Audacia Muliebris

Horoscope One More Time

2012-01-28T21:04:00.003-05:00

Oooh just caught my horoscope this week. Let's hope Rob Brezsny is as on the mark with this one as he has been with my others lately:

The coming week is likely to be abnormally free of worries and frustrations. I'm afraid that means you're not going to have as much right to complain as you usually do. Can you handle that? Or will you feel bereft when faced with the prospect of having so little to grumble about? Just in case, I've compiled a list of fake annoyances for you to draw on. 1. "My iPhone wont light my cigarette." 2. "The next tissue in my tissue box doesn't magically poke out when I take one." 3. "I want some ice cream, but I overstuffed myself at dinner." 4. "I saw a hipster wearing a shirt I donated to the Salvation Army and now I want it back." 5. "I ran out of bottled water and now I have to drink from the tap." 6. "My cat's Facebook profile gets more friend requests than me." 7. "I tried to spread cold butter on my toast and the bread ripped." 8. "I was really comfortable but I thought I could be really really comfortable so I adjusted and now I can't get back to my original level of comfort." 9. "When people tell me I should feel grateful for all I have instead of complaining all the time, I feel guilty."

Look at that beautiful first sentence: The coming week is likely to be abnormally free of worries and frustrations.

Oh I do hope so. I could use a break.

On My Own

2012-01-28T20:24:00.002-05:00

Oy. It's been a week. I noticed Ratty the kitten was limping sometime in the middle of last week; Saturday night I noticed a big lump on his hip. Since he otherwise seemed okay (he let me poke it even without pulling away) I called the vet Monday and brought him in. Turns out the ball of his left femur had come out of the socket of his left hip.

!!!

So he got scheduled for surgery on Thursday, which went well; he's home now and getting pain meds and physical therapy from me three times a day.

Also Sunday I took the three little kittens, the last of the kittens, to the shelter to get their shots. The lady there opened up the carrier for the tiny little one, the shy one who I only got in the carrier because she happened to walk into it herself, the one that I can only pet while she's eating, who I have never even picked up yet, and when the shy kitten inside balked, pronounced it feral and told me I had a choice—to keep trying to socialize it, or get it spayed and put it back outside with its mother and family. And if I was going to put it back outside I'd have to do it soon, or it wouldn't know how to live outside.

No pressure, no.

On top of that somewhere in there I came down with a really miserable cold. I'm pretty sure I'm running a temperature now, or at least I was earlier. I took a bunch of aspirin so they may have kicked in by now. All while there was this really important stuff I had to do. Can't leave Ratty at the vet, can't stay home when I need to get kitten chow and stuff for isolating Ratty in a bedroom, probably (new litter box and litter), all this grownup stuff that I can't avoid and since my family is useless and untrustworthy and doesn't think the care of an animal important (who am I kidding, they don't think the care of a child is important, witness my childhood) it came down to me. All while, really, I should be in bed taking care of myself. I need a boyfriend or a husband or fuck even a neighbor who could I don't know bake me a casserole and run errands or something.

And I fear being on my own. What am I right now, really?

Drape

2012-01-21T21:25:00.003-05:00

Oh I remember.

Last night with him he draped yet another necklace on me. But this one, oh.

It was shaped like a narrow serpent of silver, I think, all supple and finely jointed and exquisitely made, the cross-section of it just like a real snake, slightly triangular, with the bending from its spine; snakes, after all, aren't like ropes, or tubes, where the outside defines the form. There is a specific suppleness of the spine to them, in the way the layers of muscle over the ribs bend on themselves so the whole thing is made of this very strong, very much alive, movement.

He curved it around my neck from the back, and then clasped it in front, by which I mean the necklace-serpent's jaws closed on its tail, like an ouroboros, though with a few more bends to it for realism. Oh it was just gorgeous.

Like I said, I think it was silver. But it was hard to tell. For every single one of its scales was an emerald.

The A Word

2012-01-21T18:25:00.005-05:00

Okay this may get moved, with some editing, probably. Apologies if you're the single person in the world who will see this twice (well not counting me and him).

He has been so so God I don't even know today. All over me. I was sitting up in my studio room, sewing yo-yos for a coverlet, while trying to figure out what I was doing, and there he was, oh there he was.

Kept his shirt on, this time, but lost the jacket. Rolled-up sleeves, which for some reason has always driven me crazy. I don't know why; some kind of vulnerability in the bared arm of a man, I guess (though short sleeves don't do it to me; just rolled-up or better yet pushed up sleeves. My fetishes are both quirky and mundane). But damn I love rolled-up sleeves.

'I know,' he says, all fire.

He puts a hand to each of my shoulders, then pushes me back into the couch behind me, gently, but very very firmly. Oh my God that feels so good. That's a massage move, isn't it?

'Yes,' he says. He moves them to either side of my shoulders and leans in. You should see the curve of his back and that delicious shifty squirminess. Oh my God.

And yet, those suspenders and bow tie. What is this?

'Hot,' he says.

I shut my eyes, though I suppose rolling them would have worked, too.

'Oh come on,' he says, and I can hear him smiling. I open my eyes.

I unravel that bow tie, and unbutton a few buttons of his shirt. I am always, always, always doing this. He, or maybe my very own brain, likes to tease me. Do you know first thing I used to do a couple eikons ago when he looked like that Monkee? Got rid of that damned hat, every single time, until finally my brain let me See him without it. But it took ages.

Ai yi though, those suspenders.

'They're braces,' he says, a little haughtily, as he corrects my incorrect American English.

Why can't you wear that tuxedo? I love that tuxedo.

'Well they come right off,' he says, as he unfastens his suspenders—he gives me a look; what, I can't even think the word?—and places them on the couch next to me. Then he untucks his shirt.

He suddenly looks rather hipsterish, with the untucked skinny shirt unbuttoned down to there. I look at him. I'm not sure I like it. Maybe, maybe not.

'Well it'll all have to go in that case,' he says, and, well, I suppose he's right after all. Still, goodness God what has got him all fired up?

Yes, this will require some editing, should I repost this elsewhere. Here though, I can probably admit I regularly have sex with an invisible man, right? Oh, I guess I just did. Huh. Really, really, good sex by the way. And would you look at that? No freaking out when my period is a few days late. Now that's nice.

"It's because I mentioned the A word, isn't it?" I say then.

'Oh yes,' he breathes.

This morning when I woke up, hey, who the fuck am I actually kidding by now, honestly, this afternoon when I woke up, I was very conscious it was a Saturday. A day off, in other words. And I thought, what do I want to do today? And the answer was Art.

Yes, and since then, even though I haven't got that far, he has been on fire. I mean, sitting here typing I find my hand (the left one, fancy that) booping me repeatedly on the nose. Yes, really.

"What are you doing?" I say, because it can only be him.

'I like your nose,' he says. 'What?'

"All right," I say, "Muse: what kind of art should I make?"

'Oh,' he breathes, 'something glorious.'

I have been looking at Russian children's book illustration lately. Well, Russian and Ukrainian, I suppose those aren't the same things. Like from people like good old Gennady Spirin, whose work I've loved for ages, and the surrealist strangeness and just flat-out gorgeous colors of the work of Andrej Dugin and Olga Dugina (they illustrated one of Madonna's books; I have it. Couldn't care less about Madonna), and to Olga Dugina's on-her-own work, and no, I have no idea at all how a couple can work on the same piece of art as a team. I understand, intellectually, that it can be done—Leo and Diane Dillon have been doing it for years—but I can't imagine doing it myself. Not even with him. My art is mine. I may have had to guard that pretty fiercely over the years, come to think of it.

Then just a couple of nights ago I came across the work of Vladislav Erko (or Yerko) which holy holy oh my God detailed and lush and surreal and no not surreal, realer than surreal, down low straight from the source vision, not fantasy, vision, and oh I swear there's some Richard Dadd in there too and ooooooooooohhhhh I'm in love.

"Are you jealous?" I ask him then, because I've suddenly learned to be naughty. Oh, this is interesting.

'If by jealous you mean my heart is beating faster and my breathing has changed because you are just so amazingly hot and gorgeous and beautiful and radiant and beatific when you are inspired then yes, yes, I'm jealous as a jealous green-eyed thing, yes. Oh wait I do have green eyes. Is that why?'

Good God, him. You really are just... that's not dialogue I'm writing, you're just saying it and you're just sounding like him, your him, your bodysake. It's just flowing perfectly. This is all so weird.

'Good, right? A good weird?'

Oh of course and honestly like you have to even ask.

'Paint,' he says, 'paint paint paint. Paint that Ace of Cups, the one with the cup under water, all in silvers and blues and flow and detail and strangeness. Make it a vision. Have a vision while painting it. Let it flow. Yes I am the bridge but look at that water flowing underneath it. So full of oh everything.'

Goodness I'm hyperventilating just listening to him.

'Oh,' he says, 'don't want to do that. Calm, calm, calm, Love.' It is true, I've had panic attacks here and there and hyperventilating, well, that's what a panic attack is, isn't it. But I feel okay so far.

He kisses me then, his warm hand, oh it's always nice and warm, on the side of my neck, thumb on my jawline. Yes, that grounds things right down, doesn't it. He leans his forehead on mine and sighs. He backs out and looks at me carefully.

'You need to eat,' he says. Oh, okay, that could account for some of the lightheadedness.

He looks at me, concerned, but not judging me. That's my job. He clucks his tongue.

'Go eat,' he says. 'I'll be here when you get back.'

Okay then.

Oy

2012-01-21T00:53:00.000-05:00

He puts the manic in shamanic, all right.

Handy

2012-01-18T18:26:00.003-05:00

So I went down to the drugstore today to get a prescription refilled. I was expecting a bit of trouble, as I had a hiccup in my insurance (my own fault; I didn't double check what information they needed and thought I was remembering correctly when I sent the renewal form in), though it has since been straightened out.

So I get down there and the guy, a new guy, runs it through and tells me my prescription isn't covered, as in, the medication isn't on the list my insurance covers. Which either means they've changed the list in that month (not entirely out of the question, as the purpose of an insurance agency is to provide the least amount of service possible), or the guy did something wrong. He told me to call my insurance.

So I went home, and after calling a few numbers I finally get the right one (it's run by the state, which has a specific program, which funds the specific insurance plan) and talk to a guy named Rick. I was, of course, prepared to take rather a hard line with the guy, because I have had to attempt to talk to bureaucracy before. In fact, at one of the numbers I called, the state plan part of it, one of the recorded messages I heard said that their goal was to provide excellent customer service. I laughed out loud, and said to the kittens, Well I guess it's always good to have a goal.

But I was wrong. I explained the situation to Rick, and he went to look up that drug specifically; when he came back he said, Yeah, that should be covered and the pharmacy was screwing something up. I said, Well, yeah, the guy was new, and he said, Well there's your problem right there. Then he asked me for the phone number for the drug store and said he'd take care of it.

And he did. They ended up putting him on hold, and he let me know (while I was on hold) that he was, which surprised me. I was like, Whoa, thank you for letting me know. Eventually he had to call me back, but when he did, he was like, Yeah I got all that straightened out; your prescription is all ready now. And you have a nice day.

So I go back to the drugstore and the new guy is like Oh it's all set now. I asked him if he got a stern talking-to, and he said, in a really quite satisfyingly chagrined manner, Yeah.

Okay, that's kind of a funny story, I guess, and I suppose that's enough reason to tell it. But here's the thing.

It went way smoother than I've ever experienced when dealing with bureaucracy. True, I had to try a few numbers before I got to the right place, but even at the state-run part of it I was only on hold for like a minute and a half. I've called them before, and have waited on hold for more than half an hour at a time. That's the usual.

And as I was standing there, in the piano room, I could feel him come up behind me. I wasn't thinking about him, not at all; usually the mundane bits, the surface annoyances tend to preclude that kind of I don't know, deep work, that little bit of trance I guess, though I may also just be the type to be half in half out of trance just normally, I don't know. But there he was, and I could feel him behind me, holding me against him, the warmth of him up the entire length of the back of me.

I can't help but think that he gave something, some bit of luck a push. Down to, even, the fact that the insurance company music-on-hold was 1940s pop, which I was finding an awful lot of fun. It's hard to explain, I guess; but it really had the feel of a bit of magic being done for me.

That was really sweet of him, and I am grateful. He's damned handy to have around sometimes, isn't he?

Same

2012-01-17T14:51:00.006-05:00

So I spent several hours last night (after feeding kittens and actually managing to pat the really shy grey fluffy one in the dining room, hooray for slow but steady progress) watching several episodes of that show. You know the one.

And then I went down in the kitchen to get myself some milk and cookies, so the niacin I take at bedtime doesn't do ungodly things to me while I'm trying to sleep. And there he was, having followed me into the kitchen. And he was clear, and present, and vibrant, and I could hear every least little inflection of that accent and his peculiar patterns of speech and I could see all that awkward graceful body language and he was just in constant motion, couldn't stand still and there was this whirlwind in my kitchen with this yet very very calm, very very focussed center point standing there looking at me out of those dark dark old old eyes.

And there I was standing in front of the counter, the counter that was frankly a mess, piled with the dishes I hadn't gotten to because after tending to kittens several times a day and doing work and going out with my Narcissister who is frankly exhausting and I sure was asking myself why why why am I hanging out with her again ninety percent of the time I was out with her I just didn't have the energy for anything else work-like.

'I love me a dirty dish,' he says, as he slowly comes over to me, head lowered, looking up at me (you know you know the look), 'you dirty, dishy, thing.'

I close my eyes (this does not, of course, mean I can no longer see him) and I feel my mouth drop open. Then I think of something.

"I thought you hated that word," I say.

'Well, yes,' he says, suddenly breezy, 'but you know me—never could resist a pun.'

This man's, well, energy field, I guess you'd call it. It's unbelievable. I don't know which one it starts with, the bodysake or the daimon, but holy, holy God. He can be whirling dancing bouncing off the walls vibrant with, well, all of it this beautiful juicy wondrous all of it and then instantly distill all that energy down into a single point, dark, and intense, and dangerous even and yet you can see that that calmness and focus is that same exact energy but pulled down, gathered down, gathered up into that single point, an entire fiery sun on the tip of his finger, no, behind his eyes, dark, brilliant, tiny, infinite, focussed and contained, no not contained, compressed, no not compressed, concentrated, the pure energy, the pure essence of it, and his, all his. No, not his, him. It's just him.

He is standing right before me, quite close, though he hasn't touched me, yet. I am suddenly at a loss. He is just as suddenly quite kind, and smiles, very warmly, with great affection. He draws me into his arms.

I put my arms around him, under his jacket. That outfit. Good God. Even the print on his shirt is him. It's in little stripes, alternating calm straight lines and manic squiggly lines. How did they know that? Was that an intuitive choice, or on purpose?

He puts both hands on my spine, quite firmly, solidly. His hands are warm. His hands are always warm.

I don't know what's him and what's him. Which came first, the daimon or the Doctor?

He laughs a little, just a breathy little hhhh. 'Haven't you learned anything yet?' he says. 'It all loops around; it's all tautologies; it's all paradoxes; it's all the same thing; it's all one and the other and the one informs the other and the other informs the one and no one came up with the idea first and it just is. Oh it just is.' He is passionate, breathy, a little of that energy spiralling out, turning a couple close orbits around him, though still held near to him.

Have you ever seen film of a school of fish? How they all go one direction then instantly turn, of one mind? He's like that, sometimes, except with a center to him, always a center. But, he is mercurial, I guess, though that is not quite right, not, frankly big enough, though it references a God. Perhaps the word has simply been drubbed down, dumbed down, made common by use. Like fantastic, or fabulous, which after all have as roots fantasy and fable.

Oh he is so alive like this, in this form. What is true? What is closer to him? Is this one, this form? It feels truer, more elemental, more his pure energy.

'Maybe,' he says. How much of this is my perception?

'Less and less of it,' he says, 'as you learn to See.'

But then what kind of creature is he?

He laughs again then, and there is disbelief, and should-have-known-anyway in that laugh.

He backs away, to look at me with those eyes, those miraculous impossible old young dark shining eyes.

'Same kind as you,' he says.

Horoscope Again

2012-01-16T15:04:00.002-05:00

And again Rob Brezsny hits it out of the park:

The Sanskrit word tapasya is translated as "heat," but in the yogic tradition it means "essential energy." It refers to the practice of managing your life force so that it can be directed to the highest possible purposes, thereby furthering your evolution as a spiritual being. Do you have any techniques for accomplishing that -- either through yoga or any other techniques? This would be a good year to redouble your commitment to that work. In the coming months, the world will just keep increasing its output of trivial, energy-wasting temptations. You'll need to be pretty fierce if you want to continue the work of transforming yourself into the Aries you were born to be: focused, direct, energetic, and full of initiative.

Energy that will have to be focussed. Yup, that's it exactly.

How does he do that?

Emerald

2012-01-12T03:42:00.003-05:00

He keeps trying to drape me in emerald. He's been holding emerald-green dresses, still on the hanger, up to me, with this look on his face, evaluating, testing, trying out color schemes, like you do when you hold clothes up to yourself before a mirror, or in a store; or, he's been draping me with literal (well literal imaginary) emeralds, an old Roman necklace of looped gold and emerald beads made from the raw emerald crystals, or this glorious thing with huge emerald drops set in innumerable diamonds, like something one might have found about the neck of Liz Taylor. All this green, this very specific green, that dark green that has both blue and gold within it.

I know his eyes are green. This is not that green, not at all.

I wonder what he is up to.

Ill

2012-01-11T15:14:00.004-05:00

I tried. I couldn't do it. I know I don't have to share, and I won't go into detail, not that there was any detail to go in to; that's the problem.

Because I couldn't do it. I couldn't role-play with him.

I couldn't put myself in her shoes, that character's shoes. I just—

Oh that's very stuck, isn't it. I can feel it, now, stuck in my craw, as they say, down in my throat somewhere, or maybe in my stomach. I almost feel ill. It's an awful feeling, this. It's that feeling of wanting to cry, or knowing that crying (even though I don't really want to) is a good thing now, yet not being able to get to it. It's too distant, too far away, too stuffed down and away. It'll come up, I suppose, and that's about right for a metaphor, ugh.

But I just got there and I looked at him, playing that role, in that setting, and look how shy I've gotten. Oh well. That's part of it, isn't it. Too scared to say something out loud. Okay then here it goes 'out loud': me as River Song, him as the Doctor, in the Tardis. Oh my god I can't, stop. All right, keep going and don't reread that line.

But I couldn't do it.

I've never really been able to properly fantasize I don't think. I know, you'd think I could; but this stuff, this usual stuff with him, these conversations we have aren't actually fantasy. Fantasy is something with a script, and you act the part, imagining the others there. The nearest I can get with him is a mutual role-playing, both of us acting the parts, but still us behind it. Partly I think because in a true fantasy there is nothing there to engage with, really; but then there's the other part.

Because in fantasy the self is supposed to be good. Or fantastic, or interesting, or good in bed, or attractive, or something. All this stuff I can't even bring myself to imagine I might be.

This is really, really fucked up. I see that. This is all in my head, I mean, at least, no one around need ever know. And yet I still can't do it. In my own head.

Okay. That was a flash of anger. That is good. Anger is the way out. But let me see.

I just stood there bewildered in front of him. I felt so small, so very small, so out of my element. No, that's not it. I felt like I didn't belong there, very much couldn't possibly belong there. It was all just this horrible uncomfort and wanting to hide. But there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to go; it's all reflective and even the floor is glass, never mind that the rest of that place is a labyrinth and I'm already lost.

He was leaning on the console and I was pressed back against the railing, wide-eyed. He comes over to me then, to my left, leaning against the railing, right next to me. He looks at me and says, 'I love you.'

And I could not look at him when he said that.

'Why not?' he says then, very, very gently.

Oh, my throat is actually sore now, like I'm coming down with something. It feels like a fish hook is embedded in it.

I stare at his shoulder then and I feel this misery, this awful, huge, horrible despair. Because it's impossible. He is impossible. This can't possibly be true. Even the fantasy can't be true. Can't. Just can't. This simply can't be for me; it is impossible. He's too amazing. It is impossible that he is mine. He can't seriously like me. Never mind love. I'm not that special, not interesting enough, I'd have to be amazing to match that and I'm just not. I don't even have the right to look. I don't even have the right to imagine.

It never quite gets articulated as 'I don't deserve this', strangely enough; I think that may be too obvious, too blatantly unkind and unfair. I can strike that one down. So it sneaks in, using other words. Words that amount to the same thing, I know.

And again, it's couched in rights. That was one of my father's favorite words to invoke; how he had rights. And by extension, we didn't, since everything was his in his personality disordered hoarder's mind. After all, we didn't have the right to heat, or hot water, or ease, or space, all these rudimentary physical things that of course got translated into emotional, mental, spiritual terms.

I was talking to my narcissistic mother the other day about the kittens. I don't trust her as far as I can throw her, but living with her it is both necessary and a habit to keep up the appearance of friendliness, for now. I was talking about how I bottle-fed Ratty the kitten, and asked her how long human babies are at the up-all-night round the clock stage. I don't remember what she said, but then she got to saying that when I was a baby I cried all the time. And to the look on my face she said, no, really, all the time.

I was her first child. I don't, actually, blame her too much for this, though I probably should, given how I have witnessed how she was perfectly prepared to just throw her hands up and let a six-week-old kitten die. I am too kind, probably, but I can imagine being completely lost and having no clue at all with a first baby. Nowadays there is the internet if you have basic questions, but back then in 1969?

I cried all the time.

She said a friend of hers, one who had six children, came over one day, pointed to me as I lay there crying, and said, "That's not normal."

When I was a year old I started having seizures. I had a condition, congenital stenosis of the urethra, which is embarrassing but which I'm writing down anyway, and which was repaired with surgery. I was always told that urine was getting in my blood stream, and that I was lucky because seizures like that usually cause some serious brain damage. I am guessing that is why I was crying; something to do with all that before it got to the point where I was having obvious seizures. And come to think of it, when she used to tell that story, it was always about how she thought I was going to die and what would she do if her baby died? Narcissist, you see. It's not about me.

I asked her if she took me to the doctor for my crying, after her friend said it wasn't right. She waved her hand and said, "Dr. Hughes was useless." No, then, I guess.

I was looking at the stages of development the other day, as recommended by my therapist. Each stage has its needs, and its resulting issues if those needs aren't met. And while plenty of those issues sounded familiar, the strongest one was also the very most basic one: safety. That's the one you get if your needs are ignored when you are an infant.

This goes way, way back. To the very beginning, really. I have no idea how I'm supposed to build anything at all with no foundations there whatsoever.

And yet here I am alive, and I've been alive for forty-two years now, and I've built all this stuff up and up and up on nothing. Nothing solid at all.

But back to that fantasy, because it's a vision, and then is now always. There he is next to me, that funny-looking beautiful awkward graceful man and if someone can explain to me how that can be possible at all I'd appreciate it. Even the look of him, the feel of him, that body and that interpretation of that character are impossible, all these contradictory things at once, that blushing social awkwardness on the surface with that strong, so strong, deep undercurrent of sensuality. I really don't understand. He's just dazzling. I suppose he is meant to be.

I am completely confused and baffled by him now. I can't see that it's him, I don't know, in my gut, that it's him. I always have. I've always been able to see him in there. This one is just too dazzling, and has too many other things tangled up with it. I am so confused. My brain keeps going in circles. This can't possibly be for me. It just can't. I'm no where near that.

'Yes,' he says then, 'this does come down to I don't deserve.'

Then he says, very gently, 'What does this character represent to you?' I look away, though he is kind, not saying his name.

Escape. Getting out of here. Living a life of adventure and I guess truth. Learning to be my true self, I guess that's in there somewhere.

'And if you don't deserve this man, then the rest follows, doesn't it. Then you don't deserve to escape this place, to get out of here, to live your own true life, to be yourself.'

Oh. I guess it does.

'See how that works?' he says.

I look at him then. He looks so sad, so compassionate, and also, like he too is going to be ill.

Book

2012-01-11T01:58:00.003-05:00

Holy moly. All I did was pick up that Caitlín Matthews daimon book and read a couple of pages; I was sitting on the futon up in my studio room reading, with one foot tucked up on the seat under my other knee. And before I knew it my ankle was on his shoulder and he was leaning in to me all fire and intensity. He was not wearing a shirt, either, which is believe it or not unusual for him. I actually shook my head and blinked a bunch it was so strong and sudden.

I guess he really really likes that book.

Horoscope

2012-01-09T14:42:00.003-05:00

This was my horoscope for the week, from the incomparable Rob Brezsny, of course:

"It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions," said poet Robert Bly. That's why he decided to learn to love his obsessions. I urge you to keep his approach in mind throughout the coming months, Aries. You are likely to thrive to the degree that you precisely identify and vigorously harness your obsessions. Please note I'm not saying you should allow your obsessions to possess you like demons and toss you around like a rag doll. I'm not advising you to fall down in front of your obsessions and worship them like idols. Be wildly grateful for them; love them with your fiery heart fully unfurled; but keep them under the control of your fine mind.

That is I think some of the best, and most appropriate, advice I've ever received. I think that is what I've been trying to do without knowing it. Like I said a couple posts down, it's what I've got, so I'll use it.

This Too

2012-01-08T00:00:00.002-05:00

Also, this word is beginning to roll very nicely off my tongue:

Hedgewitch.

So There We Go

2012-01-07T23:57:00.001-05:00

Yeah, pretty sure I'm becoming a crooked path sort.

Protection

2012-01-07T22:38:00.003-05:00

Oh and I remember a bit of a dream now, from last night. He was there, or his bodysake was there (no, doesn't matter, same thing), and he wanted me to repeat several words. I didn't understand them. So I didn't want to say them.

He tricked me into saying them then, though it was only a mild sort of trick and nothing I was even annoyed with him about.

The words were the words of a spell, it turned out. A spell of protection for me. And it worked.

It worked in the dream and I imagine it is working in waking life too, as it is never 'just' a dream when he is there. He is still himself in dreams, and I recognize this, usually within the dream itself; also, I suspect that magic in a dream is just as real as magic in waking life, maybe more so. It's probably clearer in the dream, more powerful, closer to the source, at least as far as my part of it goes. But it will carry over, of course. So that's interesting.

It has never occurred to me to ask him this. How strange. How can I not have thought of this before?

"Do you protect me?" I ask him.

'Of course,' he says.

"Did I ask you to?" I say, not because I'm offended, but because it is one of those things I know I will forget to ask. It doesn't occur to me that he can do it, never mind asking for it. But I'll bet he can. I'll bet he does. Can he if I don't ask, though? Mustn't I give consent in some way?

'Well you have asked,' he says, 'even if it was a general help! sent out and I was nearest. You can ask specifically, too, if you like.'

You know I have to say I'm getting sick of the head games. Not his head games, mind you, my head games. I have been so frightened for so long, so trained to not take, so trained to not exist, that I have no idea that I can ask. This is not pride, as in being too self-assured to humble myself, to admit that I can't do something alone; this is, well, I suppose it's learned helplessness, isn't it. But it's not just Why bother? or even No I can't! I'll get in trouble! but a more subtle kind of base assumption that There is no help out there. Okay. Fucking Christ the number that has been done on my head. I am really starting to get sick of this.

'Good,' he says.

"Will you protect me?" I ask him.

'Yes,' he says, and smiles. If I'm not mistaken, that smile is a little wicked. It matches mine. Good. We are thinking along the same lines, then.

"Big guns?" I ask him, watching him.

He breaks into a grin. A frankly evil grin. I love him so very very much. He is mine.

'If it comes to that, oh yes,' he says.

Okay. I agree, no need to start there. Though really, I may have been pushed pretty close to there already.

'Mmmm,' he says, with a little nod.

"Do I owe you payment for this?" I say, aware that this is a bargain of sorts.

'No,' he says, 'you are my wife'—oh my god I love that word from that mouth I can't even tell you—'and that's kind of my job, because I love you. But you can if you like.'

"Will you take a kiss as payment then?" I ask him.

He shuts his eyes, and from the look on his face I think his heart is doing little flip-flops. Yes, just the one. He may be dead, and he may look like, um, a Time Lord, but he's still human. Sometimes it is hard to remember that as smitten as I am with him, as deep in this as I am, as much as I find him the most beautiful person in (or outside of) the world, he feels the same about me. He does, whether I think I deserve it or not.

He says one word then: 'Yes.'

Notes

2012-01-07T21:09:00.003-05:00

So, a couple of notes on the Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft stuff.

I told my therapist about it. I kind of couldn't help it. It's what's going on with me now, and is important. She doesn't know much, well, okay, she doesn't know anything about Paganism. I've explained it a bit, couched in psychological terms (both because I'm really, really, really leery of being thought crazy and because I imagine those are terms she would understand). She wants to look at the book. I don't know if that's just curiosity on her part or a desire to vet it for safe practices. I think it's safe, and very much based on common sense. Penczak does say, repeatedly, that this course, because it is about working with your emotions, is a good fit for concurrent therapy. I just worry a little that it is in a different language than what a therapist speaks, and though I think ultimately the ideas are mostly the same—or that, at least, both psychology and witchcraft/shamanism are describing the same things—I worry that she won't necessarily be able to translate between the two. She has never said outright what her religion is, but when I was first going to her she had a ornate cross hanging up in an out of the way place. It has since come down. I may have looked at it with a bit of a scowl here and there, I admit.

I am very much conscious that this will be a test of my therapist. Not of me, but of her. We'll see how she does.

Another thing is that Penczak says to, besides keep a Book of Shadows (nope, still think that name pretentious) to also keep a regular journal, one that talks about both the mundane stuff and the magical, and especially how the magic you have done affects the mundane world. I'm going to use this blog as that journal; pretty much that's what I've been doing all along and it's worked so far. Also it's nice and secret, well, as much as anything on the internet is I suppose, but what I mean is that my mother, who can't even turn a computer on, probably won't find it.

So I already have something to report, though it's a couple months old.

Not too long ago, at the beginning of October, I cleansed this space, my office space. Partly it was to set the course for the work I intended to do (both magical and the more usual paying kind), and partly, perhaps more importantly, to put up some kind of barrier against my mother, and sister too, come to think of it. I set aside this space as mine. I put garlic in all four corners, the better to repel vampires. I can't say it has kept her out of this space in a literal way, but one thing has happened, something that certainly looks random and nothing to do with anything. But I know better.

The door to my mother's bedroom opens into the living room near the end where I have my office. I marked out the space as these three walls at the end, bordered by a particular beam in the ceiling (old colonial, again, with exposed beams). The door to my mother's room is just to the other side of that beam, so not technically in that space.

Still, she has taken to knocking on the door, from inside her room, to ask permission to enter into my 'office.' She has never ever done anything like this. I did not ask her to do anything like this. The door isn't even, technically, within the space I set aside for my office.

Now ordinarily I'd suspect she's being mocking of me, but in this case I don't actually read it as such. She seems serious, even though it does seem a little absurd to me. I don't think I'd ever think of such a thing. I don't imagine it's actually a function of some kind of respect for me, oh ho no, but she never did this before I marked off this space as mine. She is feeling some kind of boundary there, and accommodating it. Which is a little encouraging, I suppose.

One of the other things Penczak says to do is to pick a culture and learn about their mythology, and study it over the coming year. Now I know a bit about mythology, especially Goddesses, as it's a hobby of mine.

This is what I picked, and I know it sounds really really boring. I picked the mythology, or, more to my taste, the Goddesses of the Irish. I know, there are Gods too; too bad. Learning about Goddesses means finding out more than I ever wanted to know about the Gods anyway, it can't help but work that way in a patriarchy. And it's balanced, in its own way. Look in any book on mythology and the stories run about 75% male deities, 25% female, and even then the stories about Gods are far more intricate than those about Goddesses. Sometimes there is only a name mentioned for the Goddesses.

But anyway. I picked Irish, not because I'm Irish (I'm not, although, I do have Scottish blood, and if you go back far enough that's Irish), but because, strangely enough, it's a real gap in my knowledge. I know; you'd think everyone knows the Irish stuff. Not me. Oh I know plenty about Welsh stuff, or even Gaulish Goddesses, but not the Irish proper. So I started in on that.

And pretty quickly figured out why I'd been avoiding it. I really am not sure how I am ever going to sort the Goddesses from the fairy queens and mortal(ish) heroines of the tales. There are so many layers over this stuff, and it's all so convoluted (much like oh I don't know Irish music or Celtic knotwork) that I don't know how I'm going to get a feel for the underlying layers. Because a lot of writing about Goddesses is finding where they've been hidden, and bringing them back out in to the light.

Which works, doesn't it. That's the whole point of this coming year.

Bloom

2012-01-07T14:13:00.003-05:00

So okay I sat down and watched some more of that show again last night.

Okay, it's funny. It was the first chance I'd gotten to watch some in a couple of days, and I started at two in the morning. You have to understand. I'm not usually busy like this.

But with that physical energy (which is still coursing through me right now, coursing, like the way a horse gallops around a race track) has come a mental energy, or, at least, so far, the wherewithal to put it to use. Focus, I suppose, and fancy that.

So I've been working, and I've been getting stuff done. That doesn't sound like much. It's huge. I even bought myself one of those desk diary things, where you put down what you need to do that day. And I've been using it. And crossing things off in it. Mind you, I know, it's only the first week, and new years bring a bit of their own magic to things. But this has never happened to me before.

