You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February, 2008.
Very interesting. And surprisingly enough, I had never heard of this up until just a few weeks ago.
But, um, I don’t really think I’m anywhere near ready. A few of you can get off the oxygen and life support machines now.:)
Since I’ve been all about confessions lately, here’s another. After that last post, I was giving some serious thought to just wrapping all of this up completely. I mean, it was a very good wrapping up point, don’t you think? This is me. You know me. Story’s over. The end. A sort of epilogue to this, at times, silly and greedy giga pet of a web page that seems to demand feeding and attention all the time or it falls over and dies. But, instead of doing that, I’ve decided to post something much lighter to follow the great indigestion-causing post.
Newscoma did something similar to this once with some chickens and a large microphone-looking tractor.
Put words to these pictures, if you dare.
Honesty is a word that’s been thrown around the blogosphere quite frequently lately. Honesty and the need to get things out in the open. My good friend Finn recently told Mary Sunshine to take a hike. I admitted to her that I’d like to do the same, but never seemed to have the guts to do it. Well, in light of my recent attempt to get a backbone, I’m going to be honest now because some things have reached a boiling point with me. This deserves some background explanation and honestly, what I’m about to go into will make some people’s jaws hit the floor, but it must be said. I can share this with very few regrets because only one relative of mine knows about this blog, so here goes. The cleansing process.
***
Learning how to be a peacemaker was inevitable.
I considered it to be the entering of the second stage of dealing with the abuse. My sister seemed perpetually stuck in the first stage. She’d hear the faintest hint of screaming and the sound of appliances hitting the wall and she’d run to her room, hole up and sob. But, I’d heard it longer. I decided I was finished with holding a pillow over my head to block out the noise while squeezing my eyes shut to make it all go away, hiding behind the cover of imagination and dreams. Feeling a great need and urgency to see my parents happy and my family intact, I’d put on my armor and my best humor and jump right into the middle of the fray at its most dangerous point in an attempt to bring good will and cheer. It hurt me to see them hating each other, but I decided that taking the verbal abuse, the shouts, the insults and occasionally, the physical hits was worth it if I could try to do some good in their lives. People who say physical abuse is the worst kind of abuse are wrong. Bruises on the outside heal and go away, but shots to the inside are hidden, can be easily covered up with a good dose of Mary Sunshine and surface over and over again when you least expect it. Like splintered glass, the shards can’t be seen, but just try rubbing over them. Just once. The memories are dredged up from below the surface again and again.
The fighting continued, so I entered the third stage of dealing with abuse. The hardest and most difficult one yet. I tried to callous myself against it. Pretend it didn’t exist. Which I still do. But my closest friends still notice. The smallest things bring me down, just as the smallest things make me happy. I learned to channel my hopes and wishes for happiness into academics and though I reached the top, I still dragged the bottom socially.
Even today, I can be very happy one minute and down the next. My bff used to ask, “Sara, sometimes you look like you’ve been whipped. Why is that?”
Think it would be wonderful to have a photographic memory? It’s no fun at all to remember all the details of each and every bad day you’ve ever had.
My sister still says she wishes she had the nerve to tell people why she feels the way she feels sometimes. She has a burning desire to explain, but stops short because she considers the reputation of our family. I did that too until I realized things needed explaining and I am no longer afraid to explain them. Maybe I am growing a backbone after all.
So, what are the repercussions of having led a hidden abuse-filled life?
I have high blood pressure, a nervous stomach and a spastic colon.
I am now more passionate about people, namely friends, and their inner feelings and more ignorant of my own feelings. Call it a reversion back to stage two of dealing with abuse, but when my friends are happy, I’m happy and when they’re down, I want to make them happy. It’s part of me.
Trouble is, some people take advantage of that and walk all over me. Lately, it’s been bothering me and just like being around the abuse, I feel powerless to control it.
Truthfully, I’m happier right now than I’ve been in a while. BF and his family make me very happy and I hope I’m doing the same for them. But, I have these two or three people who simply will not leave me alone and I’ve been dealing with them by putting a band aid over the problem and covering them up when I really should be telling them to get the hell out and stay out. But, it means having more of a backbone and right now, after years of disintegration, mine is trying to grow back. It will take a while, but I’m willing to wait.
I’ll do anything for happiness. Always have and always will.
I want it so badly.
Now, you know me. You know more about me than I’ve ever told anyone in person or in writing. You know why I am the way I am and why I’ll probably never change. My friends whom I really love deserved to know that.
And now, in some form, I’m finally free.
Okay. Two weeks ago, it was icy, then last week it was 80 degrees and stormy and this week it is back to icy. No one can possibly stay well in this weather unless he or she is the proud owner of a cast iron immune system. Say, anyone have one I can buy for cheap?
To top it all off, I visited my brother’s myspace page today (the same 16 year old pubescent creature I’ve mentioned before who hates my music) and we just so happen to have put up the same song for the page’s theme music.
Yup. Check Hell for steadily forming icicles I tell you.
But seriously, everyone try to stay safe and off the road in this mush.
Couldn’t let this one slip by no matter how much crap I may take for it later.
