Sunday, May 12, 2013

It appears I have lost my shell, or as I think of it as an undelicious non candy coating, meant to keep my heart same and you and a safe enough distance I can't get hurt.  A popular item on seafood restaurants in the south of 'soft shell Crab".  The reason they are referred to that way is the one time a year they crawl out from there shell, if they are captured and eaten before the new shell has had time to harden eating them is a breeze. So when they leave their shell they are the most vulnerable they will ever be until the next time this happens in their life cycle.

I was born way more sensitive than most people i know. From the earliest of times it seemed as if any emotion in the wind could give me a crushing bruise. So I stayed alive long enough for my shell to form. It has remained untouched since 1986 when a talented blue eyed damaged boy hit me between the eyes with love. It was the first time and only time I was in love and it nearly killed me. We were two children playing house in a world that we had no coping skills, no living skills to be in. He liked the pot as much as I liked the drink so it was a couple of years of "go away , no wait a minute" that ended in 1989 and in the year 2013 , he is still the only person I ever felt that "Fourth of July" explosion at the sight, thought or mention of . He was perhaps even more broken and fragile than I was but we were kids.  We were children ill equipped for life in grown up bodies and certainly had no business setting up a house.

He was the last person I was interesting in that way and he was the last person I let get that close.

So I have lived behind the Great Wall . I've seen every couple I have ever known spare one, maybe two, fail, crash and burn. I haven't put my heart out there in a long time and frankly I'm not sure it exist for me.

So, as part of my recovery plan I have to attempt at amending people I have damaged or hurt.  When my mother's friend married my dad, I was consumed with rage. Part of the rage came from my personal long history with the woman who had been a mother figure to me my whole life. She threw her best friend under the bus to get my mothers husband. There has been a thousand different faces but on the rage I had for them was white hot but in order to live the program I try hard to live i had to address the scathing letters I would fire off to her while highly medicated with benzo's or muscle relaxers.

It took three years but I faced her and let her have the time to respond to my face for the chaos and pain , at times, I had made my life's purpose about heaping on her and my father. She railed and railed at me, the pain I had caused, the standing in the town I had taken from her with my gossip I spread. I knew what it was like to dread going into the store and facing someone, anyone who wanted to sling rumors and judgments so she said she had nothing left in her in her late 70's to fight with.

I saw a broken woman in front of me , steeped in depression, regret, anger, and emotional pain and I found myself awash with pure heartbreaking compassion for her. When she paused I was stunned to find myself with the mouth open asking her the question, "Bobbie, do you have any joy in your life, is there anything that gives you pleasure to do"?

She matter of factly and in complete contrast to what she had said earlier said , "I like taking care of your father, it makes me happy".

I haven't been on the same page with her in many many years but I found myself bonding with her because I love taking care of people, I know what joy that can bring.


So several days later I am playing with this interaction, looking at it from all sides. Then, the paradigm changed. Suddenly I knew it would be ok, I knew that it would be entirely possible for there to be someone on the planet that doing things for me would make them happy. It was the first time I believed it might be ok for someone to be in my life that finds pleasure out of taking care of me. I hadn't expected that perspective shift. I knew as you began to make right the wrongs of addictions that long forgotten rooms would reopen, but I was stunned, stunned and thrilled to believe there might be someone on the planet that might fight happiness doing things for me, the things we do for people we love.

So I woke up this morning in a brand new world of possibility and that excites me to my core. I fucking love possibility. It's a better buzz than hope and I am standing in the middle of the biggest field of gold , feeling very worthy of someone loving.  Vulnerability, can I really have a joyous life without with out it? I don't think so. I think I am here to enjoy the experience of being human and I am here for a good time..

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