“In case of emergency…”

The sound of shattering glass brought him to full consciousness at last, feeling like a punch to the guts. In the confusion that followed such breathlessness, Thomas noticed his own hand hovering above the red handle, so recently shielded. Without further hesitation he closed the gap, bloodied knuckles capturing his complete attention as he pulled the red lever down…

Glancing anxiously about, he steeled himself to the decibels of repeating alert he had sounded. “Where is the fire?,” he asked himself. “I should be smelling smoke by now!”

Doors began opening down the empty hall; people began pouring out. Like worker drones abandoning the hive, they moved with one will to get outside. Caught up in the crowd, Thomas followed along; not thinking he might have another choice right now. Until he was free of the building and thought to turn back, expecting to see flames or a column of smoke…

But there was none…

Nothing…

Not a light in the sky, nor a cloud on the horizon. Just placid non-expressions standing all around him. “But what?…. But why?…,” he tried hard to remember. But there was nothing there to ignite recognition.

Not a spark, nor a flash. Not a boom, nor a whisper. Not a single clue presented itself to bear witness. “Why would I set off the fire alarm?,” he desperately questioned. But no answer came, other than the incessant din…

That urgent rhythm, that repeating ring… Like a heartbeat on steroids, or anxiety without treatment. Panic settled in as delusions often do, in a misplaced attempt to make sense where sense isn’t. “There must be a reason! I wouldn’t just… react?” No certainty, either, in this place without facts…

“In case of emergencies,…” he remembered reading the words.

“Ahh…. No fire, then,” he breathed his relief through his horror, surrounded by death and deafness in this world. And settling in to the mindlessness around him, Thomas surrendered his consciousness once more…

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Empathy Breeds Sympathy? Not Necessarily…

So… I have a friend. She’s very much like I was when I was young. Full of life, seeking adventure, incredibly empathetic, and bat shit crazy! She does things that make sane people absolutely nuts. And then backs it up with acts of kindness so generous, you’re almost willing to forgive her. Almost…

To be fair, she’s had a rough year. Which kind of followed on the heels of another rough year. I mean last year she had a prolonged and erratic break-up to process, which had forced her to go home and live with her parents as an adult. And that was a storm of its own; needing them but resenting them every single day. So none of that can be discounted, especially when considering she already had a laundry list of mental illness diagnoses, with their associated treatment regiments that she might, or might not, follow at any given time…

Then this year her mother died of the Covid, early on, during the first lockdown. Middle aged and usually healthy, no one even suspected the infection, believing her dizzy spells had more to do with the concussion she’d suffered during a fall while cleaning the bathtub. And even though an ambulance had eventually been called, mom refused to go in it; she locked herself in the bathroom insisting she’d get sick at the hospital if they took her. Two days later she died. At home. Covid was confirmed. She couldn’t breathe…

Now my friend is locked down in her family home, quarantined with her grieving father, unable to make funeral arrangements, seek counsel, or properly grieve herself, while trying to figure out the family finances, etc., as her father clearly couldn’t. Her father eventually had to be hospitalized himself. Suicide attempt. Completely unhinged from reality. Unable to care for himself, much less anything else. And so began her journey of parent care, during a pandemic lockdown, with a recalcitrant patient. And her own issues unaddressed…

So she coped. Alcohol, a return to smoking, drugs if she could come across them (I suspect her mother had a stash). Then the hospital booted her father home, the lockdown ended, and she was expected to return to work. She tried. And failed. Apparently work was that one more thing, that final straw that broke this poor camel’s back. Tragic, really! And understandable that she couldn’t quite pull herself together. She had family leave available to help when the regular paychecks ended, and the freedom now to get out amongst others. Including drug users and dealers, and mental health practitioners (on virtual visits for safety, of course) only too willing to help her manage her anxiety.

Eventually the family leave ended, resources began to dry up, and the sheer necessity of returning to work took center stage. So now, she’s back in my world…

Enter the post-lockdown cast of characters she must now deal with 5 days a week. There’s the supervisor (and best friend outside work) who lost her father during the quarantine; she’s dealing with the loss of a parent while helping her mom process through it, all while catering to her mom’s near paranoid anxiety about the virus. And the co-worker (sometimes outside work social friend) whose partner had a massive manic, paranoid meltdown during or following the shutdown; she’s trying to manage the resultant financial crisis while barely holding on to the man who is actively and brutally trying to push her away, all while managing her own (previously diagnosed) anxiety issues. And there’s me; I know this young lady almost as well as I know myself, watching her through eyes blinded by my own history. She doesn’t have much to say to me, though we were friends once, but then, she doesn’t really like what I have to say to her…

