That Was Then, What Is Now?

November 18, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

It’s ok if you go, but it’s not ok. Or maybe I don’t know how I feel.

It’s so complicated. This life. Our trauma. You were so mean to me growing up and then we became friendly and we had so much drug-fueled fun together.

You were fierce and brash – so full of your youth and life.

You laughed a lot then, and danced and sang and played.

Life slowly chipped away at you and you reverted to being mean to me again.

I didn’t understand what happened. I remained who I always was. I’d glimpse your old self now and then, and my hope for friendship’s return brightened, only to be dashed with your harsh words. Your inner bully grew, even though I sensed the conflict within you, the desire to be free again.

‘Nothing is wrong with me,’ you would declare. ‘I’m not crazy,’ you spat out from your deeply wounded, deeply guarded self.

No, you’re not crazy. You’re wounded in a way it takes professional help to navigate, but that’s only for weak people like me, right?

I got to be the scapegoated one. You got to see me as more fucked up than you because I couldn’t contain my trauma. The irony is, neither could you – not really.

We were brutalized. We suffered PTSS before it was given a name.

But you pulled into yourself and declared war on the world – and pushed me out.

I never left. I still loved you & waited for the day you might remember the joy we had through the pain that was easier to ignore in our exuberant youth.

I hate seeing you stripped of your vitality and strength. You’re still trying to bully your way through this illness that does not compromise or get worn down. It just keeps punching.

Getting well means accepting that you’re not in charge, and it’s calling the shots. Your chance is in letting go and finding that resilient affirmation to live.

You’re scared and so am I – and I’m still on your side through it all.

It’s ok to go, but I’ll be sad we never got back to the goodness we once had. I’m accepting that it belonged to back then, not now.

I lost you long ago, but keep holding out hope in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

I’m sorry. I forgive you, please forgive me. I love you.

That Ineffable Something

November 15, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Did you ever drink or eat something while far away from home that you wanted to find again because it had an ineffable something to its taste or aroma?

For me it was a cup of coffee I had while visiting a friend in San Francisco in the 1980’s. (Yes, that’s how long I’ve been hoping I’ll once again taste that amazing coffee.)

I have tried every style bean, every way of making it, and while the coffee I drink is good – it’s not that one.

I will know it if/when I taste it again.

It could have been the water, that coffee batch, or the coffee itself could have had a particularly good growing year.

I get it. Let it go.

I’m still enjoying coffee. I wouldn’t want to have to live without it. It’s an elixir for me. It’s not just the taste – it’s the experience.

It’s the steam curling up out of my favorite mug into the chilly morning air as I sit on the porch steps. The coldness shivers me under my clothes, but cradling my hot coffee mug keeps me warm enough for those few moments of quiet reflection.

On that long ago visit, my friend brought us to some fancy hotel near Fisherman’s Wharf, or maybe it was the Embarcadero. She took my hand and pulled me along inside, telling me to just act like we had a room there.

There was an open buffet along the wall with delicious looking pastries, fruit, and other more hearty fare, but we were on a mission.

There were waxed-paper bags and to-go cups – so we did.

I so admired her brazenness. We got outside and laughed about our pilfered goods as we hurried to catch the ferry to Alcatraz.

My first sip of that coffee startled me with its strong, slightly bitter taste – but my second sip was better. Maybe the croissant I grabbed along with the coffee, the beaming sun, and the salty air as we sped toward Alcatraz combined to create an inimitable experience, but I still seek out that delicious taste that keeps me searching.

My Shadowed Heart

October 27, 2023November 15, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/kufm/files/styles/x_large/public/201804/Raven_PD.jpg

A season-inspired ode to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven:

Loneliness, the shadow that now veils my heart.

My soul once did soar like the raven – but no more.

Oh, Edgar Allen! – did you see into the vast emptiness where dwelt my heart

Pierced by that cold, lonely arrow – a vile corruption of Cupid’s dart?

I did not turn to listen, as did you, to the repetition that named our doom.

And yet, perhaps, it was a fault of hearing, and not a curse

– a mis-hearing of repeated verse?

