Alone to Die?

A cousin of mine passed away on Thursday. We only stayed in touch sporadically - often through other family members - so the news about her death reached me this morning.

"Yogi's" nickname became the only one that most people knew her by. Somehow, it suited her. Picture a smiling (and always slightly mischievous) young woman who radiated an attitude of "Let's just have fun!"

When we were kids, Yogi and her two sisters were my closest buddies for the two years I lived in Big Spring. I was born there in my mother's hometown on the military base where my father was stationed. My cousins were born there, raised there and damn near defined the meaning of living there.

Those months between my twelfth and fourteenth years really were my formative ones. For Yogi and her sisters, it was just the life they were born to live.

We girls played "church", mimicking what we saw in services we attended at least three times a week. We danced to Jackson Five music and had serious arguments over which of us would end up marrying Marlon instead of Michael - though my cousin Candy preferred Jermaine. One time, my other cousin, Rene, and I performed a dance routine for the other girls. The song we used was "Island Girls" with Elton John and Kiki Dee. (Why did I just remember that? And why did it make me cry so hard?)

A couple of things happened during my time in Big Spring that haunted our lives - my cousins and mine - for so many years. First, I fell in puppy-love with a certain young man. Second, my Uncle "Hotshot" died.

Love and death have things in common.

My uncle's death brought some of us closer together. It gave some of us reasons to build chasms of pain and anger between each other. One of the girls did not attend her father's funeral. She didn't want that to be her last and lasting memory of him. One of the girls followed in the steps of the alcoholism that killed my uncle. One of them started marking time for the day she could leave the town and never come back.

Years later, I married that boy I had loved so much as a child. He broke my grown-up heart and I let it shatter me in a lot of ways. While I was with him, I briefly returned to Big Spring. Maybe I was trying too hard to go back in time.

Big Spring had changed but it hadn't. It seemed so much smaller to me.

Yogi was there, but battling demons of her past just like I was trying to recreate mine. Rene had made it out and Candy had just wandered away. As far as I know, Candy never did attend another funeral. Some of the chasms built in the past had widened from either intent or neglect.

A few years ago, I gave up trying to summon the ghosts of my youth.

My aunt died last year. Yogi, having grown stronger and wiser and more peaceful with her life, handled everything beautifully and on her own. She was doing well.

When my sister called me with the news that Yogi was gone (I hate using the word "dead" because dead means nothing ever anymore), I felt so strange. It was as though something from this side of life shed from my being and shifted to another side.

Yogi died (as another cousin of mine had) during an asthma attack. Someone had come to visit her and found her on the floor.

The first thing I said to my sister is that I hated so much that Yogi had died alone. Think about that, though. Death is a lonely thing. Even if we die in a room of other people dying at the same time, we leave this life on our own. No matter who we are, what we are or do or own, dying is going to be a solo experience.

As a Christian, I believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I believe there is a Heaven, Hell and an Eternity. I want to believe something I was taught as a child: that, as we are dying, angels will come to us.

What was Yogi thinking as she was dying? Was she afraid? I hope not. I hope God sent someone to take her hand and let her know that she was was going to be okay.

R.I. P. Yogi

Valley of the Shadows

I walked over to the edge of my despair last night.
Stood atop the mountain that I've named Hope.
Looked down at the fearsome relief waiting at the bottom.

I toed the rocks called Heavy, letting them drop over.
The sound of them hitting bottom was so long in coming.
Echoes of their destiny took rest in my mind.

I looked over the edge of my despair last night.
Set my fear on one side of my heart, my burdens on the other.
Ground crumbled temptingly beneath my tears.

I will visit my despair in another dream.
Listening in my waking hours for a whisper from Above.
My heart is finding it harder to hear the voice of Peace.

Despair is waiting to welcome, soothe, maybe damn me.
Too much silence in the world of daylight is pulling, pushing.
Shadows of death are closing out the little light I have left.

Desirability - Real, Dreamed, Otherwise

We truly need to learn to think for ourselves. Regarding politics, art, life... But I want to dip my toes in the shallow society's pool for a moment and talk about our ideas of what is desirable and "beautiful".

This is what we are told is pretty:

Unless you're synthetic, why look like this?

