#MeToo | RealStuff by RealMe

Obsessive Reflections; Listening Blindly to Memories of You

Posted on October 17, 2023 by ROCK

The mirror shows a reflection that is not my own now. Lm was a young girl of thirteen when she turned all feelings inward; no one could truly know Lm or reach her no matter how hard they would try. They, meaning, my desperate mother, teachers, school counsellors, psychologists, and “friends”; from there came bullies who learned not to cross me and then silence when I passed nosey neighbours and those who fed my peculiarities.

MiddleMe, doesn’t want to remember Dad, but Lm breaks down without him. Tears spill and plop down onto the paper she is writing on. Lm is learning that Mm doesn’t hate you; she detests your lying, bullying, and trauma invoking behaviours such as witnessing the grooming of your new younger conquest, your next spouse, and endless lovers in between. We are not your enemy; you’ve done a good job at hating yourself for eighty years.

Lm however remembers just “US”; fourteen years of just Lm and you. She hid all your ugly behaviours and stuffed them into a closet with a heavy lock for her need to be loved and love was stronger than she. The parts she hangs onto are singing in wonderful harmony, a shared love of sentiment and this unspoken code that read, ” I got your back”. She had your back until Mm just, just couldn’t, watch her try anymore. Dad, “You were a stupid teenager and human; parenting was out of the question for you. I feel sorry for your sons who could not be seen because you took up all their space with your ego.” Mm screams this to Lm.

She mirrored many of your behaviours which Mm so wishes could be erased. Thing is Dad, no matter how much her heart can be set afire with a desire to see you and hold your hand again, you will never admit the truth. It’s completely impossible for you to tell a straight up honest story. We love our siblings which you have strayed like breadcrumbs across the globe, yet the pact you push is, “Shut-up or get lost”. Mm won’t go down that road with you and your “NOW” family. You manipulated our dearest treasure, our first baby sister, then my unforeseen siblings became jaded from your lies. You embalmed your current partner with some sick, dysfunctional image of you as honourable, admirable, worthy. She is the enabler you needed when we quit the job. So, while Lm’s tears are justified, and memories can be good, Mm tells her you are dead. Merging is difficult for Lm and Mm. They are learning that they can talk to you without any fear through heaven’s ears where they imagine God makes you listen. He or She or They sit on you and force you to hear Lm and God threatens to send you back to earth and do it all over again, yet with honesty. Oh, this dream is a good one. We wish you were not a dream, nor a place we fall into if a photo appears of you. Our minds too often visit a place where good times live.

If we were to see you in human form again it would be brief; we want you to only cry and say, “I love you; I am sorry! “Bravely, Mm and Lm would turn away and walk away stronger as one. But alas it is not a movie, a dusty western where we win, and you lose. The reality show is we all lose.

No Photos

Posted on October 3, 2023 by ROCK

Twenty-Twenty Vision Without Paparazzi

One thing ROCK, Lm and Mm, (Middle Me), agree on is there shall be no frivolity when we speak our truths.

No fancy decor as we all know truth is very black and white. It is or it is not. It isn’t wrapped in pretty paper and often leads to complete hell.

Lm looks up to Mm in awe. How did we get this far, this strong, and survive? ROCK. We came from a history of strong women on mother’s side. Our family name was Steele. Our heart’s were soft but our character was pure, selfless and like in the delightful film, Lilo and Stitch, “Ohana”, means family; nobody is left behind.

Being strong means letting go. Releasing our need to validate our truths, offing the redundant longing for acknowledgement from those we dream of standing up for us is a must do. Honestly,those who hurt us do not care if it means damaging themselves. Siblings, ugh. To stay in today’s reality show one must, “stay out of the ugly”, less the reality show be cancelled. Truth jeopardizes who “they”, “we”, “us”, are collectively; breaches what is needed in regards to family and most are too weak to stand up for the black sheep who has been kicked to the gutter. All on the table, hands up, a good liar is always preferred when the good go rogue.

Uncaptured Memories

Posted on August 28, 2023 by ROCK

How far can one run before all that one is trying to forget, divert, and escape comes back to where we have fled? Is this the middle of our lives where we draw a truce breathlessly, stop bargaining with our pasts and face the incongruities of our deepest emotions? Or do some of us weasel around our truer selves, aborting our most harmful and hurtful memories?

I don’t know that everyone is as introspective and determined as I to make sense of my losses and embrace my gains. Many I know continue the grand avoidance by burying themselves in newness or clinging to safe behaviours which cause them deep regret. Newness, as in changing jobs, locales, or partners. Some embrace a new religion or avert their deepest threats by falling into the huge word, and world of “addictions.”

