Rage, Hope and Horses

The knowledge that I haven't actually written anything all summer long looms like a shadow over me. I suspect my absence from the world of electronic testimony isn't solely due to a lack of free time. I suspect it also may stem from fearing what would come out if I flung open my personal "Pandora's box", releasing words and sentiments that might be too toxic or too dark to process properly in a single blog entry. While I have experienced great moments of joy in the last few months, I have also had my share of doubt, rage, disillusion and disappointments...and given my predication of writing without self-censorship or apology...I thought it best to abstain until I had a better perspective overall. Or, and this is probably the most true reason, the drive to write something became as unbearable to ignore as my worry of offending some people with what I had to say.

This summer has provided many opportunities to discover things about myself and about the people in my life and its given me a lot of unexpected highs and, unfortunately some pretty big fucking lows too. I have felt uncharacteristically isolated and lonely, but have also found incredible joy and comfort in the re-discovery of old friendships. I have felt the support and connection to some family, but also battled with rejection and abandonment from others. It has been a summer of a hard learning curve, one that has often brought me stress and frustration, but also given me brilliant moments of feeling accomplished and refreshed. At times I have felt both like the Phoenix, as well as the smoldering pile of ash.

This morning, as I let the dogs out, I felt the promise of Autumn in the cool predawn air. I felt myself beginning to write in my head, found my mind going through the mental dance of matching phrasing to feeling. I'd held the words at bay too long and now they were coming, rushing forward like the end of summer. So, here I sit, wondering where to I should begin to start catching myself up.

I supposed I should start with what is at the surface, the arsenal I have at the ready. As it frequently tends to be, the top emotion in my mental totem these days is frustration. I am frustrated with my middle-aged body and its inability to do the things I ask it too. I am often too tired, too sweaty, too unmotivated to do even one of those HITT workouts that I so desperately need. I am frustrated by my 22+ year career which seems to be going exactly nowhere very quickly. I am frustrated by my limitations and even more so, the doubts I have about being a good mom, a better wife.

My level of frustration these days is matched only by my anger. I think I give in to rage more than I should. I think some days I get up and put on a "rage coat", and it feels too heavy for my personal climate. I know I should shuck the rage, toss it off and enjoy life more but some days it feels like its in my bloodstream, coursing beneath my skin, leaving me hot and fevered. I find inspiration in anger. I have written so many letters this summer in fits of rage. They are beautifully rabid works, overflowing with toxic righteousness and resilience. I sometimes love the "enraged and wounded" version of me best, as she writes with a firestarter vengeance that both scares and excites me. I haven't sent those letters. As angry as I have been, I haven't decided to torch all my lost cities to the ground yet.

It hasn't been all been about anger and frustration this summer though. I've reached really far outside my comfort zones and felt rewarded for the effort. I shed an old role or two and taken on some new responsibilities. In a decision that some still consider highly controversial, I became a horse owner. I am discovering, rather simultaneously, that I know next to nothing about owning a horse and also that owning a horse has gifted me with such unexpected peace and joy. It is a wonderfully perplexing dichotomy.

It is hard, so hard, to learn the basics about something so foreign to me. I struggle, a lot. I'm terrified more often than I care admit to myself. I sometimes laugh out loud about how clueless I am...but I also have those moments when I do something right on my own for the first time and I feel like a total rock star. Truth is, I love how hard I have to work at it and when I feel like I've learned something, the sense of accomplishment is something my life has been sorely missing for a long time. I am filled with gratitude for the people who give so freely of their time and knowledge to be our patient teachers and guides on our journey of horsemanship. The truth is that while we got Roo for my daughter, our painted pony has captured so much of my own heart too. The time I spend with Roo and my daughter is like balm on all my sad and wounded places. I imagine in many ways, he will become a special kind of muse for me in the years to come.

