almost new year

 not sure anything will ever feel new to me. im at an age when everything reminds me of something else. nothing new. i can finish sentences for many movie characters in variously very predictible plots and the same old story over and over. 

thoughts of new years make me think of my dad. he loved new years. always celebrated it with happiness.

11/23/2020

Where did the year go?

Quit my job of 13 years. Returned to a job I left 

Took new jib

Hated it

COVID 19

Salary cut 50%

Quit job in middle of COVID pandemic

Unemployment and SSA

Lorna dies

I return to Buffalo

Mama is in her new crib. I have moved me out of my daughter and daughter in law's home. Out of the spare bedroom and into my own place. Out of South Buffalo and into the lower west side on Rhode Island near Fargo. It is located behind a pie shop.  Sweet and savory pies and kick ass coffee. I have a backyard to share. And my own driveway.

old and not healthy

Morning

First pee

Coffee/Tea first

Advil for lower back pain Scatica

Ice lower back for twenty minutes while drinking coffee and waiting for Advil to kick in

morning medicines  pills for dead thyroid, high blood pressure and hypertension, depression anxiety for PTSD. Metformin for diabetes. Smoke pot if I have it.

CQ10, Vit D and Fish Oil supplements

Glasses, Hearing aids and one breast prosthetic 

Evening

Take off hearing aids, glasses and breast

Evening medicines white wine, insulin and metformin

smoke pot if I've got it

CPAP machine for sleep apnea

 and now

and now I have had a stroke

last week weds oct 7 I had a stroke

I was with family

I wasn't alone

Went to the hospital in an ambulance

got poke, stuck with needles and wires and stints pinched and new meds

and I am alive without any damage

no paralysis

no speech issues

more medicine

I take a lot of medicine

just like my mother she was always taking pills

she was a drinker I prefer wine or pot

now I take a statin and a blood thinner and a baby aspirin every day

and I wonder what is next for me

Existential Crisis

Cut and paste from inter webs:

Everyday challenges and stresses may not provoke an existential crisis. This type of crisis is likely to follow deep despair or a significant event, such as a major trauma or a major loss. A few causes of an existential crisis may include:

• guilt about something
• losing a loved one in death, or facing the reality of one’s own death
• feeling socially unfulfilled
• dissatisfaction with self
• history of bottled up emotions

This tells me that I remained unaware of the edge I live on 

remembering a memory

I was there I saw it and I heard it

Someone else says

No that's not what happened

I was there too

I saw it and I heard it

And besides you were in the kitchen, you don't know

And this was before you were born

All I know is no one was paying attention

for all the bravado of memory arguments

had at our dinner table

All of  what was said was or is true

                            If I say it. It is true.

Between each other we remember

experiences events moments scenes 

commonly shared with each other

differently from each other

Memory's Influence-er is time. 

Adding new memories every day over time.

Years go by 

Until there are so many years

Memory is out to lunch more often than it sits at the table 

a reliable dinner companion to our whims

Remembering becomes an occasion for frustration and letting go

There are a few  memories"frozen in time" which for me means .. 

...whenever I remember that moment, I always remember it exactly the same

it has never evolved or edited itself or come to me in new colors

frame by frame same every time

It was long journey to gain an understanding of frozen in time.

End of August

How many minutes? 

It's about 80,740 minutes one breath at a time.

New

Deeply familiar and oddly unfamiliar.

Old, people are very old now

And the young ones are younger now because I am older.

Time can fold

 Death hangs around every day

In the comfort of a house she built

She plays dead.

I go to work with a ghost. 

She walks in with me. She walks out with me.

In between she sits in my office and mostly pouts.

Her presence is vibrant and silent and bright.

Queerly silent for someone known for being outspoken.

Are we obligated or required to fill the void?

Difficult when one feels empty.

How do we not disappoint?

Oh you think I'm talking about her? 

No. I'm taking about all the hundreds and hundreds of people who love her.

For real loved her. Like you love the tallest tree in the forest.

In sis' absence that love becomes a legacy.

everything is fast

everything is fast and I am walking slow.

Change(s)

 At dinner last night Geri suggested that I keep a journal about this change in my life and the company's life. 

Death changes everything. Dorothy Allison

Everything is louder. 

I can tell I am back by the driving habits here.Drivers here do not share the road, they take the road.

August 15 and I am not paying rent to Marlene in Ann Arbor as I have for 13 years. I did not go to eat ann arbor for my Tuesday burger. But I did say goodbye to Jen who always gave me lots of pickles. I am known as a buffalo boomerangs After 13 years of solitude and personal comfort in my own little corner I now find myself in a crowded loud household. Privacy has to be carved out along with visits to see my cat. It is becoming familiar. 8 x 12 four bit room and a porch. 

