One Good Thing

I haven't been on facebook in a while but today I logged on and somehow clicked on the beautiful face of my niece.  For some reason I felt like I wanted to see more of her.  I guess she just makes me happy.  She is infectious anyway and no one can be sad around her. . . I think I may ask her to move in soon!  Teach me a thing or two about life.  Anyway, I started clicking on one picture, two, seven, fiftyfive . . .

There she is with long hair, with braids, with a shaved head, pouty, dressy, tired, showing off her tats and that booty!  There was graduation, endless parties, fun at the beach, fun with friends.  Endless friends.

It's hard to explain the simple joy I felt at clicking back through the phases of her life (not to mention her hairstyles) to see that she had one.  HAS one.  My niece had and continues to have a richness to her life that reminds me of a painting I once knew how to make.  A balance.  A fullness.  Her photos are a testament to a woman with confidence because she knows she will be ok.  That her mom is fine.  And her Dad.  She is free from that responsibility.  Free.

My sister somehow flipped it out.  She did it.  She turned things around, she succeeded as a mother, as an adult, as a woman.  I am so proud of her.  I used to have a similar vision for myself and my children.  I didn't know what it would be: photos of Coleman playing hockey, Coleman and his friends playing chess, Coleman laughing as a girl puts ice down his back, Coleman at the beach as confident and free and happy and bursting with life.  Free.  

Maybe that's why I like movies and books so much.  You can dwell there for moments in time and your own life is suspended and you can feel hope spring eternal for all of the things that won't ever really be in your own life.  But while I clicked through those pictures I felt my life suspended.  I felt my niece's joy.  I felt her vibrant, beautiful, pulsating life in my chest and I felt so proud and grateful that she exists as proof of all of the things I've stopped believing in.

I don't know what I would do without that.

Who Am I Now?

I wrote my sisters a seething, negative, angry email last week.  Have you ever been filled with so much ugliness and anger inside that you feel like you have to squeeze a little bit out on everyone you see just to get some relief from the pressure of it?  The email I wrote wasn't to say that I was angry at THEM.  It was to say how angry I am period.

I wanted to wipe it on someone else.  I wanted to spray it out; pour it onto their heads.  Here is what I'm feeling and its not fair!  So I want to share some of it with you!  Take that--and that--and that!!!!

In a way I am horrified at myself but I can't deny that it did offer some slight release inside me.  Oh, how I loathe those people who seem to have a dark cloud over them.  Every time you talk to them its always something.  This one died, that one lost their job, this one was just diagnosed with cancer, that one tried to kill himself.

Whooooweeee, I tried to dodge those people like crazy when I was younger.  I was almost afraid that some of it would rub off on me, stain my clothes, get me dirty.  And somehow I have become one of those people.  I mean What the Fuck?  I'd call it poetic justice if there was any basis for my deserving it so I'll just have to name it IRONIC AS HELL!

There are people in my life who mean a great deal to me.  Certainly my sisters, my aunts, my mother and father. . . but I can't reach them because I am straight jacketed right now.  My wiring is off and sparking.  I'm pissed and sad and suffer the chronic pain all pathetic, overly depressed, overly anxious people suffer with and I'm empty for the ones I love.

I have always been a positive person, full of strength and optimism and resiliency.  But who am I now?