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 A letter to myself when I was younger.

You can tell me. Even though he said not to, it’s okay to tell adults. I know you didn’t tell anyone then, but it’s not too late to tell me now. You won’t get into trouble and it will help me understand better.

I know you wanted to go home before he got home, that it was always better if you got picked up before he came home from work.

I remember his hands, they weren’t like my dad’s hands. My dad worked in an office and on computers. My dad had clean hands. He had dirty hands, cigarette-stained hands, strong hands that smelled like nicotine and smoke and other scents I didn’t know.

I remember he shaved. But not every day. I remember bristles.

I remember gifts. He seemed to want there to be gifts.

And I remember getting in trouble with the wife if we misbehaved?

I get the spins when I try to think more about it. My chest gets tight. My heart races and my mind wants to draw blanks.

But I remember his stale cigarette-laden breath. Why would I remember his breath?

I can’t picture his face, just his hands.

I can’t remember his kids, or his wife.

I remember the shag carpet, the dresser-like huge old television set, I remember playing the-floor-is-lava and jumping from couch to couch. I remember watching He-Man and wanting to grow up to be him, because he always had to come save She-Ra and I didn’t want to have to be saved. I remember the mom/wife upstairs at the kitchen table making stained glass pieces …… I remember that they took me away one weekend to their little cottage on some island somewhere? I remember the dock, and the weedy-muddy water, and losing one of the jelly-shoes in the muck …. I remember going to Regal, and picking a glass trinket box from the shelf…..

That’s quite a lot for a 4 year old to remember.

But what about what I don’t remember. Did something happen to make me remember all of this? I can’t remember and I feel scared and I can’t piece it together and I want to panic. My joints ache, my heart races, and I can’t remember. But I think our body does.

3:58pm Thursday June 30th, 2022

5:49pm I lost my virginity to rape at 16, but I’ve written about that before. Somehow this seemed more present to write about.

Wish You Were Here

And then the postcards began to arrive. It wasn’t just A postcard. It was plural, so very plural that he couldn’t even believe it.

The very first postcard to fall through his mail slot was from New York City. It carried a picture of the Empire State building in all it’s glory. The message side of the card simply said “Wish you were here, Love Emma.” Rolland knew Emma had never been to New York City and it wasn’t written in her famous scrolling hand. Who on Earth could this card be from?

But the next day, when the mail slid through the slot at 3pm on the dot, there they were, three post cards. One with a picture of the Grand Canyon, one with the salt flats of Utah, and a third from Graceland herself. All with the same message, “Wish you were here, Love Emma.”

As the days grew, so too did the distance for the cards. Soon Rolland had amassed pictures of the the street cars of San Francisco, Big Ben, the Great Pyramids of Giza, and tuktuks from the streets of Thailand, among others.

Finding the need to display these postcards, Rolland cleared the living room wall. He began grouping the postcards by continent and pinning them to the wallpaper of tiny rosebuds and baby’s breath that he and Emma had chosen together when they’d renovated the room a decade previously.

Travel had been the bug that bit Emma early in life. She had managed a semester abroad during her short stay in further education, but otherwise had been confined to the edges of their small town upstate Ohio.  Emma had kept a peanut butter jar under the sink, tucking away funds any time she didn’t treat herself to something over the years. No new measuring cups in the kitchen, or hand towels in the bathroom, even though the paint lines on the former had begun to fade and the edges of the latter had begun to fray.  

She planned elaborate excursions for herself and Rolland, often accompanying the excitement with a new dish found in the frozen foods section of their local grocery store:  Peaking Duck, or Enchiladas, or Shepherd’s Pie. Over the meal Emma would explain how they’d fly economy to save as much money for the actual trip rather than waste it on fancy flying — she’d already been on an airplane, that wasn’t where the excitement stemmed from. Then Emma would lay out her dream itinerary for the local sights, sounds, and tastes. The internet was not a foreign object to this elder. Emma worked websites like an experienced travel agent, often book-marking streams of sites in slide-show fashion to share with Rolland.

But something always got in the way. The car needed a new tire, the kitchen sink backed up, the eavestroughing came down in a storm. That jar money was used up quicker than Emma could believe. Always it was her dreams that paid for their unexpected expenses.

When Emma was 65 she found a lump. Ever the cheerleader, Rolland said it would be nothing, they’d go to the doctor and he’d confirm it was nothing, not to worry, it was nothing. And when the chemo made Emma’s hair fall out, Rolland said it was a great time to wear all the colourful hats crocheted over the years and hidden in the back of closets without any recipients. And when the tests confirmed that Emma’s cancer wasn’t responding to treatment, it was the peanut butter jar that let Rolland put a hospital bed in the living room and take care of Emma at home through to her last breath.

The bed had been moved out immediately following the funeral. But the rest of Emma’s belongings remained, like an afterimage of the woman who had filled the unassuming two-bedroom home with such brightness.  When they’d bought in the early 70’s, the second bedroom had been an unspoken dream of new members to join their family. But as the years wore on, and Emma’s doctor confirmed, there would be no tiny footsteps scampering through these hallways. Rolland had let Emma consider adoption for a short bit, but they’d both come to the conclusion that travel would be much more difficult with a little hand to hold, and they let the notion fade.

