So much I find myself having an issue… I am crawling my way to being healthy and a “successful ” person. For me it is a constant struggle. It means that I have to put the work I do creatively in the world. I face rejection. Ok, you say, and?… Well it comes down to what kind of day I am having. And I know that I am not alone. I so often on bad days convince myself that two monkeys with typewriters could write better than I do. And I won’t even get started with my art. It isn’t just depression, it is self worth. If you spend your whole life hearing that your opinion is not worth a damn then eventually… You believe it. This is not something that you can just get over! This requires you to retrain yourself to believe that you matter. That the systematic erosion of your dreams and desires was not in fact truth. That you can make a difference in this all too dark world. So if I seem to be attention seeking with my art or my writing… It is not because I am actually attention seeking.. It is likely that I am losing the fight that day against seeing myself as worthy of doing it at all that day. Please don’t hold it against the writing or the art.
Category: Life
Marriage
Now some would say that I don’t have room to discuss this topic. I am 41, nearly 42 and I have never been married. I will very likely never marry. I have been seeing the same man for twenty, Nearly twenty one years. We started off with an open relationship…not because I was unwilling to commit, but because I was willing to allow him time to decide if I was what he wanted.Don’t think that it was all one sided. I just was willing to wait for the commitment of my dreams. See I was very young and open minded. I wanted one marriage and all the trimmings. I was desperately in love with him and decided that I could be flexible to get my dreams. I learned the hard way that dreams rarely come in the form we think that they will. Does that mean I am unhappy? No. I have someone I love, who has loved me for over 20 years. I decided I was not going to ever divorce, so that meant being sure when I did marry, If I ever did, that it was something that I was sure of.
That being said, I find that too many people end up rushing to get married. Trying to get that paper declaring their relationship before they are even sure if the relationship will last. So they find that they are often unaware of what their partner is even like. Those flaws that people hide while dating. I firmly believe that a couple should live together for at least a year. The blinds come down when in such close confines. The pagan hand-fasting is for a year and a day. If at the end of that year and a day you are still interested in the marriage it is redone. For the death do us part kinda thing.This makes sense. Marriage is more about compromise than anything, and unfortunately most people don’t do this. It ends up being one person dominating and one submitting. While that can be kinky and fun, a real world relationship cannot survive if there is no give and take. Support must happen from both partners. {Note this is coming from someone with 20+ years of seeing what makes it work} If only one is supporting then the foundation of the relationship erodes. Both need to know the other cares and is still interested.
Love and sex are two different areas…I know a lot of people fail to realize this. Sex can happen without love, and Love without sex…but a marriage (or a relationship that is like marriage) will not last long if either is missing. If he/she does not excite your passion, then why would you hang around, same can be said if the love is no longer a part of the equation. All of these require one thing…communication. Talk to your partner, about everything…Honestly. If you hate something that they do and you don’t say anything then it will be impossible for them to compromise. Same thing if they come to you and are telling you that they feel like something you do is bad. In example…I am a writer. so if my Joe didn’t like my writing,(actually he loves it, but using an easy example here) then I could as a compromise offer to do this during a time when he was not around. Or to go to another room. Simple compromises help to keep things together.
Still sometimes compromise is impossible and relationships fail. And in that case, It merely means you were not suited to each other. It means it is time to dust yourself off and try again. Love exists to brighten our lives, not to trouble it. ❤
Peace
Those who don’t know me may not understand this. I am a pacifist. I really and honestly believe that violence does not solve anything. To my mind, violence only exacerbates any situation and makes it worse. That being said, I am deeply worried about the state of affairs in the United States. I feel like we went from the melting pot to the boiling pot overnight. I worry that the suicide rates will go up with this revelation of the new president and of the hardships we as a nation will be facing for the next four years. Don’t get me wrong. I am scared. But allowing fear to overtake me solves nothing.
