Another bit of writing from about 15 years ago that I added to today.

New Lebanon, Ohio is a small town.  Small enough that you know everyone and everyone knows you.  To walk from one side of the town to the other only took an hour or two depending on how fast you walked.  At least that is how I remember it.  There are more churches than bars and at one time we only had one grocery store.  In the 60’s the high school basketball team, the Dixie Greyhounds, won the state championship and there is still a sign at the city limits to let you know that.  The local hang out when I was in high school was the dairy queen because the Toot which used to be the hang out was gone.  The only interesting thing to do when you became old enough to drive was to drive the loop.  We would start at the edge of town at the Dairy Queen after we hung out long enough to be told “You kids need to find something to do besides taking up all this space”.  Then we would decide who was going to ride with who and we began the nightly ritual of driving up and down Main Street.  Loop around the Dairy Queen, past the High School and the water tower, into the downtown where the library and the bank were, past the only bar in town (nicknamed the crack) and down to the dentist’s office to loop the parking lot and start again.  New Lebanon was known as Magic City when I was in high school because the only thing to do was drive the loop and get high.  Off from the main street all the streets led to the housing developments which we called tracts.  Houses upon houses that all look alike: rectangular, brick with two car garages and two trees in the front yard.  Each one looked slightly different depending of the personality of the people who lived there.  Our neighbor had a bird bath in the front yard and used white rocks to fill up the spaces around the bushes.  Our house had black bark around the bushes and black shutters.  Some houses had fences and others didn’t.  For the most part they all looked alike from the outside. 

Our house inside never seemed to change.  I always wondered what other houses were like inside.  We had the same furniture until I was 17 and moving out.  Our living room had green curtains with plastic backing.  There was a huge dark wood bookshelf with the Encyclopedia Britannia from 1965 and books my dad collected from book clubs by mail.  There was a gold couch that was worn from years of my dad sleeping on it all the time.  Two end tables with nothing on them but a lamp and a coffee table with a giant family bible on it that had nothing written in it.   There were two things on the white walls of the living room, a huge mirror that was framed with gold grapes and a picture of a seashore that was distorted and dark.  The pictures were on opposite walls so when you looked in the mirror you saw the distorted seashore behind you.  The carpet was green and sculpted.  I hated green.

The den was bare also.  We had one picture on the wall above the leather couch; it was a picture of musical instruments which were distorted and black with lots of red in the picture.  The picture just looked mad and confused.  The couch was this horrid black thing that you would sweat and stick to in the summer.  In front of the couch there was a coffee table my sister carved a picture of big bird into, it had a small drawer in it that contained nothing.  At the end of the couch was a cabinet stereo that had sliding drawers and was full of records by the Irish Rovers, Janis Joplin, Glen Campbell, Percy Sledge and other artists that I became familiar with over the years.  At the end of the room in the corner facing the couch and the kitchen was a black and white console TV with a knob for channeling.  The only remote in the house at that time was my sister and I.  Off to one side was my father’s black lazy chair, no one dared to sit in it except him.  He used to scrape his feet with a paring knife while he sat in it so there was always this fear that I was going to touch that dead skin if I went near it.  The carpet from the living room also spilled into this room and was the same boring green, the curtains? Green.  We did have a fish tank for a short time but I accidently killed the fish.  I had seen my dad putting ice cubes in the tank when we got it and so I thought that was something you were supposed to do.  The next time the babysitter was with us I told her we had to put ice in the tank and all the fish died that night.  My dad called me the fish killer for weeks. 

In the kitchen we had a big oval table by the glass sliding patio doors.  It had big soft wheels and the material on the chairs was almost the color of my skin and was some kind of fake leather.  There was never a centerpiece on the table.  It was always bare.  We did not have placemats or napkins.  The kitchen had nothing on the walls and the counter only had canisters for sugar and flour.  They were silver with black lids.  Our stove and refrigerator were avocado and the fridge had a drawer on the bottom.  The Washer and dryer was also avocado.  It seemed so bare in there, so bare that if you talked too loud it would echo. 

