not the first time told...

This is not the first time I told the stories in my June 17, 2008 entry, but some of it was the first time I put it in writing (I think). I wanted to forgive myself and to find some redeeming value in how I was. I wanted to believe I was not pure evil to want to die. I wanted my children to see me as good. I can hear it in the tone of my writing. Saying what I was afraid was true was impossible.


First I wrote about Bruce. I said this dozens if not hundreds of times. How do I reconcile the good of what came out of the marriage, the feeling of being loved while in it, the belief I was wanted and safe forever, with the reality of who he is and the loss I felt. My kids came from him too. He was kind while we were married.


I went on to talk about Robert and Rosalind, truth with rose-colored glasses and a bit of drama. It was a first attempt. I grieved their loss as I did Bruce's. It breaks my heart to lose people I love. It breaks my heart to want the kind of kindness that is more than anyone would likely ever give to me.


There is brutal honesty in what I write, even without what is untold.

06-17-08 10:04 am

I know I made a really bad choice marrying Bruce from my point of view — for my own happiness — but I wouldn’t change it for anything because my two children wouldn’t have happened without him. Happiness is overrated. I have been blessed to have Kian and Christie, to raise for the short time childhood is. I love them, I feel blessed to have had them and been a party to their growing up to be who they are, to witness and share the joy and beauty of watching who they are launch. To have been able to contribute to them was a blessing.

So. while I am not proud of what of how I act in this world, I wouldn’t change this part which contributed to my spiraling downwards. Bruce was an innocent mistake. I didn’t have the tools to choose better or the tools to survive it. And the best I had to help me in the choice and in the aftermath was Robert Fritz. And for all and for all the blessings and generosity I have know with him, it was not a good choice in the end for me. Still, I wouldn’t change that choice. The contribution to me while I was raising my family was worth the heartache and disillusionment of the ending. I met Bruce through him. Before marrying Bruce, I asked for his help — to weigh whether Bruce was a good choice for me — and he chose “no” and I will never no why. 

I do trust and that Robert is generous and kind and honest, but also used to believe that of Rosalind and I don’t anymore. I knew both of them were snobs. Even with all the evidence, I couldn’t believe Rosalind was mean. I saw limitless generosity, and saw evidence that her generosity wasn’t free. In the face of the contradiction I chose to believe. But rarely is what people give free. I couldn’t see how over time, strings sprout and attach to the past and Rosalind regrets about what she truly gave freely. I never would have accepted as much as she offered if I thought it wasn’t free.

I had faith. I thought she lived what she taught and it was a heartbreaking lesson to learn otherwise. In a way, she more than anyone has crushed my ability to have faith. I don’t expect perfection, but I don’t expect mean intention either. I thought seeing the truth would change things. I had faith in what she taught. 

But everyone is flawed. Rosalind can be intentionally mean, without regret. I was unable to believe it, despite all the evidence of the past, until it was beyond blatant. It was spiteful what she did and unnecessarily mean and petty and cheap. Oddly, it doesn’t alter the good. It doesn’t change that I love her and Robert or that I was grateful for the time I was a part of their lives. 

Still, I would never hurt her, not even now. Meanness is so much worse when there is no remorse, no apology. My family is like that. My father is very proud never to come to my house. I do not understand people. I don’t think I want to. I don’t want to be like that. If that is human, I don’t want to be human. If that is how to live among people, I want to live alone. If god exists and wants me to be that way, I choose hell freely. 

I wish I could have taught Kian and Christie to be a family to each other, but they never experience it positively in their life. How could they when they see me and my family and how I am treated? Much as I value family, how could they ever know that or why? I regret this most, and I sorry about it. 

I want Kian and Christie to know they have been, are, and always will be a blessing to me, and that I am so sorry that I am disappointment to them and that I am so unappealing to know and to have in their lives. 

I don’t regret my value of kindness that permeates who I am. I wouldn’t change it for anything. 

No one seems to really value kindness as I do. It’s not a valuable characteristic that makes me worth knowing and having a part of another person’s life. It is what I most value. I neither believe nor not believe in God. I don’t know if God exists. God’s existence is irrelevant to my choice of kindness. I assume there is nothing more beyond life or at least my choices in how I live is irrelevant to the existence of God. I would be kind and generous whether there is a God or a benefit after death. In fact I would choose it even if there were negative consequences in afterlife. 

When I think of who I am, my soul, I think of kindness and generosity and compassion and empathy. I like all these things about me. I don’t like the exterior and the behavior that goes with it, my weaknesses, my inabilities to survive in this society. I hate all that about me. I would be disgusted if I liked it. 

People matter to me, people I like and love matter even more. I wish I really mattered to someone. I wish someone felt blessed to have known me. I wish someone valued knowing me. 

I wish someone could help me. I wish someone could handle the difficulty and stick with me so I could not feel so all alone. It’s unreasonable to need and want this. It would be an incredible generosity to give it to me. There is no reason outside of kindness that anyone would. 

What makes my life so unbearable right now is that I am so raw and in pain and depressed with reality that being around people is too hard. So, I stay away from people. I can’t be kind if there is no one to be kind to. The best way I can be kind to my two kids is to stay out of their lives because they can’t tolerate being in mine. It’s too hard for them. They love me. They just don’t want to know me. As children, it wasn’t their role to befriend me and as adults, it’s their choice. It’s too hard to know your mother as flawed, in intimate detail. Most people tell me my children owe me, but they are wrong. I want things from my children – like involvement in their lives and them in mine – but they don’t owe it to me. I understand their choice. 

I write this because I want you, the reader, to know I am not a good example for people. What I hope is that what I write about kindness and my poetry is insightful at best. I write for the possibility that it might be. 

I am not worth knowing personally. I understand that. It’s unpleasant to be around someone sinking into quicksand the way I am. I am realistic about this. 

I write poetry, because I find beauty in words, I hone poems over years. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing a poem come to life –like chiseling away at a rock until what is left is beauty. 

I choose to be a hermit (if you can call two large dogs and a cat living alone) and I watch a lot of TV. One dog talks to me when she wants me to eat and share my food with her, the other stays by me constantly, and comforts me when I cry too much. He lets me know he wants me to be alive. My cat mothers my dogs, especially the talker. She stays by her all the time. They give me an outlet for love. 

My father came within 25 miles of my house once and didn’t want to see it because he had no reason to go that way. He dislikes that I chose VT to live in and is proud to not have ever visited me and he never will. My parents do visit my three brothers all the time. How can I reconcile this? 

I learned about kindness in a family that took particular pleasure in being mean to me. Ironically, I thought they were right, because there was some truth to what they said. Children are selfish at times. I was no different. I thought as young teenager that if I changed and became better they would be less mean – I was wrong. It had no effect. Out of a desire to be loved for I am, came the blessing – I thought about what I valued, evaluated what generosity really was, grew into my value. My family complained that I was selfish and that I didn’t think about anyone one else. So another blessing was that I learned at an early age that generosity meant, giving freely, nothing is ever owed if what you give is free. Any time I give freely something I later regret, I think, “my mistake.” Nothing is ever owed.