And finally tonight

                     

August sun warms my arms,

But the air is mild, meandering;

A patient look in the afternoons

Dark gold glittering against

earth’s fading tan.

Crickets buzz loud in the purple-streaked night.

I miss you and I just can’t.

One glimpse clangs against my heart

Like a heavy bell cracking.

I have a life.

I wrote a book.

I spend afternoons after work with my feet in a baby pool

Next week a new garage door.

Why couldn’t you love me?

September first I will drive east out of these mountains

Spend a few last days at the ocean;

And nights with my mother

doing the evening news for God.

She prays hard for me; her outrage at my hurts

Making me cry.

I will try not to listen.

I’ll buy beach items at drastically reduced prices;

bottle salt air for autumn

lose myself in football

And say my own rosary every night

For loving you so.

I don't get it

No matter how hard I try to be free and happy, something always rushes in to bodyslam me, and I am left crying and asking why over and over and over.  It's not like I want everyone to like or love me.  I am perfectly fine with the people next door never speaking or talking to me.  I don't much care for them or their lifestyle, so we all get along fine pretending no one lives next door to us.  I don't care that Tom, the PLT, the women and most of the mill employees don't like me.  I live my life; they live theirs. They can out-Christian each other, and behave like Pharisees as long as they don't get in my face.  I don't long for every man I see--most of the men here are so unattractive, it doesn't bother me that they don't have my picture up in their lockers.  I willingly leave those honors to Dolly Parton or Pamela Anderson.  I just want love from the people I love and with whom I have a history.  I watch tv shows with all these men thanking their mothers--obviously not afraid to express their love and tenderness.  And I wonder why my sons instead choose to see me as a monster and decide they could care less if I am in their lives.  Why are Tyra and Tip and Hannah enough?

I spent 60 years hoping for a feeling of family--not even a feeling of being Daddy's little Girl--- from my father until Xmas '09.  That Christmas was miserable--no presents; no conversation---just a constant sense that they couldn't wait for me to leave.  And my 60th birthday, when there was no card, no acknowledgement from him whatever.  That's when I decided I wasn't going to stick my chin out there towards him again; I'd had it knocked off enough.  I explain to Gerry that I didn't come to the decision lightly, and that I wished him no harm, but I was never going to "drop in" again.  So she blasts me! No sympathy for anything that happened; no sorrow or anything, no gratitude that I wished him well, her well and certainly no understanding.  Why?  Why is everything such a goddamn fight for me?  He's her husband and she has a daughter--isn't that enough? Why does she want to blast me? I have a right to feel anyway I want and to act anyway I want.  He's her husband, not mine.  She accepts all that he is and justifies him--great.  But I don't have to.  I was molested by my grandfather.  No one protected me; no one even cared that it happened.  I got nothig but a threat from the predator. Nothing for me except the knowledge that I protected someone I loved from pain.  ME! The child; the victim comforting myself with the knowledge I protected a grown woman.  And now I don't even have the right to decide I am not dealing with the phony, shallow pretending which is all my relatioship ith my father ever was?  That and some other way he could inflict pain by not caring what happened to me.  I am done pretending it's ok.  IT IS NOT OK.  IT NEVER WAS OK.  And I have the right to say that.  I don't care what Gerry goes through! And he is perfectly fine losing his mind--it lets him escape.  Great.  Have a nice trip away from reality.  

And then Mikey.  Why does his rejection hurt me so much? Most women don't bemoan that the alcoholic, abusive, serial killer rapist they escaped from doesn't love them. They see that the man is damaged and destined to do nothing but damage them, violate them, harm them AND THEY REJOICE IN GETTING AWAY.  Instead I cry because I love him and want him and he doesn't love me back.  Why can't I focus on his pettiness; his enjoyment in rejecting me; his ability to stay with 1 woman and cheat on her repeatedly for 7 years?  And the almost certaintly that if he had ended up with me more hurt was in store.? Going back to her; constantly being with them, choosing them over me, cheating on me with someone else.  Yet here I sit crying over  a man who is clearly disturbed and the fact that his errant behavior ISN'T dominating my life.  I din't cry over the countless lawyers who treated me like crap--even charging me $75 for the privilege.  No, I kept looking.  I didn't accept the behavior of the TNDHS--I kept trying and am now contemplating a private adoption.  I didn't accept the rejections of all those publishers--I am pursuing self-publishing to get my book out there. 

Why is it so hard to focus on what I can accomplish rather than those who won't give me the love I want?  Buddy, Kevin, Richard don't care about me--I will adopt a child who can blot out all that pain. And I still have Jackie.

I can get my book published and then all the people at the mill who didn't care about my writing can eat shit because I will focus on those people who DO read my writing---and pay to do so.

