Happy Birthday

Released from a life of regular beatings at eighteen, I wanted the pain to stop. Welcome to adulthood, you’re out of the house. With other teens, I celebrated by drinking and drugging.

Nobody will ever hit me again, my fiery resolve reverberated in every cell; I still feel the resolve, but minus fire. The law was finally on my side, I had recourse if my father hit me again.

That should have felt better, but it didn’t because every hit on my baby body stored a rotten energy ready to rebound in fury. I could have been beaten into submission, but I drew a defiant resolve to survive.

The hurt and betrayal a child feels at the hands of parents tilts how you feel about the world. I believed everyone would hurt me sooner or later. Of course, that’s true, but there are limits and we can all be assholes at one time or another, but pretty much we can forgive and move on in different directions or make up.

Lucky for me, I met a man who loved me truly, held on tight and never let go. I wish life would have been simple; no, actually dealing with childhood issues became the foundation of my adult dysfunctions. S.N.A.F.U.

I’d pedal upstream like crazy, trying to bring positive things into my life only to be pulled under. I developed a hyper-spastic duodenum; that’s part of my small intestine. Life swung back and forth between good and horseshit. Did I get better?

Oh, hell no, by twenty-five, I had what they called a nervous breakdown. The out of control feeling that goes with falling apart made me think I was losing my mind. Thinking about going insane really made me crazy if you know what I mean.

In a nervous breakdown, days end by crying yourself to an exhausted sleep only to awaken to more crying. Pull it together to go to work, cry on the drive to the office, check face in the mirror before exiting the vehicle, and life goes on like normal. I remember how miserable I felt and only knew worse the day my husband died.

He told me straight out that he didn’t understand people who treated their children like that, but he held me through many tears. With him, I learned to appreciate the beauty in even a bad day.

Life punches and jabs, but then there are the moments with your head in someone’s lap and they’re stroking your face. To appreciate the strokes, I’ve had to give up focusing on the jabs. Do you have any idea how long that takes? I’ll let you know when I arrive.

Joy inhabits a day focused on even the smallest positive details; eventually, it overrides the pain. That may be one of the biggest lessons of my life; it’s a favorite. I like healing a lot.

Today, San Juan here I come with plans to go to a dog show. It’s funny but, when I told a friend at the gym, she rolled her eyes to say, “Who would want to do that?”

I would to celebrate my birthday. For years I didn’t celebrate; how sad is it when your birthday doesn’t make you happy? I hear it from others all the time, so it’s not just me.

During his life, I treated my husband to dinner or parties and gave the best gifts, including our first Rottweiler; or we went to a resort. Good God, I love that man.

Since his passing, my goal is to love myself as well as I loved him.

A lifetime of repairing self-worth follows a shamed child. What I’ve done in my lifetime says who I am; wow, who’d have thought it? I’m proud of me. Happy birthday.

An Ordinary Man

Stories are told about beautiful people with photographic memories who can sing. One of the first things we learn about our heroine is that she has flawless skin and great legs. Our hero excelled in the military before retiring to become rich.

Invariably they come from the lower ranks, so they came up the hard way. Ninety-eight percent of us love the tale of hard work and success. It gives us hope of being special.

Our identity, what’s more personal, what do we hold more sacred? I mean have you ever met a lawyer without finding out they were a lawyer in the first ten minutes?

Everybody wants to be special, to excel at something, or to be someone who matters. I met a man poolside at a resort in the Dominican Republic, who without even being introduced told me he was wearing a five hundred dollar tee shirt, named the artists and pieces hanging on his walls, and what type of car he drives. I left before he could brag about his other investments.

Image building beginning immediately alternately bores and frightens me. Image builders seldom want to hear anything about you; have you noticed that? I remember a man, a grand champion of image building say about people he had just met, “They were very impressed with me.” It’s easy to see where this could become a toxic pre-occupation.

What’s the matter with being ordinary? I know a man who upon mentioning someone of his acquaintance fastidiously lists all of the person’s special qualities. When I heard my credentials recited, I laughed; must we be so special?

Nobody wants to be thought of as a dumb ass, but this competition to be the special one annoys me, since I’m alone so often; who wants to spend precious time listening to someone brag? Or worse yet they brag until it drags your inner bragger and you catch yourself bragging back.  

My husband was an ordinary man, who identified himself as a teamster, the last of the American cowboys. He taught young visitors to our small farm how to track animals in the woods. He talked about nature. Men referred to him as a man’s man, a manly man; he was respected. I appreciated the uncommon qualities in an ordinary man; he was special to me.

 

When Good Things Happen

Have you noticed the weird ways we react to things? When something extraordinarily good would happen to my mom, like the time I gave her a new car, she got a headache. The headache seemed to come regularly with good news.
My brother appeared to blow it off as nothing or just another day that could go sour at any moment. I get so excited you’d think cotton candy was just rated as a low calorie health food.
Reacting strangely to good news surprises me more than how we react to bad news. Bad news or a negative encounter feels like a heavy hand on my head; I can’t wait to shake it off. Learning some techniques on how to shake it off more effectively would help. My ritual of mentally saying, WTF and rolling my eyes to heaven works until something really gets me, and then, I could use a better plan.
I hated to find myself in full blown pissed mode because I could say some hurtful things without a thought. I hate hurting people even when in y opinion they deserve it. I hate how mean that makes me feel.
Now I hate letting myself get pissed because it raises my blood pressure; it’s not good for me.
How long will this last? How can I escape this negativity? Can we make this okay?
Have you ever had a ton of fun friend, who said demeaning things to you? Or made you feel inadequate?
I had a friend who would call me a bitch for the slightest provocation; for example, if I didn’t want to see the movie she wanted, she’d call me bitch.  At first, I ignored it thinking she was taking her frustrations out on me and would get over it. I told her I didn’t like and asked her to stop, but she didn’t.
People’s temper triggers should be respected unless the provoker really wants war because that’s what happens or the provoked wimps out. I don’t like who I can become when angry, so my answer to fun, but abusive people is always, “Goodbye.”
Some people love bickering, saying snippy things and crying to high heaven when war words are returned. Maybe all the evil that gets tossed around in sport soaks into our souls so we act all goofy when truly good things happen; what do you think?

