Author Archives: debaucherysoup
“Rapture”
‘Back to back
Sacrailiac
Spineless movement
And a wild attack
Face to face
Sadly solitude
And it’s finger popping
Twenty-four hour shopping in Rapture’ – Blondie
This one’s going to be tough. But it’s time.
I just watched a documentary called “The Released”, about mentally ill offenders struggling to make it on the outside. To see the pain in their eyes – the hopelessness and helplessness, just broke my heart.
Something an Outreach member said really stuck with me. “People are being released with one to two weeks of medication and being told to follow-up at this time and this date with this agency. Which assumes that they have the judgement that they need to continue their medications as prescribed and it also assumes they have the cognitive capacity to be proactive with phone calls, making appointments, discussing how many days of their medications they have left. It assumes a lot”.
I had never thought of it that way. How does someone mentally ill remember that it’s time for their pills? I occasionally forget to take my heart medicine – and always have had a hard time remembering to take antibiotics three times a day!
I’m digressing. Or avoiding.
Bottom line is I was reminded of a topic I want, or need to share about.
Back to rapture.
Sixth grade, and I’m in a new country, a new school – feeling completely lost and out-of-place. I met someone who would become my best friend for many years.
In the locker room she was singing ‘Rapture’ and she knew all the words. THAT was impressive. There began a friendship that would have more of an impact on me than I could have known.
We had our good times – but even the good times had an undercurrent that I didn’t have the understanding or life experience to identify.
I felt it – always felt it, but couldn’t put my finger on what was ‘off’.
My best friend was cruel. My best friend was a ‘bad influence’. My best friend was a chameleon, because she hid her sickness from parents and peers and saved it all for me.
There were constant threats to keep me in line. And constant verbal, physical and mental abuse. She took me on her wild ride and I so desperately wanted her acceptance that I followed. She was all I had. I didn’t see it at the time, but she was also the reason she was all I had. Why didn’t I end the friendship? I was scared of her and scared to lose her.
She would sing ‘somebody wants to hurt somebody’ as we lay in the dark at her house. She could do a spot on imitation of the Excorsist growl. She effectively isolated me from others at school by embarrassing me and telling me she was my only friend. It got to the point I would drop in the hall when she asked me to tie her shoe – and do it.
She introduced me to lying, to sneaking out, to drugs. I remember thinking when I was scared “I just want to go home”. I didn’t want to be where we were. I didn’t want to do what we were doing. But I was just a kid, scared to say no, and I did as I was told.
I was terrified of my best friend.
There was an atmosphere around her that scared the hell out of me. A darkness. A thickness in the air of almost palpable evil.
Wow this is hard.
Our Freshman year of High School, something shifted. And I’m honestly not really sure what the catalyst was, but she delved deeper into debauchery with a new friend and I found a healthier ‘relationship’. She ended up leaving the school – and town – and getting married then pregnant.
I’m leaving a lot out, I know. Truly, I’m really uncomfortable even thinking about the years we spent together. I didn’t anticipate feeling this.
We’d cross paths now and again. Then our paths didn’t cross for a very long time.
When I had my son, I spoke with her. She revealed something that made a lot of things make a lot of sense.
She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
In conversations over the years following that revelation she shared more. Before she was diagnosed and treated, she had tried to kill her daughter. She didn’t believe it was her daughter at the time. Even on medication the voices never left her.
God, what she must have been going through all those years! My torture a direct result of her inner turmoil. I didn’t know! I didn’t know.
I’m a little ashamed to say this was almost a relief. It wasn’t me! She couldn’t help her behavior. I wasn’t a target because of anything I was.
But I couldn’t forgive her.
While her condition obviously wasn’t contagious – our time together had a profound affect on choices I would come to make and my own mental health. Combined with other life events, her actions left me feeling less than, ugly, worthless, afraid, submissive and unimportant. We’re so impressionable during those formative years! We’re becoming the people we’re going to be as we soak up our immediate environment and draw upon what we experience.
It took years to figure out I could decide who I wanted to be and change my life.
We met again many more years later. This girl who had always put me down and told me how much prettier she was than me was now morbidly obese due to the medications she was diligently taking.
She told me I looked like a model. She looked at me with clear eyes and I was undone.
But, I still couldn’t forgive her.
She sent Christmas cards, tried to contact me – sent me letters. I’d call her occasionally, she’d share what was going on with her and her family.
And I still couldn’t forgive her.
This last Christmas I sent her a card – and didn’t hear back. This was strange, because prior to the holidays she’d called my mom and asked her to have me call her.
I hadn’t called.
