Post 235: Halo Gone

I had a halo this morning:

I wrote a short post about it.

And received wonderful, wonderful comments.

Then logic set in.

At first I thought a bug flew around my head really fast before I took the photo of me with my I-Phone.

Nope.

A couple of hours later, after some reflection, I got the keen idea to go take some photos without me in the bathroom.

Would the pink light still be there?

Yep!

It has to do with the way my bathroom light bulbs reflect in the room.

Sigh. No halo.

No angels.

So panic set in.

I couldn’t be presenting myself as having a halo or little pink angels, when in actuality they were light bulb filaments reflecting in my bathroom.

I had to delete the post ASAP.

That’s how my mind works…and body responds. Any form of dishonesty, even unintentional or accidental, or not really even dishonesty to begin with but a mistake, and I FREAK and go into repair/fix mode.

So I deleted the original post for 235 of my tiny pink angels.

Sigh.

Deep breath.

Shaking off unneeded guilt and fret.

Then I had more time to think.

I may not have a halo that I can visibly catch on camera.

But it doesn’t mean I don’t have one.

And it doesn’t mean those little lights weren’t a message of sorts.

For a couple of hours, I was a believer again.

For a couple of hours, I thought I was protected and loved.

For a couple of hours, I thought I was special.

And then I realized…..

It wasn’t for a couple of hours

It’s been a lifetime

With or without proof

 

 

My mother used to work for Virginia Satir. This old plaque hangs in my kitchen. 

(My husband says: “Maybe that halo is yours. It just stays there in that spot!”—hopeful soul.)

Post 234: Demons, Darkness and the Light

Demons, Darkness and the Light

You know those days, or time periods, when a bunch of crap just starts to happen, kind of like you’ve dropped an explosive device down the deep stench of the outhouse and a volcano of poop is erupting?

Do you know too that moment when you can step back away from the ego-self and observe your own being, while distancing yourself from the mess that in reality is an illusion? How you can then, with decisive and heartfelt action, breathe in what appears to be filth and smell only succulent roses?

I’m stepping back. And I’m admiring the wonders of this experience labeled life.

I gather I’m under attack of some sort. Whenever I am entirely honest and come from a place of pure truth, as I did in my latest writings, something always counters me.

I don’t mean to sound “far out there” or “super spiritual,” but truth be told, I’ve been countered since I was a young child. And I’ve been placed in events that have directly challenged my strength of will.

By the age of nine, I’d undergone losses of grand proportion, including the loss of two fathers, one through my mother’s second divorce, a man I’d never see again, but once when I was almost an adult, and the emotional loss of my biological father, whom, for the majority of my childhood, I only saw a few days a year. I suffered the loss of my kindergarten teacher when she died of cancer. I suffered the loss of my best friend in kindergarten, Keith, who moved to Hawaii. I suffered the loss of my step-sisters and step-brothers, when our family broke apart; they being the only siblings I ever had. I suffered the loss of my best buddy of three years, who was more liken to a sister, because she was the daughter of my mother’s boyfriend, and I spent most nights and weekends in the same bedroom as her—lost her when her mother “kidnapped” her one day; the last day I ever saw her. I suffered the loss of pets that I would foretell dying in my dreams. I suffered the loss of childhood with the complexity of my thoughts, and an understanding of the vastness of the universe and consequences of social norms, that far surpassed the thinking of most adults. Suffer I did. And all before the first decade of my life reached completion.

I teeter not upon the other violations I experienced, choosing not to go into detail, but instead say that along with the losses, predators found me, and made me victim.

At the age of ten, life didn’t get easier, in fact the trials continued, one after the other, without pause for retreat, without rest, without rescue.

I grew into a woman matured in an untimely fashion by the pangs of this world. I grew into a child, who born sensitive and hyper aware of the spiritual world, became hyper afraid of the earthly world. My fear manifested itself into a grandiose, potentially explosive, bang of illusion associated with death and illness. Everything imaginable was out to destroy me. Who implanted this seed, I do not know, but it remains to this day my greatest internal weed, with thoughts of my demise recycling and winding through my mind sometimes emotionally choking me up to a few hundred times hourly. How to stop this fear has been my quest since I was nine. I have truly died a thousand and one deaths, each minute reminded of my mortality and fragility.