We have to recover from the shock, and start to put our brains to use. This country is still the same, even if it feels different. There is laws to prevent the abuse I am seeing reports of on social media. There are places still to assist you if you are in danger. No one has the right to harm another person, no matter what the people who follow the hate believe. Practice Kindness. It is needed now more than ever. Do art! Please put more beauty into this ugly world. Speak and write truth, even if it is disguised as fiction. We have so much ugly in the world, that many believe that is how things have to be…show them that it is only one way. Violence is NEVER the answer, and we as a species need to find out what is. Please be good to each other. ❤
Broken concept
Ok… Let’s stop right now. The use of the word bored. I had someone who I dearly love use this word recently and it stuck in my craw. Boredom is a flawed concept. There is always something that you can do to engage the mind. As the parent of a very active pre-teen, this is a lesson I have tried repeatedly to ingraine. Money doesn’t have to be a block either. Oh you are broke? Is there a library or a park near you? Well those are usually free. Nature walks allow time for contemplation. Also one could gather supplies to do simple crafts (easily found via the Internet…) I am not saying crafting is for everyone. I did a I’m bored jar for my girl… Slips of paper to give her ideas. If she said that she was bored then we would draw out a slip and do what was on it. Not all were fun…
Here is some examples..
1. Sweep all of the floors in one room.
2. Play half an hour of a video game.
3. Read for thirty minutes.
4. Color one page in a coloring book.
5. Draw a picture…
6. Write a story /poem
7. Walk at least fifteen minutes, take notice of all of your surroundings.
8. Do a craft… Any craft.
9. Listen to music and dance…
10. Write a letter to someone.
These are merely some possible ideas. We play d&d, so another option is to find a group of players and start an adventure. Most libraries offer free Wi-Fi for card holders. There is many places to get free books for the Kindle app(which is available from the play store for Android, not sure on Apple)…. Bookbub, bookgorilla, and a few others. So even if you can’t do borrowing from the library there is a way for free books. If you message a writer on Twitter or Facebook, and offer to review for the chance to read it… Well some will be willing to do it. Check your community for free events. Home depot and lowes both have a craft each month that is free for kids. I think that they also have ones for adults. Saying that you are bored is in my opinion denoting a bit of a lack of imagination. Let’s not have that!
Dear Mama
Dear Mama,
I love you. All that I have ever wanted was to feel like you were proud of me. I tried to be who you wanted. I found that didn’t work. Then I tried being myself. I found that I was happier, but you still were not proud of me. Mama I am fourty one, and I have succeeded. I am published. I am usually a happy soul. Yet when I fall, and I do occasionally fall. It is your voice in my ear, telling me you expected it all along. When I get rejected for my poetry, (as rejections are normal for the writer to recieve) that everyone else would tell me I wrote so well? I hear you telling me that you didn’t want to hear it because of how depressing it was.
Mama, I have published five volumes of poetry, three children’s books, and a novella. You know that family have hardly even acted like it mattered? I am doing what I told you I wanted to do at nine. I am a writer. So I may never be a novelist, children’s books still need written. I have never asked for much. Just a hey, that is awesome. Or even… Uh sharing it on social media that you have a daughter who is printed. So I put space between us. I admit that I was tired of feeling like you just didn’t care. I deserve to be someone who is cared about. I’m sorry that I was never the daughter you wanted, but Mama, I have always just been me.
Love always,
Your daughter.