And work is simply too much to expect from this child-adult. All she wants to do is throw in the towel, give up, escape (responsibility in all shapes and forms). Completely understandable. But “wrong” nonetheless. And she is torturing these other women – demanding “help” while refusing to accept it, crying wolf when it’s easier than dealing with what’s in front of her, expecting everyone to indulge her instability in the name of sympathy (or empathy), while allowing them to pick up her slack. And they do. Until they can’t anymore…

And management finally catches up to her, and calls her out. The late arrivals (hours, usually, and every day). The emotional meltdowns in a retail environment. The physical uselessness that comes with being over-medicated on the job. They ask how they can help her through this while minimizing the harm to their business. She starts screaming bloody murder. And quits…

Now she wants unemployment. She wants independent contractor covid assistance. She wants medicaid. She wants…

But she’s not entitled to any of it… She’s alone in her head, refusing to acknowledge the consequences of her own actions. It sounds incredibly familiar. In so many ways…

I want to feel sorry for her. Better yet, I’d like to find some compassion in my heart. But I have none. I have only my memories of being her, and an understanding (based solely on my own experience) of how it must play out. I choose to step away from such toxicity, understanding that nothing I do will fix her, or her situation; that she can only do herself. I refuse to be manipulated…

And these are the confessions of a late 2020 empath – inglorious, unkind, uncompassionate. Living in a much smaller world of my own choosing. I have nothing left to offer the outside world; life has mostly become a spectator sport.

Entertainment in the current age. Sad, isn’t it?

The Other…

I see you…

I see the struggle you undertake every day.

I see the smiles you fake along the way.

I see the haunted looks you hide

and the tears you haven’t cried.

I see you…

I hear you…

I hear the words you say

and the ones you’ll never speak

I hear the strength that’s gone,

your voice now tremulous and weak.

I hear you…

I feel you…

I feel your pain in the day to day

I feel the joy that slipped away.

I feel your fear that nothing will change

I feel the certainty that we’ve lost this game.

I feel you…

I know you…

I know what makes you different

I know what makes us the same.

I know where you are headed

I know because I’m going that way.

I know you…

My Other isn’t other

Any more than I’m my Self.

Interchangeable…

Unique…

Separate…

But together.

I am Me.

I am We.

I am…

Quite simply

Every thing.

Laughing at myself today…

… but not out loud, I’m afraid.

Not sure why, really, unless it’s just that – I’m afraid. Afraid, but not fearful. Is there even a true distinction between the two? I don’t know, but my internal vocabulary coach seems to think there is. At least for today, anyway…

I’m laughing at myself today because I cannot name my own feelings. Me?! The person who frequently preaches the need to expand our emotional vocabulary? The person who believes that accurately identifying such feelings lead naturally to resolving the foundations of them? Me?! Seriously?!

Oh yeah… Dead serious. I’m playing the cop-out game today: tired, numb, depressed(?), apathetic, detached, unmotivated, peaceful, still, nonreactive… They all feel the same to me. L, but not OL…

Change is happening. Necessary. Wanted. Expected. Hoped for. But not happy making… L, but not OL…

I am exactly where I want to be. But I am restless in the extreme. So long as I don’t have to physically move, that is… L, but not OL…

I can feel the creative impetus stirring deep within, rising up as pure potential waiting to be formed and shaped into something shareable. A cauldron boiling, glimpses of possibilities in clouds of steam, liquid manifestation just reaching the lip, poised to spill upon the world. But it is nothing attempting to influence nothingness… L, but not OL…

I am complete. My true, authentic self. Yet I am completely empty inside… L, but not OL…

How is this even real?

How can it even be real?

But if it’s not real, then that laughter echoing in silence is nothing more than madness. Perhaps that is why I am afraid…?

Laughing at my self today. But not out loud, I’m afraid…

The Co-Dependency Crackdown. (i.e. Taking My Own Inventory)

Life is a challenge. A series of lessons. A chance to improve. A path to evolution. All of these things. And then some…

Right?

Maybe. Or maybe not. That is what I am discovering, anyway.

I mean, I have spent so much of my life in “school,” learning the hard way. Gaining wisdom, some might say. But all of that implies progress; slow, steady (sometimes regressive) steps forward. All of that implies time.

And if I look at the sum total of my nearly 55 years here (this time), and add to it the memories I have of other times and places, the “facts” (or experiences) would support that hypothesis.

