RAINBOW GONE

There’s a particular sound that Sorel Boots make when they’re being walked in by bare feet. It’s not like they know my socks are missing or even that I’ve just cut the irritating tag off the back of my pajama pants in honor of my birthday. It’s good to take time for the special things and since today is my day, instead of rushing at my normal first-thing-in-the-morning, top speed, migrating-bird-flying-for-home pace to get outside and make the rounds picking up yesterday’s dog poop before it freezes so deep I won’t find it until my sneakers hit it at the next thaw, I picked up my pink scissors and snipped. I’m glad of this because that tiny poke right at the top of my coccyx bone startled me every time I bent over. I have to admit though that after this time luxury, I didn’t take the additional extra seconds to find my special striped wool socks before I thrust my feet down inside my boots.

With a little reflection - which I have time to do because yesterday’s poo is frozen solid and I’m trying to figure out whether kicking it out of the ice will make my boots stink later – I realize it might have been a good idea to put on those socks. I bought them for myself as an early birthday gift a number of years ago, when I was visiting in California and wool socks had the biggest markdown because the only people who’d wear them in ninety degree weather are the ‘Woolies’. These people (I hope self- identified because I don’t want to be a bigot, not even by accident) apparently wear Birkenstock shoes with heavy socks all year round. I’m not that much of a hippie anymore so I mostly gravitate to the sale bin because I really need the markdowns. At the bottom, underneath the skimpy, multi-colored bras and no-cheek undies were the wool striped socks I didn’t put on today. At the time I was glad the basket was back in the corner and hopefully not visible in either the round surveillance mirror above me or the three-way next to the hundred and ten dollar ripped jeans hung so the real sizes for real women were crammed in the back. None of the sales girls came rushing so I assumed my eyes brimming over wasn’t apparent to anyone but me. It's just that the stripes and the wool carried such a rush of love and loss and more love.

Once, a long time ago, when I was clambering around on roofs in Vermont in my Sorel boots  (which are the only boots that really keep you warm enough to be the only woman on the job because everyone is waiting for you to be a whiner and you can keep all complaining at bay if your toes aren’t frozen) I had a role that I treasured. I was the one to straddle the peak of the roof. We needed to get ropes and ladders up and over there safely because the drop was forty feet off the back end and the snow was too deep not to swallow you if you fell. The Solar Energy collectors had to go up that week or we would have been violating our contract. I was so afraid of authority figures that working to keep agreements was way more important to me than even my toes.  That day I was wearing a pair of striped wool socks over my skin and inside my Sorel boots just like the ones in the sale bin in California. My now-ex (but at the time unbelievably-head-over-heels-in-love-not-yet-) husband had given those socks to me not only as a birthday present but as the very-first present ever from him. This is significant because he had a thing about spending money. In fact, he had such a thing about it that when I wanted to get him an FM radio receiver for his birthday I got a whole bunch of friends to sign the card so he wouldn’t be mad I’d saved up the money quarter-by-quarter, ever since he’d given me my socks. By the following October I had enough. With all the signatures on the card though, no one (unless they were some sort of psychological Einstein) could have told who paid how much. So his birthday was a wonderful success. He wasn’t mad at me because I gave him the gift and he had the radio he really wanted. My socks were a different story. They could have even been on sale back then because stripes weren’t so popular yet but I didn’t care. I slept with them every night because the wool smelled so good to me and the fact of them felt so good to me. I also wore them every day on the job. They’re probably why I’ve had such good fortune. I used to be known as one of the first women in Solar energy and I either wore or brought those socks with me to every conference when I was asked to speak. Eventually they had big heel holes so I retired them to a place of honor in my bedside table drawer with my goat-feet nippers and a few other treasures. These socks though, the ones in California, after I dripped memory-salt-tears on a few of the other sale items, came home with me. Unfortunately, today they’re in my drawer because after taking the time to cut the tag on my pajama pants, I was in such a hurry to get to poo-pick-up outside that I didn’t put them on.

I’ve turned fifty-five today and it’s gorgeous out. Bare feet in boots or not. All this musing has taken quite a bit of time and if I’m going to squeeze all the special things into my one special day I have to hurry. So, head down, plastic bag in hand, me and my boots make our way up the path. I really feel that in order to fully enjoy my day I have to make sure that no one accidentally tracks dog poop into my house because I didn’t pick it up. It’s right about midway up the yard that it hits me. Someone stole my Rainbow Flag! (I need to be scrupulous here and tell you that I actually discovered this yesterday but it rattled me so much since I had to go to work that I forgot. I rediscovered it today. It’s kind of like Peter Pan discovering his first lie. He felt the punch over and over as if he’d never felt it before. So here I am again, only today it’s my birthday, and I’m working so hard to finish my chores so I can start enjoying it.) Someone stole my Rainbow Flag! Right off the fence where I carefully wired it so it would never blow off, even if the wind hit gale proportions. I love (loved) that flag. I’d wanted one for years, but  they’re not easy to find -- I guess the world is filled with people like me who want to celebrate inclusion. Even when I was a little girl I loved rainbows. Dorothy went over one and found her way home. The symbol uses all my precious colors and when humans look at it, we all know we’re of one tribe. My Rainbow Flag is (was) especially important to me since I’m proud of all the Gay people I love. Not because I care one iota who, where, when or how they choose to be sexual but because knowing how to love in this world seems to me an enormous achievement. Whenever I look (looked) at the flag I hung, I get (got) filled with a sense of wonder and gladness about being a person. Being able to love matters. And for me, seeing my flag helps (helped) me remember this.

