Cessation

Downside: My face is breaking out as if I’ve just hit puberty. I grab the extra-strength cleanser received from my dearest esthetician friend and slather my pores to shut them up. Morning rolls around and I realize I fell asleep in my day clothes again with my knitted scarf choking the stale air out of me as it is still wrapped around my neck. The cleanser has managed to create pools of sloughing skin on my chin, right cheek and left temple. Joy.

I make a mental note to reorganize the bedroom later and put those pillow cases in the laundry. Turns out that fleece bedding, though warm, wicks away all moisture and does nothing for your complexion. Those pesky sun spots are off-setting the dry skin patches now that I look closely at my reflection in the iridescent lighting of a cold, tin building.

How did I end up here?

If I had a belted jacket and some padding to slam myself against, I might feel more secure with this placement. And for as much as I know I shouldn’t say that, my hurdles of stalled motivation are growing larger by the day. So far this morning, I have adjusted the thermostat four times and tried to rework the dirty looks I am inspired to give to the guard who is never lacking a sarcastic retort. I recount the times that my heart has smiled in this most recent past and I realize that it hovers there; my heart. It stays in a place of comfort, afraid to push out into the cold because we are not quite ready to step ahead. There’s no boo-hooing, just adrift. My daily conversations with God tell me to wait – that I have put it out there and now I must just wait. Physical symptom number one which occurs when I become impatient and stressed…my eyes twitch - that’s happening. Just behind my left eye socket an irritating little finger scratches at my temporal lobe reminding me that I am not quite where I want to be and can do nothing about it at the present moment.

Buggers.

Barely, if at all.

I have barely acknowledged the velocity and impact of a life unexamined, or in right perspective - acknowledged the continuance of hurt from those elements of a life unexposed.  I want to write, to paint those stories of news for experiences which have led me to this place.  I am afraid.  I want to expose those tyrants that draw blood and do not stop - though it seems for all my efforts, they continue without pause, and (particularly) without remorse or countenance. Their faces are hidden in ways that escape me. I see them for whom  they are but to outside persons, they are as normal as the definition.  All that said, I write in metaphors and operate in hallucinations.  Why?  It is painful. It's brutal.  The struggle day in and day out with what I have been left.  I care not for the material, but rather for the emotive context of things.  And that is exactly what was bruised and battered. 

Although I sound like I'm whining, I'm not.  I'm simply pissed.  ...and baffled.  And aggravated at this exchange.  If you could see him.   See the way that he operates in daylight versus the behavior that happens when I show up on-scene.  And how does one get that part into the light?  It is not for lack of trying, I assure you.  A year ago I wrote a resolution that led to the impending New Year.  I swore I would be more forgiving, more outright, more...forgiving.  And in honesty, I have.  Yet he does not forgive me.  I am tired of struggling with my thoughts and emotions with no return but a beat-down via those powers-that-be.  Those same powers that promise to uphold the law and "protect and serve". What a joke.  Truth is, I want a return.  I want an apology, and a listening ear as invested in my speak as I am when I promise to listen.  I want someone, something to make this right and so far, it just drags...on, and on...and on...and on...and on.

On some days when the sun is high in the sky and I listen intently to the silence, I am fine.  I can understand and progress on blind faith. Most days are like that really.  Blind faith.

After the Facts

Fact 1: My son is continuously abused by his father

Fact 2: The courts, to this point have been unable to properly attend to the needs of this situation or assign accountability in order to keep my son safe.

Fact 3: My son is honest; yet frustrated, hurt; but maintaining, strong; and growing all the wiser by the day.

Fact 4: The litany of charges against said father (see also “Pop”, “Abuser”), psychological turmoil and abuse at the hands of said father, and undeniable harm is a real and present danger for my son Every. Week.

Fact 5: “The Hitch” (see below) happened only a week ago. This means that juggling the emotions, the hurt, the upset and anger is something that will take time to contend with.

Fact 6: Abusers are enabled by those closest to them (e.g. family, friends) who fail to, or cannot see the truth

Fact 7: My responsibility and role as mother means that I must, at all times, protect the physical, social, emotional, and psychological well-being of my child to the absolute best of my ability.

