Tag Archives: Truth

The Thorn in Her Side – A Poem

09 Wednesday May 2018

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I spent some time reading-through two of my old journals tonight. I found a journal entry from December 4, 2001 that piqued my interest. Once again, it reminds me of something I could have written yesterday, because of how familiar it is and how applicable to my current state:

December 4, 2001 (21 yrs old)

Sometimes when I sit down to write in my journal it is very difficult to know what to write and where to begin. I am sure that my journals are some of the most strange, inconsistent journal writings ever recorded. But, it serves its purpose for me.

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I thought that this entry was particularly interesting, given the fact that I had begun this evening’s readings with a few poems in a previous journal that are very raw and unpolished.

In my previous post, I commented that I was going to start with bones – bare, naked and vulnerable, and this poem is just that.

NOTE: This poem could be triggering to those who have experienced the trauma of sexual abuse – if you are concerned for yourself, please do not read further.

 

 

The Thorn in Her Side _- June 12, 1999 (18 yrs old)

A little girl,
Unsure and frightened.
Unknowing and trusting
Of those around her.
They are older and wiser
And she should be able to
Trust them.

One night
A friend
Took advantage
Of that small
Trusting
Child.
Stripped her of innocence.
She stood naked for the entire
World to see.

She felt it was wrong,
But did not know
What do do
What was happening?

Ashamed of letting her
Brother hear.
What if he knew?
He would tell and she would be
In trouble.

Closing her eyes
She attempts sleep
But she feels
Restless
Scared
Ashamed
And sleep won’t come.

Curling into a fetal position
Longing
For the safety of her mother
She hears herself
Screaming
Yet knows that she makes no sound.

As the tears stream down her
Rosy cheeks
Soaking the pillow where
They land
She eventually drifts away into
A deep
deep
Deep
Peaceful
Sleep.

When she wakes the next morning
She remembers it as a
Haunting dream
And shoves it –
Violently
To the back of her mind.

But the seed had been
Planted
And it would soon become a huge
Thorn
In her side.

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The Decision to Move

22 Thursday Jun 2017

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When my Mom phoned to let me know she had called an ambulance to bring my stepdad to the hospital, it was as if the world around me grew still, despite the fact that I was standing in the middle of a bustling Nathan Phillip’s Square in downtown Toronto at the very first Winter Festival being held there.

My husband, child and in-laws kept walking and I could see them pointing towards the ice skaters and, more excitedly, towards the Zamboni. But, my heart had sunk to my shoes and tears were streaming down my cheeks.

I didn’t want to spoil their moment, but I was feeling desperate. I just wanted to get away and be somewhere I could have a good cry. But, I didn’t want to scare my son.

I hung-up with my Mother and eventually rejoined my family. I explained what was going on to my husband while his parents entertained the kid. My gut instinct was to get in a plane and go be with my parents. However, this was very much complicated by the fact that our in-laws had flown all the way from New Zealand to be with us, we didn’t have any other vacation days (so I’d have to take a pay-loss), we were broke so I would have to borrow the money to go as it was, I and I have a 3-year old that I had to consider.

My husband calmed me and told me to just wait to hear some more news about what was going-on before I panicked too much.

It wasn’t until recently, when we moved-back to be with my parents, that I learned just how dire the situation was and just how terrified my parents had been. These are difficult things to convey over text or phone calls, I suppose.

When talking to my Mom in that week and a half, I was trying to discern from what she said and how she sounded whether, or not, they really needed me there.

After getting off the phone with her one evening I broke-down. When my husband came to see what was happening I sobbed “I hate feeling like I am waiting to get that nightmare call that we had better come now or it will be too late…”

My Stepdad had gone through 11 rounds of chemo for colon cancer, and this was the year after he had been flown to Ottawa for a triple bypass. Now, he was in hospital with sepsis and my Mother had said that they were struggling to keep his organs functioning.

I knew it was serious, but did not know how serious or how scared both of my parents were going-through this. I guess that’s a compliment to how well they handled it together. Still, I hate thinking that they had to go through it alone.

Once my Stepdad was out of the hospital, I said to my husband, through more sobbing one night: “I NEVER want to be in that position again. Having to ask my Mom to let me know when it got to the ‘you need to come now because he’s dying’ stage.”

I hated being in that position. I didn’t wan to wait until it was too late. I wanted to spend time with him while there was still time to spend. I wanted my son to be able to build memories of his grandparents of playing games, laughing over dinner, sharing ice cream treats and going for car rides and not just sitting in a hospital saying ‘goodbye’.