Pretty freaking creepy. Unless it's doll. (And these days it might not be...) insert article of people being dolls

When so many of us women -almost all  of us - get tired of seeing this, even when we aren't trying to look:

Pretty, but is it anything like you or me?

If, by some chance, we get a little "variety", this is what's it looks like:

Again: pretty. For a lot of blonde women.

If we stop and trying try growing up past the stuff at the intersection of our legs, this is what we learn is true about beauty:

I'm not here either, but it's closer to the truth.

It's like Mulder used to say about the truth: It's out there. Folks, you just have to look beyond your what you feel and learn to listen to what you think.

I think desirable looks like:


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                                                                   



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

I've talked a lot about the men I find sexy, but seriously, there's nothing sexier to me than a man holding a baby or doing the dishes. That is hot.

Look in the mirror. You are beautiful too, if you want to be.

Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter. (David Byrne)

Battling My Inner Writer

There are people who have to fight to succeed because of their detractors. Haters gonna hate, right? Well, I don't have enemies - or none that I know of. I keep a pretty tight circle of friends.

For all my goals and dreams, my biggest weaknesses come from right inside myself. Or my self.

Being a Cancer is bad enough. I have this damn shell of mine that I retreat into too often for my own good. When I do poke out my head, I am just waiting to get my feelings hurt. Then, when I do take a chance and don't get hurt, I still wait for it. That's not just with relationships, but with writing, working, sharing a confidence... or just walking through the damn grocery store.

There's a lot of good in the Cancer that is me. I am maternal, domestic and I love to nurture others. And I am resolute, strong-willed, ambitious, careful, patient, stubborn.

That's the good stuff. There's plenty of... not-so-good-stuff in there.

As a writer, I am sometimes too lost in a story to tell it. I will dissect and analyze my characters until I feel too protective of them to share their stories. That's if I get to the writing phase of the project. I sometimes think that I get my satisfaction out of creating worlds - not sharing them. Here is how my process usually works:

1. I hear pieces of a story in my head. (Or I just stop ignoring them.) These pieces are collected from my "real" world of life, memories or wishes.
2. Naming my characters and locations. Because what's out there is never right enough for me. 
3. Once I name characters, I have to bring them out of my head and onto paper. Not "onto paper" as in telling their story. Much too early for that. First, I have to get down the details of their facial expressions, how they smell, and, possibly, what their "favorites" are. It's like I have a Teen Beat fact-sheet going. Then I do their family/friend/acquaintance trees. (You think I'm kidding? Dead serious.)
4. Locations are especially tricky since I require a map and I draw like a preschooler using their non-dominant hand. (I went through a 40-sheet spiral with the last location before I got it right.)
5. Now I have to pull together all the different notes (made on paper, on at least 5 different android apps, and out of my head) that contain bits and pieces of dialogue. Dialogue comes to me at all times of the day and night. I have woken up from the nth stage of sleep and written notes on my $20 special-ordered birth certificate.)
6. It's impossible to effectively organize all my notes so I build an ugly wall of them opposite my computer. And I mean a literal (okay, sort of literal) wall: a tape-tacked construct of papers that flutter with every rotation of my room fan. If looking at this ugliness depresses me at any time it's in use, I carefully pull it down and temporarily store it under the bed.
7. When I actually start writing, I am too critical of my efforts. I write and backspace-delete until, after hours and days and weeks of labor, I might have two chapters. Of course, those chapters are stored into five or six different folders on my computer. There's a folder for the version I hate, but keep because it has the most completed words, the one for a version I love but still needs so much work - and then there are the other versions that I kept for reasons I can't remember but am afraid to delete.

I wish I had a Number 8 to add to this list. It would be the part where I finish at least a rough draft of something - anything. Sadly, I've only reached that point three times in my life. It was a trilogy. A coming-of-age love story. Very raw and honest. I got hurt by the person who inspired me so I did something that horrifies me to even think about: I deleted every digital copy, stored backup copy and even the paper printout. It's just gone.

I am currently working on a story. If I can control my inner self and yet let it free, I might have something to publish by the end of my life. Whenever that may be.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” 
― Maya Angelou