To fully grasp ROCK’s significance, is to understand that most all of us have an inner strength, a will, one could say to push on, to overcome adversities and pursue, albeit often ignorantly, a better place for ourselves. Not all of us have the skills, in fact, most of us do not. We learn the tricks along the way, bumping into walls, heading down one-way streets that end in catastrophe and facing the unexpected dips in the road with surprise. ROCK knows that no one has control over anything other than their miniscule tasks that give them the illusion of control. Unloading the dishwasher, vacuuming, and tidying up one’s surroundings gives some people a sense of control. True adhesiveness, however, doesn’t exist. Life will get messy again and again and there is not a damn thing we can do about it but examine who we are, accept our temporary gift of living on this planet and make choices that will break our hearts, or others, lose loved ones and gain loved ones, discover our passions and cling to them, for at the end of the day it will not matter how well you ironed that table cloth, only who sat around the table with you and enjoyed your company.

LittleMe is the part many of us hide away, live with in a small corner of our memories and try to avoid. There are amazingly many whose LittleMe is quite satisfied. They were adored, cared for and have the childhood the rest of us can only dream of; we can’t undo what is done, yet we can undo how we let what was done THEN affect our NOW.

Just when I think ROCK has given all the power to LittleMe and my NOW self can live in contentment, even joyfully, there will be a wee part, still unhealed that can be triggered and the roof I have built with confidence caves in. There’s more to address with all of me and with ROCK.

For readers who have been following our journey from October 2021 perhaps you can see growth, we can, but the self-doubt is very present and MiddleMe must address some more hurts that broke her carefree ways, her giving heart and the unkindness, unfairness the world delves out and learn to shake the fear she still clamours to quell within.

I hope you stay with us on the journey as LittleMe, MiddleMe and ROCK cut through the untrodden jungle within.

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Extricated;Revelations of Freedom

Posted on August 24, 2023 by ROCK

Revisions of LittleMe

Photo by Tolga Aslantu00fcrk on Pexels.com


Upon a mattress of memories, covered in a blanket of words
The ceiling is removed, my mind wanders like driftwood
Washing up on the pebble coated shore
Sun hidden, yet it will shine again

Free now, with no constraints upon me
Except for those I have created myself
My eyes watch as clouds shift
Shadows of LittleMe linger yet I am not hindered

Letting go of you was the best part of me
Not caring, not wondering, no second thought remains
Rock pulled me through the stench of unrequieted suffering
Like the fires of hell, each piece of me was burned 
As a steamy iron flattens out the wrinkles
Patience led to a better version of now

No longer am I tied to you
Blood bares no meaning
Selfless, I once gave you all of my dreams
My visions are only mine now
Each hour a page is turned

The further I delve into my gentleness
My heart without borders sighs
I soar above you
I always have

What makes a woman strong is not the good days
Untethered, we can face our needs
Without roses
Without holding another's hand
I hold my own

Courage to speak the words
That create our story
Defies dysfunction

Trees begin as saplings, just like me
Each branch stretches out with a bit of my growth
Each leaf is new, renewed, then falls
Like the end of summer
A bit of old me is left
An autumnal breeze is my new pulse

Rock does not sway like unbridled emotions
Together we finished another season of me
Triumphantly without your curse
LittleMe curls around her newness
Clouds will always move
As I move
Further and further away from you

I was not born brave; sorrow made me courageous
I am proud that I found peace with my anger
One by one the leaves fall away
Taking you with them
Steadfast I remain
For I am still beautiful in my nakedness

LittleMe

Posted on August 21, 2023 by ROCK

Moving Toward Forgiveness

What you gave me was the feeling of being important, of mattering, of being irreplacable,capable and loved. What you stole from me was everything I clung to and it has taken me years to see, to feel, to love and forgive myself. I am the pearl, the rare gem and you are no longer in charge of my value. I am so much more than you ever deserved. I am genuine, not some nock off rolex from the side alley in the city. I am no longer just LittleMe, I am ROCK solid. I am as gentle as the still lake on a fall morning, I am noone who needs to hide my heart or be afraid anymore. The stone is more than a shield, it is a tool, one that helped me grow away from you and into me. I am sorry for who you lost, for I was always the only TRUTH you had known. I release you and I can laugh again. You were not my hero afterall. I am my hero.