So, we made the decision to uproot our lives, and move home.

It was a decision that required a lot of sacrifice, and there are times I still can burst into tears when something I miss about our old home strikes or when my Son asks something like: “Can we go to the tick-tock park?” (A park we used to frequent behind city hall, where the large clock on old city hall, would chime on the hour).

But, the pain and the loss we experience over leaving the city that we all dearly loved pales in comparison to the pain and the loss we would feel if we had decided to stay and, instead, forfeited the time we now get to spend with family.

You just cannot put a price on that.

People say it all the time, but until you are staring it in the face it can be tough to comprehend;

life is short.

You have to look at what really matters to you and be prepared to move heaven and earth to make it happen.

It may be very difficult at times when we are missing our beloved city, but that is grief, not regret. I will never regret choosing time with my family over our life in the city.

We never know how much more time we have together. I’m determined to make the most of it.

Empty Time

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

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A space for writing. A space for thinking. For feeling. For being.
I am old enough to remember life before the internet was in every household and in every hand. I am old enough to recall what it means to spend a day in your bedroom, without Facebook, YouTube or instragram to “entertain” you.

I remember listening to Ace of Base for hours (the entire album, not just that one song – because that’s how you listened to music back then), while doodling fashion design sketches on notepads. I dreamt I might become a fashion designer one day, creating clothes that were comfortable, functional, and cool.

I liked to wear my black Doc. Martens boots with floral babydoll dresses and a well-worn jean jacket. Nobody dressed like that in my town, but I didn’t care. I thought I was ahead of my time and, having watched “Reality Bites” more than once, believed I was a Winona Ryder-esque misfit.

This brief soirée into fashion design came from the most unusual place – Archie comics.

I loved Archie comics and I used to own them all. At one point, they started fashion design contests where people could submit outfits for Betty or Veronica. Having seen the winning submissions, I just knew that I could do better than what I was seeing – for Betty, of course. Who the hell cares about Veronica?

There was such an incredible amount of space and time to create back in those days. Time to dream. Time to breathe and just be.

Some of this has been swallowed by adulthood. Time is now used for cooking meals, doing dishes, cleaning the house, taking care of my child, paying bills and the many more responsibilities that age brings with it.

Loss is inevitable when the currency is time.

But, does it always have to be lost? Once we reach a certain age in life are we just doomed to continue losing time until the day we breathe our last?

I don’t think so. I certainly hope not.

I have begun seeking ways to gain time instead of always just losing it. I find I regain a few seconds when I take the time to just look out of a window for a few minutes or sit on the porch swing, empty handed, no music or distractions other than the birds flittering around the bird feeders or landing lightly on the evergreen branches. I gain a minute when I just sit and watch my son playing and allow myself to soak-in every movement and noise he makes. My time bank grows a little bit when I go for a drive and allow myself to breathe-in the landscape around me, letting my mind drift-back to the days of childhood when I used to look-out over the same landscape and dream.

I am on a journey to rediscover the pleasure of empty time. We grow-up and somewhere along the way we buy-in to the concept that empty time is a waste of time. This is simply not true.

Empty time is where life is found. It is where joy exists and time expands.

Empty time is where the magic happens.

Putting Me First

04 Tuesday Oct 2016

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Ok, so writing is a bit challenging at the moment with everything that is going on. I’m in week 4 of my Cognitive Processing Therapy for my diagnosed Non-Recovery PTSD. This is EXHAUSTING. And there is a substantial amount of homework involved that really drains me.

Also, I have started a new job and, in the words of a co-worker at the moment, “it’s Oscar season!”
I’m planning the organizations largest event. Not only is it, typically, the largest event but, apparently, I’m very good at my job and have almost doubled the numbers from last year.

And then, I am continuing to work on the lifestyle and mindset changes necessary to become the healthier me I desire to be.

Also, of course, I am a Mother and a wife.

But, I’ve been doing really good at trying to take care of myself in the midst of all of this. I have made huge strides forward. I was recently very sick, and still have a bit of a cough and some sinus yuckies, and I didn’t binge-out on comfort foods. True, I didn’t totally neglect myself either, but I was mindful through it all.

And, for a while, I had stopped doing my mini-workouts during my workday. But, I realized how unfair that was on me. I had stopped taking breaks at work and was even eating my lunch at my desk, while working.

