Tag: marriage

One More Time, Again

Let’s not fight when the sun goes down and the shades are drawn.
Wouldn’t you rather call back the tender fury, the passion that we once wore?
Time was on our side and ever so trusting I gave me to you
only to be lost, a forlorn girl standing on the edge of nevermore.
Drew back the covers, flesh ablaze, unashamed, nothing to hide,
fell in love, lost my head, I was so sure.
Recreate the euphoria of that first night, devouring each other
between the worn cotton sheets on my antique bed.
Use your fingertips to chase away the years of struggling
the hurt and the anger that screams wild as savage beasts inside our heads.
Play make-believe, pretend that it’s yesterday
and the bitter deeds did not destroy the tenderness instead.
Pursue me like there’s no tomorrow because I can not see beyond today
then, when tomorrow comes…
I promise to set you free, stand on my own two feet, find my own way.
Hands could caress, bodies could recreate, satisfy this insane yearning
as you travel back with me, waltz me back through past’s gate.
Touch my soul once more with longing and desire, force the winds of change
to stand stationary while you re-ignite my skin’s desire.
What would I give to travel back and never have been betrayed?
I scarce remember when there were no walls
and I did not know how to be afraid.
Perhaps tonight you could help me to forget to remember if I promise that
I won’t run away when the dawn comes, I won’t run away. No…not yet.
We could try, one more time, again. What could we lose, what could we win?
Cradle me in your arms and recapture me with reckless hunger,
pretend thirty years have not transpired.
It would be so easy because fingertips have no memories and
they don’t know how to hate, they will pursue passion’s flagrant fire
unlike a broken heart which hesitates.
No movement forward from here so we could journey back to then
before the illusions were shattered and we could try, one more time, again.
One more time again, as if you read my mind.
Still, the heat that rises in my loins concedes to grief, collapses beneath regret
too wise to be enchanted, too stupid to forget.
Good-bye. No, wait…not yet. Maybe we could try…one more time, again.