But my Rainbow Flag is gone. I know it didn’t blow away. I’ve checked every detail. The wires have gone missing too. Whoever stole it left me just one tiny corner so at least I don’t have to worry that I’m accidentally turning a natural disaster into a crime. My Rainbow Flag was carefully removed and then ripped at the last bit where the wiring was too perfect to undo quickly. It’s a relief to know that I’m not being a bad person by making assumptions. My Rainbow Flag has been stolen.

It’s a shame really. There’s a lovely link of connective tissue between the Sorel Boots, the striped socks I’m not wearing, and the Rainbow Flag I’m not seeing. It’s a love link -- family and memory and gladness all woven around with grief and missing. Kind of like the Rainbow mix of colors. Not everyone resonates with every color. But the mix. Who could not feel awe when the rain turns to sun and the wet ground starts to steam and the clouds open just enough to birth a rainbow? My children are like that. This exquisite mix of all things. We all are I guess. It’s hard to imagine, though, for the person who stole my flag. They couldn’t possibly know that I think of my son whenever I look at that flag. They couldn’t possibly know that through my son I think of my now-ex-husband. They couldn’t possibly know that if my youngest daughter was the one I thought of with the flag, it wouldn’t link me to the same people and that I think (thought) of this with wonder and love whenever I look (looked) at the lovely color blend in my flag.

It really stinks to lament on a birthday. So instead, I’m going to say thank you to the mean person who stole my Rainbow Flag. You don’t go into a Church and steal the cross.  You don’t go into a Temple and steal the star. You don’t go on someone’s lawn and steal the American flag. You don’t steal someone’s mailbox. And you don’t walk in my gate and steal my Rainbow flag. But. Since you did, I want to say Thank you.  ‘Thank you,’ because you made me feel so sad that I turned the grief into a golden egg and laid an idea I’m really excited about.

Where my Rainbow Flag hangs (hung), I’m going to put an enormous canvas. I’m going to declare myself every possible thing there is to be. And I’m going to use the words that matter so much to make this idea a reality. I’m hoping to make this so other people can write words here too. We can start out with a ‘Thank you,’ and from there move into all the words for all the things that all of us can be. This way, if we’re all everything, we can stop hating some people for being some one thing and others for being some one other thing else. So right this minute, on the morning of my fifty-fifth birthday, when I see again that someone stole my Rainbow Flag and I didn’t wear my striped socks because I was in such a hurry to celebrate, I’m going to start my project:

Now that you’ve stolen my Rainbow Flag, I’ve decided that from now on, I will be no one thing. (Not that anyone else is ever anyway.) So… I’m Gay. I’m Bi-sexual. I’m Trans-gendered. I’m Heterosexual. I’m non-sexual. I’m super-sexual. I’m partially sexual. I’m all of these. I’m none of these. I’m every ethnic difference ever thought of. I’m Jewish. I’m Muslim. I’m Catholic. I’m Protestant. I’m every religion that ever was. I’m no religion. I’m long-haired. I’m short-haired. I’m every physical difference. I’m no physical difference. I’m every possibility. And I’m no possibility. If you want to join me, please put your words here with mine. Thank you again.

Phew. Now that I’ve joined everyone and no one, I’ll wish myself ‘Happy Birthday’ and get ready for the party. My children are coming over and I need to get out of my pajamas and put on some socks.

'WHY?' MUST BE THE WRONG QUESTION

The dead bird still has all its feathers. Its tiny claws are frozen in the same almost leap- with-joy posture that the Heidi goats hold as they wheel around mid-jump.  Heidi (in the imaginary movie of myself as her that runs almost all the time in my head) holds cheese in her outstretched hands and the goats come for it on the run. They jostle and poke their heads right into her/my armpit. The tiny dead bird sits on my palm, its bead eyes open.  They see nothing.  My eyes are open too.  I see everything within reach.  And I wonder.  The bird is here.  The bird is not here.  The goats are here with me always.  And not.

I dig up the shoebox.  It’s buried near the biggest root of a tree I hope is familiar to the dead bird who’s gone.  The toilet paper I wrapped around the corpse still feels new.  But the feathers and bones inside it now could almost have appeared like some odd fairy trade.  Bird taken by the dancing nymphets.  Little pile of matter left for me and my box.  And, the gift of the wrong question that will dominate my life for nearly fifty years.

