Wheat and Chaff

July 8, 2023July 10, 2023 / Hermionejh / 4 Comments

I think she’s insulating me from too much pain. While she lived, she was such a comfort through my grief after my mom died in January, 2020 – a month or so before the world was thrown into the Covid-19 pandemic.

My friend sent me a video of the Pretender’s I’ll Sta nd By You, and Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors, when the fall-out from my mom’s death was happening with my sisters, while my younger brother was spiraling from schizophrenia, in and out of hospitals. I was trying so hard to help keep him alive, and I soon realized that I couldn’t (and cannot) save him. I can only love him and hope that he is getting what he needs.

Just three years after my mother died, she died. And now another friend from my youth is slipping away from cancer too. I have had three friends, and likely soon, a fourth, die from cancer in three years. Is cancer more prevalent now? It seems so.

We could and did talk about everything, and she accepted me as I was, and I, her. I feel sad for people who don’t have that person in their life. That person who knows all about you and likes you anyway. That person who answers the phone at 3 a.m., and stays on the line for as long as you need.

We could be who we were, wheat and chaff, and we had so much laughter and fun too.

She was one of the smartest people I knew. She had such a depth of understanding and a thirst to know. about. e v e r y t h i n g.

I have many people in my life who are dear to me. I met them at high points and at low points, and I am grateful for their presence in my life – even if I couldn’t fulfill what they thought I could do if only I’d try more.

I wanted to, is all I can say. I don’t understand why my brain works the way it does, but my therapist tells me all the time that deep trauma and depression is the hardest condition to treat. It just is. It’s like a virus that morphs when you treat one aspect, only to present itself another way.

Having had so many wonderful healers in my life has been a greater bounty than I could ever repay, and I hope each and every one of them know that I love them, and how important they were. I hope I gave them a sense of love and gratitude that they felt.

I hope my friend is singing among the stars now, or I hope that she is doing whatever it is that matters to her. She’s probably just energy now, but there was an essence that was her spirit or soul, or whatever, while on earth, and I think that is what defines us here, and is what we leave with.

I sense her smiling, and waiting for me. She told me she’d be there to meet me when it’s my time to go. It’s not mine to know when this life will be done, but I still have things that are important to me to do.

Don’t wait to do them, she whispers. Don’t wait.

Too Much Information

June 17, 2023June 17, 2023 / Hermionejh / 4 Comments

There’s a pile of papers from several years that have been on my to-do list. I’m an information hoarder. I know it’s illogical – especially today when I can ask the internet pretty much anything and get back more good (and terrible) answers than I could ever want.

I learned that information represents safety. Knowledge is power, right? Only I filed that information away in filing cabinets and boxes. I would look at some of it once in a while, and remember why I kept that information, but most of it pertained to circumstances that never happened – like how to survive in the wilderness.

If I find myself in the wilderness, but haven’t read that damn article stored in my filing cabinet, it’s no better than not having it. I learned from various sources to stay in one place until someone finds me. Well that depends on if I’m in an area of regular traffic.

I know I can eat pine tree bark and needles, and to try to sleep off of the ground, and to try to make a lean-to, but I cannot protect myself in every scenario.

Not once have I ever been lost in the wilderness. I only go hiking with someone, and then only on known trails. I am not an adventurer.

But what if a plane crashes in the wilderness and I survive?

I guess I’d have to deal with that then. Honestly, I hope I don’t survive if that happens. I’ve never been good in a crisis, and I have enough PTSD as it is.

When my son was six-months-old, I was camping near the ocean with three friends and their children. Their girls were eight and nine. I asked them to watch my son, who was clipped into his child seat on the middle of the picnic table, while I went to the bathroom. They said yes, and as I walked away, I hear a loud noise and a thud.

I did that seemingly slow-motion turn around to see that the girls must have each thought the other would stay by the table and they were walking away in opposite directions while my son must have rocked forward and tumbled from the table.

A scream came out of my mouth that I did not know I was capable of making, and I shit you not, at least three mothers from other campsites came running into our site while I stood there frozen in horror, believing my son dead.