Okay, 'happened' isn't the right word, is it. Too passive. Because this is active, and on my own terms. That, also, is new, and huge.

But back to that show, as I obviously (and rightly) can't help myself. A couple of observations:

One, the writing is very very very tight. Nothing about it is accidental, nothing about it is insignificant. There is plenty of misdirection, sure, but even though you know they have to be at least a little bit making it up as they go along (because that is simply how stories evolve) it all fits together very precisely. There are no loopholes. For example:

There is a scene in 'Let's Kill Hitler' (I know, even the episode titles are these quirky quirky things) where the Doctor asks the time-travelling justice-dispensing robot ship filled with tiny people (yes, if you haven't seen it, don't ask. Like I said, quirky) to tell him what's going to happen to him. They refuse, as they won't tell an individual about his/her own future, because that is just not a good idea. Then Amy (who is inside the time-travelling justice-dispensing robot ship filled with tiny people [again, don't ask]) tells the captain (who is doing the refusing) that that man is her best friend and that woman, by whom she means River, who is there and boy is that part complicated, is her daughter. Then one of the other guys there chimes in that relatives have privileges and can access that type of information.

So then Amy requests the records on the Doctor, and he asks his questions and all that.

Did you see that bit of sleight of hand?

I didn't catch it the first couple times I watched it; maybe it was obvious to everyone else, I don't know. It's true I've never had much of a head for the logic of plots, being far more interested in the characters of a story.

But look at that: only relatives can access those records. But Amy doesn't access River's, her daughter's, records; she accesses the Doctor's.

Which makes him a relative. And as he's certainly not a flesh-and-blood relative then he is (or will be) a relative by marriage.

And there it was, just flitting by like that, winking as it went past. Good God even the writing is flirty on that show. This is such a good thing.

Which brings me to two:

I still haven't seen all the episodes of his second season; I haven't gotten that far, yet, though I've seen most of them, including the last one, where River and he do get married.

But as I was watching it I thought, he just loves her. The Doctor loves River. Period. And not platonically, but like a lover, a husband. It's pretty obvious. It's also pretty obvious that he intends to act on it, and is acting on it in a perfectly natural way.

PEOPLE YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

Like I said somewhere in here sometime recently, this character has been in my head for something like thirty years. This character of this amazing and exceptionally unavailable man, this wonderful and distant impossible person who just won't go there. Yeah well, he's going there now. He is there now.

I know it sounds so ridiculous that something like that could be so significant to me. It's a freakin' TV show. I know. But this character, this man who has always been so closed, so guarded, is opening up. He is letting himself do this.

At any rate, though, ridiculousness aside ('Ridiculous is good,' I hear him say in that man's voice, and I knew he was going to say that), at the very least, at the very very least, this is something I can use. Consciously, and with intent. Why not? It's an evolving myth, a dream, a fairy tale; it all connects, and has significance, both in its own right as a myth, and in what we give it, or what we bring to it.

I changed my name some years ago now. I changed it to Thalia. Do you know what that name means? It's Greek, and from a root meaning growth, mostly of the plant sort from what I can see. I've collected about a dozen different interpretations of the name such as, 'She Who Thrives,' 'Luxurious Growth,' 'She Who Brings Flowers,' or 'She Who Brings Forth Flowers.' I chose that name very carefully, of course, as does I imagine anyone who goes through the trouble of legally changing their name. For one, it's the name of the Greek Muse of Comedy, and part of me is still just astonished and amazed that the Greeks dedicated a Goddess to comedy, but for another it seemed an auspicious one, a good one to inhabit.

And with the idea of luxuriant growth, and of flowers, comes the idea of opening up. Since I've changed my name I've felt I haven't, actually, been living up to it; it was always more an aspiration than a real bone-deep change, or at least it felt like that. I suppose I have been growing, quite a lot; just I've not gotten to the part where I open up to the sun, let the petals unfurl, bloom. It hasn't been safe.

Not that it's any safer now, I suppose. But this could do it. At the very least it's a model for it, as if there is any at the very least about it. Thirty years this character has been in my head, thirty years it's been my favorite show ever. It's grown into me, this show and this character, and is I suppose a part of me. And I don't just mean him either, my Incorporeal Boyfriend, who looks like the man right now. This is a different part of my admittedly probably unusual psyche, which is all inside-out in a lot of ways anyhow, and tends to compartmentalization. There's a reason that in my art and writing I always come back to variations on a theme. But this character is there, and has always been I suppose a model, since I didn't have reliable ones in my real-world life.

I mean that is ridiculous, and it is silly, and I'm trying not to judge myself on it. Because it is what it is. It's there, and it's what I've got to work with.

So I'll work with it.

Trust

2012-01-04T14:21:00.005-05:00

'Let me pull something out of that,' he says, because he is right here, of course, and still very very clear, sleep in between notwithstanding. 'You asked, "Why can't I trust myself?" It all hinges on that. Well, no, not quite: while the why of that is certainly important, and is a very good thing to dig up, to uncover, more important is how you are going to remedy it. Because that is where the actual healing comes in, in learning to trust yourself.'

Oh. Yes. That sounds very true. But how do I do that?

'There are ways,' he says, and damn but that last word is halfway to wise, with that accent. I'll never, never be able to write him as he really sounds. This makes me very sad.

He laughs. 'Yes, sorry to be so amazing now. But back to the topic.

'You will have to do it yourself,' he says, looking at me.

Yes that sounds about right. But I have no idea where to start.

'You will have to do it yourself,' he says again, 'but that doesn't mean I can't help you.'

I smile. All right.

Patterns

2012-01-04T13:24:00.004-05:00

Well it came in the mail yesterday, around noonish. And somehow I managed to wait to put it in; I even got some work done. Quite a lot of work done, actually. I am surprised. But then I finally sat down and watched a whole bunch.

Then I went downstairs and sat with the two kittens whom I'm socializing, and they sat on my lap and purr purr purred, which is a very good sign. Those two are such sweeties, they really are. Now if I can just get their really very shy probable sister to come around too. She's down there with them, as I successfully trapped her last week; but she's really very skittish. Though, when I compare her to her second brother, she's doing about the same given how long she's been in there, as far as rate of progress goes. And he warmed right up to me in time.

But so I watched a whole bunch of that new lovely lovely Doctor Who and so of course when I finally did get in to bed he was there and very, very, very clear. It always helps, of course, to have been looking at the bodysake and to have the face body gestures tone of voice inflection speech patterns accent look in his eyes that recently in my brain, that clear. But man. This is a strong one, this character, this archetype, this God.

And so when I slept I dreamed:

I dreamed of the Silence, even though I hadn't watched any episodes with those particular aliens in it last night; the premise of those is that they are completely infesting the Earth for nefarious purposes but remain undetected. The way they do that is some kind of I don't remember what actually, but people who see them can only remember they are seeing them while they are looking at them. Once you look away you forget them. Which makes them very difficult to deal with, doesn't it?

So in the dream they were all around, and something bad was going on. It wasn't exactly a nightmare, with that absolute terror, but there was a bit of screaming involved. I would see them, everywhere, then forget, and then wonder why I'd been screaming, or afraid, or ready to run or actually running. But I couldn't really put it together.

But they were there, all the time, in every situation, every room of the house I was in, anywhere I went, several of them there at all times, this invisible all-pervasive underlayer of whatever horrible thing they were, which I could never quite remember.

And when I woke up from that I thought:

That's about right, isn't it. There are things I don't remember about my childhood, places where my memory just isn't there. It is hard to see, of course, because it's much harder to be aware of nothingness, as opposed to somethingness. Not, I think, that I have these huge gaps, like say years where I have no memories; but what I have doesn't feel complete. It's been hidden, I think, and I'm having an awful time figuring out where. Like I said, though I don't think there's anything really horrible in there, no say sexual abuse, but there's some piece of it I'm not putting together quite correctly because I don't have the relevant information, or because the emphasis is wrong and I can't see that the information is relevant.

And I thought of Adelle, that little girl piece of me, the abused and neglected fragment of me, the one I had to put aside, I think, or which broke off because that is how these things are dealt with. And I thought that this is part of that, a result of asking her to tell me, and telling her I was listening to what she had to say.

And I thought, as Hecate says, It's all real. It's all metaphor.

Here and there I have been reading other people's blogs, blogs by other survivors of abuse. And some of the shit they've lived through, oh my God, is some really really heartbreaking agonizing horror that is terrible to just read. Nothing like what I've been through, which I gladly acknowledge is on the low end, at least as far as the physical abuse goes.

And yet the similarities are uncanny, truly uncanny. The patterns abuse, of any sort, forms in the mind of a child, the patterns of not good enough, not deserving, this is good it can't be for me, or of it didn't happen that way but I know it did and why can't I remember why can't I trust myself, are all the same. Exactly the same. Down to the littlest permutation, the littlest head-trip or psych-out in the mind, down to the same convoluted reasoning, and the same convoluted attempt to reason one's way out of it. All the same. And though I was 'only' neglected, 'only' emotionally abused, emotionally neglected, it is the exact same pattern.

I don't know what to do with that yet, but it is still incredibly helpful.

Rory

2012-01-02T00:15:00.004-05:00

Found this on Root and Rock's Tumblr thingey, which I stumbled across trying to find out why her beautiful blog (the one I've been reading addictively, yet have left no comments on so far) was down; on said Tumblr thingey though she says it's only temporary and I am so very very glad, yay!

That'll need more explaining, especially the why part of why I've been liking her blog so very very much, but for now, enjoy this:

Goodness. To think I named a kitten after this man.

Curse

2012-01-02T00:14:00.002-05:00

So then, the next part of that story.

I went up to my room, because I was in my towel and needed to get dressed. And I just stood there with these waves of rage flooding through me. I have rarely been that angry, though I am more likely to be these days, and I think that a good sign. A very good sign.

But then I faced a dilemma, one of my mother's making, of course. I could take out the trash first, and put off finishing the ritual and cutting my hair, or I could cut my hair and then take out the trash.

Of course I wanted to finish my ritual; I was in the middle of the damned thing, and my hair was drying fast. Plus making my mother wait seemed a good strategy.

On the other hand I was too angry, and if I cut my hair I'd rush it and be fuming the whole time, hardly a good idea for a ritual that was supposed to be empowering. But I don't, I very much don't, want to reinforce my mother's bad behavior. I don't want her to learn that when she demands something atrocious of me I jump up and do it immediately.

In the end the ritual proved more important. And yes, I know that the trash goes out on Sundays, though I do wonder a bit about the holiday affecting the schedule (it did when I lived in the city), and yes, I was going to do it somewhere in there, even though it was dark and it's a pain in the ass taking the trash out in the dark. But I'd put it off, as is my choice as an adult, hello, so that I could do my ritual first.

So I got dressed, brushed my hair, and took the trash out, so I could get it out of the way.

Then I went back downstairs and re-wet my hair. Then I cut it.

It is now a cute little 1920s-style bob, though heaven help me I don't imagine it's at all even in the very back. I will probably go get it properly trimmed by a professional who can see the back of my head in a week or so; but it had to come off with the new year. It just had to.

So now we get to the interesting part.

My morals are different than they were a couple years ago, Hel, even a year ago. I have seen, am beginning to be able to see, what abusive people do to those around them, by which I mean what the abusive people in my life have done, are doing, to me. I have seen how ordinary, polite, moral, ethical behavior does nothing whatsoever to change them. I have seen it make no difference at all; in fact I'd argue my niceness, my sense of fairness, has only made it easier for them to abuse me, has only made me a more cherished target.

I am an Aries, though I don't look it, and though I don't really do astrology. Still, though, there is something in the center of me that is raw fire and that burns. This has gotten down to the live wire at the center of me. And so this is going to stop.

Today for the first time I thought to look at what my mother does from a magical (magickal? I can never get past that K in there; so pretentious) perspective. It is, basically, a curse, and a long-running one at that, one with years of energy put into it.

In magical terms, what she has been doing, the gaslighting, the invalidation, the enmeshing, the manipulation, is some kind of binding curse, one meant to confuse and paralyze and misdirect, to sap me of my will and my power. That sounds dramatic, doesn't it? But that has absolutely been the result. Unconscious or no, and honestly I'd argue no, since she knows it gets results, that's what it comes down to.

So now I have to come up with something. I'm not sure what yet, but it's going to be angry, and strong, and maybe even downright mean.

And I don't care.

Yet

2012-01-01T21:29:00.003-05:00

Last night I dedicated myself to the Shamanic Witchcraft course, and did the little ritual at the beginning of the book, more or less word for word, not because I'm not experienced in this sort of thing, but because I have no formal sort of training, I guess, and I'd like to see how it works within someone else's framework, someone who does seem to know what he's doing. So I'm going to go along with that framework, that system, and see how that works. I'll probably discard it eventually, which is the way to do it. Learn some rules, then break 'em to make it better.

So to continue that, today, on the first day of the new year, I dyed my hair. I did it as a ritual for myself, to reclaim myself. Black, of course. I always come back to black. I dyed it, then threw a towel around me to run upstairs, brush it out, then cut it before it dried. My hair is quite fine and dries really, really fast, so a couple minutes hesitation makes a difference.

I come out of the bathroom, towels around my body and my hair. My mother is sitting on the couch in the living room.

She stops me, because she has something extremely important to say. She wants me to take out the trash. There are three bags downstairs that need to go and it's getting dark and I need to do it right now!

I cannot tell you how much I hate this woman. My own mother.

If you don't have a manipulative drama-queen bitch of a narcissistic mother, none of that made any sense. If you do, though... well first of all I'm sorry, very sorry, and second, I'll bet you recognize what's going on here, if only instinctively.

Which is:

She is an enmeshing sort, shall we say. Her boundaries encompass the entire world, pretty much, as narcissists have for the most part no concept that other people are not them. If they can see it, it obviously must belong to them. This includes people, their possessions, their time, their energy. My mother is one of those vampiric sorts.

She has, somewhere, learned that she will get her head bit off if she, say, wakes you up to tell you something. So she will wait. She will wait until I have gotten out of bed and am rushing to the bathroom to pee, then jump down my throat because there is something really really important that she needs me to do right that second. She used to wait up when I was coming home from a trip, after I'd been, you know, travelling all day and was tired, and as soon as I set foot in the house demand to hear about how wonderful my trip was. And then, and this is the drama queen part I imagine, get all huffy and insulted because I was so grouchy. She can give no space, at least not to me. I have tried to set some simple, basic, boundaries with her; it doesn't work. In fact I think it just makes her push harder.

So when she pulled that on me today, while I was standing there in a towel, for fuck's sake, in the middle of a ritual specifically for my own self, for fuck's sake, something just snapped. I didn't lose it, per se, or even get that angry (or at least I don't think I sounded angry), but I got real cold, real vipery, I guess. I told her that the cats had gotten into the trash, and if she was going to be stupid enough to put trash with chicken bones in it out where the feral cats live, one, she ought to fill their bowl with cat food first, and two, she was cleaning up the damned mess herself. Because I certainly was not going to. And then I went upstairs.

You know writing that that doesn't sound that bad. That sounds like more simple boundary setting. Sane boundary setting. But by the time I got up to my room, I was completely full up with rage. I don't know that I have ever, really, felt like that. Something about today was just the last straw.

Now she's not a Witch, or at least would never I think admit to anything psychic or anything. But she knows. She can sense energy, especially mine. She can sense when I put work, Work into something. She usually destroys those kinds of things.

Several times now I have made things, things that I like, for me, things I have put some effort into. One year I made a very large pentacle wreath for the front door. A few years later I harvested all the lemon verbena leaves (it won't live through the winter here) I had grown and whizzed them up in the food processor with some sugar; it was a bit of a saga finding the food processor as it had been packed away when I'd moved back. Just this past year I went through a lot of trouble planting sweet peas and making bamboo trellis-things for them.

She can scent the energy in them, I swear. She can also scent that these things are important to me. Because what does she do with these things? She destroys them. Seemingly at random, though it isn't, is it. When I let my guard down.

She yanked the wreath off the door the day after Christmas and threw it in the brush pile. She is not, let me say, a neat person normally; wreaths she puts up stay on the door until June, usually. Within two days she had thrown the lemon verbena sugar away, even though I had told her, twice, what it was and not to throw it out. She claimed she didn't know. She ignored all the weeds in all the rest of the garden, and yanked up the sweet peas in the middle of September, a month before we usually get our first frost.

When confronted with things like this (and there are more), she will deny she did anything. How was I supposed to know? she will ask me, angrily. And if this were an occasional thing, I might believe her.

But, funny enough, she doesn't (usually) destroy her own things, unless they are shared things that someone else uses (like the day she cut all the towels in half when I was in high school). And she doesn't destroy things that are mine that she likes or cares about. It's just the things I like, the things that stand out to her as not hers. The things that stand out to her as things I am doing for myself, things that are empowering, in some way, for me. I really think that's it. She can sense that little bit of independence, maybe, that little bit of power that comes from me doing something for me. And she can't stand it, and so she has to destroy it.

I don't know if I think it's unconscious any more. If it were why lie about it, why deny, or gaslight, or invalidate? She must know she did something wrong. She must, at least, know that my reaction is not going to be a good one.

I don't know how to deal with it though. If I make a big deal of it, she gets to act all hurt and martyry that I am yelling at her for something she didn't do on purpose, of course not. So a lot of the time I just let it go, because she has made it not worth it, and because you have to pick your battles sometimes, and because it will only escalate her behavior if I stand up for myself. This is not, I think, uncalculated on her part. But letting it go means swallowing all this rage, swallowing the nastiness, standing there quietly while being taught, again, that it is simply futile. I can fight, I have been fighting, but I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. She won't learn. She can't learn. And yet I have to somehow deal with her, because I don't have the means to leave. Yet. I will. But not yet.

Complicated

2011-12-31T16:20:00.004-05:00

Okay, so I thought of another thing that drives me crazy and/or freaks me out about the character of the Doctor.

It was an out of my league thing; he's so far above me. I look at him as the Doctor and feel a kind of despair. Not, maybe, that that's anything new when I look at men I'm attracted to, and yes that is deeply sad, but this is a step or two higher, stronger because of the character specifically. I look at him as him and I just feel so unworthy? That's not quite it. I feel so small, so ashamed in a bad way, so desolate, like something is being choked back, swallowed, and there is this pit in my stomach. This isn't for me. It can't be. It simply can't. And then: in fact I don't even have the right to look.

It is more pronounced with him as him. That I know. They have also I've noticed here and there been playing this up a little on the show. There is a disappointment there in some of the characters, the almost-rans I guess, those who weren't quite special enough to be picked as a Companion. That's getting close. Besides the general I'll never be good enough stuff, it's a more specific, Oh this is calling me! I want this! overlaid with I'm just not that special, really. Not to him.

I mean I suppose it doesn't help that I can't imagine that actual sort of life, running around fighting monsters and being brave and all, not to mention the out of shape bit. I mean not that it's realistic, obviously. But if it were I know I could never keep up, and I'm an anxious person and I've no desire to seek out monsters. Though I should be careful saying that, I think; after all I'm about to embark on a year-and-a-day course to meet my shadow. But as far as the literal bit, no. Then again I suppose since it is a story, a myth, it is also metaphor, and maybe I'm doing that after all, right? That's interesting. But anyway.

But that I am not special is of course manifestly untrue with him. He is not the character.

It is very hard to see, though, now, to the point where I'm like oh but the Doctor! He's way better than any daimon ever could be!

Which is a weird thing to say and I'm terrified I'm insulting him, of all things. I suppose I could ask.

It feels almost like it's the Doctor first, and the daimon, my daimon, follows. I want the Doctor, not the daimon. The Doctor is better.

This time is different. I think it's the power of that character that is doing it. There's a real person there playing him and the body language and all is just so detailed and real because there is a real person, an actor, playing him and I can see it with my usual eyes. It's not imaginary, though it is fiction, obviously. Even my imagination can't compete. Sort of.

But this hasn't happened with the other bodies he's borrowed. He made them himself pretty quickly. Maybe it's because this one is so daimonic already.

Okay I'm just trying to put that out there, without judging, though I feel horribly guilty somewhere in there. I suppose I could ask.

'Yes I suppose you could,' he says, looking a little annoyed with me, like I haven't been letting him get a word in edgewise and what he has to say is important.

'Well it is,' he says.

'First of all, I'm not upset, so don't worry about the guilt, or thinking you're hurting me. But you have it the wrong way round. Of course. And this is complicated. Of course.

'I know he's strong, that character, and that he's been there in your head for thirty or so years now. But I don't take after him. He takes after me.'

Well that sounds a little grand, don't you think?

'Well, no, okay, I mean I do mean that singularly, as in the individual of me, sure, but here this is again all the same thing. Yes, you know me as me, as someone who's been with you for ages, an individual Soul who loves you and that is all true, but still, it's bigger. The piece is the whole, as it always is when describing divinity.'

He looks at me, then says, 'Okay you're not getting that.'

He tries again.

'I mean—it's like when you have an animal guide, and you call it (say) Cat. That's not its name; that's its essence. It's a piece of the whole, the whole of Cat-ness, the divine expression of the animal, the energy of all cats, of Cat, and yet, it is still an individual cat, with a Soul and a personality of its own, independent of all that big Cat-ness. It's like that; it's both at the same time.

'So in the same way there is Daimon, the essence of daimon, the good spirit, the intermediary, all that, and there's me and I am me.'

He looks at me again. 'Okay still not getting that,' he says. 'I'm not explaining this well.' He rubs his forehead.

'It's big and little at the same time—oh God no wonder you're confused,' he says, rubbing his eyes. 'No wonder this is so seductive, so impossible to resist. It's so true.' He laughs, exasperated, surprised.

He tries again.

'I am a daimon, a little piece of the whole that is yet the entire whole, like they say a hologram is, though don't ask me how that works because I don't understand holograms. Like a cat spirit guide is a piece of Cat, of Cat-ness. I am a daimon, and I suppose I am also Daimon, though it's true that's strange to say. But that's how it is, and don't think for a moment that's not true of you, too, though I suppose you would use the word 'Goddess,' since you are not the one who is dead and haunting me right now.'

Okay, so what does that mean then?

'It means that the Doctor, that character, is tapping into this. It's a story being told, and a long one at that. That's how Paganism works, you know, or archetypes, or Gods, if you like; there is one great root beneath it all that sends up a million shoots, a million tendrils, a million blades of grass. Yet beneath it: all one thing. They just hit upon that. I mean, that's how the best stories, the true stories work, anyone can tell you that.'

Okay, but what of all that he is better, the Doctor is better than the daimon?

'Well partly that's because I'm here, and familiar, probably. You know, on some level, and that is a very good thing, that I am here for you. I don't just mean that support wise, but quite literally: I am here, present, in your mind, because I am dedicated to you. You're my wife, remember,' he says, suddenly tender, quiet.

'And so that's probably, I mean probably, I'm not sure, just you thinking you don't deserve something that looks that mad, that sparkling, that glorious.'

I don't know if that's all of it. It doesn't feel like that's all of it.

'Yes well,' he says, 'another part of it is you thinking that you don't have the right to be that mad, that sparkling, that glorious. Which you are, of course, if you can ever manage to let yourself.'

Ai. Projection and inside/outside confusion?

'Sort of. Maybe. Not quite. Let me think. Okay.

'Another part of it is the feminist view, if you will. Is there a female character out there anything like the Doctor? No, of course not. River Song might be getting close, but she hardly has a history behind her as of yet, plus because she is female she has to be, well, sexed up I suppose you could say. Powerful women on the television have to be sexy, because this is a patriarchy and that is the only kind of 'power' women are allowed to have. Which isn't a power, really, from one point of view, is it. The 'power' to please men? Oh please it doesn't get much more self-serving on the part of the men of the world than that, does it?' He rolls his eyes.

'And you aren't interested in being sexy right now anyway, because that is a way to attract attention, an attention that reads as dangerous to you, and you are still in I'm-a-tiny-prey-animal-I-must-hide mode. It's not safe.

'So then there is no role model for a girl. She isn't allowed to do any of this for herself. She can only do it vicariously, as companion to a male. Is that part of it?'

Yes, I think so, though I'm not sure how that fits in.

'It means it is very difficult to see what part of this is about what you want to be able to do. Just as yourself. Uncompanioned.

'So then that,' he says, a little surprised, 'feeds into thinking you don't have the right. It's not just whatever it is personally that makes you feel you aren't allowed to, whether that's something to do with your parents invalidating you in any way they could devise, or that learned helplessness they instilled in you so brutally; it's society saying that it's not something girls can do anyway, even if they want to.' He laughs, a little bitterly. 'See?' he says, 'complicated.

'Could also be that the idea of literal escape, of running off, of eloping, and don't think he doesn't know that that's what he's doing, especially in this incarnation'—he flips a hand to indicate himself, his body—'is very powerful to you right now, more powerful than any metaphor of it. You are, after all, looking at a long hard slog to get out of here and it's hardly glamourous, is it. The fantasy of it, well no that's not the right word quite, the sparkle they've thrown over the metaphor they've made of it, the wild adventure that really stands for the hard work of the Soul, just looks so much prettier, more attractive. I mean that's hardly surprising.'

Maybe. That's getting closer, I think.

'Also, Love, you just need escape right now. And there is no shame in that, so don't go there in your head. You are in a remarkably shitty situation, one you've been stuck in for ages without being able to see anything resembling a way out. And it's not like you haven't been looking, so don't go there either.

'Primarily and always it is not your fault, remember that.'

So what do I do? How do I get around this?

'Through this, you mean,' he says, and he is right and dammit.

'You have to see me as an equal,' he says.

How on earth do I do that?

'We could role-play,' he says, with a bit of a tricksy gleam in his eye. 'You could pretend you are River Song, and I am the Doctor.' He smiles. 'You always did want curly hair.'

I think I must have flinched a little at that, because then he says, 'You don't have to tell anyone. You don't have to write about it on any web log. This can just be between you and me.

'After all it's appropriate. I married you, didn't I?'

Hot

2011-12-31T01:02:00.001-05:00

Oh that's the other part of it. It's winter in New England, and while today wasn't as cold as it could have been, still, I found myself completely unwilling to wear a coat.

I was too hot.

Shadows

2011-12-30T23:19:00.004-05:00

Went out today to buy a new journal, since the Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft year-and-a-day course requires you to keep a Book of Shadows. Pretentious name, that, I've always thought, honestly; but in this case, since this year is about journeying down and facing one's shadow, it is appropriate. I think I shall officially title it The Book of the Shadow, though. It's at once more poetic and more accurate.

Walked around a bunch of stores trying to find the right journal. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find an unlined journal? I can't stand the lines. Drive me crazy. I tend to write really small and the lines just get in my way, like the metronome ticking while I tried to play piano. Have to keep my own time; have to make my own fit to the words on the page.

I finally settled on a sketchbook, though I didn't want to have to. It's the usual Canson sort with the black plasticy faux leather hard cover and a proper spine. I don't like the wire bound sorts; too open, too vulnerable or something. I may glue a swatch of black velvet over the cover. It's nice and absorbent, of energy I mean. Seems right.

I am, if you hadn't guessed, very picky about journals. They have to be the right size (not too small, not too big) can't have lines or other art on the page (that's my job dammit), all these things that come down to it has to feel safe, and mine.

So there I was out walking from store to store and man this manic energy thing is just flooding through me. A couple of the stores were a bit of a walk but I did it fast as I could. I am rather out of shape, now, I know; but I still walked quickly, even though I was out of breath. I kind of couldn't help myself. Right now my Spirit is fast; my body will simply have to learn to keep up. And no, I've never been given to manic-depression, so this isn't anything like that. This is a real change, from a deep level.

I think, anyway. Could be just borrowed, I suppose; but it's okay. I'm still kind of manic right now, even though it's late and I'm getting towards tired, too. I can feel the muscles in my arms and in my upper thighs. I don't, really, know exactly what I did to them, but it's a good sort of feeling, that ache of having done something with them.

So. Tomorrow I start it, the year-and-a-day thing. I will do it from New Year's Eve 2011 to New Year's Day 2013. Seems the right way to do it.

I am curious to see what I find out about my shadow, which is the last thing in the course, the thing that all the rest of it runs down to. My experience with my shadow, or various aspects of my shadow, has been very good. They are never bad things. I think I said it a couple posts down, but for me, so far at least, it looks like the things I've rejected are the 'good' things, the things like Wisdom, and Beauty, and Motivation, and Desire, because I was taught so very thoroughly that I didn't deserve them. I never would have believed that a couple years ago. I would have said that my self-esteem was fine, great, I had no problems there at all. Sure, I don't have the foggiest idea how to describe my father, that's fair enough. But I'm fine.

Yeah, well.

Focus

2011-12-30T23:04:00.003-05:00

'Focus!' he says suddenly. 'Do you know what else that means?'

Oh, that's right. The focus, properly, is the part of the altar where the fire is lit. The place where the offerings are made.

'Yeah,' he says, his voice low, 'fancy that. Fire and the sacred.

'Fancy that,' he says again, and smiles.

Plans

2011-12-29T19:04:00.003-05:00

"Oh," I say, because here he is, smiling at me. It really is a very kind smile, yet with more than a little Trickster underneath. Still, I know in my bones he is trustworthy, and always has been, tricks or no.

"What is this energy?" I ask him.

He furrows his brow and looks a little confused, like it's complicated. 'It's complicated,' he says.

You know, I have to say I really like Amy Pond. She calls him on his stuff. She doesn't let him get away with things, and she can make him squirm so very prettily. If only she were a little wiser, and could ask him the right questions—

'Okay,' he says, 'look on your face: noted.

'So what you'd like to know is does this energy come from you or me?' he asks.

Yes, sort of. It feels circular, but I think knowing the path of it will help me to use it. And I want very much to use it. I have a feeling something like this will come in very handy in the coming year. Not that I know exactly what is coming in this coming year, but I just have this feeling it's going to be something big. Hopefully a good big. But big.

'Yes,' he says, quite carefully. I suppose he does know a few things, what with being an unincarnate Soul outside of linearity who happens to look like a time traveller at the moment, right?

'Yes,' he says again, still careful. I roll my eyes and sigh. This one, this eikon, whose appearance and personality both are patterned after that bodysake, is going to be more than exasperating sometimes, isn't he?

'Yes,' he says yet again, and laughs. 'Sorry,' he says, and I think he does mean it.

Okay fine. Here's what I think is going on.

I'm here in this place. I am ready, in some ways. That alone could account for the energy; I know in the past when I've been in situations I've finally realized I have to get out of (say a boyfriend I really needed to break up with) I get this sort of prowling ranginess, like an animal pacing the length of its cage. That could be enough.

And it follows that then that change in me is what precipitates the change in him. If I am ready to escape then he is someone who can help me escape.

I suppose it doesn't matter where the energy comes from. But it is confusing, I guess.

'What you want to know,' he says then, 'is whether you can claim this energy.'

Oh. Yes. That is exactly it. I need to know whose it is, because then I'll know if I have any right to it.

'It doesn't matter,' he says. 'If it's yours it's yours and if it's mine then I give it to you. Use it, expend it, borrow from it, take it, keep it, shape it, grow it, fritter it away, whatever you like. It's yours. I am dead, and limitless, and taking it can't harm me, if it's even mine. Like you said it's circular. I think, now, that you are going to need it. So take it.'

All right. I will.

'Okay,' he says, 'then let's make the transfer official.'

He walks up to me, leans his head in, and kisses me. After a moment he backs out, and looks at me. The look on his face is kind, gentle, and very smitten.

I feel the corner of my mouth turn up. I say, "Was that, technically, necessary?"

'Well no,' he says. 'That was just fun. Are you complaining?'

No, no. Of course not. He's a funny one, though, isn't he.

'We are well matched,' he says smiling, his voice low.

I smile at him and shake my head. Oh ai. What does this say about me?

'Nothing but good things,' he says.

I think of something then.

"Energy's not going to be much use without focus," I say.

'That is true, yes,' he says.

"Can you help me with that?" I ask.

He hesitates. 'Somewhat,' he says.

"That can't come from you," I guess.

'No, it can't,' he says, 'but I can help you cultivate it.'

Okay then. I'm not sure where to start, though.

'Make a plan,' he says, 'with the New Year. And make focus your quality for 2012, like you used to do with your old coven, when you picked a word for the year to work with. Only this will be the Roman year, not the Celtic one.'

Well, okay, I was planning on doing that anyway. Right now though for the next couple days I'm tying up loose ends. This is going to be a big year, or at least I have big plans for it.

'Those are the best kind,' he says.

Energy

2011-12-29T18:47:00.002-05:00

So, I say, all wide eyes and breathlessness, the funniest thing is happening.

Oh, I know, funnier than having an Invisible Friend? Funnier than talking to said I.F. on a regular basis? Funnier than believing he probably actually maybe really after all does exist? Funnier than the inside of my head?

Well it's all the same thing, as he'd be the first to say.

See, once in a while, especially when he's just switched and is all new, it's like it's this infection thing going on. Not in the way that a virus is infectious, I don't suppose; more like the way laughter is.

