Freefall

 

 

For more years than I care to count, I have had to chase away the darkness. Always trying to stay one step in front of it, and knowing that it was always there; lurking around every corner and hiding in every shadow of my mind. It was a constant reminder that my mind was fragile. A step or two from the edge. That I would never be able to let down my guard, for to do so would mean certain death.

I've heard that most seemingly sane people with seemingly healthy minds are only a thought away from being able to commit a heinous crime or inflict bodily harm on another person. But for the grace of God, we all go. Grace is a wonderful gift from God and he freely gives it way to us whether we are deserving of it or not. Its part of what makes him God. But in just the same way that we are perpetually close to crossing over an invisible line from sanity to psychological delusional behavior, then we are as easily susceptible to fall from that life sustaining grace.

I'm not entirely clear on the logistics of my crossover. The 'when' and the 'where' remain blurry in my mind, and right now I don't want a synopsis from any well-meaning family or friends, and I certainly don't want to hear any medical mumbo-jumbo from these idiot doctors who think they know me and presume to analyze my thoughts and...motives. Everyone considers me a freak, and want me to claim that I have a 'dual personality' or an alter ego, but why I ask? There is no other identity inside my head. There's only me. I am not crazy. Not anymore.

I was told that I could say I was insane and not responsible for my actions. Okay. Maybe I am a little insane, but I do take responsibility for my bad deeds, so that wouldn't fly...right? I mean I would have tried that defense before what happened when maybe I had planned to do something before I did it, but like I've been trying to explain to these idiots that I hadn't made any previous plans ...its that I seized the moment when it was right.

Nobody knows the real deal but me. Others may assume, presume, or whatever...but only I know what really went down the moment I turned the corner and right now I ain't talking. And no; I may not be too clear on the when and where, but one thing I am clear on is the why. Make no mistake; I know why. 

It was a slow but steady buildup of the small things, you know. Things like being ignored over here, and not included over there that kept piling on across time until a big ball of indifference had formed. That ball grew and grew and its sheer size caused it to roll forward gaining momentum, eventually crushing me like an emotional avalanche.

Because I simply could not take anymore from my friends. I'd had it up to and over my neck. It was mere foolishness on their part to push me. All these years and she didn't have a clue as to who I really was. None of them did. But they all smiled up in my face and hugged on me and pretended to include me in their bourgeois lives.  They said they loved me like a sister. Twenty-five years of lies and deceitfulness and the worst part of it all was the condescension and the two-faced pretense that I had allowed (probably out a desperate need to belong) to blind me to the reality of their toxic minds.

So, I didn't have the financial resources that the others did. I worked every day to make a living. The money I received from my divorce settlement had been used to finance my daughter's college education, both undergrad and post graduate degrees.I put her first and didn't mind going into the bank as the Manager of the Consumer Loans division every stinking day of my life five days a week to sit and listen to why other folks needed to borrow money. And to talk to them about the pathetic details of their pathetic lives.

My friends never asked me much about my work. No, they were too busy discussing their own lives of independent means. I never measured up completely to their standards of suburban  Mac Mansion living excellence, fancy cars and clothing allowances. I lived comfortably and was well dressed and all within my budget. I was able to vacation with them,go on shopping sprees and ladies nights out but they had no clue as to how I managed it. They took for granted I was just like them.

And the men! Always a new man in one of their beds. Men...men...men. And boozing it up going from one place to the other all the time. Hardly ever spending time with family. But they all had their reasons for their lifestyles, and I was determined not to judge until one night when I'd had the realization that I couldn't stand it another day. Somebody was going to pay for making me feel like a charity case. And out of the three of them; it didn't matter who. I was going in and taking no prisoners and let the collateral damage fall where it may.

I didn't have to plot or plan. Once I made up my mind I would take action I didn't waste time thinking about minor details. I knew that when the timing was perfect that it would come to me and the how's and whatever would easily follow through. 