Therapy
Not everyone is healed by medicine, not everyone is healed by therapy. Don’t get me wrong, it can do a great deal. Still it is alot like an addiction, being mentally ill. Unless you are ready to heal, all therapy will do is give you someone else to depend on. Someone else to expect judgement from. This is often more detrimental to self esteem than helpful. I have been seeing a therapist since I was nine years old. For me it was just something that I had to do. I have had some good ones, ones who could make me see them as human. I’ve had a few who abused my trust. To tell the truth, I have done more towards healing when I was not seeing one. I used to dissociate. For the ignorant among my readers, the term Dissociate is technical jargon for saying that I was multiple personalities. Twenty years ago I was a true mess. Nearly twelve personalities that we knew of. I was never sure where I would wake up, and how much time would have passed. One of my personalities was cutting. As stated, I was not in a good place. When I was in control, I was having nightly nightmares. I was terrified of being put in a hospital. Mostly because I figured I would not be let free. I am extremely claustrophobic. When I was little, I was molested. I finally got the courage and told him that if he came near me again I would scream. Well I guess he believed me… But he did decide to put one last scare to keep me from talking. He locked me in the trunk of his car and told me I would die there. I am not sure how long I was in there. But I was there long enough to scare me. I was nine. It took me four years to gain enough courage to speak. He said that I would never be believed. Damn him for being right. I was told that I was insane. I showed all the symptoms of a abused child. So much so that I was put in therapy. I was put on medicine… But I speak up… And I am insane. Fine. I am fourty one. I am finally one, not many. And I am insane. He raped me at five. He raped me until I was strong enough to say no. Then he raped my mind for the majority of my life. And if I had been believed he wouldn’t have been able to rape the girls after me. He wouldn’t have been free. He is in jail, but I check on occasion. I am fourty one and I am scared of a small man who ruined my life. I am not sure I will ever not be. Ask my family… I am a depressing poet who has always been crazy. Oh wait, many of them (not all) will not even Acknowledge that I write. I embarass them. After all, I was telling the truth. I don’t lie, because thanks to the dissociation, I often have a hard time remembering things. So why lie if I will only be caught. I am not crazy. I need no therapist to hear me. I am whole. I have good coping mechanisms. And I will not hide who I have become for anyone!
Speak your own truth. No matter what anyone else thinks of it.
Tired ramblings
Last night was not a good one. I doubt that I slept even a full hour. Every time I would try it would be falling into yet another nightmare. I have had them all of my life, as far back as I remember. I rarely remember them, only wake feeling afraid and small.
So I have been sleep deprived and shaky… Not a good combo. Well it has had me trying to gather all of the random thoughts swimming in my head. Quite unsuccessfully I should add. So much so that I have decided to post some here to help my mind to relax. And that it is a glimpse for you of my chaos? Bonus.
1. I miss my grandmother, well both of them. But mostly my maternal grandmother. I have been trying to learn to crochet. And she was amazing at it. She was just plain amazing, but it is the crochet that is bringing her to mind this time.
2. Samhain. Yes I am pagan. And this is a time for family.
3. I am very likely not going to end up with the death of neverland as anything but a novella. The halfway point is 5000 words. So I find myself wondering if I am trying to exceed my reach. I am a poet. I am a children’s author. I apparently can do short stories (aka novella). But can I do a novel?
3 i really am enjoying doing the art thing. If you are curious about how my art is… Myne drawings album is public on my personal Facebook (Patti Harris). Go ahead, look! I would love new input.
4. My daughter is starting to get into create music. I really want to encourage that.
5. Yule. I have a idea for a few of the people on my list. Not that my list is big. I am not able to afford much for even those.
6. Butt coasters. A friend of mine on Facebook is doing novelty crocheted coasters (www.facebook.com/nothingbuttcoasters/) and I am so tickled by the pug ones… (Thinking about them for one of my list…
7 money. Always a issue.
8. After the first of the year, do I want to do another bedtime tales?
9. Zombie castaways. Android game.. The villa (a building to make needed items in the game) if you combine love and rubber… You get bedsheets….
10. I really want a small crockpot for the truck. I wonder if I can pull it off this month.
11.whether I should do a blog post about religion. Or poets that I love and why….
12 my sister’s faeries. I feel like I should help more than I do…
So much rambling. I am heading to bed soon. I hope that I sleep better tonight.
define strength
I am strong. I have not always known what that meant. A lover I had once told me I was strong, and I asked him to define what strong, emotional or physical. He said both. Perhaps because it was what he thought I wanted to hear. Truth is I have never been a physically strong person. I was a bit more then though. I was walking two miles a day in high school and lifting weights. By the time of the conversation, I was starting to be less active due to pain. So physical strength has lessened by time and disability.
However, if I am honest with myself, I have always been emotionally strong. Which takes a toll. I have had to heal. I am quick to cry, and very quick to defend my boundaries. Those boundaries don’t have to make sense to anyone else. They exist because of my life has been a mess of epic proportions.
I was born to a pair of teenagers. Mom worked all the time, she was rarely home. She managed to graduate high school when I was five. Daddy was in and out of my life. We moved alot. My parents married when I was six, which lasted about four and a half years. The first four years we moved 27 times. So as the new kid, constantly, and the shy introvert… Well I had trouble making friends. So much so that my grandmother introduced the idea that reading could fill the gap.
