She sat on her high bed
Cross-legged,
Thumbing through pictures
Re-reading old messages
Remembering
Days gone by
Love that couldn’t grow
In soil full of promise
Roots pulled out
Over and over.
Still….She smiled,
At the memories
As they crept up her back,
Brushed the hair from her eyes,
And remembered the love.
Just the love.
It’s good to know,
That you can love.
Always and all ways.
I guess that phantom phone call got me thinking, about WTF I was thinking for so long….
It seems long ago now, suddenly. How much I loved a man, and how much I was betrayed. What strikes me this morning is I am trying to fathom what I was thinking, then. To love someone so much who will never love anyone but themselves. And that, only superficially.
I say superficially because this man doesn’t love himself enough to behave in ways that make him proud. He doesn’t love himself enough to take care of himself. He doesn’t do the things in a relationship that take care of it. He only makes sure he is getting his needs met, which translates to getting his ego fed. If he meets the needs of the other person, it is as part of trying to get his needs met, it’s not out of genuine care and concern. And I think that’s true across the board for him. I think he may use different ploys for different people, but it remains the truth. I’ve watched him. I’ve also watched him pursue behaviors that result in reinforcing his low self esteem, setting himself up so he can say, “see, it’s all I deserve. I’m a bad person.”
So anyway, I’m just wondering now, with all this time passed, WTF I was thinking? I’m not angry, I don’t dislike him. I have said over and over I will always love him, and, well, I guess I will. But I love everyone, or try to. Him no more or less than anyone else at the moment. But what I was thinking? IDK, do you think when you’re in love? He had lots of lovable qualities, I guess. The first being that he could make me laugh. He was funny, creative, smart. We had a wonderful physical connection. But he was completely self absorbed. When push came to shove it was always him first. He treated me so badly at times, and I just kept coming back for more, believing that he just needed experience unconditional love.
I guess the distance between us now, the physical distance has given me some perspective. I guess that move has enabled me to meet men who are funny, creative, smart, AND kind, gentle, loving, and generous. Men who try to take care of themselves and their loved ones. Men who squeeze your hand when they’re happy, sitting at a table with you. Men who behave in ways that will keep drama out of their lives, and people in.
Since I believe that our purpose in this life is to learn lessons and evolve our souls, I guess he was another life lesson for me. Now, far enough away from it, the complete lesson is coming into focus. At least part of it is, I think, to know that I can love that passionately, that fiercely, that deeply. That’s a good thing to know. He was practice. I’m sure there’s a man here who can match my ability to love, and celebrate it.
I suppose, based on the phantom phone call dream, that the connection we have had will remain, but will probably remain dormant. It originates on a level I can’t really comprehend, and will most likely always be there, but will not take over my life anymore. Life is for living in the present moment. His journey is his now, and mine is mine, and the paths have diverged far apart. That’s the present moment.
Glad to be moved on from all that. Stomach bug and car accident not withstanding, I’m very happy with the move I’ve made. It was 85 yesterday and I was at the beach. Not dressed in multiple layers and still shivering, lamenting the fact that I was burning up a ton of fuel oil. Yep, life is good, and exactly what I’ve dreamed of.
Love and light, all.
Sometimes it just sets in.
No reason, no rhyme.
Just sometimes.
The world turns upside down,
And hangs me from its teeth
And I can’t breathe.
Sometimes, the longing
For what was and what wasn’t
Takes over my entire being.
I try not to remember
So I remember more.
I try hard not to feel it,
So I feel it more.
No reason,
No comprehension
Of why this happens to me.
But it does.
Misty eyed,
I crawl into a corner,
and I let it bleed.
I lick my wounds,
I close my eyes
I dream a dream
That didn’t come true.
I try to find a new dream.
I don’t.
Waiting for it to leave
As it came.
Unannounced,
Unwelcome.
Without a goodbye
or a Fare Thee Well.
Just to stop.
Just, stop the pain.
Love always, all ways.
Never ending.
I remain.
By Deborah E. Dayen
Picture from Google Images
Evening sets in
She lets go of the day,
The sun’s brightness blinded her
Today.
She welcomes in the night.
The shadows conceal her thoughts.
No one will see her melancholy brow,
Nor the tear she brushes from her cheek.
The things that happened slide through her mind.
Holding on to the golden thread
With which she tenderly secures them to her memory,
Anchoring herself in a swelled sea of emotion.
She remembers how it looked,
That gaze across the table.
The hushed voices in the quiet
Stars twinkling through the trees.
She remembers how it felt,
The heat in the dark,
The touch that connects.
The words left unspoken,
The laughter.
Oh yes, the laughter.
She smiles, then,
In the dark.
She remembers,
How it felt to love.
