In case you ever – EVER – feel like

Something or someone rejected you, or treated you badly, therefore there must be something wrong with you, or you’re less-than, or somehow you “earned” it:

My name is Loki Chewbacca Greeblie Skywalker. It used to be Luke, but I’m opinionated, and I won’t answer to Luke or Lulu or anything but Loki. Also, I was a boy for a few months, but now people say I’m a girl. It’s all good.

I like purring, playing with toys, gnawing on my new Person’s finger, and chasing my sister.

I love cat cookies.

I love food.

I use the catbox perfectly, even though I am just almost 4 months old. (I do like to dig in it like a little power blender, though, and throw sand out. )

At this moment, I smell like powdered sugar donuts and poop.

Someone threw me outside in a tiny closed box, and left me to die.

Someone stuck gum in my fur.

Someone threw me away like I didn’t matter. When people heard me crying and rescued me, I couldn’t walk; I hadn’t been able to stretch or use my legs for weeks.

Foster mom saved my life, and it was a close thing. Then she gave me to new mommy.

(My new mommy makes sure If I ever kick my legs, I have plenty of room to stretch them out. I’ll always be supported to stretch and run and reach and climb and play and grow.)

* * *

Does it make this baby, this beautiful, perfect baby girl, any less than magnificent, that some person saw fit to abuse and discard her, and could not see how wonderful she is?

Nope.

Just wanted to remind you.

She’s got plenty of purrs – enough for you, too – until the hearts that feel turned away,

heal.

Understand that your value is not up for negotiation with anyone.

Oh, and there’s a p.s.: The people or person who hurt me have their own karma, in that they’re the kind of people who can do that.

I don’t think about the gum or the cardboard box prison anymore. I have a family that loves me. I trust them and I am completely happy, strong, and unafraid.

If I hung on to the gum and cardboard box and growled at all people, I’d be dragging the past into my future. no way! How others behaved that landed on me, is not my karma to carry.

You wanted to be held; you dug your little velvet forehead under my chin, and burrowed closer, closer, on your last day – I held you and paced, because you were quite particular, and didn’t like it when I sat down. And so, we walked. My arm trembled and ached and I thought “so soon, your weight will be gone forever, so I won’t let go,” and it became a yoga exercise of heart and soul tenacity.
It was the longest and most brief time of my life. I set up a camera timer with one hand and held you in front of it, watching as I distracted myself, “look at how hard it is for you to be present with him, look how you escape,” I observed ,
And my lower back was screaming now, “this is why we crossfit, silly woman, so you can hold your dying boy as long as he wants. As long as he lives.”

Then they were on their way, I got the call, and my heart sped up, and I shook with instant cold. With one hand then the next, I put a sweatshirt on slowly, not jostling you, my love, my own heart’s darling, and I sneakily stretched my back a bit, too-
Hold on. Let go. Hold on. Let go.
I don’t want to scare him, I said, and my tears leaped back into my heart, to wait until you were gone. “It’s ok, love, you are safe,” Which didn’t feel like a lie, as there is really nothing safer than to meet death held by love and accepting and with peace.
But this was our island, before they came over – I knew today I would wake up in a life without you in it, and my heart would stumble, learning to beat without yours near,
and so I held you and I let you go.

2/11/2020 Figaro, fly free

After a few years of experimentation and documenting occurrences, my conclusion is: I do not recommend disclosing autism – not in this society.

I know this is a horrible thing to say.

Bullying in the workplace, being targeted, scrutinized and set up for an automatic double standard, where you’re the only one called out for any and every mistake until you are walking on eggshells, and then being told you are “trying too hard,” until you feel like a bear being poked with sharp sticks, an honest person gaslit at every turn-

that is worse.

Until our society improves, until we value people, do not disclose your autism. Learn to hide it, and learn to hide your breakage from hiding your autism.

What I do now: I stop speaking. When I am put on blast, when I am being singled out for things my coworkers do all the time, I stop speaking.

I go home, and I am now spending weeks with my therapist separating my feelings from the actual circumstances. I am working out my hurt on the boxing bags. I am knitting myself back together.

bullies will not win- and they will not break us. By the time autistic people are adults, a lot of us have survived not only multiple suicide attempts, but abuse, damage, violence – the lessons from trusting people too much, one of the gifts that comes with autism.

So we, autistic adults, are resilient beyond what you can possibly imagine.