Which is why I was I was able to be molested. I was not a social child and he took advantage of how lonely and misplaced I was. I was strong enough to gather my courage and tell him to stop. I told him that I would scream and not stop if he came near me again. So he made sure to scare me. Which keep me quiet for four years. *not that speaking up did any good *
When I was eleven, Mom met an amazing man. She moved us, my brother and myself and her, into his place. He had six sons, though most were grown up and gone. He had his youngest two still. He lived in a two bedroom trailer on land he was buying. The trailer didn’t have running water. We lived a mile from the road, three miles from the store and six from town. Mom worked. My stepdad worked. So often it was just me and the stepbrothers.
We moved into the new trailer two years later, six months after my son was born. I was thirteen. It had running water, and I was no longer sleeping on a couch in the living room. However, now I had my stepbrother threatening to kill me, and I was expected to do all the household chores. The boys were allowed to help outside. (Mind you I am a terrible housekeeper).
My mom took custody of my son, to try and allow for all of us to grow up. During this time, because of my stepbrothers actions, she kept sending me to stay with family.I was raped during this time. I was over at a friends house with my son, and a guy who I had been seeing used it to abuse me. Him and four of his friends. So I was suicidal, because the first thing that was really good in my life was being taken from me and I was not as important to my mother as her husband’s sons, and because I was so very tired of life hurting. This is when I started dissociation. I had been told I was lying about the abuse, And I was feeling like I was losing my mind. My mom and I were constantly fighting, because of it. She couldn’t see me, all she saw was a mirror. So I moved in with my favourite grandmother. She was a special lady. She had broken her back three times and had to have it fused five. About the same time, she had been put on oxygen for emphysema. So it was a case of her needing me and I needed to be somewhere mom wasn’t.
I have struggled to put the pieces of my life in a way that makes sense. What I have listed above is sixteen years. I am fourty one. I have not had an easy life. I doubt that it will change, but I am strong enough to handle what ever comes my way. Just occasionally I have a day when I have to say…
Rape culture
So I am not an easily triggered person, usually. However, here lately social media has been testing the limits. Several times I have opened Facebook and found articles about children dying because they were raped. Then there are the articles about rapists getting nearly no punishment for what they have done. So then I take to Twitter, which is usually a little bit more light-hearted. Until the presidential election. Then there started a new hashtag. #WhyWomenDontReport. Well, that is a huge can of worms. It caused me to discuss this with Joe.
He said that most of the women who he knows, or has known have been either raped or molested. Then as we were talking about it, he considered. Of the twenty women who he was intimate with, he said he was unable to say for sure on four. The rest were survivors. That is not even a random statistic. That is women who he was with.
I was floored by that. So I posted on Facebook. (So there is a thing on Twitter… #whyIdidntreport
I DID REPORT! At least the first time. I was told that I was a liar. Not all rapes go unreported, some people speak and go unheard. I didn’t speak of the second time because I knew I wouldn’t be believed.) I had several of my friends express similar situations. Think on this, according to Google, one in three women are raped in their lifetime. Yes men are also raped, but I am not speaking of them, not yet anyway. So 1/3 of all women. We as a people need to address this… That is a huge issue.
Add to the issue the ignorance of Trump’s “locker room talk” and the treatment of the victims by those who have the power to change things. Is it any wonder that sexual assault is the least reported crime? We make it hard for the scared to overcome the fear instilled by violence to step into a safe place… And I for one am tired of that. I was raped at fourteen and molested as a small child. I am not a statistic. I am not a victim. I am not allowing Rape culture to break me. I speak my truth, and invite you to do the same.
Love Dust
In my life too many
Have claimed that they
Loved me,
Just before turning
And walking away.
Don’t ask me
To tell you,
Who he really is.
For in my sorrow,
In my shame and pain,
I realized that I really
Never even knew.
Do not ask me
What I did,
That drove her away.
For all that I am
The one who once
Sister she called,
In truth I doubt
That she really ever
Knew the truth of me.
The shattered shards
Of self esteem and trust,
Left beside me as those who
Claim that they love me
Leave me in the dust.
Pattimouse 