They scooped him up, and what I thought was blood turned out to be dirt and nettles. They cleaned him off as I regained the ability to function.

It’s rattling me again as I write this.

I was so relieved, and then ashamed that I froze. I am also forever grateful to those women who jumped into action.

I’m recycling reams of information that is good to know, but useless if it’s not in your head at the moment you need it – and you’re able to act on it.

I suppose I shouldn’t feel too bad because earlier that year, my son was choking, and I pulled him out of his high chair, tipped him upside down and thumped his back – and out came the food.

I don’t know why I froze at the campsite, but I’m glad I was never tested again in a seeming crisis.

In The Beginning

June 16, 2023June 16, 2023 / Hermionejh / 4 Comments

I am about eight or nine years old. My family is at my Grandpa’s house in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. My uncle Louis, and my aunt Cathy are living there with their father. My Grandma had died nearly a decade before.

Many of my nearly dozen aunts and uncles are gathered here in their family home, the occasion is a cross-country relocation of my cousin Karen and her new husband. Karen is the oldest daughter of my beautiful and sophisticated Aunt Francis and my handsome, Clark Gable-esque, Uncle Frank.

Karen is tall and beautiful like her mother, but she didn’t inherit Aunt Frannie’s red hair. She is about ten years older than me, and she tells us all that their relocation is due to a job that her husband got, or that they both found, out in Colorado.

Karen has always been kind to me, and I wished I could be around her all the time. She goes outside to put something in their car, and I follow her out. She gives me a hug goodbye and I start crying and beg her to take me with her. She hugs me tighter, then looks at me and says “I’m so sorry, I can’t, but wish I could.” It was one of the few moments in my young life that I saw that a better, or different, life was possible.

I couldn’t bear to watch them drive away.

Later that year, or the next, I am in a dim, low-ceiling, exposed beam dining room at the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune in Warwick, Massachusetts. That detail isn’t really important except to note that a few years ago I went to a house built by one of my writer friend’s and her husband out in the woods of Wendell, and their layout was so similar to that of the commune dining area that I felt stunned, and my whole body shivered as I was momentarily transported forty years into the past – a small, bewildered girl absorbing my new surroundings like the dark wood absorbed the light.

“We’re all family now,” said Larry, one of the Brotherhood members. “We all look out for each other,” he had said to my mother and me standing outside the day we arrived.

What I heard was that I was safe. We were safe. I wouldn’t be hurt anymore.

Now we had to settle in.

There are so many people around us. Some sitting, some standing – the room abuzz with conversation, laughter, eating, working, or resting. These people seemed happy, purposeful, sincere – and full of love and kindness.

We noticed the bright, fantastical rainbow art painted on the outside of the front building as we pulled up into the driveway, and more art on the rule boards declaring “no alcohol, no drugs, and no smoking”.

The flowing, colorful artwork contrasted starkly with the spiritual principles and laws painted in black on large white boards nailed up for all to see when entering the dining area.

I’m with my mother and my younger brother. I don’t know where my two oldest sisters are, but I’m not worried about them.

The leader of the Brotherhood Of The Spirit, Michael Metelica, is away in California we were also told earlier that day. He’d be back next week, someone said, and we would meet him then. He and all the other full members would decide if our family could stay there permanently.

My mother doesn’t seem worried. I think I’m a little worried.

In Memorium – Dimitra Clark

May 17, 2023August 16, 2023 / Hermionejh

Dimitra Clark

August 27, 1959 – May 6, 2023

Dimitra was a lover of knowledge, devour-er of books (especially science fiction and science discoveries), and she was also a vocalist with a beautiful, clear voice who loved many musical genres, and who sang back-up in various bands as a teen and continued singing with individuals and groups throughout her life, as well as having sung in the Greenfield Community College Choir for several years in the early to mid-1980’s.

She enjoyed playing a range of video games from Zelda, and Myst, to other interesting finds. She especially enjoyed all things Star Trek, and was so excited when William Shatner got to orbit the earth on the Blue Origin rocket ship in 2021.

Dimitra was also a writer who spent years honing her craft. She had so many ideas for books, especially her favorite Science Fiction genre, and she was developing an online marketing business to teach writing.

