by Band Back Together | Feb 11, 2015 | Abandonment, Anger, Anxiety, Child Abuse, Compassion, Emotional Abuse, Estrangement, Family, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Sadness, Stress |
I dread the day, but I know it is coming. The day when she asks why she doesn’t know her grandpa, or if mommy has a daddy, or why grandpa doesn’t talk to mommy but he does talk to her uncle, or why grandpa doesn’t want to know her or love her. It is coming.
It would be so much easier to tell her he was dead. I wish I could say that were true. If it weren’t for the fact that he is still very much a part of my brother’s life, and the likelihood of her knowing that he does exist is high, I might have no qualms lying to her and telling her that grandpa is dead and gone. Because he is dead to me.
It will be six years in January since we spoke.
The angry phone call that started with me announcing our engagement and ended with him telling me “good luck with the rest of your life” was the last time I could feel the hate in his voice vibrating through my bones. After telling me he could never be happy for me and reminding me what a huge failure I was for marrying someone who doesn’t hunt or watch NASCAR or eat meat and has tattoos, the phone clicked and I knew that would be the last time I spoke to him.
At four months pregnant, I mulled over the idea of informing him about his future grandchild. I decided to do the responsible thing and write him a letter and tell him he is welcome to know future baby if he so chooses. Why I offered such a gracious peace offering to him is beyond me now. A month passed with no response and I assumed he just didn’t give a shit, which, he obviously did not.
When I received his three-page hate-letter, my heart stopped in my chest. All air escaped my lungs. The words I was reading were piercing, deliberate, familiar –filled with hate and such inconvenience– the way I felt my entire childhood under his rule. The words and filth and lies he wrote made me grateful to no longer know him. It made me realize that even though the choices I had made were difficult to make, and the process of breaking generational cycles felt like trying to run a marathon underwater, no one is destined for a life reflective of the one from which they came.
It really solidified the choices in life that I had made up to that point and showed me that I truly have been, and always will be, a better person than he could ever dream of becoming.
I know the day is coming, the day she asks who her grandpa is. If he isn’t dead by then, my only wish is to handle that conversation with truth, grace and compassion like a champ, in a way he never could.
by Band Back Together | Jan 26, 2015 | Anger, Bullying, Compassion, Fear, Feelings, Sadness, Uncategorized |
I am the very last person to tell anyone when the right time for them to seek closure for any difficulty. I cannot speak for others when it comes to this process of healing one’s own self, because the truth is that no one else can say what someone else needs.
We think it would be as easy as saying a few magic words or thinking a few magic thoughts, and like magic, we would be okay again. Yet, every one of us here knows better than that. We all know that sometimes, there are things which hinder our healing.
Healing really is just another word for “closure.”
When we each think about the things that hurt us, for the most part, the majority of us simply want the pain to end. We know we cannot get rid of the memory. We spend so much time taking care of others, we forget that we have needs, too. When we forget that we have our own stuff to deal with, we take away our own good energy in exchange of someone else’s unbalanced energy, leaving us feeling depleted.
The one thing that we are seeking is not the lesson that is being taught, but rather, closure and an end to the pain. Yet it is through that very pain that we are able to heal and get closure. This is how Spirit works. The ache is like anything else that hurts us – to alert us that something is not right, that somehow we have been violated on some emotional level.
We have all been hurt from time to time. Other people can be jerks. The reason they behave in this manner is because it protects them from their own hurt. This behavior is not going to help with their healing.
The problem with bullies is they were not taught how to use empathy. Empathy, loosely defined, is our ability to walk a mile in another’s shoes. It is our ability to feel for someone else without our feeling sorry for them. Too often, we are told that we are feeling sorry for ourselves. Bullies feel it is disempowering to be able to relate to someone else. They have control over us if we are scared of them. I understand that fear because it became my own medicine, brought out of me in the form of the Medicine Dance, which for me is Hula.
I really don’t want anyone to think that by talking about Hula, I am trying to promote it as a way for everyone to heal. What I am saying is that there are means and measures by which you can gain your own closure.
Closure is a funny thing, really, because it demands the opposite of the thing that we seek, which is comfort from our pain. While it may well seem as though this is counter-productive, if we are wise to the reality that we don’t have to let others’ actions hurt our souls, we will be able to use the hurt they give to us as our own medicine. We will have the strength to move past the things that we have encountered in our lives. Closure requires our being able to accept that there are people on this planet who are not the nicest people.
Closure brings us wholeness. It calls on us to rely on ourselves rather than only on the shoulders of those closest to us. It takes some work, perhaps a whole lot of tears, maybe even a few bouts with rage, but it is all worth it. It is all worth it because true closure means we no longer have to live through that pain. Our pain becomes a lesson for the soul to evolve, and for us to become shiny examples of our own unique brilliance.