Now I decorate every inch of my life.  I cover up the tables with flowers and Knick knacks and cover the walls with pictures and the trappings of my life.  I string lights from the ceilings and around the windows.  I am afraid of the bareness.  Today I live far away from that place of emptiness but on days when I miss my family I get in my car and I drive from my house to the grocery store down the road and make the loop through the parking lot and then come back down my street and make the loop over and over until my heart calms down again. 

This is something I wrote years ago about the color Red

Red….

Red is the color of my daughter who is a new mother

Red like the color of blood, the color we wash into this world with

Her lips as red as roses, red seems to radiate from her every pore

Caliente splashed across the chest of her shirt

She is hot, vibrant alive with the energy of motherhood

Red bleeds and burns within the chest of the young and the young at heart

When I think of red I think of the dark red of lust and swollen bruised lips of passion, the red raised stripes of my lovers back

I fantasize of red heels, red lipstick smeared on flushed red skin

I think of red painted on the stomach of a very pregnant woman

The red of a swollen vulva ready to give birth, ready to receive passion, red womb, red heart, red earth

I hear the goddesses of fire, Pele and Bridget calling for the pulsing blood and the passion of their followers, dancing around the blazing fire on the night of the red moon. 

I smell cinnamon, red hots and red wax lips

I remember blood ties, blood relations, blood thicker than water, menstruation and Phoenix rising 

Red nails, red hair, red light

In eighth grade whispered from girl to girl “you can’t wear red nail polish it’s for whores”

Eyes red from crying, hands red from clapping, red lines from sleeping with your hand to your face.

Skin pulsing with angry red blisters

I see signs in my mind, stop, danger, death, go no further.

Anger is blazing from my eyes

Red streams of hot lava flow from my mouth….

Red

I have been feeling some sadness and regret but I have to just let it go and move on. I am determined to be grateful for my life. I am truly blessed. Those who really love me are here and will not abandon me.

I am determined to work on my future and prepare myself to retire from my full time job in 4 years. Part of this is working on a book and my plan to become a traveling tarot reader. I also have a dream to have a seasonal tarot and tea house here in Rochester where we would bring in speakers and have retreats. In preparation for all this I am going to be making more posts about the tarot. I want to look at each card in relation to my life and experiences. As a reader for over 30 years my interpretations of the cards have changed many times. I learn something new almost daily. I believe it is important to stay open to new perspectives . Today I start in the most obvious place, The Fool.

The Fool is the zero card. I was taught that the fool walks through the story of the tarot. Story telling is a wonderful way to weave a reading together. If I think of the person I am reading for as the fool of the deck and I read the cards thinking of where they are in the journey it helps me to tell a strong story. I have found that people relate to a story much easier than pieced together symbols that may not mean anything to them. The fool depictions are different in many decks. My favorite deck for reading is the Robin Wood Tarot. I have collected many decks over the years and occasionally I will find a deck that fits well for a particular person I read regularly for. So I am always looking for decks that I resonate with.

Right now I am at that 0 point of my life, the fool, the place of new beginnings. For many months I was stuck at the 10 of Swords. I was desperately trying to pull swords out of myself. I just wanted the pain I was feeling to be over. I fought the grief and was holding all kinds of anger and bitterness. I was damaging myself. I would get to a point where I thought that maybe it was finally over and then something would happen that I perceived as hurtful and it would bring it all back up again. I had that experience very recently. I was shocked at how much still remained and how in a moment all the ground I had seemed to gain was lost. But in reality that is not true. I am standing on the cliff right now with my little dog and my bags packed and what happened? I looked back. In looking back I got lost for a few days. Our brains cannot tell the difference between something happening in reality and what we are telling it is happening so it sets off all the alarms and our body reacts with chemicals to protect us. It feels awful. I am learning to breath and take the time to think these things though. I did not do that with this most recent incident and ended up saying some things I regret. My looking back caused me to question everything. It is time for me to take the step off the cliff. I cannot see exactly where I am headed at the moment but I have some ideas. If we wait on the cliff for a map or for exact instructions we may end up spending our whole lives there. In fact there is a danger that we may just sit down there with our back to the future. I do not want to do that. I am ready to move on and to stop trying to change something I can no longer change. Today I had someone say something that I knew already in my head but I need to connect more to my heart. If we focus on what we have instead of what we have lost or we think we should have we will be much happier people. When we are able to see things in this way we can move on. So …what I am grateful for?