We can never know why one thing dies and the next doesn’t.  Why some of us are hurters, some of us are hurt and some of us seem to hang around the fringes of both.  And we can never know I guess, why one person’s trying is so crystal clear to them and so clearly missing-in-action to us.  Nor can we ever know why our trying, Herculean perhaps from our perspective, can be received as an utter lack of caring.

One of the reasons I love words is this somehow-beautiful-to-me in its futility fantasy that if we can meet another human with a truly known and shared wellspring of vernacular, it will span all distances of perspective.  The bridge I imagine could change the world.  In the meantime though it’s the trying that counts.

Sometimes I think the concept of God was invented by humans so when we’re on our knees, fist to the sky – roaring 'Why me?' – we won’t be embarrassed if someone asks who we’re talking to.  The abyss of that un-answered moment, the lone clapper missing a limb, the worm brought too late to the bird, the conversation with someone who’s gone but we don’t know it.  They all lead to the showstopper of questions, the end-all be-all of missing motivation, the long pause that can precipitate  a lifetime of partiality.

Main Entry:  fractional  adjective

                         partial

  Synonyms:  apportioned, compartmental, compartmented, constituent, dismembered, divided, fragmentary, frationary, incomplete, parceled, part, piecemeal, sectional, segmented

Main Entry:  fragmentary  adjective

                          broken, incomplete

  Synonyms:   bitty, disconnected, discrete, disjointed, fractional, incoherent,  part, partial, piecemeal, scattered, scrappy, sketchy, unsystematic

I have a lot of  ‘WHY’s inside me.  But I absolutely know that the ‘why’s’ I seek will never take me where I want to go. 

We have to flip the frame on the entire operation.  Let’s assume that for whatever reason our species is not endowed to understand all the reasons for all the realities we question with a resounding 'Why?' -- never mind live with the necessitated actions if we did.  I think other explorations are much more respectful of our world in this evolutionary moment.  We can ask ‘What is true?’ and we can then work on accepting the reality of these truths.  From there it’s a hop, skip and a jump to ‘What respectful question can we ask next?’

Eventually (sorry to make this seem so simple)  we move from ‘What is true?’ to ‘What action do we need to take?’ out of our knowing of what is true.  On then to, ‘How do we put these things into compassionate action?’

From there we just roll into the precious moments of living. 

JUST A DAY

Like when Alexander had his '… no good, horrible, very bad day …', when my children were young, a stubbed toe, a metal toy shovel that accidentally on purpose made a real hole in a plaster wall, or a dead worm named ‘Sami’ like the fifteen others in the toilet-paper-ed, grass-filled leftover container, all constituted enough emergency to stop, sit and regroup.  There might have been crying and holding or crying and fighting or crying and laughing or crying and reading about Alexander, but any which way, there was release, relief and a fresh start somehow.

This day, today, seems different. First of all it’s me that’s in the muck of a mired down, un-moored, disoriented, unglued, lost and wet on a visually sunny kind of very bad day. Second of all that particular uckiness that glows phosphorescently (so it’s completely noticeable by everyone) when someone is wallowing in the abyss of self-pity, has me oozing about like the slugs I used to pick up to feed our pet Turtle.  I should add that this was before I accidentally froze him to death in the cast iron tub I put out in the back yard one winter after I got too stressed trying to contain the Fruit-fly colony breeding over the compost I’d put in with him when I was trying to demonstrate perpetual motion. I’d had this idea that we’d put the tub in the living room to mix up what I perceived to be a societally imposed sense of rightful placing of objects. Since we had a usable shower still in the bathroom, I filled the tub with dirt. The weeds I didn’t want in the garden (and didn’t want to kill because surely modeling disrespect for the earth isn’t good parenting practice) were put in the tub to grow as something perhaps misplaced, displaced, but still potentially beautiful and certainly useful. The compost from the kitchen fed the worms I bought in a brown paper bag that also went into the tub. These worms fed Mr. Turtle and my family had a living science experiment. Except the mess of it all got to me so I displaced the whole kit and kaboodle to the yard (where much of it came from anyway). The tub could have housed a tacky Virgin Mary but we loved Mr. Turtle and who’s to say? He could have been immaculate. A guy I tried to date around that time was pretty impressed by my refusal to gasp at the ooze of the slugs and there was no question that the way Mr. Turtle opened his mouth to eat was amazing because, unlike humans (which of course I didn’t miss the opportunity to point out to anyone who’d listen), his jaws worked like hinges and raised the entire top of his face when he welcomed his dinner.

So I’m oozing today. Multiple involvement of orifices. Tears. Excess sweat in disenfranchised places. It all started when I woke up in the post-menopausal hormone swamp. It isn’t even so much about the moisture (puddles sometimes if I’m being honest). It’s the brain fog that goes with the territory.  And an incessant round of thinking that if my fingers weren’t also out of whack, I could maybe catch in a series of rapidly escalating, non-redundant scales of profound thoughts. Unfortunately, even my typing seems slanted.  I do marvel though that despite having PTSD for over 30 years, this surprises me every time it hits.