Oh hope, you dangerous fool! Away from me – fly!

Back to the raven’s roost through the tempest-tossed sky.

I remain in sorrow’s horrid grasp, like you, calling out to one who met their fate.

And in so doing, left us behind to ponder and beg

An unwinding of the stiff and unyielding fibers of time.

Loneliness, that shadow veiling my heart – that blot upon my soul

Ever keeps the wound from mending, and nevermore will I be whole.

Season’s Greetings for a spooky Halloween, and a hope for you to connect with your ancestors.

Link to: The Raven

Super Memory Not So Super

September 26, 2023September 26, 2023 / Hermionejh

It was within the last few years that I realized that my memory is sometimes radically different than family members and friends. I don’t have exact daily life recall – and certainly don’t remember all events – but I have vivid recall of full or partial conversations and situations from my childhood, and continuing to the present day.

I recently asked a friend if she remembered something from when we spent a lot of time together in our 20’s, and she didn’t, but it was significant to us both at the time.

I didn’t know that my recall of family and friends past activities, events, and conversations was extraordinary – and was often puzzled that they remembered something vague or nothing. My next-oldest sister didn’t even remember that we had gone to see the band, The Police, together until I texted her a picture of the keepsake ticket stub.

Even my son says he barely remembers his childhood – which is either a good thing or a troubling thing – but if I bring up a specific event, he might have some more recollection, but it’s still way more vague than mine.

I heard a scientist on Alan Alda’s podcast, Clear and Vivid With Alan Alda, who remarked that some people are super rememberers, but then he went on to describe how difficult that must be, and it made me break down sobbing.

It hit me so hard because I didn’t have a name or place for that particular grief for the last few decades since I started feeling so alienated, especially from my sisters. I didn’t know that they don’t have the same vivid memories of closeness and togetherness that I do. I thought they just didn’t like me much anymore.

It’s almost like I walk into a room in the past and I see the setting, the people, and re-live certain conversations, and experience the feelings that I had then – hear the jokes and laughter, or the cutting remarks, and sharpness – and they don’t. At all.

I didn’t know that was a not-so-super power of mine that set me up with expectations that we are all still the same as we always were. I mean, I know we’ve changed and grown (or regressed), but I am still the essential self I was born with.

I have to forget my memories if I want to have current relationships with my sisters, but it’s like having to cut out a part of myself – a real, present self that also lives the past. It’s painful.

Getting “over myself,” as I had been admonished to do throughout my early years, was a big fail. I just learned to shut down, but not get “tougher”.

Being sensitive is a blessing and a curse. Not only am I highly sensitive to moods, but I almost always know when there’s a ‘presence’ – whether a spirit or left-over energy somewhere – and I seem to have the ability to direct healing energy, but I have zero idea how that works. I just know I feel it, and people tell me they receive it.

The irony is that I can’t seem to heal myself, or my progress is glacially slow.

I am hoping my new understanding about being a super rememberer will somehow help me feel less estranged from those I care about. I’m not the only one like this, even if I’m the only one in my immediate circle.

It’s also a reminder to get my memoir done while my memory is still so sharp!

The Hummingbirds’ Departure

September 10, 2023September 10, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Ruby Throated Hummingbird on branch — https://columbusaudubon.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Ruby-throated_Hummingbird_TBenson.jpg

September 8 was the last time we saw the last hummingbird at our feeder, which hangs from the porch beam, and we often watch out of the big window that looks onto the front yard. I don’t normally notice the date, just that they’re gone, but this year it felt like a little grief. Maybe because these last few years have been filled with so much loss.

There were three ruby-throated hummingbirds who arrived in the last days of April or the beginning of May.

The feeder is four sided, with four perches, each in front of a red metal flower petal containing a tube for the hummingbirds to extract the sugar water ‘nectar’, but the hummingbirds guarded their turns at the feeder ferociously – fighting each other off, with each barely drinking for fighting so much.

“There’s enough for everyone,” my partner or I would call out sometimes, but they all wanted the bounty alone. I imagine they would fight even if we had four separate feeders.

We didn’t see any babies this year, and I wonder what happened.

