Taking a Hiatus

The last post brings us to the end of all the stories I’ve written to date. The next one, will bring us back again, full circle, to the very beginning of this odyssey. Rather than jumping right in and repeating the whole cycle again, I’ve decided to temporarily focus my energies on other projects. I’ve begun painting, and of course gardening madly! I just picked a whole bunch of small, sweet strawberries. Yum! Last year, the little critters ate them all just as they were ripening, so hubby put a chicken wire “roof” over our raised beds. That kept them out and this year, they were all OURS!!! Bwaaahaaahaaa! Take THAT squirrels! (I shoveled so much manure this spring, I could run for office as a Republican.)

Probably like many of you, now that we’re vaccinated, life is opening up again after more than a year of lockdown. We’ll be visiting friends out of state, attending some concerts, going to a family wedding, attending my high school reunion. (Not gonna say how many years…let’s just say Brenda Brontosaurus was valedictorian.)

Perhaps I will pick up again in the fall, hopefully with a few new stories.

I thank all of my readers. Your feedback, comments, and sharing these posts on social media has meant a lot to me.

See you in a few months!

-Adrienne

Le Scandal

Originally published April 7, 2015

 

Pila

I was on a trajectory to a perfectly normal life. I was mostly good, though sometimes a bit naughty. There were times I was full of certainty and promise and other times I was crippled by misgivings and frozen by doubt.   Sometimes, I felt myself to be invincible; other times, I felt vulnerable and bare. In other words, I was perfectly normal.

And then the scandal.  I was only a peripheral player. There was no reason for me to have been brought into it at all, but the silver ball of fate landed in my number. I was in the right place at the wrong time.

Soon, everyone had an opinion about me, most of them bad. Any why? I’d done nothing so different that many others did before and after me. Except others don’t get caught in such a spectacular way.

After that, my life was never the same. The press hounded me.  When that finally abated,  many still whispered about me. My name was synonymous with my shame, and I would never be free of the taint.

I tried my best to rise above it; to develop a philosophical attitude. I managed a fair degree of success in no longer caring what the strangers thought or said about me, but I never was able to get over that initial punch in the solar plexus when I’d be recognized in a social setting and the murmur  of whispers and surreptitious glances would begin afresh.

I went on with my life. What else could I do?  I would not hide. Pourquoi? I was not a criminal! More than one person suggested I change my name. I refused, on principle. None of those who threw hypothetical stones at me were without plenty of sins of their own.

I lived a much smaller life than I had before. My friends and family closed ranks and kept me sheltered from the gossip and petty ill will of others.

Eventually, the public forgot. My transgression was too far in the past for anyone to care about it. There were far more intriguing sinners to star in the morality plays of the self-righteous.

And slowly, I started to live again.  But those were decades I would never get back.

I won’t say those years were wasted but it took me a long time to appreciate all I learned from the derailing of my life.   I am learning, still.

 

_____
Buy the book!

If you are enjoying this blog,  please click the link above to subscribe and receive posts via email (new posts every three days).  When you think of others who might enjoy it too,  it’s easy enough to help spread the word! Post your favorite stories to social media.   Email a particularly apt link to a friend.   Even better,  talk about the concepts with others (whether you agree or disagree. )

Also,  I have just started a discussion group on Facebook,  for conversations about any of the concepts/issues in the posts.  Honestly, these are things in here which I don’t fully understand myself.  I would love  get your thoughts on this…even if you think this is all a bunch of hooey!

-Adrienne

Love Me, Love Me Not

First published March 4, 2015

Agat

I was a disaster at love. My relationships never lasted more than a few years. I fell in love with the notion of love and never saw my partners as they really were.  I was interested in others only as long as they allowed me to feel within a narrow spectrum of emotion; as long as they didn’t force me to consider my own responsibility too closely. When my feelings began to stray beyond those parameters,  I might become angry or demanding or hurt or fed up.

None of my behavior was consistent with truly loving someone. I was never willing to stick around to do the work.

I thought I was doing the work. I thought I was being the mature, sensible one. I believed that what I wanted was within reason, and within my right to ask.  I wanted them to behave in the way which I believed was the correct way to behave. I wanted them to reciprocate my feelings.  To feel as I did. Respond as I did. Desire as I did. Love as I did.