Lastly, for I'm nearly at the end of my blogging time allotment today... joy has also been a consistent feature of this summer. Watching my daughter blossom into a fierce and funny beauty under the blue skies and sunshine, has been my greatest blessing. She is coming into herself in delightful ways from making new friends at camps to discovering her own tastes and styles. She has shunned dresses and headbands in favor of shorts and anything sporty. She loathes anything pink. She frequently hijacks my playlist to blast Queen or Imagine Dragons and spends her free time face-timing her friends and snuggling with her dog. My daughter still holds my hand, still wants to fall asleep between her father and I whenever we allow it, and doesn't pull away when I reach to hug her or mess with her hair. She believes in "armless" hugs for everyone but Gramma Boop and her Dad, but most of the time still manages to remember her manners in most situations. In her long legs and sea green eyes , I get hints of the astoundingly beautiful a woman she will be one day. In her boundless laugh and quirky smile, I see the fun and lively teenager she will soon become. I am, as I have been since her birth, incredibly amazed by all that she is and all I know she will do in this life.

There have been many times this summer that I have wandered out onto the back deck and watched my husband mowing the lush green yard. His legs are wrapped around his tractor and he looks lost in his task and in the music in his headphones. He looks like a man in his element and watching him, I've felt wonderfully blessed with him and with our home. I have sat in the twilight of a July evening and watched the bats flying circuits among the high, swaying trees, and felt humbled and grateful in my soul. I have walked the acres of my sister's farm as the sun was setting, felt its retreating warmth on my back, listened to her donkey braying for his dinner and thought to myself....how life could be so simply and so perfectly beautiful in some moments.

Work Ethics & Truth Telling

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
DAY 1665 July 9, 2018
Prompt: “Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings.” George Eliot
Why is telling the exact truth so difficult? Your thoughts…{/i}


Telling the exact truth takes a lot of courage, because truth can be painfully hard to hear for some. I have learned valuable lessons about family and loyalty through some of my own truth-telling, lessons that still leave marks...like wounds you thought healed that suddenly flare up and fester. I have always written without self-censorship and while the old adage may say, "the truth will set you free", it will also often isolate you and leave you exposed. That is the risk and one I have come to understand too well. These days however, if I feel pressed to blog or write about something to process it or just to better understand my own perceptions, I find myself taking a pause. I don't want to write purely from a place of anger anymore. I give myself a few days then I try to articulate my feelings, try to express myself as candidly as possible. In the past I have gone back and re-read a piece and thought that it sounded more angry than I might have intended it to. I don't ever want to totally white-wash the anger out, or censor the truth but I also don't want to lose myself completely in it either. I run the risk of being angry a lot, of turning my writing into a tool to lash out rather than what it should be, a tool to process my emotions and feelings. So...I take a step back, I take a breath...I "examine my words well" and make sure that what I am committing to electronic ink is the most honest version of myself that I can, the person who doesn't give in solely to the hurt and the anger, a person who reflects rather than simply reacts. One last word about truth...it is always 100% perspective - what you believe is your truth is personal and you should never have to apologize for how you feel or how you perceive someone or something.

"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 2058: July 9, 2018
Prompt: Work Ethic. Write whatever you want about this subject. If you have a favorite quote share it.

I have been working for most of my adult life, starting pretty early on in my father's business. I was the kid that always wanted to go to work with him, taking on menial tasks...more of a mascot than any real help around the office. Over time though, that interest developed into a career which as times, can be more consuming than might be advisable. It is what I grew up around though, my father was never really not working...
There wasn't a family vacation where we didn't spend some time standing outside a phone booth in the blazing hot Florida sun, or after the invention of cell phones, following my Dad around like little ducks as he talked with the office with one of those big, white, early Motorolla's pressed to his ear. As a business owner, my father was always working, rarely inaccessible in those early years. It is only now, after decades of near constant work, he is taking more true breaks, he actually feels like he can step back and let others step in and handle things more. Still, the moment something heats up, or goes wrong...he's right back. He is hands-on, even at the age and level of success where he could be retiring, he rarely shows signs of slowing down. I'm not sure my father is the retiring type...he's worked his whole life, how does one turn that off? To me that is work ethic...to give what's needed and more to the job and when it is your own business, to be there for it when it needs you most. I'd like to think the man raised me the same way, to understand that kind of dedication to the work.