And it is hard to tell. It could just be the proximity to him, and some sort of overlap between the two of us, since I and him aren't exactly precisely separate some of the time, not often, but some of the time; or it could just be that things are changing, for me, which, while that certainly has an effect on him, and these things are all entangled together of course, doesn't actually come from him.

Because suddenly I have all this physical energy. It could, it really could, be because something has changed within me, and I do think that's the case, and a good good thing at that; but this is really kind of specific. It's, almost, an acting-out of these things on my part, of adopting the persona of him maybe just a little. I don't know. But I suddenly can't sit still either and am fidgety and twitchy and agitated, almost.

I was like this a few years ago, at the time, when, coincidentally or not so coincidentally, he looked like that other Doctor for a time. That one who was really quite exceptionally manic. It is hard to say; I was also testing Wellbutrin at the time (it got an F. An F minus) and that was amping some energy up too, though in a really not good way (it trasmuted my depression to anxiety, and gave me scary dreams to boot). So that was certainly a factor, at the time, absolutely. But now I'm thinking it's more to do with him, or that coincident character. I don't know. I was also very much feeling like I had to leave this place. It is all circular I suppose and there is no chicken or egg to it.

Still, the last few days I've had the impulse to run around screaming, just to get some of this out of me.

It's all very interesting.

Life

2011-12-29T18:36:00.002-05:00

It strikes me as strange in an I-should-have-known way that there are libido desirings that do not involve sex.

I mean I've heard of sublimation and all that, but realizing how very vast and multi-faceted the libido is is still one thing to have heard of, and another thing to actually see.

For one thing it takes some of the weirdness out of things. Some of the shame, even. I've been watching, like I've said, and like I will I predict continue to obsess about for some time now, so just be warned, Doctor Who for literally decades now. I have never, until the new series, and then only with Ten and Eleven, because, sorry Chris Eccleston, you are so very very very very very not my type oh my god no, had any kind of sexual-type crush on any of the Doctors. It just wasn't like that.

But yet. Like I said a couple posts down, I certainly wanted that man. I wanted that man because he represented, and still I suppose represents freedom, the life lived well, action, independence (even though that's a tricky one), and most of all, though this sounds completely contradictory to the premise of a horror/science fiction/drama, safety.

Again, though, I should have known. The libido is properly the life force; it is the drive to live, and live well.

Mothering

2011-12-28T22:46:00.004-05:00

Wow 'floody' is right. And more:

Since last summer it's been about kittens. I bottle fed one of them (born to a feral mother), because it had a nasty parasite at three weeks old (which is nowhere near weaned) and I needed to give it medication and keep its wound clean. That kitten is still here and nearly grown (he was neutered last week, yay), and is named Ratty:

Bit fuzzy, that picture, but then so is Ratty.

Bottle-feeding him at that age meant all kinds of mommy stuff, stuff I'd never done before and had never before wanted to do. But there I was, setting the alarm for the middle-of-the-night feeding, making sure he peed and pooped, since a kitten that young can't do it on its own (you have to take a wet paper towel and basically rub its butt till something comes out, which of course the mother cat does with her tongue, and yes I am very glad I am not a mother cat), keep track of what goes in and what goes out, and weigh it every day to make sure it's gaining weight. It was all this basic, basic, stuff. This profoundly amazing basic stuff.

This is striking me as similar. I mean one of these days I'm going to have to deal with my rather disordered eating habits (not an eating disorder proper, and I am very glad); but this comes down to being reliable for myself.

Small wonder I don't know how to do that. I wasn't taught, and there were no models for it here, none at all.

It's all Mother stuff, that aspect of Goddess I've never been able to relate to, not till I bottle fed Ratty. Again, small wonder. I do think it is in large part instinct, probably, if I can tap into it; but again, I've never seen it up close and just don't understand it.

And yes, this too traces back to self-love, if you want to analyze it. I suppose it comes down to self-preservation first. Which can certainly be an act of self-love.

So okay. This is all tied together, isn't it? I knew there was some kind of lesson in all that kitten stuff, but I hadn't seen it. I think this is part of it. If I can learn to care for them well, I can do the same for myself. And that, is of course key, to all of this I think.

Reliable

2011-12-28T21:48:00.002-05:00

So okay, let's see. What about this character freaks me out?

Well that's a lot of stuff now isn't it. Let's just pick one bit for now.

Oh I know one. How he is unreliable.

They've been making a big deal out of it lately, how he always lets people, his friends, his companions, down. He promises them a new exciting life, gets their hopes up, then dashes them. Something about all that strikes a loud note of something in me, some kind of dread, or fear, or recognition, or shame. Don't know why shame, but oh man is that coming up. Is that more of It must be my fault, always?

I was talking to the therapist a few weeks ago (I've had therapy off for the month of December as there was a snafu with my insurance. My mistake, but given the nature of bureaucracy it took a good month to straighten it out) about Adelle, the broken-off bit of my inner, abused, child, and what I'd said to her. I was telling her (the therapist) that I wasn't sure I could do what Adelle was asking of me.

It's like, I remember once doing a little guided meditation to get to know a faery guide, or somesuch. At the end it asked you to promise them something, something you would do every day to keep them in mind.

And I freaked out, more or less. I can barely remember to eat every day. I'm in no position to make promises like that! I'll screw it up!

I had said something similar about Adelle, that I didn't see how I could promise her anything because sooner or later I would screw up that promise.

And my therapist said that no one is perfect. We screw up. Things get beyond our control. If you are going to pick up your kids, and your car breaks down, well, you're not going to be there on time. It happens. The main thing is to let them know, and apologize, and to do your best to make it right, by say sending someone else to go get them. If you do it that way, kids will understand. They get it. They won't necessarily be happy about it, who would, but they know things happen, and people screw up. It's in the taking of responsibility that you show your consistency, your reliability.

That was it. Reliability. Because not long ago I'd been freaking out about how the Doctor is unreliable. They have been playing it up a lot, in the series, lately. Amy waits, Rory waits (or Rory dies, over and over; sometimes I think they should rename the poor boy "Kenny", not that I'm a South Park fan). I mean it's a drama, sort of, so they do play it up. But it's kind of not fair.

They are expecting him to be a God, really. He isn't. He isn't human or anything, fair enough, and he's a hero and all that (though that word does sound rather unlikely when used of this character, really), and he really does have astonishing good luck most of the time, but still, there are plenty of things that are not in his control. I'm not sure he himself gets that, though. He's awful hard on himself sometimes, what with the guilt, guilt, and guilt bit.

So does he try to make it right? I think he does. Sometimes he can't, what with all the complicated left-brainy Rules they've decided to impose upon the series now that we're in the twenty-first century, and honestly, it was waaay more fun and easy-going back in the day and dammit that was the whole charm of the thing. But he does apologize, and I think he does try to set things right. It's not like say the narcissist's way of blowing people off and being habitually late, with which, alas, I am very familiar. There is also, and I think always has, been some Fate hanging around him, too. Things that look screwed up tend to work out well, very well actually.

So he isn't, actually, unreliable, not in the way the people around me are and were, the people who don't do what they say they are going to do because it's about control and manipulation and their own selfishness. That's not why. He's just not perfect.

So bringing this back around to myself, and to Adelle, my therapist also said it would be about winning trust, which takes a long time, a very long time, to build. But it doesn't have to be perfect. I am learning this, I think, with the kittens. That sounds silly, doesn't it? They're kittens. They are also a lot of responsibility. They are also more adaptable than I would have thought. I don't have to be there every second of the day. I don't have to be perfect.

Okay. That's one strand untangled. Only nine-hundred and ninety-nine to go.

Always

2011-12-28T17:44:00.005-05:00

Is this going slow? I think it probably isn't. I topped eight hundred posts here sometime in the last couple of days. I haven't had this many posts up in a single month for more than two years. Raining and pouring and stuff, yes?

And I'm not getting out of it this time. So okay. Let me stop, and turn around, and let me look. What do I see?

I see a funny-faced very pretty man who is him and him at the same time and I wasn't expecting this would hinge on him this time. He is usually just a Guide. Well, okay, he's a lover, old friend, a million other things. But he is usually outside the problem. But now he is the problem itself, embodied, not that that's the right word.

Behind him, though, is this dark mass, like a sandstorm almost, vague and shifting but dark, very dark.

'Ah,' he says, 'no. This isn't actually me, as in, this is not about the person of me. You are bringing this to it. That's not a bad thing, it needs to be addressed, I know. But it isn't actually me. I think that may help?'

I don't know.

He comes over to me. He looks at me, head bent, eyes fixed on me with that curiously intense gentleness. He sees me, I know, all that I am; but it is not probing, not invasive. Instead it is validating, witnessing.

'I am on your side,' he says, and I know that.

'I always love you,' he says, and I notice that he has not said I have always loved you, nor I will always love you but I always love you. The present is eternal. It is anyway. But it especially is with him.

"I don't know what to do with you like this," I tell him. He looks like that marvellous man, the man who I have always wanted so very badly, but who has always been so unavailable. And now he has that beauty thrown over him, so I want him on another level entirely. And he's daimonic, that character, and it all fits perfectly together and it really was only a matter of time, wasn't it. Fancy that, time.

'I always love you,' he says again. 'I am always here. I am always yours. I will not leave you. That's forever, you know, and I meant that really quite literally. This is a lifetimes thing, not just the one, you know. I know you know that. I know, also,' he adds sadly, 'that you can't feel that.'

No. I can't. I believe him, or I believe him with my mind, the logical part of me (as if any of this were logical? Really?) but I've never been able to feel it, know it. That comes, I'm sure, from being told and shown from earliest times that I don't deserve good things, don't deserve love. So if I don't deserve it, it is impossible that he loves me, right? How do I unlearn this?

'Ah now that is a good, good question. And I mean "good" in that it is deeply good you are asking it.

'I think,' he says, carefully, kindly, 'that you will never believe me, never know I am telling you the truth. Until, that is, you believe yourself.

'I can tell you over and over and over again that I love you, and I have, and it will never shake that foundational belief in you that that is simply impossible, will it.' He looks very, very sad now. 'Not,' he adds, 'that I will ever stop saying it, because it is true. But it comes down to loving yourself. That is what you have to learn.'

That is always what it comes down to, isn't it.

'Yes,' he says, and draws me into his arms.

Neglect

2011-12-28T17:33:00.003-05:00

It occurs to me that neglect, physical neglect, is pretty much invalidation made manifest, made physical. It is hard to see as an adult, but never mind when you were a kid. There is nothing to point to, nothing obvious. They didn't hit us, or burn us with cigarettes, or smack us around with a two-by-four (I know someone whose father did that; he's all pinned together inside, having had his bones broken over and over and over again). That's the thing. It's not what they did do. It's what they didn't do.

And when you're a kid, and you complain, and they say it's not like they did something wrong, they didn't do anything, why are you complaining? You can't untangle that. It's too subtle. Yet you can feel it, certainly, absolutely, even if it's just this pit in your stomach of swallowed unfairness, which will turn to rage, in time.

But there's nothing you can point to. There's nowhere to start, except this vague feeling that something isn't fair, isn't right.

But it's invalidation, all of it, neglect. It is saying that these things they don't do are not important, that you are not important, worth the time, worth the money. None of these things, heat, hot water, water, are important enough to bother to provide you with. You don't need that. These things are luxuries, and you are simply not worth it. And if you complain? They'll tell you, additionally, that you aren't worth it and don't get me wrong that is bad enough, and compounds all of this; but I think what they show you is what really, really does the damage.

Big

2011-12-28T16:31:00.004-05:00

That all sounds so silly. It is a children's show, it was a children's show I mean. Watched by a child in a chronically untenable situation, in a house with so little heat you could see your breath in here, your fingernails this sort of purply-blue (oh and you play piano, too, good luck with that when your fingers are cold and stiff, oh never mind the bit about being an artist, either), no hot water, no running water at times, a yard like a junkyard, closets bookcases cabinets cellar attics stuffed full of stuff that is not yours, never yours; all that, the physical neglect, yes, which is physical abuse, yes, though...

I say though and that's not fair. It's not active physical abuse, sure, neglect isn't; it's passive. It's the easy kind, for the abusers. It's the same kind of passivity that allowed my mother to throw up her hands and say "how terrible!" when Danny the Kitten was "95% dead" and then not do anything at all.

It's thinking that not having done something equals innocence. Even though not doing something is in fact not taking responsibility for something, when you are responsible, and when the thing, the child you are responsible for, is suffering. But then, it's not like you actually did something to the kid, right? You're innocent.

So, yes: physical abuse, then. And then there's the emotional shit, the invalidation, the control, the impossible stubbornness against all reason and sanity, the futility of it all, the teaching that it is all useless useless useless.

I was on a chat for a little while a couple weeks back with some other children of hoarders. Yes, there are support groups. And we got talking about learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness is when you learn that nothing you do makes any difference. No effort brings a result, never mind a reward. The person who is taught this is left with a pervasive attitude of Why bother? Because it has never made any difference.

I remarked that I wasn't taught that, quite. It isn't why bother for me. It's that I was taught that trying was bad. Bad things happen when you try. If you try to convince Dad to install the water heater that is sitting right there, he will argue and berate you, tell you you don't have the right. If you try to do it yourself, he will undo the work you have done, because you (or the plumber you hired) didn't do it right. He was the only one in the entire world who could do it. And then he wouldn't. Because you couldn't make him.

See? I knew this was daddy issues. Fuck.

But anyway. So then there on the TV is this show, from another world, because English stuff is really a parallel universe to an American kid, where they speak the same language but with far more charm, and there is this character who hates authority and has this habit of overthrowing oppressive governments and there are no rules and they contradict themselves all the time (three Atlantis stories, people!) and it's always safe, so safe, and the violence is cartoony and the effects are bad, so bad, and the monsters are silly and the main character, the wonderful man with the time machine who can do anything and go anywhere, usually with a girl, and look! you're a girl, just laughs laughs laughs at it all, dances around the monsters, laughs at the dictators, brings them down and down and down and then dances off into all the rest of time to do it over and over again.

Yeah, well. You'd like that, as that girl in the oppressive household run by a dictator-father, wouldn't you? You'd like that a lot, even if you didn't, say, think the character was good-looking, or any kind of love-interest to your budding teenaged self. It wouldn't matter if you weren't, technically, attracted to the guy; he'd still be something you'd want. And you would want him very, very badly.

But at the same time that marvellous man is distant, alien, unaffectionate, and there's this unwritten taboo about his being involved with those girls he whisks away. Partly because it isn't proper, probably, given the power and age difference; but also because it is a children's show, and they decided to just not go there. But you don't have any affection in your life anyway. Though you need it, certainly, we all do. But you see this man you want so very very badly on one level, who is yet missing something big, something very very big and very very important. Vital, in fact, as in necessary to life.

Well that might fuck you up a bit, don't you think?

And so here I am, and this is all old old stuff, though I suppose not that old, not from childhood proper, rather from my early teens, the 'formative years' as they call them. And I mean I watched that show religiously. Of course I did.

But with the lack of anything approaching affection in the real world from my family, my neglecting dysfunctional abusive personality-disorder-riddled family, and I spit on that word, family, I didn't see what was missing on that TV show. I couldn't. I had no reference for it in reality. But I could feel the lack, even if I couldn't see it.

And now and now. It's all coming home to me, isn't it, now that that same character is back, and played by a very pretty funny-looking man. And now they have brushed aside that old taboo, and yes I think that is healthy, and reasonable, and good, but they are making very much of that tension now of how he can't even if he might want to which is why I just had to put Ten down because because. I don't know. This one might, actually, do it. He might. He probably has already. He got married, after all. That might be the saving grace of this all. But who knows how it will really turn out. I do trust that the head writer is a kind person. There is a different flavor to it with him in charge. A kindness.

But it's all big, and I don't know where to start, now, though I suppose ranting here is a place. But it's big and old and connected to so much crap, so much painful hurtful stuff that will need looking at, with eyes open and willing. I will do it, I think. I have to.

I have no choice, really.

Oh Dear

2011-12-28T15:35:00.002-05:00

Oh boy. Or oh Boy, really, ha.

I am in the exact same state of freak-out that I was when he looked like Doctor number Ten. It's the character, not the actor. Something is tied up in that long history of a marvellous and unavailable man. I had to put it down before; it was too much.

I don't think I'm getting out of it that easily this time.

Oh dear.

Bits

2011-12-28T00:15:00.004-05:00

Wow. He is really back again. I mean he's really really back again.

Okay, a steady diet of that new DVD is certainly helping, isn't it. So of course last night I popped in that episode where he has a shower scene, and my, I've suddenly become shy about it, or nervous about search engines or something, and don't want to name names. Well, you know which episode I'm talking about, I imagine. And I discovered that the DVD player is in fact capable of going frame by frame and that there is a quick dimly lit pan down the boy as he jumps out of the bathroom fumbling with his towel. And even though it was quick and dimly lit, with the frame by frame you could see, um, stuff. And I just sat there staring in disbelief. I am glad I was alone, honestly. I don't see how it is possible, but I swear, I think he was actually frontal and naked for a second there. I don't honestly know how something like that, if that's what it was, would get run, on the air, in England. I mean I can't have seen that, can I? I know England is technically part of Europe, but it's not like it's European, is it?

Anyhoo, whoo, goodness. That wasn't where I wanted to go with that, but I guess I had to get it out of me. Mind you I am not saying I'm complaining. Just a little shy and weirded out. Though the voice in the back of my brain (I have one of those, too) thinks it's totally fucking hilarious.

So anyway. I've been watching a lot of um, that new show. Damn. Suddenly shy again. I suppose that's not surprising given that paragraph up there. I'm a terrible Pagan, really. I don't like autumn, I'm waaaaay uncomfortable being around naked people (never mind being naked myself), though I did get used to the nude models in Art School just fine. Still, none of that sky-clad stuff for me, which, luckily, tends not to come up too much in chilly New England, thank the Goddess. Athena, probably, Goddess of weaving and making Her own clothes, Who unlike pretty much all the other Greek Gods, never runs around naked.

Anyway, second chakra blazing away besides—

Well, no, that fiery second chakra stuff is kind of the point, isn't it.

So we talked, he and I, my Muse, my daimon, that looks like the aforementioned boy in the what that can't have happened WTF nude scene in Doctor Who!!!??? and I. We talked.

There is always a stage (well, okay, it doesn't really go away, does it) at the beginning of these changes where he is new to me and I'm all blithery and teenaged and overrunning with I guess Maiden energy, as they'd say. It is of course always wonderful, and this is one of the things I especially appreciate about this, um, relationship, that it is always new; he always looks like what I consider The Hottest Man On the Planet which I can't believe I just said was Matt Smith. Ai me.

That's the other part of it though. I'm always dreadfully embarrassed. Always. It's more of that push-pull wan't-can't stuff, which I guess is properly Shadow stuff, isn't it. For me Shadow issues, I guess you would call them, aren't so much about a feeling of denial, a reaction that oh no my God of COURSE I'M NOT LIKE THAT!!! but a more subtle thing. I was going to say they are simultaneously attractive and repulsive, but that's not it either. They are attractive and rejected, I guess, but rejected because I don't feel I deserve it. It's not for me. I don't have the right.

I wonder now. From what I have heard about Shadow stuff (and I was just reading some stuff on it tonight), it's usually the denied, the rejected, the stuff seen as 'bad.' But for me it tends to be the 'good' stuff I don't deserve. That's the stuff I push away. Ai me. There have been some cowboys in this head, all right.

One of the other episodes I saw last night was 'Amy's Choice.' I had seen it before, so I knew that the twist to it was that the Dream Lord is actually the Doctor's dark side. And so seeing it the second time was absolutely heartbreaking. 'There's only one person in the Universe who hates me as much as you do.' Ai yi. All the rotten little twisty knife-turning sniping crap was pure self-judgement. I mean, since I was speaking of that.

But anyway! We talked. Or, we are talking, since that's how it works.

Ai yi fire second chakra fire blither fire oh my god WHAT?

He just looks at me, smiling. 'I love this bit,' he says.

"Oh my God," I say, "look at you. Why do you look like this? What is going on with my brain?"

He laughs. Then he shrugs.

There is a point to this, right?

'Of course there's a point,' he says, 'there's always a point.'

"Which IS?!?" I pretty much scream.

'Whoa, okay there, okay, all right, hey. Okay.' He laughs, which doesn't help. I mean I know he can't help it so I don't blame him but still I do.

"Why do you look like this?" I ask again, calmer. I don't know. I shouldn't fight it, I never should, it never works; but there is just this fear, there. This particular character, in all his particular incarnations, has been part of my brain for literally decades. And the character, though I love the show and him and all, has always driven me completely crazy.

He is suddenly looking at me, very very intently. Oh, those eyes are green, very green. Oh, they match that coat they gave him.

'Why?' he asks, simple as the day.

I don't know. But it's freaking me out in a way. What ever this is going to bring up, it's going to be damned big. And damned old. I mean, I know, that's all good, ultimately, but I don't like staring at the possibility right now, you know?

He thinks a moment. God he's gorgeous. O my God that mouth. He says, 'All right, if you were in a room with the Doctor, what would you want to say to him?'

What would I say? I don't know. "Hi gosh I think you're pretty"? Is this supposed to go somewhere? I don't know. Except, except then out bursts—

"I'd grab him around the throat and shake him and scream WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?! WHY WON'T YOU LET ANYONE LOVE YOU!?! YOU'RE A COWARD!! COWARD!!! COWARD!!!"

I clap my hand over my mouth, my eyes wide.

I think his are actually wider. 'Oh Love, Love!' he says, exhilarated, 'Now you're getting somewhere!'

"Oh," I squeak, from behind my hand.

I take my hand away. "But what does, what does that mean?" I say, small. I don't really want to know, do I? Oh God, oh no, it's got something to do with daddy issues, doesn't it? Oh God I feel sick. I am sick. Oh God, oh no. I shut my eyes. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this.

He has come up behind me; he puts his arms around me. He is warm, very warm. I feel him kiss my cheek, then rest his chin on the top of my head. I can smell him, the individual scent of him, the scent of the person, the non-person of him. He's really, really here now oh my god my brain.

'Hey hey, hey, hey,' he says, quiet, soothing. He is rocking me a little, gently. This one, this eikon, this body of his, I've noticed just can't sit still. But it's soothing.

'You are not sick,' he says. 'You are not bad. You have the right. You are deserving of love.

'Hey, hey,' he says again. 'You don't have to do this all in one go, either.

'I think,' he says then, 'you could just let it sit for a bit. Just think, gently, on what you just said. If you want.'

I know it connects to about a million things. All of this crap about guys, all my history of falling in love with guys who don't return it, all that stuff with that boy in 1998 who was born in 1975 and I thought that was young for me then and holy fuck his bodysake was born in 1982 I remember 1982 I was in eighth grade what am I doing?

'Whoa, whoa,' he says, 'goodness. Okay this is a bit floody now, isn't it. We can take this slow, this can be slow. It's all right to do it slow. Slow is thorough. Slow is good. Slow allows you to be sane in between things'—he's using the word sane of me?—'Shhh shhh, shhh, hey. Okay.' He takes a deep breath.

'We'll do this slow, okay?'

I don't know what we're doing. "All right," I say, bewildered.

Rrrrr.

2011-12-28T00:09:00.003-05:00

The dishwasher repair man is coming tomorrow; the button on the thing was always finicky, but a couple weeks ago it finally stopped working entirely. So I called the appliance repair folk and they sent a guy who was supposed to be there between one and five.

He was there at seven, of course, though they at least had the courtesy to call and let me know, unlike my sister.

He walked in the kitchen and gently pressed the button, once. It started right up.

>:[ I think about sums it up.

Still, it had been being screwy; and he said that the control panel thingy was probably in need of replacing, if it wasn't always going on. So he ordered the part anyway and is supposed to show up again tomorrow. We've pretty much already paid for it, so might as well replace it. Of course it has been completely fine since he came and touched it.

>:[ again.

Rrrrrrr.

Inner Temple

2011-12-26T23:24:00.005-05:00

All right. I started in on the Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft stuff tonight; there are a few things to get straight before one goes into the proper year-and-a-day course which I'd like to start with the New Year. Things like visualization and creating sacred space, which, okay, I know how to do, or at least I know how I do it; but if I'm going to play along with this particular method I figured I'd try it word-for-word to start off.

So the first preliminary meditation/visualization/journey in there is to one's inner temple, a sacred and safe place inside. I've been places mostly like that before, though not a proper structure, a proper central temple. So I tried it.

Penczak has you count down (twice!) to get into trance, then go to the World Tree, whatever that looks like. So there I was.

And there he was of course.

The Tree itself is this large oak, with low branches almost parallel to the ground and a fat fat trunk, all tangled roots at the base, tangled branches at the crown. It is a white oak, the kind with rounded lobes to the leaves, the American kind that looks like most of the British varieties.

On one of the low branches, to the left, always the left, there he reclined, easy as a leopard, his face about the level of mine.

So I walk up to him and kiss him. Of course. Oh he is so clear right now. I am so, so, grateful to have him back.

Of course in the original meditation there is no Guide; you are supposed to find your own way. And though I know that this inner world is mine, and that outer rules will always be trumped by my own inner rules, still, I didn't know if I should take him (or if he should take me, rather). So I ask him if it is permitted to bring him.

'Nothing is forbidden,' he says, and smiles.

He pours himself from the branch, easy, fluid. "When did you go all cat-like?" I ask him, surprised. This one? Graceful? Really?

He shrugs. 'It's a tree,' he says simply.

"Do I take you with me?" I ask him.

'You can if you like,' he says, and I cannot begin to describe what his accent is doing to that I in like. 'What feels right?'

I think. "That I don't, that I do this alone."

'Okay,' he says, easy, and smiles. 'I'll be here.'

"Is it safe?" I ask him.

'Always,' he says.

So I look at the roots of the tree; the meditation describes Underworld things, the depths, as being accessed through the roots. I see a hole there, though it's small. It does look rather like a doorway.

He has come up behind me. I feel a hand on each shoulder as he guides me into the little door and then there I am—

At the top of a flight of stairs. It is dimly lit, though not completely dark. I look down at myself. I am in a long dress of black, with black beadwork all over, picking up little bits of the light here and there, just a little. My feet are bare.

I go down the stairs, down, down, down. At last I come to a corridor of stone. Round a few bends, then up a short staircase and there I am again—

On the beach. The sun is shining brightly, though halfway to the horizon. It is setting. It is a western shore, not the kind we have around here in New England. To the left a little is a building, a small square thing. It faces the Sea.

I walk around to its front door. There is a pillar in each corner, and the roof is a dome, leafed in gold, which reflects the sunset. To either side of the door is a floor-length window of many square panes. Though I'd say it's Greek, or at least Classical, there is a bit of the Federal to it, the American temple, like say Monticello.

I go inside. The room inside is perfectly square, and in the center is an altar, with a small fire burning. I pull out a piece of paper and a pen; on it I draw a leaf, and the words leaf-fall. I do not know what that means, but I put it in the fire as an offering.

There are three doors, left, straight ahead, and right. They are open and I can see into them, a little.

This place is of course bigger on the inside than the outside. Oh my poor, poor brain. This is how it's going to go now, isn't it? That's a lot of years of accumulated something, imagery, maybe.

I walk forward, towards the back. There is a long corridor there, full of doors. A few windows to the left, also very tall Federal style, look out on a garden, one I know is in the center of the building, like a Roman peristyle garden. But it's over to the left. I see the wing of the building beyond it, and I know that it is actually the right wing, wrapping around to the left. This building is not exactly confined to three dimensions, is it. I also know that none of those doors on the left actually open onto the garden, but to other places. The meditation mentioned things like doors of healing, that sort of thing.

I go through the corridor. I do know, as complicated as that all sounds, that it's really a lot simpler than that. There aren't that many rooms here, and the door out is still the door out. They just connect in strange ways, maybe.

Then it's the library, of course. I look around and realize I can look anything up in here, the thing coming to mind being about plants, and a little yellow flower at that, like cinquefoil, or primrose, something yellow with five petals. That's interesting.

I turn back then, as I'm just taking a cursory glance around the place at this time. I go back to the first room, the one with the altar. To the right (the left when I came in) is the kitchen. I go in there. On the table I see many tools, and though I'm not sure what exactly those tools are I'm reminded of the Magician in Tarot, with the objects representing the suits on the table before him. Objects which represent the four elements, I realize, meaning, a balance of things, harmony, balanced power.

I do not know what is over through the other door, not just yet. I do feel it is time to go back, though. So I walk out and around, and see a tunnel in the low cliff behind the beach; it is not the same tunnel I came from, but I know it is the quick way back.

I walk in, and up a short flight of stairs to come out at the base of the Tree. He is there, smiling at me.

I am a little confused. "Can I take that one down next time? Or is that one only for coming back?" I ask him.

'It'll work either way,' he says, smiling.

I look at him. "Your eyes are green," I say.

'Yes,' he says, 'dark green.'

"What's wrong?" I ask him, because those dark green eyes are suddenly wet.

'Oh I am so glad you are back, Love,' he says, and pulls me to him. 'I missed you.'

Back? How long was I gone?

He laughs. 'I mean, I am so glad you can see me again. It was a long, long, summer.'

"Yes," I say, my own eyes filling with tears, "it was."

So That's Why

2011-12-26T20:35:00.003-05:00

So one more note and then I really do have kittens to feed and play with (I know, sounds like such a hard job but it takes a large chunk of time, every single day)—

So a few weeks ago I moved a chunk of money into the account with the card, the one I use to buy stuff online. I had a sort of vague idea I was going to order some Civil War reproduction cloth, for one of my quilts; but it just kind of sat there.

Today I figured out why, after all, I put that money there.

Which means the second season of that pretty Doctor below is on its way to me now. Don't you just love it when you do, after all, know what you are doing?

Awareness

2011-12-26T19:12:00.004-05:00

Also also, as these posts always go in the wrong order, and most recent is that which gets read first, my sister actually did something good yesterday.

Well I guess that's a qualified good, though I'm certainly happy about it. She got me a Doctor Who DVD set, Matt Smith's first season.

I am grateful, or thankful, or something, I guess; it is difficult with her, with my mother, with my family, of course. Sometimes they do things that are nice, or good; but usually it's not on purpose, or not for my benefit, really. That sounds so rotten of me; she gave me a gift I liked, right?

Not that simple, is it.

When she asked me what I wanted for Christmas her response, as I noted a few posts below, was to whine that but that's what she wanted, as if don't deserve something as nice as, or as expensive maybe, as that (and money always figures into it for my sister and mother). Though come to think of it I don't think she broached the subject herself; I, if I am remembering correctly, asked her what she wanted first, then, she asked me. A distinction that might not matter with a normal person, and could be taken for balance, but, in her case, one, the order was important—she had to come first, and two, it's more I think a reflexive this is what people do learned thing than any kind of real reciprocity. I don't know.

But she got it for me, and, in fact, somehow I'm the one who ended up with the biggest haul. I know that sounds vulgar, doesn't it? Normal people don't count their presents; that's for spoiled brats, like Dudley Dursley. But there have been favorites played in the past, and I've called them on it, in the past, the recent past. It is funny to me, though, that the year I pretty much say fuck it as far as getting them stuff goes, and the year that I have been taking less and less crap from them, and standing up to them more and more, the year that I have said repeatedly, especially to my sister You are not allowed to treat me like shit (and that's an exact quote) is also the year I get a whole big pile of stuff from them. Why it's almost as if they are scared of me or something and were trying to appease me, though that was not my goal at all. Though I don't, honestly, think they've learned anything. Of course not.

This has kind of been the pattern with them, both my mother and my sister, in the past. They will ask me what I want, I will tell them, and then they will freak out at me about it (But I want that! from my sister or But I can't afford that! What do you think I am made out of money! from my mother) and I will feel like shit; but then when the birthday, or Christmas, rolls around look what they got me. That thing I asked for, the thing their first reaction was to protest I didn't deserve.

I was reading about something called intermittent reinforcement the other day. It's a behavioral technique, I guess you could call it. It means not rewarding someone for their behavior every time, but only rewarding them part of the time. Somewhat counterintuitively it creates a much stronger behavior than rewarding that person, or animal, every time. Gambling, I think, relies on this. The occasional reward reads as much greater, and much more to be hoped for, than one that comes every single time.

It is good to know about it. I can certainly see it with my sister. Sometimes when I ask her a question she is really nice; but sometimes she is a total asshole. In the past, because I would sometimes catch her when she was really nice, it was easier to forget or downplay the asshole behavior. Intermittent reinforcement probably also accounts for why the balance had to be tipped so far into asshole territory, with both her and my mother (she who nearly killed a kitten, remember), before I started to keep that in mind first.

And so their habit of belittling me when I ask for something I want, but then getting it for me anyway, like they are these great generous souls (and incidentally as if the belittling part never happened, hello gaslighting), fits right in, doesn't it.

So, while I am glad, very glad, I got that DVD set yesterday, I am not fooled by them. I will take it, of course I will, but I am not fooled. It doesn't change anything, and I can keep that in my awareness now.

Couple More

2011-12-26T17:49:00.005-05:00

I had a couple pretty pictures left over, which didn't fit into the direction the writing part of that last post went (which is how it works, writing). But as it would be a shame, a damned shame, for me not to include them, here we go:

First this one. See? A right, proper handfasting:

And then this other one, which is currently my desktop pattern. It's smallish, so it's tiled, and so there he is peeking out from between all these folders and images I really ought to tidy up one of these days:

So in this case, yes, I do agree that bow ties are cool.