I had lofty concepts of love, which, to my great heartbreak, no one else seemed to share.

When they finally would not or could not live by my standards, they would either leave or gradually stop making any effort until I ceased asking; until I abandoned my feelings and went away. This process was not without drama, which was mainly my own doing. It was, ironically, the very drama they’d been trying to avoid. It was the behavior which always proved them right in the end.

I believed myself to be loving yet tragically unlovable when in fact, I was quite lovable but tragically unloving.

——————

Buy the book!

If you are enjoying this blog,  please click the link above to subscribe and receive posts via email (new posts every three days).  When you think of others who might enjoy it too,  it’s easy enough to help spread the word! Post your favorite stories to social media.   Email a particularly apt link to a friend.   Even better,  talk about the concepts with others (whether you agree or disagree. )

Also,  I have just started a discussion group on Facebook,  for conversations about any of the concepts/issues in the posts.  Honestly, these are things in here which I don’t fully understand myself.  I would love  get your thoughts on this…even if you think this is all a bunch of hooey!

-Adrienne

Hello, Joe! Bye Don.

 

I couldn’t let this day go by without celebrating the end of our long national nightmare. We still have a long way to go before we’re back to anywhere near normal but at least we will have competent people in charge. We don’t have to wonder if/when our own government is trying to kill us. (Well, unless you’re a person of color, in which case, alas,  we still have a long way to go.)  Still,   today is a day any reasonable, non-racist, non-delusional person can celebrate and just exhale.

I still have a bunch of sparklers which I bought for the 2016 election, figuring we’d be celebrating Hillary’s win. I saved them for a better day. I believe tomorrow is the day! 

Anyway, just want to say “YAY!!!”

Take care of yourselves! Wear a mask! It’s really scary out there.

-A

Sorry About that!

That was a mistake! I hate this new editing format! The full post is coming next week.

-a

Cleaved

First published Feb 17, 2015

Zoj

As a small child and well into adulthood, I felt a part of me was missing. It was as if my soul existed both within me and without me, and I had no agency over the part outside myself.

I could not explain this sensation in any way that would allow another human to understand. To others, I seemed strange. My feelings were often bizarrely congruent. For example, sometimes, when things were going badly, when I was hurt or deeply disappointed, when my heart was broken and by all rights I should be crying, I’d be filled with a strange sense of satisfaction or happiness.

The day my father died, I was weeping and mourning with my family, feeling all the pain any adult child might feel at the loss of a beloved parent. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of joy and peace. I stopped crying and sat wordless, smiling beatifically. In an instant, I no longer felt like grieving.

By then, people were used to my strange moods.   They shook their heads and reminded each other in whispers that I’d always been odd.

Sometimes, too, in the middle of a happy time, when it seemed everything was going my way, I would be stricken by a sadness that sucked all the joy out of me. On my wedding day, I could not stop crying. I loved my husband.  He was the right man for me. I was thrilled to be marrying him. I had no doubts. And yet, I was filled with inexplicable sadness. They made no sense, not even to me.

Eventually, my husband and I moved to the city.   One day, a friend became angry at me because she said I had snubbed her in public. I had no such recollection. “You looked right at me, smiled back at me, and kept walking.”

Then it happened again. And again.

Sometime, strangers would approach me, greeting me familiarly, calling me by a different name. When I denied I was who they thought I was, most did not believe me. Some thought I was joking or playing a game. One or two became angry or insulted.

I began to seriously question my sanity. I was used to my unexpected emotions but I would never ignore my friends. I was not rude. I worried that the issues which had plagued me all my life were now progressing into a serious mental disorder. Was I losing touch with reality? Was I losing hours without knowing it? Was I losing my ability to recognize familiar people?

I did not share my fears with my husband so as not to worry him.

It went like that for perhaps a year.

Then, one day, I was in a café, reading a newspaper, having a my lunch. Out of the corner of my eye, I perceived what I believed, in that first tenth of a second, was my own reflection. In the next tenth of a second, I realized this was not so. We were not moving in tandem. We were not dressed alike.

I looked again, this time, more carefully. She hadn’t noticed me yet.

I could not stop myself from staring. Finally, I stood up and walked over to her table, and sat down in front of her.   She picked her face up from her book, first in annoyance at being disturbed, and then, her jaw dropped in incredulity.

