Today is June 8, 2015. I am alive and well.

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The feather of my finger drags across the dusty entertainment center. It’s time. I use a cloth to wipe the dust off the furniture. I let it get so bad so as to see a definite difference between dirty and clean. I do this with the tile floors, also. I am a down on my knees kind of woman, using my hands, sponge attached, to mop the floor minus the mop.

There’s always something other to do the clean the house. There’s always something to do then go to coffee with friends. I covet time alone, wishing there were more hours in the day, wishing that my nighttime medication wouldn’t make it so hard to wake up. I try to sleep ten hours. Even this is hard. Left with no place to go, I would sleep sixteen hours. My pillow is always wet in the morning because my meds make me drool. I can’t believe I just told you I drool. Sometimes, I wake briefly and think I am drowning in my own saliva. I am a corpse who dreams through the night. Still. Silent. The bedroom places her hands on me. I am safe.

I make a mental note to schedule coffee with friends. Once at the coffee house, I am ecstatic to see them. They are an arm to reality for me. They help me to actively love. Love becomes a word of action. Love is not static.

I sat to type this with no idea in mind. Might as well begin with a dirty house that I pressured into becoming clean. Do I think blankets have life? Are they glad when I shake them out? Does the toilet breath a sigh of relief? These things are fun to think about. This type of thinking allows me to appreciate and respect  the things I have. My bedroom does breath, this I believe. My sanctuary is complete with cats, books, a dresser, a bed, and a desk.

Th

Today is June 6, 2015. I am alive and well.

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The following is an excerpt from my second book. I still have yet to come up with a title. The danger of posting from my book is that I could do a repeat post because I don’t keep very good track of things. Hopefully, this is not the case. Annie, one of my cats, is tiptoeing around the key board. This always makes me nervous. Both Grams and Annie always seem to want my attention when I’m working on the computer. It does make me happy, though, that they want my attention. They are not very aloof and like to give me kisses.

Excerpt–

Being alone is not lonely. I actually don’t have enough time by myself. Things pop up like that pop up game at the carnival where the point is to hit the pop up quickly before another pop up makes itself known.

I want to sit here writing this, but must leave for the grocery store soon. I am hungry and in need of food. And then there is toilet paper, paper towels, and laundry detergent to buy. I hate having to buy these things. i romanticize mom being here to buy these things for me. Back in the day. Ha.

Being responsible for myself has been like shining my black boots before they crack. It is a desire to take my medications properly. I am amazed that my brain has been following my wishes and that I even have the wish to stay sane. Hospitals comforted me at times. The stress of daily life was not a part of the psychiatric unit.

In considering the stress of daily life, I find myself immune to it most days. I am a willow, God resting in my limbs. I know my anatomical body can no longer grow. Height is not something I covet physically, but is something I covet spiritually.

I have a great deal to learn about God, or maybe I have nothing left to learn about God. The thing I know best is God is.

I still have times where I quiver with anxiety. A bad pitch can cause a home run. A lesson learned can elevate my spirit. A swimmer lagging 10 yards behind can suddenly be given a burst of every, out touching her competitors. To quiver with anxiety feels impossible to control. I feel blinded from light, but am able to peacefully center myself in darkness like a four-year-old watching a three-D movie who later leaves the dark theater with her glasses on because she believes her eyes are expensive and the glasses help protect them. Sight can be costly. Sight is always followed by bliss. This I have learned.

Today is May 31, 2015. I am alive and well.

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I was in bed for three days with a bad cold. Fever that made me sweat and gave me chills, body ache, sore throat, exhaustion. I was so tired that I told a friend in a text that I could not text because texting was too tiring. These three days reminded me of the two years I spent in bed at my grandmother’s eating chocolate cake and cheese danish and showering every other week.

These two years had me trapped beneath a stone slab laying on my chest and abdomen. It cracked, releasing me when I needed to go to the toilet or eat. On my trip to the bathroom, I ignored my reflection in the mirror, knowing it would only prove how dismal I felt and how hollow eyed I was.