If Only, If Only…A Bunch of Baloney

She is speeding, forcing her car to race through blinding sheets of rain, all the while knowing that she can’t possibly get there in time. Refusing to accept defeat, she recklessly accelerates. The rain is falling so hard that her wipers are useless except for the rhythm they slap out as they snap back and forth.
Her mind isn’t on the highway ahead of her. It’s on her daughter and the cell phone beside her. She has it set on speaker phone.
“I’ll be there soon, just don’t answer the door,” she says.
“I won’t Mum, please hurry. I’m so scared.”
“Are the police still there?”
Through the tiny speaker she hears the insistent banging on her daughter’s door and that’s her answer. Frustration and panic roar through her veins as she stomps harder on the gas pedal instead of slowing down.
Her car swerves all over the road as she passes a dozen vehicles that have pulled over to wait out the downpour.
She glances in her rear-view mirror and sees the red and blue flashing lights flying up behind her through the wall of water.
“No, no,” she cries. “Not now, please God, not now.”
The cruiser zooms up beside her, edging her over to the side of the road, trying to get her to stop. He is so close now that she can see his face, read his lips, “Pull over, pull over!”
With a sudden motion spawned by her lifelong enemy, “I’ll save ya” panic, (no thinking required) she shoves the gas pedal to the floor and surges ahead of the cop. She keeps track of him in the rear-view mirror. “Damn it, he isn’t giving up.”
Her exit is just ahead, and she doesn’t dare slow down. As she flies around the sharp curve on two wheels, the steering wheel grows a mind of its own and it is violently wrenched from her hands. The tires scream as she loses control.
Right until the millisecond when her car goes flying over the guardrail, she still thinks that she will save the day; she still has hope that somehow, she can make this come out right.
As the car plunges to the concrete below she realizes that she is wrong. Dead wrong. Her last bit of confidence dies as the car hurtles toward the unforgiving concrete surface.
With so little time left to breathe before she hits the cement, her mind fills with him. He is all that matters now, too late, too late, she knows. How many times has she hurt him by trying to save her kids from themselves, how many grandbabies has she brought home and failed to rescue?
His heart will be broken; but he’ll be relieved too because her war, the war he is always drawn into, the war he claims no part of although he ignited it, her war will finally be over.
His face, his arms, his warm body against her every night for twenty-seven years, the pain he’ll feel when he sees her broken and twisted body, this is all she can see in her mind’s eye as the car plummets.
This is her last battle and she has lost. This is it and there is no way out.
She senses rather than sees the cruiser plunging to the ground behind her. The cop has made the same error in judgment that she has, attacking a wet curve at high speed. Each of them trying to save the day, each with their own agenda.
Her car explodes on impact.
Excruciating, flaming hot pain and then she’s floating above the fiery mess on the ground. She knows she must be dead, but all she wants is to go home, run home to him.
The young cop is floating above his mangled cruiser, shaking his head in disbelief. He glares in her direction. Guilt floods her so hard that she can’t look at him, so she turns away. She closes her eyes and thinks of home.
As soon as she visualizes it, she’s in front of her house. She sees her sunflowers standing proud beside the porch, the Rose of Sharon covered in purple blossoms as it reaches for the sky behind the sunflowers. She wonders if she can go inside and if she can still touch things. She grasps the doorknob and it turns. As she pauses in the doorway, she smiles down at the hand that still works. Stupid movies. They always show the dead person’s hands going through walls and passing through anything they try to touch. Guess the directors never interviewed a real live dead person.
Dinner is on the counter, all ready to go in the pre-heated oven. Stuffed cabbage, his favorite.
She had just finished preparing it when the call came. If only she hadn’t answered the damn phone. She hears her mama’s words in her head, “If only, if only…a bunch of baloney.”
She lifts the pan full of cabbage rolls and to her delight, she can place the pan in the oven, and she turns on the timer.
She sets the table and then she walks out to the garage. She wants to watch him as he works on his racecar. She loves that little boy on Christmas morning expression he gets on his face when his hands are buried in the engine.
He isn’t there. He should be there.
“Where could he have gone?” She asks the empty garage. No answer of course, she might be dead, but she’s not crazy.
She walks back to her cozy little kitchen and plops down in her favorite chair, the rocking chair Mama had bought her when her first baby was born.
She doesn’t even know if he’ll be able to see her when he comes home. She closes her eyes and when she opens them, he is walking into the house with his head hanging down.
He pauses in the doorway for a moment and then he slowly looks up. Stares around at the kitchen, not understanding the aroma of stuffed cabbage as it simmers in the oven and then he sees her sitting there.
Time stops as he rushes toward her, cradling her in his arms like so many times before. Sobbing, he buries his face in her hair, inhales the scent of her and then he holds his breath, terrified that if he exhales, she will disappear.
She sees the horrifying images he has just seen because they are still flashing through his mind as he holds her to his chest. High def at its boldest, the blood so vibrant, the devastation so real.
He holds her tightly, not sure if she is real, but unwilling to let her go just in case his touch is all that ties her to his life.
She feels his grief, she sees her body scattered across the road, her head on one side and her legs on the other.
She sees the tangled, bloody mess that just minutes ago was the young cop. His wife driving home from church and passing the wreck. Slowing down as she approaches the flashing lights. She knows it has already happened, but still she moans, “Oh God, don’t let her stop, don’t let her stop.” But the wife does stop.
The wife screams in anguish when she sees her husband’s patrol car, number 2730 still visible on the twisted metal and she screams even louder when she sees his body entangled with what’s left of his cruiser. She sees it all before another cop pulls her away.
The grief-stricken wife wails, “What happened, what happened?”
Her husband’s commander is there. He manages to tug her over to his cruiser and he gently guides her as she collapses on the passenger seat.
With the car door open, he kneels on the wet, muddy grass in front of her.
“A grandmother racing to save her baby grandson from DHS,” he explains. “They were taking the baby away because the mom is a drunk.”
The cop’s wife always feared for her husband’s life when he left the house to go to work, but she’d always thought a drugged-out teenager’s bullet would take him from her and she had never dreamed that his cruiser would be his casket. She’d never dreamed that a good woman, a mother, a panicked grandmother with what she felt was a just cause, would kill her childhood sweetheart while she sat in church with her babies on a rainy Sunday morning.
The accident scene fades away and the kitchen begins to blur although she can still smell the simmering stuffed cabbage and she can still feel his arms holding her tight. She can still feel his tears burning her as they stream through her hair and down on her face.
She wants to tell him how sorry she is, how she would undo it all if she could.
“I’m so sorry,” she begins. “It was always you, only you.”
Somehow, she knows that it doesn’t matter anymore. Sorry won’t fix this mess.
Still she keeps whispering the words over and over. “I’m so sorry; it was always you, only you.”
She panics when she realizes that she is no longer in the kitchen, she no longer feels his arms around her, or his wet face buried in her hair.
The worst of it all is the sick gut-wrenching knowledge that she didn’t have to run out and drive like a maniac through the rain.
She closes her eyes.
Mama had been right. “If only, if only…a bunch of baloney.”