I’ll be fifty-five years old this Sunday. It’s a nice number I never thought I’d live to see. I’m not having an issue with the getting older piece, at least not right this minute, but I am pretty resentful that it means having to get my license renewed. In principle this shouldn’t be so bad. You just go, sit in a chair until they call your number, try to pretend you’re not royally pissed off at the unbelievable incompetence all around you, pay the money, take the thing and leave. But that’s not how this particular day’s script went. I was so disoriented that although I’ve driven to the Registry in Roslindale, MA on numerous occasions, I got lost on my way to the local DMV. It might have been fun years ago, hanging out with several stoned friends, to have no idea where we were and then … wonder of wonders … surprise!! We’d be right where we wanted to end up. Back then it seemed like some cosmic rightness in the world. Today, feeling lost going less than three miles from my house has me questioning my right to foot space on the planet.

Given that I arrived exactly four minutes after the place opened, I thought everything might turn out okay. Until I walked around the corner and after mentally discounting the possibility that Obama was visiting (I did see Michelle’s face on some screen yesterday), that there’d been a random fantastical alien space-ship sighting, that a hero had been in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment and saved a grandmother fainting when she learned she’d won the lottery and could finally buy a house for her daughter who’s a single mom of three, realized that this huge line wending its way towards Roslindale Center was, at the front end, waiting to get into the registry. I didn’t cry while I clenched my coat, sipped my tea from my pink travel mug and tried to ignore the eavesdropping I couldn’t help. The thing that really stunk about all the waiting, aside from the permanent five year grimace on my new license, is that I had several hours worth of minutes in which to think.

I tried to distract myself with my knitting. The problem is I’m a very bad knitter. Just learning really. And it frustrates me terribly because I’ve known how to do it at other times in my life. So I sat, elbow to elbow with two people I don’t know, casting and recasting the stitches and thinking about how excited I’ve been by my recent writing. I was thinking I’d finally found a way to talk about some of the things that I think constitute our cultural ‘Elephant’ in our societal living room. Writing about denial is a way out and through. Talking about trauma helps traumatized people back into the arena. Writing about rape allows for a healing for everyone.

But the same things are true that have always been true. Most people don’t want to. Don’t want to talk about these things. Don’t want to read about these things. Don’t want to think about these things. And at least today, how I’m thinking is that most people don’t want anything to do with anyone who, just by being, impels them to look at these things that are so not pretty to see.  And as I sat, unraveling knots that wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t so fucking dissociative that learned skills sometimes disappear and then reappear in maddening random ways, I was thinking that of course people don’t want to talk about rape. Who would? Unless they were wearing the mantle imposed on them by random events that most people want to scapegoat away into some arena that makes dealing with them unnecessary? But what else is there to do? So many people are carrying loss. All of us if we’re honest. From years of experience I know that mucking in the muck is the way to not carry it. And yet, I’m sure it gets boring. And old. And evokes helplessness. And don’t we wish someone else would be the one to bear witness? We’re too busy.

So, on occasion, I fall in to feeling sad for the me that is me. I probably looked like a Rheumy oldster sitting on that green chair. My eyes kept tearing. I wanted to think of something funny. Truly I did. And I was afraid the clerk, if I lived long enough to get to him, was going to wish me Happy Birthday and that instead of smiling with grace, the cracks of my teeth would open and a whimper would escape. Luckily, he didn’t even see me enough to smile, never mind realize that I wouldn’t have been there if I wasn’t aging so fast. So at least that one worry was wasted.  But even the thought that if only I’d been a tiny more addled I might have forgotten to put on my shoes – and then the fact that I quick checked to make sure my boots were boots and not slippers – didn’t make me smile.

So I thought about that wonderful ‘Alexander and his bad day’ book I used to read to my kids and wished for a mother to normalize it all away for me.  Except knowing me - today anyway - that would probably make me sad too.

GREEN DOESN'T ALWAYS STAY GREEN

Malchick (singing Canary with a Russian name) isn’t green anymore.  It’s sad, really. When he came home with me, the brilliance of his green feathers were second only to the fact that his tiny throat could bulge while his beak stayed immobile, and my entire cottage would flood with song.  Not just any song.  Malchick sings a series of notes that cascade the wood beams, roam up to the cobwebs visible only when sun hits the dust, roll, then plunge down past the slate blackboard carefully removed from its original job in a high school in Dorchester, and float cadence-by-beat and back to his solidly yellow body clutched on his perch.  But Malchick is a ‘Green’ Canary. That’s what the woman told me when I paid her and she tipped her head in mild regret.  Apparently he was her favorite.  He was green when I got him.  He’s not green anymore.  And this despite all evidence of my trying: a special bulb for a special bird-light in  a special big cage with special food, sun as much as possible and always fresh water. 

The environment into which one is received after trauma (loss) is the imperative (determinative) factor impacting  (one could say precipitating) the intensity, longevity and treat-ability of subsequent adaptations. Mitigation after the fact is certainly possible, though impacted profoundly by the validation received from the primary surrounding milieu.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an adaptation to trauma - an attempt by an agile mind to make order out of chaos.

