Fare Thee Well, Ivory Girl

Technically, the ole girl has no monetary value whatsoever. Indeed, probabilities are high that she's the kind you'd stumble across discarded behind some smelly, old tires in the corner of a thrift store, her only companions "Chopsticks," clunking children, taunting their chasing parents with temporary locator spell melodies.

No one, is likely to pay money to take her home for the night.

But She was there, like the Giving Tree, waiting for me day after day to take a seat. She was there in so many of the moments of overload where the lump caught in the throat. She was there when the fingers longing to send the melancholy into her bowels, refused catharsis because the soul yolk was just too deep to spill all over her keys. She held the silence like stone for months between the notes in spite of this being the antithesis of the purpose of her being. She was there, waiting. She had my back, as friend of my soul.

But He was there too. He saw the creative connection we had and didn't understand it or like it. Maybe, he was jealous of her. Maybe somewhere in his traumatic past, the Dementors had sucked his soul away, because he didn't really understand soul anymore, perchance he ever did.

Her fate was sealed by my deep love and soul connection to Her. If only I'd known to hide my love for Her a little bit better. A Michigander we'd rescued, She'd ridden the bumpy road to us on the back of a pickup truck when homelessness had threatened as some church decluttered. But the truth of the matter is that She was the one who rescued me.

She held me close many the dark night of the soul when the light in my thread bare heart nearly disappeared behind the veil. She offered shelter from the emotional abuse and gaslighting swirling in the living room air like desert dirt devils. She soaked up my tears like a sponge when there was no shoulder to cry upon, as I held my breath hoping the thin walls did not betray me, telling Him of my fear in the dark.

During the divorce proceedings, He held her as ransom. She unwillingly became his pawn. He could never understand her creative capacity for space holding. He could never understand Her soul holding. He could never really see Her true value, She was just a decorative piece of furniture to Him that mattered to me.

She was no Bosendorfer, no Steinway & Son, no Fazioli, but she mattered all the same.

He needed Her only for the sake of my isolation. He needed to have Her only to destroy me. He needed to separate us like a teacher keeps the young school girls apart to keep them from giggling in the corner of class too much. He needed Her to crush the good and kill anything soulful, anything foreign to him--that which He will never understand. He will never get the realm of soul. You can't if you have none.

But, he didn't count on this: you can't kill something that has sporified into something more. If He'd even understood the ethereal realm one bit, he'd know from the Velveteen Rabbit that you can't destroy something that has transformed itself by the act of love and sacrificial space holding.  

.....................................................................................

And so I let go of you, dear friend of my soul, ethereal Ivory Girl. I bid thee farewell. May you find your way to another in need of your musical healing. May you continue on in your work. And though mere spinet melody holder to some--to Him, somehow, you were and always will be so much more to me. Somehow, like the Velveteen Rabbit, you crossed thresholds. You became something more real. You came to inhabit the immaterial, invisible land of soul. And I suppose once you inhabit this land, no one, not even a narcissist who knows nothing of real, nothing of soul, nothing of the beautiful, creative invisible realm, can ever rob you of this bit. Farewell my beautiful dancing Ivory Girl.

Dating the Real Me

Now that things are officially done, and my lovely narcissist has kinda moved on, I've finally moved into the space of being a free agent and so of course I decided to do something absolutely ludicrous like join a dating site.

You could probably argue that I'm not quite ready. You could probably argue that this might be the worst place for me. And you'd probably be right in so arguing all of the above. But, seeing as how I'm no longer living on the alien planet of narcissism, I was feeling a bit nostalgic for alien and so I thought I'd replace said alien planet with another equally strange place--the wonderful world of online dating. And truth be told, I'm sure I'll come across a narcissist or two in said ventures without even really looking.

You could say the online dating world is a bit in-authentic and rife with said characters and you'd probably be absolutely right in saying so. I've decided to consider it more of a nuclear testing ground for all things explosive in the dating world, which may or may not be about how I feel, relationship wise.

And so it was that I found myself on a casual meet up for coffee last week which seemed harmless enough. Seemingly, everything went fine until near the date's end when the conversation turned toward the topic of whether or not there would be another date. He wanted to go out again. I thought this to be a good thing. Until he said, I'm kind of a traditional guy. I'm not trying to control you but I want to get to know you without you getting to know anyone else.

