Enemy in My Memories

I received a Christmas card from an old boyfriend a couple of days before the holiday.

With the current state of affairs with my at-present boyfriend, it was a welcome little jolt in the heart. Knowing that someone is thinking of you, especially someone with whom you have a few happy memories, can bring a person that frisson of warm/fuzzies one often needs.

But, as so often happens with me, my natural sensitivities start buzzing. The part of my brain that usually assures me goes eerily silent, and the mosquito-whine of my self-defense system starts its incessant needling to "Investigate!"

First: Why is he writing to me? I haven't heard from him in, oh....ten or more years. He married a year or so after he broke up with me, to a woman with two small children. Did he get divorced?

Second: Was I the only ex he wrote to? If he got divorced, he probably whipped out the ol' little black book and bought a roll of stamps and a cheap box of twenty X-mas cards to do his mass mailing. Hey, if you're going to go fishing, might as well set a few lines instead of just one, right?

Third: Do I write back? Hey, wait a minute, how the hell did he get my new address? The card was NOT forwarded, he WROTE it on the envelope in his own handwriting (which I should have analysed, I usually do this with handwriting examples of men I have dated or might date.) and I do not post my address online; hell I've Googled myself, and I'm barely a blip on the Internet.

So, now my alarm system is on full alert, shrieking, lights flashing, stentorous tones calling out "DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, DANGER!!!!"

I'm no hermit, but I sure as hell don't give anyone my home address online, who needs stalkers?

Anyway, alarms, flashing lights, yadayada, and I decide to try Googling this person, just in case I can find out if he has a MySpace or Facebook page. After .0018 seconds, Google slaps up the answer I never expected: Georgia Sex Offenders Registry, with this guy's name and mugshot larger than life, dirtying up my view screen. Let me tell you, there is NO WAY I was expecting this.

Let me tell you about "George" (not his real name, not because I care whether or not he is looked down on in derision, but to protect myself). George helped me forget my abusive ex-husband. He wasn't comfortable dating me openly because I was still legally married, although legally seperated pending a divorce. We kept things quiet-ish, but were together daily. I didn't live near my soon-to-be-ex, but since "George" and I worked in the same organization, we felt it would be safer for us both to keep things under wraps. He was gentle and comforting, long-suffering of my alcohol fueled rages and fits of emotional instability. I rattled his cage, beat his chest in fury, screamed my hatred of the ex at him, and he took it with more grace than I had ever shown. He rarely cursed, would chastise me for saying G-D Damnit, and would hit the wall instead of me when I pushed him too hard. I felt safe, loved and cherished with him.

But eventually, I was too much for him. I drank to dull the pain of abuse, I drank to loosen up, I drank to be funny, sexy, desireable....I cheated on him to prove to myself I could have anybody I wanted. He cheated on me because he needed a woman who wouldn't terrify him. I threatened suicide, I cried, begged, promised, lied, haunted, stalked, threatened, fought and did everything wrong. In the end, he told me to just leave him alone. He said he loved me, but I was not ready to be with anyone. He told me he'd met someone stable and wanted to give her an honest try. I was devastated. He married her the same year.

I left the job and moved back to my home state, to be near my family, to recuperate, to heal.

Okay, that's me, let's get back to him...and to be honest, I did call him at work for another couple of years after I left, because we were friends of an odd sort. He'd tell me what was going on, but not too specifically, except a couple of times, when he would say that his wife was always leaving town on business and that their sex life wasn't going too well. After 1998, I didn't talk to him again. I had moved on. In the meantime, his life must have taken some bizarre twists and turns, because he became a rapist of his own stepdaughter, and arranged to have his wife killed or harmed.

I researched his court records, read the transcripts and was horrified. He is registered as a sex offender in Georgia, out of prison after serving only eight of fourteen years. His stepdaughter was only five years old at the time of the rapes. Her own brother had to testify in the case. Her mother must have felt so helpless, so ashamed, so betrayed, so scared. This child may eventually forget the particulars, but will always know a man she once trusted, who raised her as his own from infancy, took advantage of her sexually. He hurt her small body, took away that which she could never regain, used her to slake his own perverse, animalistic urges and destroyed her peace of mind.