Because we are a survival-driven, gregarious species, when we face our death (whether through physical actions that could precipitate an end to our physical lives, or through psychological ‘actions’ that could precipitate the same) we take whatever steps necessary to optimize both a physicality of living and a possibility for connection.  To survive the truth of a psychological death (secondary here for our purposes because it occurs after the original trauma) imparted by a loved one through lack of validation of the reality of our circumstance (regardless of said loved-one’s intention), often a splitting (mental, spiritual, physical, psychobiological) occurs.  Through this splitting, we continue to engage while simultaneously portioning off the aspect of self that’s been negated.

Thus: DENIAL BEGETS DENIAL BEGETS DENIAL.

Human beings do not come out of the womb wanting to wound.  

It turns out that my Malchick isn’t the only super-adapter in the house.  There’s me.  My color changes aren’t so obvious. They’ve been rooted for many years. But I think they still count.  When the truth of what we are now is discounted, it actually changes the weaving of the threads that color our reality.

Last night my son told me about the Guppies.  And the Finches.  This led me to some fascinating research.  If you dear reader, want to read it for yourself, and are moved to extrapolate in your own unique direction, I’d love to hear some of your thoughts.  There are many source sites but this one made for easy reading. Apparently the article my son read made an additional case for the fact that out of a shift in the intensity of predator presence, the guppies changed color.  More color in less fear.

For Finches, there is a readily identifiable alteration in physical characteristics, visibly apparent in only one generation.  Apparently the size, efficacy and color of the beaks change as weather and therefore dominant plant growth shifts.  Again, there are many source sites but I found this one most accessible.

We cannot forget the Chameleon. “(family Chamaeleonidae) They are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of Lizard. They are distinguished by their parrot-like zygodactylous feet, … their swaying gait, … and the ability of some to change color.” (Emphasis mine. Thank you Wilkipedia) This tiny (sometimes) Lizard is able to visually shift in response to color changes in its surroundings and/or perceived predator presence.

So what is this obsession with adaptation? How does it impact our understanding of PTSD, families, parenting, relationship, and ultimately forging an ‘AFTER’ when the ‘before’ has been first traumatic and second steeped in exclusionary denial?

I’m giggling here, still in my slippers past noon on a sunny day, because the compelling possibility of parsing this out in an accessible manner is as seductive to me as I imagine nectar is to Malchick.  The thing that gets me is that our country allocates billions of dollars in research grants to scientists.  These people (let’s face it, largely male) get to observe and document to their hearts content.  I run a minds-eye-movie where an identifiable, scientifically viable shift is observed in a study population, and everyone gets a day off.  Food and liquor flows. ‘High-fives’ abound.  The point here being that the ability of animals and plants to adapt to a shift or reduction in their survival needs is applauded.

As an artist who works both with new and ‘found’ materials, one of my greatest pleasures is watching how the very materiality of a palate changes with time and touch.  In fact, there is a major movement afoot in the art world.  ‘Green’ art is currently being featured as the wave of the future.  The implication being that to reuse, re-contextualize, re-visualize materials in a new way catalyzes a viewer to see an artist’s observations of the world (as manifested in the work they spawn) in a more accessible manner.

‘Covers’ of music previously recorded and now woven with new interpretation bring songs a new level of audience.  Movies remade with different actors and directors often are viewed with a different perception of story.  Recipes find new life under the tutelage of changing cooks.

And yet creating work without crediting the predecessors, no matter how obscure, is considered quite gauche in many circles. And – just as critical – neither I nor any trauma survivor I know, wants to live through obscurity until death and then get reworked to something more understandable.

What is this denial, so rampant in our culture, that prevents us from offering  acknowledgment and validation to trauma survivors (like we do for adaptive, non-human species)? I have to add here that this is true most particularly in the context of rape.  Both the rape-es and the rape-ers are virtually erased from the common vernacular of our world.  This could be an issue of ‘naming’.  It’s an undeniable challenge to find words to adequately discuss the complexities of that which is denied.

Surely we are one step removed when it comes to animals, plants and objects. We can look and notice their adaptations and shifts (and sometimes get wealthy from doing both) because, aside from the possible fear of anthropomorphic labeling, they are so apparently ‘NOT US’.  [God forbid we acknowledge our investment in a patriarchic-ally supported hierarchical worldview and admit there may be more to other species than we can ‘prove’.]  Other than this, what else could possibly be the problem?  To deny the reality of the adaptations necessitated by the PTSD must serve some purpose, or it wouldn’t permeate our culture. Would it?  Come on.  This is people I’m talking about.