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Those Angry Days of Living with HS

There is a fury inside of me today that I am trying to quell with seemingly copious amounts of Motrin and coffee.  Today it feels like my pain is more than just topical in nature.  There is hot anger running through me and this anger feels like a new, unwelcomed component of dealing with my HS.  I’m beyond irritable. I am unapologetically short-tempered and intolerant. 

Since my diagnosis in my early thirties, I have lived by the rules of prevention and pain management. I have gathered what remedies and suggestions I could from the forums and tried not to be frustrated by the lack of real medical support. My dermatologist called it an “orphan disease”, abandoned largely by the medical profession. Until you are dealing with an agonizing flare up, the true nature of that term may allude you. What it really means is that there is nothing out there to treat you, no cream or ointment, not oral medication to drive the painful boils back down once they erupt. There is nothing you can take medically to control the HS, to keep it locked in remission. There is no cure. You just have to deal…deal with the pain and with the knowledge that it can take you down at any time, triggered by stress, by weight gain or just by the whims of a stalking disease that resides in your genes.  

Most days I avoid this tide of anger and frustration by counting my blessings.  I believe that I am one of the lucky ones.  My HS outbreaks so far have been limited to my upper body and with the exception of the one in my neck, and my resulting scars are largely invisible to others. This is not the case with many people. HS can be severely disfiguring.  The boils that erupt, those cysts that become infected and eventually rupture cause bad scarring.  I have seen images of young men and women with puckered tracks of scarlet scar tissue running down both sides of their groin.  It is this most intimate invasion of the disease that leads to isolation and depression for so many. 

Most days, I remember those images and the stories of the people in the forums, and I feel ashamed of the anger. Today though, I’m feeling furious with my body, with its inexplicable ability to manufacture these horrible, ugly nodules that burn and throb and swell to an impossible size.  Today I want to scream. Instead, I stock up on the large size band aids and take the antibiotics that will only speed me closer to the inevitable rupture of my skin and the formation of another scar.  The antibiotics don’t make me feel better, in fact, the doxycycline tears up my stomach but there is still that small chance that it will stop the inflammation before it progresses to that awful end stage.  There is a chance, according to my epically hopeful primary care doctor, that it may attack the inflammation and help the cysts drain and alleviate before rupture – saving me from more scarring and the general unpleasantness that comes with those ruptures.  If she can hope, I suppose I can try to be hopeful as well. Hopeful and less angry...

With all of the truths I have come to understand about HS, I am most thankful for the diagnosis. Being able to give a name to the affliction I suffered from for so long in the dark, was honestly the best thing.  With diagnosis came the opportunity to explore the research, the remedies and treatments that were available to me. Being diagnosed suddenly gave me the important reasons for this very unreasonable disease. If you think you or someone you know might be suffering from HS, this is the best, most informative and straight forward site I have come across:

 https://www.nobsabouths.com/what-is-hidradenitis-suppurativa

If you suspect you may be suffering from HS, see a doctor, start with getting diagnosed. Find what works for you, because it’s different for everyone. Give yourself those angry, furious days…but always go back to hope. 

Shame to Rage and Viola's Composition

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
DAY 1137 –April 24, 2017
Prompt: Do you think that shame can be a trigger for anger? How?

Shame is a crippling emotion to live under. It can silence you, it can crush your spirit and marginalize your soul. I lived with shame like that for years during my first marriage, hiding the truth of my life from everyone that mattered. There were so many times in the aftermath of a violent episode, when I would be sitting among the shattered and broken things and I would think, "this is not the daughter my father raised." I would break open all over again thinking about how disappointed he would be that I allowed this to become my life. I was ashamed that I had fallen in love with a man who cursed and spat and hit. I was ashamed that even after that love had been crushed dead under the constant fear of sudden violence, I still could not leave.