As a lifelong scholar, Dimitra’s thirst for knowledge, understanding, justice, and compassion was unceasing.

Her spirit and life animals were cats, and she had many throughout her life. Dimitra saw and felt her devoted cat, Skitty, every day while she battled body-ravaging cancer in the last weeks of her life, even though Skitty’s physical body was miles away at home. Dimitra said that Skitty would lay curled up to her neck every night.

Dimitra was a devoted and generous friend and parent who treated all children in her life as she would her own. She raised five children, mainly by herself, and worked several jobs just to keep her children clothed and housed. Her love, wit, and great humor filled in many rough spots along the way.

Through a childhood filled with deep trauma and neglect, she found a way to break those chains for her children to be free, even if lifting those chains off of herself proved too onerous.

Her love and care was apparent through her children’s, and daughter-in-law Audrey’s, devotion, and all of her children: Brendan, Moriah, Levi, David (and his wife Audrey) and Sam, were by her side in the last weeks of her life, along with her adored grandchildren, Penny and Milo, who all surrounded her with love and care. Her best friend, Jerri, was also able to come out to see her, and Dimitra was such an amazing friend that she asked for less pain medication so she could be present for Jerri’s visit – even though it cost her more comfort.

Any who wish to donate for Dimitra’s medical expenses can contribute through her family’s GoFundMe account:

https://gofund.me/8bb65d9d

To Everything…

April 23, 2023May 10, 2023 / Hermionejh / 6 Comments

All morning the rain has fallen, soaking the greening ground in my northeastern town. The growing season is here – the birds trill out their morning song most days, but not today.

The birds are sheltering in while the hard rain falls. Only the deer venture out from the woods to eat the fresh tender shoots.

Spring mornings feel gentle, though I know strenuous work has been (and continues) happening to break new buds open, to push up the snow drops, crocuses, daffodils and tulips from the hard, cold earth in rapid succession.

So many trees and flowers are gorgeous with their blooms, but standing out are the yellows of daffodils, dandelions and forsythia blooms that are now bursting out along their stems.

I once learned at a Chinese medicine workshop that spring is the season of anger, and yellow is its color. That anger offers the force needed to push through the semi-frozen, hard-packed soil of my mind.

It’s a losing proposition to try to regulate my emotions well, and lately The Byrds’ version of Turn, Turn, Turn plays in my mind several times a day as I keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Pete Seeger arranged passages from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes:

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together…

Death is as close as life, but I act as though I will be here forever so endings always feel too soon.

I know it’s fear. I shouldn’t fear the ‘unknown’ because I once knew it, if I were somewhere before I was here – and the conservation of energy tells me that I was because energy is neither created nor destroyed. Energy can only be transformed or transmuted. While that could be comforting, it does not comfort or console.

I don’t know what it was like before this time. I don’t know if I had any senses to determine anything. It appears that this is a unique experience.

Do we report back somewhere? If I am taken to account will I quiver in a dark corner for eternity?

It’s important to me to do my best in this world – whatever my best has looked like, and whatever it will continue to look like until I die.

Another biblical passage from I-don’t-care-where reads that ‘the wages of sin are death.’ Like a bulb flash the other day, I understood that the payment for being born (sin) is death. It’s as simple as that. It’s not a judgement, it’s a fact.

Another passage allegedly from Jesus, is that ‘those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life will keep it forever.’ To me that speaks to the ‘middle way.’ Don’t be overly attached, or despairing. This was always temporary.

That still doesn’t answer what the point of having a flesh body is, except that it is a singular experience, I guess.

Maybe we reincarnate and maybe we don’t. Maybe the physical world is like choosing an adventure package from the spirit realm. Maybe there are infinite worlds we can inhabit in different forms – or maybe we never have to leave home and can learn about it from others? I suppose that would make experiencing it for oneself attractive. (Suckers!)

(Maybe being in a flesh body is more like the carnival in Tom Sawyer where you pay your entrance fee, but there is nothing to see inside – you’ve been suckered – but you leave and tell those about to enter how great it is.)