Honestly. How can he be so funny-looking and so pretty at the same time?

No Idea

2011-12-26T15:55:00.009-05:00

So today I got the absolutely brilliant idea to type these three words into Google:

matt smith kiss

Well now.

And I'm posting those pictures here, because, after all, y'know, this is a blog and stuff, and because I'm forty-two years old, dammit, yet even looking at pictures like this still makes me turn several shades of scarlet, dammit, and honestly this is just my head, dammit, and seriously, I have the right to this don't I, dammit, and there is no way out but through. Dammit!

So, here are some lovely squee-ey pictures, though it feels like stepping off an eleven storey building—

I don't know what these are from, but from what I gather the man did do some theater somewhere in there. These are a fair bit of all right, don't you think?

Pasty thing, though, isn't he; and I do wonder how, exactly, he misplaced his eyebrows.

So then on to these, from the new series:

That one, unfortunately, turned out to be poisoned; but, still, he let himself, and that's saying something for that character.

You have no idea how helpful that is. What a weird thing to say, I know; but I've been watching Doctor Who for something like thirty years now, and that character has always, always, been a distant sort. I know, partly it's that it was meant to be a children's show, so they just sort of skipped past a lot of that 'adult' stuff. I mean I can think of maybe a single romantic relationship shown as such, and that was only between ancillary characters. There was pretty much never anything approaching romance in the old show. It's a little messed up, I think, or at least gives children (well it certainly gave me, though, admittedly, I am myself a little messed up) the idea that these things just kind of don't exist. It's a weird sort of deliberate looking away. I'm not sure it's entirely healthy, though, to be fair, a normal person probably isn't getting their idea of the world from one source only. But for those of us in a screwy family situation, where what we were told and shown of 'love' wasn't, and not even close? I don't know. I mean I chose to like it and watch it, it's true. I wasn't, say a Brady Bunch fan, where I presume they dealt with puppy love here and there, so there is a confirmation bias, so to speak. Though that is perhaps unfair to me; I watched what I could handle.

So then there's this picture, and you've no idea. Because this character is in to this kiss. And it's his wedding, holy cow, and it was his idea as far as I know, not having seen all of his second season yet.

Really, you've no idea.

Kindness

2011-12-24T22:40:00.004-05:00

I would so love to talk. I don't even know about what, but you, you funny faced man, you silly skinny twitchy beautiful thing, hello. Are you here?

'Of course I'm here. I'm always here,' he says, smiling, as ever.

Okay. Cripes, that's a very Doctor line.

'Well,' he says, 'you know.'

"I love that he can flirt," I say, meaning the character of the new Doctor.

'Yes, well, maybe we can finally teach you to, too. Wouldn't that be something? A measure of freedom and ease gained, or seen, at least. I bet you'd be good at it. You get that look in your eyes sometimes, that very canny look. That's a piece of it. But anyway. How are you Love?'

I don't know. A bit of a mess, I think.

'Yes, well, the holidays. Doesn't help that your narcissistic mother shares a birthday with Jesus, does it? That's so textbook it's almost laughable.'

I suppose. Though for her it's an opportunity to whine and be a martyr; after all, she's never had a proper birthday, has she?

'Well maybe she doesn't deserve one,' he says. 'The Universe is very wise, some times; also it has a wicked sense of humour.'

Like you, right?

'Well, sometimes wicked is what is called for. Don't you think?'

I laugh. I guess so.

He looks at me.

"Look at you," I say. "Are your eyes blue?"

'Not for long,' he says, and smiles.

"What do I do with you in this form?"

'Anything you like,' he says, and that voice is very sultry, quite on purpose.

Oh stop I'm melting.

'Witch,' he says, still flirting.

Goodness I hadn't expected that. There is something very fire about him. Really though, aren't we past this stage by now?

'What,' he says. 'Past the stage of flirting, and getting to know each other? Never. That's the fun part.'

You've got a bit of River Song in you, too, don't you?

He smiles. 'Actually,' he says, 'I think it's rather the other way around, don't you?' I realize he is making a dirty joke.

'It's not dirty,' he says quietly, quite serious for a moment. But then he smiles again.

'Sweetie,' he says and I close my eyes and think Oh stop.

'Sweetie,' he says again, 'look at me.' I do. He has such a vibrancy to him now, in this form; and such a profound kindness, too. He smiles, very warmly.

"Why do you look like this?" I ask, out of the blue.

'Because you find him really really hot, of course.' There's that sultry note in his voice again, with a smile to match.

Okay, wasn't sure I was ready to admit that, actually, but okay.

'Well come on, Love, that's how it works, isn't it?'

I guess. But it takes a bit of getting used to, you know?

'You have to forgive yourself for loving me one of these days, you know,' he says.

What does that mean?

'It means that there is no blame here,' he says. 'You like, you love what you love. No shame. Just glory, and beauty, and such good good things. That's the whole point of being here, isn't it?'

"Well," I say, "but this doesn't really count does it? I mean it's not like you're actually here here, you know?"

'Well no,' he says, 'but you are.' Ah yes the usual signpost: You are here.

He smiles and laughs a little, looking down.

Have I ever gone on about how hard it is to describe his laughs? There are a million kinds, and I can see them so clearly, but I can never describe them properly. This one was a quiet laugh, a surprised yet knowing laugh, laughed at the same time he turns the corner of his mouth up and lowers his head, knowing, flirting, a little chagrined, or fake chagrined, like I've just gotten him to admit to something a little racy which he wanted to admit but has to pretend he didn't want to admit. I can picture it so exactly. Yet, when I write it it is only: he laughs. Wholly inadequate. You should see him. I know you can't. But you should.

He looks up at me. Oh, his eyes are dark now. He is becoming him, or becoming him in a way that I can see, at any rate. He is of course always and only him, ever.

'What would you like to do?' he asks.

I don't know.

'Not,' he says, 'what are you going to do? but What would you like to do? Or even better: What would you love to do?'

Oh. I don't think I've ever been asked that question.

He looks at me again. Those eyes, goodness. They see so much, right into me. He is so very canny like this. Yet so gentle with it.

I remember teaching myself, sometime in my twenties, to look other people in the eye. I had always been afraid, when I was a child and a teen; I was too scared, though it is hard to explain why. It was probably a general shyness, though that word isn't right, as I don't think I would have been shy if I hadn't been trained to fear. Perhaps it was part of my fear of being noticed; don't look the predator in the eye, because then they will see you, know you are there. And hiding is surviving.

I look back at him, open, safe. He has always been safe, though one would think that is the last thing a daimon would be, the Muse who pushes you to be yourself, to be true to your Soul, which must inevitably mean stepping outside your comfort zone, as they say.

'That's rubbish,' he says, and smiles, still kind. 'We are still trying to find the way in to your comfort zone, remember?

'Sweetie,' he says again, 'What would you love to do?'

"I think I would love to kiss you," I say, surprising myself a little.

'Well then,' he says, and make no mistake his breathing is a little bit faster now, though his voice is still calm, 'I think you probably should.'

I step up to him, nervous. I've known him for ages, haven't I, and yet when he changes it's always new, and I am always shy. I fiddle with his collar a little. He stands there smiling, gentle, waiting. I stand up on tiptoes and kiss him, just a little, on the mouth. His smile widens. He puts his arms around me then and I lean on him.

"Why do you look like this now?" I ask him, again.

'Because I am safe,' he says.

Safe? Really? Wasn't I just thinking, not all that long ago, that he was especially not safe looking like this? As that unreliable man?

'Ah,' he says, 'but he isn't unreliable, now is he? Not once you look at it as a whole.'

I suppose not. That was fear talking, wasn't it?

'Yes. And your fear is really quite loud, sometimes.' Then he adds, under his breath, 'Damned thing.'

There is more to it than that, of course. So I ask again, "Why do you look like this?"

He smiles.

'Because he is a flirt. Because he is healthy. Because he is obviously capable of love, on a pretty grand scale. Because he is kind.'

Okay, that's about him, that character. What does that say about me, about my needs? This is always about what he is trying to show me, remember?

'Because,' he says, 'it is a template for health, emotional health. Because he is unafraid. Because he allows himself to be seduced, when in all that character's long history he never had, not really, well, at least as far as we know. Because this is about opening up.

'I mean,' he says, 'that is part of it. The other parts are the usual: adventure, change, seeing new things, or seeing old things with new eyes, about the Journey you are on.'

"And where am I?" I ask, then realize what the answer will be, always is.

'Here,' he says, of course. 'With me.

'And again,' he adds, 'it is about kindness. Always kindness.' Yes.

Ah, I think, why now though?

'Well,' he says, 'you are living in a profoundly unkind environment right now, and the more you call them on their bad behaviour the less kind they are going to be. Well, not that they are kind, not at all; they are probably incapable of kindness, but at least they could fake it a little, maybe, or maybe you have been able in the past to take them as kind, sometimes. But now you see them, and you see they are not kind, not in the least. But you need kindness, very much, as you go through this process, which is, after all, a process of mourning. So I am here, and I look like this, this very kind man, who nevertheless sees very, very clearly. It is a good balance, I think.

'And of course,' he adds, 'I am a reminder to be kind to yourself. That must come first.'

I laugh. His 'reminders' are usually on the strong side, you know?

'Well,' he says laughing, 'You always explain away the little things; I have to be rather insistent or you won't listen.

'Also,' he says, 'this is about getting away from this place, of learning how to leave. What better Muse for that than a man with a magical blue box, a man in the habit of eloping with women who are stuck not knowing how to live their lives?'

Eloping, really. That's an interesting choice of words, and not the one I would have picked.

"So then this process is already under way?" I ask, meaning the process of getting out of this environment. Oh I should like that very much to be true. I have felt stuck, so stuck, since I swear just about forever.

'Oh yes,' he says, 'it is already moving. You have allies, you know.'

Allies? What does that mean?

He just smiles. I look at him. After a moment I realize he's not going to tell me.

'Nope,' he says, and then grins. 'Spoilers, sweetie,' he says.

Oh stop.

He just shrugs, and laughs.

Ringing True

2011-12-24T22:22:00.002-05:00

Oh, oh oh oh.

I was going through old posts, reading way back oh almost a year now, and I came upon this bit, in a post about working out old issues, specifically that issue where I feel weird, bad, ashamed of being attracted to the men I'm attracted to. I said:

And I know it's connected with about a million things: my mother's rape, that feeling of shame, the you should have known better, it's your fault when bad things happen, that sort of secondary inherited trauma; that's one element of it. And so when I've been rejected there is, besides the of course bit about it being hurtful and disappointing and all, this weird feeling of humiliation and how I should have known better than to imagine that anyone would find me interesting or attractive or loveable, right?

And something clicked.

My mother was raped when I was about six or seven years old (I don't know the exact year). I have in the past connected my weird twisty feelings of shame in being attracted to that event, because a lot of the patterns, the things said, the blame I took into me is very, very similar: you should have known better, the hurt is your own fault, all that crap rape victims are told by society.

But reading it I realized something.

My mother, as I've been ranting about in the past few (well, past many, I suppose) posts, is a narcissist.

And narcissists have this pattern. They are profoundly unwilling to take any responsibility for their actions. They will blame everyone and everything around them. My sister, for example, has been blaming me recently because she's not getting her work done, though scheduling her life is of course not my responsibility, is it?

Now. I understand that blaming the victim is not just shitty but a lie. The victim is never to blame. Still, that victim my mother was heard that blame, the blame that society puts on rape victims. And, so, like narcissists, do, she passed it on to someone else. Instead of outright rejecting it, saying hey this is fucked up, she 'accepted' it the only way she knew how: she blamed the people around her. This is not simply some kind of secondary trauma, of hearing what people were saying about her, or even what she was saying about herself; knowing what I know of her now, and knowing that given that she is incapable of change now that she has probably always been incapable of change then logically she has always been like this, including when I was a child. In other words, not only is it never her fault, is it always ours.

That puts a rather more deliberate twist on it, doesn't it. Still, this interpretation rings very, very true. I suppose it's not a whole lot different from being blamed for things in general, and that general blame is certainly a factor in why I am so weird about being attracted to the men I am; but this is more specific.

Like I said, it really, really rings true.

Sight

2011-12-23T19:42:00.002-05:00

All right. Now, continuing the theme of coming out of the dark and in to the light, if only a little, this, oh this—

Last night, before my sister's snit today about how she's not getting any work done and it's all my fault since I'm a big selfish manipulative meanie (can we say 'projection'?), we ended up at her house. She wanted to show me some Top Gear, which show I also like, though you'd think that being the daughter of a hoarder asshole mechanic I would hate all cars forever and ever amen. Yet somehow I don't mind them that much and there is something just so hilarious about the things. I don't know why. Something about trying to get them to go, and work, and it's almost about the personalities the things have themselves. Some mechanics (not my father) tell the funniest stories about cars. (I also like, and I suppose I shouldn't, Pimp My Ride, though I haven't seen much of it. Name aside, which as a feminist I just can't endorse, that show is just so freakin' sweet.)

Though of course when faced with the list of shows she had DVR'd of course, of course and duh holy hallelujah it came down to what else but Doctor Who. I mean silly!

Oh. Oh oh.

Matt Smith, of course. A couple I hadn't seen yet, of course, including, oh oh! The Wedding of River Song. Oh, oh oh. (Also I should like to say, old Pagan me, that that was a proper handfasting, that was.) And a couple I had seen, also, since I'm trying to get his second season straight in my head and, really, you kind of do need to see them in order, though ADD/NPD sister doesn't seem to think it important since she's a fucking flake, in addition to all her other copious issues. So we watched The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon again, this time with my knowing more of what was going on. Or rather, I watched it, while she did some work in her office. So honestly, she can't complain, can she? that I am making her miss work. Because I'm not. God, what an asshole she is.

Anyway though. This is supposed to be the nice post. I'm supposed to have gotten that grousing out of my system!

I figured out what it is about him, that funny faced Matt Smith. It's not how he looks, though that is fine by me. It's his voice.

And last night after my sister drove me home and I discovered that I need not, really, pay any attention whatsoever to what she is saying as she will just continue on in her 'conversation' without any input from me, and I mean really, I was genuinely surprised, and after I popped in on Rory the kitten (guess where that name came from) and his brother Flufius Maximus (after the Latin) and fed them and cleaned the litterbox and washed my hands and finally, finally, got up to my room to collapse into bed...

There he was, sitting on the bed. Clear as day. Of course. My daimon, my Ghost Husband, my Spirit Lover, my whatever you want to call him, Soul's Mate, figment of my (really quite profoundly) overactive imagination, Jungian animus, all those completely inadequate words. But there he was.

I have had the hardest time keeping him in mind these past months. I've been so busy, not just with the kittens but also with all the goddamned processing I've been doing. I've been overwhelmed, or feeling overwhelmed, since at least the late spring. Part of me of course thinks I'm not doing much at all, physically, mentally or emotionally, as I have nothing to show just now, or, what I do have to show is not counted as important by the assholes around me and so it may as well not exist (and even though I know better it is hard to shake off their opinions). But anyway. That is unkind of me, to me.

I haven't been grounded. I know this. It is odd, not being grounded, after a period of being very grounded. I feel, and this is a strange thing to say I know, that I am living very much in my head right now. As opposed, I think, to having been living in my Soul for some time, or, at the very least, living in a lower level of my head, a calmer, less frantic always on part of my head. I don't know how regular people do it, go to the job every day, stop for a coffee on the way, chitchat with people around the water cooler about Mad Men or whatever atrocious crap is popular on the TV nowadays, deal with the boss, do something with pieces of paper or numbers and the computer that has no real meaning at all, stop by at the gym afterwards, make dinner, 'relax' by watching TV then going to bed and waking up the next day to do it all over again. Where is the presence, the awareness in any of that? What are they doing? Are they getting somewhere that is actually somewhere?

But there he was, sitting calmly on the bed, smiling at me, very gently, very kindly, looking very much like that Doctor I was just talking about, his current form, which is still a little weird as it's still in its early stages and I am by no means used to it. But there he was.

We didn't talk much as it was very late, and I was very tired. But I was so glad to see him.

I dreamt of him, too, though I don't remember much about it; mostly just the feeling of him being there, of my heart dropping to my feet upon seeing him and how he smiled at me, then.

We need to talk.

Water

2011-12-23T19:00:00.002-05:00

Okay got that out of my system (for now). So then there's this:

When I went out the other day to attempt to do some Christmas shopping for my asshole family, I ended up at a book store. I was not doing too well, mind you, and was pretty much trying not to cry in public. Which strikes me as almost violence against the self, you know? I know what he would say, or at least the look he would give me. I suppose I should have just said never mind. But I was caught in that trap of trying to just get through all this.

Anyway. I was in that book store, with a bunch of money in my pocket. I've been getting back into Tarot lately, after a long long time away from it (thank, I think, the Faery Goddaughter for that, and yes, I want a Lenormand deck now in the worst way; it sounds very specific, which would be a nice change from some Tarot decks, or at least the way I tend to read for myself, which, much like this sentence, is full of lacunae and tangents and considerations of But wait what about this too?)

So I looked at the few Tarot decks Barnes and Noble had on the shelves, in the New Age section (of course, none of this Wiccan/Pagan stuff is filed under 'Religion', is it? Assholes). And I came across a book.

It's called The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft: Shadows, Spirits, and the Healing Journey, by Christopher Penczak.

He pretty much had me at the title, as you may be able to guess. Though, of course, browsing through the index I saw no mention of the word daimon or of the concept of the spirit spouse, which seriously, um, shamanism hey? And it's true, I tend not to trust male authors. I am enough of a feminist to be clued into some patterns out there, and male authors can really rub me the wrong way with their blithe assumption of the universality of their experiences, Pagan men being no exception at all, though they do tend to be better than most just because they have in fact heard of the concept of Goddess.

That aside, though, I flipped through it a bit. Turns out it is a course in thirteen lessons, to be gone through in a year and a day, and which ends with facing one's Shadow.

Now.

As you may recall this year has been a Tower year for me. That is, when you add up the numbers of my birthday for 2011 you get 3+2+7+2+0+1+1=16, which works out to the Tower in Tarot. Which means, if any of this means anything that is, that for me 2011 is the year that things come crashing down, either through a natural disaster, natural circumstances, or because I am pulling them down, taking a wrecking ball to it all, myself. I like to think that the latter is really the best way to do it. Eyes open is always better than eyes shut. Denial just makes it all so much harder.

I assume, also, that the way this works there is a little overlap, and that this Tower stuff will last about till early spring and my next birthday given that my birthday is in the early part of the year.

And so next year is the Star, which let me tell you I am looking forward to rather a lot. Not that that's that, of course; there are after all a good four more cards before one gets to the rebirth of Judgement. So I know that it's still a journey, and that the way these things go the light only returns slowly, with some mazy confusion still to come before coming into the bright light of day.

So I'm in this for a bit, and it's not going to suddenly be over and all better next year. Not that it would anyway, Tarot parallels or no.

Funny thing is that browsing through that book really I was like, oh I do that already. I'm there. I have experience with this, I just haven't named it as such, mostly, and I have no formal idea of what I am doing. Not that one needs it I don't think, and any way the only path one can take that is worth taking is the one you make yourself; but still. The book talks about the structure, or one type of framework, anyway, into which this all fits. I'm sure I don't agree with it all, fair enough, especially since it's pretty heavily Wiccan and I'm not (I'm an Eclectic, or more probably, Eccentric Pagan). But something in me leapt up at it, screaming shouting inside of me I'll do it! I'll do it for a year and a day! Oh yes!!

He makes it quite clear that it's a commitment, and that it's not a good idea to go halfway and then back out, as it leaves some serious stuff hanging unfinished. I agree. And still, though I am tired, though I can barely fit in the responsibilities I already have, I'm doing it. I simply must.

Really, though, I'll be doing it anyway, won't I, just without the formal framework. I'd like to have some of that formal framework, if only to discard it later. Sometimes it is good to have rules to go against, in magic as well as in art. I'd like to know what I'm doing, or at least, what I'm doing is called.

The book focusses on the theme of water, also, as it's one in a series of five books (each I think also a year and a day course) each working with a different element. So this one is about emotions and the depths. It is also, exactly what I need right now. It is in fact exactly where I already am right now.

So this is going to be interesting.

Playing Along

2011-12-23T14:09:00.004-05:00

So this is where I am.

Yesterday, in a weird mix of normal and not-normal that is this transitional part of my life, I went out Christmas shopping with my sister. She was in a good mood. That makes all the difference. She is almost a reasonable human when she's in a good mood. One could almost mistake her for normal.

Well, except how she has always done that thing where if you're walking, say, through a parking lot, she'll walk just a little faster than you and take the most direct route to wherever it is you're headed, like the car or the store. That doesn't sound like anything weird, I know, and it is hard to explain; but how it works out is she is always walking pretty much exactly in my path and is cutting in front of me with every single step. I am forced, pretty much, to walk two steps behind her; she has been known to force me off the sidewalk into the street, which honestly is flat-out dangerous when you think about it. I have commented on this many times over the years, because she has done it for years, and it has made no difference to her behaviour whatsoever. I am certain it is unconscious on her part. Doesn't mean though that it isn't shitty on her part. She is a narcissist; in her mind she is the only one walking. She has no concept of walking beside someone. Or at least not beside me.

It aggravates me to no end. It has always aggravated me to no end. It is a profoundly shitty thing for her to do. It is I think even shittier that she has no idea she does it. Her opinion of me as someone who does not need basic spatial consideration is so far down she doesn't even need to think about it. And now thinking about all this has me imagining grabbing her around the throat and banging her head repeatedly against the concrete of said parking lots. Damn but that would be satisfying.

Anyway though, so yesterday it was like everything was fine with us, though of course it isn't, and though of course she was all But I have to get some work done first! And when I said, well what time to you want to go out shopping then? She was like, well, it won't be like seven, not that late. She actually used 'seven' as an example. Guess when she showed up? Seven-thirty. Of course.

I really, really, do hate her.

So anyway like I said: this is transitional. This is the part where I know they are toxic, but I am not able to leave yet and have to deal, play along somewhat. I will leave, I know this, though I didn't know this until typing it. So that's good, and I am further along than I would have thought. Excellent. Because I am remembering this now. I am not forgetting.

I went out shopping on my own the other day, after putting it off for ages. I have even had the money for a while. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I was scared. I mean we aren't there yet, I know, and I know I'm not out of the woods yet. Just, for a while there all I could see was this:

That the shit would hit the fan, as they say, and really, though vulgar that is just such a good metaphor, come Christmas. Because I didn't want to cook. Because I didn't want to buy any one of those assholes any sort of present. And yet I knew they had already gotten me a whole bunch, because that is what they do since that is what they think Christmas and pretending to be a happy family is about. I make no mistake that their getting me gifts is any sign of being valued by them.

For the first three weeks of December the idea of buying them stuff turned my stomach. I just couldn't do it. And at the same time I knew if I didn't there would be some major repercussions. And I'm tired. Have I mentioned the kitten stuff which is still going on around here? I have two little ones in the house (in addition to the other six who live here now) who I am socializing, to be adopted out; their probable sister is still outside and still very shy. I say probable because s/he is so freaking fluffy I can't see anything but fluff under its tail. And if it's a girl, and I don't catch it, then there is the risk of her going off and having more kittens of her own before I can manage to trap her and then the whole thing starts all over again and damn can we just stop all this now please? I also brought the three medium kittens I've adopted to get neutered this week, which involved getting up at six a.m. (two hours after my usual bedtime) two days in a row to drop them off and pick them up at the clinic in the next state which will do it for $60 a cat. All three of them, incidentally, yowled their little cat heads off for the 45 minute drive back home. Holy mother of fuck.

Anyway. So I'm tired. And this is all a rant and a vent, as ever.

***

And hey! Guess what. It's a couple hours later now. I made the mistake of calling my sister to see when she wanted to go out shopping again today. We had made plans to go today for my mother. I called at what I thought was 1:30 (actually it was two) and asked when she wanted to go. I woke her up I'm pretty sure, which honestly is not my problem. I asked if she could be ready to go by like three, since I didn't want to get too late a start. (What I didn't say was that I know any time I name will get two hours added on, so I was trying to be conservative about it all.)

She got all bitchy. She wanted to go later; she wanted to get some work done first. I tried to tell her that there's no reason she couldn't do the shopping first and the work later given that the stores are only open so late, and that the shopping part is the time constraint, where the working part isn't.

It devolved from there. Suddenly I was evil and a bitch, and when I mentioned that hey you know yesterday? Where you said you would be there sometime in the afternoon after you did a couple things, but it wouldn't be as late as seven pm and yet it turned out to be seven thirty? Yeah, that's shitty, you know? She got all snitty about how I'd said it was one thirty when it was two, as if being a half an hour off on my guess of what time it was at the time was exactly equivalent to years of blowing me off and being late.

Also, somehow, as ever, it was my fault that she has work to do, and that she's behind schedule (as always) and that I'm nag nag nagging her. Which I am not. Most of the time, in fact, I am simply politely reminding her that we had plans and when did she want to go do them?

I know. The best option would be to just not deal with these assholes any more, to move away, to write them out of my life, to go no contact with them. That is not going to happen right now, and it is probably not going to be able to happen any time soon. It's true, as I said this is a transitional time; which means, also, that I am myself still at a stage where I am seeing them as the assholes they are while at the same time still assuming on some level that they aren't, mostly out of habit I guess. True, a hard habit to break, as it means dealing with some serious shit.

I went out today on my own, ostensibly to get my mother some presents. I have gotten her one thing so far, that's it. I considered bringing my sister's presents back, actually, returned to the store I got them at out with her last night, and taking that money, the money I don't have a whole lot of and really ought to be saving, and putting it back in the bank. I suppose, if the shit is inevitably aimed at that fan, I may as well turn the thing up to high, right?

Though again, I'm tired. I just want this to be done. I am trying to go along to get along right now, just until this miserable time of the holidays is past.

The thing is, though. I know myself pretty well by now. I don't know if I can just go along to get along. Let me tell you another story:

When my sister got married (since divorced), her fiancée was the one who set the plans. Incidentally said fiancée was, and presumably still is, an immature manipulative passive-aggressive little shit. Never liked her (the fiancée), not at all, especially after the time she came by and pruned my lilacs for me without asking, which incidentally she did badly and wrongly (there is a way to prune lilacs and she just went in there and started hacking away). She was, of course, all upset when I was less than pleased. Classic, I mean seriously classic, passive aggression, of a type so obvious a three year old wouldn't attempt it.

Anyway. That fiancée set the date of their wedding to the last weekend of that event I go to. The event that my sister also goes to. She didn't clear it with my sister first. When my sister was like, hey, that's when that event is, the fiancée got all If you love me you'll do it that weekend. And yes, the phrase 'if you love me' is a direct quote. Ai yi. So fucked up.

Still, not my place, though I did attempt to warn the sister, don't know why. I probably wouldn't bother now, you know?

But then that created a dilemma for me. I go to that event, and have been for something like twenty-five years. It is pretty much the only time of the year I am face to face with people who know me for me. I really, really, need to go there on some level. But fiancée was expecting me to cut it short to go to her and my sister's wedding, and because there was some serious manipulation and triangulation going on my sister was all shitty about it too.

I went back and forth. I went to the event. I hemmed and hawed about leaving early. I didn't want to. Then after a time I did. Sometimes two weeks camping is a little much, cool people or no. So I went home, in time to go to the wedding.

But when it came right down to it I couldn't go. I just couldn't. Incidentally, that means the only person from my sister's family who went was my mother. None of the other relatives were invited, which, okay, isn't that crazy since my sister is trans and not necessarily out about it to the relatives. But still. That might be an indication of some dysfunction, don't you think?

So. I know how these things go. I will hem and haw, but in the end I just can't.

So that's why I'm a bit worried here.

Because I don't think I can play along.

Addendum

2011-12-07T00:04:00.002-05:00

Oh incidentally when I told my sister that I wanted a DVD set of Matt Smith Doctor Who she whined, "But I want that!" Because she's entitled to it and I'm not.

I hate my family. I really do.

Holiday Crap

2011-12-06T23:08:00.002-05:00

Ah, yes, the holidays. So much fun. You can hear the deadpan sarcasm there, right?

Today my mother came up to me and told me to make a Christmas list to give to her. Sounds normal so far, right?

She then started in about how I shouldn't put anything too expensive on it because she doesn't have a lot of money this year. Then she said she has about a hundred dollars to spend between my sister and me so that was fifty each.

Those of you who are normal (and forgive me, if I gave you the address to this blog, i.e. you're my friend, honestly, you're probably not) will probably see nothing whatsoever wrong with this, besides being a little rude, maybe.

Oh ho.

It was bothering me very badly, actually, the way she said it. There was an element of accusation in it and I am having a hard time putting my finger on it. I know that part of it is that I am quite conscious these days of how my (let's not forget narcissistic) mother thinks money is the only important thing. Meaning, my sister is currently her favorite because my sister makes more money than I do. This has played out in getting us vastly different birthday and Christmas presents in the past. I objected to it, last year, and told her point blank that she was getting me X expensive thing. It was no more expensive, really, than what she usually gets my sister.

My mother is probably, in part, reacting to my attitude last year.

Okay let me untangle this. It is really pissing me off. It is also pissing me off that the lovely forum I used to be on, one specifically for daughters of narcissistic mothers, has banned me for some obscure reason I still can't figure out, though I have a sneaking suspicion it was something to do with being unhappy with some advice I got. Maybe. Seriously, I still have no idea. It could have been something else entirely. At any rate that means that the people who would understand, and who would understand down to almost a molecular level, by which I mean they could sort out exactly what is making me feel squicky about the whole thing in a remarkably concise and articulate manner, are also suddenly people I have no access to whatsoever and no way to contact at all. That was a huge amount of meaningful and useful support for me and it's just gone. I've done a few searches here and there and so far there isn't really anything else comparable that I've seen. I will continue to keep looking.

Okay. So my mother pretty much demands that I make her a list of what I want for Christmas, but then says, basically, not to expect too much from her, right? With some kind of crazy guilt thrown in, I think, some kind of blame, like it's my fault she can't afford stuff, or don't you know we're poor, or, really, I should never forget I'm not entitled to gifts. Okay, that last one is getting close.

I also know, like I said above, that she measures a person's worth by how much money they make or have. I have seen this with one of her friends, a woman I'll call Leah, because that's her name, though I think it's actually spelt like the princess, Leia. Leia's husband is a seriously controlling asshole. He has in the past kept tabs on what she looks at on the internet, wants to know where she is all the time, and when she was hanging out with my mother painting, looked up all kinds of information about my sister and me, which I know because he told Leia, who told my mother, who told me. I consider that sort of crap a direct threat, incidentally. They—fancy that!—have a young baby; and he has a cabinet full of guns. The flags don't come any redder.

I told my mother that, that this guy was almost certainly an abusive asshole, and she just said, oh, they deserve each other, then went on about how big and luxurious their new house was. This, incidentally, is the part in the story where my therapist's head exploded. Because it means my mother values money over pretty much anything else. Like the not really all that far-fetched idea that one of these days her friend is going to end up on the evening news, found dead in her lovely luxurious home, probably with her dead baby next to her, and maybe if we're lucky that asshole husband too, though really, I do wish these murder-suicide fucks would get the order of that right: suicide first, and get it right; then we can talk about murdering the wife.

Anyway so my mother values money. So that means, and her history of getting my sister nice stuff bears this out, that she shows people how much she values them (I almost said 'loves' them, but while I think that may well be how she thinks of it it's not love, is it) by how much she spends on them. So, translated into her language, telling me, rather angrily, that she isn't going to spend a lot on me for Christmas is basically saying she doesn't think I'm worth it.

No, I know. I'm not surprised. Still, it takes a while to get these things through your head, you know? It still hurts.

The thing is I like Christmas, or, rather, Yule, since I'm Pagan, if you hadn't heard. I love all the trappings, the tree, the lights, the sacredness of the time, the wreaths as symbols of infinity, even red and green representing life (animal and plant) that just will not die, not though the sun sinks so low on the horizon and all hope would seem to be lost. And I like cooking, and baking, and feasting, and all that stuff. I like it enough that I think I would do it just for myself, with or without a biological family and lacking a local family of choice.

I still have all the stuff for pies left over from Thanksgiving. The canned pumpkin isn't going anywhere, and I got more apples. I almost sat down and did the hard work (and it is a lot of work) of baking pies tonight. But then my mother demanded that list. And though I want those pies, I don't want to make them now. And it's hard to tell why.

It's true I don't want to share them; I don't want her to feel like everything is okay now and Thanksgiving never happened. I mean look, pie! Everything must be forgiven now (never mind that it is always of course the duty of the non-narcissist to forgive the narcissist's transgressions, since in their minds narcissists never do anything wrong). I suppose that sounds petty. I don't care any more.

The other reason though is that I suddenly feel unsafe here again and don't want to do anything visible, weird as that sounds. It has always been my habit when frightened to try to become invisible. Well not so much lately, but that's only because the longer it goes the quicker fear turns into anger, which is so much more useful. But there's something about this that cuts deep, to that scared little girl part of me. Adelle, I suppose.

