30 TRUTHS IN 30 DAYS - DAY TWENTY-TWO

Truth #22:  Logic and knowledge will get you from Point A to Point B and imagination will get you everywhere else. Imagination gives you wings to fly and explore. It gives you a spark to create. It gloriously colors your world and tickles your soul. Sometimes your imagination is bold and beckons loudly while other times it whispers gently while it brushes past you like a gentle breeze. The imagination is the muscle of the mind that people tend to let fade away once childhood is long gone deeming it useless and juvenile. Once adulthood is upon us many of us no longer have an active imagination. Logic and common sense have taken over and the imagination has atrophied with age. Those who have exercised their imagination are the artists, writers and great creators of the world. We the people who admire their works exercise our imagination and keep it alive by indulging ourselves in the journeys those people take. We take those journeys with them. We not only admire the art the create, but we understand it. We not only read the books they write but we become part of the story as we read them. We allow ourselves to dream and venture into the unknown. We keep our minds open and our imaginations keenly honed because we know it is a life force as important as logic where anything is possible.

CAN MILDRED COME OUT TO PLAY?

I haven't been feeling well for the last few days and in one of my "spleeny" (it's a Maine word meaning whiny) rants to a friend of mine about an old boyfriend, I had a lightbulb moment. No, it was more like a holy shit moment.  All of a sudden all the stupid, wasted, self-destructive relationships I've had made sense. It didn't make me feel any better, but at least it made me see why I had taken the path I had taken. 

Being sexually abused as a child severely fractured me and distorted my image of what relationships should be like. I grew up pretty clueless. And since my abuse went unchecked and like many sexual abuse victims I kept it hid. I buried it and blamed myself for it happening. I never felt like I deserved to be loved. I truly felt unworthy of having anything good or wholesome in my life. It's sad for any child to grow up feeling like that. At the time I didn't have the foresight to see the direction that was going to take me and no one seemed to want to enlighten me. As I got older, I did drugs to numb me and then I became promiscuous, but strangely enough I never connected the dots. I always gravitated to men who wouldn't love me like I needed to be loved or deserved to be loved. I lived a self-fulfilling prophecy to prove my unworthiness. If any good guys paid me any attention, I passed them by like they had the plague. I just wasn't interested in what they were selling. I found nice guys boring and sedate. What I thought I needed was something that was going to set my hair on fire and make me teeter on the edge of insanity. What a waste of time and energy that was! I should have gone with the dude offering the house and the white picket fence instead!

I have spent a lifetime proving to myself that I'm not worth anything. I'm not worth loving. I'm not worth having a decent relationship with because I believed I'm not a decent human being. That really makes me sad that I have done that to myself, but what makes me sadder is that the people who love me...my family never have questioned why I have done this to myself. Or why no therapist has ever questioned it? Why hasn't anyone simply said STOP IT? Just stop it and try something different because your way isn't working? Now, I'm afraid I don't know how to start over and do things differently. I don't know how to feel differently or be different. I know I should. I know anyone who has put themselves in timeout for 17 years has a HUGE problem, but here I sit. It's safe! No one can hurt me. I'm isolated!

Recently, I started to do the online dating thing, but only to find out that 95% of the people on the site aren't even who they say they are. The other 5% may be the nicest people in the world, but for one reason or another just don't appeal to me. Let's face it! We all have preferences. So for now I put that great idea on hold! I'm not going to say my time has passed because I don't have a crystal ball and I can't see into the future.  But I do know I am a bonafide freak magnet and until I can figure out how to curb that and how to trust my own choices in what appeals to me then I need to stay in time out for a while longer. 

AN EMOTIONAL CUTTER'S LIFE - PART II

Perhaps I should start Part II with my definition of "emotional cutter." An emotional cutter and a drama queen share many of the same characteristics, but their motivation for their bizarre behavior is at opposite ends of the spectrum. Whereas a drama queen creates situations in order to call attention to themselves, an emotional cutter may perk along for awhile with everything going well and then BOOM! It happens! An emotional cutter can't stand serenity, so they will rip the scab off the wound just to feel alive. Happiness is a foreign feeling...pain is what we feel comfortable feeling and there's nothing like feeling pain to let yourself know you're still alive. As I teeter on the edge, I poke and prod and make myself miserable and blame myself for all sorts of things. The drama is like it is with a drama queen, but unlike our "drama queen" cousins, we suffer in silence and many times, not a soul will see our pain.  We're masters at covering it up like a cat working diligently in a litter box.  We skillfully cover that pile of crap we call life and wear a smile while we suffer in silence.