I thought about her more and more and eventually did try to reach her. Her phone number was disconnected.
I found her sister on Facebook and sent her a message asking if she was alright? No response.
My gut tells me that she is no longer with us. I can’t explain why – just a feeling. Something has happened.
She was sick – and I wish that girl singing ‘Rapture’ in the locker room in 6th grade had found relief sooner. I wish she had known a peaceful heart and a quiet mind.
I wish I knew where she was, because, I want her to know that I forgive her.
Really? Eye roll worthy product (IMO) #2
Future Hoarders of America! They’re here!
And with a catchy tagline like: “How Much Stuff can U Stuff in a Stuffies?” They’re daring you to push those plush pouches to their limits!
Plus kids, In a few years, when you’re in your ‘tweens’ they’ll make great hiding spots for things you don’t want your parents to find! ^_^
Good grief.
Happy and I know it (still clapping my little blog hands)
I am happy. I am off the hedonic treadmill and go to lengths to be sure I don’t visit that apparatus again!
I wondered today, if I asked everyone to take a week to come up with 3 things that make them happy, what would they be?
That in mind, I thought I should do the exercise first and found there was no way in heck there were just going to be three things!
This will be part 1 of ‘Happy and I know it’ because there’s just so much to say!
I brainstormed and these things came flowing out first:
The unexpected, scents, laughter, LOVE, giving, harmony, nature, imagination, innocence, music, animals, simplicity, synergy, absence of ego, rhythm, anticipation. I added: Faith, sparrows, having ‘enough’, beautiful actions, learning, kindness, compassion, gratitude.
In no particular order – a little on a some of the big ones for me.
Laughter. I’m talking the real deal – eyes closed, authentic, almost no sound coming out laugher. Side splitting, tears in my eyes, can barely breathe laughter. And if you’re laughing, I’m laughing. SO contagious. My son makes me laugh at least once every single day.
Imagination. From reading to movies, dreams and writing – expressing myself creatively or losing myself in someone elses creativity – that’s a big one for me.
Love. Love for a child, love for friends – loving complete strangers and ok, that first kiss and having butterflies in the tummy. This has to be my number one. Love is absolutely, I believe, what ‘it’ is all about. I’ll never forget J.K. Rowling telling Oprah how she thought of the passengers on one of the 9/11 flights – how they KNEW they were going to die, and the last thing they wanted to do was reach their loved one and just get to tell them “I love you”. Powerful. Truly powerful. They weren’t thinking about work, or their cars or their jewelry. It all came down to love.
Gratitude. Oh am I ever grateful! For everything I have, for everything I don’t have. I’m grateful to have ‘enough’. I don’t want more than that. I’m grateful for every breath, every moment, everything. I say ‘thank you’ every night. I get down on my knees, squeeze my eyes tight and bow my head and say ‘THANK YOU!!!’.
Compassion and kindness. I love seeing these in others and strive to practice them myself. Being of service to each other is so important. Forgetting ourselves, getting lost in bringing joy to others results in absence of ego.
Scents. Wow. We have the obvious – rain, fresh-cut grass – puppy breath, bacon cooking (or is that just me?). Some of my favorite scents though are attached to memories. I keep a bottle of mint sauce (that reminds me of tea time and a blue checkered table-cloth) in the fridge, just for an occasional sniff.
My Nannie’s green house where she grew tomato plants. I had recurring dreams of that smell … the plants mixed with the warm wooden planked floor and the soil. I could sit in there and just breathe that in all day long.
I love the soap she uses too – and the smell of her bed sheets after they were hand washed and line dried. Dreamy. ^_^
Anticipation. I LOVE being ‘next’ in line. I love Christmas Eve. I love that feeling BEFORE an upcoming event. I think this is because there’s still that delicious excitement buzzing in the air. It hasn’t happened yet – it’s not over. I love, love, love looking forward to something.
Music. Opera, classical symphonies, every decade, every genre, music makes me so very happy. Andrea Bocelli brings me to tears, Freddie Mercury’s voice elicits goosebumps. Music makes my heart and soul leap! And Theres nothing like a live performance, love that throb you can feel in your chest from the speakers!
Being deliciously tired is another thing that makes me happy, and I’m feeling that now. So I’ll wrap this up with a couple of quotes that I didn’t come up with.
“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.”
― Dalai Lama XIV
“By not seeking your own happiness, you find it”.
— Unknown (to me at this moment … I’m seriously tired lol)
Tired, but HAPPY!
A little blue
No particular reason, I just feel a little blue.
Feeling quiet, introspective, a little sleepy too.
I’m not angry, I’m not sick. Not worried, not in fear.
