They left when she did, the birds, the squirrels, and the cats, even the flowers withered and died in her absence. Everything she had nurtured and cherished in the years she had lived there, was now forced to seek solace and comfort elsewhere, or fade and die. It broke her heart to drive by the house observing the gradual disintegration.

Santana, the black feral cat and mother of her feral, now tame, Solace, had visited the boys who were renting the house, she relied on them for food and water, just as she had done the same with Billie when she lived there. The boys said, “one day she didn’t show up and we never saw her again.”

When Billie lived there, Santana would visit Solace at night. She would climb up on the outside window ledge and he would sit in his cat tree and they would talk to each other in cat language.

Billie fretted over Santana when she was moving out. She went back and forth about taking her with her. Eventually she decided it would be better for Santana to stay where she was familiar, given she was feral and had only ever lived in the area, rather than taking her to a new area, where she would have to live outside and find new shelter, etc., The emotional part for her was knowing she was taking her son Solace away from her.

She was gone three years, Billie was. She moved to another part of town, bought a house with her partner and rented out the house she loved so dearly. She rented the house to three brothers. They were great tenants. Paid the rent on time and kept the house in great shape. The only thing damaged when they moved out was the back yard and the screens in the sunroom. The yard was ruined due to the three dogs they had running circles around the yard, turning the grass into mud. They stayed two years. Billie installed new sod in the yard.

The next renter was a single woman who moved to the area to take a job. They shared similar interests and befriended each other. The renter paid on time, but purchased two puppies without Billie’s permission, adding to her already allowed two dogs, this now made four dogs. One of the dogs suffered from separation anxiety, which caused all kinds of issues for the renter.

The renter stayed a year. When she moved out, not only was the yard back to its ruined state, but the hardwood floors were ruined and the dog urine smell in the house was so bad, Billie thought she would never get rid of it!

Her relationship ended. When the second renter moved out Billie moved back into her beloved house. For weeks she worked to get the house back into shape; wood floors redone, bathrooms retiled, rooms painted, new blinds, new lighting in the living room and kitchen, new light switches in the bathroom and when all was done she bought new furniture. She had been without a sofa for eight weeks by the time it arrived. It had never occurred to her how little she could relax without a sofa to sit on. She had never been a “sit in a chair and relax” kind of girl.

Billie cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned. She cleaned the windows, inside and out. Cleaned the blinds, the woodwork, the front porch, the sun room. She burned sage anti-clockwise and then clockwise through the house, burned candles and incense, ran the essential oils for hours through the infuser, all to cleanse and clear the house of previous energies and entities…

The winter was mild that year. One round of snow and ice and a few below freezing nights. The trees finally shed their remaining leaves during a hard rainfall in January. It was early in February when Billie looked out of the window into her front garden and noticed a daffodil was blooming. Billie placed her bird feeders and bird baths back out in the front garden and began filling them each day with fresh food and water. She gave out a call, “okay birds and squirrels, flowers and plants, I’m home, you can all come back now.” At first only the crows came to graze, then slowly day by day, all kinds of birds reappeared. The squirrels began playing in the trees again, jumping from limb to limb and tree to tree. It made her heart happy to see the animals and flowers answering her call

The first few weeks back in the house Solace would walk through the house at night crying. He would climb up in the windows crying out loud. She felt he was crying for his momma, Santana. Billie put cat food and water out on the front porch. Within days a small tabby cat appeared. She was small in frame, like Santana, and although this cat was a grey tabby and Santana was pure black, they had similar spirits. Surprisingly after a few visits she let Billie stroke her. Billie gave her the name “Kneader,” because whenever she saw Billie, Kneader immediately started to knead.

Kneader quickly became a regular visitor, and even began to climb up on the window ledge, just like Santana used to do. Solace climbed up in the window too, and they began talking to each other just like when Santana came around. Solace stopped crying at night, and so too did Billie!

I like to sit on the toilet, drink coffee and read inspirational quotes, especially first thing in the morning.  As a child, the toilet was my sanctuary; it was the only place I could go to find solitude. In most homes we lived in, the toilet was outside, an outhouse, wooden planks for a seat and typically whitewashed stone walls. The outhouse was either hot or cold depending what season of the year it was AND it always smelled of urine, always!  I remember times we used newspaper to wipe our bums, or if we were lucky we used the cheapest toilet paper IZAL.  It felt more like tracing paper than something that should be used to wipe yourself after using the toilet.

This morning as I sat on the toilet reading my daily inspirational, the prompt was ‘Writing to Learn.”  It questioned whether we learn when we write and the daily suggestion was to ‘Write something today,” so here I am – sat across the street from my house, sipping on a Station Margarita, writing something.