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Given the facts – the unfettered allowance for the transgressor to continue violating the rights of others means a little boy is berated, conditioned and abused continuously. Please refer to those facts as I explain the following:

Abuser fights for every-other weekend visitation because he play-acts as if he cares about the time spent with his son. Abuser is granted weekend visitation, plus Monday and Tuesday evenings for a few hours. Law-guardian (a.k.a. : Abuser’s second attorney of record) supports this arrangement as it was she who rallied for Pop / Abuser to have more time in support of her “that Mom is alienating” claim - unsupported as it was. I could carry on volumes about the law-guardian’s moral reprehension, but I’ll leave that for another day. This is about the abuser emboldened by a failed system. So, my son returns from a weekend visitation having spent little to no time with the person having claimed he needed more time, and Monday’s “long talk with Pop that I didn’t like” bore statements akin to brainwashing. As proof, I present (and paraphrase):

“Because you’re honest and tell your Mom what’s happening here, you are making (my second wife leave)…she’s leaving me and it’s yours and your mother’s fault.” “…I cannot continue being a father to someone who makes up stories just to hurt me, or get me in trouble” “Your Mom records everything that you say so she can get me into trouble because she just wants to take you away…You are misunderstanding what I did to you…you hit me as much as I hit you, right? I wasn’t drinking when I did that to you…when I and my (twenty-something) cousin mocked you and punched you, I didn’t kick you or laugh at you…we didn’t do more of the same actions when you asked us five times to ‘please stop’…you imagined it and you helped do it too…you hurt me too, didn’t you?...are you sorry now?...do you see why you can’t tell your Mother what happens here?...if you keep telling her and other people, than I can’t be your father, you understand?”.

This amounts to a sobbing and depreciated little boy questioning, at the end of the night, what he did so wrong that the man who fathered him, not only blames him but “doesn’t love me, Mom”.

After-the-facts torture and abusers will always abuse.

Fact 7: My responsibility and role as mother means that I must, at all times, protect the physical, social, emotional, and psychological well-being of my child to the absolute best of my ability.

Skeletons & Seeds

“Geronimo!” she yelled as she put two argyle sock-covered feet into pant legs that were not flared enough at the bottoms. She was beginning to like herself on the outside and love herself on the inside though she still battled those demons of self-doubt and questioning. She was always questioning…if she had done the right thing, enough of the right thing…if she could do more. Just the evening before now, she had been inspired to paint – and pulling a cigar box of water-colored pigment from beneath her plants, dropped a picture of that little boy who breathed life into her world. She’d picked it up and ran her hand across the heart-shaped framed face of her then six-year-old pictured in his red tie and black fedora. Had three years gone by that quickly that it felt as if it were yesterday? Yes, they had.


She knew he was learning, growing and experiencing everything – understanding only a fraction of it, similarly to her own situation. What concerned her most were the affects that many, many, too many to count situations of abuse, neglect…of psychological warfare upon her child, were having. Intrinsically, she understood that the Mom title afforded her the “best preventative medicine” award, but time moved so quickly. Too quickly. It was like that skeleton and seed analogy she’d drawn the other day; the similarity between the strength of a skeleton and potential of a seed.

She had walked past the wind-blown and weather-worn remnants of a lily seed pod for months. There were no flowers remaining, no foliage, and no green - just the skeletal remnants of a pod which had, at one point, held the seeds for another year of beauty promised by that unseen potential. Had she been there in that garden in September, she may have cut them back when the flowers faded, thinking that besides helping the plant to rejuvenate roots before autumn, nobody enjoys looking at the stalky reminders of a summer almost gone. But she wasn’t there in September, or even October. On the first day of February, she found those skeletal memories and recalled the passing of another year. The pods had transpired the wind, all elements of accumulation and even a quick judgment by the would-be gardener, had she been present. They were beautiful, those masterpieces of transparent mirrors between what was and what might be. She picked them and put them in a vase to admire. To remind. What had her perspective overlooked or neglected when she was certain she was seeing the whole picture?

Mostly, it is the difficulty with the space-time continuum. As in – there does not seem to be enough space to ignore what happens to her little boy all the time. Reflections. She reminisced on those lilies again. They were thought to be dead, used up, done – and yet, she picked them because they were perfect. Like her little boy – no matter the wicked elements put-upon him, he was still perfect; beautiful. He was worth preserving with her greatest concoction of preventative medicine. And at this point as a weary traveler, it may come down to a huge “Geronimo” of faith.