I live in a world where biography's Indicate fictional characters Which apparently means there is naught That we in the real world could learn from them...
History is become the darkness that clouds what lay ahead of us, Instead of shedding light on where we have been.
And as I struggle to light the path for those around me Feeling as though this might just be a war I cannot win...
I realize that even if I am becoming fiction... I still will never be the person that they want in the end....
I was watching a video of The North Omaha Cat Lady. Incredible creator. She was reacting to a comment claiming Anne Frank was a fictional character. Admittedly that inspired Serena’s Poem, and broke my heart. Anne Frank was an incredible young lady. There have been very few biographical books I have enjoyed over the course of time I have been a reader, and her diary was one. The other that stands out was the nine days queen…the story of Lady Jane Grey.
Please if all of the best historical people are to become fiction…then let us still learn from their example. Just because something is fiction does not stop the truth behind it. We can learn from history, from fiction and from each other if we just open our hearts and our minds.
Right now is a scary time to be alive, especially if you live anywhere in the USA. I really try not to be too political on here as I don’t feel like that is what most people come to my blog for. However, having said that…Sometimes it hurts to be self aware in a time of political turmoil and unrest.
I really don’t want to have the discord in my soul that politics brings. However, I have found myself being drawn into the fray a lot more lately.
I purposely did Fighting Ignorance as a volume of political poetry because I found myself actually mad about the political issues that were coming out.
I remember thinking that everyone was pushing me to have opinions on politics when I was trying to survive being a young adult in a world that was trying to destroy me. So I refused to get involved. It did the opposite of what everyone was trying to do.
I wanted nothing to do with the news, because it would add more stress on an already tired me. Terrorism was not the people who came from a far to change my country…it was the nightly news telling me that humans were doing such awful things to each other.
I now see the political climate and wonder why we are going backwards. I read a new bill that will make voting harder for those who are like me. My birth certificate and my drivers license have two different names. My name was changed as a child. It was supposed to be changed on my birth certificate as well and due to a paperwork snafu it was not.
I keep seeing more political issues that make me feel like this country is not a safe place for me to live in, and I have no ability to do anything about it. This is why I hate politics. It engenders fear.
I am going to keep hoping for things to turn out well, I will be voting…even if my voice is probably not going to be heard.(1 live in a red state and with the electoral college in place only 51% of the vote is needed to make the choice. So my voice is likely to be unheard.)
I don’t like politics and I don’t like that I have no voice in the way my life is going to be run.
Terrorism is not always an external thing. Sometimes it’s the nightly news telling you world events.
I last saw the man who has lived in my nightmares at around 9 or 10 years old. Still, he has made my life miserable not because he was actively in it, but because of what he did and the fact that when I finally got the courage to tell anyone… well they did not believe me. He said that they would not. So if he was right about that, what about the other things that he said? Was it all really my fault?
Biden just signed a Bill…I am so happy for it…it takes away the limit for how long you have to take your abuser to court. How long you have to get the world to see them for the piece of shit that they are… for some people that is a miracle.
For some of us…there is no justice.
I am not saying that just because he is dead. My abuser committed suicide just a few years ago…Don’t expect me to mourn him.
No, I am saying that because I can’t go back and get my family to see the truth. I will never be able to look at my self and think I am not deserving of the way that I was treated… why? Because I obviously missed something. Something that he saw.
My mom doesn’t understand. She asked me if she ever actually said that she didn’t believe me… no not in those words. She said that I must have been remembering it wrong. That I didn’t have the dates exactly right. Okay…I was supposed to handle the memories better. I see. I was supposed to get over it… because that is what you do right?
No, Justice doesn’t always come. But the Bill that Biden signed is a huge step in the right direction.
I will never Marry…but I came really close once. He was a handsome lad, who truly acted like I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He had dark hair and pretty blue eyes. We had dated for a while when I was in high school. I had gone to a special camp for occupational therapy. He was there and we hit it off. He was so cute, with a little bit of a problem with authority…yeah I know I have a type where men are concerned. Almost all of the men I have actually been attracted to have had that same issue with authority. I left him and the facility. Then a year or so later he and I met again. We hooked up. He asked me to marry him. You know what…at the time I had an awful amount of stars in my eyes where love was concerned. I wanted that damn white picket fence with six children. I wanted happily ever after like the poets speak of. (Says the poet) He made me think I was worth that love.