We were not merely two people who looked similar. We were identical. Even to a mole on high on our right cheek.

We sat there for what felt like a long time, just staring at each other.   She too, had had a lifetime of disconsonant emotion. Her recent encounters with strangers and the upset of friends at having been snubbed had also made her question her sanity.

But now, the logic was beginning to dawn.

“Birthday?” I asked. Just one word. She immediately understood the importance.

It was the same as mine.

*****

When we were little more than a cluster of cells, we split in two. “I” became “we” inside our mother’s womb. There, we shared one soul. When our forms became more distinct, our soul also split in two. One soul, one set of DNA, two separate people.

We came into the world minutes apart, and clung to each other in our first hours. Others saw us as two, but we still felt as one.

Our mother was sick and poor and alone, not able to care for us. And so we were given away to those who could. No one would take us both. Those with the power over our lives decided it was best for us each  to have a loving home, rather than to remain together in an orphanage. Cleaved yet again, both from mother and each other.

We were too young to remember any of this. Even our adoptive parents did not know we were twins.

****

That was the first time in our lives we both felt whole and that our feelings made sense.

We each had places to go, obligations to keep. It was painful to take leave of each other but we arranged to meet later that evening, in the same cafe. We talked until the place closed down. We then went back to her apartment which was closer than mine. Her husband and son were already sleeping, but she insisted I peek into the boy’s room to see him. My nephew! Flesh and blood, twice in one day!

From that day on, we were as inseparable as two separate people can be. Our families became one. Our children played as cousins. Our husbands became as brothers.

We still felt each other’s feelings, but they were no longer a mystery.

We both lived to be quite old, and died within months of each other. And here we are, together, waiting to be born again. Perhaps as one, perhaps as two.

——————

Buy the book!

If you are enjoying this blog,  please click the link above to subscribe and receive posts via email (new posts every three days).  When you think of others who might enjoy it too,  it’s easy enough to help spread the word! Post your favorite stories to social media.   Email a particularly apt link to a friend.   Even better,  talk about the concepts with others (whether you agree or disagree. )

Also,  I have just started a discussion group on Facebook,  for conversations about any of the concepts/issues in the posts.  Honestly, these are things in here which I don’t fully understand myself.  I would love  get your thoughts on this…even if you think this is all a bunch of hooey!

-Adrienne

Moving Forward…

Hey all,

Sorry, I haven’t published anything new in a while. It’s been a tough few years here in America, what with Combover Caligula sucking vast amounts of our psychic/emotional/spiritual energy, hijacking our nervous systems and mental focus. Certainly the election results were a great relief, but we’re not in the clear yet. It ain’t over until he’s GONE…and he’s not leaving so quickly or easily. Predictions are that these next few months will be the worst of all, which is terrifying.

And of course, there’s still the pandemic to worry about. Things are pretty dire now here, and mathematically and exponentially the infection and death rates will continue to climb. Fortunately, New York State is in relatively good shape, but things are not so great elsewhere, and that affects us all.

Through all this, it’s been hard to put myself in the right frame of mind for channeling. Instead, I’ve been working on lots of small creative projects which are somehow easier to focus on and provide relatively immediate gratification which I need these days. (I recommend it!)

We still have a lot of work to do to get this country back in shape, and the ugliness and stupidity won’t end once he’s out of office. Personally, I can’t wait to never hear his name again!

Hopefully sometime in the not-to-far future, I will be able to get back to this project and channel more stories. I miss my “imaginary friends.”

As for you, dear readers, please stay safe! Stay home! If you must leave the house, wear a mask. Try to maintain your sanity as best you can. Let’s get through this and put 2020 behind us!!

-Adrienne

The Devolution of Man

first posted Jan 22, 2015

Wa

I did things I was not proud of; things I lived long to regret. I still bear their weight upon my soul.

Before the war,  I thought of myself as a civilized, rational, intellectually sophisticated  human being.  It was shocking to me how quickly starvation and deprivation sucked the civility right out of me. With the Angel of Death as my constant companion, it was easy to lose track of my humanity.  With a landscape of nothing but cruelty, it was impossible to hold tight to my values.