Time heals all wounds. To everything there is a season. Slow and steady wins the race. One foot in front of the other. One day at a time. Keep on keeping on… Time wins every time!

But Time is a construct. A deception. A barrier. And a lie. At least for me…

The truth is, every major breakthrough I’ve had (in this life or any other) came as an epiphany. There might have been wallowing that preceded said epiphany. There might have been intention. There may even have been hints and clues strewn about the landscape of my current timespace. But the moment of change was always dramatic, instantaneous and complete.

I spent months pondering the pros and cons of sobriety before I actually embraced it, still using occasionally and making excuses. And then one day someone said the “wrong” thing to me, embarrassed me, and made me mad as hell. A week later, as my anger subsided, I stopped drinking. And I’ve never even been truly tempted to look back. Does that mean I’m not an alcoholic, after all? Doesn’t matter, because I’m not interested in drinking anymore…

I spent years in and out of therapy, on various medications, trying to “fix” what was broken in me. Then one day it occurred to me that broken or not, I enjoyed my kind of crazy. I’ve never needed meds since…

I have spent a lifetime feeling like I need to “earn” my place in the world, developing integrity, seeking reciprocity, taking responsibility for whatever crosses my path. And yet…

It finally occurs to me that I have a right to exist, simply because I do!

Not earth shaking news for many of you, I’m sure, but it was a life-changing revelation for me.

And I don’t need to save the world, after all. Because each of you is capable of making your own decisions, whether I approve of them or not. Each of you has the same right to exist as me…

And as this “truth” sinks in, “gravity” falls away. My back straightens as my load is lightened. My wings unfurl once more, and I am delighted to discover I can fly once again.

And my spirit soars…

MIA (aka “Out of the Loop”)…

How long does something need to be missing from your life before you notice it’s gone? How long does it take you to identify that missing element? Can you even identify it?

Just curious, I guess. Lately I’ve been experiencing that a lot.

I walked into my craft room the other day, and noticed a gaping hole on a display shelf. I stopped to wonder what might have been there…? I mean, clearly something else must have sat there, else why would the one other item on the shelf be sitting off to one side? Or am I missing something obvious here…?

I have a shelf of broken and forgotten toys at work, gathered over my 13+ years there, and including some that predate even me. I noticed a similar “hole” on that shelf recently. But I absolutely cannot imagine what used to sit there!

My daughter was in serious crisis the weekend before Thanksgiving. It dragged into days… then weeks. She is attempting to reconstruct her life around new principles and priorities now. Yesterday, someone thought to ask me how she was doing with that. My response?

“I have no idea…”

“How can you have no idea?!,” she asked with incredulity.

Hmm… good question, so I pondered for a moment.

“I guess I’m just out of the loop these days,” I answered finally. “She doesn’t report to me, and we only talk when I see her once a week. But then the kids are there…”

A co-worker asked me about something work related yesterday (damned if I remember what – lol!), and my response was “I have no idea.” When she went on to question me about it, I learned something else I didn’t know! She just stared at me like I’d lost my mind, and I merely laughed, pointing out the obvious fact that I was clearly “out of the loop.”

And frankly, I don’t seem to mind…

Working the floor, dealing with customers a lot this time of year. And over the last week or so I’ve been pressed for things we haven’t carried in years. All things I remember having… once. But no more. “Sorry” is all I can offer. Why the sudden fascination with things long gone, things I wouldn’t even know we’re missing unless someone asked?

And so it goes, day in and day out. A monotony of dim colors with an occasional splash of brilliant sparkle, rapidly lost to memory. I not only feel detached from reality, but actually distanced from it, as though none of it is real anymore. My thoughts aren’t even present anymore, spinning as they are around long forgotten memories suddenly resurfacing in my conscious mind. Memories that seem to lack both purpose and significance. Memories that make me wonder why I’m even bothering…?

And all I can “hear” when I question all this is “I’m out of the loop…”

Missing in action…

And I didn’t even know…

So… how long has it been? How long did it take me to realize this?!

Ahhh, time. The loopiest of life’s loops!

Truisms…

Love heals all wounds…

Not really, though I might be willing to concede that caring causes most…

Denial – not just a river in Egypt…

Funny. Ha ha! But not. At least not when it really matters…

Truth speaks for itself…

Perhaps the biggest lie of All, because it means nothing, if no one can actually hear it.

***. ***. ***

And in the end, what does it really matter? We will do what we will do, regardless of love, awareness or truth. We will believe what we want to believe, regardless of what wisdom, experience or knowledge we possess. We will trust ourselves before all others, even when we know that we are wrong…

Why?