I could feel how the lack of these breaks was, actually, draining my energy and making me less effective in my work. So now, I am back to focusing on taking 2 breaks during my workday to get active. I climb the stairs, go for a walk or close my door and do some yoga or a 7 minute workout (the App).

I have refocused on trying to ensure that I am eating more veggies and fruit during the day as well. It all makes such a huge difference.

There are a few more changes I am trying to make for my personal well-being. One of them is to do some kind of household chore every day so that it doesn’t all become too much at once. If I do a bit every day, I should be able to stay on top of it and it will decrease my stress. Bonus- It’s added energy being spent. Like free exercise.

I want to be in bed, eyes closed, by 10:30pm. I have this persistent eye-twitch lately that’s driving me nuts. I know that it is the result of way too many nights awake past 11:30pm.

And, ultimately, I’d love to have more tv/video/game-free time. More still and quiet time. Even if this looks like 30 minutes of yoga before bed. Which is also a thing I want to make a “staple” of my day-to-day. At least, a little, yoga. It feels so good to stretch-out.

Part of “putting me first” is actually letting-go of part of me. I have a tendency to want to do everything, and have everything, absolutely perfect. I have had to work on letting-go of this desire and allowing things to be done “good enough” or not at all, so I could do some self-care.

I’m not that great at putting myself first, but I am learning to find some times when I allow myself to become the priority. Even if just for 10 minutes. I really believe this is helping me, my marriage, my work-life and my family be much healthier, happier and well-rounded.

To Thine Own Self…

31 Thursday Mar 2016

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I was terrified when I moved to New Zealand.

I wasn’t 100% convinced that it was the right thing to do, but the people I trusted around me seemed to be, so I was doing it with the faith that they knew what they were talking about.

3 years earlier I had joined a gap-year program in Toronto, where I had been living and working for the past year, feeling lost, in way over my head and struggling to make ends meet.

There were 6 other people on this program from USA, Canada and New Zealand.

Over the years, I developed a deep friendship with the guy from NZ. We spent a lot of time together and were given more responsibility in the organisation, culminating in the request for us to return the following year as team leaders for the program.

By the end of the first year, this boy professed his love for me. But, I just wasn’t feeling it. He was like a brother to me and when he started to be at all romantic towards me, I felt like I would puke. It just felt wrong. I loved his friendship, but was not attracted to him or interested in him in that way.

After 3 years in the country, he decided it was time to return to Aotearoa-the land of the long, white, cloud. However, the leadership of the church did not want him to leave, as they still had plans for what we could do together. I was sent-in to talk to him because they all thought I would be able to convince him to stay.

But, even I could not persuade him to stay.

My minister pulled me aside and told me that she thought I was making a huge mistake by letting him go. She told me that she thought I had been blinded to my real feelings for him by feelings I had for someone else, the focus I had on the ministry I had been doing in the community and even a fear of commitment.

I trusted that she knew what she was talking about, especially since she wasn’t the only one saying that we were meant to be together. Everyone in that community had been pushing me to be with him and expressing the belief that it was what God wanted.

So, clearly, I was missing something. I began to feel as though I couldn’t trust my own mind or my own emotions, so I had to trust that everyone else knew what was right. And, so, I did what she told me to do and I went to this friend and suggested to him that we should give “us” a real chance.

It didn’t change his mind about going home, but he did agree to come to my hometown for a few days and meet my family.

It was a horrible week for me. I felt uncomfortable, nervous, odd, sick to my stomach, miserable and confused for most of our time together.

I just kept telling myself that I couldn’t trust my thoughts and that my “real”, romantic, loving feelings would eventually come to the surface. They never did.

Despite all of this uncertainty, I found myself in Toronto, saying my farewells and crying to everyone I trusted that I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing. I shared that I didn’t think I had feelings for him, that I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to be with him and I was afraid I was making a horrible mistake. I was hoping someone would hear me and tell me that I shouldn’t go.

But, time and time again these friends and mentors made me feel like I was silly, confused, and didn’t really know what I wanted.

I sobbed the day I left the city, my chest heaving with every breathe as though it had the weight of a thousand bricks on it. My other best friend was with me at the airport and I sobbed and clung to her for dear life, hoping she wouldn’t let go of me. I didn’t want to go. I really didn’t.

The next 5 years would be the hardest, most miserable, most terrifying, troublesome, difficult and challenging of my life. There would be many, many, many times I would be seconds away from packing my bags and disappearing. I had never been so sad, so depressed and felt so lost and helpless.