I was ashamed at how cautious I had become, how complacent, how silent. I was ashamed of knowing those dark things, like the way passion can bloom into rage with a single word or all the ways a person can hurt you without leaving visible bruises that tell the world what you are. I knew shame intimately. I wore it like a heavy coat. In the end, however, it was the shame that saved me. That day, the last day he ever put his hands on me, the shame had rose up inside me like a tide and that tide carried me away. 

The argument had escalated, as it always did. My cell phone had been smashed to bits on the floor at my feet, my glasses knocked from my face and I could see one lens was shattered. He had my car keys clenched in one fist and he was shaking them at me, telling me once again, that I was stupid and useless. The side of my face was throbbing where he'd hit me open handed. I made a grab for my car keys and he had shoved me back hard, with the palms of both hands. The momentum sent me reeling back across the linoleum. I crashed into and then partially through the glass kitchen door. I had struggled to my feet, shaking glass from my hair and clothes, checking my exposed flesh for cuts, expecting I think, to have been shredded by the exploding glass. Miraculously I was unhurt. He had rushed to me, his dark eyes filled with concern, his mouth spewing nonsense. He hadn't meant to hurt me. He never meant to hurt me.

Standing there, in a pool of glass, listening to him vomiting his panicked excuses, I felt something shift in me. For the first time the shame gave way to something else, a white, hot anger. That anger rose up inside me, like some dark and raging sister in my soul. I literally saw red and I charged at him, tossing him to the ground and wrenching my car keys from his fist. The dynamics had instantly shifted between us. When he tried to get up, I shoved him back down with a strength I didn't know I possessed. "Stay down" I told him, my voice dripping with such venom that it frightened me. I feared if he had tried to move at that moment, I would have killed him with my bare hands. I told him I would kill him if he tried to touch me. I felt like I was on fire. I rushed to my car, wanting only to get away from him...not because I was afraid of him but because I was afraid of all that anger coursing through me. I was afraid of what I could do to him with all that rage.

That day was the last time he ever touched me. Shame had been my jailer for a long time, but it had also been my ally in freeing myself from that life. I think it must have just reached a point of critical mass when the need to speak out, to stand up and to live a different life became so much stronger than the need to keep it hidden, to hide behind the shame.

"Blogging Circle of Friends "
Prompt: Write a story or poem using the following words: piano, study, gaudy, ghost, bewitch, blushing, tongue, plan

I watched her for, concealed behind the partially opened door. She was sitting at the piano, her back ramrod straight and her shoulders rigid. Her thick black hair had been hastily pulled back into a heavy braid and it hung down her back, bisecting her thin frame. She bent forward to study the sheet of music in front of her, the tip of her tiny pink tongue pinched between her teeth as she concentrated. Then, Viola began to play. Her delicate, bird-like hands flew over the keys and the music began to fill the space between us.

The composition was one of her own design, crafted to challenge her but also to bewitch the listeners with its peaking crescendos and beautiful rolling valleys. She moved with the music, the heavy braid rocked back and forth like a thick rope. Her momentum caused the gaudy necklace of big glass beads to sway on her chest like a pendulum keeping time with the beat. I held my breath, felt the tears began to well. It was like watching a ghost. Voila played with the same impassioned abandon that her mother had. Watching the girl evoked a vivid memory and in its wake, a visceral pang of loss.

Viola's playing slowed, the notes softly fading as she reached the end of her composition. I had thoughtlessly began clapping before the final note had faded. Voila was startled by the sudden interruption. She turned to look at me, blushing crimson with wide, surprised eyes. It had not been the plan to eavesdrop on her practice. Viola was, as her mother had been, uncomfortable with act of performing. She recovered a bit when she saw it had only be me. She gave me shy smile and rose from the piano.