Writing as always been important to me.  I crave it.  I crave it from other people. I love for someone to share their feelings in a hand-written letter, such a rare gift these days.  It’s beautiful to me to see words on paper, words that flow from a person’s mind out into the world, or in particular, to me!

I have loved women in my life who  could write their feelings so beautifully and passionately on paper.  I was always so moved by them, deeply moved.  That someone would take the time to share what they were thinking and feeling meant so much to me.  It connected me to them, not just in the moment that I would read their words, but even now, years later, I can still quote words they shared with me and they still cause my heart to warm and my body to ache to be near them ….

And so this is what I wrote today and it will mean something to someone …

My dad was a bus driver.  He worked shifts. To stay on top of his shift schedule he wrote them down on paper, not ordinary white sheets of paper, but long sheets about 4 or 5 inches wide and perhaps 12 inches long.  Horizontal black lines, creating columns all down the page allowed for him to fill in each shift start and end time, especially when he worked a split-shift, there would be four different times across the page.

I remember the paper so well and for many reasons. My first memory comes from a house we lived in on Elcho Street; a yellow and black door with the number 41 in large black numbers adorned the entry.  My dad would come home from work, take off his jacket and  shoes and sit in his chair.  He would often bring home several pieces of the lined paper and leave them on the dresser in the bedroom.  I had not long ago started school.  I was learning to write. It didn’t just feel like I was learning to write, it felt more like a release inside of me, a sense of urgency, a force within me that wanted to talk, not by mouth, but by pen, by writing, by bringing this sense of urgency, this raciness onto those sheets of paper.

One afternoon I went upstairs into his bedroom and there on the dresser were several sheets of paper AND a pen, there was a pen, a very rare site in our house, in fact the only pen we ever had in our house was the pen my dad kept in his work jacket. It wasn’t just excitement I felt at seeing those two precious items together on his dresser, it was elation, a jolt of thunder roaring inside of me, a volcano starting to erupt.  It was a NEED, a feeling I couldn’t control, a bursting, a happiness I had never felt before.

I picked up the pen and paper and climbed onto the bed.  I lay flat on my stomach, my whole body fit easily horizontally across the bed, my feet facing the door, my head facing the closet. I let the pen touch the paper.  I raced words across the lines, the pen leading the way, my heart racing, my mind emptying its long contained lava out into the abyss of the world. I felt free, even though at such a young age I hadn’t even learned the meaning of that word, I had fully experienced its impact.

As an adult I am known for taking pens.  I don’t do it intentionally, they just somehow come with me from wherever I have been.  At work they even went as far as to add fake flowers to the tops of the pens as a way to locate them if I take them, and I do.  At home I have too many pens, even though I rarely use them now since I spend most of my time using  a computer to disperse my words.  Just yesterday as I emptied boxes that I had brought with me in my move, I came across pens, lots of them ….

So, I’m here.  It’s taken me a long time to get here, back to my house, out of a relationship in which I lost myself.  It’s been my pattern – “putting them first.” It’s how I was raised and how my life experiences continued to mold me.  I’m here though, back in my own space, alone and comfortable with that.  I like to be alone.  I like to wake up early, when it’s still dark outside, the traffic quiet, the birds are asleep and so too is much of the world.  I enjoy that kind of quiet, it’s soothing and nurturing and calming and necessary for myself to move through life!

For as long as I can remember I’ve lived on the outer edges of the company I was in.  An observer from birth and not that I don’t connect, because I connect deeply with people, rather an innate part of me notices people, smells, sounds, touch, thoughts, movements, visible and invisible.  It’s me, and though I embrace myself, the challenge is always when I immerse into the world, when I wake from sleep and realize I’m conscious, when I step from my house into the outside, when I step into the gym and hear others voices, when I arrive at work and open my e-mail, it all feels so very intrusive and not that I don’t like my life or my job, but most interactions are a challenge to my inner self and I wonder “are there others like me?”

I thought for the longest time that it was a product of the abuse with my dad, but over time I’ve realized I’ve always been this way.  People have called it intuition, being sensitive, being psychic, etc., but could it ever be named?  Do we have to name something to understand it?  Does a word define a feeling or does the feeling define the word?  I guess that’s a deep question, but I do wonder about the whole “naming” our feelings, and how once named then a string of associations runs with the “name” and then we diagnose and label and attach ourselves to likenesses, and we form groups and find solidarity just based on One Single Word – such as Incest!

So what do you think if you are reading this? Does this make sense to anyone other than me?