A local school that closed down a few years ago is now being used as a church meeting spot and the church, in either the good taste of sentimentality or the humor of the members, has named the place after the mascot of the former school, but the California Angels it ain’t. Nor the New Orleans Saints or any of those other mascots that would lend good names to a church. The mascot was a pirate. So, it’s now, I suppose, a pirate church. And my naughty little brain along with the naughty little brain of a good friend who went to school there will not stop playing with the concept. It’s just too much fun.
Yesterday, we had a question and answer session about it when she and I had a ton of other work to do.
But, seriously, you have to wonder…..
Do the church members yell, “Arrrggghhhhh, Matey” instead of “Amen”?
In order to be baptized, must you walk the plank?
Are earrings on a man and a machete-looking knife in a holster on the hip considered proper attire?
For communion, do you have to drink rum instead of wine (or in my case, as a Baptist, grape juice)?
Do they have a captain instead of a preacher and is an aviary provided for noisy parrots? Is it located right next to the nursery?
Do people go there because it’s easier to sleep in church if you’ve got one eye covered with a patch and the other made out of glass?
Or…..maybe…..they’re like the Pirates who don’t do anything!!!!
Either way, I’m headed over there. Can’t wait to sing “Just Yo ho ho-ver in the Glory Land.”
Now, if any school with a Red Devil mascot closes and moves in a church, please call me.
I honestly didn’t know they were due to air last night. Yeppers. I was knee deep in middle school basketball game stories and stats and didn’t even realize that there were major music awards on the horizon until my sister turned on the television and I heard what sounded like people cheering over some bubble gum pop band who had just performed.
Rushing in to the living room, I planted myself on the couch for the duration of the entire three and a half hours of the show, enjoying some performances while leaving the room for others. I cheered for some of the winners while silently wondering why some of the others had even been nominated.
And here’s my simple assessment of the night. As unpopular of an opinion as it might be, yay rah for Ms. Amy Winehouse. I’ve been a fan of hers ever since I heard ”Rehab” on the radio. I immediately rushed to the local Wal-Mart the very next day to purchase the C.D. and have worn it out since then. Squirrel Queen shared her first C.D. with me and I liked it even more. How many mid-20 somethings do you know who would attempt to set foot in the jazz/blues genre and not just emulate the sound, but give it his/her own style as well? You go, Amy!!!
Here’s a clip of a conversation between me and my brother (the same 16 year old guy who hates my music) which took place while Amy was performing.
Jeffrey: “What a total pothead!!! Look how stoned she is! Oh my gosh. She needs to eat about 200 cheeseburgers.” Here comes that same stupid puberty laugh again.
Me: “Wow, Jeffrey. If you were going to put down all the bands who did that kind of stuff, I guess you really wouldn’t like any of those so-called awesome groups you claim to want to be like.”
Jeffrey: *Crickets chirping loudly and pins falling all around the room.*
So, yes, I am very happy about Amy Winehouse’s cleaning house. And the paying homage to a few of the legendary singers was very tasteful as well.
I heart Tim Reynolds.
It’s February 5. It’s 80 degrees outside and the buttercups are peeking through the ground that was once frozen, oh, a couple of days ago…give or take a day. Schools have been closed, ballgames have been canceled, meetings have been postponed and classes have been put off because the National Weather Service is calling for a passel of tornadoes to come through the area.
And I ate a whole six-inch Subway sandwich today without having ever asked them to leave the cheese off it.
Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!
Me: My sister’s car doesn’t even look like an Accord anymore.
Squirrel Queen: It looks like an accordion.
Please go send my friend Holly some good wishes. She has one of the most important yet most difficult jobs in the world being an educator and she hasn’t had many apples sent in her direction in a long time for her efforts. Go drop her one.
You are appreciated, H.
Thanks to all who have sent prayers and good thoughts to my gma. She is doing much better right now. Family members have been staying with her in the hospital in shifts and I know that just being around them has had a lot to do with her positive response to the chemotherapy. After all, medicine can only do so much, but family and friends definitely make the difference. She will be staying in the hospital a little bit longer than first anticipated because she is needing a second blood tranfusion, but all seems to be going in the right direction now.
Elizabeth’s car ended up having over $12,000 worth of damage to it. She’s currently driving a rental car and though it’s not a bad car, it’s definitely not a Honda. She may be driving it for the better part of a month because apparently 2008 car parts are very hard to find at this stage in the game.
The superbowl is now upon us and though I’d dearly love to be at the slamming party being thrown by uber friends Finn and dh, I need to get some work done I’ve been putting off all weekend. Keep your cheese dip, but save some chips for me! And though I really like LeBlanc a whole lot, I will have to pull for the Giants. Sorry. I’m an underdog kind of girl.
Only a couple of weeks ago, you would have found me tearing up hearts, spitting at Russell Stover and gearing up to write my usual Valentine’s Day Bah Humbug post that I’ve become known for….except that was a couple of weeks ago and this is now. This year, I’m uncharacteristically embracing the big V-day because I actually have something to celebrate. I’m becoming a traitor to my fellow V-day haters and am looking forward to the day. In fact, I may actually plan something for it…something other than staying at home like a hermit and crying over Hallmark commercials. Here’s a proclamation for 2008. Call it the year that I decided to give Valentine’s Day a chance to redeem itself.
What do you say?