x-mas eve

I still fool myself ... even when I know ,,, I want to believe I can be different. My mother called last night wanting to know if I would come down for x-mas eve. I said yes but I don't think I can. It hurts. I hug Princess a lot. She has bed sores on one hip. I can't kill her. I can't. There are a slew of recorded Criminal Minds ... clearing them is a way to free myself from ties to be able to act and a way not act. It does both.

Criminal Minds: Cory Doctorow:

"All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets."

 I still have secrets ... I try not to hide from myself and yet I don't think I can help that.

Criminal Minds: Elbert Hubbard:

"If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate."

I don't think this is true. I think there would be less hate, but we use idolizing as hope and hate as a way to separate ourselves and it is in our nature to need to do this to live.  I think there will always be those who are idolized and those who idolize and there will always be hate. As long as there is fear there is hate. The was a start of a sentence about a killer in the story.

"He was a nobody who wanted to be somebody..."

We all are nobody's wanting to be somebody... most other than who we are ... some will do anything for this to be so.

Criminal Minds: Eleanor Roosevelt:

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."

I think the second sentence is true, yet the first is not. Either that or I am incapable of looking enough fear flat out an acting. Or I am a coward.

Criminal Minds: Tennessee Williams:

"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out."

Criminal Minds: Francios Sagan:

"I have loved to the point of madness. That which is called madness. That which to me is the only sensible way to love."

I think I have loved to the point of sadness. I wouldn't change this either. And those I love think I am bit crazy. I am just tired.

Criminal Minds: Dr. R. Joseph:

"Within the core of each of us is the child we once were. This child constitutes the foundation of what we have become, who we are, and what we will be."

Every child wants to go home, to be safe, to be loved. I want simple things, impossible things.

Criminal Minds: Arthur Rubinstein:

"There is no formula for success, except perhaps for an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings."

I wonder if this same formula is also failure, not that there are not other ways to fail. Princess cries when she pees or poops; she doesn't want to soil herself. I feel the same way. I take it as a sign of wanting to live, like eating.

Criminal Mind: Anatole France:

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another."

 Criminal Minds by Spencer re a victim having closure:

"People's emotional lives are linear like that ... to say that one single event can suddenly bring peace to a man; I just don't think it is possible." 

Some things you don't get over. Some things don't get fixed. Some things you live with and how they scar you, because there is no other choice but death.

Criminal Minds: John Steinbeck:

"A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ."

Not quick enough. It seems like forever.

Criminal Minds: Tom Stoppard:

"We cross our bridges when we come to them, and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered." 

Why do people find it so easy to toss aside other people, like a used towel, even if it once dried their tears or warmed their body? I know it is normal to do so and I know I am not normal in this way.

It is almost 6pm. It takes 3 hours to get to my brothers house. I couldn't see how to come without my hair washed and I couldn't see the way to all the steps to leave in time, and so I did this here instead, to let time go by. I am so sad. I need to go out and buy food and shop and yet I do not go. Princess is crying again. So am I.

She pooped. I wish I could explain away so easily what pains me. I think about the food I am missing tonight, the lobster sauce and all the good food. It has been a very long time.

Criminal Minds: Frederich Nietzsche:

"What was silent in the father, speaks in the son, and often I found in the son, the unveiled secret of the father."

And so it is for mothers and daughters.

Criminal Minds: Gilbert Parker:

"There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance."

I know there is no refuge ... and still I hide.

Criminal Minds: Mark Twain:

"Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles."

I suppose that, given how little I understand people, or little I seem to be understood, perhaps this is a reasonable way to make sense of it all. Thing is, I don't think we are meant to understand each other, empathy is difficult enough and rare. Understanding is like knowing and it is outside our realm of existence. We think we understand, but all we tend to see are pieces of ourselves, and even then, only when we are willing to look.

Criminal Minds: Martin Luther King:

"Man must evolve for all human conflict, a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

I understand love. I also understand that love is the most dangerous thing to those who hate, and the kill it whenever they can. I think what King says is so true not about the "must" and yet it is what would be the best in us were we to achieve it. But among the masses, this will never be understood. Even among the well-educated, revenge, aggression, and retaliation are all considered normal, viable, and appropriate responses. I do not believe this will ever change. The foundation of christianity is love, and yet among its most avid followers are those who hate the most. Wisdom leads you to this understanding. Most are not wise. Most don't even seek wisdom.