Twenty-Five Years (2005)

Twenty-five years she has spent waiting.
Will he love her tonight?
Waiting for him to shut off the TV,
Put the football to bed.
Dance her around the kitchen,
Arms around her so tight.
But it’s late when the game is over,
and all she gets is a quick kiss with his,
“I’m tired. I’m going to bed. Goodnight.”
Twenty-five years she can’t erase.
In the mirror she sees old pain in her eyes
Remnants of twenty-five years of fights.
Wrinkles dust her once smooth face.
Wrinkles she did not see yesterday
The wrinkles a present of time
Now permanently in place.
Her dreams will never
One magical day come true
Because she wasted her youth
Longing for love from you.
Wrinkles tell her that one day at a time
She threw twenty-five years away
She has waited far too long
To find her happy ever-after someday.
No strong arms will hold her,
No lover will whisper in her ear
No lover’s voice gentle in the night.
She’s old, she’s tired and hair is fast turning gray
Her kids are all gone, even her baby has his own
And another baby on the way.
It finally hits her. Yes. She is alone.
Because she chose to continue to fight
Change her life, stand on her own.
When she was blooming she never knew
The sweet soft skin, the silky auburn hair
It would not, it could not last.
The ending has been written and
The characters have all been cast.

The Night The Stuff Went Down

I think I’m having decluttering remorse.
Almost like waking up after a blackout, trying to remember each item I tossed.
“I threw away what last night?”
I don’t really need to item by item remember, because it ALL went.
What was in the last room that I attacked with the rage born from exhaustion and frustration?
Just everything I had thought was important enough to move from house to house, even if I never opened the boxes.
The next day was moving day, and I thought the last room would only take a few hours. Although the anxiety I felt every time I went in there over the past year should have warned me.
It was just a corner filled with boxes. Boxes I hadn’t opened since two houses ago, some hadn’t been opened for twenty years.
I had spent the last three weeks decluttering. Selling and giving away the contents of a ten-room house, cellar and garage.
I was on a roll. How hard could this last corner be?
I had thrown away my wedding heels a few months ago, so I thought I had toughened up.
The contents of several boxes had been scattered for weeks, opened and left, the victim of my confusion. Well, I had no choice now.

Tonight, was my deadline and I dug in, armed with kitchen trash bags. It didn’t take long for me to go downstairs and find the huge, green bags.
I always knew I was a good packer, but I don’t know how I fit so much content into those boxes.
I filled at least six green bags with CD’s and cassettes and that was just the beginning.
Some of the CD’S had been special to me. Our ten-year anniversary by Alabama I had signed, “Then Again…Forever, you and me.” I kept that one.
I had listened to and loved each CD at some time in my past.
As I looked through them, I was overwhelmed by how many there were and I began to grab handfuls, shoving them into the green bags.
So many material things I no longer needed or wanted, but surely my frustration added volume to the trash pile.
I was angry, and I was sad, and I just wanted to be free from stuff. Too much stuff.
Our mind is like a computer and it captures every little thing we have ever done, seen or felt and much of my frustration was because I was replaying those memories as I threw each thing away.
My wedding dress got special treatment. It was 3:00 a.m. and I walked outside and hung it on a tree beside the yard sale.
My neighbor was still outside because she was getting ready to have a yard sale with me, and she said, “You have to take a picture,” and of course, I did. As I took pictures, I realized that I was trying to capture my emotional whirlpool in a snapshot of a wedding dress.
The dress had fit like it was designed for me, draping my tiny hips, and it had made Mum smile, because back then, I seldom wore dresses. As I ran my fingers down the silky dress, I could see her smiling face.
I remembered the day I went shopping for it with my mum and how proud she was that I was marrying such a good man, a man who worked and took care of me and my three kids financially.
She special ordered artificial roses for my corsage and for the wedding, because I was allergic to flowers and I remembered how the florist thoughtlessly sprayed them with rose perfume and I sneezed all day.
I threw the still rosy corsage away too tonight, along with a box of wedding day souvenirs.
We never dreamed thirty-eight years ago it would end this way, my wedding dress hung in a tree for a yard sale, all alone in the dark. Us, living in separate houses. Big ouch.
Couldn’t hold on till morning. Needed to let it go, let it go.
He was here helping me finish up the packing and for the closing, and I couldn’t afford to show any weaknesses in front of him. It was a real test.
His heart was hurting as he saw me throw away our memories.
The picture Mum bought me because she thought it looked like us, my IHRA umbrella and hundreds of presents he had bought me.
I think it hit him hardest when he saw my books start to go. Fifteen house and thirty-eight years, and through it all, he’d been complaining about moving my books. I always found ways to resist his demands to get rid of the damn books, because I loved my books. I had learned that if I carried the boxes in and out of the moving trucks, it wasn’t as bad, but even then, the “weight” it added bothered him.
I usually soothe him when he’s hurting, even if he’s sad because he hurt me, but not anymore. Not anymore. Recovering codependent, yes, I am.
Now, as I rerun the night of the huge declutter through my mind, I am proud and sad and proud.
I let it go, I let it go.
I let it all go so I could move on, move into my twenty-foot Coachmen Nano Apex travel trailer and on to the next chapter of this story I am living as I create it.
I took pictures of things that touched my heart as I tossed, and that was enough stuff, for me.