I will not speak, because I know a very eloquent tirade will come out of my mouth if I speak to bullying in the moment. I do not speak, because no matter if it kills me, I WILL treat others with respect, no matter what kind of disrespect they feel free to dole out.

and I know the potential pitfalls of this: I have already had it happen, where someone rushed to report an incident, flipped it around, put their actions in my mouth and my words in their mouth. “I have never, in all my time here, been spoken to so rudely; I am disappointed, and I am hurt.” one of us said it, and the other stole it, and reported it.

One rule for me, another for them. I know this. It is always this way.

Hide your autism, and build your armor, wound by wound, scar by scar.

I am here for you. I am here to remind you to pick yourself up off the floor, because as long as you are still breathing, you still have fight left in you, and I will lace you back into your gloves and put you back in the ring, even if I am crying for how hurt I know you are.

Welcome to the ring: this is autism. Hide it, and fight them.

The irony? If employers realized what they had in autistic people, they would value us so highly. They have honest people who will NOT lie. they have people who log rules into a file in their brain, and follow the rules. They have people who love going that extra mile,

until they break us down –

I feel indebted to my parents for the life they gave me. Growing up in Germany taught me a lot (though I was defiant and resistant, and blasted the Beach Boys at all hours, and had “Santa Cruz” stickers on all my stuff, and wore sunglasses in the dead of winter…)

I visited a friend who lived in Berlin, and we went over to east Berlin while it was still a completely walled off, controlled country. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my young life at the time, when they pretended they’d lost my passport, then said they had no such thing, my receipt was a forgery and I wasn’t allowed to leave.I stared at my friend who had already crossed through the narrow wooden tunnel. I remember shaking. I remember thinking I would never get out. I wanted to run, my body was poised and trembling, and I knew I would be shot if I ran.

Then I remembered what I had been taught, and told them to call the East German Polizei, who would then call the Russian police, who would then call the American military police. I mentioned my father worked for the american government. They somehow “found” my passport. A little blue scrap, clutched in my sweaty hands, so fragile a thing, to let me out. out. out walking freely, breathing freely, a girl who would never take her safety for granted again. I saw checkpoint Charlie taken away by a crane. I chipped off a part of that wall myself, with my own two hands wielding a mallet. It was a symbolic thing for young me to do, and it’s still what I stand for…

Breaking through walls of imprisonment is in my blood and in my family line (another story, for another time, it deserves its own story, because it is glorious.)…I still have the piece of that wall somewhere. It horrifies me to hold it, though, so I’ve never known what to do with it.

If people experienced these things, I feel like they would understand how fragile our social structure is.

I feel like some might vote differently, if they realized what it’s like to live without checks and balances.

Even one day behind a wall changed me for life. Even a few weeks in Berlin had me in fight-or-flight the entire time.

If you could see what the true horror of being owned looks like -They had facades of buildings along a main route, and that wide, main route was the only place they’d allow foreign governments to see and visit. Behind the facades was devastation. Despair. Crumbling hovels.

I still have a bag I bought from a seller there, sitting cross legged on the ground. I was standing and I felt far too tall. He smiled at me and cheerily, quietly said “help me,” as we completed our transaction. I can’t forget these things. I can’t forget these people. They infuse my vote. I cast my vote for all of them. In memory of the trapped man who smiled and whispered “help.”

You set the enormous antique mirror down; you know you did, because the cat told you to, and she is the questgiver. You don’t remember why, but you had to do this little side quest before you continued on with the main quest. What is the main quest?
You can’t remember.
You can’t remember, because I’m writing this, and I haven’t told you yet.

“How does that feel?” The voice is coming from behind you. How can that be? You’re facing into the room; you see the patch of sunlight on the apartment floor, but no cat. Oh. She must have slipped behind you, when you were busy trying to figure out your point of view.
You turn,

you turn around

…and that’s when you realize that you were standing inside the frame of the mirror. How could you have been standing right inside it, and not have noticed? Last thing you remember is accepting the quest, and setting down the damned mirror.
But as you turn, you see the edges of the frame. As you turn, you hear and feel a strange grating crunch, that sounds like pieces of glass shifting against each other.
It sounds like that, because that’s exactly what it is.
You look down at your arms, (and no: we haven’t looked into the room yet, because it’s dark, and before you go forward, you’ve got to figure out what the hell is going on in the liminal space.)
and if you could feel horror, this would probably (maybe) be the moment for it. But you don’t. Because somewhere inside, where you didn’t want to think about it, you already knew.

