The Sunny Side of the Street

This simply must be my response to the state of affairs in my little corner of the world. Direct my feet to the sunny side of the street is excellent advice in and under all circumstances. Frank Sinatra is cool. My feet are trying to march me straight into a glum place. There are a number of reasons why this is the natural bent of things at the moment. But, I swear, everywhere I look things are challenging for so many people. I can't afford to go chasing after a melancholy mood. They are difficult to dig out from and are selfish journeys benefiting no one. Still the idea of hanging my head and appearing defeated is appealing. Appearing defeated is the truth as I am not defeated. I am far from defeated. Lord knows that my entire life has prepared me for times such as these and I do not want to do these times with my head squarely up my "you know what"! Isn't it strange how the dreadful places of self-pity and rampant self-will appear comforting just at the time they would be most harmful?

Do I qualify for the, "Wow, you have it tough" club? Yep! You bet'cha! Am I qualified, with the help of God, to thrive where I am planted. Yep! You bet'cha! But I come from a long line of melancholy people with dark visions of the future and mental sickness running through their veins. Swimming upstream from this legacy requires constant vigilance and the willingness of trusted friends to, with a stern hand, redirect my thoughts. I suppose I can take credit for wanting to live my life in the light of grace and faith. I cannot claim that I gain that lofty goal alone or that I always act as if I want it. No! There are days when I allow myself to slowly descend into morbid thinking. Funny, that is exactly what the alcoholic part of me loves to do as often as possible. Morbid thinking! What a comfort! Surely someone will notice and ask me what is wrong and feel sorry for me. HA! HA! Not on your life or mine! God does not allow for it and my friends won't stand for it so I am left in the pit of morbid thinking all by my lonesome. I climb out. There is no fun in high drama if no one at all pays attention.

The sunny side of the street beckons. What the heck? I think I'll cross over.

RUMINATIONS

It is hot. It is as hot as I remember it being in a long time. The evenings are warm. The breezes in the evening are warm. This kind of heat draws stories out of folks. People my age, from the south and who had farming grandparents can swap stories from dusk till dawn about hot summers, long tobacco rows, bathing in tin tubs in water warmed by the sun. Our common ground soothes us. When we are drawn by a sound, a photo and even this kind of hot weather, memories come flooding back.

At one time I talked about Mr. Owl who I saw on the top of the water tower at times. We developed a relationship built solely on my imagination and need for Mr. Owl to show up. At times he would hoot from the nearby woods. I would hoot back. Not well. I am sure I did not have him fooled. Mr. Owl began to show up less and less frequently last year. I  believe he did not cotton to the development going on around him. It has been months since I saw him or heard him.

God fills a vacuum. Enter the whipporwill calling from the small bit of forest near my mom's. My papa talked back to whipporwill's as they sang out in the evening. He could call up a whipporwill, which, if you are not familiar with "call up" means he could get a whipporwill to come to the nearby trees and commence to sing, "whipporwill! whipporwill!"

Between the heat and the whipporwill snippets memories of hot days on the farm during tobacco season began drifting through my mind...we got up before sunrise, often at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. Outside the mist hung in the trees and, in places, on the ground. People would be coming later to help take in the tobacco. Chores for set-up had to happen..toting jugs of water to the barn, setting up the tobacco horses where women would string the tobacco onto sticks that would later be hung in the barn. As we worked the sun began to melt off the mist. We had a huge breakfast that will live in my memory until I die. Granny would make eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy...there was no holding back. Work was gonna happen. It was gonna be hot. We needed our strength. My papa ate a huge plate of food. He would be in the fields with the men, walking the rows and pulling tobacco. No women did that job on his farm We worked at the barn. Lunch would be a sandwich and iced tea. My grandparents saw time as money when folks were working for them so we got at it fast as we could...granny muttering if I slowed down..."Time is money!" The depression stamped an indelible sense of the value of a penney on people that lived through it.

There is so much more. Maybe I will think on it again another day but I gotta go for now. They say that many a farmer's child went to college to keep from working tobacco all their lives. Motivation at it's best. Later!

This Will Be Short!