 

 

( #10 SHE Saga) Let It Go, Let It Go

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I feel numb and She is hiding.  I know she’s furious with me and she didn’t believe that I would go through with my plan to get rid of everything that I didn’t absolutely need or want…before we moved into our tiny home on wheels.

I guess it was my turn to pitch a fit. It happened when I was decluttering tonight, when I was down to facing the boxes that I hadn’t unpacked in over ten years.

She objected over every piece I tossed. She cried. She screamed.

She was so upset that she had me walking in circles, holding things to my chest, paralyzed by grief and indecision. After about an hour of circles, I snapped.

“Stop! Stop, leave me the f… alone,” I screamed as I dumped another pile of boxes in the middle of the room. When the pile was gigantic, I sat down beside it with a kitchen trash can beside me.

She left and the silence was eerie.

I quickly filled that kitchen bag, so I went downstairs for the green yard bags and I kept going.

I dragged at least six green bags full of papers, memories, CD’s and tapes down the stairs tonight and out onto the front porch for trash day. Plus, containers and boxes full of stuff.

My wedding dress got special treatment. It was 3:00 a.m. and I walked outside and hung it on a tree beside the yard sale.

My neighbor was still outside because she was getting ready to have a yard sale with me, and she said, “You have to take a picture,” and of course, I did.

As I took pictures, trying to capture my emotional whirlpool in a snapshot of a dress, I remembered the day I went shopping for it with my mum and how proud she was that I was marrying such a good man, a man who worked and took care of me and my three kids financially.

I remembered how happy she was to buy the dress for me, and in 1983, $27.00 was a lot of money.

The dress draped my tiny hips like it was designed just for me, and it made Mum smile because back then, I seldom wore dresses.

She special ordered artificial roses for my corsage and for the wedding, because I was allergic to flowers and I remember how the florist thoughtlessly sprayed them with rose perfume and I sneezed all day.

Our mind is like a computer and it captures every little thing we have ever done, seen or felt.

I threw the still rosy corsage away tonight too, along with a box of wedding day souvenirs. We never dreamed thirty-eight years ago it would end this way, my wedding dress hung in a tree for a yard sale, all alone in the dark. Big ouch.

Couldn’t hold on till morning. Needed to let it go, let it go.

He was here helping me finish up the packing and for the closing, and I couldn’t afford to show any weaknesses in front of him. It was a real test.

His heart was hurting as he saw me throw away our memories.

The picture Mum bought me because she thought it looked like us, my IHRA umbrella and dozens of presents he had bought me.

I think it hit him hardest when he saw my books start to go. Fifteen houses and thirty-eight years, through it all, he’d been complaining about moving my books. I always found ways to resist his demands to get rid of the damn books, because I loved my books. I had learned that if I carried the boxes in and out of the moving trucks, it wasn’t as bad, but even then, the “weight” it added bothered him.

I usually soothe him when he’s hurting, even if he’s sad because he hurt me, but not anymore. (Codependency, which I’m recovering from, one day at a time…amen.)

I probably went too far tonight, when I shoved She away with all my strength.
She left, but I know she will be back, so I’m going to enjoy this time without her.

It’s the first time in forever that she hasn’t been challenging me, quietly or violently.

(# 1 SHE Saga) She Wants What She Wants

Link above will take you to the complete list of She Saga posts.

Death of a Marriage, Rest in Peace. 1978

Death of a Marriage, Rest in Peace


I didn’t even know that you were sick
and now you’re dead.
Destroyed by a disease born
inside two people who couldn’t see
that love should come first
forsake all others, as God said.
But there is so much I didn’t know about you.
I never guessed that someday you would be deceased.
How can I bury you, when to me you’re still alive?
How will I ever feel whole, with part of me
inside your corpse, which hangs in the closet of my mind?
JM, 1978

The Wedding Heels

I’m trying to de-clutter my life and unravel my mind.
Yesterday, I threw my thirty-five-year-old, size five wedding heels in the trash. I tried on a lot of shoes before I found the perfect heels. They were important. My future mother-in-law bought them for me. She wasn’t impressed by her son marrying a woman with three kids, so they were a peace-offering.
The heels have stuck around. They made the cut every time I packed. They have been with us to fifteen houses and a dozen apartments.
I had hoped to wear them again, maybe on an anniversary, but that’s not going to happen.
My feet are no longer small and petite, and my husband and I have separated.
I looked at the shoes laying there in the trash, taunting me, reminding me of my wedding day, and I pushed them in deeper. I instantly panicked, but I took deep breaths and I walked away.
Later, I carried the bag outside to the trash can.
Today, I was out front tearing open the trash bags. Coffee grounds, dog’s pee papers, egg shells and dirty paper plates, I found.
No shoes.
I gave up easy, compared to my norm.
I’m not a quitter. I held on to those heels for thirty-five years.
I stopped because I knew it was hopeless.
I could save the heels. But I couldn’t save us.
I’m strong and I’m weak. I’m resisting the urge to go back out there now.
I just want the trash truck to come and take the heels away before I give in to my compulsion to bring them back into the house.
If I can leave the heels in the trash, maybe I’ll make it through this after all.
P.S. The trash men came and the shoes have gone to their final resting place.