You didn’t really set the mirror down, because it is embedded in your skin.
Pieces of it have cut you, so you’re bleeding in trickles and stripes, but it doesn’t hurt – much.
Or at least, you’re used to how it feels. You feel the same. You’ve always been aware of a pain you carry around; it’s so familiar, it’s just what comes with you when you wake up in the morning, and weaves itself into your dreams at night. You wouldn’t even call it pain, if you weren’t looking at the blood – you would just call it: yourself.

But it isn’t. you can see that, now. It is shards of glass. Some are buried so deep, you can see the scars where your skin has healed over, but there’s an angular bit pressing against it, so it forms a small lump. Some are sticking out- those are new, you suppose – some of them are halfway in, and grating against the ones buried deep.

Here’s where the horror comes: GET THEM OUT! how do you get them out? how many are there? You want to run, screaming, get them out, get them off me, but the moment your blood surges like rocket fuel and you feel your bladder decide in a panic that it needs to pee or something, your brain laughs and tells you that’s NOT how we’re going to solve this, and a calm flows through you.
That’s exactly what you always do when there’s an emergency, isn’t it? It’s your superpower. “There’s an unidentified, mangled object in the engine of this plane. We must ask you to stay calm and evacuate.” Your brain switches into calm, doesn’t it, so cool that you spread a pool around you, and the people near you are touched by it. You say something calm, usually something funny, and people laugh. You see their shoulders relax. Good.
You did it when you had tried to commit suicide, and you were on the emergency room table; the last thing you remember is them chuckling at what you said, and someone saying “she’s so sweet. I hope she lives.”

They hoped you lived

Tears spring into your eyes, and you’ve accepted that there are various-shaped (Narrator doesn’t even know how many) shards of glass under your skin. You’ve accepted that you’ve accepted it, and now it’s time for us to be able to see the room inside the mirror frame.

This hurts. Writing this hurts, so I hope reading it is a little bit more pleasant.

The room is foggy. Sorry, I know that seems like a copout, but it is. You can tell it’s a room, but you can’t see very far in front of yourself. It’s shifting with fog. You can see that there are people in here – and you can see a large shape in the center of the room, and you make out a glint of gold here and there in the center of the room, but that’s it. There isn’t enough light to even see colors. Where there’s a “glint of gold,” there must be light shining off it from some source somewhere, or maybe I’m just making up the glint of gold part.
IN any case – just trust me when I tell you that right now, it’s a weird, foggy landscape. You could be in Sherlock Holmes’ London, if it were contained in a room, but surely if you were, you would hear horses’ hooves and cab wheels on cobblestones, because that’s how you’ve always pictured it.
What do you hear and smell?
Your ears feel oddly muffled, like when you duck your head underwater. You move your arm experimentally, and you can hear, sort of inside-your-ears, the grating of the glass, and your own breathing. You should be quite proud, really, that your breathing is so even and relaxed.
It smells damp. It smells, in fact, like a smell you really love- the damp of the water and the rocks on the Pirates ride in Disneyland. It smells like you’d imagine the spooky hallway smells in the Haunted Mansion, if the Mansion were real (and yes, you’ve really always just called it the Haunted ‘House,’ let’s just admit that, since I’m speaking for you at the moment, and you haven’t got a choice in the matter) as you’ve always wished. Wished it were real.
It is real.
You’re standing in it right now.

The ghostly forms begin to make a bit more sense to your mind- the large thing in the middle of the room isn’t Madame Leota’s table, as you wish it were; it is, in fact, a dais, a raised platform. There are stairs, so it’s really like a series of circles, one on top of the other. On the platform, in the center, is –

but wait. Surrounding the platform seems to be a sort of glass wall or forcefield or something, because the fog is behaving oddly. It isn’t the same inside the platform as it is on the outside. How can you see this now, when you couldn’t before? Have you stepped into the room without me narrating it? You naughty thing.

You look down at your arms to see if you’ve moved, or whether it was just that the fog was moving so you felt like you moved, and one of the shards of glass flashes (there’s that mysterious glint, again! Where is the light source?) and right when it flashes in your eye, it hurts a bit, because it’s a new kind of pain, and you look up to find-

You don’t have glass in your arms at all. What kind of crazy idea was that? You look down at your arms, and they’re small. They’re smooth. They’re tiny. Someone grabs you roughly by the shoulders, and you look – oh no- there’s a tightness in your chest, and you really don’t want to look, any more than I want to write this –
You see your brother, as he was. Oh shit, not this. Not this time, it is over, must we really revisit this?