Those people, all of them who thought they were speaking for God, were wrong. Totally, absolutely, 100% wrong.

I felt like a victim for years about this. I felt that they were all to blame for this horrible life I found myself stuck in. They were responsible for making me be with this person to whom I wasn’t attracted, leaving everything I loved to follow God’s plan for my life.

This all changed when, 7 years after she had left me at the airport, my friend visited me and said words that made me so angry because they were filled with undeniable truth. I wasn’t a victim. I had made the choices all along. I made the choice to go. I could make the choice to leave. I couldn’t blame anyone but myself for staying and feeling trapped.

She spoke frankly with me and for the first time in my life, I actually felt like someone was talking to me adult-to-adult.

This year will mark the 10 year anniversary of that flight and as I sit here, writing this tale, the guy from New Zealand is in my kitchen cooking himself some eggs and watching “Dancing with the Stars” and we are happy.

We are happy because I made a choice. We are happy because he made a choice. We decided, together, that we were going to make this work, no matter what.

It’s true that we never had the “head over heels” romantic phase that most people do before they get engaged. We never went on dates. We didn’t get giddy over texts. We didn’t giggle with friends and chat about stolen kisses or the silly things being done during the wooing stage. We skipped all of that and went straight to the ‘married for 20 years, romance is dead, have to work on it’ phase.

And so, that’s what we did. We worked on it.

And, the most incredible thing happened-the further we got from the church, the healthier our relationship became. When we removed all of that unhealthy, outside influence, the added guilt and pressure to be something we’re not, and the expectation to fit into roles that didn’t suit us, we found that we really could enjoy being together. We went to counselling and with the guidance of someone who actually knew what she was doing, we worked on things together.

As I said before, I have spent years doing what others wanted me to do and believing that other people knew what was best for me-even more than I could know for myself until that autumn day, while walking the streets of Toronto my friend put me straight.

Today, I take great pride in my marriage because it has been forged with fire. Tested with tears and fights and moments where the desire to run hung as heavy in the air as an elephant would hang from a weeping willow.

This is our marriage. Our relationship. Our friendship. Our victory. It doesn’t belong to anyone else. It doesn’t belong to the church. It doesn’t belong to God. It doesn’t even belong to our counsellor. It is ours.

And, just as I couldn’t blame anyone else for where I found myself back then, I get to take the credit for where I am now.

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.” –(Hamlet Act-1, Scene-III, 78–81)

I am in charge of my own life.

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Memory

14 Monday Mar 2016

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I have said this before, memories are tricky, unreliable things.

I believe that most, if not all, of our memories consist of factual truth, embellishments of emotion, imagination and external influences (such as seeing a picture, news article, or hearing someone else’s account).

While they may not be 100% fact, memories, especially those from childhood, can tell us a lot about how we were feeling at the time. They should not be judged. They should not be criticized. And, there’s often no real need for them to be “set straight”. They exist for a reason.

They are called “Autobiographical Memory”.

Our memories help shape us and, in turn, our lives. I grew up as the baby of the family. I am used to having everyone else tell me how “things were” or at least, how they remember them.

I also have grown-up constantly trying to keep the peace and protect everyone around me. This has meant that, time and time and time again I have never shared what I remembered, how I have felt about things and the memories that have been my experiences through life.

Even now, as I started this blog, I have had to constantly battle the urge to edit or not write because I didn’t want to upset anyone. I have held my own memories, recollections, feelings, thoughts, and stories close to my heart, where they could be safe, long enough. I want to share them. I want to share this world that I grew-up in. As I remember it.

I know that my memories are never going to be 100% truth. Sometimes, they may not even be more than 20% truth. But, they are mine.This is how it was to me. And, as part of who I am, they don’t need to be corrected, just accepted as part of me, my story, my substance. I know that they are not, necessarily, perfectly accurate and I know that there are other people involved who have their own versions of the stories, their own memories, their own feelings. I do not write to take that away from that. We all experienced things through our own lenses. This is my space to share through mine.

Fear, loneliness, trauma, anger, shame, embarrassment, love, uncertainty, humor, imagination, sadness-they will all be a part of why I recall things the way I do. And that’s important.

This is what my world was. These are the experiences, memories and feelings, both fact and fiction, that all led-up to this point. Right here. Me.
Here in all my strengths, weaknesses, victories, failures-the love, the hate, the fear the bravery. Everything I am comes from these memories.

It may not be 100% factual truth-but, it is 100% me.

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