Uh, dude have you forgotten that we just had coffee? We just met.  And you are trying to control my life already. 

No, really. How would you feel if tomorrow night I was out with another girl like this?

I should hope she could keep the standard as high as I have... I should hope she could raise the standard, even. And I should hope to be the sort of person that you don't forget so easily.

I want you to consider this compromise where you do exactly what I'm proposing and don't date any other guys while we are getting to know one another...

Uh, I'm sorry, but what part of we just met, don't you understand? I felt the oddly familiar coiling and talking and hypnotic looking into my eyes in trance formation. As the strangulation factors began to seem cozy, something triggered. There is a snake, I thought.

Startled. I got my bearings. I'm gonna check in with a friend, I told myself. I'll ask my friend about this boa looking thing coiled around me sharing my breath with me after coffee.

That's weird. Bizarre. Clingy. No, you're not the crazy one. It was only coffee... 

I knew it. I knew all the stuff my friend said. I think I had almost the same thoughts my friend had. Except I didn't trust my thoughts. Thanks to the lovely stamp on my soul by Mr. Crazy Town, himself. This is why I still need for somebody outside of myself to confirm to me that I'm not being crazy. Or unreasonable. Or paranoid. Or over-reacting. Cause the brainwashing continues onward sans narcissist.

The voice of my ex is still there right inside my head. Loud as ever. Telling me I'm stupid. I'm less than. I'm inept. I'm paranoid. I'm over-reacting. I'm worthless and don't matter without him. And as much as I've journeyed onward and I don't believe these lies, there is still the problem with the doubting of self. I know all these things are not true and it's still hard to argue against the part of me that I became in order to survive, and now suddenly I'm apparently supposed to cut off this gangrenous part of myself--but it's still me that I must now ironically sever in order to become the real me again.

on Death Stamps

Sometimes I wonder at the course death may have taken if the guy dumping the coal, had looked away? What if the twenty two year old boy had just seeped away into the void of nothingness? No detectives dawning the door at half past 11. No phone calls to Africa beckoning the parents homeward in a hurry. No lonely buglers haunting the silence of a gathering with the presence of the minor keys of sadness.

Death and grief. Such strangeness and yet, such odd familiarity.

I remember playing Hide-n-Seek amidst the headstones in the South as a young child. After sitting still for far too long, we'd dart out of the country church where the old ladies still donned over-sized hats and gloves to shake the hand of Gran the Preacher. Escaping to the cemetery we'd irreverently jump and climb the dead's makeshift jungle gym until the old ladies would shame us with their scolding eyes. Retreating to the long stone tables under the shelter we'd await the lecture from the preacher himself. The lecture never happened. Instead, his wild eyes merely suggested hiding near the back of the cemetery, where our sacrilegious play wouldn't ruffle the feathers of the little ole prim-and-proper ladies.

The death rituals didn't seem any sort of different from the living rituals, then. No, rather there were giant stones with dates stamped on them marking the basic details and sometimes a quote or a little lamb which seemed fair climbing material. It didn't seem to us that the dead would actually care about the traipsing all over their space.

But, the death rituals were handled differently in Arlington. I remember the hypnotic rhythm of the marching, the clicking of the shoes, the gun cocking, the endless back and forth and the non-flinching-in-the-face-of-a-bead-of-sweat-dripping-down-your-nose in the middle of the summer humidity. These rituals communicated a different rendition of death, contrasted starkly against the graves turned jungle gym. Twenty four seven, rain or shine, timed paces back and forth for years in front of the Unknown Soldier imparted a special heaviness and honor to the idea of death and all its enshrouded acknowledgments. These rituals almost seemed more important in the face of the unknown details.

And then there was the day the detectives knocked and we planned and stewed over the most minute details in the going about of the burying of the twenty-two year old boy in the frozen January earth, the day before his 23rd birthday. It seemed pertinent to avoid having the funeral on his birthday.

A thousand people drove in. The folks hopped a plane out of Africa and a people did what they do at funerals.