To Do More…

I feel the strands stretch
as I leave you at the airport
tearing, ripping, bleeding
straining to be released
struggling to break free
before I bleed out.
Driving away in tears
begging God for healing
aching to be, to do more
than simply survive.

Love Can Be Twisted

Love can be twisted, love can be cruel.
Love can tear you to pieces and turn you into a fool.
Love can grow wings and fly you to the moon
then it can take you to hell and whoops!
Here you go! A flight to the stars,
crashing back down, way too soon!
Love will take you everywhere
oh that silly love, it will take you so far!
Love will take you to places
where you don’t even remember who you are!
What drew you together, you might never know
were you just like his mother
or was it your smile that once
sparkled like sun, your glitter and bows?
You grabbed each other’s hands
and you said Yes! Yes! I do and I do!
Love codependent was playing a game
turning your smarts inside out, flipping
your brain to mush, all sticky, icky and goo.
Up, up and up, oh so high you did go!
Then in snuck the Oh no’s! How could you’s?
The you coulda’s, The I woulda’s, The I don’t know if I shoulda’s.
The same ‘ol I’m sorry’s, I’m not’s, I love you’s and I dont’s!
When you try to end it, all you can see is the good’s.
You cry too much and you scream, I won’t give up…
Oh NO, I wont! Wait! Maybe I should?
I bet I don’t!
Love comes down, right down to the floor
to memories of passion
that don’t live here anymore.
Alive only in your silly, girly head
and all of a sudden you’re not speaking
even though you still snuggle in bed.
Too many years you each play the games,
you play and you play till you’re half insane.
It comes to this is your’s and this is mine time
don’t worry baby, my mama don’t hate you,
I will always love you’s and you will be fine’s.
Dr Seuss taught me about Green Eggs and Ham,
he never once, no, not ever, did he warn me
I’d have to let go of my one love’s hand.
Love can be twisted, love can be cruel
Love can tear you to pieces and turn you into a fool.

Women Who Think Too Much, by Jeanne Marie in E-book again!

This book is a wake up call to women sleeping through their lives, accepting emotional, verbal or physical abuse.

Now available in Ebook format at these locations!

Creator of the popular newsletter, “Women Who Think Too Much,” published from 1997 to 1998, Jeanne Marie has had ample experience in flipping over everyday actions to expose the dark underbelly.
Her fearsome narrative will draw you in long before she slaps you with her reality meter, turning your preconceived notions of her subtitles, A No Help At All Handbook and How to become codependent in 12 easy slips, upside down.
If you get confused as to where the heck the author is heading, you can end the suspense by reading Slap One first.
An accountable victim, her writing is vulnerable with an awareness that is empowering.
The result is not at all preachy, condescending, alarmist or worst of all, sappy.
You will find yourself laughing out loud regarding scenarios that should make you cry, like the circling ladies in Kmart, the perverted mailman, etc.
Written from personal experience and presented in the mood of an honest chat with a trusted girlfriend, this unique perspective on love gone awry is as entertaining as it is enlightening.
The author has a very sharp sense of humor and she lets it fly without losing the gravity of her subject.
Terrifying examples shine a revealing light on the painful truths of codependency.
Highly entertaining while touching you in raw spots that you didn’t even know you had, the only promise given is that you will never be able to unread this book.

DK, review 2013

Such a perfect couple…

Such a perfect couple, people always say…
They don’t know that for so many years we have said the same sentences.
“Don’t talk to me that way.”
“I talk to you that way because you made me so mad.”
“Well, that doesn’t give you the right to talk to me that way.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I believe we have said just that paragraph over five thousand times.
Exactly like that, except now and then a f’n works its way through.
So, now it’s decision time.
Because I keep repeating the same sentences too.
How do I change the script?
Our responses are so automatic.
Can you actually change within a destructive relationship or do you have to leave it?
I learned a long time ago, that you alone are responsible for what you accept from other people. I have accepted verbal abuse.
I am also responsible for how I respond to other people. I’ve become angry enough to start screaming right back at you. I don’t want to be that woman.
I don’t know how to be near you without being angry anymore and that scares me.
Can I change? Can you change?
I guess we would have if we could have.
Such a perfect couple people always say…

