“If you never heal from what hurt you, you will bleed on people who didn’t cut you.”
I’ve written about this topic before. We carry our wounds and issues, often in plain sight of everyone except ourselves.
This statement states it in a way that exceeds pithiness.
I made the image, too.
X
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It is possible that one death prevented another catastrophe.
It woke me up to the fact that other people would be devasted by more loss.
I don’t know what another two weeks might have brought.
Whether a fortuitous accident, fate, or simple happenstance, the universe rolled in my favor this time.
It’s been almost a year since my emergency surgery.
Thereafter, I committed to a ‘reset’ project. I failed at that on a couple of levels. I’ve kept the weight off and stayed active. My failures were personal.
The funk I experienced not so long ago wasn’t that much more profound than others I’d temporarily passed through. It was like a mile-long curtain of beads hanging from a doorway I was attempting to go through. I did, however, get wrapped in those beads, ones which got heavier the further from their source I traveled. The feedback loops in my head trapped me there. My feet were moving step by step, but no motion propelled me.
It’s a dangerous place to be.
I understand it much better now.
Being humbled does that to you. Having to look at yourself harshly is never a comforting experience.
Our egos have a way of whispering with too much bravado.
Someone in my circle recently suffered a profound loss, one which will forever demarcate her life into the before and after.
I don’t want to be a part of anyone’s loss or regrets.
The curtained beads are behind me again. I hope I retain the lesson, though. I always hate that I forget the primitive lesson of loss I learned in 2007.
No matter what happens, you have to “Get busy living or get busy trying,” something I originally was going to add to this post.
I woke up this morning with so much energy that I could feel it radiating off of me. I hope that energy converts to motivation and enthusiasm. Without those, life is a series of responses to the world around us.
I chose the picture for this post because it’s one I took a year ago when I was just happy to be outside feeling the sun on my face. That was enough – just literally standing outside in a foreign place, surrounded by trees and distant people in the periphery. Gurus have maintained for centuries that simplicity is one of the components of happiness. I’m not sure any of those gurus had to live life in this modern world.
Love, X
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My version of this famous quote is much more apt.
X
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Just my opinion, of course.
“We are very good lawyers for our own mistakes, but even better judges for the mistakes of others.”
One of the hardest things as a human is to swallow the urge to correct people who have misconceptions about you. We all come to our own conclusions, draw inferences, and make assumptions about other people, ones which are based on our own observations and intuition. No matter how carefully you talk, behave, or think, people will fiercely defend the conclusions they’ve come to. At times, they are simple misconceptions. Others? They are villainous views, ones that hit you at the core. No matter what led you to act or talk in a certain way, it’s a certainty that you’re going to be misunderstood. No matter your defense, your arguments, or your intentions, you’re going to have to develop the ability just to let it go.
All of this is why so many memes, reels, and TikToks exist to remind us that we must do our best to swallow the drive to correct people’s erroneous assumptions. Those assumptions belong to them rather than us. That doesn’t mean they are always wrong. Each of us gets blind to our stupidity or can’t find a way to accept how we’ve behaved. If you jump out of a tree, you’re going to have to land whether you’re prepared for it or not. You might not remember climbing the tree or why you did it, but you’re going to have to prepare to hit the ground.
It’s hard enough for me to live my life and with myself and thoughts without fighting intrusions from people who have written a different narrative. It’s doubly troubling when I’ve made mistakes that weren’t ill-intentioned or nefarious yet get filtered that way. Complicated situations and emotions become reduced to black-and-white decisions. I wish life were that simple or that I had the constancy of purpose and drive to avoid them.
Looking around, I see that most people are rowing in the same boat. If we’re rowing in the same direction, it’s folly to use our oars to pummel one another.
Love, X
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It is true my apartment, absent my presence and decorations, has the ambiance of a Yugoslavian prison camp.
However, I don’t remember riches being a prerequisite
for great ideas. My grandma Nellie had very little education and never a lot of money. Yet some of the wisest words and kindest gestures of affection came from her and spoke to my heart and mind. It’s true she often threatened to box my jaws or get a switch after me. Unlike others in my life, she didn’t do so unless it was one of those rare occasions I wasn’t listening to her. It was an amazing example and juxtaposition to experience her brand of loving discipline in comparison to my mercurial and unpredictably violent parents. Grandma was always poor. But the place and home I hold dearest in my heart throughout my entire life was a shotgun house built with tar paper and tin roof.
To discount someone or insult them based on the condition of their living space is to negate any possibility of being open to learning from any source. To do so is to inadvertently reveal an understandable but also snobby attitude. I’m living proof that profound things can come from the dumbest person. Besides, if you don’t have someone like me to roll your eyes at, it is tantamount to being iron-deficient.
My place is better for my presence. Weirder, too. Improved, though, simply because I don’t believe that one’s current living situation is necessarily a reflection of their personality or character. It’s true I sometimes forget this and catch myself making presumptions about those who live in such places.
Any of us can lose everything at any moment. Or have to start over.
Given that I’m poor, it’s a good thing that I live so much in my own head.