Once we can see our pain as our medicine, we become the most powerful being in our own awareness. When we understand that whatever we went through is not our fault, we become empowered.
…and being empowered rocks!
ALOHA!
by Band Back Together | Jan 21, 2015 | Coping With Losing A Partner, Fear, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Cope With A Suicide, Partner/Spouse Loss, Sadness, Suicide |
The love of my life chose to end his life two weeks ago today. There are no words to convey the loss and desperate emptiness I feel. He has struggled for years. I share here the words that I wrote during his last attempt, in August, as he struggled on a ventilator. I could do nothing but alternate between simply staring and listening and scribbling each moment as they came, clinging to each memory, as I feared that it would be our last.
He had threatened so many times that, sadly, the last time I saw him, I did not truly believe that it would be the last. You had to have seen the movie “Where Dreams May Come” to truly understand his final words to me.
“We are soulmates. I will always find you.”
We had a standing promise that no matter where life or death took either of us, we would find some way to find each other. This movie resonated strongly with us. For now, I digress and share my sad, almost prophetic words from my last experience as a tribute to him, as I know nothing else to do anymore but preserve and express my love for him and privately and also as publicly as possible.
A Tribute:
I write this as I look at you. Rise and fall. Mechanical clicking partially drowned out by The Fray’s “Happiness”. I thought I had felt pain before. Well, I have. This surpasses pain. Just like “love”. I don’t know the appropriate word to convey this emotion. If I were Catholic, I suppose I would be sitting in Limbo. Joy on one side, torture on the other. Once again, these words do not fit.
I write these words not knowing if you will ever hear them. I suppose either way, you will somehow.
I have had so much to talk to you about …so much to say to you. I began it in a text, which sits unread on your phone. I couldn’t wait for today, but to be sitting here now? My heart can’t handle it. It’s laying trapped in a chest two feet from me, still keeping the rhythmic pumping and it dances with yours. For how long?
I have told you before, but I couldn’t feel it like this until this moment. I am connected to you. I can’t come up with the words to explain how. I watch my own life hang in the balance. I know that if you die, I do, too. Maybe not my physical body, but the part of me that matters.
I knew that this would be a horrific feeling, but I had no idea how badly someone could hurt on the inside. I feel like I am being turned inside out. The world stopped turning. Perhaps literally, as there was an earthquake and pending hurricane. Perhaps, the earth itself groans in pain. The sun does not shine. There is no light. It has lost its meaning.
Being separated from you before was terrible, but I could still feel you out there. You were and are omnipresent to me. You are in the air. I never comprehended that something so simple as the scent of your hair could impact me so much. Colors fade. Light is darkness. But the music, I still find you there. It is something that is somehow not taken. The emotion with it is horrible right now, but I find you there, and so that is where I will stay for now. As I listen, perhaps you are the DJ. Every note, every word somehow fits each moment. “If there is no one else beside you where your soul embarks, I will follow you into the dark.”
I would still follow you if I had a choice, but perhaps the only clarity of the moment is that I do not. I will be taken, and I will go, but I hope that we do not have to.
Perhaps, this is paraphrasing, but I believe that is was F. Scott Fitzgerald that said, “I wish I had done everything in the world with you.”
I suppose that is still possible, regardless of what happens here. The world does not end at death, but mine does with yours. And so, as I know that my journey continues here for now, I can only hope and pray that you will continue to be my co-pilot.
Somewhere between the mechanical world and the spiritual realm that surround me, it is the organic that brings me the only comfort. The rise and fall of your chest may as well be a million seaside sunsets. I catch myself drifting, lulled by the peaceful repetition of each movement.
Again, I never fathomed that something so “simple” …how quickly and unexpectedly things can gain or lose their meaning.
I made sure to eat three times today. As I am not sleeping, I need something to keep me going for you. I even got some cookies. I tasted nothing. My stomach cramped. I didn’t feel it. The road poured ahead of me. I didn’t see it.
Nothing. There is nothing but this music and the rise and fall and the feeling that I never want either to end.
I am not sure where these words are coming from. I have drawn deeper into myself than, perhaps, I ever have. My motions are mechanical. I’m not sure what is guiding my physical movements. From soul to paper, I don’t feel attached to the space between, and, as I write, it takes me further and further away.
Where am I going? What is happening? Are you taking me with you? I am coming. Wherever you are and wherever this body is, I feel myself drifting somewhere in between.
I’m not sure that these words will make sense to anyone else at any other time, myself included, but, as I write, it is all I can do.
I have been emotionally stripped down. This is as raw as I come.
I’m not sure when they will pull me from your room. It may literally take that. I don’t feel capable of leaving you on my own.
I have no concept of time. I know that a good bit of time has passed from my first word to this one, but it could as easily been a minute as a year. What does it matter?