The only thing that stops the thoughts is being immersed in a fixation or passion. The issue then becomes that I am escaping the present to avoid my thoughts, and in fact not really here at all.

I have grown tired of this battle. So very weary.

In truth, I have traveled a tiresome path of challenge after challenge, emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. I have been persecuted at all levels.

At age elven, I would awake to demons dragging me down my bed or to the hell fires roasting my body. I’ve been visited by spirits I would call “evil.”

My father had told me as a teenager, when I’d undergo the extreme nightmares, the visitations, the precognitive dreams, and such, that I was a beacon on a hill and that my bright light would attract the good, but with this, I would also attract the bad. I believed him. I still do.

My outer-body experiences started when I was very young. I would wake up trapped in my own body, able to see everything about me and hear, but unable to open my eyes. My father could leave his dream state and body, travel to another room in the house, and upon awakening tell all of what he saw and heard.

For me, I have visions, I see what will happen, or what might happen. I see car accidents, deaths, tragedies, sufferings, and sometimes, though rare, cause for celebration.

There was a time, I sat alone in a room with my father, and when he asked, “Can you tell me what you see when looking at me? And I responded, “Yes, to your right, there is a demon there, sitting and trying to control you.” And my father answered, “Yes,” pointing to the exact spot I mentioned.

Again, another time, my father said to look in a mirror at the end of his hallway and tell him what I saw. I told him a green like lizard-like alien with yellow-orange eyes, and he again responded “Yes; that is what I see.”

My father is quite sane. With the whole of my heart, I believe he was not inventing things. He is above all else extremely honest, blunt, and direct. I fear, though, he still has that demon sitting at his side.

In his house I was never safe. When I lived with him during my college years, I was always frightened to sleep under his roof. I would hear “get out” when I entered his bedroom, though no one was home. And strange events happened, like the television turning on by itself and flicking channels or a spirit holding me at night using the exact same words to speak to me as she did to my father.

“Oh her. Yes, I know her. She comes to me at night in the same way,” my father would say.

Once a well-known and established religious sect tried to recruit my father, based on his connection to the spiritual world. “Quickly, come here,” father would hear, before stealthy escaping the waiting area. “We found one of them!” Them referring to psychic and able to astral project.

With all the challenges and arguably unusual (and sometimes unspeakable) occurrences in my life, I’m growing tired of what I see as servitude through sacrifice. I definitely feel as if I have the soul of a martyr. I say this with no pride.

I tried for many years to heal my soul, to fill some gap or hole, so to undergo a life of simplicity and easiness.

I’m quite the expert in mankind’s current way to better one’s self, and quite the expert on the shortcomings of such solutions.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my soul and personhood does not need fixing.

I am realizing that the most advantageous action for me to take is to continue to be authentic and shine my light. To continue, regardless of the consequence, to be truthful in my personal experience.

I am listening to my angels.

I’ve been called since I was little to help. First with animals, later with the elderly, homeless, non-English speaking immigrants, and children, and now female adults.

Being called to help and shine my light for no other intention but to help is just who I am.

I think, no I know, I scare some people. They just don’t get me.

They don’t understand why I do what I do.

Why I write or have this drive to reach people.

They don’t understand honesty.

They don’t understand goodness.

Day 232: My Inner Bitch

A rose from my front yard that blossomed in late September.

I woke up this morning and came to the conclusion that alongside the yoke-like phlegm I’ve been coughing up for three-plus weeks that I’ve also hacked up some major  baggage.

I woke up thinking: I want to find my inner bitch.

Which is so unlike me, as I don’t even like to say the word Bitch, unless teasing my dog, and to type bitch (bitch, bitch, bitch), well that’s just plain out of character!

Much of the thoughts of finding my inner bitch erupted from my dreams last night, the repetitive type of nightmare where I face a parental figure or face a professor and act cowardly and then rage. Seems my inner bitch has found her way into my dream state. Still no sight of her out in this world, though.