I was so sensitive to sound that my grandmother’s foot steps down a carpeted hall drove me to madness. I wanted to shout at her “please stop walking and learn to fly” knowing she would do her best to step silently. As for flight, well, that belonged to another reality, another space and time. My grandmother would have done anything to make life more bearable for me, thus the chocolate cake and cheese danish.

I spent two years reading suspense novels, falling asleep to the murder of Joe and Alice, only to wake miserable once again, seeking solace in the world of books.

So having this cold frightened me. I thought how easy it would be to let the stone slab slip into place; armor against an unknown world. I had to remind myself that those two years were sixteen years behind me; lost to the ragged T-shirts I would put on one on top of the other hoping to mask my body odor.

It amazes me how true it is that our bodies hold memories. My body remembers that painful time of wishing I would die because I could not cope with the sun, I could not cope with waking, I could not cope with my grandmother loving me so much as to not be critical of the fact that I could not leave the house.

And then I left the house. I have had sixteen years of leaving the house. There is joy in my life today. Life is a steady stream of occurrences. I eat salmon and green salads. I bathe regularly. Simply said, I love. I love the way the breeze moves over my skin. I love the touch of my friends as we embrace, which will repeat itself the next time we meet.

My grandmother is dead now, but I love the way I can hold her memory in my palm, hear her feet sliding over the carpet, stare at her photo, knowing she is not missing but rises with me as I leave the house.

(I promise my next blog won’t be so long!)

Today is May 25, 2015. I am alive and well.

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Just for fun!……

The napkin is lovely, large white and starched. The napkin comes alive, quietly catching food. It earns its name. The work is easy; my lap is flat.

I ordered a veggie burger with sautéed mushrooms, sauteed  onions, and avocado–all on a bun that half ass does its work. I sympathize though, the burger hangs over the edge. How can a bun control a burger when the burger is larger than the bun?

I like restaurants. They are unencumbered by sun. They are off the beaten trail of masses of people all carrying keys to important buildings.

The restaurant I frequent is dimly lit with high ceilings and gorgeous chandeliers that do their work. The energy is one of “aim to please” with happy folks dipping into salsa or devouring sweet corn cakes.

A child cries. The parent can’t control the kid even though the parent’s bum is larger than the child.

The child is loud. The conversation I’ve been eavesdropping on is washed away. I will not find out who Mary is in all of this.

I finish my food with a gulp of water, ask for the check and thank the waitress. I am leaving full. The entree has done its job. It’s wonderful to be around things that work.

I cut my nails too short and am unable to pick the quarter up off the table. The quarter can’t work if it stays on the table. I ask the bus boy to please take the quarter. He does. All is right in the world.

Today is May 17, 2015. I am alive and well.

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I’ve been reading about female executions. Morbid. Yes. what is my fascination with violence and wrong doing? I slow when there is a car accident, wondering if I will bare witness to tragedy.  I realize that millions of people have asked this same question. And oddly enough, there is no real answer.

I have never seen anyone beaten or murdered. The only dead bodies I’ve seen are my parents and grandmother.

My mother was at rest in a hospital bed, her toes well manicured and painted red. Liquor had claimed her liver. Jim Beam had been her best friend, then later her executioner. Her death was sudden like crumpled paper with a bad idea written on it. When the nurse removed her oxygen mask, it took about a minute for her to die. It was a quiet night, nothing spectacular was happening in the hospital. I kissed her forehead and said goodbye, said I would see her on the other side.

And then there was my grandmother. I had just left the nursing home. Ten minutes later, I got the call that she had died. Her last words to me were “where are we going to find you another guy.” WIth her last breath she was thinking of me. Her body did not look natural. Her face was stuck in a yawn. I stayed and cried by her bedside for an hour, hoping my tears would wash her awake like bleach taking out the stubborn stain.

A heart attack killed my father instantly. It wasn’t like a bee sting where you can remove the stinger. In the emergency room, hospital staff had not removed the breathing tube they had shoved down his throat with the hope to resuscitate  a dead body. I’m still mixed by my father’s death. During football season I still think we can talk football–a phone call away. Him forever silent on the other end like a kid who dropped the can on the string, frustrated with the lack of conversation.