She’ll love again.
She hopes.
Love always, all ways.
I arrived at the fishing pier with the first rays of daylight. The sky splotched with gray rain clouds and patches of grayish blue. On the horizon over St. Pete Beach across the bay, the sky is pink. There’s a nor’easterly breeze, strong enough. It’s still balmy, which surprises me. In my old home a nor’easterly wind foretold cold weather.
The tide is very low. Probably due to the new moon. Tides are always more pronounced when the sun and the moon share the same sky. The derelict sailboat which broke loose in the recent hurricane sits high and dry on the shore this morning, amid mud flat now exposed. Now I know why I saw someone out clamming one morning, with a rake and hip-waders.
I can see rain falling from some of the clouds offshore. Since the breeze is blowing that way, hopefully they won’t rain on me.
A little slice of day glow pink appears above the horizon where the sun will come up in 15 minutes or so. I have not adjusted to how late the sun rises here, nor how the days are almost exactly 12 hours, and how the difference between the length of a summer day vs. a winter day is about an hour or two. No months where it’s dark at 4:30 in the afternoon, and no 15 hour nights.
Life just continues on in its laid-back way here. Going to watch a local band tonight with friends. We can volunteer to help set up the place and then get in free. I think it will be a good way to meet people anyway.
There were just a bunch of fish jumping, as if being chased. When they stopped, I could see a small dorsal fin sticking out of the water. Maybe it was a small shark, herding smaller fish.
The sun is almost up. It’s been a pleasant, solitary sunrise this morning, though I was greeted with a “good morning” by s few of the fishermen on the pier.
Edited: it was not a shark, but a dolphin. As I got up to leave it began swimming around the end of the pier. This is as good a picture as I could get.
The day begins, peacefully. Full of gratitude and love to be able to watch the morning unfold.
Love and light…
Shimmering skin heats
Passions in the recesses
Where love is hidden.
Touching in the dark
Prescience forecasts the future,
Longings unfulfilled.
Dreams awake yearnings
Long asleep where abandoned
Wait to manifest.
By Deborah E. Dayen
Image from Google Images
I slept hard last night. Nightmare, of hate and anger. Displaced, afraid. Real fear that they were coming to get me, and that I would die in their hands. (I don’t know who they were, maybe Nazi’s. With tanks. And soldiers marching.) Then, in the dream, I told myself I was dreaming. And that I could combat their hate and anger and fear with love.
I did. I turned the tide, I sent the fear packing, I taught them that they deserved love, and they lay down their arms.
Still, it was a hard and terrifying dream.
Not sure what brought it on. Probably some deep-seated stuff, from the past.
Whatever. This morning I awoke early, around 5:30. My room was cool, I could hear the faint hum of the ceiling fan. I tried to go back to sleep but decided about 20 minutes later that that was not happening. I got up, tried to write, and did, but not sure it’s worthy of publication. I need to re-read and edit.
I decided it was time for me to see the sunrise here in my new hometown. So I quickly got dressed in my bathing suit top, and a skort, and drove the short mile or so to the beach. I parked along the street, as the first rays of dawn broke the sky.
There is a long fishing pier on the beach. I headed down the pier, into the gray and pink early morning light. The pier was dotted with a few fishermen, people walking dogs, people exercising. But not more than a dozen people in all. They all greeted me, everyone, with a “Good morning.”
Felt like I was taken into a brother/sisterhood, of people who love the morning. I walked to the end of the pier. I guess it’s maybe 500′ long? I’m a bad judge of distance.
On the way, I passed a gull on the rail, so still I didn’t think it was real. He just watched me as I passed by. Then, a great blue heron flew in and landed on the rail, about 100′ in front of me. As I approached, taking my camera out of my pocket, it flew away.
I got to the end of the pier, and sat on a bench. I was alone. I set my cup of coffee next to me and closed my eyes and just breathed. Tried to take in that this was now my home. Listened to nothing but the sounds of the sea birds, and worked at finding peace again, the remnants of that nightmare still on the fringes of my psyche.
When I opened my eyes again, the sky to the east was breaking dawn. Turning the clouds pink, and gold. It is something I will never tire of, seeing a day come in over the water like that.
There were a lot of boats anchored in the bay, many with their dinghies laying in the water behind them, signaling that they were aboard. I thought how lovely a place to anchor out. One boat had two dinghies behind it. I made up a story in my head of people coming from one boat to the other, drinking wine and talking late into the night, too late and too dark to find their way back to their own boat, and staying with friends instead. Like Van Morrison’s song, “So Quiet in Here”. “this must be what paradise is like, so quiet in here….”