It was the time of the year for us to get together and plan our annual vacation. Last year it was Kingston, Jamaica. We all had a blast on that trip (and it took me six months to pay it off of my Visa) and we were all in agreement that we escaped the island by the skin of our teeth. What had started out innocently enough, quickly took on a sinister and dangerous turn. But, I digress. We had decided to meet at my house for dinner, drinks and vacation planning. The day and time was set and I had made all of the arrangements to entertain the ladies in the style that we had all become accustomed to. I left the room where we'd all assembled to retrieve the serving trolley full of delicious treats for us from my kitchen.

There had been a nagging, pestering thought near the front of my mind for a couple of days before they were supposed to come over. It was a recent barrage of unkind remarks that I had been on the receiving end of, carelessly made by one of the girls to the other three. I wasn't supposed to have overheard them, but I did. As I've said earlier, I have been the recipient of their stupid remarks and the butt of their jokes for years, all supposedly made in "good fun cause you know we love you girl". Of course they all loved me and meant no harm when they'd been caught red handed. 

It had been said that I had an off-putting habit of trying too hard to please, and that sometimes my smiling face made me look ridiculous. I had an annoying way of always trying to be a goody two shoes and that didn't I know that I was too old to dress the way I did? And that I had been seen coming out of a consignment shop with shopping bags which obviously meant I'd made purchases there. If she can't afford to run with us, why does she keep trying? And for crying out loud, doesn't she know that hair color looks awful on her?

A different voice this time saying that they knew I had to borrow money to get by and should they offer to help pay for my vacation expenses? Another one asked why didn't I know that my furniture was badly coordinated and why for the love of roses didn't I buy a new car? They must have sensed my presence because I heard a distinctive "Shh" from the third one.

I had not meant to eavesdrop, but I had honestly left my phone in the living room and since it's charge was nearly gone, my intention was to get it and leave it on the charger in the kitchen. Innocent enough.I held my head up and kept my back straight, and pasted my "ridiculous" smile on my face as I re-entered the room. But the damage was done and in that instant I knew what I had to do. I felt the coldness close around my heart and squeeze it like a vise. I felt the nauseating disgust rise up in my throat, threatening to spill out of my mouth like a geyser, but I showed none of this and my poker face did me proud. The time would come and I'd show them.

There is no rewind button for real life where you can go back and take a closer look for clarity. There is no pause button either where you can suspend life until you're ready to live it better. It's only the now and the hereafter, and the latter will be too late. Too late for apologies,for make-ups and possibly too late for forgiveness. Satisfied for the moment that I'd avenge my broken heart, I smiled normally and wheeled the trolley in.They were none the wiser that someone had just cut her own throat.

What are your comments on this?

 

Many of us are suffering in silence from the pain of betrayal from friends and loved ones and broken friendships.  We tend to put our friends and loved ones in unrealistic places; never expecting that they would hurt us intentionally or not.We may chose to forgive and forget and move on; which is the healthiest and the best method, but for some of us its just not that simple. Of course the degree of the action is what determines how long and how fierce we may hold a grudge. A mind is fragile and its tensile strength varies from one individual to another.

On the Road to Perdition...Part One

Myranda Clayton Rice felt and looked the worse for wear. She had been out fall night partying with some people she was friendly with because she certainly could not call them friends. The word 'friend' in its definitive term did not factor into her vocabulary because truthfully she did not know of one single solitary soul she could pin the word to. At the ripe old age of thirty-eight, she had very little to show for her life on this earth. So very different from her la-DE-da younger sister Regina, or her bourgeois older brother Stanford Jr.

Her life had been on a steady downward spiral for the past two years. And typical of people with her particular brand of personality and who possessed the long list of disorders that she did always put the blame on others. They did not take responsibility for their own actions and out of an exaggerated sense of entitlement never failed to see their wrongs as a conspiracy against them. The world was to blame and all of the more fortunate folks in it had conspired to hold her and those like her who were down on their luck back from achieving any kind of a better life.


