“Only when the heart is still is the journey over… and even then …there are rivers to cross.”

Charles DeLint, from ‘Spiritwalk’

Of muddled myths, Helium Spheres, broken friendships and unconquered dreams, define this time. The time that had passed, I look back today and see the rocky waves of emotions, smashed dreams, and broken hearts.

This time that had passed became a sort of introduction, we learned the hard way, to the trials of unacknowledged child abuse, clinical depression, and psychological warfare 101 that was about to blow in.

This man I had married had been abused, as had all of his other 5 older siblings – 3 girls, 3 boys. He eventually opened up, first to my mom, and then himself. Unacknowledged does not mean gone, he came to realize, as did I.

While his 6-year-old self stood outside that kitchen door, standing beside the only phone in the house, listening to his sisters body hit the walls of the kitchen, the stove, the fridge, being thrown around the kitchen by their father…my Mom listened to him.

Maybe Mom offered him a bridge over to his Mom. He shared his stories and Mom listened to them as a Mom…and somehow, along the way, something in him was mended. He learned to forgive his own Mom for not protecting him against his Father.

Later in our marriage, when howling at the moon beside our campfire wasn’t enough, he turned to suicide.

IF I had been paying attention I would have seen it coming, but I was too busy ignoring it all – we can call it “la-la-land”.

What we do not choose to deal with, will deal with you.

Then the four, that had been three, became a duo (see Helium Spheres). He broke down, after I’d grilled him, and told me he didn’t love me anymore, and wanted to be alone. He was finally dealing with his shyte, and now he doesn’t love me, doesn’t need me, or want me.

A week after he tried to commit suicide…I kicked him out.

Nice. If I had not ended it I believe he would have wallowed away and I would have dissolved even farther. As would have he. He had been obsessed with Genevieve for a while, and I knew of it. The three of us had discussed it and I had accepted it as merely a simple attraction.

We can be so naïve. And that’s the ROYAL we.

POEM DATE NOV.4, 1999
I walk out from the shadow of disguise
      forced to the light by circumstance.
The molten core of hope,
      overflowing into the pit of despair.

THE LONGING ANSWER
What is it that sparks this eternal longing,
this need for that which is not mine?
From deep within it stirs and wakes,
it looms within me.

Loneliness dreams of togetherness,
and my heart contracts.

Memories of waves and whales,
trees glistening in their snowy sleep,
dark candlelit nights awash in connections,
and I must turn away from it.

A pilgrim am I now,
on a path towards the unknown,
in worship of a thing I cannot touch,
but know within myself to be.

Of new beginnings I long for.
Orange walls,
billowy curtains,
Oak floors and a trio of pianos meet me when I stumble.

With these things I nourish my hungry soul.
In spirals my imagination dances me,
towards that which I am…
THE LADY OF THE CELLAR

NEXT:Part Two