1. My home which is a true refuge and place of love.
2. My consort who loves me in a way I have never experienced before.
3. My close friends who have stood by me through all of this.
4. My life experience which helps me to make better choices and to help others who are on a similar path.
5. My job which allows me to be creative and to also be able to financially live a good life and help those I love.
6. The lessons I have been presented with.
7. My teachers who have both been people who have been loving and warm and those who broke my heart.
8. My heart, it has been broken many times but is still open, loving and empathetic.

There are many other things I am grateful for and I will remember those things when my inner critique, the squirrel committee, starts trying to drown out the positives in my life.

I welcome the fool role in my life right now. I am ready to start over. I must decide if I still have things in my bag for this journey that I no longer need and put those aside. It is time to move forward.

I am going to start a regular serious of posts about the Tarot.  I have been reading tarot for many years now and it has become very important in my life.  I have collected some interesting decks over the years and I pick my decks based on the art and symbolism.  I have found that not every deck works for me.  I will be posting at least once a week about a different card or in some cases more than one card.  I hope you will enjoy my insight and what these cards mean to me in addition to traditional meaning. 

I will also be making some posts about ritual.  As a pagan High Priestess I have been providing ritual for over 20 years.  I love writing and providing ritual for my community.  I can also answer any questions you may have about ritual if you have any. 

I am looking forward to posting on some other topics.  I will keep posting about my journey but you will find some other posts among them.  Please comment if you enjoy my blog.  I love your input. 

I have been doing really good.  I have started to have ritual at my house again.  I have renewed friendships that I had not been putting enough energy into.  I hosted a one year anniversary housewarming with my housemate.  We had all the kids and grand kids over for a thanksgiving dinner.   After almost 6 years my divorce is about to be final.  I have the most wonderful housemate in the world.  I have a great dog.  I have wonderful friends who have helped me through a very dark time in my life.  I have a companion and consort that makes me extremely happy.  I am helping to lead a women’s group based on empowerment.   My job is better at the moment and I have some great vacations coming up in the next few months.  In the midst of all this wonderful stuff I have been fighting off that black cloud that whispers “you are not good enough” “those people hurt your purposely”  “they just used you”.  I see it out of the corner of my eye sometimes.  Other times it sneaks up on me in the shower and I end up having all kinds of thoughts about what I did wrong and how I was wronged.  It gets so bad sometimes that I start having terrible revenge fantasies.  I am told this is normal.  I hate normal.  I don’t want to think about lighting candles and screaming curses.  I don’t want to imagine someone crying and being hurt as badly as I was.  Deep down I only want happiness for others.  So why….why am I struggling so? 

How far does this go back?  I think part of my growth is to figure out where this deep self loathing and anger that is trying to come out really comes from.  I truly feel like I have an infected wound that is constantly oozing awful smelly green stuff that I keep trying to cover with a band aid.  The thought of cleaning it out scares the shit out of me.  My fear of rejection certainly goes way back.  It seems that as soon as I trust someone that is when the other shoe drops.  I have a huge fear of that other shoe.   As long as I can remember I have been standing watching the back of someone I care about who is walking away and I am wondering…what I did wrong?..   But did I really do anything wrong?  In some cases, yes.  In other cases, no.  I cannot lump them all together.  I was a troubled teenager.  It started when I was around 11 actually before I even became a teenager.  I am not sure exactly why.  I can say some of it came from being part of a religion that taught me that women were not as important and you should submit to the men in your life.  That teaching caused me a lot of pain and hurt for many years.  I never thought I could say no to men.  I was manipulated to do things I didn’t want to and then shamed for being sexual.  I was called a whore, slut, bitch by the men who used me and the women who hated me.   I thought I was doing what was expected of me instead I was being used and then judged by both men and women.  Several times I completely trusted and felt comfortable with men who should have protected and mentored me only to have them put their hands on me the first time we were alone.  Instead of protecting me my parents shamed me.  My mother called me names and my father turned a blind eye.  My first boyfriend was physically abusing me.  My father found out about it and called me into the living room and said “You tell that boy if I ever hear of him doing something like that again I will take his head off”.  Me, tell the boy who was torturing me at school and at public events in front of people, who spit on me and raped me several times…tell him what my dad had just said.  I felt like I had done something wrong.  I never told that boy and he kept abusing me into high school.  This scarred me greatly.  I still have a great fear of being alone with men unless I know them well.  Men I really love I cannot be sexual with.  I can only be completely sexual with men who are emotionally unavailable.   I feel safe with very few people.  At this moment I can tell you of the men in my life I feel safe with my housemate, my consort, my son and a couple of men that have proved over time that they are truly my friends.  I have some very close women friends that I trust as well.  I feel lucky to have them.  Some of them were with me last year when I was so wounded I just wanted to end it.   Others live far away and have kept in contact with me over the years. 