The rituals seemed inept. Not enough wrappings to dress the body of loss.

And then the day came and went when a relationship a few years shy of being as old as the almost 23 yr old, was declared dead.

And nothing happened. Nothing was different. The passing in all its finality was just dumped into the vat of void. No corduroy suit or Stone to climb on or march in front of for this death. No funeral pyre, no flower arrangements, no freshly disturbed dirt, no place tethering the grieving and keeping the feet on the ground. Instead the death and change of life's trajectory warranted a stamp from a robed stranger and an email from an expensive lawyer the day after the anniversary.

And nothing was the same.

it is Finished

It is finished.
The marriage is ended. Unceremoniously declared undone by some ultimate power that rules over things like devastation and loss for a salary-of-sorts at ten minutes past 4 o'clock in the afternoon on a day not all that dissimilar from the day things began in June, far too many years ago.

It is finished.
After all the waiting. After all the speed bumps. After all the endless time spent working with the soul who abandoned itself.

It is finished. 
Those final words, oh-so-similar to the martyr I grew up hearing about. The martyr who hung in the pain of imagining God doing all the forsaking.

It is finished.
Somehow the perspective always gets skewed. The martyr chooses to sacrifice.

It is finished.
And then the martyr questions the abandonment.
My God my God, why?

It is finished.
Why hast thou forsaken me?
Perhaps God did. Perhaps God did not.

It is finished.
Sometimes we are the ones doing all the forsaking of self.
And we don't know it--the abandoning we project onto the divine figure in the sky is our own abandoning. We do the finishing. We do the abandoning of soul all too well on our own, without the Divine and then we blame the Divine for the finishing.

It is finished.
The relief at the closure of the death of relationship is ours. And we feel the stab of the snake, lifted high, in the wilderness, healing all who look. Healing with the finishing of closure. Finality. A death of sorts. Enacted by a judge, in a clinical office in the county of nowheresville. A judge knowing no-one. A judge knowing not the look of a bright eyed boy hoping to change a future and a past wrought with agonizing awfulness. A boy and a girl hoping that love might be enough. But, instead the honorable has ruled it finished. Stamped her signature on the death of a marriage. Called it at ten minutes past four on an afternoon in June when the parties knew nothing of the passing until the lawyers notified the dead of the death of a relationship past. The lawyers waited to send the email. Waited for the day after the anniversary.

It is finished.
Sometimes the finishing hurts more than you think it might. The pain seeps in even after you think you've cried your eyes out till the tears dry out and they are no more. The sadness at the finishing still hits you all the same. You tell yourself its not an ending, but rather a beginning. You tell yourself it is a return to the sacred abandoned self. The snake said so after all. There is a circle. A snake symbol looped around signifying eternity.

And it is finished all the same. 

And somehow, that hurts a bit, more than you might have imagined. Circles and death and life and symbolism aside you still feel the horror of the ending. You still feel the my God, my God, why have you abandoned me piece? 

It is finished. 

For the Interim Time

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems TO believe the relief of dark.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

"The old is not old enough to have died away;,
The new is still too young to be born."

You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might com free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

                                                    -John O'Donohue

the Funeral and the Performance

There was a funeral. And then there was a performance. And the two ran together in some goopy mess. Singing at the funeral. Crying at the performance.

A great man was buried.

A mystical scene was performed.

I thought I'd be ok at the performance which was after the funeral. But there was a bathroom passing. An intermission where I distinctly knew her in passing as she paused after speaking with him, the performer and his man bun, (which by the way kind of repulses me) but that, my friends, is beside the point. I saw her for the first time. She is pretty. She seems kind. Good. All the same, I had this weird flash of wanting to help her with tips--to make it work, you know. Cause I kind of need for it to work. I need for him to be stable. I need for him to be grounded and taken care of by her. I realize this sounds kind of fucked up--that I actual think about managing his narcissism in some sort of clinical way like some sort of pet to be looked after for the weekend get-away, but I do. I do as part of the get-the-hell-out exit strategy. I think I do it selfishly. And while its practical, it isn't altruistic.