The rise and fall. The steady rolls of your breaths and the jumps between of your heart. I may experience the beauty or profundity of such things, but, as I bear record here, it will always serve as some form of remembrance in the future, whether it is a tear on my cheek or a curl on your lips, only time can tell.
Time. Time. Even letters look foreign. Words sound garbled. I feel as if somehow I have already known you for an eternity. Or maybe it was only a second. What is time, anyway? It simultaneously means nothing and everything to me right now. As it carries on this moment, it means nothing, but thinking moments into the future make my head spin. All I have is this one, and in this one, you are here, and, for now, THAT is all that matters.
My head quickly fills with horrific thoughts if I let it ponder beyond this second. What if I never hear your voice again? What if you never even read these chaotic words? What if …blank. Fortunately, my mind has pulled me back to now. There is enough time to worry about the future if it comes to that. All that matters now is this moment and the fact that you are still in it.
My eyes draw up. In that instant, your eyes flutter open. I don’t know if you saw me. Words can’t describe what I saw. Not even now. I suppose that this proves that there truly are no words for what I feel when our eyes meet, and I think, no, I know that that’s okay. I know what I feel, and I believe that you do, too, so why waste time struggling with an explanation that surpasses words? Time. We’re back to that. I suppose the future could be worse. It could be the already determined past, and all those wasted moments.
“I want to feel you. I need to hear you. You are the light that is leading me to the place where I find peace. You are the light unto my soul. You are my movements, you are my everything. And how can I stand here with you and not be moved by you? You still my heart, and you steal my breath away. Would you take me in? Take me deeper now.”
I wrote as fast as this pen and hand would move, trying to pick up the pieces before they were laid out. I didn’t know the lyrics as well as I thought I did. Maybe that isn’t exactly what it said, but that was all that I heard.
And, now, as the physical sleepiness sets in, I feel myself being drawn back, back into this world, which somehow, stands still, suspended, and all there is is you. I don’t want these eyes to close. I fear the next thing that I see. But, for now…
You ARE the DJ! I should not have feared the next thing I saw. I looked up. Your eyes. I know that you saw me this time. I reached for your hand. You grabbed mine. I tried to adjust. Tighter. “My hands are holding you,” pour out over the speakers. I hear you, baby. I hear you.
I don’t know what is happening, but after these moments, I feel overwhelming peace. Somehow, it is okay, and I don’t know how, but it is.
I got lost in your blue eyes, your warmth, your touch, and I transcended. I’m not sure where we went, but it was not here, and it is okay. For now, at least, fear is gone. It is okay. Enough words for now. Time for some peaceful, quiet, wordless moments with you before sleep.
by Band Back Together | Sep 12, 2014 | Guilt, Parenting, Sadness, Single Parenting, Stress |
My throat is sore from shouting. I am exhausted. I hate my life.
I never wanted children. My ex did, and as he always gets his way, we had a son and then a daughter. I love my children, but I don’t love being a parent.
I feel robbed of a life and my freedom. My ex loves getting high more than me or our children so I left him. I don’t regret this but I am annoyed as he can now do whatever he wants while I’m stuck here on my own.
I’m constantly dealing with their mess, stopping fights, and thinking of ways I can leave. I’m sick of not being able to do anything or have anything nice because they always destroy it.
I want to enjoy them, I just don’t know how.
I’m told this is my job and I should just accept that it’s not going to be the way I want, but it’s destroying me. I feel guilty for feeling this way, but I’ve been nothing but a full time mum for seven years, and I don’t think I can do much more. I’m selfish. A horrible mother.
by Band Back Together | Sep 10, 2014 | Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Guilt, How To Cope With A Suicide, Loneliness, Psychological Manipulation, Sadness, Suicide |
I’m stuck in a long distance abusive relationship with a man who will most likely kill himself if I leave. I’m all alone on the world’s scariest amusement park, sure there are some highs to it. But with every high comes a stomach turning, I-wanna-throw-up fall, sometimes several in a row before another small high. The gates are locked and the key has been thrown away, I’m all alone. There is no way out unless I want to live with the fact that he killed himself because of me. There is no way I can do that, I try so hard to help everyone who wants to or has attempted to kill themselves.
So I’m alone in a sometimes wonderful hell hole. Then again, even in hell, people need a little bit of water to live and will miss it that much more when they get thirsty again. Not to brag at all, but there are multiple men I can call, text, email, or go visit and tell them that I want to date them. They would treat me well, let me explain when I seem in the wrong. It would be so nice and perfect. But no, I day dream about it while we talk then get snapped back into reality by his harsh words. I want out, I want fucking out of this nightmarish hell. There is no way though, because he will kill himself if I leave.
I don’t want to be responsible for that.