And I used to love this man.
I used to touch his body, kiss his face, hold my ear against his chest to hear his beating heart.
I used to pour out my soul and my tears to him as he held me tight to himself.
I used to trust him to protect me against others and myself.
I used to wonder at his patience and gentleness with me.
Now I wonder at this ugly scar that snakes red and raw across my psyche.

Why would he contact me? Didn't he think I might research him? Does he want me to believe he was framed and blameless for these morbid crimes? Would he admit his guilt and ask me for forgiveness?

I'll probably never know the answers to those questions because I can't allow myself to contact him in return. The danger is there, stalking outside my comfortable world, tail thrashing, teeth gnashing, pissing all over the flowers, digging up the garden.

Whatever happened, I can't change it. I wasn't responsible, I wasn't able to intervene, I wasn't there to know what happened. These are the things I have to repeat over and over to keep my mind whole, because I do blame myself. It might have gone differently between George and me if I had been stronger, more mature, more sober. He could have married me. He could have felt loved enough by me, not ever feeling the urge to look for physical gratification by taking it from a child.

But it isn't my fault, and I couldn't have changed the way things were going. Things happen exactly the way they will, for reasons that have no reason.

I hope he gets the help he needs to change. I hope the child he raped forgets enough of it to live a full and healthy life. I hope her mother finds peace and assurances to calm her heart.

I hope the nightmares go away soon.

Poised for Flight

This photo was taken on a nice fall day in the Oak Openings Metropark, just outside Toledo, Ohio.
Sunlight warmed the ground around the pond, the air was just right for the looping flight of dragonflies.
The brilliant carmine red of this beauty foreshadowed the red that the japanese maples would soon turn.
And as the breeze gathered, zip! the dragonfly flitted away, to dance her last dance in the cooling sky.

When your body is not your own...

Washington state passed a bill putting into law an amendment allowing physician assisted suicide on November 4th.

I am ecstatic about this, just as I am about Michigan passing a bill allowing the use of medical marijuana.

Let me tell you why.

This country has, since the repeal of slavery and women's rights, been foundering over the rights of a citizen to have control over not just their lives, but of their bodies. A slave is owned, forced to obey commands of a master who only has his own needs at heart. A woman used to be the property of her husband, who had control over her body for his sexual and reproductive uses.

With the advent of the Roe Vs. Wade decision, women took the reins of their reproductive organs back into their own hands. She is no longer his slave.

With the right-to-die movement championed by Dr. Kevorkian, Oregon and now Washington State have made inroads into the citizen's right to end his own suffering, legally.

Marijuana is becoming more and more accepted as a viable method to decrease the suffering of individuals afflicted with chronic pain and cancer-related appetite loss. As an unadulterated natural substance, it shows less side effects than many anti-nausea medications and has less dependancy issues than the legal drugs.

The main issue with all of these changes is that Americans are finally getting the rights promised to them by the Constitution that have been hindered by the faulty morality inherent in the religious dogma of the Moral Majority.

Its about damn time.

