Cracks in the Foundation

Some days I am surprised by the hurt that still resides inside me.  One minute I am going about my life, living it as best I can.  Then I am blindsided by something small that cracks the veneer. I am caught off guard when the most innocuous comment rips off the tiniest corner of my heart and causes me to bleed that toxin of disappointment and resentment again...that ripe, black cocktail I thought I had finally drained.

Days like this I wonder if our wounded places ever really heal?  We tell ourselves that we have overcome, we have risen above the trespasses against us.  We have constructed a life we live in truth and we can no longer be dragged under the pain of our past. Then, you find out its all still inside you, like something insidious crouching in the corners of your soul.  In that moment, you understand that damage can never be undone, only built upon.  It will always be with you, forever weakening your foundation.

I spent a lot of time traveling in Mexico when I was younger. I visited all the typical tourist places and a few that were decidedly more off the beaten path.  It was the churches that made the most impact on me. I learned that many of Mexico's churches, from the extravagant, gold-trimmed cathedrals to the rustic village chapels, were built on top of indigenous temple and ruins. When missionaries moved across Mexico and began to convert the native tribes and nations, it was common for the new churches to be built directly on top of the tribal holy sites.  It was as if these  missionaries felt they could best eradicate the old deities and pagan beliefs by driving them into the ground.  They thought that by burying them under the shiny new promises of their christian churches and their new, benevolent God, they would cease to exist for the people.

It always struck me these missionaries, bent on converting the people to the new faith, failed to see what they were really doing.  Instead of re-writing the narrative, maybe they were instead, forever trapping the past in the foundations of the future.  In one place, far off the typical tour, one old church's foundation had begun to crumble and the earth had begun yield to the corners of the old pyramid lying underneath.  In one section of the church, the ancient bricks had even been driven up through the floorboards. It struck me that those ruins were not gone, those gods and beliefs, not forgotten. It was all still there, residing under the feet of the believers.  The old gods might all just be waiting, bidding their time to be excavated and brought back again.

It is days like these that I think about those old ruins.   I feel like that sometimes, like that church.  I feel like my shiny life with all its promises and personal gains and achievements, might have just been built on an old temple of wounds.  I wonder if it is there still, just waiting, and slowly poisoning my foundation one tiny, black crack at a time.

Legacy of Words & Finding Hope

"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 2097 August 16, 2018
size:5}" “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there." ~ Ray Bradbury
Do you agree or disagree? If so what will you leave behind?

Without question, I will leave my daughter my words.

I have, it seems, always been writing in my life but the moment my daughter became the seed in my soul, she also became my muse. I have written about the joy of expecting her delivery, the trials of being a new mother and struggling to find balance as a working mom. I have written about the incredibly vulnerability you feel bringing a life into the world and of the fierce and all-consuming love that makes you both terribly afraid and immeasurably happy all at once. I have written about my daughter's growth, about her amazing milestones, our battles and all those sweet moments that made my heart melt.

I continue to write about her, marking her years with all the insights I can about who she is and what she is like at her various stages and ages. Her aggravating love of slime is forever immortalized in my my blogs, as is the lovely character of her laughter and the summer she fell in love with horses. I try to capture all her burgeoning beauty, grace and personality that seems to come at a rapid fire pacing I feel I can barely keep up with. My hope is that one day she can read through all my entries, all my stories and blogs and see how I saw her at age 3, age 7, age 18...and that this might tell her something about herself, about the woman she has become and most importantly, about how she was the absolute world to the woman who raised her.

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
Day 1703 August 16, 2018
Prompt: Hope.
I had hope. It wasn't much hope but it was a little. Then it turned out to have a thousand pieces, Scattering it in all directions. Hope for the best, expect the worst. When is the last time you felt all hope was lost but things got better?

There have been many moments when I have felt hope scattered around me like so much broken glass. There were times when the darkness was so close to pulling me down that it seemed I could not draw enough breathe into my lungs to live another second for myself. Even in those moments, I must still have held onto hope because I did breathe. I did find a way to get back on my feet. I think I wanted so badly to know a different life, I wanted to be a different woman. I did not want to cower forever or live a life when I could not tell the difference between passion and violence. I wanted to love in another color besides red. I think I had hope even then, when a weak man's rage had me curled into a frightened ball at the base of my stairs, that this would not be my life and that it would get better...that I would love better and find someone in turn who did the same. I remember staring at my bloody fingertips and thinking, "someday it will be me or him, and I will have to chose me". Those words seemed so impossibly loud in my head and thinking them gave me hope, and that hope eventually gave me the strength to do exactly that.