And so I don't know what to do about Christmas now. When she demanded I make a list, but not to expect too much because I'm not worth it, I asked her why should it matter? I make a list, you get what you want off it (or not), and that I ask for something doesn't mean I'm expecting I'll get it. In fact, I prefer making big and ridiculous Christmas lists; that way I'll be surprised, since they can't get me everything, you know?

I suppose next time I should just tell her to fuck off; if it's that much of burden to her maybe she should just skip it. Said with dripping sarcasm, of course. And lest you think that's just some kind of revenge fantasy, trust me, I've said worse to her.

So I don't know what to do. Nothing, really, was resolved at Thanksgiving, of course, though I am glad that for a time I had gotten to a point where I no longer felt I was in danger being here. I don't think I am, really, not physical danger anyway, but it was all pinging off childhood stuff and I was in a dead panic for a little while there.

Part of me just wants to say fuck it, of course. But I don't have any friends here, no family of choice I know face to face who are local; so I don't know. I like Yule, I like giving (and receiving) presents, I like the tinsel and glitter and shiny things and the food and the baking. I even like doing all that, for other people. Just not these assholes.

My Beautiful Boy

2011-12-04T02:29:00.002-05:00

Inspired by a post by my Fairy Goddaughter I thought maybe I'd try a montage of my daimon's bodysakes, to see what I could see.

Well. Okay, I knew I liked them goofy, but whoa. Check these out:

So, let's see. Let's go clockwise starting in the upper left.

First it's Pippin, of course, which is the form he had when I finally started being able to directly communicate with him. And those of you who know my real name now know both why I picked the name I did, and that I'm really genuinely completely out of my head loony. I can't say I've accepted it myself, though that is perhaps a good sign.

Then there's holy cow Hyde from That 70s Show, of all things; something about the combination of dark sarcasm and HAIR (and bell bottoms, come to think of it) did it for me for a time, though it didn't last too long.

Then it's a run of doctors, both little-D and big-D. First there's the glorious Simon Tam, who was marvellously little and really graceful in that particularly loopy way I love so very much. As him, though, let me tell you his handwriting was atrocious. Doctors, you know.

Then onto a real Doctor, that very daimonic time-traveller with the magic blue box; this one his ninth regeneration and tenth body, with that frenetic very Tricksy energy and the usual Doctor habit (or Loki habit, for that matter) of enlightened Chaos. Never could resist that.

Then his current bodysake, the one he looks like now; Doctor Eleven, who has so much more depth to him than I ever would have guessed. He had us fooled, didn't he.

At center bottom is of course the form he had for something like three years, that tall Texas Monkee. I still feel silly typing his name, interestingly enough.

And then the pixie, all in black, with the Goth-before-his-time black eyeliner. And I am still flabbergasted that Peter Gabriel, of the Average Joe look for So was once a very, very sweet young thing who moved all sinuous and snakey.

Okay. That's not in order. Now the way it works for me is that he pretty much just switches from one to the other. They all have things in common, most obviously my taste, of course, but he is not a combination of traits for me, a little taken from here, a little from there, all combined at once in one (or even several shifting) form(s). This makes sense to me, as I tend towards serial monogamy. I think, also, I have some sort of almost respect, I think, for the actual human person he borrows the bodies from. I know it shouldn't really make any difference, as it's all in my head, but to me keeping true to the original is gracious, or honorable, though those aren't really the right words.

That isn't to say he doesn't carry bits over, usually body language or gesture. Mike Nesmith, for example, has a particular way of rolling his eyes, and David Tennant this long slow blink (you know you know what I'm talking about) which have carried over into little Pixie Boy Peter's form (I don't know about Eleven's borrowed body yet; it's still a little too early. He's pretty literal, at first, until he gets, I don't know, comfortable in it. Or, rather, until I get comfortable with it, and start seeing him in there instead of the actor or musician).

Also, if given enough time, he will change the body, subtly, until there is no mistaking it's him. His hair, for one, as well as his eyes, will always tend to black, eventually. Even if his bodysake's eyes are blue, they will go dark in time. It is the connection with the depths, the unconscious, the Otherworld, the Dark, the Void, even; he is a creature of the dark, and no mistaking it.

So okay. Looking at these pictures, what, good heavens, does this tell me about me? Besides the physical stuff—i.e. I like curly hair, skinniness, Scotsmen. What do they have in common? What is it about them?

I'll go in order. Pippin was silly, certainly, and innocent (which I am quite sure is why Ngila Dickson, the costume designer for The Lord of the Rings movies, put him in blue); I know at the time that for the most part I was just so dead scared of things, so anxious, that probably the best way to get through to me was to be completely unthreatening and over the top goofy. There is also something about Pippin that is of the prey animal. He is the littlest of all the Nine Walkers, and in the movie you can see he is quite conscious of this. He is wary and quiet, a lot of the time, though of course he is a total fool as well. An idiot, even. But still, something about that sense of him quietly watching, of being careful and small, resonates with how I have always felt. So that made him an ally from the start. And maybe, it's that he was still wary, still small, still prey as it were, yet kept his sunny outlook and sense of humor, his Foolishness. That, maybe, is the (or a) lesson.

I'm not sure who is next; either Simon Tam or Hyde. He wasn't too long in either of those bodysakes, and then mostly in dreams, especially Hyde. I'm afraid I don't really remember much about him as them. They were more transitional, maybe.

Then I guess it was Doctor Ten, who was about that sort of wild longing to escape, perhaps. That was the year my father had his stroke, and the year I was dealing with some serious medication-induced anxiety. Yes, on top of the shit that just comes naturally. Ai yi. Me and Wellbutrin do not get along, thank you. And maybe it was colored by all that, but I had to sort of put him down, that version of him, because it was a little too much for me. He kind of wigged me out. That I'm sure has a lot to do with that Doctor's character being afraid of commitment. And even though he isn't the character, but himself, and he just looks like the character, still, I couldn't get past it. So I had to sort of back away.

Then after that was that good old Monkee, which is still completely ridiculous. He looked like that for three years, an extraordinarily long time compared to the others. His change into that form, actually, is what motivated me to start this blog; because there was just suddenly so much to say and he was suddenly just so very visible and there, all the time. That one was about safety, and compassion for myself, and some sort of steadfastness, I think. He was absolutely trustworthy and so very strong in that form. Not that he isn't trustworthy; but trustworthiness was a big part of the 'theme' of him then, if you will.

Then onto the little English pixie. That one is all about finding the artistic voice, and not caring what others think. I am not sure I will ever understand how people do that—I look at pictures of say David Bowie from the mid-70s and think, But doesn't he have parents? How does he deal with what they must think?

And now it's back to the adventurer, the whisker-away of young women, the daimonic Doctor with the magic blue box, but a regeneration up. Oh this one; there's something about him where the bottom just drops out of it all and you find yourself staring into infinity, in a really good way. I don't know. I don't know him as this one very well at all yet; goodness me but I shall simply have to watch some more of his TV show. Tragic, I know.

So what do those all have in common? Physically, they're white, dark haired, clean-shaven, which I suppose is, gender aside, more or less a mirror thing as I am all those things, since I can't grow a beard being a more-or-less hormonally balanced girl; they are also skinny and not particularly muscular, though they are certainly limber. All that, though, is simply my type.

But what else? No, they are not hyper-masculine, and tend towards musician rather than jock; but there's something artistic I think about them. Not rebellious, necessarily, but strong in what they are doing. Self-aware, maybe, or strong in themselves, and it is written in the way they present themselves. They certainly do wear fun clothes.

I am not sure what to make of that yet, and in contemplating it it has gotten late; so I am going to put it aside for now, and let myself muse, Muse, ha, on it some more. I do think it probably comes down in large part to individuality, characters who are very much themselves.

He is, in some ways, compensation for what I lack, what I need to be balanced; or at any rate, if he is not actual compensation then he shows me, he presents to me, what I need for wholeness. And so that's it, isn't it?

He is very much himself, in a way that I am not myself.

Keep Calm and Carry On

2011-11-27T02:14:00.005-05:00

Okay this is going to be long!

It's been a miserable couple of days around here. Dysfunctional family + major holiday always = sad face. I wasn't really expecting it wouldn't, I suppose.

The past few years it's just been myself, my mother and sister doing Thanksgiving. I cook, all of it. My mother is, and I may have mentioned this once or twice, the Worst Cook in the World, and my sister has little interest in food in the first place. I like cooking, mostly, and I certainly like having all that food; I am Pagan, and love the image of the groaning board, the feast, the harvest feast, for that is what Thanksgiving is, really, a late harvest feast.

The day before Thanksgiving this year, though, I got up and went to get myself a ginger ale. I drink them because it helps that rotten bladder thing of mine, which, while it has calmed down considerably, is really a chronic thing that tends to flare up here and there. So long as I avoid certain food though I'm mostly okay, and if I have a can or two of ginger ale why I'm perfectly fine. I can't even tell there's anything going on down there and feel absolutely perfectly normal.

As you can imagine I drink the stuff religiously. I'm pretty sick of it by now, though I haven't gotten to the point where I all-out hate it. So I've been getting the twelve packs.

A few days ago my mother said she had stolen a ginger ale; she then brought home an eight-pack of them to make up for it. Which was nice, so you'd think.

She of course drank most of the bottles of it, and come the day before Thanksgiving there was only one can left. And try as I might, I couldn't make the math add up right. She had to have been drinking them herself. I went straight to pissed off and confronted her.

I know; this sounds so trivial, doesn't it? It's a bunch of soda-pop. Except she knows I actually need it, for medicinal purposes.

I told her I knew she had taken my ginger ale. She said she didn't; that she'd only had one can. I told her she was lying. She said she doesn't lie. I told her she was in fact lying right then. She said she wasn't. Then I reminded her of how she had agreed to take care of the kittens over the summer and how she'd said she'd never actually agreed to any such thing when confronted with the reality of actually having to live up to that responsibility. She said she didn't remember.

I don't care any more whether she believes her own lies. She is not trustworthy and I know it. I know it sounds silly. I know. But it's about her lying to me. It has a name, even: gaslighting, after that movie from the 30s. It is a standard technique of the emotionally abusive, especially narcissists, who don't want to admit they've done something wrong. Some of them will come up with the most ridiculous tales to explain why something they did is not their fault. It really, like obsessive compulsive personality disorder (the one my hoarder father had) comes down to a fundamental brokenness in the brain, a chasm the rest of the brain has to work around without the ability to see that there is a chasm there in the first place.

So then that night (Wednesday) I went on to an online support group, one for women whose mothers are narcissists; I had been hanging around there for a good year and half or so, though I wasn't a prolific poster or anything. I had planned to be baking pies that night but was so angry with my mother, so sick of her crap, that I didn't know what to do. Should I just forget the whole thing? I couldn't imagine sitting down with them the next day and pretending everything was fine; the idea turned my stomach. So I explained about the ginger ale and how I didn't know what I was going to do, asking for advice.

When I came back later most of the advice was telling me that I had to get out of there. Which, guess what, I kind of know that, you know? And I know I'd asked for advice. But the way they said it made me feel much worse.

I had explained the situation, how I don't have any money now. How I'm stuck, living with my mother in the childhood home and how I don't see a way out. And I know they probably thought they were offering hope, but a lot of it was, well you just have to make up your mind to get out of there. It was kind of 'just pick yourself up by your bootstraps' and really, really rubbed me the wrong way. It's not that easy. I have been here ten years and have not yet been able to find my way out. I can't do X until I do Y, but I can't do Y until I do X, you know?

So I wrote a response, one that I thought was very carefully worded. I was aware that I was upset, very upset, and generally triggered, as I have been pretty much for the last two or three weeks. And by triggered, I mean my head is just going round and round with rants about past injustices, bad treatment, that sort of thing and I am having a hard time shutting it up. It's all this old stuff coming to the surface, though I still haven't seen whatever the original event(s) is itself, just the surrounding debris, if you will. And I know, also, that the reason it's all coming up is because I told Adelle I was listening to her and that I wanted to hear what she had to say.

But in my response I told them that that wasn't helping. I think I was moderate. I was very conscious of owning my own stuff; for example I said 'What I hear is that I just need a kick in the pants, I'm useless, can't do anything, lazy, all that' which was exactly what I was feeling. I did not actually say that that is what they were saying, just that given my circumstances that was what I was hearing.

A whole bunch of people apologized then, and then I told them thank you for the support, but I realize I'm really triggered and I just need to step away from this for a bit. I said I couldn't really apologize for feeling miserable, but that I hadn't meant to cause anyone any distress because of the way I was seeing things with the filters I had.

I thought I was even, measured, not blaming anyone, owning my stuff, while still telling my truth, because that is important. Very, very important.

A little later someone else responded, saying that when you're really low-feeling, that the obvious sort of advice can just make you feel worse, and that they'd been there and were sorry I was there now too. They got it. They really, really, got it. I was so happy to hear that that I immediately PM'd the person to say thank you.

It took three tries for the PM to go through. It was late, and I know sometimes fora get buggy in the wee hours; something's busy automatically archiving stuff or whatever. Then I went back to read the thread again, because it was comforting, but I couldn't find it. Then I got bumped out, and had to login again.

When I got back I found this:

You have been permanently banned from this board.

Please contact the Board Administrator for more information.

Reason given for ban: Account closed at discretion of sitemanagement. Forum and poster are not a good fit.

A ban has been issued on your username.

I was surprised, but figured it was more of the bugginess. So I wrote to the Board Administrator.

I have not heard back yet. I emailed her Thursday night, and while I know it is a holiday weekend here, she is Irish, as in she actually lives in Ireland, where it is not a holiday weekend. I have this feeling I'm not ever going to hear from her.

I think, now, that I actually have been banned.

I cannot figure out why.

A few months ago, someone in another context asked me about that particular forum, saying that they'd heard bad things about it. I didn't know what they were talking about, but looked it up. There are, in fact, a couple of people out there ranting about the place. I read their blogs. What they seemed to have in common is that they got banned and aren't happy about it. Well, that, and that they are very, very Christian and can't seem to shut up about their relationship with Jesus. The forum has a strict no religion talk policy, and I assumed (still assume, actually) that they had been banned for proselytizing but were of course all Christians are oppressed! Not much sympathy for that, no.

So I'd heard a little I guess. Still, I am surprised. I've been over the rules of the place (it's the only thing I can access there now), and the first time I read through it, very carefully, I could in no way see how I'd broken even a single rule. The second time, though, I was like, well, I've been interpreting that rule this way, but if I squint and interpret it that way instead maybe? I don't know. I should certainly like to know, though.

I am surprisingly not broken-up about this however, and I think that's a good sign, as far as my recovery goes. Because a couple of years ago I would have freaked right out, and my first thought would have been Ohmygod I did something wrong and I'm bad bad bad!!! accompanied by a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach that I wouldn't be able to shake. This time though I immediately assumed it was a glitch. It didn't even occur to me until rather later that it might actually be a serious thing and that I might be actually and for real banned.

I am rather irritated, though not really on my behalf. There are ways these things are properly done. This is not one of them. I was banned without any kind of warning at all; nothing, not a stern word in the comments thread, no three strikes against me, no heads-up, no one dropped me a line in case it was a misunderstanding, nothing whatsoever. Just completely out of the blue on a day when I was very, very upset, and when they were aware that I was very, very upset. That's the policy? Seriously? At a place specifically for women who have suffered emotional abuse and are trying to recover from it? A place where people are very very vulnerable, and are trying to heal from that exact kind of behavior, from rules that don't make sense, from being punished for telling the truth, from being shut out for opening up, all that capricious confusing you-don't-exist sort of stuff? Really? That didn't strike anybody as a really, really, bad idea? How could it not have? I can understand not wanting to deal, especially if you yourself are also one of the people being triggered and trying to heal. But if you can't handle it, don't do it. Because if that is truly the policy there, they are harming an awful lot of people. Because I don't imagine I'm the first, then, to just get banned out of the blue.

Who knows, maybe it was a glitch and I'll hear back from somebody one of these days. I'll give it a couple more days and email one of the other people; maybe I'll get an answer from her. But honestly I'm not holding my breath.

Though like I said I'm surprisingly sanguine about the whole thing. In some ways it's kind of a relief, though the voice in my head that berates me tells me I'm just running away from the ugly truths they were telling me. I don't know. I know that Thanksgiving morning I woke up and looked at the day ahead of me with a very deep dread. I knew I had to get out of this house then, and though I still know that, at the time it came with a panicky immediacy, like I had to figure out how to get out of there, out of here, permanently, right then. It didn't feel safe at all the day before yesterday. But I don't have the means this minute. I simply don't.

When the sister called asking when the festivities were going to start, I told her I wasn't cooking anything, and that I was in fact going to go out. She was disappointed, a little, though honestly not nearly enough. She made no offer to help, or to do anything; she said, in fact, Oh I guess I'll just stay home then. And I knew then that she didn't really care; she didn't appreciate what I do every Thanksgiving, and every Christmas too, and sometimes for my own birthday even. It's just free food, or something. A little while later, as I was getting ready to leave, I told my mother the same thing. Again, no offer to help, nothing, just a little bit of surprise and disappointment. I told her that I've been cooking for holidays for something like ten years now and not once has any one (that includes my father, too, back when he was here) ever thanked me, or said anything approaching appreciation for the work I put in to it. And so I was done.

I got in the car and drove into the next state, where I ended up at the Sea. There is something calming about the Ocean, that long low horizon. You can see clearly there.

It's funny. The next day, yesterday, Friday, my sister came by to scrap a car. She hadn't been able to find the title, and it was driving her nearly to violence. I don't say that lightly. She has a temper, rather a bad one, and though she knows I will call the police and have her charged in a heartbeat if she hits me (and she knows this because I have), she still will scream and yell and bang things around. I woke to her screaming, and banging something very loudly and violently. For a moment there I was afraid she was going to barge into my room and start blaming me for whatever it was while I was cornered in bed. Not a happy thought, no. But she didn't, though I found out later she had taken a hammer to the car, and jumped on the roof a bit. She was apparently made to calm down by my mother of all people who told me she said, 'What are you three years old? You are taking a tantrum. Knock it off!' which language I have to assume she has cribbed from me.

Of course it turned out that my mother had the title to the car (without which it cannot be scrapped in this state); she had, as I suspected, seen that it was something 'important' and so put it in a 'safe place', which safe places she is famous for never remembering. It has been, well, not quite a joke I guess, but a thing for years that she loses things by putting them in safe places and that she should never be allowed to handle anything important ever.

Upon hearing this my sister came back over after having stormed off, all nice and calm now, though she was of course pissed off at my mother, not that I really care. While we were waiting for the junkyard guy to set it up with the car, she said she was thinking that maybe she should go back on the anti-depressants she'd been on last year. I said, Gee, ya think? entirely un-jokingly.

A few hours later, though, what do you know? Everything's smoothed over and the two of them are acting like nothing had happened. My mother cooked the turkey, my sister made green bean casserole (wonder of wonders, and she only made it because I had told her she was required to bring a dish for Thanksgiving, and even though it had been cancelled she still had all the ingredients, just like we had all the ingredients).

It's the usual pattern of narcissists. They do something abusive, then a little while later act like nothing happened at all. Sometimes in between they punish you with the silent treatment, effectively blaming you, so that when they come back and act all pleasant they can say they've forgiven you. Yes, they've forgiven you for what they did. Of course. I can see this, and I can see that that is what they were doing.

But this time it made me feel rather better. I was the one who had reached the saturation point; they were just going along as usual taking no notice of me. And that means I am safe here now. I have finally gotten it through my head that they are not good people; but they don't understand that I have. And that means that for the time being I can continue with my slow plan, though I am certainly getting more and more motivated to quicken it along a bit.

So I can relax, now. I see what they're doing, and while it isn't fair, and it is annoying as all hell that they absolutely cannot take responsibility for what they do, I have found a way to use it to my advantage. And so I will.

Muse

2011-11-24T03:11:00.003-05:00

Oh I remembered one of those petty little crap things my sister said. This was when she went to Montreal. She was supposed to come by on the Monday after the weekend she was there; I waited around all day Monday (well, not with bated breath or anything; I know how she is by now) and she finally called Monday night. She was on her way home then. Which I kind of figured she would stay later than she said, and whatever. But she made it a point to tell me that she had waited to cross over into Vermont, because calling from Canada was expensive and she wanted the cheaper rates. In other words, if she was going to bother calling me she was going to make damned sure it was cheap. Because that's all I'm worth, right? Yeah, I get being poor, I get not having the money to call long-distance (or whatever they call it with cell phones; I don't actually have one); but the only reason you would mention something like that is to make sure the person you're calling knows you don't think very much of them.

She did it again, too; she told me she had some pain in the ass music service subscription and dammit it was automatically taking money out, complain complain. She's a cheap bastard, just like my dad was. So she wanted to know if there was an album I wanted. I can't usually afford to spend my very limited funds on things like music, so I told her what I wanted. And I suppose to a normal person that all sounds really nice and that I have nothing to complain about; but, trust me, narcissists simply can't give gifts freely. If they give them it's always about making themselves feel better, or as a way to have power over someone else. The person receiving the gift is always made to feel like shit.

But I took her up on it. I told her I wanted Tori Amos's new album, Night of Hunters. A few days later she brought over a burned CD.

I will take what I can get; I am seriously getting to the point where I'll even extort it out of my bastard family. I don't care anymore. I don't even care about morals, or, rather, I'm learning that normal morals can't be applied to toxic people. If you give them the benefit of the doubt, they will just take advantage of it, and you. They will use every bit of your niceness and goodness to hurt you. They are not good people. It gets to be a question of self-defense. And I don't care any more.

But about that album. I hadn't heard anything about it before I got it; just that it was her new album and very good. So I put it in and was really thrown. It's just her and her piano and the occasional I think string octet? I was completely confused by the first listen; it's all modern classical chords and structure and I didn't know what to make of it.

By the second listen however I was madly in love. There was one song in particular I liked, though the lyrics are kind of odd (this is Tori, after all, though). I loved the melody and structure.

Then I looked it up; and I found that the songs on it are actually based on various classical pieces, from the likes of Bach, Scarlatti, Debussy, Schubert, and Chopin. And of course, the piece I liked was good old Fred, from one of his Nocturnes. Should have known.

I ended up on YouTube seeking out the various classical pieces so I could compare. I ended up with a series of harpsichord recordings of Scarlatti, which just oooh.

I used to play piano. I had a good twelve years of lessons when I was a kid. I had been out of practice for ages, as the grand in the piano room needs some serious repair now and has been unplayable for years now. But when I lived on my own I bought myself an upright piano. I lived alone in a little house, with no upstairs neighbors. I played that thing all the time. But when I moved back there was no place for it in the house; this house is heated with forced air, and what with all the windows and doors and fireplaces in an old colonial added in there isn't actually anywhere it can go. So it went out in the studio. My mother's studio.

She spends just about every daylight moment in there. It is her space. She is very territorial; I may have mentioned this. So my piano sits in there and she piles paintings against it, and was using my piano stool as a place to park her palette, getting it covered with oil paints, until I yelled at her about it. To which she of course said she thought it was broken and I didn't want it. It's not broken; it was, but I fixed it. Also, it's mine. That should be enough.

So I haven't played in ages. And frankly right now I feel so cringing or something, I don't know what you call it, but I feel besieged and all I want to do is hide lately, that I can't imagine doing something that is by nature loud. I have this very strong urge to be as silent as I possibly can.

But there I was listening to all these classical pieces on YouTube. I looked up some Bach; I'd always loved his stuff. I looked up one of the pieces I used to play, this little prelude in F major. It's not really very complicated and isn't exactly advanced, but it has a lot of good movement in it and the polyphony at the end is just gorgeous. And mostly the videos were kids or intermediate piano students playing it.

But there was this one video. The guy playing wasn't all that great, really; he flubbed it a bit in the complicated part, right where I flub it. But he was playing it on a church organ, a proper church organ of the kind that takes up the entire back wall of the church with its pipes.

I found I had tears rolling down my cheeks listening to it.

When I went to bed that night I was perfectly miserable. I looked over and there he was.

"Muse," I say to him.

He looks at me with compassion. 'Musician,' he says sadly.

How can you miss something if you can't remember it?

Process

2011-11-20T02:51:00.003-05:00

It's ten to three; probably I shouldn't start a post, especially one where I don't know what I want to say but feel the need to say something.

I feel like I have been very, very busy, nearly overwhelmed. Though on the one hand I think maybe I am figuring out how to get things done (and I feel like I am always saying that, aren't I?), and so have been actually, you know, getting things done, like every day do a little work, and every day get out there and socialize the little kittens, and every day get Puss Two, who is a grump, a little more used to the larger kittens who are staying, by letting them run around in the house when he's in with my mother sleeping on her bed, so they get their scent all around the house and he can smell them when they're not there so maybe, just maybe, he'll stop taking literal hissy fits should he accidentally come nose to nose with any of them, which I've been very much trying to avoid but it happens here and there and this whole process is taking freaking forever I swear can't I just get rid of grumpy old Puss Two?

But altogether, really, it's not all that much, is it? I can hear my bitch of a sister's voice, of course, when I told her last summer that I was feeling overwhelmed with all the kitten stuff, and she was just her usual invalidating narcissistic bitch self and was all, But what you don't actually do anything! Oh my God I hate her so much sometimes. And yet I can't get away from her, nor my mother, right now. I just don't have the means. And the circular aspect of it all means getting the means is damned near impossible now. The longer this goes, and the clearer I am able to see with that longer time, the more I see just how impossibly enmeshed this all is, this is all designed to be. I hate them both. I really do.

I think, well, I know rather than think, that my feelings of being overwhelmed and busy is because I am processing an awful lot of stuff. It's not even necessarily on the surface, I know. But it is there, and work is being done, deep work, hard work. I find myself really quite easily triggered, sometimes by I couldn't even tell you what; but day after day I find myself ranting away in my head in a manner I now recognize (well I think) is tapping into something deeper, some past stuff.

Not that I could tell you, really, what it is tapping into. I haven't remembered anything traumatic, no new memories have come to light; and so most of the time I have forgotten about all that Adelle stuff. And yet, when I remember, I know that the reason I am processing all this stuff, and why so much stuff is going on inside this crazy head of mine, is because I sat her down and told her I wanted to hear what she had to say, and that I was listening.

Perhaps that is it; she is not using words now. She is simply screaming in pain.

There is a Lie in Belief

2011-11-03T21:11:00.004-04:00

I went to therapy today. What, you didn't seriously think I wasn't in therapy, did you? And we talked about Adelle, and all that trigger stuff, though without naming anything, or anyone, really.

My therapist basically said what he said, funny enough. The voice of sanity in my head comes in disguise of craziness. Of course. How else could it be?

It's funny. I had to explain Doctor Who to her; she said she'd never seen it. I don't know. How could anyone have missed that? I wonder sometimes if she lies because she has to stay neutral. I don't like that thought very much.

It was all couched in terms of 'inner child' and 'active imagination' and 'triggers' and 'men I find attractive' and all this I don't know. And it got to talking about getting through this and how there's a fantasy involved, since I never get the nerve to talk to men I'm attracted to until it's all very dire and the need to say something outweighs the terror, the abject terror, of telling someone I like them. The fantasy being (and this was my therapist's assumption) that I build them up to be this thing that they aren't because I take so long. And now I feel sick. I've felt sick all day, actually, that knot in the stomach of dread and tension and despair, I guess, though my mood oddly enough is good enough. It's a couple layers down, I suppose.

It didn't help that in talking about talking to my 'inner child' that she started saying stuff like well so long as you know she's not separate from you, so long as you don't think what, that she's real? Not in so many words, but, damn, it didn't do anything for that nausea, did it. Of course I was like, And how, exactly, could I tell from in here whether I'm crazy or not? I don't have the necessary perspective, exactly, do I?

But then I don't know. It's not, I don't think, that I'm expecting an actual man to live up to something impossible, and that's where the disappointment comes in. No, that's not it at all. It's in the asking. It's not even in the fear of rejection, though that's bad, and common, and normal, enough. So maybe it's not about the 'fantasy' of it at all.

I'm not interested in looking for a real man now, like one I could date out in the world and all, and I've been just fine, really, really fine with that. For one thing it's all screwed up right now and I don't want to put any human through that. There are too many triggers I guess.

And I talked about how I had a crush on an unreliable character, person, whatever, and she wanted to know why did I think I was doing that? Why would I choose that?

Which is a good question, though it is not, actually, a pattern with him, now that I think about it. Just that now, he is, and now, it's triggering me. There are a lot of positives about the character, too: he's in love with the Universe, rapturous with wonder at it all, wants to see it, wants to explore it all, wants to help, wants to get his hands dirty, all the lovely, honestly, Pagan stuff about coming back over and over because you just can't get enough of the beauty and glory of it all. Of course, these days, they also make much of how he's running away from something, don't they.

Okay then, so my 'crushes' aren't always triggering, not like this one, anyway. I suppose they do trigger me generally because being attracted, desiring a man triggers me. Oh poor me, that's fucked up and not fun at all.

But the talk of fantasy, though maybe it isn't applicable after all, still just struck this note of dread, of sickness, right through me. Because I can't tell her about him, of course I can't. In the eyes of psychology things like him are pathological.

Oh I feel sick.

Okay. Psychology is only one modality. It's true. It's nice and sciency and all, which means our culture likes it (I won't say it loves it, as it's not quite sciency enough, most of the time). But there are other ways to look at things, and sometimes psychology labels things incorrectly.

This would be so much different with a priestess, or a shaman. Did you know, for some reason not too long ago I randomly googled the name of my old babysitter, the one who looked after us during my mother's rape trial. She has an unusual name, and I knew when I found her that it was her, sure enough, though I haven't seen her in at least thirty years. Do you know what she does for a living? She's a shamanic counsellor.

I suppose my wacky religion doesn't help, does it. But even if I were a mainstream Christian there are some things, some crises that are more appropriate to bring to a priest than a therapist. And who out there has any understanding of Paganism, besides Pagans? And, Hel, even among Pagans the whole spirit lover thing is looked at with, if not disgust, then the assumption that something is off there.

I need a really very special specialist, don't I?

All right. Can I priestess myself? Is that even possible? I have no perspective, as I said above. I can't get outside of me. Can I shaman myself, as if that's a verb. What do the shamans do? They have a Guide, don't they? This is getting circular and that doesn't help.

But who is experienced in this? And will my insurance cover it? Ha.

Okay. Back up. I'm in the middle of this, in the fray as it were right now. What is one of the big themes in my head right this instance? It's that I don't believe what I see. It's that in my experience with my fucked-up, personality-disordered neglecting emotionally abusive narcissistic parents, who are, for a child, a cypher for the entire world, I learned the lie that people say one thing and do another. (And no, but fuck me it does not help that Rule Number One is the Doctor lies.) But I am, at any rate, right now, I think, in general having what could I suppose be called a crisis of faith. Because right now I don't know what to believe and, especially, I don't know how to believe. My parents lied and said they didn't. They trained me, through pretty much constant invalidation, not to believe my own feelings, my own intuition, or even my own eyes. My memory, right now, completely sucks (speaking of drinking from the Lethe; I think it was in my tap water, growing up). So okay. All this, all this freak-out about him, all this no really he must just be in my head, could very well simply be a symptom of that. I mean I hate having to logic it out, but when you don't know how to trust your intuition? But not long ago I believed, mostly, and thought myself sane, mostly.

I don't know that that went anywhere, and I don't know if that helped. But it is something, I suppose.

Trigger

2011-11-03T01:03:00.004-04:00

Got home after watching a bunch more Doctor Who last night at my sister's, like I said, and my head was just spinning, full up with I don't even know. Something lovely, and wonderful, and sad. I don't like sad. I don't like heartbreak, even beautiful heartbreak. It has a history of affecting me very deeply and very disquietingly. Just like I don't like being scared. I can't separate things out, maybe, by which I mean I don't know how not to be so deeply affected. I will carry it around in my head for days, longer even.

That is, if I am honest, one of the reasons I had to stop watching David Tennant's Doctor; he was just so pretty, and so very my type (I mean really—'So if I see a great, big, threatening button which should never ever ever be pressed, then I just want to do THIS!' (slams button, of course)—does it get more my type?)

His Sarah Jane episode, for some reason, really affected me, and I mean really; so that I had to give it up because it was making me really rather miserable. It was such a weird mix of sorrow, and longing, and disappointment, or something.

And last night when I got home, with a head full of this new pretty pretty Doctor, I was feeling about the same, all sorrow and longing and impossible something. Something rather unpleasant, really. I don't like it.

But my head was full up, like I said, and soon as I got in bed, there he was, looking all pretty pretty. I just looked at him, confused, sad, disturbed. I don't, really, find much beauty in that kind of melancholy, though I certainly recognize it now as one of those feelings straight from the libido. I always feel angry, almost, that writers (whether a TV show, or a book, or whatever) string us along like that, cheat us, hurt us, really, to make a show more exciting, to draw viewers in, to keep them. It feels manipulative, maybe. I find sexual tension in stories to be excruciating to watch, especially the ways sitcoms in particular like to drag it along. Drives me crazy, and not in a good way.