I was nearly twenty-one. I was an old lady to my mind. Thirty was an impossible dream. I had one child already. My best friend was engaged to a charismatic stoner. We were a group. At the time I thought that the traditional monogamy route was the only way life was. I also was quite deep in the metaphoric closet. I had girlfriends, but I was hiding them and our relationships because I was convinced that being myself was a bad idea. So, I was convinced that I would marry him. We would be together and there would never be a reason why we would not.
Then I walked in on him and my best friend on my couch. Yeah. He apparently had different dreams than I did. I had a one night stand with her fiance as revenge. That was an incredible memorable night. We are still friends, that one night stand and I. The best friend and the husband to be…well I haven’t seen either of them in 26 years now. I left the area and joined Job Corps. I met my boyfriend. He was unlike any guy I had ever dated. Yesterday is the anniversary of the day we met.
He is my best friend. He makes me laugh. He and I will never marry. We don’t want to. He and I had an open relationship from the first. It worked because we were able to be honest with each other. He closed it off when I found someone I could actually have considered getting close to. He realized that he wasn’t able to find anyone else who was even remotely like what he had in me. I still am able to find a girlfriend because there is things that a girl can provide that he cannot. But I have the only man I will ever have. And I am okay with that. (If he was gay the situation would be open there, but he is not.) I had in my youth figured that I needed to marry. I needed to have the house with the three-car garage and white picket fence to be normal. I was so foolish. At forty-seven I have learned a lot. I have carried to term 3 children. I had to give one up for adoption. I miscarried 2. I have found my home. It was not in a building. It was at the side of a man that loves me. It was being Mom to a neurodivergent Girl who thinks I am some kind of hero…and I still am trying to convince her she is mine. It was allowing myself to be me.
I have some definite opinions about Roe vs Wade. This story has a lot of family intonations in it. If I had grown up without the option for an abortion, it would not have mattered to me. I would have not aborted any of the three. However, I miscarried. Twice. Both were emotion killing moments. I wanted both babies. I barely survived having my beautiful neurodivergent girl. The doctors told me if I got pregnant again I would die. I can never carry another child to term. Roe vs Wade means I have the choice. I hate the idea of getting one. I still want that choice. I was raped after my son was born. If I had ended up pregnant I would have wanted that choice. I didn’t report it. I was terrified of the idea. I had told about the sexual abuse I endured as a child. I was told I had lied. Why would anyone believe me if I said that this had happened?
Ending RvW will not stop abortions. It will stop safe abortions. There was abortions before RvW. There were no safe abortions. Women have been choosing to slip pregnacies since the dawn of time. We are supposed to be an advanced society…so why are we discussing this again? It was solved in 1973…
Now I normally don’t do this. I don’t explain my poetry, or my art, because I think that most people see what they want to in anything creative. I feel like explanation ruins a piece. To be honest this post is not entirely an explanation… But rather an aside. I have been thinking a lot lately about accountability. About guilt and mistakes. About what I am responsible for in my life and what regrets I should have and what it all means.
I have thought about the regrets that others have expressed towards me. I find that I have very few actual regrets. Each of my choices I made with all of the knowledge that I had at the time. I have revisited some of them later… And hindsight makes regret easy… If you let it.
The problem comes in when you allow regret to consume your conscience. We are as a society, cold. We have lost the conscience. We have lost the knowledge of good and evil, or the will to care. When prison actually looks better than trying to make your way in this miserable world…lives of others no longer matter. That is not a mental illness thing… It is a wake up call.
We have a society where you can work 60+ hours a week and still not be able to afford to pay rent. We live in a society where there is often no way of breaking even, much less getting ahead. Where hate and violence is broadcast nightly on the news. So I have to wonder how we as a society can fix this? How can we take responsibility for the problem and fix it?
Pattimouse 