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.
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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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
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.
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.
She fell backwards then downwards,landing at the bottom of her darkest place; she laid there for days refusing to accept TRUTH doesn’t matter. Rock as always stood near but honestly, he feels ashamed as he never saw this coming. She’s been so forward, following her own path and rules then as Father’s Day approached stateside and in the UK she leaned into her Buddhist and mindful consciousness and forgiveness came to mind. She had conditions however; she wanted to be heard and have a safe space, a witness, a protector so she could say outloud to her BadDad all she remembered and all she knew. That is not forgiveness. She wanted him to be seen for who he was, is and will always be by someone else, too. She sets her standards very high and wrongly assumed others after twenty years may have grown wiser. She was way off course. No one wants to hear that her BadDad hit on her friends and even her, sober and drunk. No one wants to know he had an affair or twenty and she has proof. Lm sunk into her bellied belief that someone in her paternal family cares. They don’t. They are all suckers for his new working persona. He doesn’t feel guilty and although he always said, “There are no athiests in a foxhole” that epitath doesn’t ring true. He dosn’t want redemption to get into heaven, if there is one, and he sure as hell doesn’t want Lm. How did this whole thing get triggered? On her sixtieth birthday in January he wrote her an email saying he will always love her. She had blocked every account he had so he couldn’t reach her. Yet, the schemer always has had his tricks. She deleted the email and let it simmer. Six months after this email under extreme stress, feeling sick (she always gets sentimental when getting sick), she broke her rules and wrote his wife. His wife as always, the one a year younger than Lm, shut her down. Luckily, a few days later while convalescing Lm turned on the television after moping about for a day and there was Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama said, “Some people never outgrow their smallness”. Basically, Lm’s father’s wife loves a good grudge, thrives on them and has no intention of letting Lm near her father or her family. Lm was bullied by this woman because she has always not known how to stand up for herself, never been quick on her feet, nor good at come backs and when her BadDad’s wife yelled at her or wrote or said mean things to her in the past she just cried. Being an empath, extremely sensitive is a good quality, a beautiful way to exist, yet it has it’s drawbacks and bullies love to watch the way Lm sinks, loses control and runs away from her pain. Luckily, Rock has seen her inner strength struggling to regain her balance and although she is not even on the first step, she is aware that she has fallen and it won’t be long before she gets up and starts to trust the ones who are here NOW, allowing them to comfort her and allowing herself forgiveness for falling off the “No Contact” wagon. For those who have wonderful parents, be they a Father or two, a Mother or Grandparent who love you, hang on to the good stuff. The bad seed planted by the ones that hurt you may try to sprout when you are weak but you don’t have to water it. Sow self love.
Art is to be embraced, expressed, exposed, undressed, worshiped, hated, adorned and shared. For those who fear the beauty of living, who believe self love and entertainment forms such as performance art are harming their children, their religous doctrines let them eat peas in a pot three days old. I will enjoy life, celebrate each and every person who is willing with joy and laughter and eat frosting from my finger tips, drench my self in honey and roll in chocolate, dance into your dreams and sip fine wine. I will write a story for bedtime and read it outloud in a sweet, soothing voice and you will fall asleep smiling, free to be who you are. HAPPY PRIDE WEEK Wherever you are; don’t let the fuddy duds get you down. Love, Rock, LM, and ME
In her own light she was conceived again and again as she grew into her truest self, following her own oath and quest to live life in tune with her deepest heart. She began with no knowledge of who she was or who her mother was despite living together for sixteen years. She knew only that to survive she had to follow the pull through a very twisted and sometimes treacherous journey.
Love is often hidden in the crevasses of the wounded ones, felt, yet not expressed in a manner that a girl or child can decipher. This girl was LittleMe, Lm to her readers, and while facing the rebirth of her own sweet creation, she tore unintentionally yet necessitous the perinium of her mother’s flesh that bore her time after time.