So here’s what I currently think.  It has to do with my as-yet-unpublished book. One of the chapters is titled: ‘The Boogieman Under The Bed’.  As long as we can label what someone else has done, what someone else had done-to (them), how someone else adapted to either or both, as ‘OTHER THAN US’ (other than we would do, be, think, feel and certainly speak) then we are safe.  Because it’s them not us.  Couldn’t possibly be us.  And therefore will never be us.  So ‘we’ don’t have to worry.  When we pull out the boogieman, and the only thing left under the bed is old dust and the possibility of a lost treasure, buried deep by the always-too-short vacuum cleaner cord, ‘THEM’ IS US.  Most people are too selfish and afraid of their own discomfort to recognize an ‘us’ in all of the ‘them-s’.

The mental adaptations of the traumatized are fucking brilliant. PTSD allows people to tolerate what most others are unwilling to contemplate. It allows a multiplicity of mental tracks to run simultaneously in the recesses of one human mind. It allows the eyes to cry while the rest of the body offers comfort to another.

The mental adaptations of the traumatized are also debilitating. PTSD allows for a challenge of living unparalleled in the non-institutionalized. When untreated, it can catalyze tremendous violence. When un-acknowledged, it will trigger and re-trigger until the core of shame we allocate to the floor under our bed becomes the predominant felt-sense of a person.

To be both survival-driven and gregarious is as much a conundrum as to be both mortal and conscious. Yet this is what we all are. Given these realities, to believe that humans are supposed to be happy and comfortable would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. Moments of brilliance? Yes. Moments of joy? Yes. But all of the time? No.  We have to be willing to be uncomfortable, to walk in each others’ shoes, even if the steps are not palatable. To harness the courage necessary to take these actions IS A CHOICE.

When my PTSD is running rampant through my nervous system, at this stage generally only set off by the triggering brought on by a loved one’s blatant disregard of the realities I live with every day, my dog Pushkin knows and responds in a fraction of a second. He is not afraid. When I’m what I call ‘fallen in’, and my blood pressure drops (among many rather disgusting manifestations), my children see, know and respond. They are not afraid.

When our children are in reaction to the adaptations that have allowed us to survive, we can prevent a second generational subversion of experience and thus a next level (our children’s emerging PTSD).  Their experience has to be validated so that they can develop the tools to cope without having to resort to their own severe dissociation.  Labeling our own aberrance for what it is allows our children to know and validate the truth of their perceptions. Therefore, they grow, knowing it isn’t about them in these moments.

How magnificent a discovery is this?  Epigenetics. As I understand it, what I’ve labeled ‘vicarious, multigenerational PTSD’ for the past 24 years in my practice treating primarily trauma survivors and their families, is at last proven by scientists to be valid, verifiable and true. In a nutshell, trauma actually changes the way the brain works so that a layering occurs on certain genetic carriers. Thus, the adaptive nature of the whole morass passes down through the generations FOREVER. It seems to have been firmly established as truth when the trauma originates in childhood. For more extensive reading, please go here.

For members of our species who live a so-called ‘relatively safe passage through childhood’ before they are traumatized, I will postulate that the epigenetic impact on these individuals is similarly significant. Certainly the incident (s) itself, its lengthiness, awfulness and fear-of-ones-own-death quotient are all important.  However I have found that the most potentially detrimental factor has to do with the level of denial encountered and the level of validation received. When a person’s perception of reality is disavowed and disallowed, they face a psychological death scenario that triggers the fight/flight survival mechanism in the adrenals housed inside their body.  My supposition is that this cycle spurs an epigenetic layering as potentially damaging as when originating in childhood. This is particularly evident in adult children of both Holocaust and Rape survivors.

Hiding the realities, not speaking the stories, not seeing the adaptations, perpetuates a cycle that is massively destructive. Because, as I say: denial begets denial begets denial.

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

J.M. Fields was a discount department store chain based in Salem, MA, owned by Food Fair, Inc. Most J.M. Fields stores were built adjacent to Food Fair's grocery stores and the two were in fact connected, making J.M. Fields the first true "supercenter" of its time. Customers could walk from the department store directly into the grocery store without having to go outside. (Thank you Wikipedia)

Finnerty’s Country Squire Restaurant was open for lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch and dinner. It was a ‘…well respected restaurant in the area with outstanding Prime Rib. …’ The interior was set up like a country inn with a fireplace in the main room.

While not my very first jobs, which included selling flower seeds door to door, babysitting and washing pots and pans in the local nursing home kitchen, J.M. Fields and Finnerty’s were the two jobs slated to be my key to freedom. My plan, after graduating from high school in three years, was to make one thousand dollars (which would mean I was rich) and set off to live ‘real’ life. I intended to work as many jobs as possible, for the shortest time possible, take the money and run. My longing to leave suburban Boston, my parents and their friends (all of whom seemed so terribly unhappy to me) and start my real life drove me so powerfully that I barely struggled with the biological pre-disposition to over-sleep that side-lined many of my friends. At that time, I was on fire with a desire to ‘finally start my life’.

In a way, those two jobs gave me what I hoped for. And more.

It was at J.M. Fields, working the floor as a bathing suit picker-upper, that I first saw overweight white women behaving in ways that made me wish I was a goat and not a person at all. I didn’t stop to wonder why I personally felt embarrassed at their obnoxious entitlement. I just knew that picking up the mess-strewn floor made me wish I wasn’t of their same species.