I keep imagining going out to get food, but think about my mother calling and my not being here. I am waiting to tell her I am sorry for not coming, that I miss her and I would have loved all the food. I would have made everyone less happy ... I would have been unable to hold myself together ... I would have cried. I didn't have enough time to prepare myself ... like I did at the funeral. Thing is .. my mother doesn't want me to break down in front of everybody .... they don't want me to cry .... they don't want to see me the way I am. My goal is to go out tonight by 10 or 11 pm to see if Walmart is open ... to buy food. It's been my goal for more than 2 months. I think I can pull it off tonight ... sometimes I only pretend to think this way ... it's a remote possibility ... hard to know right now ... how real ... how remote.

Criminal Minds: Mother Teresa said:

"I have found a paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."

I have not loved enough. Or maybe she is wrong ... or maybe it has to be a way of life, practiced in as many moments as you are awake and able. But it is doesn't hurt to love ... but with empathy, you feel the hurt of those you love ... and that doesn't end the hurt within.

Criminal Minds: about Haley at her funeral

 "If [she] were with us today, she would ask us not to mourn her death, but to celebrate her life ... she would tell us to love our families unconditionally, and to hold them close, because in the end, they are all that matter."

While I am alive I want to tell those I have loved to do much the same ... slightly differently...

I wouldn't presume as to whether you mourn my death, but would ask that you celebrate what life was about for me ... to celebrate kindness. I would tell my son and daughter to love each other unconditionally and foster loving your family in your children and in theirs, hold them close; whether or not they are all that matters, they definitely do matter. Family is as small or as large as you make it. It is not just those who are connected by blood. Open your heart and love and it only grows larger. I have found that love and kindness have always fed my soul and that I have never found the well within me to be dry, rather I have found it bottomless and infinite.

It is a flaw in myself and of my childhood that I did not or was unable to love myself, to care for me enough to live well. But it did not inhibit my ability to love others and to be kind. I understand how come I am the way I am, and I understand that loving me is chasm I am unable cross. I would not wish this on anyone. And I know how to make it not so in every child, and I would like that to be my legacy. Loving children for who they are, what makes them special, unique, and beautiful, is the foundation for self-love, for the ability to flourish. I grew up with parents who loved me and wanted me to have the best; to love a child for who she/he is, is different than this, it is liking, enjoying, and appreciating them for themselves. You cannot allow children to be teased and humiliated and not come to their defense because you think they are being wronged. Keeping them physically safe, while allowing them be tormented verbally because you believe "sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you" is not enough. My parents meant well, they do love me, and they did not see the harm that was happening to me. I do not fault them or think badly of them; I love them. I would wish for people to see the beauty within their own children, not the projection of what they wish them to be, but who they truly are. Liking another for who they are as they are is gift, often all too rare.

I have not been happy a lot of my life, but I have loved well and deeply, and for that I am forever grateful and blessed. I have been able to see opportunities to be kind and so I have been able to be kind. I have no remorse about living and being kind. I do wish I could have been different, but not at the core, not in who I am. Remember me for who I am, for who I was, for the kindness I showed, for the love I gave. To my children, remember me for how I am in your hearts forever, for how I imprinted the best of myself onto you.  When you celebrate kindness and love within you, you celebrate me. Celebrate how I loved you for who you are, by loving your children for who they are, and teach them to do the same. In doing this we live forever, even if never known.

Criminal Minds: Kathleen Norris:

"Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."

I yearn to go home. The opportunity is available, yet I stay. I am home. Yet I still yearn. I suspect they know I am not coming. I think my mother hopes, maybe my father, probably my cousins, maybe my aunt, possibly my brother Bobby, the rest are expecting me to be the same, and won't miss me. I miss my mother. I love my mother and father. I hardly know my family.

Much as I yearn to go home, I would be watching myself, keeping emotions in check, watching what I was eating, how much, I would not feel free or able to relax and be me. Not because I should not be that way, because I wouldn't want to feel the criticism and because I could not help but react. That's the horrific truth .. I hate the idea of being there as much as I want it.