A Change of Heart

A lot of things have changed for me in the past decade or so. Twelve years ago, I got out of the military. I moved back to my hometown, got back into the civilian workforce, made new friends and watched my sister start a family.
Since then, my own life has taken a back seat, I felt that I had done and seen so much that I needed to take time to assimilate all the new opinions and ideals that I had formed. One thing that I learned was to not take everything for granted. At thirty years old, I assumed that I still had time to meet Mr. Right, start a family, start a career, buy a house, etc. Now that I've gotten a dozen years older, and none of those things has happened, I wonder what it was that held me back all these years.
I had been married when I was twenty-three, but that marriage was a sham, a constant war between my over-controlling young husband and myself. The thought of willingly subjugating my wants and needs to him made me contrary and belligerent. Some people are headstrong; I'm one of those people. During my ten-year stint in the military, I got into a bit of trouble, nothing too serious, but always because I thought that I had the right to strike out on my own path, and Uncle Sam thought differently. We didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things, just like my husband and me. For a while after my divorce, I made it my mission to prove to the world that the rules didn't apply to me. I took many lovers, enough for some people to call me a slut, a whore, a tramp, even a homewrecker. I didn't care, because I thought that if men could do it without the stigma, why couldn't I. To tell the truth, I still think that way, to a degree. Sexism pisses me off to no end, but I decided later that I was better than any domineering man, and made a pact with myself to become more moral than they are. Being better than the gander is better for this goose. Luckily, I never got any diseases, and never regretted the pregnancy I terminated because of one failed contraceptive. Perversely, I still believe that it's better to raise kids with mom and dad present in their lives.
Somewhere along the way, while still in the military, I got involved in a church at the suggestion of a female military colleague of mine. There was a hole in my life that I was trying to fill, besides the one between my legs. Every Sunday, I would get up after a night of binge-drinking, jaundiced and hung over, and drive out to the church off-base for my dose of that ol' timey religion. I reasoned that I needed to have a 'personal relationship' with God to drag me out of the funk I was wallowing in. There was a lot of singing, hand shaking, muttering in tongues, hugging your neighbor and passing of the plates (plural, plates; they took an average of three offerings per service) and still, no resonating voice of a superior power to instruct me in the ways of the Lord. Oh, sure, the preacher, the pastor of the singles ministry, the ever-supportive congregation all assured me that when I had TRULY opened my heart to Jesus and his father, I would get the sign that he was there to guide and watch over me. Months went by, the church asked for more and more money, and even urged me to go to a seminar to learn how Christians managed their money, and promised that if I joined in their approved money-making endeavor (think NutraLife supplements pyramid scheme), God would bless me with as much money as I needed to give back to the church, which would open my heart to the possibility of God, which would make me one with God in his infinite wisdom. At times, I felt like the ringer in a rigged poker game.
God never spoke to me. When I questioned my friend, she told me that I wasn't getting the messages because I was hung up on the idea of a literal voice talking to me. She explained to me, as if talking to a child, that God speaks in different ways to different people. She admonished me for being blinded by my worries, and when I stopped thinking of myself, God would send down some kind of heavenly smoke-signal to alert me to His message. I tried, I worked hard to help others with mundane tasks, I gave up partying and sleeping with cute guys that I just met, I gave to the church. Still, no God.
I got out of the military after a stint in Kuwait. Ten years of my life spent seeing the world and working my tail off, and I still had no marketable skills (I built bombs and missiles, not a lot of call for that in the civilian sector) and I was sure that God was ignoring me. Prayer was a daily thing, only, I hated doing it on my knees, they were damaged so badly from all my years of jumping up and down off of munitions trailers that they hurt to the touch. Still, no answers.
When I got back home, my sister was dating a guy she met in college and eventually, they got married and soon after, got pregnant and had my lovely niece. This is the beginning of this story...
Not long after having my niece, my sister started having trouble with her coordination and vision. She'd trip and fall, bump her head, smash her fingers, get weakness on her left side, and generally, feel terrible. An MRI detected damage to her central nervous system consistent with multiple sclerosis. I know the whole family felt like they'd been gut-punched, but I felt a pain in my heart that still hasn't subsided. She was the good kid, the loving, giving child, the considerate and compassionate one. Sure, I was the brainiac, the leader, the risk-taker and the war-hero, but she was my anchor to reality. I felt cut loose from the God I was so desperately seeking. How in the hell was this supposed to be His plan? What the FUCK??? Of course, my sister, being the way she is, tried to console me and tell me that everything was going to be fine, her MS wasn't the aggressive type, but to no avail. I carried guilt like that damned cross. It should've been me. I was the strong one. I had nobody to be a burden to, I was a free-range mustang on the vast plain of life. She had a family to worry about.
One day, after telling her that God would surely help, I mean really, her father-in-law was a minister, she had a direct line to God, she told me that she had been an atheist for a while. She said it was because she had never been saved in the church, our parents had never had her baptised and wasn't dragged to church like I had been when I was young. She said, at first, that she never felt connected to God and didn't miss it at all. I was a little indignant, telling her that now was the time to rely on God to help her out, but she'd have none of it. No amount of convincing would make a dent in her resolve that time or any other.
I pored over the Bible, looking for some sort of reason that God would treat a wonderful person like my sister that way, but never found anything that made any sense. God said he was merciful, that our rewards lay with him in Heaven, that we cannot fathom his ineffible plan for us, that we are cleansed of our sins by the sacrifice of his son, blah, blah, blah. All I could see was pettiness, cheap words, mystical pronunciations, empty promises. And not a drop of proof.
My sister is having another episode as I write this. She has double vision so bad it makes her vomit. A visiting nurse came by and connected an intravenous line to her forearm for a course of steroids and a new drug that's supposed to help. My sister is so weak, she has chest pains and gets winded just crossing the room to help her three children get settled at the dinner table. Mom and I help her with as much as we can until her husband gets home from work. I can see the worry in everyone's eyes. The normally ebullient kids are soft-spoken and subdued. The two older kids, the girls, are helpful, getting tea for their mom, while the youngest, the boy, acts out and sulks over the littlest things. Nobody has much of an appetite. God isn't in this house. He never was, but not because these people were bad, just the opposite, really. They are truly loving, sweet, giving people, all of them, almost to a fault.
I've had a change of heart. God does not exist and I'll tell you why. Why would a god, an all-powerful god, and all-seeing god, an all-knowing god, make such a stupid mistake as Multiple Sclerosis, and then blame this mistake on the creatures he visits the mistake upon? We didn't pray enough? I did.
I don't hate God. That would be like hating the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. None of them exist. Mankind has created a system of belief to ward off the fear of death, the end of a life that means so much to one's self, be it your own, or someone's life that you care about. It's a sham. Humans suffer, we're animals with a life expectancy of seventy to a hundred or so years. We die, we all die, but I will not give my hope over to an imaginary, useless, destructive, mind and self-erasing concept any longer.
My sister will probably die before me, and I will suffer her loss, but her children will remember her, as will their children if she makes it that far. But I'm glad neither of us has to feel as if a vengeful, weak, impotent god had anything to do with the joy and love we feel for each other. We made that ourselves. And as long I breathe, I'll make it my personal mission to make sure everyone I love knows that I love them, that my morals and deeds are inspired by a flesh and blood example of goodness and morality that no god ever forged. I've learned that our rewards are here on earth, in the love that we generate around ourselves, in the joy that no one else can take credit for and most of all, in the god-free knowledge that this is the only life we get, to enjoy it as much as we can, while we have it.