Some people did inhuman things and made inhuman sacrifices to save the ones they loved.   I cared only about saving myself.  I put my own life, which wasn’t worth much,  above those of others who might have done some real good.  I gave aid and information to the enemy in exchange for another day.  I betrayed my friends, my leaders, my beliefs, so that I would not suffer.

Before the war,  I thought I knew which side I was on; which side others were on.  In the throes of the nightmare, however, the only side that mattered was my own.

And so I lived and ate and stayed warm while better ones than I died for their cause; for their families; for their love of country.  Had they lived, they might have changed the course of history.  My only goal was to stay out of its way.

When it was over, I created a history of how I survived. I painted myself as an innocent,  a victim.   I told it so often, to so many people, I too believed it occasionally.  I worked to delude myself into believing I did only what was natural; something any human would do:  I saved my own life.  But I had seen too many examples of selfless sacrifice not to feel  reproached by them.

And so I lived the rest of my life shackled to shame and guilt,   knowing I had betrayed those far better than myself.

I am still bound by those chains.

——————

Buy the book!

If you are enjoying this blog,  please click the link above to subscribe and receive posts via email (new posts every three days).  When you think of others who might enjoy it too,  it’s easy enough to help spread the word! Post your favorite stories to social media.   Email a particularly apt link to a friend.   Even better,  talk about the concepts with others (whether you agree or disagree. )

Also,  I have just started a discussion group on Facebook,  for conversations about any of the concepts/issues in the posts.  Honestly, these are things in here which I don’t fully understand myself.  I would love  get your thoughts on this…even if you think this is all a bunch of hooey!

-Adrienne

Dress Up

originally posted June 8, 2014

Pad

I can still smell the sweet, musty scent of old perfume clinging to her elegant clothes; the tickley feeling of her long fur coat brushing against my face;  the smooth skin of her fine, leather high-heel shoes lined up neatly in the shoe rack.

My mother’s closet. It was the place I hid when I needed to feel safe.

When I was very young, and my parents fought, downstairs, I would run up to their room and slip into my secret fortress, pulling the door closed behind me.  I kept a flashlight hidden in the back. Sometimes, I turned it on. Sometimes, I sat in the dark. When I was in grade school, and the kids at school bullied me or called me names, when I felt myself weird and disconnected, that’s where I ran.   It was my secure, perfect little world, where every color,  smell, and texture was familiar and reminded me of unconditional love.

It was a finite place yet it contained infinite peace. The sounds of the world outside were muffled by tightly packed garments of silk, linen and wool. If my parents were shouting, I couldn’t make out the words. If I fell asleep, when I woke up, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. I might have been sleeping for an hour or for years, and this too seemed mystical and magical to me, because there was always the possibility that I’d been asleep so long that when I emerged, everything would be completely different.

When I got a bit older that pleasure was no longer available to me. It was OK for a small boy to hide in the closet, but not at all appropriate for a thirteen year old. Which is not to say I outgrew the need or desire for it. I was just more afraid of being humiliated, especially by my father.

In order to recreate that feeling as best I could, I would sneak one of my mother’s silk shirts or casual dresses — something with her scent on it — or perhaps a pair of her shoes, and I would keep them near my bed. At night, I would pull them beside me, and they helped me fall asleep.

One day, when I was about 14, I put on her shirt, just to feel it against my skin, and I become sexually aroused.   This confused me and made me feel ashamed and yet, it excited me in such a primal way.

As I said, I never outgrew the need for the closet so I found another way to hide in it: by wearing women’s clothing.

There was so much shame involved in this practice, it colored everything else I did in my life. I hid this deep, important part of myself from everyone, including my wife. I lived in fear that my humiliation would be discovered. The mocking voices of my childhood classmates accusing me of being strange never left my head. I had to admit to myself,  they were obviously right. I was weird.

I tried so hard to control my need, but the more I resisted the more obsessed and stressed I became. The more stressed I became, the more I needed it. It was a cycle I could never break.   And every time I went back to it, after being “good” for a while, I was filled both with relief and a deep-sense of self-loathing.

This was the core of my life. The rest of it doesn’t matter. Not my job nor my family nor any hobby or interest. They existed outside of me. I played my roles well and nobody ever suspected — I hid myself that perfectly.

My entire life was all about what and how and when I could do it again; about balancing my need with my terror at being unmasked as a pervert. My entire life was a lie. I hid the most important part of myself from everyone and in doing so, sacrificed any hope that anyone would love me for who I truly was.