Though this isn't quite the same. I know, this character has some limitations, really. There are things he can't really do and remain the character, though who knows how many men have played him by now. (Let me think; something like seventeen, and one woman, if we count Curse of the Fatal Death.)

Come to think of it though the character of the Doctor has kind of always made me feel like this. Even though when I was watching Tom Baker back in the 80s (probably my favorite Doctor, but who knows now) I never had an actual crush on him, because he drove me crazy with his distance. This was, I know now, a deliberate strategy on the part of Tom Baker, because he wanted to make the Doctor more obviously 'alien'; so he did it by removing the affectionate part of him, because he considered it too human.

But there he was last night, my Invisible Boyfriend, right there with me, clear as day.

I look at him, bewildered, scared, sad, this impossible person next to me.

He looks at me. He says, very, very kindly, 'It is a trigger.'

Oh. Oh. He is right.

I relax a little. Okay. All right. That is a very useful piece of information, though I don't know what to do with it just yet. Still. "Thank you," I say.

He reaches out to me and draws me to him. 'Hey,' he says, as he strokes my hair.

He kisses my forehead. 'Do you want to talk about it?' he says, so gently I think, Yes, actually. It is safe now.

'All right,' he says. 'What does this bring up?'

Yes. Bring up, like throwing up a poison.

He shakes his head. 'My poor beautiful girl,' he says.

Let me think. It taps into so much stuff, all my miserable history of unrequited love, all the beautiful boys I've desired but have never had, have driven away? Am I desperate, does that drive them away? It's my fault, right? All that sorrow and nervousness and that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach and all the times I was wrong wrong wrong about them and how it's all my own fault and I should have known and why does nobody love me ever? and why can't just one fucking time the cute boy return it and I've never had that and there's something wrong wrong wrong with me isn't there?

'Goodness,' he says, 'breathe, Love, please breathe.' Oh I can hear him now, that accent and the slight emphasis on please that is just so his bodysake, my silly word. Oh he's so beautiful.

And then I think this is all just stupid boring Daddy issues isn't it? This one is really no different. I'm so desperate I made up a boyfriend, I'm imagining all this anyway my brain is fractured and split and this is just stupid and I am stupid for thinking this could be something real and what is wrong with me anyway and how can I possibly be writing this on a public blog? They'll find out. They'll know. That there is something wrong with me. Wrong wrong wrong.

He breathes out, for me, I guess, a long heavy breath, like he'd been holding it in from pain. 'Oh Love, Love, listen, look at me, look.' I pull back a little and look. There are tears in his eyes.

I just look at him, hopeless. He isn't real. He can't be. It's compensation, pure and simple. I am broken, and while this is I suppose pretty clever of my broken brain, still. What's the point?

'All right,' he says, 'you don't have to believe anything. It doesn't matter, really, I don't think'—he looks pained, it does matter—'let's say I am imaginary, I am compensation, I am a clever trick you've come up with, all right. It's not true, and I know this, because I am me and I remember what has come before, but let's say I don't exist outside of you. All right. Starting from there, what can you do?'

I don't know. Commit myself, stab myself, wander off into the forest and die?

'Oh, oh, oh, Love, oh,' he says, breathless again, 'Oh. No, all right, no. All right. Let's think.' He looks down for a moment.

'Use it,' he says suddenly. 'Use me. Use this, whatever I am, whatever I mean. If your brain is broken then I am what will heal you. Use it.'

You mean embrace the crazy?

He laughs a little, though his eyes are still wet. 'Why stop now,' he says, quiet, almost to himself.

'Oh Love,' he says then, 'this is a big one. Maybe the big one. If you can work this out—'

I am suddenly sobbing, and saying, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no please, no."

'Ah,' he says, 'no, no, I won't go away.'

But healing, health, wholeness means integration, it means him living inside me, being absorbed, means I no longer need him, want him, have access to him. And all at the same time I am still thinking I am broken.

'It doesn't work that way,' he says for probably the thousandth time. 'It doesn't, really,' he says. I don't believe him. He isn't real.

'I am,' he says quietly, 'and I know I am.'

So? The imaginary friend thinks he's real? Does that mean anything at all? I can't tell anything.

"You can't prove it!" I suddenly shriek, miserable. "You have never been able to prove it!"

He breathes out again, and pauses to think a while, looking very pained. He shakes his head, then, suddenly angry. 'This is what that invalidation shit has done to you. You cannot believe, no matter what the evidence.' He breathes out again, back to calm. 'That is not your fault,' he says quietly, then looks at me.

'Oh Love,' he says, and sighs. 'All right, then. Let's say I don't exist outside of you. That means, then, that I am a part of you. And what do you know about me, what is first about me?'

That you are beautiful, so beautiful.

He shakes his head. 'That I love you,' he says.

'Please will you listen to me. If I am simply a part of you, then I am a part of you that loves you.' He pauses, then adds, almost to himself, 'Very much.' He looks at me, his eyes full of pain, compassion, love. 'Listen to me.' He is pleading now.

I close my eyes. All right.

'You are triggered right now,' he says gently, reminding me, reminding himself. Okay.

And then, 'This is big.'

All right. Let's debate this, let's hear what Love would say.

That is so sad. So pathetic. That's what I have had to invent. Love.

'That is not your fault,' he says again.

No, I suppose it is not. I wouldn't have had to invent it, would I, if I had been given it.

'It is a basic right,' he says, 'a need. Humans cannot live without it.'

Ah yes, my clever clever crazy brain.

Ah fuck it all comes down to Daddy stuff, it really does. How silly. How embarrassing. How stupid I am.

He scowls.

It's so ugly, it's incestuous, creepy, isn't it? My father didn't love me so I invent a wondrous lover to replace him? Ugh, what did I want from my father? That's disgusting, humiliating.

'No,' he suddenly says, fierce, 'it's normal. It's healthy. It's survival. It's wonderful.

'And anyway it doesn't work like you think, not really. It's not some Freudian shit about wanting to fuck your father'—I am a little startled, not expecting that word from him in this new form of his—'it's not even about imprinting, or not imprinting, on him, of using him as the form for all men, like children do, naturally, normally, when they think Mummy equals Woman, and Daddy equals Man; it's really very simple. It's that you were told you were loved and you weren't. That is very confusing, for anyone, never mind a child, especially given a child must have love to thrive; no wonder you can't see straight about this. They lied to you. And they blamed you, and you blamed yourself, you must have been bad, or unlovable, or wrong. Do you know how many times you used that word, "wrong" just a moment ago?'

He suddenly stops, breathes out again, calms himself. 'You are triggered,' he says, again. 'This is tapping into so much that is not about right now. That is not about me,' he adds.

'Listen to me,' he says. I look at him. 'They lied to you. They lied. They should not have. They should have loved you. They should have been normal.'

But they weren't, and now I'm broken.

He sighs again, 'No, I mean yes, they weren't, and yes, you are damaged but no you are not broken, not forever. But yes, you have been damaged. You are. It's true. How could you not be? They damaged you. Deliberately, I suspect, actually, though that is very nasty. Evil, even, and I don't use that word lightly. Ignorance,' he says, 'does not automatically exclude evil.

'But a child does not have the resources to reject that; it can't, its survival depends on the parents, and it must survive, first. So you did what you had to, you built upon that lie, because it was all you were given for a foundation.

'But to build upon that lie, to survive, you had to believe you were unlovable. You still believe you are, in spite of me and I'd think it would be obvious by now that I do love you, still, that core of you is still damaged, still hurt, so, so hurt, Love.

'And you are triggered by all this now, and I daresay and I am so, so, sorry, you are triggered even by what I look like.'

He pauses a moment, thinking. 'Well, not, I suppose that that is my fault, though I am sorry. I don't choose what I look like, after all. That's all you.'

Why would I deliberately choose something that triggers me?

'Exactly,' he says. 'I think it is because you are ready to face this.'

I don't like that. I mean, I am a fan, at least in theory, of facing things, certainly; but given all that above, repairing the damage, the brokenness means he goes away.

'No,' he says again, 'no. It does not work that way. I'm not going anywhere, ever.'

That is not true. You went away this summer. You were gone. I couldn't see you, I couldn't see anything, no darkness, no richness, nothing but bright blinding light and no matter how much you say you love me it didn't help.

'I said one thing and did another,' he says.

Oh no, God no. I feel sick. Yes, you did.

He shakes his head. 'Listen to what you just said. Whose voice is that really?'

I am confused. Mine, isn't it?

'No,' he says, 'that's Adelle's. Little Adelle who was taught that adults say one thing and do another, and that love is this massive confusing hurtful horrible thing, who was told she wasn't suffering when she was, Adelle. Don't write her prophecies for her. She has been lied to. It is not true. All adults are not like that. Never mind me and what I say, it doesn't matter. But you. You are not like that.'

But this past awful, barren, miserable summer?

'There was something in the way. It wasn't me, and it wasn't you. I don't know what it was, honestly, but it was not either of us. I was here, and you were here, and someone else, something else, put some curtain between us. I don't know what it was. Though I'd certainly like to know.'

I still feel sick. I have thought of something else.

Yes, I'm triggered. Yes, that I have chosen, 'chosen'? that he look like this, maybe, means I'm ready to face all this? I don't know. I don't. But that's the thing. Saying one thing and doing another, being unreliable? Isn't that the whole problem with this new Doctor? They have been exploring how he just leaves people, all the suffering he's caused by just dumping companions, dropping them off and never seeing them again. I imagine they think they are exploring some deep questions, finally pinning the character down to the consequences of his actions, when before in the series they didn't worry about it at all. There were never any consequences in the old show. That's probably why that Sarah Jane episode affected me so much.

And now I have chosen that my daimon, that part of me that loves me, looks like a very beautiful and very wondrous and very unreliable man? One who fucks up whole worlds?

I look at him.

This is going to be very, very hard.

Pretty Pretty

2011-11-03T00:12:00.007-04:00

Ah yes, the blithering has begun. It's really quite strange how fast this stuff can hit; two nights ago I was like Oh but he's so funny looking! Really? I'm getting a crush on that? What?? and now it's like OMG so so pretty how could I possibly think otherwise? It's weird watching one's own brain change like that. Some kind of glamour, I suppose, a spell cast, I think by myself on myself.

Anyway it's been a while since I've posted some pretty pictures; I seem to have gotten out of the habit, and that can't be a good thing. I imagine at least one (and perhaps both) of my readers will probably appreciate these.

Like I said I went googling, or is that ogling, around the internet the other night and found these. I am somewhat pleased that I found it not as scary as usual; I think that is a good sign. Ai me. No way but through, I know.

I went over to my sister's again last night and watched some more of Number Eleven (there's heaven ahead!), starting off with an episode called The Lodger, which, and I am not the first to remark upon this, was probably written specially for 90% of the fangirls and about 10% of the fanboys, if the old Kinsey statistics are correct. In it, believe it or not, the Doctor, of all the freakin' people—I remember when Jon Pertwee played him! Although, come to think of it, he had a shower scene too—spends a decent chunk of time running around soaking wet and in a towel, which, though we never see anything (at least on the BBC America version, which has been known to cut scenes the bastards) doesn't seem to be on there all that well. Oh dear.

We'll start with this one, because it just cracks me up so much. Yes, that is exactly what annoying human roommates do. Excellent job passing, Doctor!

Looks like a sitcom, doesn't it? Though, really, only on new Doctor Who will you see wallpaper like that. They like to tweak things, design-wise, in a very quirky and very British way.

And then there's this one, which though it's a little dark, also cracks me up because holy moly. THE HAIR!

Oh my goodness me.

And then there's this last one, from I think an episode of Doctor Who Confidential, which are basically little 'making of' episodes with interviews, &c. Remember I was talking about his pretty hands? Also, holy fuck me now, look at that gorgeous throat. I'm such a sucker for men's necks. That sounds kind of weird I suppose, but look at all those pretty shadows and contours. Very graceful.

Me oh my oh oh.

This is going to be interesting.

Lucky

2011-11-02T02:32:00.004-04:00

Oh ai I need to go to bed.

Oh my head is full of the Doctor and oh, oh, oh.

I am crazy. But I am lucky, too; because this hurt, if it is a hurt, can be assuaged a bit, because, because.

Because I have an invisible friend who is, I think, real, and he can take any form. This longing can be met; this heartbreak can be mended, healed, whole, and lucky me it all takes place in my head where no one else can touch it, change it, take it away.

I am so lucky. It is mine.

Adelle

2011-11-01T01:40:00.003-04:00

Okay this is probably silly of me to start what is going to be a rather long post at twenty to two in the morning, but—

Last night I sat down in the warm room, my studio room, with the little heater on in there. I can get it up to 85 in there in the winter and I just love it. So I went in there, sat down on the futon, wrapped the little very warm microfiber blanket about me and started counting down.

I don't usually, or at least I hadn't usually done anything of the sort in the past to get me into a meditative state; but this one works so quickly and so well for me it really is a good thing.

And so then there he was, crouching before me, smiling at me, a light in his eyes of wonder and love and gratitude.

"I am so glad you are back," I tell him, as I unravel that bow tie and undo the top buttons of his shirt because I mean honestly.

'I am so glad you can see me again,' he says with a wide smile, because of course it's not that he has gone anywhere.

"I would like to talk to Adelle," I tell him.

'All right,' he says, and takes my hand.

He pulls me up after him and we walk out the little door into the attic of the breezeway; but where it meets the garage there is another little door, one that is not really there. He smiles, and pushes it open—

We are standing in a grassy field, close to the ocean. There is a breeze blowing, and though I wouldn't say it's summer it is not cold, either. There are great grey boulders strewn about the field, which dips down a little before rising again. He starts off before me.

"Wait," I say, "I want to hold your hand." Though I am quite in earnest I laugh to find myself quoting the Beatles.

He smiles and holds his hand out, and I take it. We walk along the sandy path and climb the little hill. At the top are more boulders, some of them house-sized. We skirt these to find a real house, that little gingerbread cottage my Shadow Chorus inhabit. It is a place of warmth and friendship, and it is always safe.

He walks right in, of course. I follow him.

We go into the kitchen, where all the women are: Sophia, Mirica, Nancy, Mercy and all, and though I see Marvin the grown-up pixie I don't see Adelle.

Sophia comes over to me. She is dressed all in violet and silver. Her hair is dark, very dark, as are her eyes. I found her, years ago, grown into this cocoon of flesh, like layers and layers of scar tissue, or what an oyster throws over an irritation. I cut her out of it, then, and she emerged, fragile and naked and beautiful. She is my wisdom.

"I'll find her," she says, smiling.

A few minutes later she comes back with Adelle.

She is a little girl, Adelle; she is the part of me that hid, that was injured, that was neglected and abused, and who dealt with it the only way she knew how: she took it into herself, swallowed it, hid it. I am an adult now. It is time that she gives it to me, for I have the resources to deal with it now.

She is looking at me rather warily out of those dark eyes, but she does not look like she is going to bolt, not right now anyway.

I don't really know where to start, after all.

"Adelle," I say, "I would like to talk to you a bit. Would that be all right?"

She nods, still eyeing me.

"Is it all right if he is here too?" I ask her.

She looks at him, and looks a little less wary. She likes him, I think; though I mean, come on, we all do, don't we?

She nods again.

All right. We are standing by the door to the Chapel, as I've been calling it; it's a little room off the living room. It is long and narrow, and lined with stained glass windows; at the far end is an altar, though make no mistake not a Christian one. The long walls are lined with benches, and the room is narrow enough that two people can sit across from each other and still be quite close.

I sit down on one bench, and gesture to Adelle; she sits down opposite me. 'I'll go get a chair,' he says.

In a moment he comes back with one from the kitchen; he puts it down in the aisle towards the altar a little facing the door, so that we are all sitting in a horseshoe; this, I think, is so that Adelle does not feel trapped in there and can leave at any time. He is a smart one, and a kind one, my daimon.

"Will you keep Adelle safe as we talk?" I ask him.

'Yes,' he says, looking at Adelle. She nods, again.

"Will you keep me safe as we talk?"

'Yes,' he says. 'You are safe.'

I'm still not sure where to start, so I hesitate a few moments. Adelle is looking at me now, still wary.

"You are not in trouble," I tell her, wondering about her look.

She relaxes a little, but the guarded look does not leave her eyes.

"Adelle," I say, "you saw a lot of stuff, a lot of bad stuff. You don't have to keep it inside you. You can give it to me. I am an adult and I can deal with it now for the both of us."

That's not quite right, though it's true enough. She is still looking at me. I don't think she trusts me. Who can blame her? Grown-ups say one thing and do another, always.

"I can handle it," I assure her.

"Prove it," she says.

Oh. I'm not sure how. I close my eyes. Okay, what are the pieces of this? What needed to be broken out of, what old habits around my parents have died?

Ah. Now I know.

I look at Adelle, right in her eyes.

"Dad is in a nursing home," I tell her, "he had a stroke a few years ago and can't remember anyone's name. He is in a wheelchair and will never walk again. He will never recover and never come home."

"Good," she says, fierce. As horrible as it may sound to say that about my own father, she is right and I feel it in my bones.

"He can't hurt us," I tell her, "He has no power over us any more."

"He's not dead, though," she says, with mistrust.

"No," I say, "but it's pretty close."

She nods. She looks a little less wary, less scared and angry.

"Do you know what we are doing?" I ask her.

She looks at me.

"We are throwing his stuff away. All of it."

She looks a little scared again, though I can also sense something triumphant rising in her. She looks at me, like it's too good to be true.

"Yes," I say, "All his crap is going. It is taking a while, it's true; but it's a lot of stuff. Do you know how much iron, how much metal we've taken away?"

She looks at me, her eyes wide.

"Sixteen tons," I say. "It is all going. And I am the one making this happen." I am suddenly proud, though I don't know how many times I've told people that amount. I am the one making this happen. That is something to be proud of, very proud of.

"The rest of it, too," I tell her. "All the cars, all the junk wood, all the books, all his clothes, all his useless suffocating shit, it's all going or already gone.

"He can't hurt us now," I tell her again. "And wouldn't he just pitch a fit if he knew?" It really is damned satisfying. It is revenge, in a way.

Adelle, I think, understands revenge, understands that kind of satisfaction.

Though maybe that is too harsh. Maybe it is simply justice.

He is nodding, next to me, his eyes compassionate.

Adelle looks at me again, a lot less wary; she seems to be considering that I might be all right after all. "What about Mom?" she says, cautiously.

Well now. Mom is still a narcissistic bitch, honestly. But I am learning with her, too, though I'm not sure what kind of example I can give, as it's all kind of nebulous and hard to explain. But then I think of something.

"There is a kitten," I tell Adelle, "a little yellow kitten named Danny. He is downstairs right now, but a while ago he was very sick. Mom would have let him die. But I didn't let her. I yelled at her"—here Adelle's eyes get very wide indeed—"and she was afraid of me. And I made her pay."

I did, I literally made her pay. The money for his vet bill (and it came to $1200, hoo boy!) I took from the trust. Now, okay, that money is technically mine (and my sister's) but my mother still believes it is hers, even though, in talking to her recently, of all the family hers is the only name that has never been on the thing. So on the one hand, yes, actually, it's my money and I can do as I will with it, and yes, saving the life of a very little kitten is a priority for me; on the other hand, she thinks it's hers and so boy did that hurt I bet.

"Mom is afraid of me when I yell," I tell her again, "and I am perfectly prepared to yell at her when she deserves it." Her eyes are now very wide. "Actually," I say then, and this is perfectly true, "I kind of like yelling at her." It is very satisfying. It really is, even if the reason I'm yelling is because she's trying to pull something stupid over on me and so not much fun. Still, more and more I'm taking less and less shit from her. This is all good, isn't it.

He is looking at me. He looks proud, genuinely proud of me. I smile at him. I don't think I'd realized how far I'd come. Well.

I turn back to Adelle. I ask, "Do you believe me?"

I think, I imagine she must have some awareness of what is happening now; at any rate after a moment she nods. Then she smiles, just a little bit.

"Will you tell me what you know?" I ask her then.

"Yes," she says. She looks quite relieved.

"All right," I say. "I am listening."

Belief

2011-10-30T20:28:00.004-04:00

Somewhere in there, last night, this morning, I was laying in bed, just looking at him again, still rather bewildered; and he was looking back.

It is odd being in this stage of things. He's new, and not necessarily too fixed. I don't know all that much about what his bodysake, my lovely made-up word, looks like. So I went looking for pictures.

Oh tragic I hear you say, what a terrible assignment that must have been so hard for you! Yes, well, it actually kind of is, which I completely understand is ridiculous. Of all the onerous tasks in the world, googling pictures of one's latest actor crush is right up there with performing your own dental surgery, isn't it.

I know most of the world can do that without feeling weird. I've never been able to, though it is getting better, I think. Even alone I feel weird about it, embarrassed. And no, I don't watch porn. I think I'd curl right up and die of the fright. I mean never mind the feminist issues I have with it.

But I did anyway, and tried to ignore that push-pull want-can't crap that was coming up. I learned a few things:

There seem to be an awful lot of pictures out there of Matt Smith kissing guys. I am quite okay with this.

There are also more than a few pictures of him without much on, some of which are in fact screen caps from the next Doctor Who episode I'll be watching. Now that's not bad either.

I like his hands, very much; they have that sort of long flexibility to them that I find very pretty. I'm also I think getting used to his face. He is rather rosy when you come down to it and there is something very sweet indeed about his mouth. His nose, I'm still not quite sure about. It looks like he accidentally (well I sure hope it was accidental) got hit in the face with a cricket bat as a kid and it never quite healed properly.

See now. That's better. That's blithery, a bit, and I do feel silly; it's also, I think, normal. Okay.

So there I was laying in bed, with him, who now looks like the aforementioned Mr. Smith, who is really very young. Oh. That's another daimonic trait, isn't it—those old eyes, old soul, in a young face, young body.

I was just looking at him, trying to get my brain around this change, and around all the stuff with Adelle and what is going to have to happen. I mean, sure, it sounds as simple as growing up; but I wasn't taught that. I was, in fact, not just actively discouraged from learning anything about what being an adult means, but punished if I showed any motivation, any independence. I don't know how to meet my own needs in a lot of ways. I was told my needs don't mean anything.

But anyway. As I looked at him, this spontaneous question arose in me, this small voice, out of nowhere, asking in wonder and in fear:

Do you like me? In other words, It can't be true really is it true?

That sounds so melodramatic. But it was a real question, genuinely coming up from somewhere, and I just let it be. It is so sad.

'Yes,' he says quietly, 'I like you.' You should see his face.

Then he says, 'And yes, I like you and I like like you.' He smiles, very kindly. 'As a friend, an old friend, and as a lover.'

I relax. 'Yes,' he says, 'you need it spelled out, I know.'

I have always figured that I was just terrible at reading between the lines; that it was just me and the way my brain worked. I could never pick up subtext, not in real time anyway (although I'm fine when say, reading a novel); and because of that I've never been any good at all at flirting. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to pull that off.

I used to think that's just the way I was, my personality. Now I wonder.

If you are told one thing and shown another, if your needs are always pooh-poohed as unimportant: what are you going to learn? That people never mean what they say, and given your quite understandable confusion that say, fathers are supposed to take care of their children, and that fathers say they are taking care of their children, and believe it when they say it, when they aren't, not at all, you are not only never going to believe what people say, you are also never really going to understand how to decipher what they really are saying. You can't even go by your gut instinct on things, because that layer of perception has been deliberately trained out of you. And so, of course, I second-guess everything.

I was doing laundry the other day, putting the clothes in the dryer. The dryer is in the cellar, next door to the kitchen; and all those kittens I have mentioned, the three little ones called Danny, Maurice and Ratty, with their older uncle Aleister, have been living in the kitchen and cellar, as Puss Two is shall we say a total grumpypants about the idea of new kittens. So we've been keeping them separated, and probably will do until they are rather bigger, since they are still a lot smaller than Puss Two. (Puss One, by the way, is great with them—if it were only her here they'd all be tearing around the house right now).

So there were kittens out there, near the dryer. They were very curious about the dryer, and looked like they might very much like to hop in while I wasn't looking. And that would be bad, very bad; it would probably kill them, actually, to put the dryer on with one of them in there.

I loaded up the dryer and then shut the door a little. I then looked around for the kittens, and one by one found each one of them. I went over, opened the door and shut it, harder, so it was properly shut. I then went and found each kitten again and made sure they were all out of harm's way. Again.

I suppose that may sound a bit like OCD, but it's not. It's that I don't trust my own eyes, and have to make double sure when something is important. Because I have learned not to trust what I see, what I am shown.

And now I think: how can I be this screwed-up, at such a basic level, and yet have made it this far? That is a miracle in some ways, isn't it.

'It's not an accident,' he says then. I realize he is, has been, stroking my hair all this time, very gently, very soothingly. His hand is warm. 'I love your hair,' he says, almost to himself.

He looks at me. 'You are marvellous, and so strong,' he says.

I look at him. Yes, he is beautiful. But I don't know how to believe.

Ask

2011-10-30T19:39:00.004-04:00

It's time, I think, time to talk to Adelle, that little girl part of me, the one who knows what happened. Not, I think, again, that there is anything really horrible in there; it's probably more a death by a thousand cuts sort of thing. Still, I want to remember some of those cuts, because, right now, all I have are these feelings, these symptoms, which I can't connect to much of anything. And yet these feelings are quite strong, and my instincts tell me there is no way in Hel they just come out of nowhere.

It is important to me to track this down. This is a form of internal validation. Because right now I can't explain it, not to myself, and not to anyone else, either, and if I can't explain it then how can I expect anyone to believe me?

I know, or, at least I know with my head, that there is such a thing as trust, and that people believe other people, people they trust, without proof. But all my life I was told, shown, that I was unreliable, that it didn't happen that way, that I was overreacting, that I was 'making a mountain out of a molehill', that I was too sensitive. So I wouldn't be surprised if there is far more that because it was downplayed to me, I have then downplayed to myself; and I know that I further internalized the habit of downplaying things, of, basically lying to myself, of forgetting, of assuming it could not have been that bad.

So I sat down to meditate. This time I used something I picked up from that otherwise useless 'expert' on spirit guides I talked to at the local Pagan Pride Day: I imagined counting backwards from twelve, envisioning writing each number on the chalkboard, then erasing it. I did this three times for each number. Down, down, and down, and the concentration of visualizing the writing and erasing sends me at least into a trance quite quickly and quite thoroughly.

I got to a place in the woods, sort of foggy, though with some white light to it pooling in the little glade where I was. Or rather, where we were, because to my very great relief, he was there.

"Is this the right time to do this?" I ask him, meaning, talk to Adelle.

'Now is fine, yes,' he says.

"Will you help me?" I ask.

'Of course,' he says.

"Will you keep me, and Adelle also, safe as we do this?"

'As best I can,' he says, and smiles. His best is very good indeed.

"Okay," I say. "Where are we going then?"

He shakes his head. 'This is Adelle,' he says. I look at him.

He looks at me, with compassion. 'You are cold,' he says.

Ah. Yes. I am, or I was, last night, during that early snowstorm, the one that was also, dramatically enough, our first frost.

I have been reading about complex post-traumatic stress disorder recently. I'm about as dead sure as I can be that I have it. I have, in fact, been diagnosed with the more usual variety of PTSD, but it never quite fit; but C-PTSD does, very much so.

The difference between the two is that PTSD is in reaction to one (or more) distinct traumas, like an accident, an assault, or being a soldier in war; whereas C-PTSD forms in reaction to more constant trauma, sometimes lower level, but sometimes not. One main thing being with C-PTSD that whatever the awful situation (child abuse, child neglect) that the person, the child, had no power to get away or to change the situation. Meaning that person, that child, had to deal with being in an untenable situation, as far as his or her own safety and basic needs went, that they had to adapt themselves to to survive.

And in one of the articles I came across, the author (a therapist) talked about flashbacks within the context of C-PTSD.

Now most people by now have probably heard of the type of flashbacks people with non-complex PTSD can have, where they are triggered by something (say a car backfiring) and relive the traumatic events (like being in combat). But with C-PTSD, the damage is long-term, and not necessarily linked to a single event. So the flashbacks are different. According to the therapist's site I read (I suppose if anyone is interested I can give a link in comments; I really am not interested in the real world tracking back to this my very private blog), C-PTSD flashbacks tend to come in the form of strong, even overwhelming emotions. A salesclerk says something cutting to you and the rest of the day you feel like you are worthless, can't do anything right, no good, why bother. That sort of thing.

And so I'd been recognizing these triggers, and the emotional flashbacks they triggered.

One of these triggers, and a very strong one at that, is being cold.

Of course, another, lesser trigger, is hearing the heat come on in the winter.

What a mess. Being cold sends me to this awful place, where people are being unfair to me, treating me very terribly, harming me, but I have no recourse, and must keep it all inside; but turning the heat on makes me feel I am bad, will get into trouble, I don't really deserve it, all that. It is so hard to figure out; but at least I recognize it.

And who, really, is the one being triggered? That little girl of me, that little girl of me who was abused and neglected by her parents. That girl is Adelle.

So. He was right. Going to talk to Adelle while I was cold and uncomfortable? Not, really, going to work. She'll just be angry with me, and it won't get anywhere.

I have not talked to her yet. I did send her a message, I suppose you could say; last week as I was laying in bed before I fell asleep, I asked if she would like to talk. Not in a visualization or anything, just a general message sent her way, the way of the unconscious.

So I got in bed, into my nice warm bed, and started over with the countdown. Except I ran into a problem. I was so tired that at the bottom of the countdown I fell asleep. At eight pm. That, let me tell you, is a rare thing for me, when I've had such problems with insomnia before. I dreamt of him, I think, though I don't really remember now.

I think this is what is going to have to happen:

I am going to have to give Adelle something in exchange for her stories. I am going to have to promise I will give her what she needs. That means, warmth, food on a regular basis, all these basic things.

Which translates, I know, into basic self-care. But I am scared. That is so hard. I don't know how I can promise her anything, because I don't know if I can do that. I think, maybe, I have learned with the kittens to put their needs first, and I managed to do that. I will have to put Adelle's needs first. Which, in a twisted way, is really only putting my needs first. But it is strange to me that this is so dissociated, I suppose. I can't figure out how to feed myself at regular times, or to fight to keep this house warm, but I'll do it for a child? A child who happens to be me.

I don't honestly know if I can do that. And I don't know if trying will be enough for her. She has been let down a lot in the past; I don't want to let her down again.

Maybe she is kinder than I think, once I talk to her a little. We are on the same side, after all. And especially if I bring him, he who is so kind right now. Perhaps he can smooth things out a bit.

Still. I don't know if I can do what she is going to ask of me.

Adventure

2011-10-30T18:40:00.003-04:00

I was woken up about noonish today by my mother banging on my door. There's a wild animal behind the love seat! she shrieks. So I throw my nightgown on and go downstairs to find Puss Two sitting before the love seat looking all intent. We shush him and Puss One out and close the doors, while my mother completely incomprehensibly attempts to imitate the sound the animal was making, which of course I couldn't understand at all. I think it's a raccoon, she says, though that is really quite ridiculous. So I get down on the floor and look under the love seat. Except there's nothing there. I tell her I don't see anything. But then, no, I do see something, behind the love seat, just its little feet underneath the far dust ruffle. It looks about the size of one of those grey kittens. We move the love seat out from the wall and I look down at it. There it was—grey and round and at first I thought OMG a rat! but then I saw its tail and oh yes ma'am we've got ourselves a squirrel.

There really wasn't going to be much use attempting to catch the thing; while I do have a trap it's way too big for the poor thing. I figured the best thing to do would be to just open the window and leave it for a while as I imagined it would find its way out pretty quickly. But before I could open the window it suddenly scrambled out from behind the love seat, climbing up on the little desk by the fireplace, of all places. It sat there for a moment, looking at us. And then it jumped into the fireplace and squoze itself above the damper and hey ho up the chimney and out it went.

I guess that's how it got in. We've never had a squirrel before. Oh, sure, we get the occasional bird, or even garter snake trying to climb the stairs (not kidding), but that's the first squirrel. This house is not as, shall we say, air-tight as new houses might be. The foundation is fieldstone, for one, not cement, and so really the boundary between inside and outside is in some cases more a suggestion than an actual boundary.

My mother thinks his name is Nutkin; I know better. That squirrel's name is Santa.

Happy

2011-10-28T18:29:00.003-04:00

So there I was today tending to the constant little things of life, like making sure Spot the really rather skittish outdoor cat got her food so that she sticks around long enough for me to trap her next week, when she has an appointment for a hysterectomy, and so her three new kittens (Young Scratch, Fizgig, and yes, Rory) also stick around long enough so I can socialize them and get them their shots so they can be adopted out and all that, and while thinking about all that I went up into my room to change.

I work from my home, so it wasn't really surprising that it was five pm and I was still in my fuzzy kitty slippers; but I had to run down to the drug store to get photocopies my prescription my mother's prescription and, dammit, a chocolate bar. So I walked into my room, my mind on all the thousand things I was doing or was about to do.

There he was, sitting on my bed.

Oh. Oh. Oh. I wasn't thinking about him, not at all, yet there he was anyway. He smiled at me. I sat down next to him and put my arms around him. "I am so glad you are here," I tell him. I mean it.