As the first just-over-eighteen year old female hired to work at Finnerty’s (Massachusetts had recently lowered the drinking age) I was hard pressed to find connection with the career-matrons who taught me the ropes. Tip distribution varied widely and I noticed from day one that hip-swinging and coy smiles put money in my apron that catalyzed severe glaring from my trainers.

The third job I worked was so non-memorable that I have to admit I can no longer remember what it was. From these three jobs though, I did take two important things. The money counts as one. Although I wasn’t ‘rich’ like I thought (Ahh the cruelty of a rude awakening. Sitting at our family kitchen table I’d begged my father to teach me about money. He’d refused by telling me there was nothing I needed to know. I erroneously believed him.) I did succeed in making the money I believed I needed. Because – like all beliefs – thinking something is so doesn’t make it real, by the time I was hitch-hiking across the country, I had thirty seven dollars and fifty cents. and a conch shell from St. Kitts, which I believed to be very valuable.

The other life lesson I took from my three jobs has turned out to be much more significant. I often found myself simply pausing to stare in wonder at my customers. This was not the most popular employee behavior but it eventually gave me the information I sought. Watching a woman’s exaggerated frustration when she stepped over a pile of bathing suits she’d just watched me watch her dump on the floor, I realized that if I wasn’t careful, I’d end up disliking her a lot. I was under strict, boss-enforced instructions not to voice these perceptions so I didn’t speak them. And in fact, it wasn’t the not speaking that troubled me. What did disturb me deeply was seeing that I was capable of actively disliking people.

Whatever cherished notion my parents may hold about our past, I saw their unhappiness as hate. In response to this, as a small child, I promised myself, vowed actually, that no matter what happened to me in my life, I would never become a hater.

And there I was, nearly hating a sweating woman with candy streaked kids, and I hadn’t even left home yet.

At Finnerty’s the waitresses needed to help each other. The trays were heavy. If a waitress was carrying a full load, she needed to make a graceful landing on the bussing tray quickly or she was liable to either drop a six-person ceramic dish dinner (each with two sides in separate breakable bowls) or bust her gut. The same night I got my first twenty dollar tip, after a married male diner waved away the assigned waitress and loudly asked for me, I came out of the kitchen with an overflowing tray. Three waitresses stood like gargoyles guarding a holy vessel. Arms crossed, they lined up in perfect unison, making access to the bussing station impossible. If I’d not been in pain, I’d have smiled at the choreographed symmetry of their motions. They were perfectly positioned to refuse my tray. In the moment it took for my eyes to make tears, I marveled at their incredible, non-verbal communication skills. I think I even thought a sad ‘if only’. Maybe they could teach my parents what I’d so obviously failed to impart about communication, despite my best efforts and hopes. As it was though, I balanced that sucker of a tray on one palm because my other hand and arm were fully occupied holding my shoulder blade. Years before, my brother had accidentally dislocated my shoulder trying to pull me out of the highchair when I was a baby. Periodically, with stress or strain, it would pop out in an excruciating burning not unlike a massive sting from angry, disturbed bees. My back was ripping at about the same moment my polite “Please get out of my way so I can put my tray down.” was receiving its antique-like stone response. I dumped the tray, jammed my shoulder back in with two hands, noticed the women's faces when the busboy rushed over to help me and two others raced to the debris with appropriate mops and buckets, and, after finishing out the night, quit my job.

So here I was again, not forty eight hours after my first brush with professionally located hate, feeling intense dislike for these mean women.

Fortunately, both of these events happened when I had just barely achieved my financial goals. And fortunately again, they both forced me to learn something that has stayed with me always: Hating is a choice.

Because I do not choose to live as a hater, I have to be careful about what I do and who I do it with. I do not want to hate the world. I do not want to hate people. I mean, let’s face it, I was a committed hippie. I wanted (and still passionately want) to love everyone. Even the man who taught a group of us to meditate, and who revered Meher Baba and his words, believed in love. I believed him until he tried to force me to have sex with him outside the room while everyone else breathed ‘Ohm.’. He said it was important to follow teacher instructions.

I could go on and on but I think you see my point. I choose to live not as a hater. I choose to orchestrate my life so I can love it. I choose to work so I can come from a place of service and love. I choose to write and make my art as an honest observer, which in my world is a deep sort of self love and loving gift. I choose honest, loving parenting. I choose to engage with my family of origin in as honest and loving a manner as I can imagine. And I choose not to be an idiot. I did not sleep with the teacher. I did leave the group. I did not attempt vengeance on the waitresses. I did quit the job. I did not grab the pudgy hand of the mother who littered bathing suits like a retarded three year old. I did pick up after her, and then, I did quit that job. I have loved and tried and yearned and begged and pleaded and communicated with my family of origin. I have also concluded that each of us gets to choose. We choose how we’ll be. We in fact, while knowing there are many things out of our control that we do not get to choose – like the three violent rapes I obviously did not wake up one day and choose ‘just because’ –choose our life stance. Certain things and events are what I’d label ‘not-chosen’ things. All the rest of it, and how we make relationship to those things, are choices.

