i have come to realize that i am, on my own. there is not prince charming, no savior in white armor coming to free me from the tower. just me. I’m not sure if that is empowering or deflating.
time will tell.
Author Archives: Stacey
Marie Howe
on fresh air today at lunch, Terry Gross interviewed poet Marie Howe. i was floored – she is thought-provoking, clever and somehow her words reach into your soul and clench hold of an inner ideal of what i have already thought. one poem reminds me of Emily Dickinson‘s poem from Time and Eternity, While I was Fearing it It Came; to me, a gut wrenching portrayal of how fear of anything prevents one from living and only pervades a focus on the fear or fear of that we try to ignore.
Marie Howe
How Some of It Happened
My brother was afraid, even as a boy, of going blind–so deeply that he would turn the dinner knives away from, looking at him, he said, as they lay on the kitchen table. He would throw a sweatshirt over those knobs that lock the car door from the inside, and once, he dismantled a chandelier in the middle of the night when everyone was sleeping. We found the pile of sharp shining crystals in the upstairs hall. So you understand, it was terrible when they clamped his one eye open and put the needle in through his cheek and up into his eye from underneath and left it there for a full minute before they drew it slowly out once a week for many weeks. He learned to, lean into it, to settle down he said, and still the eye went dead, ulcerated, breaking up green in his head, as the other eye, still blue and wide open, looked and looked at the clock. My brother promised me he wouldn’t die after our father died. He shook my hand on a train going home one Christmas and gave me five years, as clearly as he promised he’d be home for breakfast when I watched him walk into that New York City autumn night. By nine, I promise, and he was–he did come back. And five years later he promised five years more. So much for the brave pride of premonition, the worry that won’t let it happen. You know, he said, I always knew I would die young. And then I got sober and I thought, OK, I’m not. I’m going to see thirty and live to be an old man. And now it turns out that I am going to die. Isn’t that funny? –One day it happens: what you have feared all your life, the unendurably specific, the exact thing. No matter what you say or do. This is what my brother said: Here, sit closer to the bed so I can see you.
i know that feeling, that total take-over of body and mind, that is ingrained into your soul and every movement and thought of each and every second of each and every day – yet, the focus does not prevent the encounter any more or less than the removal of that fear.
Emily Dickinson
WHILE I was fearing it, it came, But came with less of fear, Because that fearing it so long Had almost made it dear. There is a fitting a dismay, A fitting a despair. ’T is harder knowing it is due, Than knowing it is here. The trying on the utmost, The morning it is new, Is terribler than wearing it A whole existence through.
To me, a huge fan of Emily Dickinson, I thought these two ideas, went hand-in-hand and I found it interesting.
Like this:
“it felt like a kiss”
today like everyday I listen to the story or fresh air on NPR at lunch – today fresh air was interviewing Carole King, award-winning singer-song writer. a great interview and a lot of interesting conversation; but the statement that stuck with me all day was Carole talking about the song “He hit me (it felt like a kiss)”.
Carole spoke of the abuse she suffered from her third husband:
“… there are women — and some men — who experience domestic abuse who feel ashamed, who think it’s their fault, who think they don’t deserve to be safe or don’t remember what it’s like to be safe. And I thought, ‘If women and men read this and say, ‘Wow, she was successful. She had financial independence. She had it so together and she could be in a relationship like that … maybe I’m not so bad, maybe it’s not my fault.’ …”
what struck me was that word safe. what does it mean to be or feel safe? i don’t know that i have ever felt safe.
safe is defined by Webster as:
1: free from harm or risk : unhurt
2: secure from threat of danger, harm, or loss
i do not believe at any time in my life I have felt safe. all my life i may have been being hit (not literally) and it felt like a kiss. i have felt “safe” in unhealthy relationships, chaotic family life and dangerous choices. i have been shown that is what love is…
i think i am just beginning to realize how backwards i have been seeing love.
like being hit and then told it’s a kiss.
do you validate?
we all want/need validation.
at work. school. church. from friends, family, etc.
for our job performance. that paper you spent 3 months writing. the new wallpaper your spent all day putting up – only to remember what a b***h it is to remove.
we all want/need validation.
it’s important though, who you seek validation from and for what. example…
asking your home-boy for a high-five after tagging the side of a train – not healthy.
asking your best friend for kudos after running for a block without passing out – healthy.
I do not crave validation. but i do crave authenticity – to which no one thing/person/relationship in my life fulfills. I really have learned to live without it, but lately, due to a very inauthentic person i am made to see the difference and want the real thing.
It, on some level, brings loneliness.
movement
praying for open doors, closed doors, invitations and opportunities.
“I HATE THIS FEELING. LIKE I’M HERE, BUT I’M NOT. LIKE SOMEONE CARES. BUT THEY DON’T. LIKE I BELONG SOMEWHERE ELSE, ANYWHERE BUT HERE, AND ESCAPE LIES JUST PAST THAT SNOWY WINDOW, COOL AND CRISP AS THE FEBRUARY AIR.”
- Ellen Hopkins