The blood shed, the young woman’s cries reverberated in her dreams; she knew instictively that her beginnings were frightening for her young, lonely mother and that parenting was thrust upon her with reluctance at a time when few could choose to pull the helm in their own direction. Her mother had indeed been married but she knew her choices were complex.
Although a student on scholorships at a good college in the southern USA, her husband was the one who stole from her the sense of ownerhship of her being and he put himself first, not just in their relationship but in all life matters from an early age and forward. It would not take long for him to play cat and mouse, yes and no, hot and cold leaving her with blatant instability. His actions led her to take me and carry our lives in her own hands. This was both an undeniably brave and challenging decision and a burden that would weave in and around our relationship for years to come. Although she had parents they were not suited for her to run home to; daily life was a struggle to keep us sheltered, with food, clothes, and with money to use for her first old car’s gasoline. Often it was two dollars worth at a time to get to work. The Green Hornet was a beauty bought for much less than it’s value from a coworker whose father had died. She got me to my babysitter’s and herself to her two jobs without help from the one who I called “Daddy”. He would claim to others how much he helped us, lie and make her feel foolish and belittled and there came a time when I would grow into a fierce yet wobbly doe and would see him for all he was sincerely not. His lies were like candy or chips you know you should not be indulging in yet you continue because they taste so decadent and good in a detrimental way. Too many consumed make one sick but the craving remains even so. He was my addiction.
I never truly let go of either of them in my deepest heart however my brain knew what was best for me and pushed them away, down, down, down and put their imprints that hurt Lm into small boxes and locked them with keys I can not use. Only Rock has the key now and LittleMe stands disgruntled on the bottom step of her dank stairwell always wanting more. She will always wish for things to change, to be seen and heard and believed. She will always want love and truth in it’s highest form. Lm continues to forgive clinging to hope with a desperation which deturs her from fully healing. Rock doesn’t think she will ever let go for she, the Black Sheep, the kindest and most endearing of all had her pain wrapped up in a paper bag and set out to seek acceptance fully believing she would find all the answers and eventually all the keys to fill the holes in her heart out in this world somewhere with divine light. Rock patiently stands beside her as once again her heart is aching with new pain invoked by the mother of Lm, the grandmother of Lm’s struggling only child has broke her trust again.
Lm’s young adult has been suffering after coming out of the proverbial closet as transgender. Throughout years of required investigations in the Swedish system, the back log of others waiting after the coronavirus choked socialized medicine to a mere drip of dysfunction. Doctor after doctor, endocriniologist, psychiatrists, depression, dysphoria and self loathing became a never ending roller coaster ride in an abandoned amusement park for her daughter and for Lm. Seeing her own child hurt repeatedly has contained all of Lm’s emotions regarding her own deepest self so she may be available and strong for her daughter.
The circle of love and pain begins to churn. Nurturing yet admittedly not knowing the answers has brought Lm to a stand off with her own mother visiting for six weeks from the southern USA. The same area were drag queens are prohibited, the same south where the bill was passed that genitalia must be checked before entering toilets in public places, the same south and country where carrying guns to school instead of sneaking in bubblegum is more common.
Lm’s daughter is Black and Cuban, adopted from birth, her fragility and social anxiety is hightened as the world she experiences judges her everyday because she is not white and priviledged. The world is full of haters. Lm’s heart is full of love and it grows bigger making room for all of the LGBTQ+ community, wanting to hold them all in her shadow, protect them from harm and discrimination.
