Hope Moves You Along

I have been thinking a lot about lesson’s learned.  Why things are the way they are, and how things are constantly evolving.  I have learned that the only thing constant is change. The only thing permanent in this life is change. How you continue to handle the change and evolve and continue to move forward is up to you. These are the lessons I've learned:

                Eventually you learn that your future may not always look like everyone thinks it should. You learn that opportunities present themselves, everyday. You learn that even though you have things to be afraid of in your life, you don’t have to let those fears confine you or restrict how you live your life. You learn that no amount of guns, ammunition, dead bolts, and steel bars can keep you safe, and you learn how to hide in plain sight. You learn that you don’t need someone to tell you what to think, because it’s how you think on your own that matters.  You learn that no amount of roses makes up for true gratitude and no amount of sorry’s really means true forgiveness if the apologizing party still continues to break your heart. 

             You learn that anger is a secondary emotion to whatever you are really feeling and that when someone makes you feel agitated, frustrated and isolated, there is always a reason. You learn where your past ends, and your future begins. You learn to take the necessary steps to rebuild your life. You learn to get up from the floor where you’ve been crying in a puddle of your own tears and make a new life. You learn that your future may not look like you thought it did and race does not confine you. 

          You learn that what other’s think of your life and how you choose to live it does not matter. You learn to make a new path on your own terms, your own merits, playing by your own rules. You learn to take the parts of life that are good from the situations that are bad, and move forward. You learn to talk to the people that care, the people that matter, the people that listen. You learn to advance. You learn progress, you learn to listen, you learn to recognize. You learn to relate to the parts of other’s stories you can relate to and rewrite your own. 

         You learn to pick up a hammer, a nail, and some new paint and you begin to rewrite the chapters of your life. You begin to recognize what takes work, and what will be easier. You learn to recognize that life is all about proverbial hammers and nails, and fictitious buckets of paint. You learn to manage. You learn to compartmentalize. You learn to cry in the shower on bad days so your children don’t hear you, and you learn to celebrate with them and get ice cream on the good days because they don’t come around all too often.   

         You learn that sometimes even though everything looks fine on the surface, it’s not fine, and men will continue to hurt your heart. You learn that even though you would like to go through life with a knee-jerk reaction to the groin of every man that’s ever hurt you, you learn that walking away takes strength, and staying and fighting is sometimes the harder option. You learn that diamonds are not a guarantee and even though someone offers you one, and tries to help you rebuild your life, it’s not the same vision.  You and your partner are standing in front of a blank canvas and you need to be on the same page to paint the best possible portrait of your life together. 

          You learn that beauty comes from pain just like the artist Van Gogh created beauty in his “manic phase,” and that even though we are not cutting the ears off of our problems and mailing them to our lost loves, you begin to understand why he may have done that. Did she not listen to you? Did she not hear what you had to say? Were you not being heard, were you painting to escape your fear? How do you take the shit that’s been dealt to you in life and begin to use it to fertilize your garden and share the blooming flowers with others. You learn that even when someone tells you in an accusatory tone to “take it easy,” or “give it up,” you never will. You learn you have a warriors spirit and the fire inside of you will not be extinguished. You learn how to use what you have to get where you’re going. You learn to overdraw your checking account when you need to, and make a plan for repaying it. You learn that every purchase matters, and even though you may not have the money to live within your needs, you’ll still find a way. 

             You learn to make it look so easy from the outside. You learn to use what you have for what you need, to get ahead, to move forward, to plan accordingly. You learn that there are few men capable of holding the hand of a woman so strong that she does not need a man, but she want’s one.  You learn that not every man has your best interests at heart, even though he says he loves you, and is promising the world.  You learn that even though you want to move forward and see a way through the maze, you have to have the strength to ask for the help you need, but that doesn’t mean that you have to take the help that is given. 

It doesn’t mean that the help will not come, it means that it may not be the best solution for your life at the time. 

             You learn that even Holocaust survivors share a part of your story, because they could be beaten and bloodied, brain-washed, starved, and left for dead, but that in all that pain, and all that sorrow, you stand up, and “brush the dirt off your shoulders” like Jay-Z told ya, and move the hell on with your life. You learn that fear is not getting you anywhere, and pain does not produce consequences if you aren’t listening to the right voice. You learn to rebuild and move forward. You wipe the slate clean however many times you need to and mess up, fail, fall forward and write with permanent marker as often as you need to also. You learn to give yourself permission to fail. You learn to try to paint accurate pictures of your life for people with as much detail as needed so that they can make the right decision for you. 