When you're young, you can only hold things in for so long before the pot boils over. And when the pot boiled over in my case, everyone just scratched their heads. Of course, it was much easier to just label me as a "bad kid" at that point, but I wasn't a bad kid! I was never a bad kid. Sure, I always had a bit of a rebel in me, but I wasn't bad. I just always had a mind of my own. Is that a bad thing?  I started doing drugs to dull the pain and I kept doing drugs because being comfortably numb worked. Are you acquainted with being comfortably numb? My comfortably numb almost killed me. My comfortably numb almost tore my heart from my body and locked it in a dark dungeon where no one could hurt me. It was my safe place. I felt nothing. No pain! No fear! No hate! No anger! But no joy or pleasure or love either. Emotional bankruptcy is void of everything and anything, but it's a safe place to hide out until either you're forced back into the land of the living or you perish forever. 

My mother wasn't what I would call a a warm, nurturing person or at least, that's how I saw her. She was an only child and I don't think she was equipped to handle difficult situations like raising four children while dealing with an alcoholic husband. I don't think many people are suitably equipped for that task. I think like most people who fall in love, they go into the relationship with unrealistic expectations.  Life is wonderful until reality hits. In my mother's case, I believe when reality hit, it made her angry and bitter. Instead of focusing on what was in front of her, she became encapsulated in a cloud of her own angst. Listening to her talk about life on Walter Street, it was always all about her own pain. It was as if my brothers and I didn't exist or our pain was less important than hers. A few times over the years, I'd get frustrated from listening to her synopsis and I'd remind her as she recounted those years from what we all refer to as "the hornet's nest," that I knew the story too well because I lived it, too. I'd let her rave on about what a son of a bitch my father was and at the end, I'd make her say one nice thing about him. That always rattled her!

She didn't hug me much. I guess she didn't hug any of us very much that I remember. She screamed a lot. Just ask anyone in the neighborhood. Anyone not knowing us would have thought we were the children from Hell. She also loved to whack the bejesus out of all of us, but I remember the last time she tried to do that. I was old enough by then to stick up for myself. When she was about to hit me with something, probably a hairbrush, I grabbed her wrist and I told her not to ever hit me again. The look on her face was priceless. A true Kodak moment! I'm sure if I could ask her about it now, she'd claim she doesn't remember it, but I remember it too well. I think it's when Mildred was born. Mildred is pretty fearless and a force to be reckoned with when needed. From that day on, I did things my way. It seemed to amuse her when she'd tell people that I stopped listening to her when I was about 12 years old. Oh yes! Her attempt to control me was a total failure and that beat of a distant drum she claimed I heard was more like a whole symphony. Her need to control things that were out of control continued, but it no longer affected me until much later in life.

I have to admit that it did my heart good to see her life change when she married my step-father. He treated her well and tried to give her everything she wanted. The struggles she had once faced were behind her and she was finally able to bloom. Yes, her dream of becoming a fashion designer was gone, but instead she became an artist. Living life under totally different circumstances seemed to make all the difference in the world. Yes, she still had those "only child" tendencies, but she didn't scream and wasn't angry all the time. It was nice to see her in a different light. When she and my step-father had first gotten to the point of needing someone to live with them, my adult daughter volunteered. About three weeks after she had moved in, I got a phone call at work from my daughter where she announced to me that she now understood why I did drugs when I was younger. To that lightbulb moment of hers, I first laughed and then, I responded by telling her that her grandmother had mellowed out in her old age and that she wasn't the same person now as she was then when I was a teenager. 

FLAGPOLE LICKERS ANONYMOUS

I truly was a Poster Child for birth control when I was a lot younger. My mother tells me that birth control pills came out a few years AFTER I was born. Phew! I think by the look in her eyes when she tells me stuff like that I should interpret it as meaning that if the FDA had been a little speedier on their approval of The Pill old Mildred might not be here today. Imagine that! A world without Mildred!