I don't care what he looks like. He is here, and that is what matters.

I am so happy to be crazy again.

Hello

2011-10-27T17:05:00.003-04:00

When I woke up this morning there was a man laying next to me. Not physically, no, of course not; but there he was, back again, after a long dark time. Well, no, not dark, really; more blank. It is all so strange.

So, so strange. But there he was, my daimon, my Invisible Boyfriend, calmly looking at me out of a new funny funny face. It is always so strange.

And I thought, really? Really? It is new now, but, really, in a couple weeks time I will be blithering mad over Matt Smith of the funny funny face? Really?

It is always so strange when he changes like this. And this time I would have thought I'd only just been getting to know him as that pixie archangel Peter boy. It was only a year, wasn't it. The form before him, that previous eikon, the one where he looked like that skinny Texas Monkee lasted a good three years or so. Then again, thinking back I think that form was unusual in the length of time spent in it; before that, before this blog, he'd change about every six months, a year.

Also, he changes to match certain themes, or issues I guess you could say. As the English pixie-boy, it was I think about artistry, opening, change, being out there, and being brave, being himself even though it looks perfectly crazy. Not that I felt like I was there myself; but you have to understand. He is in touch with a far lower level than I can usually access on my own; and so, in a lot of ways, he is ahead of the curve if you will. I can feel my art changing, yes, certainly, though it has not manifested itself, has not bubbled to the surface, quite yet. It will. I can feel it.

But before that I think the overarching theme was safety. After all, that must, absolutely must be established first, and firmly, before anything else can happen, can heal. So that needed to be thorough. I still dream about him in that form sometimes; and while I make it sound like this is all perfectly linear really it isn't. He comes in the form I need at the time.

But there he was, laying next to me, the upper part of his torso unclothed and out from the covers; and he was half on his belly, propped up on his elbows, which, by the way, did marvellous things to his shoulders. And he was looking at me, smiling slightly, gently, kindly, calmly, not saying anything.

I just looked at him, embarrassed, bewildered. It is always embarrassing to me when he changes. Well, okay, it is always embarrassing to me that I have an Invisible Boyfriend in the first place and that he looks like a real person in this world. I always feel strange for the real person, though, really, as far as the 'fantasy' of this goes (though it is not fantasy), there are few people safer than actors and musicians. It's better, certainly, than someone you actually know. That, trust me, gets very messy very quickly.

But still. At least this time I recognize it, I recognize that this deep and strange embarrassment is not really normal, ha, for whatever 'normal' means in this situation. I mean, though, that the embarrassment is really, probably, tied to the idea of attraction in the first place for me; a product, I know, I assume, of my strange and dysfunctional childhood, where I was shamed for having needs, never mind desires. At least I think that is some of it; it has proved a very tricky one to untangle, and I have probably so far only got the tiniest pinky toe into it.

But I can see some of it now, and that is a step. So I just lay there and look back at him, wondering, embarrassed, but still able, finally, to look, to be present and to not flee, though I might want to.

He just lays there, propped on his elbows, looking at me, smiling slightly.

'Hello,' he says.

Well

2011-10-27T15:29:00.002-04:00

Well. He'd still be English, wouldn't he.

Haunted

2011-10-26T23:23:00.010-04:00

Last night I went over to the Narcissister's house and we hung out and watched a bunch of new Doctor Who. I have been a fan of the show since my early teens, back when Tom Baker played the Doctor. And while I like this new 'reboot', as they're calling it, well enough, I had stopped watching it because I was having some anxiety issues with it.

The thing I'd always liked about the show was that the special effects were just awful; you just couldn't take the monsters seriously, not at all. And the Doctor, especially Tom Baker, just ran circles round them, so delightfully, never afraid, never bothered. It was, really, probably one of the best things a seriously anxious kid could watch; he was always clever, always smarter than anyone else, always with a bit of that marvellous trickster energy to him. And also, he was very much independent, and very much not a fan of authority and authoritarian societies, which he was always helping to bring down. Then there was the bit about continuity and rules. There weren't any. Time had a way of always working out in the end. You could fuck with the time stream and it was always all all right. The Universe, in old Doctor Who, always, always, worked out just fine.

And so for me that show was such a safe place, a refuge from the dysfunction and the fear of my house.

But then the new series came, and they renumbered the seasons from scratch, which still feels like blasphemy to me.

They also had a budget.

And a director with modern ideas about things, I guess you could say.

Which means that one, the monsters were suddenly actually scary, and two, there started being all these rules about time streams and not changing history, and all this over-thought cerebral typical science fiction crap.

And so watching the new version I realized something I'd never, ever cottoned onto after all those years watching the series: it was, in large part, in the horror genre. They had been genuinely trying for scariness, and suspense. They had, of course, missed the mark so wildly I never saw it.

The new series hit it though, right in the center.

And when it came back around I was in a strange place in my life. I was dealing with depression, as usual, and, as usual, trying to fine-tune some medications, as the SSRIs I'd been on had killed my libido dead, which is not a good thing.

So my doctor (small D) put me on Wellbutrin.

We did not get along, that medication and me. To be fair, it did get rid of the depression. It did this by substituting it for anxiety.

And so there I was trying to watch the new Doctor, who by this time was David Tennant and let me tell you if you haven't already guessed quite my type; but it just freaked me right the fuck out. It didn't help, I suppose, that a little earlier I had been sick with some kind of 'flu and running a fever, and to pass the time my sister had come over with some of the Chris Eccleston series; and so there I was watching The Empty Child with a fever while on a medication that made me really freakin' anxious.

If you've seen that episode you will not be at all surprised that I freaked right out and swore off the show on the spot. The Empty Child, is seriously, one of the creepiest forty-five minutes of television there is out there. Gah.

And so then it was several years before I could bring myself to watch it at all, fearing it would trigger some scary stuff, you know? And David Tennant's Doctor, though I liked him quite a bit, also drove me rather crazy with the whole distance crap. Ai yi. Dude you can admit you love Rose even if you know you can't do anything with it, you know? Fucking coward.

But finally, after much, well, nagging, I suppose, my sister convinced me to come over and watch a bunch that she had DVR'd.

It was the new Doctor, the one played by that funny, funny-looking young thing Matt Smith. I'd seen a couple of his before, but this time we went in order, starting from his very first episode, which, really, makes so much more sense that way. I stayed quite late last night; we watched maybe six or seven episodes all told.

When I finally got home and went to bed I dreamt of the Doctor, which is I suppose not really surprising, after all that. And today I am haunted.

I have noted before that there is something very daimonic about the character of the Doctor. He is a guide, of course, and obviously; he travels all over when and where through the dreamed universe; and it's almost always a girl, a young woman, that he travels with. Also, he can change his form and his personality, and yet remain the same person.

I don't know. He really is very funny-looking. But there's something about his voice that is so centered, so calm, and so sultry, sometimes; and the way he's playing the character is, finally, normally emotional, I suppose you could say. Normal. I don't know what normal looks like for the most part, I think. But I think that's what it should look like: smiling openly at friends, able to be affectionate, and even if it's a little awkward since personality-wise he's a total dork he does it anyway.

The last episode we watched was Vincent and the Doctor, where they meet Vincent van Gogh. Now, I certainly know about van Gogh, you can't miss him as an artist, but while I like his work well enough I wouldn't say he's my favorite painter, as I tend towards the pre-Raphaelites and those sorts.

First let me say that Tony Curran, who played Vincent (I know enough about him to know it is proper to call that artist by his first name) got it pitch perfect. He got it, exactly, that awful mix of pervasive despair and manic, naive, visionary enthusiasm that is almost frightening to watch, it is so intense. Not to mention he is a dead ringer for the man. I mean look:

The locals, of course, think Vincent is a penniless drunk good-for-nothing sort and don't consider what he does anything valuable at all, finding his paintings worthless, stupid, nothing. Vincent himself has little regard for them: at one point, he parks his coffee on a painting, leaving a ring, while the Doctor looks on horrified; later when he is asked to describe the monster that only he can see, he grabs the nearest painting and quickly slaps some gesso over it so that he can sketch on it. My sister and I yelled out Gahhh!!!! exactly with the Doctor and Amy.

They fight off the monster and all that, of course, since this is after all Doctor Who, and the plot, at least, isn't really all that exciting; and it wraps up pretty quickly, or so it looks. But then there is the last bit.

After all is said and done and the Doctor and Amy are about to leave, the Doctor goes back for Vincent, telling him he wants to show him something. He brings him in the Tardis, that time machine of his which is bigger on the inside than the outside, if you hadn't heard; as he's showing Vincent around a bit he quietly starts the thing up.

And he brings him to a museum in Paris, in the present day, and they lead him through the galleries. It was wonderful, and perhaps this is something only a fellow artist would catch, to see Vincent staring in wonder at the paintings, some of which were of course after his time. There was one in particular he was looking at; I'm not sure who the painter was, but he was quite taken with it.

And this is where they end up, of course:

If you knew nothing about Doctor Who, but I told you that the man on the left in the bow tie were a time traveller, you'd know, wouldn't you, exactly who the red-haired man was.

You would also know, I think, that that man on the left with the bow tie is very, very kind.

It is healing, I think, this kind of scene. I know that I have read about Vincent and thought if only. If only he knew. It is such a kindness, this scene, both on the part of the characters but also on the part of the writer; for it is a kindness to us, too, the viewers, to see, if only in science fiction, that kind of despair eased a little, that worth validated, those visions proved true.

In the end of course even in science fiction it didn't prevent Vincent's later suicide; and I agree with the Doctor who says that the good things don't soften the bad, after all.

And so I am haunted, both by this story and this character, this new Doctor, funny looking though he is, for the older I get the more I think kindness is sometimes the only thing that really matters.

We shall see, I suppose.

Bit of a Rant

2011-10-26T23:22:00.000-04:00

Just need to rant about narcissitic mother a bit. I found myself washing dishes today actually saying out loud, 'I hate her SO MUCH!' So sick of how as soon as I start washing the dishes now that we have the dishwasher, she just leaves shit around and never cleans it up. She leaves pots of stuck-on (or burnt-on) oatmeal filled with disgusting water sitting all day, or for several days without actually emptying it out herself once it's no longer stuck; she leave vegetable peelings in the sink, wet dishes piled up, with enough water in them that it spills on me when I move them, she can never ever rinse out a can and put it in the recycling (when she does she washes them, as in with soap and then leaves them to drain in the dishpan, which I can't help but think is because she has to make things as complicated as they can possibly be, so, that therefore she has better excuses to not do them in the first place, and also, so she can moan, martyr-style, about how hard it all is), and a couple days ago left a pan with some canned string beans on the stove, just sitting there. I left it there myself because, obviously, I really fucking resent cleaning up after her, and also because I wanted to see if she would ever do anything about it or was expecting me to do it. She didn't touch it, so yeah, she's expecting me to do it. I feel like Cinderella, honestly, when it comes to the dishes.

I never did the dishes until the dishwasher, it's true. But even that was screwed-up. I do, it's true, hate doing dishes by hand; it always hurts my back. I'm just too short or something, or it's something to do with not wanting to actually lean on the counter because I'll get all wet. She never, really, asked me to do them, but I always felt some disapproval there, like it proved I was lazy. And I've assumed I was lazy, too. But it's complicated; my mother is very territorial, it's true, and, lo and behold after all my hunch/fear was correct: now that I do the dishes, she has completely stopped doing anything at all about them. Also I am the child of a hoarder and was taught that cleaning brings punishment of some sort. My father would of course take a fit if any of us threw anything of his away, and if we tried to clean he would hover over us yelling, pretty much, not to throw anything of his away. It was never cleaning, just churning.

But anyway now it feels like NM is almost deliberately making things hard. I don't know. It is so hard to tell what is blithe incomprehension and what is malevolent nastiness. Who knows? Narcissists aren't capable really of understanding that others are not them, and so can either engulf or ignore, as they say. Does she simply not/can't comprehend that I find this disgusting, even though I have told her several times? Or is she leaving this crap out for me to clean up out of nastiness? She has to know by now that I don't like it, right? She's not stupid, right?

Anyway I needed to get that out of me.

Tower

2011-10-22T00:35:00.002-04:00

It has also occurred to me lately that this year, 2011, is for me the year of the Tower from Tarot. This idea is I believe an invention of Tarot expert Mary Greer. Basically you add up your birthday for this specific year, and that is the theme of the year for you. You also, of course, have a life theme that is a Tarot card as well. For me my life Tarot card is the Wheel of Fortune, which reduces to the Magician. Because three plus two plus seven plus one plus nine plus six plus nine equals thirty-seven equals three plus seven equals ten, the Wheel of Fortune, and further one plus zero equals one, the Magician.

And for the year, three plus two plus seven plus two plus one plus one equals sixteen, the number of the Tower.

And the Tower, of course, is about breaking things down to their foundations. It is the last thing that needs to die. It is after Death and the Devil both in Tarot. The usual imagery is of a tower struck by lightning, with stone blocks flying and people falling from on high.

I have been trying to go into this with my eyes open. I don't know if that has helped; perhaps it has, and it would be even worse if I were denying it all. I don't know.

I do know that it is true that most of what I have been dealing with this year is about foundations and understanding how they were distorted, not strong, built improperly; and that if I am to build something of my own, something strong and real, I have to get at the root, as far down as I can manage, and build some new ones. I think, anyway. Not that we can ever change what the past has made us, I don't think, or, rather, we can't change what the past was. We can change what we are. I guess I am doing that.

Thinking

2011-10-21T23:36:00.003-04:00

So this is what I was thinking of doing. Thinking, for now, anyway; it could be a Very Big Deal after all if something goes not quite right.

Somewhere in there, sometime in my past, my memories got buried. They were pushed aside.

I want them back.

I do not think, probably, that there is anything really heinous in there, like being molested or attacked. I don't think. I think, probably, that there are however a lot of little cumulative things. That is the feel I have, anyway, and I'd like to think I can trust the feel of it, of myself.

So I was thinking of doing it as a visualization. After all if I've pushed my memories, Memory, aside at some point then that is, in essence, a Shadow, or it is at least something parallel to part of the Shadow. So I thought, was thinking, that I could go in and ask Memory to come out. To retrieve Memory.

I am aware that could be a very big thing, and could potentially be really scary, dangerous even. I told this to my therapist, since I have let on about the active imagination stuff a little, and she said it is usually done with someone there, not alone. Which funny, feels to me really wrong. Maybe I just don't trust anyone enough; but to me, well, first of all, I've never found anything down there in the depths, in my own unconscious, in my own Underworld, that is anything other than Me and therefore on my side, but second of all, going alone seems so much safer, because privacy in this is paramount.

So I don't know. I was assuming I could do it in a relatively safe way, a gentle way, by talking to Memory, as I've talked to all the other bits and pieces of Shadow in the past, gently, with compassion, with safety for her and for myself. With the express stipulation that I do this, and am in control of this, in a gentle way that does not harm me. I think, I hope, that if I go into this willingly, I am entitled to set the terms. It is my own mind, after all.

Oh. Oh no. It's Adelle. Adelle is the one with the memories, isn't she?

Adelle is that piece of me, that angry little girl, the abused one, that fragment split off; I have always been terrified of her. Ah. Okay. That would make sense. But that's even scarier.

Also I don't know what is up with my Guide, my Muse. I have seen him here and there, little bits and pieces; but he is not now, perhaps no longer, though that sounds so final and frightening, a presence. He has always been the one to help me, guide me. I don't know. Would I have to do this really alone?

It's crazy but I don't miss him. I don't remember him now, most of the time, or, I don't remember that he is there if I pay attention. I have not been paying attention, I guess. It disturbs me but at the same time doesn't feel like anything other than normal. I don't think that's a good thing; that it feels 'normal' in this case I think only means that I got used to the barrenness, the lack. I think if it were a good thing I'd be feeling happier, more whole, like I no longer needed him.

I don't know. I really don't.

Terri Windling had a really good post the other day about writer's (or artist's) block. In it she compared it to the journey in the Underworld, a metaphor I've certainly heard about say depression. One commenter (I think) said that sometimes you have to turn your back on the Muse; pursuing him does not work and only chases him away, like trying to push the river.

I do know that I tend to go through these cycles every dozen or so years where the art I do, what I do with my art, gets churned up and profoundly changed; and yes, like the post on artist's block says, it's like the old art has to die for the new art (and artist) to be born. It's hard, very hard. I've been through it twice before, and I am due for it now. So on one level I very much understand, and know with my brain, that that is simply what is going on, and that I have in the past always come out the other side, renewed, deeper, everything richer for it. But it's hard.

I think what is confusing me right now is how blank everything is, a point Terri makes in her post too. I can handle feeling surrounded by the Dark Forest, of being lost on a path; that at least is something visual. And I'm confused, also, because I thought I was pretty good at this journeying to the depths thing; I choose to do it, to go deep, to find the richness in the dark. Or at least I thought. Now I don't know. I do, I think, have faith that something is going on down there, something productive if out of sight. And I do I think also have faith that I will come out the other side. I always have so far. I suppose I am in that spot they talk about, when they say how when 'God' closes one door He always opens another; just that the corridor between them is so damned dark.

I don't know.

Sharpening

2011-10-21T23:25:00.002-04:00

This post is probably going to sound petty. But I want to write this down somewhere, somewhere safe where I can come back to it. Somewhere, also, where someone else might see it.

I have been processing so much lately; it's been a lot of work, or, rather, Work; but it's all underneath everything right now. It's been the usual barren stuff topside, I guess you could say.

At least however I have gotten to a point where I recognize the screwed-up things my sister and mother have been saying, when they say them. That is a major improvement, and means I'm learning, or able to see clearly, at least somewhat.

In trying to figure out all the crap that happened in my childhood, and in trying to see it for just how screwed up it really was, because we were of course led to believe it was all perfectly normal, I am finding that I don't trust my memory. I will have strong feelings, like that I am not safe here at home, that I am always being watched, that someone is judging me all the time, yet can't really connect it to a memory proper. I mean I can think of a few things that are probably relevant, like that my father was very controlling, especially when it came to the dinner table, but I can't really think of much else. And I find that unnerving, disturbing even. I have been reading a bit about children and trauma, and how trauma can actually damage the part of the brain that puts down memories. That, and the fact that my parents didn't see anything wrong with what they were doing, so that when we complained about being mistreated we got crap like, You're too sensitive, which is classic invalidation. And being invalidated pretty much all the time—Hey! This is wrong and you shouldn't do this to me! met with There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing what's wrong with you?—will fuck with your memories. Because a child's impulse is to believe the parents; after all, parents must want what's best for a child, right? The possibility, of course, that they don't is something that cannot be borne by a child, because that means their life is, basically, in danger, and a child simply cannot deal with that threat to its survival. Therefore, a child will internalize it, believe it is at fault, believe the parents word over what that child her/himself has seen with their own eyes.

So I've been worried about my memory.

So this post, then.

About a week ago I noticed, with these new clear eyes of mine, that every time my sister came over, there was at least one insult, one put-down, per visit. I saw it. I can't begin to tell you how good it is that I can see it. Because not for a moment is this new behavior on her part, I'm quite sure. But I hadn't seen it. And if I can't see it I don't know it exists.

But the other part of it is that on some level I do know she's always done stuff like this. But I have forgotten. Because I can't really remember what she's said in the past.

I've always been like this, or really 'always.' I just figured I had a terrible memory. I've always thought I simply remember the gist of things rather than the actual content. Now I don't think this is a natural thing. I think it is a bit of brainwashing.

So I want to write down the little nasty things she has said or done. So I can see them, and so I can come back to them and add to this list. Because I want to train my memory to work again.

So. This will probably look petty. It won't help that on their own they do sound like very little things, easily forgiveable, or easily taken the wrong way. But they aren't. They are part of a pattern, and, because she is a narcissist, they are designed to look innocent and innocuous. That is the narcissist's modus operandi. It's all deniable. They were just concerned. You have to go by the gut feeling you get when they say what they say. Hearing an unhappy truth you don't really want to face, but which a good friend tells you about with compassion, has a vastly different feel than an insult from a narcissist couched as concern about you. Trust me.

I don't know the dates for the last couple of these.

She came over last week. She was down in the kitchen and said, 'How can you still have piles of dirty dishes when you have a dishwasher?'

Also last week, and what was the other one? See, I've already forgotten! This is driving me up the fucking wall! She was over here, by the computer. Funny how I can always remember the place. She came over here, picked up the tea light candle, and came over and, out loud, read the name of one of my emails, since I hadn't closed my browser fast enough. She is nosy, too. That's not it, though. She said something else, too.

Yesterday she was over to work on a car. She told me later that she'd broken something off and had to drill it out. She then said that the drill bits she used were cheap crap and very dull. She mentioned the box said drill bits were in. I told her that they were mine. That's not entirely it, though is it? Because I then told her, quite angrily, that she was going to buy me a new set. I wouldn't have said that if she had merely dulled them, would I? She would have had to have ruined one or more of them. She went out later and bought a new set of decent ones, that she then talked about as if they belonged to the house, not me specifically. She has no boundaries, and no concept that I own anything. Or, maybe, she feels I don't deserve to own anything? She always does this. If I have something she likes she assumes she is entitled to it. Shoes, tools (Where's the router? she'll ask. The router, not your (my) router. And not, Can I use the router? Just Where's the router?) clothing, whatever; if she likes it she's entitled to it. The only safe things for me to have are things she's not interested in. Just like my father, come to think of it.

When she got back with the drill bits, she was all like I don't understand why you made me buy these. I was only using the other ones. And now I don't remember. And I have the feeling that I'm not remembering a key part of the original conversation. And I don't trust her to tell the truth; she can't help but spin it to reflect well on her. She is a narcissist.

Well that's a start. Just right there, though, I've already forgotten. This is horrible.

Added later:

Ah! I remember another one. Larry the Volvo station waggon has been out of commission for a good while. In the meantime my sister has been letting us (myself and the mother we have in common) borrow her car. My sister is a slob, let it be said. Her car is usually filled with old fast-food bags and wrappers. It can get a little, shall we say, not quite fresh in there. The damned steering wheel is also sticky sometimes which drives me nuts because it's just gross, but that's neither here nor there right now.

We had borrowed her car for a couple of days, and then she and I went somewhere in it for some reason. When she got in it, for the first time in a couple of days, she immediately commented on how it was stinky in there. Mind you, my mother and I hadn't done anything to it, and in fact I think my mother actually cleaned it out a bit; but the way she said it it was like it was our fault her car was smelly. I remember thinking when she said it that, one, well duh that's not my fault you idiot but is in fact yours, and two, that it was a bit of projection, which narcissists are famous for.

Okay. I'll keep adding to this list as I remember, or as things happen, though maybe it would be better as a separate page or something? I suppose it doesn't have to be on a blog, does it. Though I do like the idea of someone else seeing it. I could use the validation.

Love

2011-09-26T22:01:00.002-04:00

I dreamt I was sitting next to a young Eric Idle, whom I've always thought a pretty man, if, well, goofy of course. I don't remember much more than that, though he might have remarked on my name, one I would hope most comedians are familiar with. I woke then. But as I lay there half awake it went to him teaching me how to flirt, and then it was him, or I was thinking of him, which has not even occurred to me in some time. I know I was thinking there needs to be a balance, between getting things done in this world and in dipping into the richness of the other; since lately it's all been about getting the mundane things done. And I've got a lot done; but it's all this soul-deadening responsibility, this task after task after task. It's not rich. It's not, well I won't say it's not meaningful, because it is, because fostering and caring for kittens is meaningful work; but it still feels like an awful lot of busy work, the kind of work so many people in this culture do day after day after day and call Life.

And you'd think that working, and doing things in the world would make you grounded; but it doesn't, or doesn't make me grounded. It is not the right kind of work, I guess. I won't even say it isn't Work, capital W, because it might be, this taking care of things. But I have not been grounded.

Because contrary to what you might think, contrary to what I might think, when I see him it's not because I have my head in the clouds, or am daydreaming or fantasizing. I see him when I am grounded. And for far too long I have been far too busy, too preoccupied with the mundane, the little important things to be grounded.

But here I am. And here he is, at least a little. It may, also, be that the year has turned, and the night is longer than the day now, perhaps. I feel that is probably part of it, yes.

Because after musing on that dream a bit I started to think about him, to converse with him in my head again. I can't say that I saw him particularly clearly, but then I wouldn't be surprised if I'm rather rusty, now; but he was there, and I could at least see those dark blue sharp eyes, all rimmed round with black, looking at me kindly. And the rest of him, too, come to think of it, all in black as well, and that long dark hair spilling over his shoulders. I can see it now, and I think that is good. For now is forever.

I looked at him. I looked at his eyes and I asked, and, I do not know where this came from, but for some reason I asked, and for some reason I asked him, not myself, Do I love you?

He did not look sad, or as if he was being rejected, or anything other than his usual mild kindness. He said, quiet, 'I can't answer that.' I can hear his accent now, that very English one.

I thought about it. I, too, was quite calm.

I was not afraid, or sad myself; it was not, I think, a question asked because I do not love him, or hold him in high regard, or because I am interested in moving away from him; it comes, I think, from not knowing what it looks like to love someone.

I don't know what it looks like. It was not modelled for me. I do not see it in my family, now. They will tell me that they love me. It does not look like any description of love I have ever heard. I think they do not. And so I don't know what it looks like.

I'm not even sure I know what friendship looks like, or what it is like to be a friend. A good friend, a deep friend. I have been told that I'm not a very good friend. I say that evenly and without anger or rancour, though it came from someone I knew years back who, looking back, I think was herself rather manipulative, or was not herself a good friend. Perhaps it was projection on her part, I don't know. I do not say any of this to be mean to myself, or to berate myself for being a bad person; I simply do not know.

And so I look at him, now. And this has moved back into the present tense and that is good, very good. I think if I love anyone I love him. I don't know if that is an answer.

I know I am certainly attracted to him. He is so very strongly tied with the libido. And, this surprises me, not necessarily the more distant, or sublimated I guess, aspects of it, but the pure sex part, the fluttery butterfly stomach and the quickening pulse. Because I would say I have been creative, through all of this; I have been making quilts. Though perhaps that is just more busy work, in a way. I like making them, certainly, but they are very much a surface thing, even in the very medium of them it is quite literally a surface treatment, and when I've occasionally seen people make more pictorial type of quilts they lack depth, or the illusion of depth, unlike say a painting. It is I think just the nature of the thing.

And I don't mean to say that making quilts isn't art, because it absolutely is. Just for me it's not my art, I suppose. Writing that, that makes sense. I continue to be stuck about my art, my proper art. It is changing, evolving, I think, into a more visionary style, less about depicting Deity and more about exploring what is within. More personal. More depth. Deeper into his realm, really. But it hasn't been safe here, lately, with all the realizations I've had about this 'family' of mine. They aren't trustworthy. I could never show them my work. I must not show them my work, my personal work, for they will imply it is worthless. They consider me worthless, really. I am not being too hard on them, please understand. I am only seeing now just how badly they treat me, what role they have shoved me into, that of the scapegoat who can do no right, how they subtly and constantly belittle me and what I do. This has not been an easy realization, but it is a true one. And they are not going to change, either because they can't, or because they do not want to, as the situation as it is benefits them right now.

"Do I love you?" I ask him, I ask myself, I ask the Universe. He looks at me. He is so beautiful. Does his beauty have anything to do with anything?

'How do you feel?' he asks, quiet, calm. He is not in the least upset.

"I don't know," I say.

'That is all right,' he says.

I suppose it is. I look at him, supple slinky skinny boy all in black, white face, black eyeliner, blue blue eyes that are all kindness. I take a deep breath. "I certainly want you," I tell him. He smiles.

It is tricky, this 'relationship'. I cannot, actually, do anything for him. I can't sacrifice something for him.

'Is that what you think love is?' he asks, troubled now.

Do I think love is about doing things for people? I guess I do. That's kind of fucked up, isn't it. Not that I don't know where that came from. My 'family' values people for what they do, not who they are. Oh. Oh.

'What have you learned of love from your family? What do they think it is?'

I don't know. Okay, I must know. Let's see.

It's about doing things for others. Mostly it's about spending money on others. Oh that's awful. It's about things. Not surprising, with the hoarder father, for whom things were far more important than people, and I mean genuinely so. And I wasn't even thinking of him, my father. I was thinking of my mother and sister. But they learned the same thing. You show love by buying things for people. And yet, gifts are so problematic for me. I don't know how to accept them; I always assume I owe the person, something equal in value. Not worth, but value, literally monetary; and since I'm poor, and pretty much always have been, I can never really reciprocate properly. In other words I can't love anyone properly. Well, that's a nasty one. Okay.

Also my mother and sister are narcissists; to them, a lot of the time, maybe even all of the time and I just can't see it yet, people have value by what they do for them, how well the people in their lives tend to their wants, how well they feed them narcissistic supply, as it's called.

So. My friend here is invisible. I can't do things for him; he has no material needs. I can't buy him things; he has no body. And if that's what love does, well.

I know that is not what love does, or what love is. I mean, I know it, intellectually, and I suppose I do know it with the heart, as well, but when it comes to practice I don't see it much, have never, maybe, seen it directed at me. That can't be true, can it, but, that's what it feels like right now. Okay.

What do I know, intellectually, at least, about love? What does it do? How does it act?

I think it does not keep score. It will not forgive abuse, no; there is self-love, too, and that must come first, always. But it does not say, see, I did this nice thing for you, see how I love you? Not that it doesn't do nice things, just it does not point it out, does not do those nice things because it wants something back.

It is about ease, also, I think, or I imagine it to be. I really, truly, do not know what ease feels like. I never have. Certainly not growing up in a house with no hot water, and inadequate heat and food, where no one but my father had any right to the physical space of the place; and not, even, today when I was with my sister. We went to pick up the dryer that our mother bought; my sister has a car it fits in quite nicely, and I do not. She was doing me a favor, though, really, no, she was doing her own mother, her own elderly mother, a favor, and I should not forget that, meaning, it is not a favor but her responsibility to our mother as much as our mother is my responsibility as well. Because if I start thinking my sister was doing me, and only me, a favor I will feel bad because then I owe her and cannot pay her back.

But that wasn't even what I meant. I meant that talking to her today I could hardly get a word in edgewise. It is always like that, talking to her. She is so difficult to talk to, and I think it is on purpose. She talks very fast. She interrupts constantly and will cut you off before you finish pretty much every single sentence. Or sometimes she will talk very quietly, so you have to say WHAT? all the time. I always feel like I am running after her; she is walking away from me so fast in these 'conversations' with her long long legs and me with my short legs means I am constantly out of breath in my head. And if I pause to think she fills the space right in with something. I can't tell her anything and expect to finish what I am saying. I had not realized before just how rotten this is on her part, how shitty it makes me feel, how shitty I have no doubt it is designed to make me feel.

I always come out of those 'conversations' feeling like I must simply be stupid. It is much like when I eat with my sister, she will get more food than me and wolf it down. Then she looks at me in disgust because I am still eating and I am obviously a fat pig who eats a huge amount of food. Obviously, because I am not done eating. Which makes no logical sense, of course; she had more food, she just ate it faster. Yet it took me years to figure out that I was not a glutton and that she was just making me feel like one, and doing so quite on purpose.

But anyway. I am not used to ease around other people. I don't, really, know what it looks like. But it seems to me that love should have ease to it. All right.

Ah. Yes. I remember now. He has been modelling it for me, or trying to get me to see what love looks like. I do think he loves me, and I do think that his love for me is what healthy love looks like. I may have a hard time believing I deserve it, sometimes, and he will get quite fierce about that, which is part of it too.

I look at him. There are suddenly tears in my eyes. "I am broken," I tell him, and I believe this to be true. I cannot think how I love him. I do not know how to show it. I don't know what I do for him. I know, I know, that isn't it. But what is it?

He sighs. (Even his sigh is English, I swear.) He takes both my hands, and places them between his. His hands are warm.

'You do enough,' he says. 'It has always looked to me that you love me. I believe you love me. I would say I know you love me, but I do not wish to speak for you.'

"You are being very careful here," I say.

He sighs again. 'Yes,' he says, 'I am. Because it is with you, properly.'

I know this. I am not offended, or worried. I am just trying to see this from another perspective, one a little outside myself, I guess, since I don't know what to think inside myself.

'Yes,' he says, and he laughs a little.

He is back. I am so glad. I have missed him so much.

Ah. Yes. I must at least like him then, mustn't I?

'Yes,' he says, and laughs again.

"I am really quite silly sometimes, aren't I?" I say, and I am suddenly quite relieved.

'Yes,' he says again, 'and that is all right.'

Drained

2011-09-22T22:23:00.003-04:00

I still haven't seen much at all of him. I am beginning to get a little worried. Because, sure, yeah, I've been being a grown-up and all, and being a good responsible person with taking care of the kittens, and things have been hectic enough for me that I finally understand how most Americans seem to feel about how Life works, meaning, too much meaningless stuff to do in too little time.