              You learn that even someone having a bad day somewhere can royally fuck with your life. You learn when to shut out the voices that don’t matter, and listen to the ones that do. You learn to never be silent, to never be afraid, to never back down, to be in the face of all your problems. You learn to try to pick up the pieces of your life in the ways that matter to you. You learn to listen to hope, shut out fear and distraction and stop falling down. You learn that even when you do fall down, scrape your knees, bruise your shoulder, cut your lip; you learn to wipe away the blood, squeeze your eyes to the tears and keep moving forward. Cause there is good stuff at the end, there is good stuff along the way. There is sunshine to be scattered, and hope to be found, and light to be shed in the lives of others. You learn to listen to your sixth sense because it guides you. You learn to listen to your intuition because it is sacred. You learn to hold out for the things that are worth waiting for even though rushing into them seems like the perfect solution. 

           You learn that the wedding of your dreams is possible, but that the groom may be negotiable. You learn that prices are negotiable, and the way you pay for things along the way is being nice, and the currency that is always there is hope and gratitude and peace. If you find a way to help others get to their peace of mind, their solace, their  “sunshine,” they will always find a way to repay you with kindness. You learn to do the right thing, to never walk on anyone, to have hope along the way. You learn that even though you are down to your last $10 and you need that $10 to put gas in your car to drive to the store to buy ramen noodles for 17 cents a package, you still have a way to earn more. 

         You have a way to answer the cries for help, you have some solutions to offer along the way. You learn that even though others may think you are having a nervous break down,  because you are yelling and screaming for what you know is right, you know yourself enough to know that because it is what is right, you get angry, you scream, you yell, and you move the hell on with your life. You learn that the solutions that are fixing every one else’s problems may not be the solution to fixing your own. You learn how to stay up all night when you need to—to get things done, and sleep for 12 hours at a time on the days you need to sleep, because even though that doesn’t make sense to any one else, it makes sense to you. You learn that even though you forgot to write your 5 page Essay for your Advanced English course in high school because some domestic violence happened at home, that kept you from writing your paper; you have an English teacher who believes in you, and knows you’re a good writer; a decent person, and she wants to help you develop your voice too.  

            You learn that even though you did not share that part of your life with her, she can see the fear in your eyes, the worry, the intent. So she gives you another day to complete the assignment and another day is all you needed, because you got an ‘A’ on the paper. You learn to recognize the people that knock you down, and the ones that help you stand back up. You learn that even though you had to take regular English, your junior year of high school because you did not understand how a syllabus worked, because no one ever taught you and you failed one semester, does not mean that teacher understands where you are in your life. You learn to move to a regular English class and accept the ‘B’ because you knew you could do better but the violence at home would not stop. You learned to switch to an advanced English class your senior year, and excel in that class and move forward with hope, perseverance and faith.  You learn that the Summer before college spent worrying about college is no Summer at all, and who wants an ulcer anyway?!

            You learn to talk to people in your situation that share your story and how to move forward with the skills that you have. You learn to be brave, to be skinny when you have to, to be fat when you have to, to accept yourself for your faults because other’s will too. You learn to feel good about life. You learn to only reason with reason itself and to not back down or go quietly into the night. You learn that age has no bearing on maturity and love truly knows no boundaries. You learn to listen to your heart, regardless of what the cynics say, and to violate the law when the law is wrong, and stay strong when others are telling you, you might go to jail. You learn to hope. You learn to find hope in your own situation and help others find hope in theirs too. You learn how a new coat of paint and a new pair of shoes are enough to help someone else rebuild their life. You learn what you can from what you know, you learn how to be a philosopher and an entrepreneur, and a philanthropist when you have your heart in the right place. Reason will tell you differently, fear will try to bind you, hope will find it’s way.  Hope is the flower that grows up through the sidewalk cracks even though reason tells it not to, hope is the rhythm that moves all of us along. Heaven can be a heart beat away, pain can be pushed aside, and the characters of our lives can be rewritten. Good friends will find you, safety will find you, and hope will move you along.

Victim or Survivor?