Now my mother would likely claim that my inner bitch came out in the fall of 1981, but I would have to disagree. True, at the time I was a very angry teenager, but I raged because I’d held so much inside for so long that with the help of hormones I  just plain exploded…and screamed, and threatened to runaway from home, and barricaded myself in my room….

Fact is, up to that point in my years, and after that point too, I hadn’t really been dealt the best childhood experience; and I had a right (as I see it) and need (to not implode) to be a bit of a bitch. Plus, my teen-bitchiness was so very short-lived—doused out by guilt-laden lectures, scolding, and insults, and the move to the east coast. I was in the bitch zone three months, tops.

That is honestly about the only time Bitchy Me ever surfaced. That and when my boyfriend of several years had a pregnant teenage mistress that showed up at his apartment door.  But I felt guilty after I screamed in shock and hit him with my open hand in the chest. So not sure if that counts.

And I had another bitchy moment, I suppose, when a best friend called me (again) in the early hours of the morning to tell me her much-older-than-her, drunkard and big time loser of a boyfriend had once again abandoned her. I’d had enough, and told her to get some help, and that I could no longer support her in regards to her relationship with said jerk. I was kind of mean, I guess. We were never close again, after that. Boundary setting verses Bitch—seems to be a fine line.

Sometimes I think I might be lacking the bitch gene. Sure, certainly at moments I  look like a bitch, but that’s generally my lack of recognizing and controlling my facial expressions. I could be thinking intently about dark chocolate, and my intense facial expression could be mistaken for bitch. It’s just the way my face is made; it contorts and twists so that most onlookers haven’t a clue to what I’m truly feeling or thinking. That’s why pasted-on-smile helps, often, when dealing with outsiders.

You can ask my husband. I’m not a bitch. I really am not. Sure, I have a dry and sometimes biting wit (blame it on my intelligence) and sure I get frustrated like all human folk, but my degree of anger and expression of my anger is liken to the temperament of a well nurtured and cuddled kitten.

My anger zone generally consists of rolling of the eyes, a sigh, and raising my voice slightly; and if you’re my husband, a mini-lecture about my need to express my emotions and be accepted as a human being with feelings. (That’s what happens when you marry a man like Spock from Star Trek.)

When my anger climaxes, I retire to my bedroom to mope, fret, and catastrophize the situation. Generally then, I am forlorn, curse my circumstance, and want to expel everyone from my life so I can die in isolation.  Where anger goes, who knows. I seem to skip over that square in the hopscotch of emotions. I have no trouble leaping into the hopscotch square of self-pity and depression, but anger, it’s like the chalk in the square has been erased, and anger just doesn’t exist. Even if I purposely jump two-footed into the anger box and try to feel rage, it’s very much lacking in luster and flame, kind of a dull spark of nothing.

I gather, part of this anger repression comes from the times I was often guilted out of my emotions.

“Be thankful for what you have.” “I do my best.” “Things could always be worse.” “Count your blessings.” We’re all common phrases in my youth, bombarding me each and every time I showed the slightest indication of sadness or upset. I grew up believing that my feelings were wrong and out of proportion. That I was over reacting and ungrateful.

Missing from my world were words like: “I’m sorry.”  “It will be okay.”  “That must be so tough and hard on you.”  “I can’t imagine.”  “Let me hold you.”  “I am here for you.” Missing so much, that as I grew older and heard those loving statements, I didn’t know what to feel, and as a result would start to cry uncontrollably.

If I dared to feel anger, I was to blame for not being appreciative, understanding, patient, or forgiving.

So much of my energy was spent stuffing emotions to appease.  I learned to evaluate others’ expressions and adapt my own body language to survive. If I could figure out what others wanted, I could feasibly avoid deflating remarks. If I acted happy and carefree, I was more likely to be praised. My happy expressions were seen and acknowledged; and whether genuinely expressing myself or not, when I appeared happy, at least I wasn’t invisible or wrong.

Anger, I gather, if anger ever existed, got lost in the shuffle of pretending. I was the good girl. The sweet girl. The kind, the giving, the loving. I was unbreakable, brave, and dependable. I was everything I could be to make another happy.