They usually look around 11 years old. Girls only.  I stare at them.  I’m thinking, “is someone touching her?  Is she hiding a secret? Is it a relative, a neighbor, a family friend, her brother, her father?  I watch their every move, looking for signs without knowing what to look for.  How would I know? How does it show?  They look like ordinary little girls.  Their scars are invisible.  Hidden from view. I stare for a long time, as though by staring I might see beyond the veil of innocence.  I am looking for clues, but what are they?  Do they look sad?  Are they flirtatious?  Are they well-developed?  Do they chew on their bottom lip, wring their hands, tap their feet, play with their hair, sit pensively?  Do they frown, walk with their shoulders sagging down to the ground, avoid your gaze, block you out, avoid your touch, encourage your touch?  What do they show, that we don’t see?

And so I Stare …..

Lately I don’t want to do things that I don’t want to do. It isn’t just a casual “no’, but a stamp my feet, dig my heels in, try to make me if you dare kind of no. I simply don’t want to do much of what is waiting for me when I show up to work, or even when I open my eyes and take my first conscious breath of the morning. The child in me is pitching a fit with all of it. All those days and years of having to do so many things I didn’t want to do, and had no choice or voice about, have caught up with me. I don’t want to is a common thought, powered by a willful child tired of having no voice.

It’s a common theme, picking at scabs attached to my heart. In my latter years I’ve learned to leave them alone, knowing that even untouched and unscratched, they will never heal. For years I would pick at them, hoping that underneath I would find warmth and a sense of healing, but that never happened. A picked at scab only ever revealed fresh, unhealed flesh. Pink and raw, ready to begin the process of growing a new scab. It’s a literal thing – the heart beats, blood flows, but the scabs remain.

I’ve often thought of a healing heart as something warm and pink, beating loud, blood rushing in through one side and out through another. The truth though for me is my heart will always beat in spite of the pain it feels. It will always endure any cuts that are made, it will always defend itself by forming hard crusty scabs. It’s a survival thing, a way to make it through a long life of hard blows and jubilant rebounds. The scabs are actually a fortress, made of sponge, absorbing all the tenderness and washing away all the debris ….

Where to go from here? Stuck in mud. Feels at times like sinking sand, knee-deep and nothing to latch on to. I miss the ones who knew me well, who loved me in spite of myself, who I could reach out to when I was at odds with some item in life. I miss feeling them on the earth, that feeling of knowing they are there, like a blanket, invisible, yet warm, cozy and welcoming, washed and dried and ever ready to embrace me whatever my need might be. They still loved me the day after a fight, no grudges were held, just acceptance of me and of them and whatever we might have been to each other. It’s lonely, many times without them. I feel the need for that smile, that voice, that wink, that arm around my shoulder, that knowing look, that resting place that I could take for granted because it would always be there, open and inviting with a large welcome sign on the doormat. Their absence is loud and cold. I can’t feel them out there in the world. My last memory was a cold dead face with purple lips that used to offer warm kisses. I can’t erase those realities, those definite moments, those deep etchings in my mind, but I miss them and I ache for that knowing of me, that shelter that was always safe and absolute … where to go from here …

I know shame well. It held my hand and comforted me for years. It kept its arm around my shoulder whispering its daunting and controlling words of shameful self-doubt. I listened hard to shame, afraid to stand up to it, fearful of its wrath. I sought freedom from its grip only to find myself weighted down by a ball and chain, heavy in weight, unable to move, unable to escape its tightly woven links.
I danced with shame as I dated boys and let them touch me in places that were too soon to be touched. I let their fingers shamefully search my womanhood, though I was still not much more than a girl – I wanted them to like me, to approve of me; instead I shamed away as they laughed and gossiped to each other of how big my tits were, how well endowed I was for an almost twelve-year-old girl. I thought they wanted me, the me who feels and cares and cries and hurts and laughs, but they wanted the shell of me, the external, the flesh – just like he, my father did. How I felt was irrelevant to him, myself was invisible. It was my flesh he sought and in doing so he controlled all that I felt, my every move, as I learned to barter sexual acts for my freedom, a blow job so my friend could spend the night; my friends presence a shield from his nightly visits to my room. I learned to barter for my friendships and learned the shame of a blow job in the kitchen while my friends waited on a cup of tea in the living room. I learned how to look shameless when shame riddled my body and how to hide shame in the core of my soul.
We were friends, good friends, shame and I, for many years, all through my teens and into my late twenties, until a random phone call prompted a long hoped for conversation – an apology, ownership of his wrongful acts. I was brave enough to speak my truth, to show my pain, to ask the simple question, “why?” and with his response of, “I’m sorry, I was the adult.” came my unexpected divorce from shame. It wasn’t dirty, or difficult, it was clean and easy. I took my freedom from shame with a deep sense of pride. I fought for my freedom, I suffered for my freedom and I thank my dear departed father for taking my shame with him to his grave.