In case I’ve inadvertently offended anyone, here is the definition of retard:

        retard - decelerate: lose velocity; move more slowly

Do these things make me an ‘Unconditional Love’ flunkee?

I think not.

What I do think though, is that love, unconditional love and choice are all constructs that merit a lot of exploration. I’ve been racking my inside self for years about all of this and I can honestly say that I do not feel we have yet created language that is fully capable of both the open ended-ness and the complexity to put names to these things easily. Sometimes a body of artwork touches it. Perhaps a glimpse in a reflective puddle that catches an image that holds intense beauty and dissonance simultaneously comes close. Sometimes a story written with just enough hidden authority that it dictates the cadence and tone for the reader, without being controlling, almost hits it. For me though, I experience the narrow band latitude of our words as an enormous challenge. Never-the-less, this challenge is one I want to engage with.

I do not think that everything exists on the same plane. There I’ve said it. I’ve written something that immediately starts the qualifiers running in my head. All explanations and parenthesis aside, I do think that there are contradictory and simultaneously true elements that take their abode both inside us – as humans – and in the world that we both know and don’t. Out of this, I’ll state that something may be true on one plane, and absolutely not be useful, applicable or accessibly true on another. If we accept this basic precept, figuring out how to live seems a lot more do-able.

On some plane, we are capable of loving always and completely. No matter what. I can walk anywhere and be blown away by the immensity of beauty I experience in every spec of every single thing. I can breathe out and imagine my breath as a love mist dancing with the world. I can also, at that exact moment, be terribly troubled because although I find abhorrent the tendency to take a small experience and extract it to a gross generalization, given the fact that I am a trauma survivor, I am often frightened of someone, simply by the size of their shadow. So, do I unconditionally love that human? At that moment? It seems not. At least not on this plane where I believe the aspiration away from prejudice to be essential. And yet. Were I not afraid, were I to start up a conversation with this individual, it would only be with the wisdom of hindsight that one could decide if I were an unconditional lover, ‘asking for it’ or just generally naïve and lucky.

I’ve thrown out all of these methods for judging. They simply have no value (other than recrimination that protects the pronounce-r from having to feel compassion) and they’re based on what I call ‘faulty thinking’. I hope that on some plane, which is so clearly not this plane - where we eat, shit, laugh and make war - my awe and curiosity about all things counts as unconditional love. I believe this to be true. But here, where my feet are - which was so aptly taught to me by a pink sneaker-ed girl many years ago when in frustration I asked her: “Where are you?” and she looked at me in surprise and almost pity as she said: “I’m right here. Aren’t you?” – is where I live as a human being in this body. And it is here, where I am questioning what we call love on this plane, never mind unconditional love on a larger scale.

I’ve never been able to conjure up the feelings people say I’m supposed to feel. I’ve honestly never wanted to cut the balls off the three different men who raped me. I’ve truly never wanted to hurt my mother for her denial nor my father for his episodic emotional viciousness towards me. I’ve not hated the women who slept with my (now ex) husband nor do I hate the woman who chose to forge long-term relationship with him when he was married to me and we had two children. I don’t hate my (now ex) best friend who left me when my marriage ended and I don’t hate the people who’ve benefited from my silence. I don’t hate people I don’t know and I can’t seem even to hate the man who stole my intended inheritance. I’ve tried to feel these things. But that’s just not what comes. Hating these people is what I’ve been taught I’m supposed to feel. I don’t. What does come though, is an utter bewilderment. A feeling alone and isolated because I do not hate in this way. When you think about it, this is kooky.

Just because I don’t hate these particular people doesn’t mean I never will. Nor does it mean I don’t have huge other feelings. I certainly don’t love the men who raped me and on this plane, where right this minute the hand-sewn leg-bottom of my awesome overalls just barely touches the top of my shoes (right here where my feet are), I have no intention of trying to do so.

I guess it gets really sticky when we mix actions and intentions. When I’ve been snarky with my daughter and I say I didn’t mean to and I truly didn’t mean to, she believes me. And vice versa. But if one of the men who raped me said he didn’t mean to, I’d be doubled over laughing in a super mean derisive way. I know my mother has not meant to hurt me. And I know she chose something that became the core of my wounding. So she both knew and didn’t know. The difference floating around in here has to do with what I call: ‘ Naming. Claiming. Validating. Apologizing if necessary. And engaging in a reciprocal, respectful, gropingly honest interchange.

On this plane, I vowed not to be a hater. And I vowed to tell the truth. I hope I succeed. I might fail. Sometimes the speaking of these truths is so painful. It’s hard for me to put these concepts into words. It’s hard for me to risk vilification and/or hurt reflections coming back at me. And some of what I have to say is probably pretty painful for some people to hear.

In my world, it is ‘unconditionally loving’ to communicate, question and choose, and it is selfish and/or enabling not to.