Sleepy Eyes;The Reawakening

Posted on July 11, 2023 by ROCK

Lm Rises With Relentless Passion

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

Eyes Squint as the sun rolls over the hills pulling Lm up and out of her lengthy hibernation.
There is a grace around her,calmness is rewarded with a toast of familiar aromas between her and Rock. He has stood silent, never pushing her to write or paint for he knows she always will find her bearings after all these years as one. One woman, wound in threads of her past, always mending her wounds, sometimes unravelling and redoing her old patterns. She rips at the stitching she has worked so diligently on and then regrets her lack of believing in her self.
Rock is not one to heal, he simply listens to her heartbeat, her dreams, and guards her memories with pride. He loves his protective role, yet desperatly longs for Lm to embrace him and allow their codependency to gain an impenetrable force of a love for life beyond the silences lingering between them.
Lm has indeed been writing on the walls in her stairwell, deeply hidden in her darkness she creates prose and poetry that brings heavy tears to those with a true understanding of the life she has lived, survivied and continues to embrace.
Rock pulls open a drawer where some of her writng is growing stale, longing to be shared with the world. "Go on" he insists, "Put it out there!" Lm feeling somewhat nervous takes the words she has written and takes to the keyboard of her laptop.
Poem? Prose? Lm sees no reason to give her words a title and let's it spill into print.

Like turmeric, pomegranate,and cumin, we fill the room with exotic spice.
Pungent scents of our newness exhale around our discovery, circling like a dancing nymph.
Ochre and cinnamon, brassy, hot, flesh soothed only by the midnight air.
Dainty, cool, silver falls upon our sturdy moon, a flash of our future, our beginnings. Desert orange, a flush of your cheeks.
An odd mixture of clay and clover, of cabbage and okra, we long to be the same.
We grope for the chance to blend.
We are an experiment, unlikely ingredients combined by chance.

Rock can't applaud but is pleased. His stoic face never gives way to emotion.
Dissociative still, yet hope will always be on each mornings horizon.

The Revelations of Rock; Lm is Growing Into Herself

Posted on March 16, 2023 by ROCK

For new readers, I highly recommend that you return to October 2021 when Little Me was fighting the inner flight from her dysfunctional childhood and adolescence to get over her “Daddy issues”.

Sixty years and some Rock is finally letting Lm fend for herself; her regressions are fewer and her boundaries tight. There are fences to mend and some details to box up and burn. Sixty years it has taken this one inner girl to accept that her father, her idol, first love to whom no one could ever compare was and is a fraudulent character created in his head and placed into hers. No man matched his wit, his charismatic charm, his ability to control an entire room, and several other’s lives. She no longer sees him this way, in fact she pities that he was so ashamed of who he really was he had to hide behind falsities his entire life. That’s a truly gruesome story. Lm’s husband says that he knows she still ” misses him” for one of her weaknesses is sentimentality, recalling both hilarious and almost unbelievable tales of her father’s antics. Rock knew she was healthy when on her birthday her father managed to email her an ” I will always love you” birthday message. It meant nothing to her and she quickly blocked him and deleted it. It was to soothe his soul, not hers. He will be eighty this month and surrounds himself with trained sheep who jump through hoops to please him. Lm doesn’t wish him harm and from her understanding of karma, she is just as susceptible to its varietal awakenings. In a warm, cozy hotel full of books and antiques and oddities of interest she sips her Rooibos tea in soft yellow lighting, Norah Jones had sung repeatedly for an hour via the sound system and she no longer cries. Her husband has treated her to a two night get away and she knows his authenticity, his love awaits her.