The mother that never knew Lm truly and with whom she still forgives daily has now crossed a line that has caused profound pain for her beloved daughter. While out for an appointment, Lm’s mother and her daughter were left home together. Lm had made it clear before her mother visited that she had to follow the rules of her household, not push her bounderies or she could not visit. Despite jumping through hoops, rolling over and fetching for her mother for eighteen days she felt it would be okay to leave the house to do errands. Then a text message came from her daughter whom I will refer to from now forward as “B” for Blessing arrived. Lm had just sat down in a café and ordered a glass of white wine when B’s text pinged on her phone. Expecting the usual, “Mom can you pick me up some chips?”, Lm reads that her Meanmom has resurfaced and was verbally inappropriate with B. Meanmom went to her granddaughter’s room twice uninvited and told her that she was put on this planet by God for a reason. Okay, she can think that. Then she did her double back flip of harsh whiplash and used her tongue put in her mouth by her God to proceed to say B was a disappointment to her, to us all and that she would wind up on the streets and was worthless. Rock stepped in and double checked all drawers to ensure the memories of Lm’s shitty childhood full of belittling and physical abuse from Meanmom were secured so she could focus only on her daughter’s needs. The pain grew exponentially even so and she for the first time delegated all of her disgust and unspoken words to her most trusted confidant, her husband. Rock was proud Lm did not react by lashing out at her Meanmom or by letting her own tongue spew regrets. Her husband who has now adopted Lm’s daughter stood up as a father should, in the way BadDad never did for her as a young adult, and became the kind of person she admires. Dear Swedish Italian Viking, my favourite human spoke to Meanmom while Lm comforted her daughter and now she is even more in love with her Swedish Italian Viking husband. Now Lm must consult with Rock and decide how to proceed forward on this day after the incident with Meanmom scheduled to be here for another month. Luckily, Meanmom stays in the little house on the property and not in the same house with Lm, B and her husband. What makes all of this so important that it needs to be written down? Lm is growing stronger and is not afraid as often even if triggered. Most importantly is that Lm adopted her baby with her first husband 25 years ago and he disowned B when she came out. Quit, broke her heart and has been swallowed up by bigotry. That loss for B was enormous. After much time passed it became clear the bigot would not contact B more and Lm’s dear husband asked to adopt her.
Think of all the children, the young adults, the humans of any age terrified of living life as who they truly are because they are transgender, gay, or define themselves with a pronoun other than “she” or “he”. Think about the Black skinned, the brown skinned, the Asians of any descent, the hate that gloats and seeps it’s ugly sickness into the hearts of those fighting to live their best life depsite it all. I sit wondering how Lm ever let her guard down, began to trust once again the mother that bore her, that gave her this life; the one that says she loves us yet scars our hearts repeatedly with her hateful words. Lm can’t forgive, Rock pushes emerging ME to stand up for my daughter and I feel the closing in of the circle, the one I’ve tried to keep open with room for my mother’s imperfections; yet when my child, no matter her age is feeling badgered, broken and lost Lm can relate to the stain her grandmother left on her heart yesterday, the final stain (at least from her grandmother). The circle will change; womanhood should be inclusive not exclusive. Am I disappointed in Meanmom or in myself for believeing that continuing to allow her the priviledge to be part of our lives was or is the right thing to do. I don’t know the answers now. Rock unlocks the door at the top of the stairwell and Lm is released into the sunshine; he trusts that she is growing into her first true grasp of what it means to be reunited with her deepest self, that she is integrating and we will continue to rise above all that broke “us” into dissociative fragments as a girl.
Rock proudly states, “She is becoming her own shield.” Will Rock soon be obsolete?
Cold weather factually is weather that just appears to not be warm. It can be quite cosy in fact. The judgement ensued upon it’s character in my history book began with the Donner party who stupidly thought they could cross the Rocky Mountains in wobbly wagons with a few snacks. Cold weather did not cause their demise, their gobbling each other up or their legacy which ended in a rather unsavoury fashion. I defend Mother Nature’s call, her warnings, her bell ringing from the roots beneath and above us. In Vermont they know how to prepare for the most part, again for the most part. In Sweden the old adage that there is “No bad weather, only bad clothing” is more or less true. Suffer or survive. Despite the dark winters and below zero temperatures or my severe arthritic flares in the cold weather I choose to embrace each flake that falls, remain poised in gratitude for it’s not my call to take cold weather personally. Firelit mornings and hot coffee spark my creativity and I write much more than in the summer. Not everyone can choose to flee to Florida or southern Spain to avoid being cold. I am bound to stick it out, add another sweater and refill my cup with awe.
RealStuff by RealMe 
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