I can ponder the unknowable all day and I will be right back where I am now, no closer to understanding a damn thing. The clue has always been right there in bold type: it’s UNKNOWABLE.

All I can do is focus on the moment.

What stones am I gathering? What should I cast away? Is that something I can know? I think I should cast away what hinders me – but with all the practice from all the therapy and knowledge I have gained throughout my life, I still haven’t cast much away!

I don’t want any of my people to leave this world while I’m here, but so many already have – and one day – sooner than I can imagine, I will too. I just really hope it doesn’t suck.

Motivating

March 30, 2023April 4, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I have a love/hate relationship with working out – with staying healthy basically.

Walking and hiking definitely give me physical as well as soul benefits, but working out does not produce endorphins for me.

True believers (or work-out-ers) would probably say I am not working out enough, which is true considering that I am not working out at all lately.

I actually like moving my body and seeing it getting stronger, but I don’t like pain. I do almost anything to avoid pain, but I seem to spend a lot of time hanging out with pain.

Ironic, I know.

Really, it is because I hang out with motivation’s unhappy cousin, procrastination.

Actually procrastination is pretty chill. It just sits around, thinking about doing things, but never actually doing them.

Procrastination is a stoner that needs more sativa and less indica.

People who are jazzed to work out scare me, and annoy me. Yeah, I know I’m probably just jealous.

When I was growing up, Jack LaLanne, was the man, man.

On his 70th birthday, he towed 70 boats a mile upstream.

A mile – upstream!

I was in my early 20’s and I couldn’t have towed a boat a foot downstream.

Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons were the latest fitness gurus then.

I worked out at my local YMCA, working the Nautilus circuit and doing aerobics, but I was never super serious about exercise.

It wasn’t until my lower back started hurting in my late 30’s that I had to do something to function better. Pain pushed procrastination out of the way and I found the miracle of physical therapy and targeted exercise.

The first thing my PT asked me was if I had any children. (Yes, I thought, my child can be a pain, but that’s not why I’m here.) She told me that my abs were probably weak from childbearing, making my back bear too much responsibility for hauling my ass around the world.

She said it nicer, but that was the upshot.

She gave me exercises to do every day, and she had me check in. It was really hard to get into a routine because I always found a reason to delay, and my physical pain persisted. Finally, I realized that as soon as I woke up, I had to put my exercise mat down, and just start exercising. I had to begin before the voices in my head woke up.

And it worked!

For ten years I did those damn exercises every day with few exceptions.

Somehow I got lost a few years ago. The routine was boring, or it wasn’t challenging me, but I have been in a rut that my mind helps foster. “You’re not in that kind of pain anymore. You’re good.” Says that voice. Except I feel the old pain creeping back in. “You walk or hike pretty much every day. You’re good.”

Or my favorite: “You deserve to take a break.”

From health?

I didn’t question that voice because it’s so inviting. But like all siren calls in my life, it’s bullshit, and it leads nowhere good.

“Get off your ass,” says my militant voice, “- drop and give me twenty.” (I can usually do ten push-ups before my inner three-year-old starts whining.)

My entire work out is a battle of me telling myself how nice it would be to stop, and I think I finally agreed.

Every day is another chance to begin – and I just read an article that said even if exercise is broken up throughout the day, it still counts. I have bundled exercise with another task, and that does help, but it still gives me too much wiggle room to give up early.

My PT also said “motion is lotion” for my joints – and like it or not, my body is aging, but I will never again be as young as I am right now.

I read articles about 90 year-old marathoners (show offs), and 80 year-old weight-lifting women who are jacked! They are like honey badger – they don’t give a shit what their inner naysayer yells.

A body in motion tends to stay in motion, and a body at rest tends to stay at rest. The law of inertia.

Overcoming that inertia, besting that procrastination is my goal – but really – it’s not letting my inner three-year-old run the show.

Burning Bright

March 28, 2023April 4, 2023 / Hermionejh / 3 Comments

She laughed and smiled, and went home planning to die.

She drank or drugged to feel different, and for several beautiful minutes she felt whole and worthy, but it was so brief, and it didn’t fill the gaping hole of worthlessness.

Justifying her existence became her job. Hiding became her daily pursuit. Hiding in plain sight.

