New News, No News or Nothing Special

August 23, 2022August 26, 2022 ~ Joliesattic ~ 4 Comments

Hey guys! I’m on a roll, lol. Two posts in one day?

Where do I begin?

The other day, I was doing my usual morning walk, however it was destined to be a short one, yet before that happened something caught my eye…

What happened here? A few too many maybe?

More on that later.

Lately, because of the heat and my age, I’ve had to either start out at the crack of dawn or substitute the treadmill or elliptical in order to avoid the sun. It has been a scorcher both while I was in Salt Lake City and at home in Southern California. The heat and sun has been very intense. My outdoor plants in Cali had withered and died completely as I was not here to water them while I was in Salt Lake.

What a sad state of affairs. It has cooled down some since, but the loss is depressingly sad. I hate when living things pass out of neglect and circumstances.

On my walks I get to ponder many things and yes, I’m still walking to my K-pop tunes, but I’ve since added some Keith Urban and other pop artists to my lists as well. I’ve decided, I love Pink. She’s actually a good singer. I love how Keith Urban seems to be tuned into the female psyche. He hits home with me all the time.

One day I was walking, airpods in my ear belting out one of his songs, I think it was Blue Ain’t Your Color or Wildhearts, and this construction worker in a hole on the street, stops to tell me I have a good voice. I had to take that graciously since I’m singing loudly to a tune no one else can hear but me. My father always told me never to deny a complement but accept them graciously, so I did.

I’ve also added some Elmer Bernstein and The Greatest Showman tunes, which I also sing loudly to.

On my walks, I meet other people’s animals and photograph them. I spot unique garden designs or beautiful fauna. I see sad things and dirty things.

Once I went through a cycle of photographing a good many roadkills. It was quite the week, all these critters jumping into harms way like that. Some things I see, I’d rather not mention.

Lately, I’ve spotted injured coyotes that disturbed me. One such coyote was busily licking his wounds before he was aware of my presence and ran off. I kept looking for it wondering if it had died and I had visions of it being consumed by maggots. A couple of weeks later I saw another coyote, only this one was lying on the ground and appeared to be dead, but upon my approach, I called out. It startled me when it jumped up and leapt away. He also bore a scarred gash on his flank. At first, I thought it was the same dog, but photographs I’d taken before proved me wrong. I’d wondered if someone was doing them harm or were there just too many males and there is a hierarchy battle going on. No clue. After I published the photo of the second one on my Instagram, someone from the Eastern Coyote_Center, let me know there was a Coyote Rescue.org probably in my area and there is, so I now have a number to call should I see that again.

CONTEMPLATION

These walks allow me time to contemplate many things. Life, my blogging friends lives, though I’ve not followed up near as much as I used to. It’s like where has my time gone? Why do I feel like I have no time? It is jam packed with so many things for some reason. I think of my family so far away and wonder if I’ve done a good job. Even if I haven’t, they love me and think I’m the best and cool. I’m grateful for all the love they give me. Thoughts. Some make me smile, some make me cry. I still miss my sister so very much. Our chats, her responses.

I discovered some of my best ideas for screenplays come out of my walks. At first, as these ideas came spilling out, I’d arrive at home 3-4 miles later, having forgotten what they were. Since then, I discovered my Notes App on my phone and started dictating my ideas to notes. At times you can see me having running dialogues with myself and my characters. That has been such a boon to my screenwriting.

Back to the beginning. As I said in the beginning, something caught my eye. I came across that big gash in the fence, off the road, in a business area. On the ground, was a hubcap and I immediately came to the conclusion that some drunk driver had careened into the fence some time during the night. It was a miracle he’d not gone into the ditch below. I shook my head and sighed then walked a few steps further and happened to notice a tree behind the fence, tipped forward and a large branch that had broken off in the direction of the dent on the fence.

Hmmm. Did I make a judgment error? I looked at it carefully and figured I had. It made me think. It was a tall eucalyptus tree and eucalyptus trees tend to have shallow roots, which seems odd since they grow so tall. Nonetheless, it reminded me of a time, some 40+ years ago when the same thing had occurred near my home at the time. I’d been away and upon my return, unbeknownst to me, we’d had an earthquake which jostled the tree across the street enough for it to become uprooted, falling onto my neighbors garage, seconds after their daughter had pulled out of it to go to work, no less! What a mess and a blessing Kathleen had escaped unharmed.

Like I mentioned before, it’s been very hot and I might add, there has been no rain, nothing to soften the soil and loosen the roots, so I wondered if we’d had an undetected earthquake as can happen often in California. Another Hmmm

My point though, and what occurred to me in all this analyzation is how busy my mind was to create and conclude a story. One that fit my logic. It made me wonder about the stories we tell ourselves and the judgments we make about the world around us either through our own observations or the influences of social media or through educated (or uneducated) guesses based on information we’ve logged into the recesses of our brains and how we use it to see the world around us. Why?