Our Love Is Only

Our love is only valuable when we’re apart.
It becomes so intensely sad, wild and mystical that
I can almost forget where we were when you left.
When we’re together it’s no, I didn’t, yes, you did.
Crying and fighting and tears and yelling.
Boundaries that should never have been crossed.
Now it’s  two-thirty a.m.
and sleeping is what I should be doing
but your nice words from tonight
are swirling in my head, lingering
as I ache for your warmth in my bed.
Talking to you is so hard and so painful
as your voice awakens my anger
that we are doing this once more
and I have to live without you
when that wasn’t what I wanted.
Your current kindness stirs my grief
into a big old mess of confusion and regret.
The train is blowing through town
the whistle long, drawn out and melancholy
just like when you were here.
Now it’s three-thirty and sleep is just a thought.
I want what we didn’t have
I want what I thought we had
even as there’s no way back
to what I thought we had
for the first few years because
it was something that didn’t exist.
It’s five a.m. and as soon
as I shut my eyes the tears fall.
That’s why I don’t shut them.
Sitting alone in the house
that you pay for, the house
that is everything that I didn’t want,
but it didn’t matter what I wanted.
Watching the sun come up
behind the trees
as the tears go down.
Our love is only valuable when we’re apart.

I Cry Because

I cry, not because you’re gone, no
it’s that you left me so many years ago.
I’ve realized it was a lie, I’ve been sleeping with
and snuggling against the enemy’s back
dancing with demons in my bed
holding my breath to give you air
for thirty years too long.
I cry because
I refuse to love you anymore and
love’s removal leaves a gaping wound.
You pulled me close, then
you pushed me away so hard
you bruised my tender soul.
Over and over and said it was my fault
while I bloodied myself in battles
you had already won.
I cry because your love
was just an illusion, a reward
that I could never earn.
I cry because
I lost a love I never had at all.

You Said

brave (2)
You said that you’re proud of me
you said that I am strong
you said that I am beautiful
you said that I am kind
you said that you were wrong.
It would have been awesome
if you had said those words to me
before it was too late.

What’s Left

If we could have
we would have
but we couldn’t
and this is what’s left…
Empty arms, your clothes
folded on the bureau
two extra pillows
that I tuck around me
so I can fall asleep
left over love
your favorite glass
wedding photos
your old tee-shirt
guitars in the cellar
pictures of us kissing
between each fight and
two lonely Chihuahuas
confused, waiting
to hear your truck
pull in the drive.

The Princess

The Princess was sitting in her castle and she swore no man would she let woo.

She turned them all away as she said, no, not you, not you, not you, to myself I will be true.

She danced with her butterflies, she twirled in her flower gardens like when she was two.

She whispered to her flowers, confessing, I love you and you and you.

So happy was this woman that she vowed never to wed and then a Knight in dazzling armor appeared at the castle gates, the sun shining on his head.

She was blinded by his beauty, aura like spun gold and this one Knight she invited to her bed, visions of together growing old.

Prince Charming was his name and wow, that man tickled her fancy with his soft kiss and even if he just walked by, she would stumble and a step she would miss.

Well, we all know about no such thing as happy endings and soon the Princess gave up her other loves, like her writing.

She was busy twisting and turning and bending to keep the Prince happy, looking in her mirror-mirror and often sitting there silently for hours.

The Prince started kissing her less and less often and his voice for her…he no longer softened.

Many nights she cried herself to sleep, under so many full moons…she would weep and weep and weep.

Many moons later, she came to her senses, had the guards toss the Prince out and around her old gardens she built stronger fences.

This is a true story and you know it’s true, because I was the Princess and you, you were the Knight I gave my heart too.

Silly Princess, Stupid Boy, hard lessons, me and you.

Choices

She started to think about what she wanted to experience before she died and it went like this…she wanted to be made love to like he had never seen her before and she was the most precious thing in the world that he could ever touch or possess.
She wanted him to say her smile made his day and lit up his world.
She wanted him to hold her as he was sleeping, wrapped all around her and never letting go all night.
She wanted to dance around the bedroom with him at midnight. Dancing slow, to a country love song, held so tight she could barely breathe, dancing with the man she loved as he whispered, “I am so sorry, I didn’t know how much I loved you,” in her ear.
She wanted to be loved like that once more before she died.

Your love is raw…

 

I thought my love was true…so why do I always fantasize

about leaving us behind, running away from me loving you?

Your love is raw, it is bloody, it is deep.

Your warm, obsessive blanket covers my eyes, my empty girly head,

shielding me, protecting me at night, yet not heavy enough to let me sleep.

Lying wide-eyed in our king-size bed, the buried fights numb my head.

Your love, my shroud, my bad, my dead.

You call me to your side each night, honey, come to sleep.

Not unlike a small child, I run to you and snuggle under my pink blanket

on my corner of the mattress awake in the dark long after you snore.

Into the dawn I weep, tears leaving their dirty marks.

The weight of your need to possess me and my need for you cements my life.

It this all I’ll ever feel, is this all I’ll ever be, your woman, your girl, your wife?