She couldn’t afford to let you know her even though she was desperate to be known, to be loved, to be accepted – to matter.

Every failure confirmed her lack of value, and she told herself that everyone knew she was shit – it was a pheromone radiating off of her.

Shame was her cloak – its vile fabric wrapping its folds so tightly around her.

She didn’t even know she had fallen back into the pit. She had reopened all the old escape hatches, but they didn’t hide her anymore.

Until she remembered, and really understood that she had to change her self-beliefs – to love her unlovable self, and learn to act differently, nothing could change.

Living was becoming unendurable, but she was still too afraid to kill herself. In a fog of self-loathing, she was gifted the memory of once having worked hard to like herself – even reaching a sense of love and self-worth.

“No one provides worth or value,” came the small voice. “It is always self-derived. It was never fostered as a child – that shame belonged to others who failed their duties. But it’s still possible,” said the voice.

“Let the flicker become a brilliant blaze, and know that all fires go out if they are not fed. And a fire will burn whatever fuel its given – so feed it worthy fuel.”

Addendum: It’s also okay to borrow fuel from others if all you have is shit to burn.

None Of My Business

March 9, 2023 / Hermionejh

I heard something today that I heard a long time ago, but keep forgetting: it is none of my business what anyone else thinks of me, and none of anyone else’s business what I think of them. What I think is irrelevant.

Tending to my own life, to my own path, is all that is required of me.

I cannot count on anyone else – it isn’t fair to put that burden on anyone – but it sure is nice to have friends who don’t mind walking beside me time to time through this world.

My job is to meet people where they are and have no expectations of them. It sounds easy, but it’s not.

I hate change, and I hate having to change. LOL

It’s uncomfortable, it’s painful, even, but it’s life.

Is there some being or force overseeing all of this, guiding us, or willing to guide us if we so choose?

I have no idea.

Sometimes I would like to believe that, but in order to accept that I have to also accept that that force or being is also cool with horror. So I stay away.

Let it be.

I don’t want to argue anyone else’s philosophy, or point of view. Evil exists. We see it every day. It’s so enormous that it’s almost paralyzing, and I have to tune it out.

Maybe I’m a coward. Maybe I deserve all that I get.

I don’t know.

I believed in love. I really thought love would change the world. I really thought showing up and speaking out would change the world for the better.

Maybe it has and I can’t see it.

I don’t know. It feels like just a lot of wasted energy.

I have been very naïve my whole life. I was idealistic, I was hopeful. I’m not ready to give into the forces of evil, but they feel stronger than the forces of love lately.

I’m ready to leave the world – whenever my time comes. I believe I have done my best.

My imagination leads me to a quiet place out in the universe somewhere. There is no sight or sound, and no worries. There is no happiness, no sadness, no anger, no hate, but also no love. It’s just energy, I guess. At least that’s what science says. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, and everything must go somewhere.

Implausible

February 22, 2023 / Hermionejh / 3 Comments

I forgot about the passage of time. I knew it was happening, but I didn’t believe it was real. My body sure knows it’s real.

I didn’t believe I would one day look in the mirror and see my mother as she was at my age – when I thought she was old – but now I know she really wasn’t, at least not in the way I thought of age thirty years ago. It’s all perspective.

It’s also the package deal I accepted by being born. You live, you grow, you age, and then you die.

When I was 12 I saw some illustrations in a book about the human life cycle. One showed a male and the other showed a female going from babyhood to old age. I was so angry and disgusted when I saw aging illustrated, and I vowed it would not happen to me – as though it only happened because some idiot made a drawing of it.

I did not want to become old and wrinkled. I did not want my life to be taken from me. I thought I had beat aging because I remained relatively young-looking for a long time.

I’m certainly not what I assumed about that drawing – that life was over because you’ve aged – but I internalized that. I think I thought that people age because of their attitude. Some people at the commune/cult I lived in actually said that, and I internalized that as well. “You only age because you think you’re going to,” said that 20-something-year-old to the general agreement of the throng of people sitting around.

And I thought we were special. I thought we were “chosen” as I so often heard. I really believed it though. Part of me still believes it despite knowing better.