Just a little blue and thought I’d talk about it here.
I gave the word a Google search, and one thing that I found,
was this lovely blue umbrella, just laying on the ground!
That made me smile, reminded me, how much I love the rain!
So I searched for blue umbrellas now and found my smile again.
Why stop there? My mood was lifting – then I found this book,
I loved the art! Now I’m intrigued – here, have a little look.
This last one is my favorite – because I never did.
The blues will pass, I’m smiling now – and so’s my inner kid ;D
(“When did we stop jumping in puddles?”)
You down with OCD? “Yeah! You know me!”
When I was just a wee girl, I’d avoid cracks in the pavement. We’ve all done that right? After all, I did not want to arrive home to find my mum with a sudden and pretty serious back injury. Ok, pretty normal.
Things evolved. To get the nerve up to jump from a diving board, or do anything I was scared to do, a little voice in my head would inform me that if I didn’t do it by the count of three – ‘your mum will die!’. Wow! Talk about escalating the consequences!
Walking home in the dark? “If that car passes you before you reach the lamp-post, your mum will die”. GULP! I must have looked like a crazed sprinting deer in those cars headlights.
Obviously ‘it’ had it in for my mum. ‘It’ knew my weaknesses and played upon them.
As I got older, I reasoned with myself that these were irrational behaviors. SO – my mind came up with fun new ones! JOY!
I got stuck for a while doing a ‘teeth’ thing. (Not as bad as Poe in “Berenice”).
I’d have to click my teeth together in a quick bite action then make a little sound in my throat. Next came having to blow into glasses to make sure there was no dust inside before using it as a vessel.
(To be fair, that one might actually have spawned from an occasion there was actual dust in a glass I had selected from the cupboard – who knows).
Room messy? That’s OK. But God forbid one drawer be open even one inch. I could be completely comfortable, deliciously sleepy and no matter what – I’d have to climb out of bed and close the drawer. Sometimes more than one drawer was actually ajar, but ‘it’ fixated on just the one. (does ‘ajar’ apply to drawers, or is that just doors?).
I conquered the tooth thing, stopped making the little noise in my throat and weaned myself off of blowing into clean glasses. It was pretty excruciating to be honest. But I did it.
‘It’ wasn’t amused. Next came having to tap my bottom teeth on the underside of a glass before taking a drink. 3 times. AND in a certain pattern. 1 … 2,3. UG. Hey, at least I hadn’t needed to blow in it before the tap ritual!
That one fizzled out over time. (took the teen years to adulthood but hey! Better late than never).
“Must touch” was next.
One example, when I worked for a bank here in town , I HAD to touch a certain ficus leaf every time I passed it. I tried hiding it at first, then realized everyone knew and by then, no one actually cared. They were used to me and my oddness.
I got over that one too. I’m not sure if it was ever actual OCD – or stress related – or what, but one thing I’ve always had issues with is my affinity for inanimate objects.
Oh yeah, at the office, at home, in the yard … public places. (I’m the one that put the box back on the shelf that you stepped over in the grocery store, you’re welcome).
Rewind to the ‘wee girl’ again. I HAD to have all of my stuffed animals on the bed. Not for a cozy security reason, but because I didn’t want to hurt any of their feelings by not choosing them. I could have smothered in the night there were so many!! No joke! But, if I left any of them out, I just knew they’d come alive in the night and kill me.
As I got older, the empathy part grew (thankfully not so much the fear that objects were going to kill me).
Food: ALL items in a can must come out of said can.
How is that poor lone baked bean going to feel if it’s friends get to be part of dinner and achieve their destiny – while it was grown, chosen, processed, packaged – only to land in the garbage, in the can??!!
It gets worse. If I touch a piece of paper, oh, let’s say a fax cover sheet, then let’s say I’m interrupted and accidentally pull another slice of paper out, I’m screwed.
That first sheet thought IT was going to be used!! And now, the second piece is all excited thinking it’s the chosen one. ARG!!!!!!!!!!!
I have literally had to take two pieces of paper, (or envelopes, or folders) out to a co-worker to pick for me.
I still feel awful for the one that didn’t get picked, but a lot less anxious.
The good news is, this madness seems to wax and wane.
I can usually override the need to follow through with rituals. OK, once in a blue moon I still tap my teeth on a cup or glass, but usually only when I’m stressed.
And it’s perfectly normal to hug my son 3 times, give him 3 air kisses, in sets of 3 every night – right??
And it’s totally nothing to worry about that when I’m standing outside, watching as he walks up the road on the way to the bus stop, he turns to wave 3 times …
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!
Debauchery Soup 