel. In loving you so intensely and obsessively, I expressed some sentiments which I can never, ever take back. And my soul, it flew from my lips before I even realized you’d captured it.

A Thing Called Truth

Empty-handed, I turn up empty-handed, when I attempt to dissect my true feeling at this moment. How can I dissect nothing? I ask the question, only to receive an answer filled with silence. I shudder to think how deeply into the bowels of my pysche I may have to dig in order to locate truth. And, will I know it when I’ve found it, this alien thing called truth? And what shall I do, when finally, I find myself face-to-face with this thing called truth? Perhaps I shall pluck it out of myself, perhaps it holds the seed of this restlessness, of this complete absence of tranquility in which I find myself? There seems no way that I can disengage the sharp tines of this immense dullness which presses against my heart. No way except for waiting. Waiting.

Drunk with Rage

I wonder, always wonder, when we will have our last goodbye. I shudder to think, perhaps we have already had it? No, I choose to believe we will meet again. Until then, I remember you, my dangerous beauty, drunk with rage ~ a beautiful, broken piece of art. My art ~ beloved.

The Beauty of a Broken Thing

I feel a deep, yet dull, sadness  when I think of you ~ a hollow man, a black hole that devours everything substantial in its path. When sparing my life meant leaving you, my heart felt as though it dried up. You remain, to me, a question without an answer, a perpetual white-hot flame burning my heart, from the inside, out, and eating away at my soul. So many times you left me, leaving only your enormous absence. What of our love, if such a fragile entity ever existed? I cannot say, because putting it into words would only destroy any meaning of what lay between you and I.

I have tried to burn up my memories of you, of us. But the ashes only reconstituted themselves back into memories, each time rendering themselves more difficult to burn than before. When I ponder the beauty of broken things scattered across the formless soul of our union, I see so clearly that the broken thing is you, and not our relationship, not our love. Our love distills itself down to my love. A broken you has no capability of love. And love cannot, does not, ever break itself. Your inherent pollutants consumed you long before you entered my heart and my life. No matter how much I loved you, I could never fill the vortex inside you. No one could.

Train Wreck?

Loving you broke me wide open, like a shattered incandescent light bulb. My pain crept among the strewn wreckage, feeding itself, like a parasite. Loving you, I could not tell the difference between reality and the creations of my own heart. Such darkness enveloped me, so much so that I could only sit and wait for my pupils to dilate. And by the time I could see in that awful darkness, I had already begun to bleed, having cut myself on your barbed, razor-sharp thirst. I saw myself, taciturn, brooding, and waiting for exsanguination.

I tried to love you better with my mind, which I had stuffed like a barn full of impotent ideas and logic. No amount of armour could save me, could close the wound out of which my life force flowed so freely. This type of death has no smell. The end has long come and gone.

The sun has sliced through your thirst, severing it. And reviving me. I like to think that my wound has healed, leaving only a scar as its legacy, your legacy. At times I don’t feel so sure ~  down to the marrow of my bones, I still feel your absence. Perhaps that’s what this scar is ~ a physical membrane, an ugly container for my various perceptions of your absence?

Day 105

I’ve written you a letter. I wonder how long I’ll keep it at my bedside before mailing it. You’re frightening beauty lingers in my heart.

Language of My Heart

I tell myself that you led me astray, that I got lost, being with you. Forgetting my own language just to speak to you, I lost myself in translation. And, now, without you, I try to find myself. I have no map, no co-ordinates. The information flows within me. So, I cut myself and watch me bleed. Feeling pain, watching the blood flower out of me, gaudy as poppies, seems like a worthy remedy for this swarm of nothingness that makes me feel hollow inside. I think of running, but can’t seem to get away from myself, in order to find myself. I long for the city, long for its feverish streets, that make me forget what I do not want to remember. There you’ll find me walking down a road called despair, suffocating in the thick air, with concrete blocks for feet.

Day 95

Do you belong? You have such brilliance and frightening beauty that you almost seem …. out of this world.