I failed, I think to myself. I let the world get to me – or I wouldn’t have aged.

I see people give up all the time – otherwise known as acceptance.

I want to fight it. I see people fighting it to the very end. Isn’t that what all the plastic surgery and body modification is about? Isn’t it a wish for immortality?

I have deeper lines and sagging neck skin now. It pisses me off every time I see it. My failure staring back at me.

My mother stopped looking in the mirror and now I know why.

Without the mirror I can feel like I am still young, and believe I look to others as I wish to appear. But then I see that I am somehow cordoned-off from those not-so-young-themselves-anymore, but younger than me, and I am shunted into the next category. It’s just an observation, but sure, it’s sad. It’s probably self-pitying.

The saying: “We’re here for a good time, not a long time,” should pacify me. I repeat many of those type of sayings to myself. “Life is what you make it – always has been – always will be,” – and the woman who said that was about 80 at the time. Grandma Moses – Anna Mary Robertson Moses. It’s just whistling in the dark though. A platitude. A pacifier.

Life happens with or without consent, approval or control. I do my best to be steadfast and positive, but you can only eat so many shit sandwiches before starting to call them what they are.

I am trying to accept my aging in a culture that tells me in a million subtle (and not so subtle) ways that to age is to fail.

I’m a little late to the show but I’m trying to embrace my aging and not just pretend to accept it. How do I do that?

Defiance.

I defy the 12 year-old girl looking at that book making a lifetime judgement through an illustration. She has no right to determine how my life has unfolded, or what my aging means. Fuck her. She’s fucking 12 for god’s sake! I defy the 20-something-year-old know-nothings, no wiser than that 12 year-old, and whose lives unfolded as all life on earth unfolds. They aged, and they died, or they will die. They have health struggles, and memory problems, right along with any wisdom accrued. I defy all the plastic surgery (which I would get in a damn heartbeat if I could afford it), but it’s still an inability to accept aging. It’s also a form of defiance too, though, but it often just looks circus-freakish (no offense to non-conforming circus persons).

So what is wisdom and perspective for? Is it just to talk to myself because the young have no interest in what the old have to say? I don’t know. My son has no use for any wisdom I possess, but maybe my wisdom is just anxiety? I want his life to defy life itself!

Maybe all of our lives do just that in the implausibility of us being here at all.

Messages To The Future

January 17, 2023February 22, 2023 / Hermionejh / 3 Comments

Maybe so much of my depression has been because of all the false starts, or half-hearted attempts at completing creative projects. I hear my therapy sessions whispering that my procrastination was and is not laziness. (It’s the PTSD, stupid. It’s the trauma.)

I know the best way out is through, but how long is through? An entire lifetime? I feel like I’m missing out on life’s best moments while hitting all of life’s pitfalls. I guess I need to carry a ladder – but ladders are cumbersome aren’t they?

I know some would just say to avoid the pitfalls, but, for me, that’s like saying “just stop breathing.” So, until I figure out how to no longer need a ladder up and out of these setbacks, I will continue working on a lightweight, fold-able, unobtrusive ladder that works for me.

“Works for me” is the key phrase – for all of us. Maybe what I do is the absolute opposite of what you should do. Maybe the ladder you built, or found, or have always had and used with ease is not attainable for me. Maybe all the guru spewing, consciousness-raising, ego-deflating advice isn’t helpful.

The best I can say is that I hope I find what is important to a more creative life and way less struggle – but I’ll keep championing myself, and us, in the collective struggle, and challenges, and also revel in our victories.

On my doctor’s wall is a framed statement by Brené Brown:

What we don’t need in the midst of struggle is shame for being human.

She also has a sticker on her laptop that says “I love drug users,” so she’s a pretty cool doc. She’s working to address the opioid crisis, while acknowledging that the war on drugs has been a big fail.

The opposite of addiction is connection. Sometimes it’s connection to ourselves most of all.

The ability to choose something different, to hope – to persevere in spite of circumstances – takes self-love, and compassion. And it is creative, even if it’s the smallest speck of belief that I will rise, and that I will complete what’s important to me before my time comes.