For the first time ever, I saw a hawk swipe a robin chick from its nest with the distraught mother screaming out and attacking the hawk as it tried to speed off – but to no avail.

The hummingbird’s departure is the end of summer for me, even though the temperature this year has remained in the 80°F’s and 90°F’s. Climate change is well and truly here.

I, too, have the pull to move on though – but where? It’s not so easy to pick up and leave when you’ve never learned to pack light. I’ve also never liked change, but I’m drawn to it anyway, and I’m constantly changing – whether it’s hairstyles, or clothing, or organization (ha!).

It’s the big changes that cause me the most anxiety.

Like the hummingbird, maybe I have an internal clock telling me it’s time to go – but where? I have no homing instinct or intuition – and where is my ancestral home? I’m a mutt, as so many of us are. Would it be Canada, or Ireland, or Scotland, or England, or France?

Life has one true caution: “Adapt, or die.” Maybe that’s what my subconscious is trying to make conscious. Prepare, it urges. Maybe I interpret that as “leave”, when it just means “get out your warmer clothes.”

I know that acceptance and adaptation are paramount to survival. All of us creatures are constantly adapting – and we’re good enough at it that we haven’t wiped ourselves out – yet….

Aww, Nuts!

August 28, 2023 / Hermionejh

https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/horse-chestnut-tree-martine-murphy.jpg

The birds are quieter in the morning now, but the crickets fill the void with a steady, almost electric, hum. The frenzied morning calling and flurried activity of mating and then feeding their young has turned to the yearly southerly retreat for several bird species, while many others fly deeper into the woods to find their colder weather shelters.

Now the nut trees are burgeoning with their fruit, and the squirrels are busy harvesting them by scavenging or chewing them off of the tree branches where the nuts might crack on the street below, or at least entertain the squirrels by pinging unsuspecting walkers.

There was a huge horse chestnut tree outside the last apartment I lived in with my son, and the weekend I was driving him to college, I heard him yell out an “Ahhhh!” in mild distress a few times while he loaded the car with his belongings.

It seemed that several squirrels were chewing off a load of the nuts right over the car and onto the sidewalk next to car, and my son had been hit with several of the spiky nuts while bringing some boxes to the car.

“I think they’re targeting me,” he said.

“Maybe you look like a nutcracker,” I offered.

“Hilarious, Mom.”

Just then, another barrage beaned me on the head.

“Ow!” I called out as I took off for the shelter of the porch. Several more nuts had thudded onto the car, bouncing off onto the street.

“I told you!” he said, as though I hadn’t believed him.

After that we went around to the street side of the car to avoid any more nut bombs, but the squirrels had probably chewed them all off at that spot by then.

I think about that day this time of year on my daily walk when the squirrels – or gravity – start unloading the horse chestnuts, black walnuts, or acorns from the trees that line our country roadside. I’m more careful to give those trees a wider berth this time of year.

Peace, Love, Grief

August 20, 2023 / Hermionejh

There have been better days lately. I’ve been doing my best to fill up the friend-shaped space she once occupied.

We don’t know what, if anything, awaits us after this world, so it’s a crapshoot if we’ll ever meet again. We won’t have eyes to see one another, mouths to talk and share a laugh, or arms to give a hug, but we will recognize each other if we retain consciousness outside our body.

I saw another old friend today that I haven’t seen in years. He was part of our large mutual friend group when we were teens, and I’m grateful he hasn’t radically changed since then. Matured, yes, but still true to his essential self.

After we parted I was hit with a wave of loneliness or sadness that seemed outsized for the situation, but later realized that it was about belonging – and about loss, because my friend who died in May also belonged in our friend group.

It’s kind of silly that I wanted to cling to him emotionally, as if his presence would resurrect our friend, but she’s gone, and no one can bring her back.

We both had places to be, so we left, and I walked myself through the mental patch of grief left in his wake that he really had nothing to do with.

The starkness of grief can trigger my leftover childhood neglect trauma. It feels like standing alone in the midst of a crowd.

My inner peace comes from the center of my heart, because I have no peace without love, but it’s very hard to find the love without peace. Thankfully, it’s still possible, even if it’s only moments.