Your need is soft, it is strong, it is rough, it is binding, it is smothering, it is fluff.

Your need has taken over my life which doesn’t even make any sense.

Becoming nothing, wanting something, I sit and scour my mind, trying to find myself.

Can I take care of me, this woman, this girl who will not speak?

Standing on the outside, looking through the tinted glass of our storm door.

I don’t want to come inside. Oh yes, I am sure.

Am I running from us because of our today or am I running from our pain-filled past?

I don’t know anymore.

No place left to hide.

Your love surrounds me, it saves me, until it drowns me.

Your love is raw, it is bloody, it is deep.

Distorted Image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He shatters my self-worth
with a single sentence.
“You looked prettier before
you went back to work.”
Oh God, I’m nothing.
Wait. I go to the mirror
just to see for myself.
A familiar woman
sadly stares back.
I give her a smile
brush away her tears.
Hey, I look better
since I started working.
I realize, I am not the
woman he says I am,
I am the woman
my own eyes see.

Love isn’t and love doesn’t

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I’m not sure what love is.

I tried to write what I knew about love and I didn’t come up with a very long list.

So, I’m going to tell you what I do know.

I know what love isn’t and what love doesn’t.

Love is not the flush you get from your head to your toes when you meet someone who sparks your pheromones. Walk away or get burned. That’s lust.

Love is not the tingle you get between your legs when you see Sam Elliott in white briefs. Again, lust.

Love is not orgasm after orgasm. You could get that from a stranger who triggered your pheromones. Lust, again.

Love doesn’t manipulate, control and lie.

Love doesn’t run away emotionally and physically when times are hard.

Love doesn’t throw family or friends away if they screw up.

Love doesn’t hold you down by convincing you that you can’t do anything right, so you might as well give up before you even start.

Love doesn’t bind you in barbed wire because it’s afraid of losing you.

Love doesn’t lock you in because it’s afraid to let you out, afraid that somebody else might tempt you.

Love doesn’t control you by controlling your access to money.

Love doesn’t hit you or slap you.

Love isn’t cruel or verbally abusive.

Love doesn’t make you feel dead inside.

Love doesn’t care if you are pretty or if you have big boobs, gorgeous hair and a tiny waist.

Love doesn’t make you less…

Love doesn’t stand you up.

Love doesn’t break you into a million pieces.

Love isn’t a game of tug and war.

Love doesn’t capture your heart just to break it.

Love isn’t the presents you buy her after you made her cry.

Love doesn’t always last forever.

Mad Men & Crazy Women

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My sisters and I, we like to love Mad Men. Seriously.
We are Crazy Women.
The Mad Men we love are always mad at the world and we spend way too much valuable time trying to make them calm and happy…
We are old-fashioned, cooking and cleaning while working full-time, loving our man all night, kinda women.
It doesn’t help very much.
Turns out Mad Men don’t want the all night loving after they get you. They are too busy being Mad at you.
But Mad Men don’t always tell you when they’re Mad…they just make you pay in a million little ways and then tell you it’s your fault.
Can you say Gaslight?
The Mad Men think everything revolves around them and I’m being brutally honest here, Crazy Women agree.
Splitting up is as common as Full Moons in our homes.
We certainly know how to leave, we just don’t know how to stay gone, so reuniting is also on our agendas just as often.
Fight. Cry. Talk. Don’t talk. Pack. Leave. Talk every night for hours. Agree on a fresh start. Pack up. Go home. Unpack. Pack. Leave.
We put up with a bunch of bullshit, but luckily the Mad Men are all different, so our phone calls and visits never get boring.
We got rid of the Mad Men who hit many years ago. I give us credit for that.
However, there are thousands of ways to hurt another human being without hitting them.
We watched our mom maneuver this same road with our dad, a truly certifiable Mad Man, and we vowed that we’d never marry a man like him.
But we did.
We are not weak women.
We are strong, intelligent, creative, loving, caring, beautiful women.
But once we fall in love, we give of ourselves until we break and we do not accept defeat gracefully.
My dad begged my mom to leave him before he killed her in a drunken stupor, which he was working on every night, the killing and the stupor.
He would try to wrap the phone cord around her neck and strangle her while my twelve-year-old sister sat on Mom’s lap and stopped him.
My mother’s most famous words were, “Go to bed. your father is not going to kill (or hurt) anyone tonight.”
Our strongest model of reality and she told us we were safe when we were not safe.
Dad even stood over our beds with his hunting rifle now and then. Pondering killing us.
Reality has been confusing for us, at best.
As young girls, we all had a turn sleeping in front of Mom’s bedroom door trying to listen under the crack to see if she was still breathing.
If dad got quiet, she would say, “Go to bed, Ray.”
You would have thought she’d stuck a hot poker in his side because those words would spur the Mad Man on for another hour.
When I write it down and then read it back, it sounds insane and it was, but that was how we lived.
My dad would rant and rave until the sun came up and then we would all try to go to school and my mom would go to work…
It wasn’t hard to find a better man than my father, but I know for myself it took me a long time to realize that on a core level, I was recreating the dynamics of my childhood home and trying to make it come out right.
Four divorces between us, one of us married the same Mad Man twice, not naming any names, baby sister. I would have married mine twice too, but I never got brave enough to divorce him.
I did leave my Mad Man five times, six if you count spending a few nights (alone) crying in a motel. I think that counts.
Serious enough about not going back to buy my own place to live, twice.
I’m in the second place I bought right now, packing to go back home, again.
My sisters and I, we like to love Mad Men. Seriously.
We are Crazy Women.