I feel challenged intellectually. The work is for real, hard. Takes focus and attention. It is new and unknown.  The world is a very scary place right now. People seem to be hunkering down. How do we keep Ujima afloat?

We are in the early hours of one of the greatest tragedies in our countries history.
None of it had to be, but it has happened because Donald Trump is President.We will lose the country if Trump isn’t repudiated. Make no mistake about the intentions of a president who is openly undermining the 231 year old tradition of American elections. 

I fear for everyone's future. I feel threatened, as in physically every day. The sound of his voice haunts me.

learning self

I am learning. I am oddly and suddenly motivated to learn more. Grief and Sorrow are different from guilt and shame. They are all "bad" feelings and prevent an enjoyment of life. Since Lorna died I am feeling Grief and Sorrow more often than my usual double scoop of guilt and shame. I noticed it's absence.

I'm sorry.  I must say that 100 or more times in,,,a day. No that's an exaggeration. That's cliche'. I say I'm sorry to every person I talk to in a day. So however many that brings that's how many times I say it,  sometimes I say to the same person more than once.

Imagine saying I'm sorry to every person you talk to in one day. Why? Why would that be necessary? What could I be doing in this moment that warrants me apologizing to everyone I meet?

THERAPIST SAYS  You have known guilt and shame so long, you are comfortable there. It is what you know. You know how to function there.

BACK TO ME I really cannot think of anything now that I should be ashamed of. I can make a laundry list of things I did in my past or things that were done to me without my consent. I often run the list of sins it in my head like a tally. Drudge up all my old sins. Relive one or two to try and determine the wrongness of it and how to fix it.  I call them sins because they happened when I was a supposed practicing catholic as a young girl. I never confessed these sins when I was practicing.

I loved nuns. I hated lay teachers. I loved nuns because they all wore lace up black leather boots and walked with intention and quickly. I still do that, walk with intention and quickly. I had nice nuns. Well the mother superior was a holy terror., otherwise known as the job description. Must be a holy terror.

Learn to be comfortable without feeling guilty or ashamed. As a fat woman that will be a challenge.

Follow your purpose. Follow your heart.

Lorna died. Lorna is gone. It hurts more than expected. In a big way it remains unimaginable, even though I almost never missed a day to be with Lorna. Even ten minutes with Lorna was a ticket to heaven. I can see her, now, in the stage spot light as luminous as ever. One moment lead me to another memory and that memory took me to another one. Reminds the routes of my brain of yet another breath taking, heart stopping moment in her presence. Our relationship was different in that I came to Ujima with the same political knowledge as Lorna. I was the daughter of working class success story as a trade union labor leader.An immigrant he was and had a different view, dare I say minority view of America history than most. I would often get into arguments with my anti union revisionist history.He never taught me the pablum version of American history.

He had stories and details just like Ruby did for Lorna. Just like my dad did for me. We both had a favorite parent and we enjoyed learning more from them, and more expansive and inclusive view than what was taught in school.

May 26

long day
productive day
creative day
problem solving day

Drew Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for myself. It was fun to do the coloring

Small things -if not corrected-become big things, always.

attempt to change my future

Operate from an internal sense of "this is right"-Audre Lorde

The lemons spite me by shriveling up and turning ash green. Lemons famously hide themselves from me to roll off and die in the corner. the lemons remain unaware of my familiarity with that same feeling..to roll off into the corner and turn ash green. I know the feeling.

The amputation of my breast in a profit economy and my refusal to rebuild it is a daily reminder of the quick loss of power. Without cleavage I feel powerless. It is not the absence of one but the lack of a pair that is most difficult. I cannot accept it. 13 years later I am still angry. But I have never felt guilty about surviving. 

I recently made a left turn and I wished I had not turned at all. And now I have another big decision a head of me. So soon after having made a colossal mistake I worry about making another one. 

A budding opportunity is gaining oxygen. Ujima needs a managing director. Do I take the Ujima job and go home to Buffalo. People -many- want me to come home. It is finally spring and many dormant lives are pushing up from under ground. 

i don't know what to do with my pain. I am very scared.

contemplative practice

now why did I leave Buffalo?

Lorna

I met Lorna at the Center For Positive Thought. James introduced me to her. I signed up for her acting class. And she assigned the book, Woman and Nature (The Roaring Inside Her) by Susan Griffin. That was the beginning of our 40+ year friendship that became a sisterhood and family. Yesterday I learned she may not live a month. Breast cancer has returned. It is in her bones, spine, liver and around the brain. I'll be saying goodbye to one of my oldest and dearest friends. It hurts. I'll have the book but she will be gone. Surreal concept don't you think? One reason I love books. I can the memory that is attached to the book. The memory is as important as the book.

5/24/2020

Struggle every day. 