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am and have always been that person who always does what they're warned not to do just because I can.  Having someone tell me that I can't do something only makes me want to do it. I'm sure there's probably some psychiatric diagnosis to explain that "I'll show you" type of behavior! And to think they claimed I  would eventually grow out of it! ha! I do, however resist the urge to touch something that has a WET PAINT sign on it now. Maybe now that I'm older, I do less things that can be considered questionable, but as a child I was in high gear and in my glory.  Okay, so my glory days lasted a little longer than just my childhood. What can I say? Mildred is a mess and no, I didn't grow out of it...well, not completely anyways, but I act okay most of the time.

For example, when I was younger I wanted to know what it felt like to touch a bare wire and get zapped by electricity.  I can tell you that it really tingles! But it was a hard sell to get anyone else to try it.  Maybe those other kids were just more pragmatic than I was am.  Hey, it wasn't like I touched a high voltage wire.  I cut the cord from an old lamp so that the plug was still attached. Then I exposed the electrical wires so that I could touch them.  After plugging the cord in, I grabbed a hold of the bare wires. Yes, it tingles and that's all I have to say about it. I satisfied my curiosity and never intentionally messed around with electricity again.  My next zap was much more powerful and was done accidentally.  But that's another story for another time.

When I was in elementary school, during the winter it was a rite of passage to stick your tongue on the flagpole.  Sign me up! You see, I was good at doing risky stuff no matter how small and petty it may be considered.  There's an art to flagpole licking and I knew just how long I could put my tongue on the flagpole without having it stick there. Other kids weren't so well versed in the mechanics of flagpole licking in the middle of winter.  I know I must have gotten my tongue stuck a time or two, but if I had, I don't remember the incident. Obviously, it didn't deter me from doing such a stupid stunt again and again.

Now, I think about all the poor teachers who used to have to come out from their warm classroom to get another idiot unstuck. Teachers have to put up with so many shenanigans from young fools.  I actually feel sorry for them and nowadays, I'm sure that the stunts I used to pull would be considered pretty lame.  But back in the day, Mildred was da bomb. If it became a thought and if that thought piqued my interest or brought a smile to my face then the deed was going to be done. I just had to figure it out and they say practice makes perfect!

For those of you who don't live in an area where winter means snow, ice and sub-zero temperatures, sticking your tongue on a flagpole in the dead of winter usually means that your tongue freezes to the metal quickly.  If you're stupid enough to get your tongue frozen to a metal flagpole, trying to pull it free is definitely the wrong thing to do. I've seen kids pull flesh off their tongue trying to free themselves. I can understand freaking out once you realize your tongue is stuck, but in any risky situation, you have to go in with a back-up plan. You know, just in case things don't go as planned.  Every kid knew that a teacher would eventually come with a cup of warm water to free them, but most would panic before the teacher got there. And you know what panic in any situation means. It usually means someone is going to get hurt and that someone usually is you if you don't wait for the teacher.  Duh! Keeping your wits about you and not panicking when placed in any type of jeopardy is a difficult thing to do, but if you have the balls to do something risky, you have to be willing to pay the consequences if  all doesn't go as planned. To all those kids who got frozen to the flagpole and ended up leaving a little something behind...it sucks to be you!

My oldest brother once told me I'm a selfless person. Who me? Damn it! I can't have people running around making wild accusations like that about me! After all I have a certain reputation to uphold. He claimed I was the type of person who would run into a burning building to save someone without thinking of my own safety. When he told me that I thought he was crazy. I guess we rarely see ourselves as others see us. I think he might have overstated my selflessness a bit, but I was a firefighter for a period of time so maybe he's right after all, but that's another story for another time. I think maybe he was reading my willingness to do something heroic as being selfless whereas I would see it as part to my overall risk-taking behavior. The final result may be seen as selfless, but the motivation for the action was more deeply rooted. I've always liked the feeling of being on the edge with one foot dangling into the abyss. For the longest time after I was no longer on the fire department, any time I heard the siren from a fire truck, it would trigger an adrenaline rush. That was the weirdest feeling to have adrenaline surging through me and have no outlet for it. Like a Dalmatian dog you see in cartoons running after the fire truck, that's what I wanted to do, but I was afraid if I ran after it, I'd also start chasing garbage trucks, barking at the mailman and peeing on fire hydrants, too.

The Box

I don't exactly remember how old I was when I decorated the inside of the box transforming it from being an ordinary cardboard box that housed a new refrigerator into my own little world.  My mother and father had just purchased a new refrigerator and I claimed the empty box as a playhouse.  What kid doesn't like a place to hide away? I remember the box seemed huge inside so given the length of my ever-growing, lanky legs, I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 years old at the most. 