And I feel guilty for such. I feel awful thinking of her as a means to escape in a cost-benefit analysis sort of way, as if she is not a human being. And believe me the irony is not lost upon me. Because this is exactly what he does. Sees people as things to use and abuse for whatever pressing needs he has. And I ask myself if I'm becoming like him? Are we attending the funeral of my own soul?

And then I wander elsewhere to the awful imagining of the future and what is likely to happen to her and her soul with him.

He is likely to crush her soul.

Because that is exactly what he does.

He is likely to suck the life blood out of her, like a vampire, leaving her a shell of the woman she is now. It is almost as if I can predict the future--magical seer that I now am.

And in the split second on the way to the bathroom, it was as if the future and the past and present congealed in the intermission. Her look of disguised recognition and avoidance, where she seemed to dramatically drop out of the bathroom line to avoid standing near my presumed wrath, anger, and hatred. None of which seem to be on the list of emotions I was able to conjure out of the air and actually feel. All I could feel in that coagulated moment was guilt and sadness and the ripping pain of knowing the future hole in the space where her soul once was. I felt the imagined grief of her future pressing in on us as my own dark past with him pressed in from the other side. I wanted to reach out and hold her hand with some sort of nod to the sacred feminine spirit and tell her how sorry I am in advance for not warning her. She is part of the sisterhood, after all.

Instead, I stood in line, no acknowledgment of recognition, trying to be true to myself, neither feeding the resting bitch image she needs to see me as, nor firing off the SOS flares into the dark sky. I acted the part of the clueless woman visiting the bathroom during the intermission of a performance.

The performance--but that is the sticking point. Act 2, scene 4. The scene I get stuck in is the one where I desperately try to be the powerless actress that surrenders to the ending of the play, ok with the knowledge of autonomous human beings fucking up their own lives, yet desperately driven by a seemingly magical healing force inside that wants to help, even those that want not my help. The guilt in the wake of healing potential or not. Preventing harm. Futures that while not set in stone, still seem ominous. I feel the weight of Merlin, in just trying to be faithful to who I am, and whom I'm meant to be, and whom I'm meant to heal in life. Of all people, she is not my responsibility. This I know. All the same it's complicated. And the healing always bleeds over into every corner of my life. It is not meant to be contained in some sort of healing box.

The healing piece shows up at funerals and performances alike and in brief moments in passing your ex husband's new girlfriend in the bathroom who wants to hate you and it is probably best if she does, anyway. And the healing dresses those wounds in tears.

This is the weight of being in the healing arts. The weight of being in proximity to something you don't really control, you only facilitate it, and sometimes see the pathway to help someone, even your ex's new GF; all of this married to the knowledge that you can only heal when someone wants healing and of course she doesn't--not from you anyway--antichrist that you most obviously are...

The specific tragedy this time is intimately knowing the two extreme poles. Knowing both the real sorrow she might find herself in down the road with him and the joy of authentic living in walking the wounded down the healing pilgrimage. Two counterfactual worlds adjacent one another.

And the tragic powerlessness is overwhelming, in watching her standing on the edge of the Dementor's vortex, being readied for the soul chewing up and spitting out into the void. I know this sorrow, this grief, this monster that lies in the murky waters. I know the countless days of praying for death, just to escape, yet hanging on by a thread.

And so there I was. Caught in the interim between a performance and a funeral. What was the performance? Was it mine? Was it hers? Or was it something else altogether? And who's death was being mourned? It was all too blurry and too looped together, intertwined like the caduceus.

I suppose that is why I found myself sobbing at a performance and singing at a funeral. The funeral felt more beautiful with a healer soul flying into the collective unconscious finally being a bit more free.

While the performance was overwhelmingly sad and heavy with the weight of seeing another soul begin her walk down the suffering path. I wept at the seeming endlessness and loneliness of the narcissistic journey on repeat. I wept at my own healing loneliness and powerlessness in carrying the weight of the world and nobody really giving a damn about it, my own journey doomed to repeat. It was only then that the loss of the great Scott gone hit me. And I began to feel the looming heaviness of the absence of a fellow soul carrier gone elsewhere. And I wished he could weigh in on the goopy mess of it all and still just be a part of the sorting out of all the snakes.  