There’s a scratchy sensation like splinters in your skin when the rope goes around your neck. What is he saying? Can you remember?
Oh yes. “Cowboys and Indians.” That was it. You always want to be the Indian, don’t you? Always. You hate cowboys. You grew up believing and knowing that the Indians were yours, their brown skin should have been your brown skin, and you hate your brother’s blond, fluffy hair -HATE it.
You’d see it from the back when he was in the camper, in front of you, lounging in the entire window so you couldn’t talk to your parents at all, the butt pockets of his “Tuff Skins” jeans and his stupid blonde hair right in your face so in your mind you wanted to just spank his stupid butt. Instead, you gave in. You let him have your parents, and you turned around to play with the cat. Your real brother, Pooh bear, the cat. He was blocked out, too, so you and Pooh played together. Give up, you don’t want what your brother takes away- you learn to release it all…

Now your brother the blonde cowboy has a rope around your neck, and seems to have decided that the end of the game was that he gets to hang you from the swing set, because you’re the Indian. It’s how it’s always been; the cowboys always win, don’t they, that’s what he’s saying, but you still don’t want to be one. You never, never do. You love your brown hair. You love your brown skin, just like your Dad’s. Just like your Mom’s. Brown in the sun, brown from running toward the ocean waves and rolling in the sand. To hell with him.

Fog swirls in front of your eyes, and you move your hand up to feel for the rope burn. It’s not there. The glass clinks and grates under your skin again, but there’s a clink, and you look down to see that one shard has worked its way out of your skin and fallen to the ground.

How did you escape death that time? You don’t remember what happened after your brother threw the rope over the swing set. You know someone rescued you, because your parents told you. But you don’t remember it at all. You step forward and hear the satisfying crunch as you grind the shard of glass under your trusty adventuring boots.

This is how you’ll get free of the damned mirror. One piece at a time. No matter how long it takes. all right.

I could do this all day.

You hear a squeak behind you, that sounds like a cross between an amused, startled laugh and a cough. You turn again, disoriented, How many times have you turned? Is this some kind of sick game of Blind Woman’s Bluff?

“You’ve turned a few times,” says the new cat, and you’ll turn more before you’re done with this quest.

“I didn’t know what this involved before I agreed to it,” you say, your mind already furiously working on an exit strategy. But the shards of glass under your skin throb the truth before the cat can speak it:

“That’s life. We come in the door, but we don’t necessarily agree to all that is involved. The only thing we can do, really, is let go and be brave – or not – I suppose we could just sit down, give up and whine, but you don’t want to do that, do you. You’ve always been a fighter.”
“Yes.”
The new cat is smaller, just a kitten, really. She’s got the same grey ears as the first cat. You look around for the first cat, and you see a glimmer of her as the fog shifts. She’s still got an exclamation point over her head, but this time it is drained of all color. it’s as grey as the fog, and you can only see it because the fog parts around it, and it stands out against the darkness.
“How many of you cats are there?”
“Two,” the little kitten smiles, “Well, three, really, but you won’t see the third one. You may not meet him at all, if your quest doesn’t go that direction. That would be the best of all outcomes, but it’s up to you, really.”
She cocks her head, the wisps standing out wildly around her ears, “the only way out, of course, is through.”

This will not transform itself to go into the story, no matter how many times I sift it, no matter how many facets I carve into it, or angles I observe it from. There are some wounds that are too fresh to be made into fiction. They have to heal somewhat before they can be […]

Intermission – — When a Raven is like a Writing Desk

Her smile was serene, and it landed in my chest with a sharp ache that startled me awake.
She slid the thick pottery mug of tea across the table to me. Steam wreathed her in mystery as she poured her own, and finally spoke.
“The problem with heroes,” she said, wrapping her hands around her mug and breathing in the warm, clove-spiced steam,
“is that they require you to need rescuing.”
My tea tasted of autumn; liquid gold afternoon sunshine and a hint of spice, old-fashioned and comforting.
“I guess that’s what we’re supposed to want,” I said, “to be rescued. To be shown that there is goodness, that men can be honorable and true, noble and good.”
“Do you hear it?” her voice shimmered with amusement. “Do you hear that that is simply an answer to doubt? Do you hear that the opening, unspoken question there is one of harm, of disbelief, that there are good, honest, honorable, brave men, so the hero is supposed to prove himself different, is somehow better than the rest? That to be honorable is somehow,” she gave a rather unladylike snort, “difficult or unusual?” I nodded, struck silent. Of course. It was not too much to ask, that a man be a good, solid, honest person.