I worked diligently on coloring and drawing all over the inside of the box while leaving the outside deceptively plain.  I invited my friends one by one to visit me inside the box.  Everyone seemed thoroughly impressed by the wonderland I had created and they put their own mark on it as well by drawing a little something on the wall.  Because the box was too large to stay inside the house, my mother made me keep it beside the house in an area of the yard that the separated my house from my cousin's house. 

Each day I would race outside to check on my box and each day it was still there untouched.  And then it happened!  One morning I raced outside after eating breakfast and it had rained sometime in the night.  It never even entered my mind that it might rain and what rain would do to cardboard. When I tried to crawl inside the box, it collapsed on me.  It probably was a funny sight to see a huge cardboard box with a set of skinny legs sticking out of it, but I was crushed.  

My cousin, Debbie who was sitting on her stairs laughed hysterically at me.  I kept thinking that she's laughing at me because I hadn't invited her inside the box.  The longer she laughed the more it hurt my feelings. The more it hurt my feelings, the angrier I got. Finally, I accepted my refuge was gone forever and I stomped back to my house breathing fire as I went.  All I could hear was laughter resonating in my ears as my anger quietly boiled over.  When I went to shut the kitchen door, I slammed it as hard as I could. When I did that, I put my hand and arm through a pane of glass. 

I immediately had a "uh oh" moment when I looked down and saw glass all over the place.  I knew I was going to get in big trouble for it.  I hated my mother yelling and so did the whole neighborhood.  I knew this little fiasco was going to stir her wrath.  It seemed like in those days everything stirred her wrath. There was no way I'd catch a break and she'd just let me slide.  She didn't let anything slide!  Maybe a miracle would happen and  I would become deaf so I wouldn't have to hear her yell. The odd thing about it  was that I was completely oblivious to the fact that my hand and arm was bleeding from getting cut on the broken glass as I pulled my arm back through the pane of glass.  While I bled, all that seemed to concern me was having my mother yell at me, having to face my cousin, Debbie again and being embarrassed from having the whole neighborhood know what stupid thing I had done as my mother announced it to everyone. Her voice sometimes hit a fever pitch like she was yelling through a megaphone at a football game. I feared that this was going to be one of those times. 

It wasn't until my mother came running to see what all the commotion was and her bellowing, "What in hell have you done, Karen?" (an understatement, no doubt or maybe just a forecast of my misadventures that lie ahead) that I realized I had been physically hurt.  All my pain until then was emotional. She attended to my cuts first which weren't too bad before cleaning up the mess I had made. The bandages on my arm made my injuries look a lot worse than what they really were.  My wounds didn't require a trip to the doctor or stitches, but the gauze bandages that decorated my right arm was a constant reminder of what a dumbass I had been. I still invoked laughter each time I saw my cousin for days after that.  Each time she laughed at me, it hurt to be laughed at, but each time she laughed, I got a little tougher until it didn't matter anymore.  I may not have found a way to turn off my hearing, but I certainly found a way to turn my heart off so it would stop hurting.  Growing thick skin at an early age was a Godsend to me! 

BITTEN BY AN EMOTIONAL VAMPIRE

I'm just not feeling "it" today, but that's when it's most crucial to have a little peek at all the nastiness lurking inside. I bet the technician who did my abdominal ultrasound very early this morning, saw a bunch of my nastiness lurking in my pancreas, my liver and my gallbladder. It really sucks when your organs don't behave themselves.  So for today, here are my thoughts...

In life we have two choices. We can either rise above the pain and sorrow or we can stay emotionally paralyzed by the demons of our past. Few of us had a perfect childhood and yes, too many of us bear the ugly scars of coming from a dysfunctional family. But remaining crippled by our past takes away our ability to give and to receive love. We lose the ability to forgive and move forward. We dwell in a gray area where our demons thrive. We are weakened by some unseen, unrelenting force that continually reminds us to never trust, to never have hope and to never have faith. That force is an emotional vampire wanting to drain us dry, but fear not because that vampire can be defeated. It's a choice and the choice is ours and ours alone to make.

Maybe tomorrow I'll feel a little more human and be ready to kick ass. For now, it's off to bed so the sugar plum fairies can work their magic on me.