I’m still in my life. I have things to do and places to go. It’s ok to still be here. It will also be ok when I’m no longer here.

I wondered earlier today if the experiences we have and the knowledge we gain are not ours alone, but are directly feeding or enriching the spirit world.

It might be that that is not how any of this works, but it made me feel like I’m possibly contributing something worthwhile to the whole.

Who knows?

A Kind Of Immortality

August 8, 2023August 8, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Books speak to me – especially if they’re an audio book. (bah-da-bump, tss)

The town library in Dennis, Massachusetts is a bright and lovely building to spend a rainy afternoon in.

I’m not sure what attracts me to the Cape. It’s certainly not the traffic or the folks who drive way under the speed limit as though they prefer just driving above all else. I am glad if they are having the time of their life. The 50 cars behind them are not.

I realized that it’s the coast that I love, the ocean, the lighthouses, and the history. The trails in every town take us out of the sitting and waiting and into the doing and enjoying.

We knew rain was forecast today, so we decided to visit a library rather than a museum. On the way, we found the Captain Baker Donut Shop in West Dennis. It was raining so hard we could barely see 10 feet in front of us, so stopping there was an excellent spur-of-the-moment decision. I only regret the calories. The donuts are amazing! – definitely worth the side trip.

The rain became less torrential once we got to the library, but it’s been pouring with off and on ferocity since we got here. The time for the tornado warning we got on our phones has passed, but the severe thunderstorm warning continues for the next several hours.

The rain drumming on the roof is pleasing as I write, but it’s the books that win my heart every time.

The mixture of smells from new and old paper bring me back to childhood, and the treasures I found at our school library which spurred me on to visit more libraries to see what they had.

My favorite discoveries at 11 years old were from Thornton Burgess, who grew up in Sandwich, Mass, on the Cape, I just learned.

His Mother West Wind, and his many animal stories captivated me. I also found The Wind In The Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, along with several other books that I have forgotten the titles of but nevertheless found new worlds to lose myself in.

I thought that teaching would be a good career because I loved reading and I wanted to share those stories (and maybe instill the love of reading in others), but teaching, I learned, was more about managing behavior. I had also hoped to write children’s literature, but the stories that live in my head don’t want to come out on paper – or I haven’t been able to coax them out so far.

Books represent a kind of safety for me. Knowledge isn’t just power, but escape as well. I imagine alternate paths or endings when I read books now, and I often grieve the end of a captivating book.

How I loved those characters! They took me on their journey (or journeys), and let me in on their secrets, their fears, their hopes and their dreams – whether or not they were able to realize or accomplish what it was they thought they wanted to do, or be, or have.

The best characters to me are those who fail, but don’t give up. I get to discover the outcome along with them, and makes me wonder about the outcome of my own life.

My friends who have died have lost their chance to create or progress, and I am doing what I can to take action so I’ll have less regret.

Libraries are full of dreams realized, work completed, and an offering given to all who wish to enter.

The most loved authors have reached a kind of immortality – until access to their works are lost forever.

While I cannot recall all of the books I’ve read (some of which I’m glad to have forgotten), there are those few whose lines still come into my consciousness at times and encourage me to continue on.

Good Grief

July 26, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Time has been a strange concept for me. Sometimes I feel like my life has been one long day, and other times it feels like I’ve lived several lives since I was born.

I have clung to people in my past that didn’t cling back, even though we seemed so close at the time. I am lucky to still have a few people in my life that have been my friends through a lot if not most of the journey so far.

I try practicing the Buddhist idea of non-attachment, and try as I might, I still have attachments. I have put time, love and energy into people who seemed to feel the same, but have detached, or our connection didn’t mean to them what it meant to me.

We change. Our desires or our focus shifts and we either fall into, or choose, new groups of friends or acquaintances that give us more of what we’re looking for, maybe?

It’s about acceptance too. I keep hearing the lyric: “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with,” from Love The One You’re With by Stephen Stills.

I naively assumed that the people that were with me then experienced our connection the same way – that it mattered as much to them as it did to me.