So how did I get from executed woman to the dead bodies of my family? Death binds them.  Death is not a subtle hand. In executions, it is immediate unless the blade is bot sharp enough, the noosed not right, the torture of limbs being torn apart on the stretch rack, slowly. There are numerous ways to kill a person, none of them decent.

I’m glad my loved ones did not suffer. I sleep hoping they visit me in my dreams. I wake hoping I will feel them by my side. Death is permanent, and yet ongoing. My cats see them. They wash over me like a cashmere blanket. I love. I love.

Today is May 9, 2015. I am alive and well.

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Saturday morning. I’m on the treadmill at the gym taking care of cardio. I see him from the corner of my eye. When I shift my view to full frontal, it is not him. I remind myself that he is in Florida with the other woman. I still fluctuate between sadness, anger, and acceptance. If a tulip could talk, she would be angry from being pulled from the earth, sad that she is no longer rooted, but pleased she could show off her bulb in a beautiful bouquet of a variety of flowers.

I am moving through life as a single woman. Stress moving. It has been a year since he left me. I marvel often at how well I am doing without him. My movement takes me to the grocery store on my own where I buy spaghetti squash and blueberry jam, washed spinach and almond butter. I no longer need to buy with him in mind.

He asks me if I’m over him. Answer, no. He is deep under my skin. I find no reason to tug him off my bone. He is my friend, never to return as partner or lover. Damage does not make this possible. Water can be frozen. I am the cube in the ice tray. Warmth can return me to water. My fluidity circles friendship, circles love. The tips of my fingers tingle as I pet Grams and Annie, their cute cat selfs impossible to ignore.

I am a woman with a great many friends. The kind of friends who would walk through mud for me, and I for them. The kind of friends who cup my tears and then show me how to dry my hands.

He is one of these friends. I have quit trying to explain my love for him. It just is and I am glad for it.

Today is May 2, 2015. I am alive and well.

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I had a schizophrenic moment today. Yesterday, I put in new air filters. Today, I wondered if I put them in the right airflow direction, thinking that I didn’t and that I was breathing polluted air. Today, I thought because I had to jam them in that they are set to high and will catch on fire. I called Scottie for reassurance that all was well. I am somewhat reassured.

Paranoid, obsessive thinking is like gravel against the eardrum with a cockroach tucked in making a bed for himself. It is like a scratch on a CD of Green Day replaying the same “Fuck” while my car is stuck in the middle of a car wash, the thick ropey things surrounding all four sides so I can’t see out. It is thinking over and over again that one of my cats is going to get stuck outside in a hailstorm. My cats are indoor cats and I live in Arizona.

Most of the time I am free from obsessive thinking, so when it is happening it is five times as worse as it could be because it is so unfamiliar. Thank God when it slides out the side of my mouth and disappears in the  ether.

Paranoia is paralyzing. To date, I have been able to leave my house and enter the world for sometime. I don’t take entering the world for granted. I feel I am blessed every time I do. There are so-so days. And there are the glorious days. So-so when I swim through the tasks I have, leaving a tray of bubbles to pop behind me. Glorious are the days when the love I have for people and the love they have for me consistently causes small, silent eruptions; a Gerber Daisy pushed form the earth, tulips pushed from the earth.

Maybe you have noticed in some of my blogs I throw a word in that doesn’t quite make sense but the word sounds right. I think sound drives writing 25% of the time. With that, I’ll spring up, comforted by the fact that my bed is unmade and I can roll right in, covers up to my chin.

Today is April 18, 2015. I am alive and well.

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The poems that follow I wrote with Guy in mind when he was still in my life. Now that I have no lover, I wonder if I will  make one up and continue to write love poems. An imaginary lover would certainly cause me no  grief, unless of course I imagined he did. Ha. My intention is to have no lover in my life for a long time. I need time to just chill, as my niece would say. I toast to “chill in.” I can do this.