Why should she have it so hard? Ever since that bastard Palmer got into trouble and went to prison she had not been the same. Sure, she realized that she had some problems...who wouldn't have after going through what she went through? Losing her financial freedom, losing her husband (who she discovered was a liar, a cheat and on the down-low as well to add insult to injury) and most of all having to leave her own children. While she was in rehab the first time right after all this happened, her parents took the kids to care for. They didn't exactly turn them against her, but when she got out and tried to put her life back together, they acted like she was a stranger. That hurt like hell.

The men and women with whom she caroused the night away with were a rag tag collection of losers made up of druggies, prostitutes and some cons on the run from the law. She didn't care anything about their backgrounds. All she cared about was where and how she'd get her next fix or drink. Long as they kept coming, her companions mattered little to her. They were just disembodied faces with no names.

Thankfully, her sister Regina sent her money once a month that was supposed to be going toward her education expenses for the courses she had enrolled for at the local community college. Her classy, upstanding parents would not hand over a dime in cash to her, but agreed to pay for books and class essentials, but Regina's money was meant for her personal use. She had started classes and was aspiring to be a gourmet chef, but after only one semester she had dropped out. Naturally, Helena and Stanford soon found that out, but it was a miracle that Regina didn't know.

It wasn't a loss of interest that caused her to do so, it was because she had met up with this guy (lets' call him Dwayne) who convinced her that she'd be better off working as an apprentice of sorts and getting her training on the job. So, he introduced her to another guy (lets' call him JT) who worked as a chef in a mid-town restaurant and he agreed to speak to the manager on her behalf. It was all on the up and up with the chef guy. He was really intending to help Myranda get a job in his restaurant, but Dwayne was planning on running a con game.

Well, Dwayne told her that his chef friend JT was looking to strike out on his own and if he did, she could probably be co-owner with him. Trouble was, he needed some investors to help him get his business off the ground and if she could manage to raise five thousand dollars she could get in on the ground floor.

Long story short, Myranda managed to raise the five grand by selling an heirloom piece of jewelry she lifted from her mother's house on a rare occasion she went to visit. The diamond studded brooch sold for seven thousand five hundred dollars and she promptly handed over the five to Dwyane and tried to save the rest. That did not last long. As soon as she found out that she had been scammed, she sank into a depression so deep she wanted to die. In fact, she had been placed on suicide watch for the first month of her committ,ment. Once again, Helena and Stanford took Julia and Kirk home with them.

Palmer's parents; Walker and Ruby Hendricks and Steve and Linda Rice (his father's second wife is Linda) tried to get involved. Of course Myranda's parents were more than agreeable to visitation and keeping the kids familiar with both sets of their fathers parents. Only the second time around, Palmer's mother Ruby thought that she and her husband should share equal custody with the Claytons. It got to be one big royal pain to deal with, but they were no match for Stanford and his legal eagles, so Julia and Kirk remained with Helena and Stanford.

Two years went by, and Myranda was released into the care of her parents. For a while all was fine, and she seemed to be making remarkable progress. The setback came when Regina admitted to her that she had had an affair with Palmer before he met her and that she was the one to break it off. This breakup had sent him running into the arms of her sister, and that every time they were thrown together Palmer missed no opportunity to tell her that Myranda had been second choice....


Stay tuned for Part Two!!

A Relative Position

It had been a wonderfully enjoyable and romantic trip. The past year had been very good to Helena and Stanford Clayton Sr. They both had so much to be grateful for; as a couple and as individuals. Their marriage had gone through a severe trial as a result of a variety of contributing factors that conspired them to ultimate ruination. But, by the mercy of God, and divine intervention the marriage had survived and not only merely survived...it was thriving and they had never been so happy. It was almost like they rediscovered each other and recognized that they were two people independent of each other; yet still a couple.

