Reclaiming my Self

The past couple of years have been brutal. Almost beyond description in some ways, but in comparison to what others have suffered, mine just doesn't seem that bad.

First, my husband was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer, and on the day he called me "It looks like cancer", I pulled my car over because suddenly I could not breath. This is the man I'd called my partner for 21 years, and in that moment I swore to see him through thick and thin. And no, our partnership, nor our marriage, was anything remotely close to blissful. We lived like brother and sister, held captive in each other's inability to move along and forward. It is my opinion that I led our life together according to his wants, and I'm sure his lens on it is a different color.

And in the end of it all, along with his terminal cancer diagnosis, he decided to pursue his former girlfriends, and ultimately decided that I was, to put it in his terms, "ghetto" and "unprincipled" -- and he left me. But yeah, he didn't quite leave: he stayed in our house and started dating and spending nights out with the women he met. He felt, quite frankly, that it was my business to leave since I didn't like the way he was doing thing. Yes, he really did think I was supposed to upend my life because of his life crisis, and try to figure things out. 

But I didn't and making this long story short, he was eventually forced to move and I stayed in what has always been my house, was my mother's house. Where my Nana is buried in the backyard. He left me without resources, and in every single discussion, his vitriolic resentment seeps through as if I were the serpent that bit him with the germ called Cancer.

My son and I have had some horrendous fallings out during this time as well. I thought at one point we would not have a relationship again. I realized that the idea of losing that was far, far more devastating than anything Carter, my husband, could dish out. My son. My life.

I was destroyed. Devastated. In the grips of my greatest fear: that of being rejected and scorned. My worst fears borne out by men.

During the past two years, much of which was spent crippled with grief and fear, I learned of a woman whose husband had demonized her, forced her out of her home and away from her two children. He divorced her, took everything they had, and left her homeless. He took full custody of their children and has forbidden her from even seeing or visiting her beloved daughters. She is surviving.
A dear friend of mine lost her eldest son just a few years ago in a tragic accident. She bore this grief on the fortitude of her own strength. On the strength of her faith and with the support of her many amazing friends. She is surviving, and thriving as she pushes her home-spun business into her life's work.

Another close friend of mine lost her oldest son in a motorcycle accident only six months ago; it was the same way in which her son's father had died at the same age 30 years before. She has bad days, and good days. She grieves hard and still has time to laugh. She survives.

I've spent the better part of two years in deep, dark anger and in some ways I don't know why. I can demonize a dying man. It would be easy and he deserves it. But the story has to stop being about him, and start being about me. It has to be about moving into a new realm of being, to let go the man's pettiness and his vitriol. It has to stop being about my vitriol and hatred. It has to start being about me and my survival. And he didn't bear out my worst fears, in actuality: he just dug into the soul of one thing that could push me to think it was. My greatest fear isn't any man's rejection, my greatest fear is losing people I deeply, truly, honestly love. My children. My friends. My beloveds.

My friends make me proud. They make me grateful. They hold my space better than I do much of the time. They do not reject or scorn me, and they do not go away. They are my backbone when my vertebra feel shattered. They heal my fractures.

I am the Daughter of Oya, and my life is my own story to write.

The past is illuminated.

Emotional damage can be a domino effect. You -- yes, you (any of you) -- are quite capable of inspiring injury simply with your words.

We, I meaning I, don't necessarily know who you are referring to, though it sounds suspiciously like me (and I've heard Carly Simon sing about this, "I know you think this song is about you"), but I suspicion that you know this quite well, and do it anyway. I will never be sure what you meant, because it's locked up in your damaged soul.

You know the significance of 'you' without a modifier, a name, a description. You know that there are lives out here you can damage, hearts you may wound, anger you may inspire. The 'you', which is replete in your discourse could be you, a piece of you, a piece of him, or a slice of her. You may be referring to me when you call out someone else who's not even a part of your story. But who really knows? Because you are hiding behind the veil of implication, setting imaginations free. Passive-aggressive in nature, your words are petty vendettas.

Whether you mean to or not, oh, am I now speaking of you or me now? Whether you mean to or not, you create these stories in your head and spin them into things that may or may not hold truth. You, which could mean me, or you, may not understand the sheer devastation we/you/I may hand off to another's being because of your/my inner vitriol and spite.

You/we/I can't come to a truce on this, you know. Is there no winning in word-salad, vomited out into the ethernet like a deck of cards? Maybe you got the Joker, but I got the Ace and you know what that means, because the Joker always looks like he's a mess.

Let's not be coy Anne Johnson and Carter Sweet --  I win, because I see the truth.

The Tempest of Change

Meferun Oya.

The tempest of change; being this daughter of Oya. I wish there was a less distant memory of a moment's peace in rest here with you. That comfortable space we once had, where both of us existed in layers of silent understanding, not mincing around the things we hadn't said. I wish to remember the times we danced, laughing as my feet stumbled to learn to follow and not lead. To lean and touch the contours of you. To laugh and see the gentleness of your smile. Time is short.

I wish that words were like paper scrolls left in the dirt, rotting in the rain no longer legible or resonating.

Like a willful child, pushing outward came to be the way it was. "It's this I don't like", instead of "so much of you is so good". Can't we go another direction? So many paths to choose, and with those choices, the wrong ones are steeply dangerous. Ellegua doesn't tell us where to go, he simply opens the options and says "listen". Certainly, my ears were not open to hearing or I would not have been on this path. Talk more, Listen more. Hear more. Talk less. Silent endurance, seething resentment. The wrong path chosen.

I wish the path were seeded, now, instead of going fallow. I wish the softness of grass and nature's beauty could wrap us up in it's blanket and take us away from what was and into what is possible.

If I were different, someone else, it could have been. It is me I am, imperfections and all. Nothing's right about me, but not everything's wrong. If I had been a sculptor I could have made beautiful things and you might have said "oh, but that is so lovely", and if I'd been a talented writer, you might have said, "I admire you for being such a wonderful wordsmith". If I had been someone else, you might have found the person you were looking for, but I was me. I am me. I tried to make me better, but all I was, in the beginning, was me. No one else. I didn't love less for being me, I hungered more for something I didn't understand was love. Didn't understand you, even though I thought I was trying. I trusted more than ever before, but left accused of less, I have no answer.

Oya waits. I follow her lead.