Remember one of my recent posts and how I talked about fight and flight responses? Nature will tell you it is the most common response for animals in the wild to fight or flee when confronted with a dangerous, overwhelming circumstance. That’s why certain animals have protective coloring, sharp claws, teeth, and can run 25 miles per hour. I don’t have sharp claws, teeth, and the only way I am willing to run, is if my life depends on it. My lack of protective coloring and razor-sharp claws however does not keep me from fighting or fleeing. Dangerous overwhelming circumstances happen in my life every day. I have an ex-husband who makes it very hard for me to think clearly. He has done everything one person can do to another to make me feel trapped, afraid and overwhelmed. I have tried my hardest over the past decade to keep my sanity, stay alert, keep my son safe and decide whether or not to fight or flee. I have done both.

When I was married to The Mistake I chose to fight, chose to stand by him, listen to him, try to understand him and ‘work things out.’ I went to marriage counseling, I read books about men and women and their differences, I tried ad nauseam to see his point of view. I feel I exhausted every resource I could, in order to stay. After years of extreme mental and physical abuse I took my son and left.  The last fight we ever got into did not end well. He had purchased a big-screen TV, which cost over $400 while we had a young child and were trying to save for a house. Our rent at the time was $350.00. He had mentioned wanting to purchase this TV and a surround sound system to go with it. I told him that was something we needed to talk more about.  We had a new son who was less than a year old.  It was just after the Christmas-holiday hoopla season and I had stayed up one night to take down the tree and all the season’s festive trimmings. There was a fireplace in our small apartment, oddly enough , and I remember looking in a box at our wedding photos. Several frames, and mementos remained in the box and I was going to place them on the fire place mantle.

  I kept staring at the framed photographs in the box and I knew that on that day, three years earlier when I had promised myself to that man and no other that I meant what I said. I meant I would stand by him through thick and thin—I had certainly changed clothing sizes post-baby, through sickness and health---I had been emotionally sick and taken anti-depressants, cared for our young son, and even cared for my husband when he was ill. The part I hadn’t made it through was the ‘til death do you part.’ Staring into the box of wedding photographs I realized I was dead inside. My love for this man was waning, the torment and excruciating pain he put me through was overwhelming.

                The mistake stormed through the door almost two hours after he had gotten off work, close to midnight. His brother helped him carry the TV into our apartment. Naturally I was furious. I was upset that I wasn’t important enough for him to have at least called to tell me he was running late, I was furious he had not asked me how I felt about making such a large purchase and how he expected me to keep paying for things we could not afford.  I made some snarky comments about the giant television being placed on the floor. My young twenty-something brother –in-law sensed my distress and exited, stage left. Our son was asleep in his crib, the box of wedding photos remained unpacked on the mantle, and I began fighting with this man I promised to love with all my heart, might, mind, and strength, until death did we part.  I cannot tell you all that was said, I cannot tell you all that I did. I can tell you that my son woke up and was bawling. I went in his room to console him. My son was crying out for me in his tiny frightened voice. He was afraid, he was screaming in terror.

I tried to pick up my wailing child, to console him, to hold him close, and The Mistake threw me on the ground. He pushed me down so hard he knocked the wind out of me. I stood up, my child and reason for fighting less than 10 feet away from me still upset and frightened from having watched his father push me to the ground. I stood up with a fire in my eyes that still remains. I stood up and I punched The Mistake as hard as I could, giving him a black eye. I told him he would NEVER TOUCH ME AGAIN. He took our son out of his crib, tried to console him, but all my son wanted was me. He wanted me to take him in my arms, to know that I am okay, he was afraid of his father. I tried everything I could to bring The Mistake to his knees so I could take my son and leave.  The Mistake kept hold of our son, clutching him tightly screaming obscenities’ to me all while my son was still wailing.

At some point after I had injured The Mistake and had gotten my son back, I comforted my sweet fearful baby, and called my mother to tell her what happened. I locked the front door. I knew there was no way The Mistake could get in the door while it was locked, because it was a chain link lock and would only lock from the inside.  At the time all of this was happening in my marriage, I had befriended the neighbors down stairs.  They were an older couple trying to start their life over, sell their home and relocate until something more permanent became available. They were my life raft at the time. I would spend hours talking to them and talking to the wife who was also a mother and grandmother. She had fallen ill and had surgery and I spent several days cooking and making extra food to take to them because we had become so close. I remember the phone call I got the next day from her vividly. This elderly couple lived directly below me, they had heard the fight the night before. They had witnessed my son screaming out for me and the sounds of The Mistake throwing me around. She told me I was a wonderful mother, that I was capable and strong, that she almost called the police, than her husband came up to see if I was alright, but The Mistake had already left. She told me I shouldn’t ever put up with that kind of abuse from a man or anyone else. I told her I knew, that I didn’t know where to begin to start over, but that I was tired of feeling afraid.