“Poor silly butterfly that’s pinned to that flat, dull, card labeled ‘hero’. He has no spark left; no freedom to choose a moral compass to guide him. He must perforce hide all that doesn’t fit the illustration – and then, how can he be real at all? His wings won’t move. How will he cope, then, with all the kinds of weather that this life brings? He won’t. His pretty wings will crumble to dust at the first breath of wind, that needs living wings to bend, move, adapt, stretch, make difficult choices.” She shook her head, and closed her eyes briefly, her smile growing soft.
“If you heal too much, a hero will wish you broken again, or he loses the sense of purpose that your need gave him. He loses the sense of superiority. And understand this: there is no stepping out of storybooks to be living, breathing, growing, learning, thriving, curious and evolving people with such a one. Not together. Not in partnership. My dearest, I wish you to put away, once and for all, Once Upon a Time.”

My body echoed hers, now; across from each other at the small, comfortable, worn oak kitchen table, hands cupping mugs, basking in the warmth of the tea and each other. Crone, and – what was I? – for I was no maiden, I was no mother, and not yet crone. Warrior.
Crone and Warrior, we smiled our understanding,
and wholeness wrapped itself around my heart like a cat settling in to make a new home there.
“The quest never was for a hero,” she said, “my brave one. It was for you to find your own limits, and stand firm. It was for you to learn to speak to yourself in the way a true love would. You were speaking to yourself so harshly, you see, that someone came along uttering spiky impatience, and you took it for love, because it sounded just like your inner voice.

A hero won’t want to rescue you for your own sake. He won’t be rescuing you because he sees your beautiful soul. No, he’s rescuing you for himself, so that he might feel, for a moment, proud, noble, invincible, strong. So he might convince himself and the world in his mind, for a moment, that he’s something shining pinned to that labeled card.
The truly strong will not need you to need them in such a way, dear heart.
The one who can love you, who deserves your love, will wish you to expand. He’ll not speak harm.
But you’ve made it to my cottage; the first stage of the quest,” she twinkled coyly. “If you heard harm now, it would sound to your ears like a story meant for someone else.

Oh, he’d follow his script, try to disparage you as he did, to make himself stronger, create you weak, and now, why, you’d think, how odd, and you would keep on your way. You’d nod to him, remote, and keep walking, would you not?”

“Yes, lady, I surely would, now.” And I knew it to be true.

She bobbed her head in satisfaction. “Now, you’ll know goodness when you hear it, and you’ll walk away from curses. There will not be a single moment you’ll need rescuing or saving, so what you’ll find along your way now, perhaps, will be a companion. A bright friend by your side, content to share the path, working together when it’s time to set up camp.”

“I like to travel alone now, lady,” I said, smiling into my teacup.

“Yes. As it should be. What delights you’ll know, and you’ll go much further than you ever imagined possible, when you thought it all had to be so bloody difficult.”

“Forgive the hero, lass. He did the best he could with what he had, poor chap. He doesn’t have eyes to see the riches you carry. Leave him to his quest, and follow yours – your next stage is clear; you carry the Crone’s gift, now, to see you on your way.”

We laughed then,
and talked long into the afternoon,
until finally, it was time to say goodbye. I walked away from her door with the knowledge of love blooming in my veins, as spicy and mysterious, comfortable and warm as her autumn clove tea.

Once upon a time,

I was going to marry someone.
I had decided, by God, I was going to marry him, and that was that.
I had decided that no matter what, I was true. That was it, I had chosen, and no matter what, I couldn’t un-choose. Even though he un-chose me.
It has taken me ten months (almost?) to see the problem with that.
It has taken me ten months to forgive.
It has taken me ten months to understand.
It has taken me ten months to find my own true heart in the matter again.

So, in case this can help someone else:

I thought I was marrying him without wanting him to change.
We were highly compatible as artists, and as friends. It was the absolute best kind of friendship, in my eyes – we had adventures, and we laughed a lot. We sparked each other to play and stories and silliness. I have many wonderful memories with this person.
And!
We were not at all compatible in these important things: in the world each of us wanted to live in, and in the life we each desired, and in the way we saw people and our perceptions of what was important.