But there were no journeys. Neither modest nor extravagant. The furthest they’d been together was Cleveland to check out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after a friend’s wedding had brought them to town. But even that had only been a weekend away, and away had only been a 3 hour drive.

And here was a postcard from Niagara Falls, on one of Emma’s more realistic lists, a mere 6 hour trek. Rolland still felt the shadow of guilt that he’d never been able to let Emma’s dreams manifest into reality. Between hours on the factory floor, he’d considered a second job, but pain and fatigue always kept him close to home in his off hours. The two of them had been each other’s best friend, rarely making waves in social circles. Emma had her Bridge ladies and Rolland had his tobacco pipe; both finding solace in their activities. Though they’d been ever present during Emma’s downward progression, bringing casseroles and cards of hope, Rolland couldn’t imagine any of those ladies setting up this scheme with the postcards, it was just too elaborate.

Standing in the living room, in front of his wall of postcards, images from across the globe, Rolland let his mind wander down the current ever-present mystery. Where were these cards coming from? The literal answer was easy, they were coming from everywhere! But who had sent them? He knew it was more than one person, as not only were they so frequent, but also each “Wish you were here, Love Emma” was written across the back in so very many different fonts and slants, that each postcard was certain to be from a different hand.

Something like a tingling ran up the back of Rolland’s neck and he had an impulsive idea. Striding over to the kitchen and bending to open the cupboard beneath the sink, his aging bones crackling as he did, Rolland retrieved the peanut-butter jar. The jar itself, still wrapped in it’s long-faded sleeve, felt lighter than ever, but Rolland twisted the top suddenly certain something lay waiting inside. And he was right. Here was a bundle of folded sheafs, feathery against his fingers as he unfolded them to reveal Emma’s familiar script.

The top most page was dated a month before Emma’s passing, the lettering was easy to follow and read, but as he read further, the dated pages moved forward in time and her long-hand became messier, the last of the 5 pages was dated mere days before the end. Rolland felt moisture pricking the edge of his vision, but was still unprepared for the first tear to escape and mark the ink on the page before him.

It took Emma several days to explain in her letter, as fatigue and weakness fought against her determination to compose these ideas to her husband before she passed. Here, in blue markings before his view, Emma told Rolland about her discovery of a website called Reddit, a place where people could write about simply anything. At first she’d stayed in the travel subreddits, reading stories about other people adventuring around the globe and sharing comments with fellow onlookers. But soon she’d branched into topics and lists that had nothing to do with travel, even earning something of a name for herself as a top commenter. It was then that the idea struck her. Emma knew she had a bit of a following, a minor sense of fame, so she wrote openly about her cancer, inviting others to share their own experiences and feelings about how they, too, were facing death. There were heart-wrenching tales about young patients leaving behind partners and children, there were lonely sufferers who had no one to leave behind to remember them, there were women sharing how they’d been gifted a crocheted breast to fill their tops after life-saving mastectomies. All of these people thanked Emma for the opportunity to share their stories in a thread where she always responded, no matter how many people wrote to her or the length of their post.

And then Emma began to explain in her letter how her idea had taken fruition. Emma started a post about this very jar of peanut butter, empty under their sink. She had come to terms long ago, knowing that travel would not be the apex of her existence. She was content with her life, with living vicariously through others, with all the knowledge she’d learned  about so many varied places in the world as she had planned her trips. But the one thing that would bring tears to her eyes every time, was the notion of leaving her best friend behind. Emma and Rolland had been high-school sweethearts. They’d never loved anyone else and they loved each other dearly. Emma knew he had few friends and acquaintances who would be around after she was gone. She wanted somehow to reach out to him from beyond the veil. Of course this wasn’t possible, but Emma was a crafty lady. She lay out her plans in a message and gave it an expiry date — she knew she didn’t have much longer.

Emma had somehow, with her words, convinced all these amazing people from all these distant countries to send postcards to her lonely husband for her, suggesting that any postcard, from any where, at any time would do the trick.  The simple words were taken from a song they’d both admired in their early 20’s and listened to on many quiet evenings in as they aged. Music was eternal, Emma had been known to say.

Rolland turned over the last page of the letter, finding the words “I love you, Emma” at the bottom and then held the pages to his chest. She had done it, she had reached out to him even after she was gone. He walked back into the living room, staring at her gifts to him, pinned to the wall and whispered silently, “Wish you were here.”

Spiraling

 It wasn’t like he could just walk away. He was invested. 

After 17 trips to this small blue and green planet, trips he could remember nothing of, he knew one thing for sure — being buried alive had never been on the itinerary.

CJ knew he came from a place filled with white light and all the joy one could imagine, and then some more on top of that. CJ wasn’t sure how he knew, how he remembered, but that’s what they felt like. Memories. There was a place in his mind that he could only describe as “warm” and “home”. And he knew, when this was all over, he’d get to return there and feel safe again.