My life was a never-ending cycle of self-loathing, fear, determination to change, failure, collapse.   I suppose the only way to have broken that cycle was to accept myself as I was, for who I was.   It didn’t matter if nobody else loved me; more important, I needed to accept myself as the imperfect being I was. This is something, I never managed to do. Perhaps if I’d been brave enough to share my secret, I might have found acceptance, but I could not. The shame was too deep. It was a part of my DNA.

It was a secret I took to my grave.

____

Buy the book!

If you are enjoying this blog,  please click the link above to subscribe and receive posts via email (new posts every three days).  When you think of others who might enjoy it too,  it’s easy enough to help spread the word! Post your favorite stories to social media.   Email a particularly apt link to a friend.   Even better,  talk about the concepts with others (whether you agree or disagree. )

Also,  I have just started a discussion group on Facebook,  for conversations about any of the concepts/issues in the posts.  Honestly, these are things in here which I don’t fully understand myself.  I would love  get your thoughts on this…even if you think this is all a bunch of hooey!

-Adrienne

Way to Go

first published Nov 12, 2016

http://maggieevansart.com

 

Az

Sometimes, when you are hurting, you just want to be with someone who loves you. You don’t necessarily have to say or hear those words, because even unspoken they are understood. Sometimes, when you are sad and confused, flailing, near drowning, in a stormy ocean, you need an anchor, someone to keep you from drifting out to sea. You can put on a brave face to the world, but there are times when you just want someone to hold you when you are falling apart, away from judgment.

I had a lot of close acquaintances in my life — people I laughed with when times were good — but there were not too many who took my confession. I protected my fragility well.  I did not let many breach my walls.

As I grew older, one by one, they began to die off, leaving a landscape pocked with gaping chasms of loneliness. Gone were those precious few humans whose souls resonated with mine; who knew where the shattered pieces fit.

Soon, there was nobody left who knew me; nobody left who could look me in the eye and see clear down to my soul. I was old and alone. I wasn’t sick, but at such an age, infirmity can overtake you in the blink of an eye – a bad fall; a cold that becomes pneumonia; a stroke; the wear and tear of time on the body and then the final straw that snaps the back. I lived in dread of that day coming upon me. I would end up alone in some awful place where they put old people to die, surrounded by strangers who would take care of my body while ignoring my heart.

I couldn’t let that happen to myself.

There was nobody left who cared enough to warrant a note or a goodbye. Most would just see a sad end to an old person who had nothing left to live for.

But that’s not really how it was. Not exactly.

I didn’t kill myself because I had nothing to live for. I killed myself because I wanted to leave before I lost control of my own story. I didn’t want to lose my autonomy. That would have been worse than death.

Once the death spiral began, there would be no pulling out. Worse, there would be nobody who would save me from the horrible end. There was nobody left who loved me enough to pull the plug, disconnect the tubes; nobody to slip me too much morphine so I could go in peace.   No, I’d have to ride it out, counting the minutes until it would all be over.

That is not a way to die. This is one of the greatest tragedies of modern man, but if you took a survey among the living, it wouldn’t even make the list.

Only a handful of people were at the funeral. Some relatives were there out of respect (respect for what, I have no idea). A couple of good-time pals from the old days (who weren’t looking too great, themselves) Someone hired religious figure, who’d never met me, to say a few blessings.

If I’d had pills, I would have used them, but in the end, I did it with gas. I wasn’t brave enough for violence. I just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. I was serene and sure. In those last hours, and just until I lost consciousness, I really missed my dearest friends. But this time, it was tempered with the joy of knowing I would soon be with them all again.

 

---

Buy the book!

If you are enjoying this blog,  please click the link above to subscribe and receive posts via email (new posts every three days).  When you think of others who might enjoy it too,  it’s easy enough to help spread the word! Post your favorite stories to social media.   Email a particularly apt link to a friend.   Even better,  talk about the concepts with others (whether you agree or disagree. )

Also,  I have just started a discussion group on Facebook,  for conversations about any of the concepts/issues in the posts.  Honestly, these are things in here which I don’t fully understand myself.  I would love  get your thoughts on this…even if you think this is all a bunch of hooey!

-Adrienne22