So now I find myself in a place that is confusing and I can barely see.  I know this is the part when I am struggling to finally throw off the cocoon or the skin I have been trying to shed for the past year.  I don’t remember much of anything from December 15 until almost the end of the summer this past year.  I felt like someone reached in and put their fingers in my heart like a bowling ball and just kept twisting it.  In some ways I should count this as a blessing.  If I would have had the energy to act on the anger of all these years I would probably be in jail right now.  I stay away from certain places not because I will hurt …it is because I have overwhelming feelings of rage.  I know for a fact this is not about the persons it is directed at right now.  It is all the rage that has been building since that first slap, rape, rejection, or betrayal by not only men but women.  I want to be rid of this anger I have been carrying for so many years.  I want to lance my heart and clean it out completely.  What is stopping me?  That is what I am working on now.  I need to let go completely.  I have said for years I want to write a book and I have put it off because it hurts to write about all the betrayal and pain I have experienced.  It is important for me to say that I also caused others pain.  In my own pain I lashed out, I hurt people, I did things I am not proud of and I was not a great parent.  I regret all of that.  Today I am lucky that I have children who have grown up to be wonderful people who still love me despite what they had to live through.  I hope that it helps them to be better parents and I see them being way better parents than I ever was. 

I need to stop right here and say something important.

I take responsibility for every single thing I have done.  I am not standing here pointing fingers and saying that every wrong thing I have done is the fault of others.  I made my choices and I know in many instances I did the wrong thing.  I own that.  I still have days where I think about ending things.  Luckily I have a safety plan and people to talk to.  I still have days I just want to lock myself away and give up…go live in the woods and forget everything…but we all know that is not reality.  I have a calling and I want to dedicate myself to that calling.  I just have to keep reminding myself  I am worthy of the friendship and love of the people who have stuck by me. 

So here I am facing some anniversaries and fighting the feelings I am having.  I can’t fight anymore.  I have to just let the feelings flow over me and embrace my shadow.  It hurts but I believe that with time it will only get better.  I am grateful for the lessons I have learned this past year and most of all I am grateful that I can see who my true friends are at this moment and one of them…is me.  

I am practicing gratitude.

Every morning when I brush my teeth I speak three things I am grateful for and why I am grateful for them.  In addition I am sending one message a day to a different person to tell them why I am grateful to have them in my life.

Our brains are trained to constantly scan for the negative.  It takes work to be positive.  I have had way too much negative in my life for too long.  I want to change that.   I will be reporting back here on how it is going.

Things are going good for me right now.  I have made the choice to live my life doing what makes me happy.  If you are going to judge me for my life choices I don’t want to hear it. It’s my life and I have lived too much of it pleasing others.   I can’t live that way anymore.

The box of darkness I was handed last year is on the floor empty.  The contents are no longer scary.  I can look at them one by one and be reminded of the lessons I have learned over the past year and a half.  When I first opened that box I was overcome with darkness and sadness and I let it overtake my heart.  I was in a dark place for many months.  Today it is hard to believe how far I have come.  I have grown in so many positive ways.  I have wonderful people in my life.  Some of these friends I gained throughout this process.  I never dreamed I would have friends who would just come and sit with me on the couch or sleep next to me just so I could rest.  One in particular has become a sister of my heart.  I am so incredibly blessed.  So universe thank you for this box of darkness.