Hope is this amazing thing that resides in our souls...quietly waiting until it is needed the most. In those dark times, it can be the light by which we find our way out.

"Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without words and never stops at all" Emily Dickinson

That Day in April....

Nine years ago today Fatih and I got married in a modest ceremony just a few miles from our front door.  It was a ceremony we carefully crafted to represent us and to celebrate our mixed faiths and cultures.  Our readings varied from love poems by Paublo Neruda and Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet to Emily Bronte and a familiar piece of scripture from 1 Corinthians 13:45.78.  The favors we gave our guests came from Turkey, silver evil eye charms and a glossy bag filled with Turkish delights. Our music was a highly varied soundtrack, with milestones of the ceremony marked by our favorite songs.  We danced to Van Morrison's Crazy Love, cut our cake to Mozella's "Can't Stop" and danced for hours to Turkish pop songs and all the modern top forty rock we could muster. Looking back I know it was truly our day, a day we designed to be about us and for us to share with our friends and family.  I think we got it 100% right. People still talk about that day, about my Dad's amazing speech, my sister's hilarious gangster-style toast or the surprise belly dancer we hired to kick off the party. 

Today we are both a littler grayer. Fatih is a lot thinner and we are parents to an amazing 7 year old who makes life so much more wonderful than either one of us imagined it could be.  That day in April, when I thought life couldn't be more perfect, I was totally wrong. Marriages are full of perfect moments...just not in one continuous stream.  Marriage isn't about everything always being perfect, always being "just right".  It can be hard, so hard sometimes and there will always be rough patches that wear you down. As the years pass, as the memories of that brilliant day fade and those vows and promises seem to grow fainter, sometimes you even question.  In the most difficult times, you may even have doubts.  Then, you have one of those unassuming, simply perfect moments in life and you are astounded by how complete and infinite your love is and you are so grateful for the life you have built together. And you think, in all the world this is my person, this is my best friend, this is my family and I would do anything, go anywhere, be anything for him.

Marriage is work, even the best ones. Its about having faith and hope and a little perspective too.  Love is recognizing the absolute perfection in imperfection and the grace in loving someone with everything you are.

Fatih, I still love you like crazy, everyday with everything I am. Happy Anniversary!

Human Nature and the Beautiful Sarcastic

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
DAY 939 October 3, 2016
Prompt: “In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exception.” George Eliot
What do you think makes the human nature more interesting: its compliance with the rules or its deviations into exceptions?

Over the past several months I have been thinking a lot about human nature. In the past year it has been difficult to find the beauty in the human condition, to find the exceptional amid the noxious masses. There has been no shortage of stories about what the worst of human nature has to offer the world. It is hard not to see us as a species hell bent on destroying our planet and each other. We are so easily tore asunder by greed and rage. We are so easily misaligned, mislead.

The other evening my daughter wanted to watch "Book of the Life" by Jorge R. Gutierrez. It is a colorful and vibrant animated movie that tells the story of three Mexican children and how their destinies entwine. The story revolves around two key figures in Mexican mythology, La Muerta and Xibalba. La Muerta, pictured as a beautiful woman in a wide red sombrero and dress adorned with candles, is an ancient goddess. She rules the Land of the Remembered and loves all mankind. She is a champion of human nature, celebrating their ability to love and forgive, to have passion and mercy. She understands that humans are flawed and adores them for all their beautiful chaos. By contrast Xibalba, her estranged lover and fellow deity, has no faith in human beings. He rules the Land of the Forgotten and believes humankind is irredeemable and doomed. He takes delight in watching them fail and often intercedes to easily tempt them into malicious pursuits. It is a rich story, woven in a brilliant tapestry of Latin myth and history. I found myself thinking about it more later than night.