It made me sad, because in our relationships with our fellow man, we do it all the time. What is even sadder is how we tend to justify these analogies based on our own life experiences and the preset filters we create.

I realize that it’s probably instinctual, as instinct has been key to man’s survival all these centuries. Yes, they were necessary back then, but how well are we using them now? How and why are we letting outside influences, through both peer pressure and social media vomit and scorn, skew our thinking? It’s like we’ve become lemmings or as we had in Colorado, prairie dogs that periodically go off to a mass suicide death. To be honest, who isn’t influenced by the world around us? Who hasn’t quoted Yahoo, or preferential news sources or a Twitter comment as if it were the holy grail? Oh, and Quora, who follows Quora? We are so easily manipulated. I’m no exception. I sometimes believe how much so and so loves his wife or doesn’t, then there’s this or that person being a total jerk. Oh, then how wonderful so and so is, look at all the humane things he does. Social media can be and is often tweaked to be a weapon. Isn’t that what a certain person was counting on when she filed her suit against her famous hubby? Hmmmm

When I was visiting my children in SLC, my granddaughter showed me how to manipulate my pictures, add sound and do all kinds of stuff on my phone. Wow! If she does it easily, think of all the other things we are bombarded with that may be contrived to tell a story “they” want you to see?

But, apart from that, what about the things we see in those closest to us, those that social media isn’t posting about? This contemplative thinking made me aware of how unfair I can be sometimes with those I care about. A friend once told me, that trust is like a mirror, once it’s broken, it can’t be put back together. That hits close to home. We discovered that neither of us trusted the other, but mostly me, him. He once said there were things, I didn’t know or what he couldn’t reveal yet, and my response was bullshit! (sorry) In the meantime, I won’t tell him what I feel, because it makes me feel vulnerable. Have I become jaded? Has my own past colored my present?

I know I’ve shared with everyone, in earlier, previous posts, some of my childhood and past. Not wanting to live in the past, I’ve tried real hard to overcome these and change for the better, but my kids tell me it’s my past that has kept me from seeing things honestly. I trust when I shouldn’t and don’t when maybe I should.

I think because of the past, I tend to want to see results quickly, otherwise, I run away. Prove to me now and I’ll be fine. Perhaps, that’s also why I doubt and put up walls to protect myself. Does anyone else do that? So, in the interim, as my neighbor revs up his snazzy Corvette across the street, making a boatload of racket and drowning out my thoughts, I’d like to say… In conclusion,

if … anyone that reads this post has been hurt by my doubts, I’m sorry.

Some things we just can’t shake no matter how hard we try and at 76, I just learned that. Is it too late to try?

In the meantime, remember too, forgiveness is divine. 😉😉🥴

Guilt, Broken People & Stolen Childhoods

February 20, 2022 ~ Joliesattic ~ 7 Comments

I was reading an article on Quora about a woman who discovered the past of an odd uncle she barely knew. In going over his belongings after his passing, the family discovered his hidden past. He had been a victim of sexual abuse by a priest. The why of the idiosyncrasies and oddities of this relative came to light. Her putting the pieces together after going through his stuff was a feat in of itself. She says about his life: “It was a lousy life filled with sadness, failure, misplaced loyalty, an inability to nurture relationships. ” The person writing felt guilty even though she had not even been born at the time all the abuse transpired and obviously had nothing to do with it. Why is it, abuse makes the victim feel guilt when the guilt is not theirs? Sometimes this carries over to others who care about us. It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around, isn’t it? Please understand, I am not a therapist. My observations are that of a former victim.

Guilt. It is a sad burden to carry, why does it torture us? I can’t imagine her why. Perhaps, because of their shared DNA, she felt compelled to shoulder some of his pain? I can’t say because I just don’t know.

Some people can overcome the trauma of abuse even if not forgotten. Some cannot. I can only imagine the suppressed anger and guilt, he must have kept inside all those years which stymied his growth, kept him from successful relationships and contributed to his reclusive later life. One never knows what was in the mind of this person.

What many people don’t know is how much guilt is shouldered by victims and how that guilt affects all facets of their life. Guilt? Yes, guilt.

I have been doing my three pages every morning as my assignment and as I study the book, The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. My assignment in Chapter Three is to describe my childhood room and what it was I liked best about it and what my favorite things were. I had none. NONE! No memories. I could not describe my room! After stretching my memories a while, I could only remember a bunkbed that we kids would roll off the top of and that’s it! Did the room have windows? Were there other beds? I don’t remember anything other than my dad sneaking into the room at night to single me out for his perversity. I’ve always wondered, where were my siblings? I couldn’t say. I couldn’t sleep tonight, mourning the loss of innocence, the loss of not having a fond memory, no special toy or anything. My loss. The earliest images I have of a bedroom, were later as a teen and not of my room, but my brothers and his model airplanes suspended from the ceiling. I have been searching my brain for a memory, but obviously I blocked it out. All of it. It’s no wonder my only fond memories as a child were being outdoors, far away from the house.