Love, X
PS The picture wasn’t originally in color. It’s of my maternal grandparents. They aren’t happy in this picture. Though I don’t trust my memory, I believe it was taken at the house near White Cemetery, the one that preceded the happy place that I recall with love and fondness…
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Mostly Blue
mostly blue
an earthly hue
evoking beauty
were that it always
giving me its due
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I’ve written personal stories about my dad Bobby Dean. He was violent and loved alcohol. He went through at least a few years smoking marijuana, too. As did mom, who would be mortified to see me write this. For people with multiple DWIs and violence issues, it’s still odd to me that they were worried about something like that. As I’ve aged, a lot of the hardness I had toward dad dissipated, in part because of the human overlap I share with him. Including base emotions. He was responsible for a lot of carnage. Paradoxically, he infected me with a sense of humor that I like about myself. There were times he genuinely helped people. The same is true for mom. It’s a struggle to separate the dichotomy of that realization.
Especially because of my multiple and ongoing surprises with both DNA and genealogy, my belief that it’s stupid to fight the disclosure that history drags with it. It doesn’t change history; it merely mirrors it. Talking openly about someone or what they did or didn’t do doesn’t change history. Revelation should not be shunned because of the possible ramifications of needing to adjust your viewpoint or opinion. Truth is truth. You can turn away from it, but it remains, whether to illuminate or to tarnish.
No matter what personal mistakes a person makes, they might otherwise have monumental or mundane accomplishments. Dumb people sometimes say intelligent things. Someone might surprise us with their dedication toward a social or religious cause. Smart people? They are the worst about careening into the abyss in their personal lives.
Behind it is a human being. They have vices, anger, sexual issues, or be terrible spouses and parents. When we get to know someone, we go beyond the easy socialization and familiarity we have with people. There’s a lot hidden behind most people’s curtains.
Martin Luther King, Jr. changed the world in so many ways. Yet, as history peels back like an onion, we discover that he had numerous affairs. He was with another woman the night before, and the day he was assassinated. He smoked and didn’t like the image it portrayed, so he kept it a secret. Times were different back then, and though the FBI violently tried to tarnish his reputation and mitigate King’s accomplishment, news outlets didn’t take the bait. Because he was also a minister, it adds a level of incredulity to most people’s heads when they dive into everything hidden behind his public persona.
JFK followed the same trajectory. He was a political visionary but also had a torrid personal life.
Gandhi? He had some wildly racist views. History indicates that he had some strange views on sexuality and was undoubtedly bisexual. You can find reputable sources and look them up yourself. When you read these words, please remember that I’m a liberal. If people are consenting and wish to live their lives the way they choose, I am without criticism. Gandhi didn’t always express his life with consenting people.
Mother Theresa? It’s almost sacrilege for most people to hear reminders that she had so much baggage that I don’t even know where to start.
I wrote earlier in the week about Dr. Seuss, a writer who gave the world a love of words and fundamental poetry. He was not his public persona.
We all write our biographies each day with the choices we make, the words we say, even the things that we believe to be hidden.
I don’t have a premise, theory, or moral to this post either.
Just thoughts piled on the floor like laundry.
X
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Earlier this week, at a very early hour, I had a human moment, one which I will write about cautiously, against my nature.
Just a couple of nights earlier, I listened as a neighbor sat outside. His mind was at high elevation, so to speak. He had his phone in front of him, singing loudly and with an absent melody. His voice carried, even against the strident insistence of insects. I couldn’t help but laugh at the content of the song he sang. I wasn’t laughing at him per se; but his delivery and vocal content were so amusing that I couldn’t help but laugh involuntarily. So much so that even days later, I find myself singing a certain segment of what he sang.
On the morning in question, I stood on the balcony. The neighbor sat below. Something about his demeanor signaled that something was amiss. His mind was clear – and that surprised me. “I just need to talk to someone.” So, even though I needed to leave for work, I did. And he told me a story about dear friends, ones who’d moved away. Betrayal had struck them like it does so many. As we talked, his mood lifted, and I gave him a practical distraction about the absurdities of human behavior and its consequences.
It’s the terrain I know too well. I suspect most of us find familiarity in the map of mixed emotions.
I went inside, petted the cat, and headed out again. As I sat in my car, way before sunrise, I looked at him again, still sitting in silence in front of his apartment.
I ignored my inner voice and exited the car, walked over to him, and hugged him. He sobbed for a bit and then thanked me.
Presence.
It’s overlooked and sometimes feared.
But who among us doesn’t want it and need it like the oxygen we breathe?
Each of us will have a turn in our own flooded boat. Perhaps it will be invisible to those around us.
The rain falls on all of us.
I don’t have a moral to the story or a tidy bow to crown it.
Just shared words.
Sometimes, that is more than enough.
Love, X
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My sister posted an affirmational meme, and it reminded me of something I wrote a few years ago in response to people’s addictive or destructive behavior. Including my own.
“Fill your life with people who reflect who you are and who you want to be, not with those who are a reflection of who you once were and no longer wish to be.
If you’re a fuse, don’t stand near dynamite, as the results are inevitable. You start to believe it’s your purpose and inalterable. Abnormality begins to normalize patterns that aren’t ones you’d otherwise choose.
And if you are a fuse, choose to stand elsewhere. Proximity to undesirable people and behaviors infects you incrementally.
You end up with a life you didn’t choose and don’t want, and you wrongly assume, “Well, I am a fuse, after all.” That’s garbage thinking.
Every change commences with a choice.
Stay away from the fire and those who need or want you to be a fuse.
Choose.”
X
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P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 