I have returned to work and things are going great.

I feel like my life has started over.  I am motivated and happy.  I no longer think about things that were ruling my life for the past year.  I am over and done with it.  It has been a long road but I have learned so much about myself.  I am grateful for the lessons.

Once this first week of work is over I will start blogging about my new life…. It’s a new day.

It finally happened and it was like someone walked  into the room and turned on a light.  All the pain and longing I was struggling with is gone.  I think it happened for a couple of reasons.

1. Being able to share my heart in a meaningful way and feeling I had been heard and respected and hearing positive words in return.

2. Making the choice to go off a medication my doctor had put me on 1 year and 4 months ago when all this anxiety and angst started.

The talk was a wonderful thing and I am glad I did it.  It made me realize that things happened for a reason and I am not less than because I am no longer in that relationship.  I hold no grudges or anger any longer.  I have moved on, finally.

The medication issue is something that I have struggled with for a long time.  For years I was totally against any psychiatric medications because of what I learned in my college courses and what I had seen first hand.  In addition I did some of my own research and I was not impressed by a science that is not exact in anyway when it comes to these particular medications.  When I was in so much emotional pain that I just could not function I gave in and agreed to try something.  It worked for a few months and gave me the courage to end my relationship but then it went terribly wrong.  I began having intrusive racing thoughts of killing myself.  I could not sleep and I cried all the time.  I blamed it all on the breakup.  Yes, I was mourning but this went way beyond that and I could not understand why I was suffering so much.  I felt embarrassed and I was full of anger and resentment.  I was sharing some but hiding so much more.  This is not my normal personality.  I am a forgiving person who has never been one to carry a grudge.  I chalked it up to me finally getting in touch with my inner warrior and working on anger but that is not what was happening.  This was pure hatred that after awhile had no rhyme or reason.  So one morning I got up and decided that my medication was no longer helping me and I stopped.  I do not recommend this way of stopping.  It was not a fun withdrawal and I was sick for weeks but then it was like the light switched on….the racing suicidal thoughts stopped and I was no longer obsessed in my head with thoughts of regret, hatred and revenge.

About two months before this my doctor had also given me something to help me sleep which I continued until a week ago.   I made the choice to discontinue it and use CBD and other natural means which seemed to be working very well so far but this past week has been scary as hell.  The drug I was taking for sleep was Lorazepam.  I would not recommend this drug to anyone.  It is the strongest and most dangerous benzo.  I had been telling my psychiatrist for months I never wanted to take a benzo and when he gave me this drug he made me promise that I would not look it up because I am super sensitive to drugs and he was afraid I would have symptoms just reading about it.  I was desperate for sleep so I trusted him.  If I would have broken that promise I would have immediately have known that I could not take this drug even for a short period of time.  I took it for a little over a month and I did sleep but drugs are not a long term answer for me.  I stopped one week ago.  I had no idea that such a short time on the drug would bring on such a strong reaction from my body.   Within 24 hours I was sick.   I was dizzy when I moved at all, headaches, body aches, sweating, nausea and my brain felt like it was crawling and shocking me.  I could not sleep and my ears rang constantly.  It has gotten better day by day but I am still having issues.  Yesterday I got dizzy and the next thing I remember is my granddaughter Lizzy yelling to her sister Lilli that I had fallen.   I was ok, but shook up.  I am super pissed about this.  I will never take another psychiatric drug under any circumstances.  Some people may feel upset and defensive reading this but this is my experience and I am not judging anyone else for taking them.  I know this much for sure.  If you have been on them long term do not try to just quit.  I have read many articles about them and people die from withdrawal sometimes.  It is not something to mess around with.   I am having withdrawal but long term use withdrawal is the reason some people end up on heroin or other drugs.  I truly believe that 100 years from now they will look back at this time and shake their heads at the “cures” that were handed out.

So where am I now.  I feel like I have woken up from a long nightmare.  I feel hopeful again.  I cannot believe I came so close to taking my own life.  I have a bright future ahead of me no matter how long that may be.  I am grateful for my life and those who have stood by me.  I am returning to work next Tuesday and I am looking forward to it.  I feel I have so much to live for.