What's On My Mind

I realized there are two posts I still need to make. One is the last in my feline series and then one more. Of course, today is neither of those posts. They are still swimming in my mind. Today is about yesterday.

Yesterday I had to have an endoscopy. That’s when they stick a camera down your throat to check on your stomach and esophagus and take biopsies and other fun stuff. But that’s not important either.

After the biopsy, my friend came to pick me up. The doctors told her to hold me that I might be woozy. She wrapped her arm around me and asked if I’d mind that people will think we’re a gay couple. She loves to hold hands on the street with her female friends, hug them, be affectionate in public. I told her I didn’t really give a damn. But again, not that part of the day that bugged me.

Heath Ledger died, that wasn’t good, but that’s also not what is on my poor brain. Well, it’s there, but not predominant.

Coming out of the ‘Specialty Center’ as they like to think they aren’t a hospital, my friend and I, arm in arm, watched a man get beaten by the cops. We weren’t the only ones, there were people all around.

At first, we just saw the three cops and a guy behind them, then we heard the screaming, “stop resisting arrest, stop resisting arrest” and noticed that they were billy-clubbing a guy on the ground. This man had on a hat (it was snowing yesterday) and was clutching a duffel bag tightly, he was on the ground, but not fully – more like kneeling (or being pushed as, again, three cops and a fourth guy were on top of him).

The cops kept yelling that he was resisting arrest, he was screaming, “I didn’t do nuthin!”

Then one of the cops yelled for the spray, and this guy got it about three times in the face. Enough that my friend and I could see the white foam running down as he screamed. The cops continued to yell, and one was now livid about getting some of the residual spray as apparently there is a dispersal pattern.

This was in a matter of seconds, and my friend took me across the street. We walked around the block and when we came back, there was an ambulance.

“Why do you think they need an ambulance?” she asked. “Maybe because a guy was just beaten and maced by three cops?” I replied way too snottily. Luckily, she blamed it on the time being after 4 pm and me not having eaten since 6 am.

Contact

Okay, so here's the deal, the real deal.

My mother contacted me.

Now, she has me address, my name, my info. It's not like it's easy to move around from house to house in my city, living space is a high commodity.

In the past she's sent cards, every few years or so, and I've ignored them.

But this was an e-mail. And, she dared to talk about my beloved cat, my REAL mother.

The therapist asked what was so wrong about that, as the sentiments were simply, "I'm sorry she passed" but the meaning is deeper to me. It's like someone who killed your child telling you they understand how you must feel, as they lost their child too and asking for a hug of understanding. It doesn't fly with me.

I tried, my friends tried, a co-worker tried to see how she could have gotten that e-mail address and no Google combination came up with it. We did get a number of sites offering us all my info for a mere 29.95USD and figure that's what she did.

So I was entirely pissed, I was angry, I was afraid. If she found my e-mail (and the other site that I used to run that she mentioned) how soon until she found this one? How soon until she infiltrated other parts of my life? Plus, I've already been told that she's harassed a couple other people I have contact with (albeit sporadically) so who else will she hunt down? How much MORE unstable is she now? I like my life, my school, my job - how will she attempt to f#ck it up in her goal to bring me down?

My neighbors were put on alert - pictures went out and everyone instructed to call 9-11 should she show up. Then I calmed down.

So I talked to my doctor who wondered if I wasn’t still giving my mother too much power, which probably led to me reading the book about owning your shadow and realizing, yeah, I was. I don’t want to swing to far the other way and cry, ‘just let her try something!’ but I did have to move on from that initial fright and ponder how a. She’s still trying to f*ck with me and b. it does still affect me. But then, that is what I’m working on, why I’m in therapy, why I started the blog. To deal with the fears I have, and her, as the absolute worst one.

Here, let me be completely honest. My therapist asked what I would like to hear from my mother, and I said the first thing that came to me – “I don’t want to hear from her at all, I want to hear from her lawyer telling me she’s dead.” And I suppose, in the end I’m realizing that the way I felt with that contact was like an aftershock, the main drama is over, the earthquake gone, all that’s left are the occasional tremors.

(censored, but unedited, sorry. In a state where if I don't post I won't.)

Owning Your Shadow

Recently, while cleaning my house I found this book, Owning Your Shadow by Robert Johnson. It was a Harper Collins book, so I figure I most have nabbed it while I did a rotation through there. They had a great benefit (if lousy pay) and that was in the basement they'd put out books that employees could nab. You'd see us all down there just waiting for new books to be put out, and I was more than happy to run any errand that would bring me past that treasure trove.

Anyway, I'm not generally one for self-help psychobabble type stuff, which even when I picked the book up again recently, I felt it was. Just the title kind of irks me. Calling the dark side 'the shadow' isn't my thing, but it's my understanding he takes this from the Jungian philosophies the book attempts to 'bring down' to proletariat level.

But, it has made it's way into my bathroom reading rotation, and I'm about two-thirds through it now. And I have to say, I'm digging parts of it, or parts of it make sense.

I've always been about the unity of self, which this book promotes. It talks about making some ceremonial gifts to the 'dark side' once in a while to feed it and keep it from rearing it's ugly head (and it uses Mass as a perfect example of ceremoniously appeasing dark forces, what with the eating of flesh and drinking of blood and worshiping capital punishment and all that).

The part that stuck out, was where it talks about OTHERS shadows and how parents who don't want to deal with the darkness inside them, split and send their 'shadows' onto their children who then have to shoulder the burden of not just their own disunity, but their parents as well.

Which made me think - before I started this book things came up that brought back old fears (part of why I haven't posted in a while). All growing up, I felt my mother had the power, and technically, physically, she did. She was huge and imposing, taller than me, could throw my brother and I around. She crowed about how strong she was (on more than one occassion she also jumped kids that bothered my brother, a notable one sent her sliding down a snowy hill). She talked about her strength of character and physical strength that could cause us pain.

But she was weak, so very weak. She couldn't handle the burden of pain that her parents put on her, she couldn't handle her own darkness, so instead, she thrust it upon her children. She crowed about her perfections and her strengths and frequently commented on the weakness of her children. But we were the stronger, for we (or at least I, I like to think my brother has succeeded in unifying our fractured selves as well) had to deal with her by ourselves, while she just shoveled burden after burden on us so she didn't have to deal with it. We were like her own emotional garbage cans.

I'm just jotting stuff down freehand here or else I know I won't, so please excuse if this sounds to self-helpy or just incomprehensible (or badly spelled) but it pisses me off to think about it now. More than the physical abuse, all the mental ills that she forced on us just prove what a *insert swear word here* whimp she was, and that as always she put her own immediate needs over the long-term ones of her children. And all this time I thought she was strong, but only because she kept saying she was. I guess that proves that no matter how many times you repeat a lie, it still doesn't make it true.