That, I am now knowing, doesn’t make him wrong or me wrong. It makes us -not people who should marry each other.

My mistake was this. I saw his chosen way of life, the entertainment business and the city and the way of dealing with people that goes along with those things as morally wrong. I saw his perception of people and his thoughts as wrong. As damage. As harm and hurt and negativity.
I didn’t even know it; I had blinders on – I simply saw it as a weakness, as something I could cure, and heal. I would think “oh, he doesn’t really mean that.” when he would say something I saw as damaged.
I’m now knowing that he meant it. His life choices show me that he meant it. It wasn’t damage, it was *Who he was!* he was telling me ALL ALONG, and I thought I was being kind and forgiving by denying this person his reality!
By gently pushing past it, whenever he would declare how he saw people or saw the world; by ignoring it as if it was inconsequential and would change once he became the “good” I saw in him, I was so fully in my own construct of the world, that I couldn’t see I was denying someone his entire reality. I was calling it poison, simply because it was air I can’t breathe!

IN my eyes, this was a man of great integrity and kindness, with a beautiful, idealistic heart. So I thought I could heal and help him overcome his way of seeing people. I thought I could heal and help his life, which in my eyes was full of strife and battles, never ending anger and distrust-stories. I saw him a certain way, and I held him in that.

He saw me a certain way, my potential, and he held me in that.

I thought I could heal that, and bring peace and calming waters. He thought he could heal my gentle introversion, and make me the snow-white-wonderwoman fighting perfect princess that he saw me to be.

I hated when he said my goofy, Lucille Ball qualities were damage I didn’t have to hold myself in. I wanted him to laugh and love my goofiness.

He hated when I said his “tank in a bunker inside a concrete fortress” was damage that could be healed. He wanted to be strong, feeling-proof, and victorious at all costs.

This man doesn’t want “peace and calming waters.” He has expressed that he’s bored by serenity. Those things were a judgment on my part. I thought that universally, all people wanted peace and serenity, and the kind of connection I desire to live in.

They don’t.
They don’t!

This realization came about because I was reminiscing about how this man anxiously tried to prepare our future home to be a place that I could stand to live in. He rigged up a surround sound system so that I could play my nature sounds in any room I happened to be in.
I was anxious to keep the peace at all costs; my tenderness for this man is as huge and protective as a dragon- so I was preparing to get in my car and drive when I needed space and peace. He needed space to be loud. He needed the kind of sounds I could not live with. I needed the kind of peace and meditation time that was anathema to him.

We both, in our own ways, were desperately, anxiously, trying to force ourselves into shapes that would allow the other partner to be happy. Because we loved.
Because we loved, we both tried to “heal” the other person of things we thought were complete fallacies and damage.

My need for solitude and peace. My complete serenity, not in fame or achievement or anything at ALL like that, but in healing. In helping others. My contentment at being “nobody,” which in his eyes is terribly like being “mediocre;” my feeling that there was no hierarchy, no one reached any sort of top, middle, or bottom… that, in fact, there is nowhere to climb at all!
In feeling like when I have left this life, I will have helped. I will have brought more love. I will have planted some seeds where there was once angry, damaged, hurt, bitter ground. I will have given laughter and sunny times and happiness. that is ALL.
His need for achievement. His need for striving, and striving to make a name and make a mark and change the world.

We both saw each other’s life purposes as damage that needed healing.

Simply because we are different.

If I went to another country in which women lived a certain way, and had no voices (do you see the judgment there already? “had no voices”) I would be all fired up in my reaction, my judgment, my anger, my fighting.
What if, in that country, the women saw my way of life and my choices as wrong, and wanted to cure me to their ways?

This isn’t a great analogy (I can hear the arguments now…) but it’s one that we learn in sociology – it’s one that Ahsoka (if you don’t know who I’m mentioning here, just go watch Clone Wars) tries, as a jedi-in-training, to practice, (but fails just as I would…) to observe without attempting to effect change. To accept and observe, even if my mind would call it “harmful” or other words.

Yeah, I would fail just as Ahsoka does, because I tend towards passionate, co-dependent rescuing. So did he.

This is all to say: it is possible to love someone, and love them deeply, and not be able to make a life together that makes for mutual happiness.