In other words, after many years of ignoring the critical signs of marital breakdown, and refusing to address the problem areas of their marriage, Helena and Stanford were tremendously blessed to salvage the remains of a tortured and disintegrating union. After the domestic disturbance they experienced, no one expected them to be able to carry on. The almost total meltdown of them as a married couple had literally been a saving grace.

All of their children and grandchildren were prospering nicely with the exception of Myranda. Myranda Clayton Rice was the middle child, and quite frankly she was the one least expected to be the problem child. If Helena and Stanford would have had to name a child out of the three offspring, it would have been Stanford Jr., (the oldest) that would have been expected to ...well...have issues. Myranda and her husband Palmer had lost quite a bit of money a few years back in a pyramid scheme. Probably one of Palmer's biggest faults was his love of money. He was always looking for ways to turn an easy buck, and not all of these avenues had been exactly above board. His real vice was when he dragged his wife into it and convinced her to invest some of her own private funds into whatever cockamamie thing he was up to at the moment. And at that particular moment, he was into the so-called fast easy money making pyramid scheme.

Myranda knew it was the wrong thing to do when she married Palmer Rice, but she was hell bent on defying her parents. At the end of a brief courtship (she and Palmer dated for six weeks before getting married) they ran off to tie the knot to the dismay and the disappointment of both sets of parents. Palmer bore the brunt of the burden of the illegal scam, and subsequently the worst of the punishment that had been doled out to the four scammers. Philip Dover and Connor Woods were partners in crime with Palmer and had both received the same sentence. Jacob Hearn (who was married to Myranda's sister Regina) and also a pyramid partner had gotten off with the lightest of the sentences. He had to serve three years in a minimum security facility that was more of a "state run country club" than a correctional facility, but whereas he may have gotten off lightly as far as the law was concerned, his ultimate cost came at the dissolution of his marriage. Regina Hearn sued him for divorce the day he went off to "prison" and promptly put him out of her life.

With the financial aid of her parents, she was able to make a fresh start for herself and her twin sons; Eric and Eli. Not only did she set out to recoup her losses (which she did) but she actually made more money through hard work and dedication than she had thought she would. While Regina pulled her life out of the toilet and handled her business like a woman, Myranda on the other hand, used the situation to dig herself further into a hole. Her two children Julia and Kirk were already disadvantaged by the fate of their father, and she only made it worse by just about abandoning them in pursuit of her own worldly pleasures, being selfish and feeling endowed at the same time. When Palmer went off to prison, Julia was only a year old, and Kirk was just turning three. Helena had kept them at her home for nearly a year, providing a full time nanny and giving them both the love and support her wayward daughter could not seem to find the time or the inclination to give.

Now, it is a few years later, and although Myranda has come a long ways from where she was at one time, there was still quite a bit of road remaining to travel. The most important thing to come from her rehabilitation was that she had reconciled to be a better mother to Julia and Kirk. She was making remarkable progress in that area, but her weakness for men was still her personal demon and a wound that didn't want to heal.

Stanford had rescued his beautiful, smart, sexy wife from being a mother of three adult children and grandmother to four lovely and wonderful kids. He took this wife and grandmother away for a long, relaxing vacation; but here's the thing...he left going on this vacation with his wife. He spent the vacation with his woman. His desire was to leave the wife behind and release the woman within to be free to be all that she could, would and should be during the two weeks they spent on the French Riviera. It was a great life and it was filled with doing incredible things.

They were blessed and would never, ever forget it.

Memories...Of The Way We Were

The 2012 Holiday Season is here, and I'm sure that with its approach many of us are anxious about how we will be celebrating them. For great many of us, the memories of happy and carefree holidays past that were celebrated with our loved ones who for some reason or another are no longer with us. Some of these loved ones have gone from us by passing away; while others have moved on to a new life of some sort. Either way; they are no longer a vital part of our lives and for all intents and purposes have left us behind, and all too often their departure has left a huge void that even with the passing of time; has been hard to fill.