Half and Half; The Division of Self

Posted on December 21, 2022 by ROCK

Chronic Pain; The Modalities of Madness

“It’s that TIME of year, the gruelling, catastrophic melancholy jingles of good tidings deepen Lm’s bastard of a headache.” Rock reminds Lm it’s not her “JOB” to be jolly. Lm thought last year was tough with her mother visiting; fibromyalgia, brain fog and her severe spinal pain made being merry impossible; polite and engaging was a morose daily event. Lm’s mother still does not get it even though she says she does. Her mother wakes at seventy-nine years old in good health, fully dresses, puts on her jewellery and lipstick then the giant elephant, PAIN in the ass, Lm woke slovenly, unrested, clad in in her night clothes, needing the toilet and wishing her mother to be quiet. “Good morning!” “How do you feel today?” Blah, blah, blah would ensue, and Lm would use the bathroom then excuse herself to her room again. She had wanted to shout and completely lose her fucking cool and say, ” I don’t know what a good morning is!” “I feel like shit”. What a tiring memory; simply recounting it drives steel bars through Lm’s ears, clanging, banging, whistling to the point of insanity, “Tinnitus”, Rock recalls. Lm glares at Rock, “Shut up, you don’t have ears.” Now, after having covid last March 2022 Lm has made a steady decline, like a little steam engine riding it’s breaks she slowly took each turn, believed she was in control and would not careen into the mountain sides and land in a big heap culminating into a pile of unsalvageable parts. Yet, she did. She is a heap of bitter moments, throbbing bones, more and more fatigued each minute as she lies entangled within her dreadful blob of perpetual turmoil. Dreams are cruel and vivid now. Christmas music isn’t cutting it for her and Rock pushing her to wash her hair, take more pain meds only irritates her. An unwelcomed mouse gnaws in the ceiling above her bed and her eyes burn from lack of rest. Sleeping is her game now. Fa la la la la. Rock is not as strong now. He has always carried her with crushing will and managed her weaknesses; it’s obvious he is vulnerable, too. She has clung to his ability to push through the physical pain, the abuse, the sickness, the past, the failures and smile. He can’t do it alone now and is scared. Who will help Lm? Who will see she is too weak to fight much longer? She does have two promising doctors now and soon will fly off to a special hospital for chronic repetitive pain patients. What about her CPTSD, BadDad, unresolved “Black Sheep” night terrors? What about suicidal ideation? No one wants to hear this part. Amsterdam is sounding like a good place to depart this goddamn nightmare. Laying on sofas, forgetting words, sleeping for hours now while it seemed like a romp in the snow wasn’t so long ago, a wintery walk through the forest, cooking masterfully with passion, playing a game of cards with the kids, being the “I got this” kind of mother. Lm knows she doesn’t have this now. She won’t climb a mountain, canoe or see Botswana nor make it back to her favourite old haunts with her husband. She dreams of parties and dancing, remembers her youthful beauty and laugh. She can’t take care of her surroundings and just wants out. Rock can’t console her more. He has run out of ideas. There are no good surprises coming. She will sleep through the holidays, check out her last shot at being “better” at the special pain rehabilitation centre and then come back, just the same, turn sixty in January in an uneventful way and wonder no more “why me?”. She will let go of Rock, stop dreaming and stop trying to make friends stay. No MORE existing through this shit, she will give in. She doesn’t want to be felt sorry for, sympathy and prayers. She wants OUT! Because NOBODY truly knows what it takes for her to live. The anxiety, lying in a pool of regrets, wrong turns, and basically her dumbass MINDFULNESS journey leading her right back to what she really is, useless. A total drag. Someone who holds everyone she loves back. Pride has left on the last ship out of here. Divided. Lm is now a thing. An “it”. Rock stumbles and TRUTH agrees, the two of them are in for a big last fight before the bell rings and the winner is declared. Honestly, in the boxing ring of life, he doubts either will rise again.

Why Does TRUTH Matter?