                Over the next few weeks I had to move all of my stuff out of the apartment and into storage. I learned The Mistake had started an affair with a co-worker whom I assume he told he was already getting divorced. I had to move in with my Mother and Father. I had no job, and The Mistake had left me with no money by cleaning out our joint checking account. When I asked The Mistake how he expected me to pay for our son, to even feed him his response was: “you have food stamps.” I had to deal with The Mistake coming over to harass and threaten me while I was trying to move our things in storage, to start over, begin a new chapter in my life. He returned to the apartment again and again to turn all of the lights on because the power was in my name and he thought making the power bill more expensive was a good means at getting back at me. I dealt with The Mistake taking my name off the car insurance so that the vehicle I was driving was uninsured, him not caring if his son and I were in a wreck what might happen to us. I dealt with threat after threat, act of isolation after act of isolation. I felt alone, financially penniless and emotionally broken.

                Over time, my bruised ribs healed, the bruises he left on my arms from grabbing me so hard, the bruises up and down my back from being thrown into the door and the door knob landing squarely and painfully in my mid- back. I imagine the land lord of the previous apartment I vacated had to patch the hole in the wall where his fist went. I imagine the land lord had to patch the hole in the wall where I had thrown a jar candle across the room, when I learned I was pregnant; Even though my son was planned, even though I wanted to be a mother more than anything else in the world.  I had a conversation with my best friend, who married the exact same mistake I had. We spoke of how messed up it was that our desire to become mothers out -weighed anything else in our lives. We spoke of the blessing our children have been , the source of joy, and how the lack of support and love from their father’s have gravely affected us.  The toll this journey has taken on our hearts, the pain we live with, the fears we’ve outgrown.

                While living with my parents, my belongings in storage, waiting for a divorce to be finalized on a marriage I entered with hope and exited in sheer terror, I began to think things through.  My son slept with me every night in the hide-a-bed that folded out from the sofa and I cried myself to sleep. I cried so hard I didn’t think I had any more tears to cry. I didn’t understand why I had let my life get to this point, why I had married a man that was so cruel and unfeeling. A man who would never truly understand the  bond between a mother and child and how that cannot ever be broken, not even in death. I had married a man who blamed me for the extra weight I put on from pregnancy, but did not support me well enough to watch our own child while I worked out and did anything about getting back to my pre-pregnancy size. I had married a man I thought was religious who hid pornographic magazines all over the house, who spent money we didn’t have to finance an addiction he said he didn’t have, yet I kept finding the proof of everywhere I turned.

                I am the crazy one. I am psychotic, I am fearless. I never quit fighting, I never backed down, I have not given him the upper hand since. My son is afraid of him, he has concerns that he only tells me, and a few he shares with a counselor, he has trusted me with information he cannot tell anyone else, that I promised to never tell anyone, not even in a court of law. I will continue to fight, and to protect my son. I am still the young mother and woman who got thrown down in front of her son in so many ways, but I am no victim. I will always stand and fight. I will always be courageous. I will never stop helping people, and I will never be afraid of any man ever again. Especially The Mistake. He will never threaten me, belittle me, undermine me, or frustrate me ever again.  He can say what he wants; he can believe I am a crazy heartless bitch who is constantly keeping him from seeing his son. His opinion of me does not matter. He can call the police, he can throw me in jail, he can try to keep me cornered and afraid. I will not be afraid anymore. I will not be silent. I will stand up for what I know is right, I will continue to fight. I will not run away.

                That seems to be the tricky thing about fighting and fleeing; sometimes they resemble each other and fighting looks like running away and staying looks like leaving when your heart isn’t in it. It doesn’t matter what it may look like from the outside, it only matters how it feels to you, and what you need to do to keep yourself safe, and keep yourself sane. No one is perfect, no one person has all the answers, but what is inside each of us pre determines what comes next. We are all the master’s of our own destiny and no matter how many times we get knocked down, we can stand back up. No matter how many times someone tells us we’re the victim, it is up to us to decide our own fate.  I have decided to be a survivor, and I will not go silent into the night. I will not be afraid any more.

Happy Birthday to My Baby Girl

Baby girl turned 4 years old today. Yup, my kids' birthdays are two days apart. :) Guess I'm only fertile during one time of the year!