PTSD, just a little jolt this time. Visiting with a friend when I hear a baby cry out. Somewhere deep in my psyche threads of this and that race to find each other and a shiver runs up my spine. I hear the child again. My head tilts. I lose track of my friend's conversation. An ancient place opens up for a moment. Deep dread and a flight or fight response fly out of that opening , grip me around the neck, let go and are drawn back into the ancient place which closes back on itself. Probably 10 seconds have passed from beginning to end. I ask my friend, "Did you hear a baby cry out?" She replied, "You mean the children on the playground equipment?" "Yes", I replied. "The sound triggered me at a deep level." "Oh!", she said and nothing more. It is one of the reasons I treasure our friendship. We both know and experience these moments. The ptsd response ebbed away. Two veterans far removed from the days of war understanding each other, knowing that moments will come and pass and we will just say, "Oh!", meaning I love you and I understand.

When Mental Illness Is An Inheritance and some other stuff

Before the purist among you argue that I have used the word 'inheritance' out of context or incorrectly or some other statement on the use of that word I will set the record straight right now...SO WHAT?

It is my family legacy on the paternal side. It is the depression, the bi-polar, the schizophrenic, the alcoholic, the paranoid and the just plain odd character thrown into the mix for levity. It is my family and it is my inheritance as I have not gotten one other thing out of any person on that side of my family or the other, for that matter, when they passed on from this life to what lies beyond. (Well, my paternal grandmother did bequeath me my body shape and a goodly quantity of eccentricities) Since God does seem to give crazy people a generous bounty of grace when it comes to going to heaven I assume many of these same people will meet me at the river when my time comes. They will, of course, have been restored to a sound mind. It won't be like old times. No! Don't go getting snooty on me about being sacrilegious. This is my story, my life and it will, one day, be my death. 

Enough about death...my mom got to telling me a long story about my daddy's side of the family; how this one committed suicide and the other got hit head-on and died instantly and him probably a budding alcoholic and how she doesn't remember so much of what I tell her when we discuss the past, for whatever reason, which could be a good thing. It could be a gift.

So, I had the amazing surgery and I am mentally in a great place. Physically I am being treated for acute sinusitis and a flare-up of deverticuli. That one that starts with a "d" got my interest immediately. Who ever knew little pieces of food stuck in tiny pockets of  the intestine could create an environment that hurts like a big dog and causes a fever and a doctor's visit and antibiotics which I had to take while taking an antibiotic and getting a shot of an antibiotic. Doesn't it sound as if my body may just be a toxic dump with all these antibiotics? But,what's to be done?

I cannot dwell on the subject of my health for long without getting bogged down in self-pity and that is a thankless road to emotional hell. Life hands each person something they struggle with although it may not be so obvious as constant health issues. I started getting sick early in life. Malaria and dysentery took a toll when we lived in Africa but then it seems there was a space in time that I felt better...through my junior high years especially. Anyway, it seems to me it has been all of my life but that is a generalization. I can with all honesty say it has been the last 30 years of my life. Before that I was using drugs and drinking to one degree or the other so I am not sure about my health. This topic is making me SICK.

I talk a great deal about God and I absolutely know that God is with me. I am not doubting that at all. Just, at times, I gotta say WTF. Then I think of how much clearer my mind is and how much happier I am emotionally since the surgery and I realize that what is bringing me down is this infection hanging out in my body. Things are not so bad. Just this body of mine and God made it and I am trying to understand who to be in it and then I think of Lu and her struggle with cancer and her beautiful spirit and I take a deep breath and pull up my big girl panties and trudge on...you know...the happy road of destiny?

So much about myself when the world is groaning in deep distress. Well, here's the scoop, I am running a low grade fever, my husband said he thinks the air conditioning in our home stopped, there is no money to fix that air conditioner, my husband is going to the doctor tomorrow and he is afraid but this darn low grade fever is the culprit and the reason for this entire post. My body feels as if something is plugged into it draining energy slowly off of me. Lawd have mercy!! Woman, stop! Stop and smell the luxury of the world around me. So this is me sounding off and it isn't even a decent sound off. Whine! Hey, if I was eating I could be a "Whine and Dine".  Yeah, I agree. It is time to wrap it up and go home and see if the AC is really shot. I have a thermostat to install and that should send anyone who knows me into peals of laughter.