I thought a lot about La Muerta and Xibalba, and wondered where my own alliance would fall. Have I lost faith in humanity? Do I always assume that when pressed, most people do the wrong things? Do I believe human nature makes us more exceptional and interesting or threatens to make us irredeemable for all its deviation and darkness? Or, like La Muerta, do I still have faith in humanity? Do I still celebrate the human species, marvel at our abilities, at our capacity for love and kindness? Most days I think I would have to side with La Muerta and I feel comforted than I've not yet lost hope for us all.


"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 1419: October 3, 2016
Prompt: October is Sarcastic Month or National Sarcastic Awareness Month
Have you ever written a sarcastic character? Do you know anyone who is sarcastic? Is sarcasm another form of humor?

Sarcasm is a life skill, simply put. I know people who have honed sarcasm to an exacting science and regularly employee it with such expertise that I am left in awe. It takes a highly developed quick wit that I am admittedly envious of. I've never attempted to write a sarcastic character, believing that to really capture it correctly, one would have to understand the nuances of sarcasm. While I am I fan, I am not by nature, given to sarcasm aside from using it on my highly excited and often overly dramatic six year old. My six year old is decidedly not a fan. She, like me, tends toward being more literal. I think there is a danger in using too much sarcasm too. I recently listened to an audio book called, "Poe", in which the main character was a young, 20-something medium who's tendency toward sarcasm ending up making him wholly unlikeable for me. It wore too thinly against a plot that was also a bit threadbare. I think it takes a good balance to manage any character with particularly strong personality traits. I think it can bring a humorous element to the story but if overused, it can have an adverse effect on some readers.

The Raging Within

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
DAY 863 July 19, 2016
Let's try an example in perspectives. I've provided two and you take it from there with which ever one works for you.
1. A young woman not ready to die 2. An old man who is ready to die

The rain came down in heavy, swollen droplets. The weight of the water pressed the tall tomato plants in their wire cages down toward the ground. She found herself thinking about those tomato plants. They had grown remarkably lush, spreading well outside the confines of their towers. Their branches had extended out over the patio, heavy with the swell of ripened red fruit. She wondered if they would be permanently damaged by the storm or if they would rebound with the sun. They has seemed so strong before and now they appeared to be losing the battle with nature, in much the same way she felt she was.

There had been lots of tumultuous weather in her life, storm fronts she had withstood and rebounded from time and time again. She had started to feel stubbornly indestructible. Until yesterday. Until the call from the doctor had interrupted her marathon cleaning session and reordered her whole world. Tomorrow she would sit across from him, he would disclose the results and they would talk about time. She would learn how much she had left and she would be certain it would never seem like enough. She wasn't ready to die. She wasn't ready to bend her limbs to the earth and surrender all her beautiful ripeness to the dirt. 
  
"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 1343 July 19, 2016
Pick something that happened on this day and talk about it in your blog. I've included a link to give you some ideas.
http://www.onthisday.com/events/july/19

1848 The first women's rights convention, called by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia C. Mott, was held in Seneca Falls, New York.

On this day in history, the first women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. I find this day and event significant as this country is witnessing the first ever female democratic nominee for the Office of the Presidency. As I write this I am astounded at how long it has taken us to get here. The fight for equality has raged on now for over 168 years. Whether or not Hillary is elected, women everywhere should recognize that she represents some measure of victory in the ongoing battle for equal rights. It has taken an excruciating long time for society to accept the concept of a woman as Commander in Chief when you consider that the credential committee of the World's Anti-Slavery Convention held in 1840 in London once ruled that women were "constitutionally unfit for public and business meetings".*

*Reference: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/suffrage1848/a/seneca_falls.htm