The first time I walked into a room of people to whom I did not have to explain myself.  I was understood without having to explain who I was. What came as an additional gift was the freedom to explore who you might want to be. There was a growing force for change and those of us who believed gathered at places like the Center For Positive Thought. Indulging my fears would have destroyed my life and my daughter's life. The only choice for my survival was self empowerment. 

fried green tomatoes

And then there was Fried Green Tomatoes featuring two women in love, making it, alas yes a lesbian dies in the end but one lives!  And they kill the bad guy, It was damn beautiful. 1991. I was 38.

Girl crushes for me started very young. There was the butch at Braymiller's feed store, 1958. Susan Hayward was my favorite Saturday Matinee Movie Star, and I had a crush on Barbara Stanwyck. Then at Grier, my all girl boarding school. Dino, or Denise Schneider, I never tired of her company. She was very kind. Until she dropped out of sight after graduation and I never heard from her again.

indecision

I am fearful of picking the wrong answer. Picking? That was an odd work choice. Picking. Do we have a choice, do we pick what we answer and how we answer? We do if we lie a lot. As I child, adolescent, teenage and adult I held a very big secret, so I lied a lot to cover for the secret.  To keep it a secret forever so that people would continue to love me. I still lie to this day about it, to protect me. I mean how bad could it have been? I forgave while he was still alive. I forgave him the first time he asked me for forgiveness. 

Myself? No I have not forgiven me. And when I forgave my brother for years of sexual abuse I did not yet completely grasp the full effect of that abuse. Hell when I started therapy,  in 1969, the professionals knew little to nothing about women in general, let alone women who suffered trauma. Many professionals were clueless and didn't understand why we were making a fuss.

In 1977 I was escorted off the stage by Erie County Sheriffs at a public hearing on the county social services department budget. I pointed out that there was no money allotted for social workers to be trained on emerging issues in the field such as rape prevention, and increased reporting of incest. 

Incest. I said that word outloud and I was removed from the stage and the microphone. You will not use that language not while I am in charge. Back when the use of a word in certain company, word choice was a greater crime than the actual committing of said crime. Some crime was not discussed it was so taboo. Thats where I started.

5/14/2020

The unprecedented times continue. No one knows what is really next or what it will look like or feel like. It is unknown and so it is possible that is making my life feel pressure to be more intentional.  But I am not sure that I am. I am listening to more Brene Brown. Playing less solitaire on my phone. Petting the cat more. 

I have always believed that my story my truth was too ugly to be said aloud. I have always believed the world will stop loving me and never ever love me again if everyone knew.

And discerning the truth of my life has always been important for me to discern and to understand on some deeper level.

I continue to believe myself unworthy of forgiveness, understanding and unconditional love of myself. I never feel safe, not really. Advancing age adds to those feelings of not being safe.

This free time I have now-free to explore-free to examine-to begin new habits, I need to re-calibrate. Fresh point of reference. For too long my point of reference has been being the victim. Shame, and anger, but mostly shame. Feeling outside the norm. I need a new frame of reference.

How do you find, is it find?  How do you find a new frame of reference? DO you just choose a new one like ordering lunch off a menu or is it more of an obvious life choice. 

Fresh as in new, as in not one I've had before. Fresher than springtime it is...

Definition of recalibrate

transitive verb

: to calibrate (something) again… these systems gradually drift off course so that the navigator periodically needs a fresh point of reference to recalibrate the navigation system.— Stefi WeisburdThe problem is that eating more doesn't sate us; we merely recalibrate how much we think we need.— Nando Pelusi
Definition of point of reference

: something that is used to judge or understand something else

something that is used to judge or understand something else. i use my values to judge others. values i learned from my parents. values I learned from teachers that I admired and believed in. values i learned in novels by steinbeck and betty smith  and later eileen myles' poems and stories or in toshi's music. 

all the many and varied self help strategies such as cognitive therapy, im ok your ok, tarot, horoscopes, psychics, transcental Parent Adult Child, massage therapy, crystals, wiccan practice in a coven, yoga, tai chi, labyrynth walking, meditation, prayer beads, altar, day of the dead practice, the artists way, writing workshops, self defense workshops, 

Not sure what I know

Not sure what I know. I have been the Sherlock of my life, my actions, my feelings, my lack of decision, my reactions vs my inability to respond calmly. People talk about my passion when being polite in describing their personal interactions with me.

Weeks ago I told the therapist that I was going to write. This is my first attempt.

Abort abort

Next day Tuesday May 12, 2020

My day to talk to SSI
They are not allowing me to open an account. It is a dispute over my identity. My name. Margaret Elliott let go of 43 years ago in my divorce. And my name Margaret Mary Smith. The call is at 11:30 A.M.