Interestingly, this year, during the month of May, I had a major breakthrough physically, energetically, emotionally, and spiritually. Starting in the late spring, I felt transported back in time to around the age of thirteen, when all feelings of love-sick, passion, creation, freedom, strong will, and justice were erupting.

Strangely enough, I first had bronchitis (due to living in a damp ocean town with mold and in a house with smokers) when I was a teenager and haven’t had bronchitis since. Until now. I seem to be revisiting my later youth on multiple levels, including visiting bronchitis.

Lately, I feel as if there is this sticky residue inside of me.

It’s been said 2012 is a year of purging out the “negative” emotions and coming to terms with all the garbage inside (I paraphrase with much liberty.)

Apparently, my bronchitis is symbolic of all the residue still located at my heart and throat center, where my ability to love and express my true self is located. I’m purging…going on week four now of purging (bronchitis).  And still stuff is coming up.

Today I am acknowledging some current realities. I am delving into the residue and coughing up the phlegm of the past. I am rediscovering that there are people in my life that I simply don’t like. As hard as I try, I don’t like them. I don’t like their behavior, their choices, their self-focus, their belief that their view is the right view, their tendency to think the world revolves around them, their ability to blame others, the anger they harvest and spew, their arrogance and their ignorance, and especially their lack of self-awareness and self-accountability.

I’m wondering if it’s not time to let my inner bitch blossom, if only for a bit, long enough to mop up the remains, to stand up and shout: Enough! Enough already!

Day 231: Temporary

(This is a continuation from yesterday’s post: Day 230 Tornado )

From the backseat of a dented sedan, amongst a cluttering of mismatched suitcases, I drew in my breath through my nostrils and lowered my head in doleful resignation. There, outside my car window atop a plateau, slept a muddy-brown structure—most of its windows draped in faded tangerine sheets.

“There it is,” Ben said, curling his lips into a satisfied grin and tapping his hands on the steering wheel to the beat of the song Sexual Healing.

The car engine stopped.  The music stopped.  And Ben started.  “Just take a look,” he said with an easy stroke to Mother’s sleeveless shoulder.  “It’s just like I told you. Look!”

Glancing forward and to the left a bit, I followed Ben’s rounded back up, and then across and down the length of his burly arm to his stubby finger which pointed through the window to a pathetic dwelling; which alas, to my deep disappointment, appeared to be the worst house on the best street in town.  Not only was the house in desperate need of paint and the yard weeping with neglect, but the mailbox itself was a rusted clump of sadness.  My soon to be new home, this place I would slumber and eat, shower and dress, and partake in life in general, was ironically misplaced, set out in front of the world in its worst garment and accessories.

Knowing what to do, almost instinctively, I narrowed my eyes into a half-squint and scanned the surface alternating the image of the house from blurry to clear and back again to blurry.  I’d looked at my reflection in the mirror in the same way, after discovering by blurring my reverse-self I was momentarily able to erase all visible flaws.

 

The rest is in the book 🙂

 

Day 230: Tornado

Tornado

One midday, beneath the shade of a leaning cypress tree, after the late-spring sea fog had lifted, I stared out to the crashing waves with a grave impassivity.  In the past years, I’d grown deeply attached to the ocean side town. I believed in a sense we were one, the town and I, joined together in the same way the redwood trees unite their roots underground.

Aggrieved and spiraling with emotions like a blender on high-speed, I replayed Mother’s words, her promises; there would be new bedroom furniture and a private school, and a nice house.  I could wear a school uniform like Jane.

Mother had strolled into my room twenty-minutes earlier with a confident air and found me absorbed in my sticker collection book, categorizing each sticker by theme.  I was on the butterfly page. There were 33 butterflies—one more butterfly than fairies.  Mother had a faraway look, a deep and distant gaze that made me think she was traveling with the angels in the sky or the dolphins in the sea.  I knew innately from all my years with Mother that she was happy; and so I also knew she wasn’t going to tell me her boyfriend Ben was finally leaving; still, I held onto the hope, even though all the signs pointed in the opposite direction.

 

The rest is in the book 🙂