Blindspotting and New Snow

Today my heart feels so heavy...actually I think the best way to describe it is that my heart feels so weary. There are things in this life that are so demoralizing that they leech the hope right out of your bones. I have a unique and unfortunate perspective on dealing addiction, on dealing with an addict who is also a family member or loved one. The helplessness and sense of desperation of someone attempting to understand and process that type of situation, resonate with me deeply. I literally feel their pain, all the way to my soul. I've been there. Its hell on Earth and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy let alone someone I love. I know my words of advice may sound calice. I know I don't sound like someone who has compassion - but I do, in spades. It is just that I have been there, and barely made it out with my life. Trying to save someone who refuses to help themselves is like standing in quicksand in steel toed boots, or trying to put out a burning inferno with a silo cup of water. You can put in all the effort, all the love, all the fight you have at your disposal...and it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean we ever stop loving the addicts in our lives, or hurting for them, but we have to be strong in our hearts and in our conviction that we can not control their lives, that we are not responsible for their lives - only our own. An addict will wound you because they know your love for them will allow you to rip those wounds open time and time again, without ever healing...and one day you wake up and realize you've nearly bled out from trying, from caring, from loving. This is a difficult path and there are very cruel lessons to be learned. My heart is heavy because I know the burden, I know that self-doubt and that fear and that heartache. I know how it is to feel your spirit breaking off at the edges. I can only pray for you to have strength to do the things that need to be done, the things that seem heartless when you want to love so badly. I'm a bit distracted today but I've got to give my daily prompts a go...


"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
Day 855 -- July 11, 2016
It is said that everything outside our warm, safe circle is our blind spot. Do you sometimes think that you are blind to what’s in front of your eyes or that your subconscious has blocked something from your immediate knowledge of it?

Once upon a time, I think I did have a blind spot but fortunately my own personal trials have granted me a well-earned "eyes wide open" view. I'm a skeptic at heart now. I tend to always assume the worst and hatch a Plan B before I even know if I'll need a Plan A. My default setting is just two ticks shy of always have a contingency plan or escape hatch.


"Blogging Circle of Friends "
Day 1335: July 11, 2016
Prompt: Which season inspires you the most? Why does this season inspire you?

There is something about new fallen snow that inspires me. Waking to it first thing in the morning is like getting a do-over. The world looks for pristine and bright. It can be very beautiful. There is a stillness to new snow that always brings me peace.

Misery and Faith

I've been writing/blogging now for many years. I've had at least one blog running for over ten years and its served as a rather rare and consistent snapshot of my life through some of the most substantial moments of the journey.  I find its been a good habit to randomly select a page and revisit that entry, it helps me reconnect with where I've been and most important, who I've been in the past. I has been a revealing practice that has given me a lot of insight to the person I am today and the choices I continually make in my life. 

Here is one from April 12th, 2007 that I entitled: Misery and Faith

The rain outside is pelting my office window. Certainly today's gloom factor weighs in somewhere are 9 on the 1-10 scale of such things. My little dog is sleeping in front of the space heater by my feet. I reach down to pet his soft head occasionally, as if to assure myself he is still there and that the good and gentle elements of my life are still alive and breathing. Not bearing to wade into the pile of stress-producing work on my desk, I've busied myself with seemingly more trivial tasks; looking up the addresses of long lost relatives, reorganizing my purse, filling out the health questionnaire for my new doctor. Its been a difficult morning. I woke up this morning cocooned around myself. I drove the sleep off with a hotter than advisable shower and loaded the dog and the latest bills into the car. I put more gas in...again. On the drive to work I was suddenly assaulted by a memory I can scarcely recall now. Driving to work under the pelting rain though, it was clear and bright. It was the memory of walking along the sandy path that curled around the Avery Point college campus. It had to be Spring, because though the sun was out and warm against my back, the trees were just beginning to bud and the air was still crisp with a winter not to recently forgotten. I was barefoot and he was dilligent in pointing out the little green land mines of goose poop so I could avoid stepping in one. He was walking beside me, as he often did, his lumbering gait keeping him just ahead of me. It was a memory so vivid but so fleeting it left me floundering about, my mind trying to re-access all the elements but coming up empty. It was from the time before all the darkness, when our lives were still comfortably linked by common threads of friendship, work and an appreciation of the sea and this beautiful, open place. Was it a message? A unexplicable communication from the beyond? And if it was, what was it meant to convey? I am more a daughter of science and matter than one of spirit and faith, but if I were to suspend that instinctual need to have all explained for a moment and just listen to my heart, I think I'd find a message. I think it was a reminder from my dear friend that life is full of small, contented moments and not to lose myself too far in the low and darker ones. The rain will stop and the sun will come out. The grass will get greener and the sea will beckon me again and there will be sweet afternoon walks when all I have to worry about is dodging piles of goose poop and breathing deeply of the ocean air.