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.)
(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.
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.
Now as much as I love, love, love someone else doing the dishes and fretting about dinner, the trade-off of viral bronchitis—so not worth it!
Seems some nasty bug is circulating the state, well at least this town. Watch out for the attack. Not fun in the least.
Picture red plastic cup marked “phlegm” and me in blue medical mask, and endless hacking. Fever seems to have FINALLY subsided; at least I no longer ache in places I didn’t know existed. And the paranoid thoughts of being the very first person to die of the new viral outbreak, set to kill 10% of the population, have stopped. At least for the most part.
Still I’m left rib-bruised, out of breath, and wondering what happened during the month of September, beyond what I learned from season eight of Grey’s Anatomy and seasons one through eight (yes, eight seasons) of Everybody Loves Raymond.
The good news is I’m in love! Yes. I am. His name is Robert.
He is a fictional character on the show Everybody Loves Raymond, a very tall, insecure Italian who is just one giant adorable bear. Though I realize the episodes are over a decade old (and therefore Robert is in his fifties now), and that Robert is fictional, and thusly doesn’t really exist, I am in love nonetheless. He’s more attainable than the young wealthy god-like creature in the Shades of Grey series anyhow.
When I was having fever dreams, during the early stages of my illness, my dreams were related to the fictional character Robert, (or to dimensional time travel during the era of futuristic war-ridden earth). I didn’t dream of Robert. I dreamt his dreams. Yes, indeed, in my fever-state I believed I was Robert. After over 100 episodes I imagine our minds had molded together in someway. As Robert, I dreamt as Robert, and had dreams about his circumstances that befell him while on the show. Yes, I had fictional character anxiety dreams. Who would have thought that was even possible?
Dreaming I was Robert was far better than the jumping from one dimension to the next dimension dreams, to recruit and “save” people who would make good warriors back on earth for the alien battle we’d soon be fighting. There was a sophisticated screening mechanism for determining what individuals were suitable to be pretty much kidnapped from their dimension and brought back to ours. Basically, if your life sucked, and probably would continue to suck, or lead to early death, or harm to others, we stole you. Nice mind I have. Don’t you think?
So that’s what I do when I’m sick: Watch lots of television, obsess about all the feasible ways of expiring, kidnap people in other dimensions, and fall in love with fictional characters. Probably not too far off the mainstream. That and write poetry—when the head’s not pounding and I’m not catching phlegm in a cup.
~~~~~
Love Leaves
I shall not tread
Into thy dark night
A cornucopia of lost cause
Landscape stripped barren
By voice of horned trumpet
Melody suffocated by circumstance
Mind bled out by tourniquet expired
Whistle blown at ruptured drum
Bleakness wrapped as toy for infant
Revealed broken, rusted blade
When torn
Open, his tangled mane made web of longing
Prepped and fondued to tempt desire
Lion’s thirst, a churning ache
Thick swallowed whole
Harbored
A chest plate of veins, pulsing blue
Tulips turned stone
Roots in mire
Crushed sweet
Gone
Sour echo vines and chokes
Stiffens in eradication
Layers thick upon cake of earth
Stomped brittle leaves remain
Rocked forth
In cradle of you
~ Sam Craft, Sept. 2012
~~~~~
Love Enters
Love enters
Starlit glow aflame
Beauty infinite
Whispers honey
Recognition formed
Beyond womb
Of mother’s promise
As feather set upon chariot wind
I move within your substance
The sound of songbirds assembles
Lullaby of cherubs
And silence
He knows not
How to exist
When I am filled
With your beckoning
~ Sam Craft, Sept 2012
And this video Explains Exactly How I felt during my illness
Everyday Asperger's 