I have no real idea other than the fact that truisms stand by themselves. Static little moments in a dynamic, ever-changing reality. Anchors in a stormy sea of unrelenting tides and passions…

Hope springs eternal…

Though only in a world where time is irrelevant.

Home…

I was out of form and exploring the lack of boundaries I felt, enchanted by the possibilities taking shape. I had reached out to an’Other I know very well, seeking connection in this formless state. But she hadn’t answered my call or responded in any way, and I knew time had passed in my world. So I reached out once again, more determined now to discover why she was avoiding me…

I felt my hand solidify, just a bit, as it touched something real somewhere, so I fed a bit more attention to it, and grasped at the object I’d found. Pulling it toward me with a jerk and a wish, I prepared to ask questions of my missing friend…

But the hand that emerged was not hers at all. It was large, and tattooed, and tinted slightly blue. I glanced up, quite startled, as the body came through – a tattooed man I’d never met, who stood there grinning like a fool. Acting like he’d achieved something wondrous that day, leaving me disoriented, and shy, with this stranger I’d nabbed…

“Uhh… you’re not Lea,” I pointed out, to cover my shame.

“Ummm… no,” he responded, though his grin never faded.

“Do I know you?,” I asked, unsure of myself. “Or should I?”

“‘Should’ is a word I don’t like to use; it’s weighted heavily with expectations, and leads too often to excuses.”

“Which doesn’t answer my question at all,” I pointed out. “So, tell me, my friend, who are you? And why are you here?”

“You brought me here. Quite insistently, I might add,” he answered with a wink, lifting our still joined hands into my field of vision.

It was then that I realized I was nothing more than mist, with a hand solidly attached to his. And as we moved silently across a sandy land, I thought to look back to see where we’d been. His footsteps were clear in the sandy soil, but my path was marked by a series of puddles. Remembering suddenly I was water without form, I focused more strongly on the hand that I held.

As I did so, a body began to take shape around me – lithe and tall and blue as a lake…

“You’re not even human!,” I suddenly exclaimed, aware in that moment of the size of the moon. For night was falling in that unfamiliar place, and the moon was rising to take her natural space. But she was huge, and purplish blue, and the stars that surrounded and worshipped her were all new…

“Neither are you,” he whispered close to my ear, and suddenly I knew it was true…

“I am now,” I said sadly. “Or mostly, anyway. And I have been for a very long time…”

***

“Welcome home, Lost One,” he continued softly. “You have been missed.”

Glancing around at the barren landscape, I felt bewildered. “But what happened here?,” I asked. “I don’t remember any of this…”

And suddenly a great noise arose, directly in front of us, as a crowd of like others came running to join us…

“You found her!,” exclaimed an old woman, leaning heavily upon a small child, while others babbled in laughter and other joyous sounds…

“More like she found me,” he reacted honestly, as our contact was broken by the crowd embracing me…

I was loved here. Completely. And joyously. And freely. And tears of happiness flowed easily from me. My heart felt full for the first time in forever, and I let it burst free to enjoy this phenomenon.

And as tears fell from eyes that were never quite dry, I noticed the very landscape around me had shifted. For now things were growing in the desert of before, becoming lush forest in the non-time we wore. And when I looked back at our footprints once more, I saw flowers springing from puddles where I had stepped before…

Glancing back at the tattooed man, I noticed his smile again. Only this time I felt it within me as well… He took my hands in his, looked deep into me, and spoke gently to the deepest sense of my being…

“As I said, you’ve been missed… Welcome home, Le-hAn-Dre-Elise…”

Moving On or Giving Up…?

Questioning motives today, mostly my own.  Wondering about this weird “between” zone I’ve been living in of late.  Not really here, but not really anyplace else, skating upon the surface tension of experience without attempting to delve within.  It’s almost like a dream state, acknowledging events as “significant,” identifying which are most currently relevant, suspecting why they may be pertinent, but refusing to make any commitments on this, my own journey.  Like reading headlines and telling myself, “that looks interesting,” but not bothering to read the actual content…

I’ve been “struggling for so long” (yes, those are the words that presented themselves, though I am eager to change them to something less combative, less obstructive, and more positive, but I can’t, or won’t in good conscience do so, lest I give in to some compulsion to be less than totally honest with myself) to grasp (and utilize productively) the concept and tools of self-empowerment.  Decades I’ve spent “learning” this path; yes, decades!  I understand the theory behind it. I’ve explored so many methods of expressing it.  I’ve owned the responsibility.  I’ve dedicated myself to this particular path.  And yet…

