Fer real do

I keep telling myself that I'm going to search out some poetry magazines, and submit a manuscript to some editors. I swear I'm going to do it, until I make a move in that direction, and freeze up. OK maybe it isn't that simple, I don't "freeze up" I sort of distract myself with other things until I forget I was going to do it.

I am SO disappointed in myself and my unwillingmess to try. Meanwhile, Jon is published all over the place, Cher has her own chapbook in print, Vickie is in print. . .me? yeah, 2 online Zines, woo hooo!
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Anyway, MTC has a new member and I think she's gonna fit in there just fine. Her name is Erin (heheh THAT'S weird Email, "Dear Erin blahblahblahblah Signed Erin." Like I've finally lost that last marble and started emailing myself.) She seems like a hoot, although her reaction to me was much like my reaction to Tara and Jon so many years ago. It tickled me, and made me realize how it made T and J feel way back then. I chuckled about it, I admit it.

Weird though, it was a deranged sort of psycho-ego trip. God I hate to say that out loud.
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I was laying in bed last night and realized that Kassi will be going to Middle School next year. 7 months and she'll be in Middle School. It's too much to digest. I don't know how it happened so quick. She's too damn young, too little. I ended up spending a lot of time today looking over old pictures of the kids when they were little, when I could still mold them, when they weren't so. . . grown up.
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It also made me realize that I'm 32 years old. 32. I'm no youngster anymore -- god knows a look in the mirror should have told me that, but I suppose as a mother, maybe I see myself through my kids. Be realistic, you forget yourself the first time you hold your first child.
As much as I miss the years when they were babies, I miss the years when I still looked younger than my age, when my body was something to look at, before I lost Alexis and my spirit, when I knew who Erin was, and could look her in the eye.

I don't know me anymore.

Scotty

This is my husband Scotty. We've been together for 13 years, through the hardest times in our lives -- and they've been the best 13 years of my life. I love you gorgeous.

Definition

I find that so many times, we claim that life has held us back, that our lack of success is a result of our surroundings, our environment – that someone else is to blame. Only we hold ourselves back, using situations as excuses for failure, reasons not to try. I do not try, I have not succeeded, and I have only myself to blame, because moving on feels guilty, and that guilt is only a self-imposed weight that I’d love to blame on someone else. The problem with that is, I claimed that guilt years ago, and made it my own.

Truthfully, I do not fear failure, perhaps failure is how I define myself, and seem content in that description. I hold it dear enough to be uncomfortable with someone else’s disagreement with it. I fear success, I don’t know how to do that, be that. I fear the pressure of always one-upping myself, out-doing what I’ve done to remain successful. The stress of it seems too daunting, too much like work. And so here I am, whatever that is, defined with the words of my own choosing, and I am content.
I think.

PSP v9

I've spent a good part of the day working in paint shop pro. Nothing wonderful, all uploaded on my AC account I'll finally be getting that camera I've wanted for years. Thank god for eBay. Now I'll I need is some black and white film. I'll have no clue what I'm doing for the first while, but that's OK, I'm always up for learning something new. Especially if it widens my artistic horizons. I think that's why I have so many children -- I have an insatiable urge to create, to control too, I suppose, but that's a different entry all together isn't it?

Digital Inadequacies

Sometimes I have a hard time removing myself from my writing, a romantic sort of notion that I am my words. In that case, there are times I am inadequate -- when words are not enough, because there are no words. Oh sure, there are cliches, banalities and platitudes, but then, they are not MY words, and therefore, they are not me.

Sometimes giving yourself is the only thing you can give, because it's all you have, and yet, it isn't enough. What words excuse death, fill the void of grief? There are no words.
I am not even afforded the awkward silences, or the uncomfortable back-patting hugs, because my only connection is digital.

See, someone I love dearly (whom I've never met in person) has just lost two very important people in his life. The most important people in his life. I have cried for him, after the disbelief passed, and my hands stopped shaking long enough to email a mutual friend and verify the accounts. Then I lay awake in bed till nearly dawn, just trying to figure out, exactly what happened? How, Why? Then the mental movies began, all the horrible images of how it all might have happened. . . and of course, what can I do for him?