After awhile, two women came walking past my bench, and struck up a conversation. One of them had a dog, she did not stay long, her dog was anxious to go. But the other woman and I talked. She’s lived here for 20-something years. She used to live in Philly and Martha’s Vineyard. We talked about the Vineyard, and the breach that happened about 8 years ago in the south beach, and changed the whole nature of Katama Bay, and made Chappaquiddick a real island.
She walks often, she said, so maybe I’ll see her again there. Her name was Mary.
I got up and walked back down the pier Most of the fishermen had gone by then. I walked along the sidewalks, past what says is a casino, but is really a dance hall now, advertising lessons and dancing in fox trot, tango…ballroom dancing, for $8. No partner needed. Might be fun to learn the tango. Outside is a sculpture which says this town is Florida’s best kept secret. I’m beginning to agree. I walked past the permanent beach vollyball courts, and along the beach for a while.
As the town woke up, I headed back home, to record this, my first sunrise here. What a lovely way to start the day. I think it may become a habit.
Love and light.
The evening air was sultry.
Sea breezes blew across our shoulders
from the bay
From beyond,
Giving us respite from the heat of the day.
Quiet music charmed the diners
As we sipped our tea
And carried on intimate conversations,
Or laughed together,
And met new people,
Under the lights strung through the trees
Like twinkling stars.
We clapped our hands
For the singers
Who got up and sang for free
For the joy of singing.
Only happiness and contentment
Filled the air.
Sometimes it’s not that way
Sometimes it’s more raucous
With singers belting out the blues
Or rock and roll,
And people dancing.
But not that night.
That night was just laid back
And perfect.
Evoking memories
Of hot summer nights
In another life
Long ago and far away
And intimate conversations
Under the stars
With people that I loved,
Still love.
There is a continuum,
From then to now.
The energy and the love survive all,
Love always, and all ways.
My bff, as I suspected she would, had a surprise going-away party for me last night. She’d asked me to dinner, but I know her. I knew I wasn’t going to get away with just a dinner. So when I got there about 20 of my closest friends were there.
I started to cry, just for a second, that they were all there, for me. No one, ever, has thrown a surprise party for me. Just was so nice, just wrapped up in the love of the people I love. They’ve all said they wanted to come see me in FL. I know not all of them will, I know some of them will.
We ate, and drank, and told stories, and laughed. I love going to my bff’s house, because I know I will laugh there until my stomach hurts. I only had one drink. I was tired when I got there. But it was just fun, relaxing. Caught up with everyone before I left.
A few people gave me gifts, which totally surprised me. How nice! I am going to have to get some cards that I can write thank you notes on, to all the people at work and my friends.
I don’t think there’s anyone I haven’t said goodbye to now. And I’ve been good, I’ve barely cried at all. At least not til I’m alone. I think I may cry when I leave town, maybe when I leave my house to go to my friend Susan’s for the two nights before I leave. The movers are coming Tuesday to take my stuff. Wednesday I’ll clean the house, and we’re leaving early Thursday, really early like around 5 am, to beat the NYC traffic because we have to go over one of the bridges over the Hudson. So, I will stay at her house after the movers take my stuff.
I am nervous, and anxious, and excited, and happy, and sad. I have never had so many mixed emotions about anything. Yet, I know it’s the right thing, only choice I can make that makes any sense for me to be able to spend some time not working. So I forge ahead, each day, and make the dream come a little closer. When I get to Florida, Susan will be with me, and my friend Pat from high school who lives there, and my other high school friend Cathy who is coming over from Daytona just to help me move in. So I will be greeted and in the company of more people I love. In October my sister will be down for the winter, I can’t wait for that, to be able to be close to her. It’s all good.
I am so blessed, just so incredibly blessed. That I am able to do this at all, to make this choice, to have had family to help me do it, and life-long friends. My bff toasted me last night, reminding me that we have been friends since I brought her Glorious Morning Muffins when her father died, and we sat at her kitchen table and bonded. 20 years ago. She has stuck with me through my horrible marriage and divorce, and helped me to move out, and advised me to leave Scott in the dust long before I could imagine it, but she was right. She could see how he treated me, and how I was taking it and after my ex, she couldn’t stand to see me let Scott do what he did to me. But she also never got mad at me for my inability to let him go, she knew I really loved him. Though one time, when I asked her to go shopping she said, “Ok, I’ll go, but we’re not talking about him.” LOL. And we didn’t. I don’t think she and I, or any of my friends have ever uttered an unkind word to each other. True true friends. We are there for each other, all of us, without judgment, with only unconditional love.
The path opens, and it is paved with the wonderful things that have been put in my life. I know there are more waiting for me there.
Love and light, everyone.
In a silent house
His laughter still fills the air.
Love knows no distance.
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