This man has now married, I am told, (this is hearsay, I have no idea. it’s not my business…)
someone who likely fits into his life far better than I ever did. I am delighted for them – and whether it’s an actual circumstance or not, this has brought me the closure, peace and healing I needed.
The understanding that he and I were a tree and a desert plant trying to live in the same container.

I am so grateful he found someone he doesn’t have to change, who doesn’t have to change for him. I am so grateful I am free to expand and be myself in a way I never could before.

I can love. I can see this spirit in the world that used to delight me in his many quirky funny ways.
I can see his wounds and wish fiercely for him to have healing of them someday. He saw mine and wished the same.
We tried to fix each other.

I think it is enough to have had the deep soul gift of this lesson that I, for one, will not repeat :
We can love, and what a glorious gift it is! but we must first live a life that makes us completely happy,
and have the freedom to do so. And we must go our own way in order to fulfill what we are here to do. We can’t shrink ourselves to fit into someone else’s world, or ask them to twist around to fit in ours, and still expect to be happy and live the life we are here to live.

I am feeling whole these days in a way I hadn’t in my entire youth-to-adult life. From about the age of nine onwards. I am deeply and richly content and buzzing with abundance. I have a death to grieve, a few of them, but there has been profound healing of that which felt a “lack” and a need for someone else.

I’ve been meaning to write this, to the men who have been writing to me – except for three of you, who seem quite happy. The rest: if you are unhappy and you complain about your life, and you are sad and lonely and you’re looking for “a woman” to fill that,
please reconsider.

For one thing, I personally will not date someone who is unfulfilled and thinks “love” will solve it. I have learned that even the most forgiving love- even the kind of love I brought my ex, that strove to make peace at all costs, and strove to be his happiness and wanted to heal his sorrows,
IT CANNOT SERVE. What happens is (and if you don’t believe me, just experience it for yourselves and then come back and re-read this!)
what happens! is that you will wind up being quite angry, eventually, with the closest person. Even if you manage to find a woman like I was, in my damage, who wanted to be wife and mother and nurturer and provider and healer and just hold you through all the pain and defend you fiercely from every single hurt, and fill your life so that you are finally completely happy – even if you find that! you will wind up resenting it. Her. you will wind up feeling trapped and stifled, and you will wind up fighting like a toddler hitting the soft, yielding mother arms that hold them.
And the partner who wants to be all things?
that’s damage. That’s a person who is codependent, who derives their self-worth from how others feel, who NEEDS THERAPY and needs, in turn, to find out how to be whole on their own. Because “unconditional love” has no boundaries or healthy limits. It doesn’t value the self – and if you think that’s generous and amazing, just consider: if you can’t value yourself, you have no self to give. You’re removed, dissociated, giving your own value to someone else to decide, and, ultimately, not completely in your own truth.

So. It won’t work, those who think it’s romantic to reach out to someone and say “I’m sad, I’m lonely, I’m lost, I need.” there are many of you. many!

I am writing this to you now, and I’m writing it to me. I hear you. I feel for you. I cannot respond to you all. I have my own life and heart to heal. I am giving you the gift of this story,
(this isn’t actual circumstances. It’s my thoughts around the past, and God knows, that is filtered through my own perceptions) This story is how I have reached complete forgiveness and wishing the blessing to everyone concerned, that they find healing and happiness.

I know I will. I know I am. I know I have.

If you find yourself struggling against something, ask yourself if you are trying to change a dog into a cat. Ask yourself if you feel someone is trying to change you. Ask yourself if YOU are trying to change you, being completely flexible around someone else’s opinions.
Ask yourself if you can accept, love, release, and go find YOUR own truth and heart and life.
Ask yourself if you can take up space, as much as you need, and risk disapproval, until you move gently into a place where you fit.

(and this is not even *touching yet* on limerence, which is probably another article entirely. Creating a fantasy image and pushing all your dreams and needs onto someone else, thinking they’re the answer. Please check yourselves of this, I am exhausted by it.)

Ask yourself what you need. Then go out and create it.
Forgive. Bless. Give Thanks. Release. I am so profoundly grateful. I have tried to say it here, but the words still don’t encompass the enormity of the realization, bliss, and love I feel in my life now. Thank God. Peace, Beaver.

… sigh. and again, I am not going to edit this one. I’m not even going to re-read it! 😛
I guess I’m doing too much of that in my fiction work, so this blog is the space I’ll keep sprawling in. skip what you want to skip! xoxoxo