I get frustrated when it does not seem to work for me.  (Note the qualifier there, as I suspect it is important.  Lol!)  The truth is, if I’m actually being honest, while I may never attain what I want, I almost always get exactly what I need.  My dissatisfaction comes from my refusal to accept that as enough…

Am I really so greedy that “enough” is not enough for me?  How can that be me?  Honestly…

This past week, like so many more before, I found myself in that familiar but unenviable position of seeing my “almost safe” position collapse into absolute uncertainty again.  I was fed up!  “Why?!,” I cried out.  “Why does this always happen to me?!  I get so close to that light at the end of the tunnel, I see the exit bright before me… And then the world trembles, the tunnel collapses, and all is dark again!”

And the answer came to me…

“Why not?”

How do you refute such logic?  How do you answer such simple and real honesty?  I can’t.  There is no compelling reason why I in particular should succeed when so many others are failing (or more accurately flailing about).  There is nothing so special about me that I should be exempt from such setbacks; in fact, my very history (if viewed from a perspective of self-empowerment) would imply that I prefer it this way.  Consistency is key in any experimentation, and in this journey of self-mastery, “just falling short” is my hallmark, the highest rank I have ever achieved…  Perhaps I want it this way?  *sigh*  (I would ask why, but really what is the point?)

So I lashed out against All, acknowledging I was responsible, but still wanting to express myself.  And in doing so, I was presented with story after story of troubles that far surpassed my own.  Relativity, right?  Comparing misfortunes.  I hate it, and I refuse to encourage others to pursue it; just because others may have it worse than me, I see no healthy reason to deny what I feel.  It matters to me, therefore it’s worth experiencing – fully, and without minimizing it.

But I couldn’t maintain my self-centered point of view, and so I turned my conscious thought to “wanting” what was best for the others involved, and trusting that my needs would be met in the end…

And “miracles” occurred – a shifting of reality so dramatic and improbable that reasonability would not have allowed me to truly hope for them.  And within 48 hours, events resolved themselves to meet everyone’s needs.  And I had to stop complaining… (lol!)

It does work, but it does not appear to truly require work when it does…  And perhaps that is where I have led myself astray so many times before…

Because I have believed in my own potential, and I have owned my failure to live up to it.  I have seen how fear, laziness, selfishness and greed have prevented me from truly succeeding, and I have justified every failure with judgments against myself – I didn’t follow through, I gave up, I never gave myself a chance, I didn’t want to do the work, I pursued the selfish (unnecessary) goal, I made mistakes, I was impulsive (or too slow to act), I spoke too soon (or not soon enough)…  Etc., ad nauseum…

But my needs have always been met…

So I “should” be grateful (and I am).  I “should” accept what is (and I do).  I keep on keepin’ on.  Life proceeds…  and plans and needs change, along with those unfulfilled wants, though to a much lesser degree.  Those wants return with amazing consistency, changing only enough to better meet the “times” they are experienced in; at their root they remain the same.  And unfulfilled.  Still…

And still I question why I am here?  Still…  Could there be some sort of connection there?

Nearly 3 decades ago when this path first became clear to me (crystally), it emerged in a rapid series of epiphanies.  Suddenly I was fired up, motivated, eager to pursue what was so obvious, and yet had remained so hidden from me.  I’ve been sensing such an epiphany pending, all week, hovering at the edge of my consciousness but refusing to enter.  Always on the periphery, threatening to topple my well-ensconced beliefs about myself…

Back then, my “others” questioned, as did I:

“But how can I use this to get what I want?  What is the reason for knowing this stuff?”

The answer came then, cryptic but certain, haunting me to this very day, where it runs through my mind like an endless refrain:

“You will know how to use this as soon as you see…

the purpose of Being, what it means to be Me.”

And I can’t muster enough depth of awareness to even pursue it…

Giving up or moving on…?  Today, that is the question.

The Chill…

I have a chill inside my body I simply cannot shake.  No matter how many layers I don, or blankets I snuggle into, the chill remains…

It reminds me of the coldness of space, the emptiness of all that lies between the atoms of matter, and the consciousness of being.  And I cannot shake it free…

I reach for something warm, familiar, to hold close to my heart, hoping, as always, to feel once more as though I am a part.  Of something grander and more meaningful than just myself.

But still the chill remains…

Outsmarting all my efforts to push it or turn it away…

Is this just my way of telling me that I prefer to stay enslaved?

Now that’s a chilling thought!