Reparations=Welfare

Is the welfare system a JUST and EQUITABLE social service, or is it merely a FRONT?

I was watching the Glenn Beck show, against my better judgement, may I add, and was treated to an interview with my teen-aged fantasy rocker, good ol' Ted "The Nuge" Nugent in all his wild game eating, firearms a-blazin' glory. If he had come out wrapped in Old Glory itself, I couldn't have been any more thrilled! His politics aside, I was happy to find myself in agreement with him on the subject of Welfare reform.

Having never allowed myself to fall into the trap of long-term unemployment, and likewise being an able-bodied person of excellent mental capacities, I cringe at the number of folks still sucking the teat of Welfare, the ever-present "Mother" in Motherland. She is the wetnurse of America, the surrogate to self-reliance, the dolemaster to the disaffected, the lazy, the schemers and the grifters of America's yellow underbelly. Naturally, there are those whose need for temporary support will always be met, and those whose justifications are wholesome and righteous. But, in truth, the system is so riddles with cracks and holes, that any person willing to relax his/her morals and self-respect can easily accomodate in their mind the series of steps required to become a welfare recipient. Become addicted to drugs, claim a mental dysfunction that precludes contact with other citizens, bear so many children by fathers unknown that the cost of childcare is prohibitive...not too hard for the imagintive.

A program I watched on the hot-button topic of Reparations gave reasons and arguments from both sides of the issue, and some were well thought out, while others were pipe dreams and pure silliness. Neither side was terribly convincing in its reasonings, as I had already made up my mind that the issue had already been decided with the advent of Welfare. Its origins may have been glazed with the frosting of charity for the lost and forlorn of society, but the biggest bite was taken by the African Americans when it was realized that, as disaffected as they were, not being able to find decent work to their liking, that the sugar-tit had been drawn out quietly for their suckling!