Posted on December 10, 2022 by ROCK

The Philosophical Dialogues Between RocK and Lm ; Part I

Rock is calm, in control and direct; he nudges Lm after days of her hiding so deeply within herself that she hasn’t eaten properly. She developed this unhealthy habit as a teenager along with over exercising, mega dosing herself on over the counter diet pills and eventually she was given “black beautys” by her worst addiction, TJ. That’s the TRUTH. Her first love was older, maybe twenty-one going on twenty-two when she met him on the city docks in Annapolis, Maryland; he fulfilled all the longing she had for her father’s attention. When BadDad had visited her in Nashville she was treated like a wealthy princess, shown off to his friends for her beauty and good manners which he was proud of. When she ran away to live with him he had married the wonderful Elle and she longed to be with her baby sister, D. Expectations were quicky extinguished. BadDad was curt, often critical of Elle and used Lm to find younger girls to hit on. Lm never knew how to deal with this and just pushed it into the stairwell with everything else that tried to break her spirit. She was naive and desperate for love; TJ was smooth, like Old Spice commercials, a sailor, a good drunk, a good Catholic, and a sex addict; he introduced Lm at barely sixteen to a wide variety of drugs. TRUTH. “You could have overdosed!” Rock is actually still surprised Lm is alive. “Yeah, well I didn’t, did I?” Lm is snarky, angry at TJ to this day. He was the one who slept with everyone she knew, in fact he slept with other girls while she waited for him in his best friend’s room. His best friend was a good person and although drugging and drinking, too he maintained some sort of faint resemblance to decent ethics. She would go to him (aka “Moby”) and sob; he always comforted her and he didn’t hit on her which gained her trust. Soon TJ introduced her to crystalmeth, cocaine, hashish, uppers, quaaludes, hard liquor, acid (LSD) and the habit of daily pot use. Her mornings were black coffee, amphetimines and saltine crackers, just enough to start the day. Lm’s father couldn’t do much because he wasn’t around enough and well, he had no room to talk. Lm new about his teenaged lover, his mistresses and flings and tried to bury the secret life he led behind Elle’s back. Her desperation for being seen, loved, adored, and wanted was now a sickness and TJ took full advantage of it. He would show up at her school in his old station wagon which he and Moby named “the Whale”; they started a painting company and lived on an old boat docked not too far from her house. She had been transferred to an elite private school after failing religion in tenth grade. She refused summer school and thus was tossed to the next VIP high school and it was life changing. She made friends, met really nice nerdy boys she liked but TJ had a good grip on her. She felt obligated to him and missed out on much of the fun with her new classmates. Other than BadDad and a few drunks hitting on her, TJ would become the one who broke her into small fragments of a girl, he would groom her just as her father had and she would take all of his emotional and mental abuse in a grotesque self deprivating way, for she had no identity; she was only HIS. Rock forces Lm to nurture her inner child, sip some tea, come forward with all TRUTH day by day. Why does TRUTH matter? Rock says, “Denying your own experiences leads to a deep sickness.” He is never giving up on Lm and promises to help her heal and in turn she can heal others. It’s dark twenty-four hours a day right now and Lm is also physically unwell. She can’t accept her pain within her heart, or that which engulfs her soul; how is she to accept her physical pain? Rock wants to hold her but he can not. He wants to teach her to hold onto herself. Rock said, “Lm, if I could punch TJ in the snout, I would; but we of all people know violence solves nothing.” Our only secret “mean” wish is that TJ and BadDad suffer for what they did to us. Lm whispers, “Why must I suffer in my dreams all alone?”. Tonight she may not sleep; it’s her only gaurantee that she won’t wake in a cold sweat, with those fat salty tears burning her fair freckled face.

Resurrecting ROCK

Posted on November 9, 2022 by ROCK

After a long hiatus, Rock was found face down in wet leaves, stashed behind the family pet’s gravestones

For some newer readers, you might consider going back to the very first post in October 2021; Rock has been crucial to LittleMe’s growth, always her protector and strong. As Lm gets healthier, crushing her past with a mortar and pestle grain by grain she hid Rock and escaped his wise, solemn advice. Why would she do this to her best cover, her internal bodyguard since she was so small, she couldn’t talk? Rock knows and is upright, straight forward so let him explain why, despite her bravery, she still needs him and always will. ROCK is all knowing, a TRUTH teacher, and he sees what Lm is thinking before she acts. Without him, Lm (despite feeling she can take on the world), well, simply put, she can’t. Lm suffers from childhood trauma, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, CPTSD, depression, and extreme insecurity because those she loved like BadDad let her down, not once but to the deepest, darkest, unforgettable place that creeps up on her, breaks her and torments her still. “Lm?”. Silence. Damn. “Lm? I’m back, still here for you. Are you under the bed? Are you in the stairwell opening memories without me?”. He waits. He hears a whistle, the kind a small child tries to make but it’s more like a soft blow of wind with a hum. “Come out Lm and let’s talk about what you’ve been up to. “Lm is indeed under the bed. Out stretches her hand from the same old bed she fled to when BadDad memories became too big when she was young. She feels Rock’s gritty surface, whimpers and doesn’t retreat. Rock is everlasting, part of her until her last breath; she wraps her smallest self around him as tears flood the floor. Rock is good at cleaning up messes and doesn’t mind. “We are closer to being one, but Lm you are not ready. I will know when it’s time to merge.” Rock wants to keep her safe and tells her, “Don’t hide me away again, we need each other Lm. Do you understand why now?”. Lm nods her head up and down and wants to articulate “Yes.” She can’t talk right now and is grateful Rock returned. “Tired of keeping up that big girl smile?”. Lm nods again. “I got you. Rock is here. Rest your heartache, leave your longing, stop waiting for the sky to open and for BadDad to hear you, admit his sins, to regret his lies and wrongs. It IS NOT going to happen Lm. He does NOT care and never will because you remind him of who he really is. Rest child. I will stand guard; I will keep you from starving for his love.” Lm lies in her puddle of tears with Rock. She is sorry to admit, she is not even close to being healthy. Rock knows Lm also has much chronic physical pain and is tired of fighting, that she is weary. He assures her she can close her eyes, but he knows he can never stop her dreaming.