It's Not

I keep going round and round on the same old circuit.
A wire travels underground to a vacant lot,
where something I can't see interrupts the current.
And shrinks the picture down to a tiny dot.
And from behind the screen,
it can look so perfect.
But it's not.

So here I'm sitting in my car
at the same old stoplight.
I keep waiting for a change,
But I don't know what.
So red turns into green turning into yellow
but I'm just frozen here on the same old spot.
And all I have to do is press the pedal.
But I'm not.
No, I'm not.

Well people are tricky
You can't afford to show
Anything risky
Anything they don't know
The moment you try
Well kiss it goodbye.

So baby kiss me like a drug
Like a respirator.
And let me fall into the dream of the astronaut.
Where I get lost in space
that goes on forever.
And you may call the rest
just an afterthought.
And I believe its you
who could make it better
But its not.
No, its not
No, its not.

                         --Aimee Mann

evil

And this is how I know there is evil in the world.

I think I'm going to interact with him and get a normal human being. And there he is emotionally and psychologically abusing again. And I feel ridiculous for still being affected by it--though this is someone I was married to for 19 yrs....

How is it that I know exactly what he will do... and I'm still affected?

regaining intuition

When will this narcissistic experience not define me? I suspect that is when and where there is healing.

When I'm just my own unique person. Not defined in relation to the man with the mirror at the lake.

Not defined by a reaction to the narcissist, but rather when he becomes inconsequential. Just another puzzle piece on the table that is my life. A part of the whole that has shaped me into a (hopefully) better person. I'm not sure about that, but I am working at that.

I will wander where life takes me. Ushered by intuition. I will and must listen to Her. For she has never actually let me down. It is the narcissist that tried to drive Her away. And made me judge Her, untrustworthy. And so I shall usher Her back. And make space for Her. Allowing Her whims of change to influence me and guide me.

New GF

Tis Spring Break. And my narc is vacation bound to the mountains with his GF. The new one, I might add. Not the old one, he would have to fly to visit. I guess she was too much trouble after the funds to fly to see her dried up. But the One round these parts. The One with a lab named the same as mine... Kinda creepy, I'd say.

I can't believe he told you so soon about her, I said to my kids.

Oh, he didn't tell us, mom. We just figured it out already. He's traveling on vacation with her. In case you don't know, mom, that means something in relationships.

They lecture me now on how to tell if your dad is dating someone without telling you. They school me, as if I don't know already.

And I let them.

And the truth is, I don't tell them of my own schooling of how to tell when someone you love is being unfaithful. How to figure out if the underwear was left by your sister, or another? How to tell if the razor appearing after you were gone for a weekend magically appeared in your shower by accident? How to ferret out why you feel so empty and alone in a 20 year relationship?

Truth be told, I'd rather this. I'd rather little people who love me and want to break it to me gently, tell me of his escapades. 

But, no, contrary to my assumptions, he hasn't told them. They've just grown schooled in the art of figuring out the schemes already. They've grown accustomed to watching the actions and not the words of the narcissist. They know to wait for the behaviors that tell the truth. And this, this is progress.

Because he. He can't.

just one ounce

Every time I think,
I can't believe he's actually being human. There is hope. 

It always turns out in the end, that there is always an angle. Something he is manipulating even if it seems otherwise and I oh-so-readily want to believe it is otherwise.

How? How can he be so?

I keep looking for the redemptive inkling. It must be there. He can't fully be evil. Impossible. 

And every single time, it turns out I get my hopes up for nothing.

I still can't believe such a person exists. I still can't believe I was married to him. I still can't believe, people don't know this. I can't believe there isn't an ounce of caring.

Quest Ions

He questioned Me on the stand. I didn't know what to do. Yes, it was triggering of the PTSD. I froze I think. I'm not sure. Perhaps, I blanked out. I definitely couldn't concentrate. How was it that He got to wield philosophical weapons at me? Well.

He fired his lawyer.

After spending an obscene amount of money on her sophisticated arguments.

After She argued for this date in time, wherein She could be here on His behalf.

She wasn't.

It was only I on the stand being Questioned by He. My Narcissist. Echoing all that has already passed.

I survived, at least.

We shall see.