Love

She doesn’t know how the drapes came to be zippered shut. But they did. And locked. His light got tied behind his ears. The ball cap helped keep it in place. So when she met him that day for lunch, she was blind to the beauty he offered. No light pushed the sounds of love forward onto her plate of food. The meat was tough and the barbarian within signaled to her to take it into her own hands. Bite hard and pull ferociously at what remains outside the mouth. Just yesterday she accused him with small words of cheating. He assured her with bigger words that was not the truth. At lunch it became all too much and he cried tears onto wilted lettuce. They left for home without eating, her hand in his. She doesn’t know how the drapes came to be open.In tender light she lifted her skirt and invited him to come home.

Pre-Dawn

The sun has not dreamt itself awake, yet. Nor do I hear through the open window the excited nature of birds announcing dawn.

The microwave has quit its pulse. I hear you pull your bowl of oatmeal from its stomach the other side of the bedroom door. As with most mornings, I stretch my body the length of the horizon across the bed. Somewhere in the dark are the little dogs. I imagine their eyes open to the soft dark as mine are, wonder which God they embrace instinctively upon awakening. Breeze flutters through the window, stories my shin.

You crack the door, whisper “I love you” knowing I hear, knowing I pretend sleep, knowing you won’t resist that first impulse to tickle the arch of my foot…..you don’t . I laugh. Time pauses. And then there are birds, always birds.

Today is April 9, 2015. I am alive and fairly well.

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My writing has been as bad as a bat without night vision, his echolocation** not working. He doesn’t leave the roost in his cave dwelling for fear of running into a city building downtown. He’s afraid he won’t be able to make his way back before dawn, dawn the time all bats fear; the time the predators are out.

I would like to take flight as bats do. They’re the only mammals that fly. They leave in colonies and have harems. There is no war with bats, no jealousy, no fight to find the best roost or the prettiest female. In some places, people consider these fuzzy creatures a sign of bad things to come. In other areas, bats are thought to be good luck.

Night shades me. I like to walk out into it, leaving the light at home on for the cats, Grams and Annie. NIght allows the moon to wake and the sun to sleep. Eventually, I return to my bed and sleep, dreaming of gold coins.

Then comes dawn. I awake paranoid, afraid to begin the day before me. Like the bat, I oftentimes feel unsafe in light. The light is strong. If I turn it on myself, I recognize that I radiate like a gold coin, still, on the light gray concrete. I walk out and reach for the coin. Viola! I am past the threshold of my home, out the heavy door, the door heavy like stone, to heavy to break down. I am safe in my home. But I radiate outside. I mustn’t forget this. I mustn’t forget that I live.

**Echolocation is the process of using sound waves to locate surrounding objects. Among other things, it is how bats find insects.

Today is March 28, 2015. I am now 51, alive and well.

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There she was in the library. About four. Wearing a red tutu with little shoes that had lace socks frothing over the top. Her brown hair hanging straight down from her center part. She says to her mother, “I want a real movie.” I think, “what does that mean? No more Toy Story? No more Shrek?”

How do we lose our innocence? And what does that even mean? Is it when we are exposed to sex and violence? When good does not always win out over evil? I was about seven when I walked in on my parents having sex. I thought my father was killing my mother based on the fact of my mother’s moans. I ran away across the house, hiding in my closet. When the closet is not hiding monsters, it always seems like the safest place to be. I can’t remember if either of them came to find me. I am certain I emerged for dinner and was pleasantly surprised to see mother tossing a salad with tomatoes and avocado.

Still around seven-years-old, my parents took me and my younger sisters to a drive in theater to watch Death Wish. Death Wish has a violent rape scene within the first fifteen minutes of the movie. I remember feeling shame for my father for making such a bad choice in movies. Shame–maybe that’s what stole my innocence like that first paper cut…paper no longer just something to write on.

I don’t know if the little girl got her “real movie.” I do know how real Pinnochio is. Hopefully, the little girl will learn that things are not always as they seem. Good is not always good, and bad is not always bad and hopefully any confusion works itself out like a tortoise with its head out, waddling its way on a muddy sidewalk. Smell the mud. The mud is real. What better to enliven the senses than earth? Earth always has a way of being innocent and not innocent in the same breath. Allow the sun to harden the mud, the mud to crack, and then be washed away by a hose, leaving the sidewalk friendly. It really does all come out in the wash. I remember the froth of the lace socks. That is innocence.