I can focus my time and energy on the parent who is still a human being.  On the friends who just enjoy my company and who actually lift a finger to help me and who thank me when I do things for them.

I have to rejoice in what I have--usually thanks to my own efforts. Appreciate what my life is apart from Mikey and Kevin and Richard and Buddy and Daddy. Selfish, uncouth, unfeeling users--who I am blessedly no longer tied to.

Gotta quit tilting at windmills. Trying to get love from abusers. That is no more healthy than they are.

Sense of Ocean

Surprising sky
simple wash of clouds;
Shells, like skeleton hands on sand
or in seafoam.
Skinny senior: speedo, surfboard.
Sun-soaked skin searing,
Salty scent,
sighing,
Silky slapping:
toes (hiss)
knees (gasp)
thighs (ah)
Soothing, delicious.
Sun sparkles
shiny sink and surface:
shark?
Porpoises, swimming.
Couples kissing,
Singles sliding, surfing
Children sitting, squealing:
Every square inch of sand,
Every scintilla of sea:
Chincoteague in summer,
kaledoscope of swells
and surrender.

Allergic to Love, scenes from Atlanta

Four hours south of the city we once shared
I am up before you
taking in the smugly leafed out trees of colonial suburbia,
startling at the overconfident jays screaming:
here, Brittany Spears
Brittany Spears
Brittany Spears.
My son has lived in this house for over a year, nearly two.
It speaks in mute tones about its mistress and the man my tow-headed boy
has become.
the pictures against the wall, the cardboard boxes sigh out
no nest.
Most telling the 5 ft. wide (tall since it is on its side against the stairs)
silver-framed, black and white photo of night time Paris
seen from the Left Bank.
The dark, still water in the foreground
obliterated by lighted bridges further on.
The Eifel Tower
the only color,
pale gold in the picture's upper right.
A singlar and striking work
but there it is
no commitment to even try it on a wall.
When I come here I always think my brilliant son
will help me organize my cluttered life--a little complex, unmarried at 60;
After all he has 10 external hard drives.
We have fun shopping,
watching movies,
but the sterile quiet
of his freedom
is unerving;
forcing me to conclude as I make my way north
to a very hesitant spring
that my messy, lived-in 60years
filled with the ghosts of children
and poems
is probably best unordered.
That I am meant to stumble on
loved by a Seal point
Siamese to whom
I am probably allergic.

DKD

Feeling way better

I guess even with the worst addictions, once the blinders are off, it just continues to get easier.  And as much as I should be more mature, I am glad I got to send him a crappy message on his birthday.  Everything ought to be about him--especially on his birthday--but not this time. I hope he seethed at my temerity. I definitely shouldn't have sent him the little pager message about looking on the Kingsport ARRESTED! page wondering who his next girlfriend might be.  Because he is not stupid. He will correctly see that as me trying to get his attention.  So I can't do that again. It was fun, though. 
I feel very mellow, sitting here.  I appreciate Gary L telling me about his birthday--thank God, I am not the only one! And I have enjoyed wearing the new clothes to work. 
Sad about Elizabeth Taylor.  Daddy used to think she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Well, I will get depressed if I go down this road anymore.
At least I am no longer agonizing. I only have 2 or 3 more stages to go thru before this is totally behind me.  And I will get past it.  I am too good for him, for Charlie; for any of the Tennesseans with the "Who asked ya" mentality.
Moving on.....

Horror

I guess I am scared.  But am I scaring myself? Is this an old pattern or has something really changed with this birthday?  Does 60 really mean that it's too late for me? How could Kevin and Richard have so much venom toward me?  How could Mikey be so self-absorbed that his situation not be the central problem? How could it be about presents given to Gary or Tony? Or his giving me a flaslight for such a big birthday? Why am I such a nothing and nobody? 

Insanity

The old adge is that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Never did that come banging home to me as it did last night, when I was told that the man I love more than anything would do everything he could to spend what free time he had with me this weekend.  IF his wife went to a movie or if fixing his daughter's and sister's cars didn't take a real long time.  In fact, if he had a single spare minute he would come to see me, if only long enough to say hi.  No matter how often we break up or get back together, eventually it always comes down to this: THEY are his real life; I am his toy to sneak out and say hi to; make love to.  And once again when I objected, I was asked why was I "doing this" today? Why was I? Why was I expecting more than the leftovers? To whatever wouldn't threaten or inconvenience them? He can lie so easily. To tell me he gave my Valentine's stuff to first Robin and then Niki, when he never got me anything for Valentines.
Being here is like being away from the area altogether because people are nice to me; pretend to care about my comfort and well-being.  It is such a change from MY real life. It gives me a clarity I rarely have.