But that wasn’t right now. Right now, he was in a dark place. Surrounded by, secluded in, encapsulated by, darkness. His sense of time must be fading, because he felt like he’d never been anywhere else in his 40 turns around this unimportant sun, on the far end of a remark-less galaxy, randomly scattered amidst an unwatched Universe.

He’d been here long enough to have other memories, too. Memories that faded more every moment longer he spent in the darkness. There had been laughter, and smiles. There had been touch — touch! His only reason to be corporeal. His fingers reached out, in darkness, before him, touching a rough stone surface. He was somewhere then. Somewhere tangible. He could feel the cold from the rock before him seep into his fingers and he pulled his hand away.  

The memories contained other people, friends, family, lovers. He knew there had been lovers, many, maybe too many. But it had been pleasurable, right? Touch brought pleasure and pleasure for its own sake was still pleasure. 

CJ felt his arms cross in front of his chest, he felt his hands aloft on the skin of his arms, rubbing softly, as though trying to release the coldness from his fingers and find some comfort in the warmth of his own body.

There!

A light!

His eyes had been shut for decades, CJ blinked, blinded by the bright light. It must be the surface, it must be the sun, for it was ever so bright.

But as his vision returned from the red blindness of the initial shock, he could see that no, it was not the sun. It was a single candle, burning alone against the darkness. He watched, transfixed by the flame wisp-ing and growing as it flickered in an unfelt draft. Would it stay lit or go out?

CJ held his breath, unsure what would happen in that moment. The light seemed warm, welcoming, a lone soldier standing strong against a darkness that had all but swallowed CJ whole. Would it be able to stave off the monsters lurking just beyond its circle of glow? Did it even know there were monsters in this dark?

CJ slowly released his breath, so as not to disturb the flame.  As though discovering he had feet for the first time, he took a careful, unsure step forward. 

Avoidance

 

• • • • •

Let’s talk avoidance for a minute.

If you are struggling to find balance, wellness, recovery (however you define it) you know that there is work to be done.

That work is tough, anxiety provoking, painful and at times can make us feel worse.

I want you to trust me when I tell you that everyday that goes by that you are AVOIDING by engaging in harmful behaviours you are making that part of your brain STRONGER.

Wellness means re-wiring your brain to have new thinking patterns, new reactions to stress and new habits to make you feel better. This requires fighting against, what for now seems right, normal and Okay.

For today, pick one pattern that has been hard to challenge. Isolate it and try strengthening that other, newer, less familiar part of your brain.

It gets easier, it’s worth it.

Beat it, kid

sometimes, when you’re not here
I can’t breathe and I feel empty
and I cry
because it shouldn’t be this way
I have so much
around me, surround me, with me

when you’re here I breathe easy
my heart beats in a way that makes sense

but when I’m alone
I can’t hear it
beat
beat
beat me

tears fall
around me, surround me, with me

sometimes, when you’re not here
I think about
what it would be like to not be here

to simply never have existed at all

and I can’t
let it
beat
beat
beat me.



10:26pm July 28, 2018

Tree of Stars night (at LOST)

Journal prompt #1: struggles

Sometimes we find ourselves
Twisting in a place we've been before
Returning again and again
Unbeknowest to those close to us
Gaining strength from the repetition
Giving only the slightest notion
Leaving us to ask what is this for
Each lost to the vast plane
Struggling to catch our breath

Journal Prompt #2: home

a) Inside your embrace is where I seek to find home. Strength, softness, warmth. Knowing I need only turn my face to find yours and see the depth of emotion in your eyes mirroring my own. Home is much more than a place, it is a feeling of safety and a sense of well-being and comfort.

b)

• I've moved more times than I can even remember. I'd quickly run out of fingers to count on if I tried to suss it out for you. So I know that 4 walls and a roof are not what create it.
• I've lost all I own due to various situations, sleeping under a towel on a carpeted floor, so I know it takes more than a bed or a couch to make it.
• I've lost partners, friends, family, and pets, so I know it is not just the people we populate our buildings with who make it what it is.
• But somehow, if you squeeze all these pieces together and add in some love and support, some warmth and caring, with the people who really matter, you can create a space for yourself in this unforgiving world and call it home.

Journal prompt #3: self-care (list from group)

- blogger.com
- self massages
- no cell phone
- avoid news
- watch comedy
- letter to self about "things I like about me"
- de-cluttering (home and head)
- walk
- youtube yoga
- blowing bubbles
- help someone randomly
- write
- talk to a stranger
- learn to make a new food
- just breathing
- enjoy a cup of tea
- quiet
- headspace (app, guided meditation)
- mammalian dive reflex
-  go to library w/ a friend
- look through old memory boxes
- eat in shower (a dripping fruit)
- re-wire the brain

A Poem for Max

He's sick, he's sick
What do I do?
My kitty cat
Has got the flu.

He's thin and slow
and will not eat.
I've tried it all
I fear I'm beat.

Took him to
the Doctor now,
who poked and prodded,
took blood anyhow.

I'll wait and see
What might be wrong
I'll hope the prognosis
isn't long.

My kitty cat
Has got the flu.
He's sick, he's sick
What do I do?