And while it is not called as such, Welfare IS a free ride, a solvent to the hard starch of Labor, of contribution to Society, one that has caused a feeling of entitlement amongst a large population of African Americans.

How many hard-working Americans have grimaced in disbelief at a Brother ridin' high in his Whip, sportin' Dubs, flashin' Bling, draped in D&G, Diddy at an ear-splitting, bowel-loosening volume and wondered where the money came from, when the same Bro' parks that machine in front of a tenement house, where dirty, near-naked, snot-covered children bound up and down the porch?

Yes, I am being prejudiced. But I see it too often. I drive past the slums on my way to the job I hate, where I work day in and day out for my paycheck, in my used car, in threadbare workclothes. I hate your obvious sneers, your got-away-with-it-Whitey glares.

Fuck it, where's the Welfare line?

George Carlin Was Right!

I'm going to miss George Carlin. With his death on the 22nd of June, 2008, the world lost one of the most insightful, charismatic, hilarious and brilliant comedians of all time.

There have been many times when I wanted to have the logic (or illogic) of a concept explained or redefined, and George managed to do so brilliantly. Happily, his method of utilizing humor in coincidence with logic and good ol' fashioned common sense put such a hard spin on the mundane existential conundrums I was internally debating, that I caught the shot in the head and it stuck hard and fast. George was good at that.

There's no need to reiterate his monologues, so I won't try to, but his explanation of religion and its inanity was so fantastic that I am just going to give you the YouTube link and let you watch and decide for yourself if he had it as right as I think he did.

Happy viewing! Go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o

On Saying Farewell, but Not Goodbye

Today, on Friday the Thirteenth, I say farewell to my best friend.

I admit, I cried when I finally hugged her and tearfully promised to write and call and visit when I can, but I'm no stranger to tears or parting of ways. Somewhere during that final embrace, I realized that I have no other close friends other than my family and boyfriend.

People are categorized as extroverts or introverts, friendly or antisocial, but really, these labels are totally arbitrary when it comes to how we make friends. Some of us have droves of friends, a circle of social contacts and a bevy of personalities to choose from when we desire human interaction.

I used to behave that way, when I was younger and better able to ignore people's foibles and idiosyncrasies and just enjoy the grab-bag approach. Ten years in the Air Force dragged me into a way of life where my companions were my co-workers, family, party-buddies, roommates and even lovers, sometimes. From one month to another, my circle of friends changed with the inevitability of reassignments and separations from the military. It was expected, it was fluid and organic and that laissez-faire attitude was the norm, not the exception. Some people, I would keep in touch with for a while after, but then, the friendships would fade out imperceptably, phone numbers would be lost, new friends would capture my interest. Old friends would move again, contact lost forever.

High school friends fell by the wayside soon after I graduated, I was on to new horizons, and college friends were even less attached to my heartstrings. Very few people I knew were travelling on the same path as I was, I was also too eager to see the world, to meet new faces. The fault truly lies at my feet, like an old, sightless hound, vaugely aware of the smell of yesterday's dinner in its nose.

I have let go of nearly every one of my dearest friends the same way.

This one is different, though. This friend came back after a nasty parting of ways over the unfortunate decision to become roommates went sour over silly differences of lifestyle and perceptions of responsibilities. After six years of separation, our paths reconverged quite literally, on a path in the woods. Past resentments dropped away in the space of a breath, replaced by, well, relief.

Four years later, after her marriage and career started moving purposefully towards fruition, her sister, like mine several years earlier, developed Multiple Sclerosis, sending her into a vortex of worry and a desire to help, someway, anyway. A visit to her sister's home in North Carolina yielded leads to jobs for her and her husband. The leads turned into offers and suddenly, it was time to pack up their belongings and relocate.

So, here I sit, drinking red wine, which I barely tolerate due to allergies. She drinks red wine. She loves the stuff, and I'd like to buy her bottles recommended to me, but I never buy them because I can't share her joy for the stuff. Selfishly, I buy white wines, which she barely tolerates because they aren't red.

There will be a week of intense feelings of loss, followed by too many phone calls to "check in" and cry about how much I miss her. But sooner or later, I'll start to save my money and make plans with our mutual acquaintance to road trip to visit her.

I wonder how long she'll let me stay...