It’s not bad or good, it just is. The challenge is to accept that. It’s not like I hadn’t been living my life anyway, but I have to incorporate it differently in my mind, and not interpret it like there is something wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with me – or at least nothing that the right pharmaceutical can’t dampen. (Kidding – sort of). I’m still waiting to get into a therapeutic psychedelics treatment.

Honestly, losing my mother, one of my best friends, and two other very good friends in the space of three years has been really hard. I miss my mom so much lately. It’s more the idea of her, I think – like my longing for someone to make my pain less raw. It’s more archetypal than actual because my mother wouldn’t have won any parenting awards. I think I did better, but guaranteed I still fucked up my kid no matter how hard I tried not to.

This has felt so convoluted, but it’s not, it’s grief. Grief is weird and distorting. It feels never ending and frightening to me – like if I feel it deeply I will dive into the darkness and never resurface – but that’s just not true.

Amnesia seems like it would be an ideal solution, but that would just cause other problems. Balance will return, but it will take a lot longer if I keep stuffing this grief under every internal couch cushion I can find, or shoving it way into my psyche’s back closet.

Leaving Claw Marks

July 10, 2023July 10, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Sometimes you just have to let go.

The problem is that anything I ever let go of had claw marks all over it.

We were a solid group of close to a dozen. Me & Jimmy were the younger ones in the group that ranged from 13 to 18 year-olds, but Jimmy was more fully accepted by everyone. Maybe because he was one of two boys in our group that regularly hung out together.

I had such a crush on him, and I didn’t know he was crushing too until one night we were at a dance and we were laughing and running around when he stopped and turned around to kiss me. I was more shocked than anything, but it was nice.

Maybe because I didn’t pursue more kissing, we just went back to the dance and our larger group as though nothing had happened, but continued dancing and having fun.

I was confused. I liked him, had a crush, but some inner sense held me back. I valued him as a friend – and I already had a boyfriend from school – who I rarely saw, and who lived in another town.

But this was summer, and our group met every day. He never said anything about the kiss, and neither did I.

He had a steady girlfriend before the summer was over, and my school boyfriend broke up with me. I had another crush by then, which eventually turned into my first true boyfriend.

We all continued on as a close knit group throughout the next few years, eventually drifting away as we found serious relationships, had children, or moved away.

A few years later, Jimmy started spending more time with my next oldest sister whose birthdays were two days and three years apart. I started visiting her almost every other weekend & we all grew close, had a great time partying, going dancing, taking trips to the beach, or weekends in New York City, and going to dozens of rock concerts. – the B52’s being one of the stand outs that Jimmy and I had such fun dancing to with my next oldest sister.

My crush on Jimmy, who now preferred James, remained. I nearly confessed my feelings, but something held me back.

It turned out he got into pretty hard drugs, and his life was beginning to invite more trouble than not, and I had college to focus on, but that crush remained true.

I accepted that that was all it could ever be, and I continued to value his friendship, but I think something broke for him about me.

Maybe it had been that first non-rejection rejection, but I was moving away from the drug scene – though I’d end up struggling with alcohol abuse throughout college.

I hadn’t seen him for several years after college, and it was so good to reconnect when we bumped into each other in our old town.

We both had a child about the same age, and chatted for a minute. I went to hug his son goodbye as we were about to part and James told me that his son only liked to hug beautiful women. I stood back and said “oh, okay,” and to my eternal gratitude his son looked at me, recognizing the dis, and gave me a big hug. Years later I got to tell his adult son how much that meant to me, regardless of what he thought about my looks. Lol

But, I continued to consider James as a friend – and I didn’t think I was very good-looking anyway.

He and my next oldest sister reconnected a few years ago, and my sister told me that James had bought her a ticket to go see the B52’s. It was so devastating that they didn’t think to invite me. Hadn’t I continued to be as good and true a friend as I had during all those years, seeing all those great bands together?

It took way too many years to figure out that neither of them are my friend anymore, regardless of the reason.

I must have left behind some of the longest, deepest claw marks in the world. I just wish it hadn’t taken me so long to figure it out.