Each Thanksgiving Holiday brings back so many treasured memories of being a child growing up in my parents house. The delicious aromas of cooking filled our house, but what I remember most was not just the food aromas, but the house itself had a certain special smell all through it. This was an indescribable fragrance. It was created not only by pine scented decorations or pumpkin pie; I think it was the pure essence of love coupled with the unmistakable sweetness of my Mother that filled the air and made our house a home. My Mother was an excellent cook, and she always laid out a sumptuous spread fit for a king, even though the guests at our table usually consisted of my parents, my younger brother, and our grandparents...maybe an aunt and uncle or two. My Daddy loved the holidays. Absolutely loved them! He would start to stake out a Christmas tree for us right after Halloween was over, and from that time on he was as happy as a child anticipating Christmas.

For Thanksgiving, he would help Momma out in the kitchen by chopping the veggies or the "goodies" as she called them to go into the stuffing and the potato salad. He would joke around with her and tease her so much until finally she had to banish him from her domain in order to get her cooking done. I would be watching the parades on television, reading a magazine or maybe listening to records while they were working in the kitchen and I could hear them talking, laughing, and just loving the closeness they shared simply by being together. She would put him in charge of the turkey from the moment she put the big bird in the oven until it was time to set it on the table as the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving Day meal. There was a certain comfort and a feeling of well-being just knowing that my parents were happy and we were together as a family and most of all that soon I would be eating one of the best meals in the world!!

Both of my precious parents have been gone for a long time...twenty seven and twenty five years as of this year. But although time by the grace of God has healed the wound, and has dulled the pain the void they left can never be filled. Sometimes it seems as if it were only yesterday that I sat at my Mother's table in her warm and cheery kitchen. Sometimes it seems as if I never sat there at all. I am not alone in this experience or this feeling. Anyone who has been orphaned or widowed has felt the enormous pain of loss and has looked at the future ahead of them as bleak and lonely at one time or another. Life as we had known it...has ceased to exist.

I remember my Mother not only at holiday times, but when I'm singing a particular song, or looking at old family photos. I believe that I can still smell her essence when I close my eyes and think hard enough.  When I see her in family photos, I can go back in time mentally and recollect the exact thing she was doing in some of those photos. I can see my Daddy laughing, dancing a little jig when he'd had a little sip or two and see him at the kitchen stove frying bacon for breakfast. I remember him coming home from work tired and dirty from working on automobiles all day. Later when he'd had a job promotion, I recall him as a sales person in a local hardware store...charmingly assisting customers with their purchases. And giving me lunch money on my way to work even after I had become all grown up.

Memories...so many memories! They can comfort, they can make me laugh until I cry, and make me cry until I laugh. I dream of them both quite often. In my dreams they are speaking, but although I can see their faces and discern their features distinctly; I can hardly remember the sound of their voices. But that's okay; they echo off of the walls of my soul and they resound deep in my spirit. Here are the two places where their voices will never be without sound.

I would love to recreate those kind of holidays, but even though I have tried with my own family it just doesn't feel the same. Maybe its because I'm not the same. I'm too different now and too much time has passed with me being on my own. I'm not sure if I'd know how to relate to anyone else at this point in my life. I lose myself in the past sometimes. When I'm anxious, lonesome or feeling blue I go there...back to the little frame house where I spent most of my growing years and I'm safe and taken care of.

I can hear the television with the sound of "Gunsmoke" or "Rawhide" westerns playing and my Daddy is sitting in his easy chair in front of the set, totally immersed in his favorite shows. My Momma is in the kitchen washing dishes and there's cake leftover from dinner sitting on the sideboard. My younger brother is playing with his trains in his room, and I'm sprawled across my bed in my room leafing through an "Archie" comic book. And I remain here until I feel as if its safe to come back to reality, and when I do I feel stronger and more able to accept and to cope. Until its time to go back again.

Memories...of the way we were.