I’m not a therapist and I can only speak from experience, but a victim always wonders what it is about them that abusers seek out. What did they do to “invite” the abuse? Did they do it intentionally or is there an invisible brand on their forehead that tells others they are easy targets? Do they trigger something in certain personalities that draws the perpetrators?

Victims experience so many false starts in life others cannot understand. Their self talk tells them they are not worthy. Even when things start to look up and success looks like it’s coming their way, they inadvertently do something to self sabotage. It is not the same for everyone and it doesn’t just relate to sexual abuse. Like the uncle above, a life of constant fails seem to follow them.

They can be accusatory and suspicious. But, it all stems from their own guilty feelings.

I had an attorney tell me once, while I was going through my divorce and in regards to my ex-husband’s philandering and infidelity, he said “you can’t put guilt unless guilt is there”. I now think back on that statement and wonder if perhaps that wasn’t just to make me feel better but a narrow and prejudicial view of his own?

Let me back track a bit here. His comment was in response to me telling him that my husband, who was a constant cheater, blamed me for his affairs, saying I always made him feel guilty, as if to excuse his cheating. I couldn’t understand it at the time, but the issue between us was obviously more complex than any of us knew.

Knowing what I know now and years after the fact, there were several dynamics going on. We were both broken and because we were broken, and neither of us knew to what extent, we couldn’t help each other.

His background: I don’t know his early, early years, but I do know his father was a womanizing alcoholic and was gone a lot. He died the year we were married of cirrhosis of the liver. The ex was a middle child, with an older sister and younger brother. His mother was a nurse and worked hard to provide for her family. She was obviously depressed because one day she shot herself. She was found by his younger brother. That young man suffered tremendous trauma and died at a fairly early age of drugs and alcohol.

I recall later telling my then husband, “You’re just like your father who you’ve always hated”. Even though he admitted it was true, did my saying it aloud reinforce his own lack or self talk of not being worthy? I don’t know.

I wonder if for some, like myself, guilt comes from not doing something or the inability to notice that others might need help and perhaps fall short of helping them?

It is my belief that broken people can’t help broken people, yet we tend to gravitate to one another. I truly believe that. Not because they don’t want to but because they just don’t know how. They’ve not had the template of what a successful relationship looks like to go by. So, guess what? I felt guilty. I really didn’t have the tools to help him. This person married several times since and once before me and each time, he created circumstances that obligated all the women in his life to leave or give up on him. He is now living a loveless life with no one. He even pushes our children away from him.

I also always wondered how much is genetics. I think genetics plays a part in our temperament to receive and counter information. Perhaps its a conditioning from the womb, environmental absorption pre-birth? Theory.

Perhaps not though. My father beat mother, he beat us, but there was no way in hell I’d let anyone do that to me. When the ex raised his hand to me one time, I stood straight up, my 5’2″ to his 6’1″ and looked him straight in the eyes with my finger pointed at him and said, “Don’t you dare!” He backed down immediately. The memory of that day still makes me chuckle. He apologized. It apparently wasn’t in his DNA to be a hitter. Yet, he sabotaged every relationship he ever had and drove people out of his life. Sad.

For some time, I felt guilt and a sense of obligation to not give up trying, despite the fact I did take him back three times. Since that marriage and before this one and after the last one, I had extensive therapy and realized I was in no position to have helped him. At the time, I was too broken. It took a while to learn and realize that.

When my sister died and after her diagnosis, I shared with all of you the burden of guilt I felt that fortunately has lifted since. I just couldn’t shake it for a long while. The guilt of not having been around to help her and/or recognize her illness. At some point, we have to let people make their own decisions. We cannot force them to see the doctor, which I tried to convince her to do. The guilt is not mine. Resentment? Yes. I miss her and I am angry she left me too soon, but I will not feel guilty. I believe her choice was intentional and the consequences of that choice was realized long ago.

I think of myself as broken china mended with gold. Each crack makes me more valuable.

I am okay, but then… maybe not yet, but I will be.

Let me counter what I said earlier on about broken people not being able to help broken people… the truth is many therapists are former broken people, so I think broken people may be able to help other broken people once they’ve been fixed . I could be wrong.

Guilt and shame prevents growth. I’m digging deep and though I may not have many years left, I intend to clear out the junk and live wholly.

Like I said, I AM NOT A THERAPIST and this is not therapy. I’m only sharing this because I’ve had to come to terms with a few things in the last few months and I can tell with this new workbook, I will be delving deep and as I grow, I’m sharing. I hope you don’t mind. It’s MY therapy.

I still wonder what my room may have looked like.