I am not depressed. YAY!! I can think clearly! YAY! My body will get stronger over the next 6 months. YAY!! Praise God for these and so many, many other blessings. His grace is sufficient!

 

Thanks for listening!



Purple letters on a whim. Short post. Snippets. Rescued a chicadee this week. Took him to the wildlife shelter. What a treat!

Have an opportunity to learn a new job skill online. I can probably learn it this time. The removal of my sick parathyroids has meant the return of my brain.

Humidity sucks. Humidity ain't my thing anymore. Summer has just begun and I am in full rebellion. I live on the coast of North Carolina. Life is weird. Now that I live on the coast where it is hot and humid during the summers I have lost the desire to hang out in the heat. Life is so darn weird. In my 20's and 30's I kept a deep tan, body surfed, walked the beach and now I don't do any of those things. Maybe my health will improve enough for those pleasures to lure me to the sea one more time...or not!

This post post is BORING!! Who cares if I don't like to be in the sun anymore? I certainly do not care. The humidity part is the point but I am leaving the rest of that paragraph just so I can show myself how I am so much like people on Facebook who say things like, "I had kale for dinner." I am like, "Really? Who cares?" Then I write the ridiculous information that I use to like being in the sun and now I don't like being in the sun. I have a lot of nerve feeling superior and smug towards other people.

And, this color of type is sucking my brain out of my head. It will not be on this blog again. Count on it.

 

Comes Once More The Hideous One

I have a dream that comes to me from time to time. There are, of course, variations and it may be years between one time I have the dream and the next time I have it. There are two other, no three other, recurring dreams that come to mind immediately . One of those I have not had for a very long time although the house which is in the dream and the location of the dream I visit in other dreams and try to remember during those dream if I have seen that house before and wonder why it seems familiar. 

 

The dream I just woke myself up from has been , oh wait, first I want to tell you, the reader, about this cave I have gone to in my dreams on a number of occasions. Not the entire dream as I do not remember it and there is no way to fully describe the significance of a cave and the journey I take to this cave or into it each time. I go there and it is always a place that has been at some point in time condemned and I know this but I also know that far enough down into the cave there is an entrance into a deeper part of the cave and it is there that I always go. Reciting much more of that adventure can become a waking nightmare so I will remove myself from that place and return to the dream that chose tonight to return in a variation but one of "those" dreams nevertheless.

In this dream I am part of a group of people who have been set up to be in an environment where death is the final scene. We are not chosen arbitrarily. If I could define the art form of this dream I would choose to compare it to one of those horror movies that Vincent Price starred in long ago. Void of the complexity of modern day special effects  those movies managed to convey a sense of impending doom . Our imaginations do so much of the work in the older horror movies. As I was dreaming I was vaguely aware that I had been here time after time in other dreams and I wanted to wake up but the dream ensnared me. The difference this time was that I actively tried to find my way out of the situation. Yet, at every attempt I found out the person I thought was going to help was part of the ongoing trap or the path I chose to find my way out simply turned on itself forcing me back into the dream. Ultimately the way out was to wake up. I finally was able to wake up and I did not go back to sleep at all. The familiarity   of the dream coupled with the new behavior of trying to find my way to safety was intense.

I may never dream this dream again or I may dream it in three years or five. I will soon forget it unless I re-read this post. Yet, once the dream begins I will know immediately that I have passed that way before.

I can easily interpret the dream. Clearly understanding the dream has not lessened the impact nor have I managed to escape it.

This dream is a milder version of the cave dream. Kinda a prep school for the cave dream which I hope I never dream again. While little happens in the dream that would make a horror moment, the dream in and of itself illicits horror. When I realize I am once more in the cave dream I am drawn like a moth to the flame.

Enough of dreams. It is, after all, water under the bridge. The deed has been done. The wound has been deep. The healing ongoing. All that remains are these dreams with no end, no beginning, no relevance. They are like abandoned horror houses in an old theme park.