Get Over It While We Can

Whites are racist. Blacks are thugs. Orientals are smart but untrustworthy. “I’d like to slap the next white woman I hear saying black lives matter,” the black celebrity said. Do we hear ourselves? And yet we say that God created us all.

Who are you? What are you? With pride and defiance, we cling to our myths of greatness, of why we’re better than you.

Paint all whites with the brush of white privilege to demean their successes or suffering, to say,”We’ve had it worse” brings out the poor me in every hardship case, so the argument becomes who has it worse. Is the goal to claim the title of who had it worse?

Poor whites for too long have comforted themselves by looking down on the “niggers,” while rich people refer to us all as the great unwashed. Arrogance and pride rule our dealings with others, whether we believe ourselves better or don’t want to be seen as less.

When I was a kid I couldn’t figure out who I was or where I fit in since most of my friends were Irish or Italian or Polish; plus in New Orleans, there was always an assortment of black people around. I, on the other hand, am a mixed breed of Irish, Hungarian, Austrian (although we refer to ourselves as German, we’re from the same town as Hitler) and as it turns out my orphan grandmother from upper New York state was French and American Indian. Everybody has a culture except a mix breed; that’s how it seemed to me.

Under the watchful eyes of my German grandfather on Sundays, the family gathered to eat, play games, help out as needed, or just hang together. I learned to ride a bicycle in front of grandparents, aunt and uncles, and cousins. Family love and camaraderie interrupted by a move to Chicago didn’t give me time enough to absorb it as part of my culture.

By contrast, my mom’s family seemed a scrappy lot who didn’t really like each other, so I began to focus on my friends’ families.

Every group of people doing the same daily routines as everybody else put their own spin on it. From cooking to mealtime rituals our little differences imprint who we are in a way that fascinates me still.

According to folks I’ve known, I’ve been a Jewish want to be and a black want to be, as well as East Indian and Latin. Who you are, is of great interest to me. By learning about others it helps me put into perspective who I am.

Dining in a humble home in Appalachia, eating home grown vegetables and the steer that grew in the back yard gave me as much pleasure as any formal dinner by a famous chef. In either event, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Haven’t we all been to parties where someone spouts, “When I look at you I don’t see black;” this being one of the most well-intended bits of sophistry I’ve ever heard. Yes, this is a friend, a wonderful person you see; blah, blah, blah.

How can you say that you don’t see this woman’s beautiful ebony skin? Yes, they’re black, or brown, or red; there’s beauty in all.

Here’s the deal; we’d better start embracing the little differences between earthlings. Aliens are coming to rape and impregnate our men. No earthling squabble is going matter. 

Last Bitch of the Year

Imagine you are telling a story about something you saw and heard. You say, “The woman looked away when the man took her by the shoulders.” The person you’re telling the story to jumps in when you pause for a breath and proceeds to tell you how this happened, why it happened, and what it means without the benefit of hearing your story to the end.

This robs you of the satisfaction of telling your conclusion or point. It’s no longer your story they hijack your story before getting back to theirs. They seldom ask questions about what you’re saying, but readily explain what it means.

Their version may bear no resemblance to what you thought you heard and saw, but they dismiss any other possible outcome.  Is this a power trip? What’s with this behavior?

I enjoy listening to people’s stories and ask questions; I don’t understand people who hijack conversations. Isn’t this as rude and annoying as people, who begin conversations with,

“I don’t know,” and then go on and on about their opinion, which they pre-qualified as worthless. 

My Year End Rituals

At the end of each year, I write out a summary of what happened in that year and a goal plan. People dismissive of this ritual say,

“I don’t do that; my goals are in the back of my mine, always,” or “Hell, who knows if we’ll even be alive this time next year.”

That’s always impressive to hear from an acquaintance over a cup of holiday beverage.

For me it all started with New Year’s Resolutions, seeing it written down helped me think about it. I hate it when my attention drifts. Oh, yeah, anyway over the years, annual goal planning became a big deal when I ran my businesses. A company well planned almost always outperforms one run by the seat of your pants. Ha-hah! I’m well reinforced for planning. Even the year Kirt died, I feebly set goals.

Each year I wrote a letter telling where we’d been, which once meant where we showed our dogs, and what we did meant bragging time for awards at dog shows. After coming to Puerto Rico it meant telling about dogs we fed or brought to shelter and what I’d learned about the street dogs.

For three years I’ve struggled with depression, no, with the devil. My recovery continues with variations daily. I fear the habit of sadness imprinted guiding me down familiar sad trails. Habitually sad, are you kidding me? I’d begun to wonder; the blues are too sad when you deserve them.

Travel helped me overcome my grief; I’ll tell you how. At home I grieved and remembered; traveling I had to pay attention to what I was doing, when my loss overwhelmed my thoughts.

I find long term sadness tiresome; don’t you? There’s the devil you just can’t f’ing shed so much so I’ve felt bitter about it at times. I love my husband, but I want to enjoy my life.

2016 retrospective hit the jackpot for me; I looked through the photographs, remembered my year and decided, when I thought about it, 2016 was a good year.

I thank God, the Universe, Gaia, and my fellow human beings for a lovely year; healing feels better.