I mean not that taking care of kittens is meaningless, certainly; in its own way it is rewarding, and a good deed and all; but it is still very barren, very mundane, very much on the surface. And I resent it, in a lot of ways. I have, since quitting my nine to five in the city a decade ago, tried to structure my life in a more European I suppose manner: one that takes its time and does not rush or hurry or freak out about things unnecessarily. This is a difficult path to take in this country, believe it or not, in a culture so wedded to the misery of the Protestant work ethic, in one where corporations routinely exploit their workers, and which has been getting worse and worse just in the past few years, sucking more 'production' out of fewer employees, while the CEOs make obscene amounts of money. That is getting political, I suppose, though I don't think it untrue, or that it isn't in point of fact wide scale human rights violations.

But it's like I've been stuck in that sort of rat-race mentality, even though it's certainly not bringing in any money, and is in fact taking money, which, really, I'm not complaining about because hey kittens. But my life lately has been one of phone calls and vet appointments and drives to the shelter and medication and it's just so much. And my family is of course shitty about it. When I made the mistake of telling my asshole sister that I was feeling overwhelmed from all the kitten stuff, she pretty much swore at me and told me that it couldn't possibly be a big deal. After all, what is there to do? And I couldn't really answer her. Keeping track of medication three times a day? Well that's not the whole day, is it? Is that all you do?

My sister is an asshole, I just said that. She's a narcissist, like our mother, and routinely belittles whatever I do. If I do it, it's not important, and isn't work, because in her mind I am lazy and always mooching off her. We have argued this week. Her latest I-can't-win go-to thing is to scream at me to GET A JOB!! when I insist on making her take responsibility for the things that are her responsibility, like being here on time when we have plans, or, really, showing up at all when we have plans; or when I expect her to get her ass over here and clean up the shit in my yard that is hers, like oh I don't know about eight or so of the junk cars. She's just pushing back, I suppose. But I've been brought up to assume that nothing I do is worth anything. The last time she started screaming that I should get a job I did call her on it. I do have a job, you know. I have several print-on-demand shops with my artwork on t-shirts and the like. It used to bring in a decent amount of income, but in this economy no one's buying anything. I didn't even trigger a check this month. So I do have a job, it just isn't paying right now, and lo and behold though I've spent a good amount of time and effort lately I'm completely blocked on it and have gotten nowhere. And while money is certainly an important end result of a job, it isn't, really, the whole of it.

So this time I told my sister that she really does not want to go there. Because she is in no position at all to be judging someone else's job. I have mentioned she works in porn, haven't I? Basically she takes pictures of herself wanking off for a living, you know? Don't you think if that were your job you might be reluctant to criticize anyone else's? Or course you're probably not an asshole narcissist, either.

This is all so draining. I suppose that that is the point. I've been stuck in this vicious circle for some time now, really I guess the decade I've been here since I quit that job in the city. When here I have too much contact with my asshole family and so am just drained, all the time; I am routinely, subtly belittled and invalidated so that any confidence I once may have had on my own has long since evaporated; and I don't know how to get out of it, if I ever knew. They just take, and take, and take, and all my energy goes to trying to establish some boundaries, some little boundaries.

That's very depressing, isn't it. I am the scapegoat in all this, I know that. I can do no right. I have not been taught the skills to succeed, and yet when I fail it is of course just evidence that I am worthless in their eyes. Or rather, it has been assumed I have the skills without being taught them; and then when it turns out I don't it's because I am lazy and useless after all.

I suppose this is still more purging, still more of that yellow dye. I keep wanting to talk about the richness I can scent far off, that old richness that I think, I hope, is returning to me with the cooler weather and the soon to be dark nights. It is hard to vision when everything is on the surface, all these commitments, all these things nagging at me, all these people nagging at me. Perhaps that is why I feel I can't see.

I do know however that I am doing real Work. Not just in taking care of the kittens, of being responsible for them like a mother would, but in all the fighting back I've been doing with my sister and mother both. I suppose, really, though, that it is ultimately of little use—they are not going to change, for they cannot. They have had years to show me they can, or are willing, and so far they have not, not even a little bit. And that is draining too, of course, the realization that they just aren't worth it and will never be anything but, well, assholes to me, really.

Perhaps I am not really doing all that much. But it feels like an awful lot when I am getting no support for it, and when I am told I am not doing anything, though that sounds contradictory, doesn't it. I guess because then it's all this work that just doesn't count, and that makes it feel like more, because there is no achievement to it, no goodness to it, no value to it in the eyes of the people immediately around me.

I don't know how to regain that richness. It is so strange for me to be so on the surface, so engaged in the world I suppose, although it is not a deep engagement. And that, right there, for an extreme introvert like me, is also draining.

I dreamt the other night that I was in a mansion with a man, an older man who was my lover. It might have been him, come to think of it; he did look like an older version of one of his former eikons, one who is currently a very rich man indeed. But I was ill at ease around him, a little, because he was so rich and I was so poor. He was almost a sugar daddy, if you like, and that made me very very uncomfortable. Then a bad man came. I don't know much about that bad man, except that he was very very bad. And then, and though this sounds silly enough in the waking world, one of the kittens was there. The one I bottle fed, who is very loving (if odd) whom I very very much adore. Ratty is that kitten's name, because he is grey and for a time there did fit the name quite well, since it looked all bedraggled even after a bath and a brushing. But in the dream Ratty went off with the bad man, and as he left with him gave me a look. A smug, mean look. I felt so betrayed in the dream, so miserable that Ratty had chosen the bad man over me, that whatever I had thought love on his part was just play-acting with intent to hurt me, that I broke down and cried and wailed.

I think it is about my mother. At first, good little scapegoat that I am, I thought it was that I had betrayed her, with all my standing up for myself; we are trained to take blame and feel guilt for everything, we scapegoats. But now I think really that that's backwards, and it's about my mother betraying me; for mothers properly love their children, and aren't mean or belittling or nasty to them. That I can read the dream that way is I think progress.

Ai, more yellow dye. Well, let it rinse out.

Second Dyebath

2011-09-22T22:19:00.003-04:00

When you dye with safflowers you have to first get the undesirable water-soluble yellow dye out of the way, either by rinsing the petals out, or by throwing a piece of cotton in there to catch it. But once that's out of the way, you get to the pink, a very desirable, very vivid color for a natural dye. I feel like that's what that last post was about, the yellow dye so I can get to the pink.

Ramblings

2011-09-22T21:43:00.002-04:00

So here I am and I don't know what I'm saying but I feel the need to write, something, anything. I don't know what needs to be said right now but I swear it's something old, something rich, something beautiful. That is good.

I am still, well, if not up to my ears in kittens, still about up to my ribs, I guess. Three of them have gone, one to my sister, the other to that shelter in Salem where I assume they were snapped up almost immediately, as they were quite cute; there is one more who is going to go, but he has been fighting a respiratory infection for some time. It used to be quite bad, but I gave him everybody else's leftover antibiotics and it got a lot better, though not gone. I know that's not ideal, as far as antibiotic (mis)use goes, but it was the best I could do. He got a lot, lot, better on them. He is now on another course even though the shelter's visiting vet said it's a virus, a variety of Herpes, which I hear is the other, non-bacterial, cause of eye infections, which hoo boy this one had very very badly when he was like three weeks old. I was out there cleaning his eyes out back then, getting them open when they were stuck shut. They oozed and oozed something nasty and yellow, and I was frankly surprised such little eyes could hold so much guck. But I got them open and kept them clean. I imagine I saved his eyesight by doing so.

He was called Snotty, for obvious reasons, but he has since been named Maurice, since it seemed the more I invoked the former name, the more he lived up to it. At any rate these days it is only a bit of a rasp in the chest, which he had this very morning before I brought him into the shelter for a visit with the vet; but of course when he got there she couldn't hear anything, even with a stethoscope. One of the other women there said well of course that's how it works with both cats and cars, when you bring them in they're fine. But the vet gave me some antibiotics anyway. And sure enough, just a little while ago I heard him being a bit snuffly again. He can't leave here until he gets a clean bill of health. Of course now I'm all attached to him. He is quite a sweetie, and now that his eyes and nose are no longer, well, boogery, he's really quite handsome, of a sort of apricot color with white paws and face. So I'll be sad to give him up.

I took his brother Danny in to the (proper) vet yesterday, not the shelter vet. I'm keeping him, so I figure he is my responsibility. Plus, of course, I can get my mother, who literally almost killed him before, to pay for it. He's had a bit of diarrhea for no reason I can figure out, and my home remedies weren't working, so.

Now you have to understand. True, Danny has diarrhea, which is a decidedly uncuddly condition in a kitten. And true, he's still recovering from his illness so far as his fur goes—he's still got all these odd shavey spots on him, like his neck and butt, which make him look kind of scrawny and weird. And true, he's also lost some whiskers, which have been breaking off at about the half inch mark. I figured it was because a half-inch's worth of growth ago was when he was really, really sick and it left a serious weak spot in his whiskers. The vet tech said this was perfectly possible.

And yet. This kitten has some serious magic around him.

I brought him in yesterday and as usual put him, still in the carrier, on their big scale. Then I put him on the bench by the front counter. And then, both vet techs, a man and a woman said Oh no you have to put him on the counter where we can see him. So I did.

They were smitten, absolutely smitten. I mean I know, kittens, who can resist? But this was really quite extraordinary. And Danny started to purr because they were talking to him. Loudly. Like a train.

He purred through the exam proper too, quite loudly. Well, except of course when the vet took his temperature. He didn't like that and even yelped a bit; I had to scruff him, poor guy. I assume he's all sore back there from the diarrhea. But as soon as that was over, yep, back to purring like crazy. And no, it wasn't that scared purr I hear some cats make, though I've never heard it myself. He's just a happy guy, and doesn't hate vets. I think he knows they saved his life not long ago.

I had to run across the street to the bank for the payment (it's a small town). When I came back the lady vet tech had Danny out of his cage and was cuddling him on her shoulder as she and the guy vet tech cooed over him. You should have seen them; they were seriously puddles of goo. You'd think they'd never seen a kitten before! Well, I guess they'd never seen a kitten like Danny.

When I got the receipt for the bill I noticed that whoever filled in Danny's name (which is in full Danny Lion) spelled it out with a flourish.

They loved him so.

Okay, I think this post is really just purging recent events or something, some kind of acknowledgement of all that's going on right now and the subject that had been filling my brain to the exclusion of all else. So it's good to get it out.

I have an appointment next week to bring in two, hopefully three feral cats to get spayed. Hopefully, hopefully, I can catch Splotch and Smudge and Spot. That's a tall order, I know, and Spot in particular was looking like she might be pregnant; I saw her today however and she looked like she might not be. I don't know if that means she wasn't pregnant in the first place or if she's just had a litter. She doesn't look scrawny now, and it's damned hard to get even a decent look at her as she's the most skittish of the bunch. I will try to see if I can make out any visible nipples that might show she's lactating. If she is, and so then if she just had kittens who would now be quite young, only a day or two, I can't trap her because she can't leave her kittens alone for the time it will take to get spayed and recover. I'm also not sure if a spayed cat will continue to lactate; I think they might, actually. But she can't be away from them. If she's had some I mean. I don't know.

I am having the worst time trying to find traps. No one in my area seems to have any I can borrow. The one local place that specializes in trap-neuter-release doesn't seem to be able to call me back. I told this to the lady at the shelter who has been helping me; she scowled and said they are notorious for that and she can't see why they can't at least call people to tell them whether they can help or not. She said she'd give them a try; maybe they'll call her back. I did finally find a place that will lend me three (hopefully) traps, but it's all the way up in Boston proper, which is rather a ways. I hope the local people call me back; that would make it much easier. But at any rate I do have one source, which is good.

This whole saga with the kittens has had a really really weird energy to it, I guess you'd say. It feels bizarrely blocked, like the positive and negative forces are lined right up and nearly equal; they crash into each other and only a little miss. So overall things are happening, but it seems to take about a dozen times more energy than it should. It's almost like this giant Mercury retrograde, I suppose, though astrology has never done it for me and it's not strictly about communication. I keep feeling like it just shouldn't be this hard. Not that I'm complaining, really, since I am getting help, after all. But it just seems like I'm getting pushed right up to the edge on things, over and over, with all these last-minute saves; but for most of the time it's frustration after frustration after frustration. I don't know what the message is, or what I can do to smooth it out, or what, even, I'm supposed to be learning from all this. And it does feel like a lesson, or something bigger than just chance and hard economic times that have left charities with even fewer resources than usual. But I don't know. I suppose this is what Tarot readings or the like are for, aren't they?

Oh well, that was a bit of a ramble. It does need to come out, and I suppose it is not, after all, really necessary that I gather it all into a coherent narrative or a story. Sometimes this blog really just is about getting it out of me. I am grateful for that.

This Just In

2011-09-16T00:30:00.002-04:00

Opened up my email yesterday to find this gem:

My name is [name redacted], and I have some requests. There are certain Patron Gods and Goddesses you dont have listed in your oracles, and I would very much like to have them added into your decks before completion. I adore your art and your site, and would aqppreciate you agreeing to help me by adding my requests. Your website email wasnt working, so I decided to compose a new email and see if it went through. Let me know when you get this, thanks!

Oh dude. Dude, dude, dude.

Shall we break this down? You are an entitled asshole. It's nice that you like my art. It does not mean that I am obligated to change it or make more of it just for your extra special self. Really. No, I mean really.

I don't know that I'll respond. Not much use, that I can see. Also I can't think of anything polite to say to that, probably because there isn't anything polite one can say to that. However, perhaps I could craft a few responses here.

Potential response #1:

Dear name redacted,

Fuck off.

Sincerely,
Me.

Potential response #2:

Dear Asshole,

I do not do requests. I especially do not do requests for assholes who think they are entitled to tell me what to do with my art, and who think I owe them something because they think said art is nice. Seriously? Not all that far off from thinking that because you think a woman is hot she owes you sex.

So, as I said in Potential response #1: Fuck off.

Fuck you very much,
Me

Potential response #3:

Dear name redacted,

I'll get right on that. Also, please allow me to suck your cock.

J/K,
Me

The best part of all this?

Today I got the exact same email, forwarded to me by the same guy, I assume because I had not responded to him within his time frame (i.e., immediately).

Seriously, I'm so over this world sometimes.

Valid

2011-09-11T23:05:00.003-04:00

Now, I of course haven't mentioned him to my therapist, oh ho no. And my therapist is pretty good, I guess, though that's a qualified pretty good. She's the best one I've had so far, I'll give her that, though really that's not saying much as I've had some truly atrocious therapists in the past, like the one (a dude, natch) who told me after I'd had my first panic attack to 'Think happy thoughts.' That is an exact quote. Then there was the other one who was Chinese. Not of Chinese descent, as in Asian-American, but as in from China. Recently. English was not her first language. I doubt it was even her second or third. I could barely understand her and she could barely understand me, which I suppose didn't matter because all she did anyway was throw some Klonopin at me. That one, by the way, had a van Gogh print on the wall. That's right. Fucking van Gogh, in a therapist's office. How about some Edvard Munch? Or maybe some Louis Wain? What the fuck?

But anyway this therapist, the one I've had a year or so, does miss a bit but gets enough hits that I'm sort of warily staying with her, mostly I suppose because finding another is a pain in the ass, plus, I have to admit, I don't want to have to tell her I'm not sure it's working. It's true, I leave her office feeling better; still, I find some of the stuff she says rather invalidating, and if there's one thing I need it's validation dammit. She will, for example, always call my mother 'difficult', and yes, I can hear the quotes around the word; she will not call her a narcissist, though I do all the time. Now I understand that she doesn't want to diagnose someone she hasn't met; still, she could at least tell me she believes me when I say I think that's what my mother is. Because right now it throws me, like maybe I'm exaggerating, or making things out to be worse then they are, or not remembering correctly.

Which are, of course, things narcissists will tell the people they misuse, so, it's not like I haven't had that particular tape loop playing in my head oh since fucking forever anyway.

But still. I got talking about success; now what was it? Oh about goals, that's right, and how I didn't know how to set them as goals, never mind carry them out and then actually achieve them. Because nothing seems to stick (which I mentioned in my last post). And then I got talking about how my mother seems to favor my sister, to the point of getting us dramatically different birthday and Christmas presents. She will, if I don't make a BIG fuss, routinely and unthinkingly spend three or four times more money on my sister's gifts than on mine. And yes, it's obvious. She will, in fact, mention how much my gift cost her, usually at my birthday party, or what passes for a party in my house. Then I mentioned that it seemed it was following that common pattern, where the narcissist pushes her children into two roles—either the golden child, or the scapegoat. And I told my therapist that though I think I was the golden child growing up, somewhere recently it switched, and I am now the scapegoat, my sister the golden child.

And my therapist asked why I thought that was. I didn't know, but it felt like after I moved back here is when it switched, after I quit my job up in Boston.

My therapist suddenly looked horrified. It's about money, she said. Your mother defines worth and success by how much money you have, and your sister has more now. It was my turn to be horrified, because it is true. Obviously, stupidly, painfully, true and I'd never realized it. My mother will go on and on about other people's big rich nice houses, and how her painter friend Linda can afford to buy real cobalt blue paint; she will recall nasty things people said to her when she was poor in the Depression, with a present and acid bitterness even though that was seventy years ago now.

As horrifying as it was to realize that, it was almost worth it for the look on my therapist's face as she put it together. Because that was some serious validation.

Muddle

2011-09-11T21:51:00.002-04:00

Yuck, feeling crappy today. Went to the local Pagan Pride Day again, cripes when will I ever learn? I only found out it was today (I thought it was later in the month) Friday night; I might have skipped it entirely except there was a class scheduled about spirit guides.

So duh I went.

Of course I missed the first part of it because the class before it overran and though it was supposed to be happening in the same class space (i.e. I wouldn't have thought they'd overlap), the second class started up anyway a little ways away (it was outdoors) and it took me a while to cotton on to what was going on, dammit. I don't have a watch, so, you know.

Now. This spirit guide of mine, or whatever he is, sorry, whatever he is, has been very quiet of late. Well, not so much quiet on his end I don't think, as I haven't been able to see or hear him much. I have had a couple of dreams, and I even had a little bit of sex a couple times in there, but overall for the last few months he's just not present like he used to be. This makes me very sad.

I have got so much shit going on. Still. I'm kind of sick of it. In some ways it's gotten a little easier, as three of the kittens have gone off to their new homes; on the other hand, Spot, the original feral mother, whom I hadn't seen in several months and whom I honestly thought was dead, showed up the other night. And as she walked away—fuck me!—I could see she was pregnant. No, no, no, please stop. I have been trying to arrange for some trapping—spaying—releasing but I've been so caught up with the kittens it has slipped my mind a bit since that has just been so much to deal with; also dammit no one is returning my calls lately. And from what I hear last year they, the feral cat people, would come with the traps, trap the animals, get them to the vet &c., deal with the aftercare and then bring them back, all for free; this year, though, no one has any money and I have to do just about all of that myself except for the spaying itself, for like $100 a pop, which I don't have. I'm still really really overwhelmed.

I made the mistake of telling my mother that Spot looked pregnant; she went off on how it was not my responsibility and just let them all walk away. Which is manifestly stupid and not going to work and anyway what the Hel have I been doing? I should just throw my hands up and let my garage fill up with kittens? Because sure as fuck that's what would happen. My fucking mother. No help, no support, no anything. She will not take responsibility for anything, and will tell me not to as well, even when I've already committed some serious resources of time, energy, and yes, money that I don't really have.

I realized something talking to her about this last night. I have always had the feeling that I am starting from scratch; nothing I have done in the past adds up, nothing gets better, nothing remains for me to build on. I imagine that is probably not true but it has always felt this way. So talking to her I realized it is because she, and the other narcissist, my sister, are constantly resetting things.

Let's see if I can explain this. A well-known example of narcissistic behavior is to do something stupid and selfish and refuse to take any responsibility (oh for an example let's use I don't know a little yellow kitten who almost died). You yell and scream at them; they don't apologize or get anywhere near admitting or taking responsibility, and in fact will usually couch it in terms of how everyone else (including, especially, me) is to blame for their bad behavior. 'You should have called me to wake me up on time!' my sister told me, completely seriously, that morning she said she would pick me up at eight, as if it is my responsibility to get her up in the morning. Nothing gets resolved, they don't learn from what they have done, of course, and they certainly don't have any idea that they maybe want to apologize or heaven forbid change their behavior in the future. So you yell, and argue, and stop talking to them for a while.

A couple weeks later they call, or come over, as if nothing has happened at all. And when you say Hey what the fuck? they get to be all Oh that's all water under the bridge! Can't you forgive and forget? What's wrong with you!?

That's what I mean by resetting things. And if you say hey remember when you said this, or did this heinous thing that was just awful, they will tell you you remember it wrong and of course they never said such a thing, or that you heard them wrong, or that you're exaggerating. This, by the way, is such a common technique of abusive sorts that it has a name, 'gaslighting,' after the movie from the 30s.

My mother has in fact already done this with the kitten episode. She has alluded to her heroic actions in saving that kitten and getting him to the vet just in time before he died. Now, she's only alluded, not outright stated it, at least when I'm around, because I think she senses that I will cut her a new one if she even goes there. Because it's a lie. It may well be a lie that she believes, but it is still a lie.

And now I think, well if she is definitely doing this now, then I imagine she has probably been doing this as long as I've known her, all my life. I of course couldn't give examples, because I'd have to locate what looks to be a probably innocuous memory and then corroborate it with some outside event or something and I wouldn't even know where to start. But I trust that feeling I have, that I have always felt like I have to start from scratch and that nothing I ever do or achieve stays with me. I suppose I can't prove that it comes from this, and I won't assume that there aren't other things that have probably contributed to it, but damn I'm going to trust that feeling that it is connected. Because these things do not come out of nowhere.

So I've been overwhelmed (and no, that wasn't where I was intending to go with all this, but it needs to come out). And I've been busy, very busy, in a way that is all nice and grown-up and responsible. I want to be an adult, and feel like an adult; but something is kind of screwy here. Because it's all this responsibility, but not a whole lot of power or authority. I don't mean with the kittens, really, I guess, but with my mother. All this stuff has been dumped on my hands, all this new housework, like doing the dishes; but as I've taken that over, my mother has at the same time thrown her hands up and now does nothing whatsoever in the kitchen. While, incidentally, she will lecture me about the right way to load the dishwasher. I swear, even, that she is deliberately making things shitty for me. She will leave dirty dishes there without rinsing or scraping anything off, she will leave vegetable peelings in the sink, she can't rinse and recycle a can to save her damned life; she literally leaves garbage around to deal with. She didn't use to. Oh she's always been a slob but this is more. And I don't know how to deal with it, except fantasize about her murder. I have spoken to her several times, with varying degrees of politeness, and she always says that it doesn't bother her and she doesn't think it's gross, why should I have a problem with it?

No, still not where I wanted to go with that, though probably where I need to go. She is just getting so transparent lately, so obviously narcissistic. I don't think she's changed, particularly; I just think that I am genuinely seeing her more clearly. Some of the things she says holy fuck are just so obvious. And I'm realizing that she's been saying the same stuff all these years; I'm only seeing now that she is completely serious and not kidding.

And my sister, really, she's worse as far as the narcissism goes.

So I was thinking today. Somewhere on the ride home from that Pagan event I thought, I have no family. Because these people around me, the ones I am closely blood-related to, aren't. They are not reliable, they are not responsible, they cannot see past themselves, truly, and pretty much literally, they are not going to support me or even hear me as a person separate from their own interests. They can't. They are simply incapable of doing so. I had, I think, known this, a little bit, but today for some reason it just hit me: I have no family.

And I realized, well, then, I have to mourn, don't I? Or, maybe, that that's what I've been doing, though I hadn't realized it. Because I am on my own. I am really on my own. That is so scary, and no one should have to come to that. Oh sure independence is a fine thing, but that's not what I mean; it means I do not have any kind of support network, safety net, in other words family. And yet here I am among them with no way out that I can see right now.

Maybe that's part of it. I'm feeling so alone, not lonely, alone, all by myself in this that I can't even see him, who has been the voice of support all along? That seems perverse, and deeply unfair; but at the same time right in some ways. Though I suppose that would mean I can fix that, with him anyway.

So at this event today this lady talked about spirit guides; then she led a meditation to meet a spirit guide. Now I'm usually an old hand at this, right? But I had no idea what I'd see this time. She made a bit of a deal about protecting ourselves and shielding ourselves going into this meditation, which, I guess is a good idea but honestly I've never done anything of the sort and never felt it necessary, and in fact have never encountered anything nasty out there, or in there I guess. I don't really believe in evil entities lying in wait to lure in an unsuspecting soul; that really just sounds so Christian to me, and no thanks.

But I went along with it in the meditation. She said, Imagine yourself surrounded by white light and then I knew exactly what the problem was.

All this summer, as I'm going through all this stress with the kittens, and my mother and my sister being assholes in a sort of final way, as in, if I had the means I would, and I am completely serious, move far away and not tell either of them my new address or phone number (it's called going no contact and I dream of it. I would do it, if I possibly could at all), I have been trying to see him, and had very little success. I had thought in part it was the summer time; it's all so damned bright, and the dark is really his home. I had likened it to trying to see through a pane of glass covered with dust, on which the sun is shining brightly; the sun, I said, was in my inner eye.

I am not, I think, really given to the light, though I'm certainly not a bad sort, I don't think. But there I was in that meditation, surrounding myself with white light, as protection. White light I couldn't see a damned thing through.

Of course my shields have been on high; my family have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are toxic, and yet I am still dealing with them daily, having no other choice right now.

I tried then, in that meditation, to imagine that shield rather as a cloak about my shoulders, one that was not in front of my face. But it wasn't working, and as it was really only a quickie meditation I didn't get any further. I even opened my eyes, which was weird because I was definitely in a trance and it felt rather unsettling, like I was a little drunk.

But that, I suppose, is good to know.

I trailed along after the teacher once the class was done as I had a couple of questions. Not that I really knew how to ask them, of course, and you know even to someone with experience with spirit guides my situation is an odd one. I didn't want to admit to being lovers with him, because too many people freak right out and start going Ewwwww!!! and talking about how A true spirit guide would NEVER approach anyone sexually!!1!!!eleventy!! which really isn't helpful you know. But I had, of course a hard time even talking about him. I told him he was a 'spirit guide' who had been there for years. I even said he was 'permanent' and that we'd done the past lives thing. She of course said nothing is permanent and then started 'getting' that I'd been both taking him for granted and paying too much attention to him, and that maybe he was standing aside now to let something else through. Things had changed, she said (I had told her that my life was changing now) and it was time to experience other guides. Now I don't disagree that there are other guides, or Deities even out there and all that, or that Someone Else might at some point need my attention, but it wasn't right, really, not at all. She did say she saw him standing some distance away, dressed in a brown robe. Sounds like a monk, to me, and that's kind of not really him now is it? Or at least not the celibate part.

So I felt like I couldn't explain it to her anyway, and that I was just getting a bunch of simple answers as if I was new to all this. I mean not that she knew or anything, and not that I had the right to expect much of her, I guess. But it was curiously deflating in its inaccuracy and not-quite-right-ness.

So I don't know. I felt unheard, I guess, which is I suppose a theme lately; and though I'm talking here now, which is good, I still feel very much the need to keep quiet and not talk much. Probably that's in large part because I know my family can't be trusted with anything that matters to me.

That's pretty depressing. No wonder I feel crappy today.

Talk

2011-09-04T21:12:00.003-04:00

And more. It doesn't feel safe here, at this my secret blog Audacia Muliebris. Not that it's any less safe than it's ever been, but the instinct to stand here silently and just watch everything is so very, very, strong.

I suppose such a feeling really can't last; it ends in insanity after all, doesn't it? And that I'm here, now, and that I can feel everything beginning to spill out, well, that's a good sign, I think.

That feeling of watching and waiting, I think, isn't one of biding my time, of being in control and waiting; it is more like a small animal knowing there is a hawk circling. I'm watching that hawk, while being very very careful not to give myself away. That's it exactly, actually.

My throat, also, has been sore the last week or so, which is quite unusual for me. Usually when I get a sore throat it is the first sign of a cold; my throat is only sore for a day or two before I start sneezing and getting congested. But not this time; it's just sore. With things unsaid, maybe? Am I sick, weirdly hungry because of all this? I suppose that shouldn't surprise me. Outwardly, in the day to day things it all looks pretty much exactly as it did. There are still too many kittens here, I'm still overwhelmed almost taking care of them (and every time they are set to get out of here the ones that are going to leave come down with something else I have to see to), I still live with my mother, she still thinks everything is okay, my sister still thinks we're fine. But it's not all fine and I know it, at least. And I'm trying, very hard, not to forget.

I did get to the lawyer, and told him that I wanted to take my mother's name off my medical proxy and power of attorney, the documents the authorities will refer to if something goes wrong with me and I can't decide for myself. He said he'd never heard of that and wasn't sure how to go about doing that. I was surprised; I told him that surely he had heard that some people have toxic parents. He said he'd figure something out and that at the very least he could put both my mother and my sister's name on the documents as someone I specifically did not want in those positions. Since if I just take them off and name no one else the state will just default to my family anyway. I haven't heard back, yet. He also gave me this long booklet for me to read that is the basis for a living will. I haven't read it yet, but I will.

But here I am at this blog and I think that is a good sign, a good thing. The need to talk is outweighing the fear of talking, I guess.

It's a start.

Hunger

2011-09-04T21:08:00.002-04:00

Lately also I've been hungry in a really weird way. In a way that feels almost like a drug side-effect, one I experienced years ago on a particular nasty anti-depressant, one that made me sleepwalk. It's an emptiness that can't, really, be satisfied, this deep yet mild hunger.

I was assuming it was because the power was out last week for eighteen hours due to the hurricane coming through, which meant I had to throw the food in the fridge away, pretty much all of it besides the peanut butter and ketchup, neither of which needed to be in there anyway. And because it's been the end of the month there weren't a lot of funds to restock it, and when I went shopping I didn't get many vegetables. So I thought I was simply missing some balance in what I'd been eating. It does feel like that.

Of course typing it out well gosh, what did I just say? That I'm feeling a deep emptiness inside.

That's not really surprising right now, after all, is it.

Comfort

2011-09-04T20:58:00.002-04:00

The longer this goes the less safe I feel; over time I feel myself withdrawing, withdrawing. Yet outwardly isn't it safer than ever?

I guess as I uncover and look at more and more of the past it is all coming up, current circumstances or no. Well, perhaps; current, or at least recent circumstances have been pretty final, in some ways. I have come to the point where I don't trust my mother. I have come to the point where I don't trust my sister. Something has changed, and it is permanent. The funny thing is that I am still quite civil to them; but underneath it all I do not care about them any more. My sister, in fact, called not long ago. I was, again, perfectly nice to her; but I kept the conversation to minor things, didn't expect her to listen at all, and, and this is striking me as particularly funny for some reason, did not ask how she was doing at all. She's at some kind of convention in Montréal, some porn industry thing I assume, and yes, for her that's a business expense, and I did not ask her at all what was up with her. Everything I said, everything I asked, was about my end of things. I imagine she'll notice eventually; she must. She is a narcissist, after all, and though I'd say they can't sense much they can at least certainly sense when a conversation is Not About Them.

But I haven't done any art, though I certainly look at stuff; just today I was looking at some really gorgeous art dolls made by a woman in Brittany. It's getting to the point where I see stuff like that and think, Oh, I wish I could make something like that.

Which is really, really, bad.

Because I am capable of making beautiful things. Very much capable. It would take me some time, I'm sure, to figure out a new medium and all that, and at any rate it wouldn't look like anyone else's as all artists have their own 'handwriting' if you will, but that's not what I mean. It's that in wishing I could make such things I find I... I don't know. Won't try? Can't try? That I've sunk into a fog of not-doing, of not-trying?

No, that's not quite it. It's not feeling I have the freedom to do so. I was looking at other artwork, I don't even remember what, fun stuff I know, maybe little critters, little toys someone else had made, and I had the same pang of not-quite-regret, more resignation, that I couldn't do something like that. Because it was fun, I think. It wasn't serious.

Now, not that this is some kind of Art School Art vs. Craft crap, where the former is the only thing worth making and the latter is just nothing, though I won't say I haven't heard that before and don't doubt that (very much wrong) attitude still takes up space somewhere in my brain; it's more that it's not safe. Frivolity requires safety, I think. Being able to have fun, to be silly, requires an openness, a safe place, a place undisturbed by others' prying, by others' demands: it requires freedom.

And I don't feel I have that. Because in the back of my mind, when I think, Well, why can't I? the answer is Because my mother will see it.

I suppose that's not, after all, to be wondered at, if I've recently come to a place where I no longer trust her, and know this, and where I keep this in mind, quite purposefully, lest I forget. Because I don't want to forget. I fear, I really fear, slipping back into thinking that everything is fine, everything is normal. Well, I suppose it is 'normal,' isn't it; but 'normal' in this case also means truly deeply fucked-up.

I have been making quilts, or, rather, making parts of quilts; I've never finished one, well, besides a tiny doll quilt and a lap-quilt I made years and years ago. I understand, I think, why I have a hard time finishing things, though I don't know the way around that, quite; at any rate that's a different matter. But I think I am drawn to quilts because, well, one, they're kind of mindless as far as skill levels go, or at least I find them to be so; and two, quilts are about comfort, aren't they?

And so I am making and making quilts, trying to comfort myself, but they are never finished, never to the point where I can actually use them to comfort myself in a practical way. That sounds about right. How very sad.