Changes

 

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I don’t often write about this, but I have severe degenerative disk disease and several creative forms of arthritis including the master bone bender, rheumatoid arthritis. The reasons I don’t write about it are simple.

I believe what you think will be, so I refuse to dwell on my health issues and I refuse to be handicapped by fear of the future. I focus on what I can still do and it’s so amazing to see how much there is left that I can still do.

However, I have been on a rough journey since last summer, beginning with moving from Florida last July to New England. We have moved so many times that I didn’t realize that we were getting older and much less spry. My husband  carried boxes out to the U-Haul trailer for me and I packed every single available space in the RV. We were both exhausted by the time the trip began. We had numerous delays in the closing on the house we sold in Florida and with the house we bought in New Hampshire. The dates did not match up close together and we ended up having to camp in our RV for a month.

Although I had days and days of adventure and fun on the road trip and I loved camping in our RV on a stunning mountain for a month, the stress of learning my way around an unfamiliar area, again, was tiring. I loved the month we spent camping on the mountain but…my husband hated it.
He hated the small space and he was cramped with our two dogs on top of us, although as far as I know, our two Chihuahua’s are always on top of us no matter how much room we have available.

I think the biggest stress factor for me was finding a doctor. When we finally moved into the house, I found a doctor’s group and they refused to see me without my medical records. They would not see me without my records and they would not accept the ones I had in my hand, my complete medical records printed from my doctor’s portal. They looked through them and then handed them back to me.
“You might have forged them,” they said.

Months went by with this medical group claiming that they never got my medical records from Florida.
I began to run out of several important medications. When I called my Florida doctor’s office, they said that they had mailed my records…twice.

I went back to the medical center to request an appointment again. They went through my hand-held records and my prescription list (for the second time) at the front desk and they told me that I probably didn’t even meet their requirements to be accepted as a patient. (It was the only medical center in our little town.)

So, after a humiliating verbal dance in front of several patients and staff members, the head nurse admitted that they wouldn’t accept me as a patient because I took pain medication.

Talking about my personal history in front of anyone was a direct violation of the Hipaa Law, but I just walked away. Humiliated and so mad I couldn’t breathe. That’s how bullies win and although I wish I had turned her in, at least to her boss, I didn’t.

On the plus side, although I still had severe pain from rheumatoid arthritis and degenerative disk disease, I had by now weaned myself off a fifteen-year legal pain pill habit because I realized that I was going to end up withdrawing cold turkey if I didn’t.

It wasn’t easy, but I had a deep belief that God was in control and I gave this problem to Him. Every day. Strange things happened. My pain level went down, not up as I changed over to Tylenol.

That was last October and I immediately began to feel better, my head felt clearer and I had less pain.
I still have pain, but it’s much more manageable and I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason. I am better off without the pain pills and I would have never thought that would be the case.

Meanwhile, I found a doctor almost an hour away and waited a month for an appointment. When I saw the doctor, she told me that I needed to see three different specialists because she didn’t prescribe medicines, she was a homeopathic doctor. Would have been nice if they had explained that when I asked for a primary care physician appointment.

In the weeks that followed, I left my husband and my house and moved almost three hours away.
He helped me buy a small mobile home near my sister in Maine.
We had problems before the move so combining the stress of moving and the extreme changes in my body chemistry, well I think that I just had myself a good old-fashioned nervous breakdown. Or so my mom would say. 

I have been alone since October.
I have learned many things since I have been alone. Here are just a few.
I have definitely learned how much my husband loves me, even after thirty-five years together.
I have learned that our good memories are powerful.
I have learned that no matter how old your kids are…they never want to see their parents split-up.
I have learned that I enjoy taking care of myself and that I like being alone.

It’s sad, but we have talked more since we split-up than we ever did when we sat together every night and a make-up is hopefully in our future. 

My husband says that thirty-three years of marriage are worth fighting for and he has a point.
Still, I say; right now…I’m just tired of fighting.

The most important things that I have learned are that I will be okay, single or married and as always, I am in His hands and He knows where I need to be, even when I don’t have a clue.

Jeanne Marie, 2016