What have I come up with? A sympathy card, a series of poems, and a hesitancy to mail them for fear of intruding on his pain, his grief. We are close, with a mutual respect for one another as people, we are friends, I consider him one of the best people I know. And yet, I wonder what place an 'internet buddy' even one who's been around for years, has in his suddenly harsh reality, removed from any internet connection.

This is all sounding so selfish -- it's all coming out so wrong. The point I'm failing so miserably to make is that I want him to know I adore him, and that I want to support him, in any way he needs right now. Perhaps that way is to remain silent and let him cope. I'll mail my card on Monday and hope that it is received as a sign of love and support, and not one of intrusion.
And then, give him time.

This world is a cruel place for things like this to happen to people like him.

Lackluster Moon

So I'm at MTC, staring at an unchanging screen. Mostly my own posts on the front page, and I think I've read just about everything posted on the entire site, and I'm bored mindless. There's no creative input there, everyone is feeling pretty damn apathetic, which means nothing's getting done, no one's learning a damn thing, and the site is wasting away. What the hell is there to interest a new member? Nada! Unless they're for some reason really interested in the regs all chit chatting.

I know, I know, I'm a reg - stop bitching, right?

I'm just so frustrated and discouraged about it right now. Either I'll get over it, or I'll do my part to change it. Either way, I won't bitch for long eh.

My Kids

This is the crew, Tommy 15, Kory 13, Kassi 10, Brendon 7, and Terra 1

3 1/2 years

At first, it's all there is, the grief, the pain, the sheer size and weight of a nothingness you can't even comprehend, even as you carry it around. Everything you see, or say, or do -- all translates, degrades, into the mental image of sod-stripped ground, and the seemingly gaping hole that waits to swallow up the casket and hold it hostage from you for eternity.

Or the way the rain played on the surface of the pond in the distance, the peaceful shade under the arms of the willows that drip, sodden with your grief -- wouldn't she have loved to feed the ducks there? Wouldn't you have had to be oh so careful that in her youthful glee, she didn't fall in?

She'll never worry you that way, mama, she'll never get the chance

Weeks, perhaps months, later you'll wonder what the minister said while the rain poured off that grotesquely green tent and down Uncle John's back. Why they turned you away when the men came on the tractor. You'll have to re-examine the visitor book to know who attended -- and search for your own name, because it all still seems so unreal.

Death is ugly, horribly, irreversibly final.

Time passes, and one day, with a guilty start, you'll discover an uncertain smile on your lips.
It can't be helped, as cruel a reality as it is, as cliche as we know it to be, life goes on.

Beckett said it best didn't he?
"I can't go on. I'll go on."

You do because you have no choice, not because any part of you believes that you can, not because any fiber of you even wants to. It would have been easier to sit, motionless on that aluminum folding chair, until my body wasted away -- until, through some process of physics or biology -- the pressures of the inner and outer were equalized.

The 3 year anniversary passed in August, and it crushed me to the point of being unable to speak it out loud. I lived it all over again, pining over pictures of her tiny tube-riddled body, and those of the bloated purple child they planted firmly in the ground -- just out of my reach.

6 more months have passed, and I feel no differently than I did then -- I just don't have the luxury of letting it out, never did. I just, went on.

A Starting Point

There's something to be said for pen and ink in this age of keyboards and word processing. Something freeing about being able to spill it all, and not worry about someone else's reaction to it. Not having to feel obligated to respond to their responses.

Don't get me wrong, I love MTC, but there are things I couldn't possibly post on there. Things that just belong in my tattered old spiral notebook, safely tucked away from prying eyes. And yet, I find that now that I'm back online, I don't use it so much. This keyboard is either addictive, or makes me lazy. So, the best of both worlds -- here, I can slop through the sludge of my subconscience and not worry so much about responses. Oh maybe someone will find me here, and reply to me, I don't mind that -- it's the volume of responses I get on the 'touchy' posts that bothers me.

So, no, this isn't an admonishment not to reply, should you feel compelled, it's just sort of a commentary on my own insecurities really. You know, my discomfort in letting other people ALL the way in. . . and then needed to justify what they find. Here, well, I guess all my skeletons will learn to dance.

So much for Post #1.
Maybe #2 I'll actually say something, because re-reading this one makes me realize it's just another justification.

I'm so lame.

ML~
~EM