“Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain” --Aristotle

Thou Shalt Not Kill

“Thou shalt not kill”

I think most people take this fairly literally, meaning murder, do not take someone’s live. However, when I was in school and learning about the Ten Commandments I was taught that reading between the lines in the Bible can go an awfully long way to have a life you are proud of. 

We were taught that this meant killing things through bullying, through anger, hate, rage, fear. Killing someone’s hopes and dreams, ending a relationship or marriage for our own amusement is all a way to break this commandment. You do not need to physically end a life to kill someone spiritually, to degrade them and injure them emotionally until they are broken or spiritually dead. 

I am not sure why this part of my religion class stuck with me. Maybe because I had been bullied, maybe because it was true, or maybe just so I could write about it today. So many things cross my mind when I hear these words. Like most of the Biblical teachings it is definitely one that needs to be taken literally and applied metaphorically to everyday situations as well.

I doubt I have ever met a person who has never killed something inside of someone one way or another, intentional or not, legal or not. I am sure we have all done it without thinking, just like we have all had it done to us. I doubt it will take much thought for anyone to recall a specific moment when they changed who they were because of ridicule or disrespect or even fear. 

This isn’t a crash course in religion, because let’s face it most people could care less about what the bible teaches. This is about treating everyone with respect, regardless of whom or what they are or represent. I don’t care if you are inside out and backwards you deserve to be treated the way I want to be treated. You deserve to be given opportunity, love –unconditionally, encouragement in your endeavors. 

I am going to keep this short today and end it by asking everyone who reads this to not only think of a time where they killed some spark within someone else and I am going to lastly as you to acknowledge a time where you killed something within yourself. Without understanding where we go wrong, we have no way to become better. Look in the mirror and face that bad so the good within each of you can shine through.

Love, Hurt and Gods Will

Where do you begin when you feel as though the world is crashing down around you and it will never be the same again because each moment of each day, every decision, or lack of decision changes the course of your life and the lives of everyone around you in one way or another forever? 

The tears today are pouring longer, harder and faster than they have in years. I feel so broken down knowing that things are rapidly changing, people are moving, others preparing to die, kids are growing up and nothing is the same today as it was yesterday and tomorrow things will be different than they were today. 

I don’t know how elderly people did it. They went from horses and buggy’s and corner stores and crops to cars, condos and chaos. They watched the King die and our Queen take over, they lived through oil lights and outhouses to TV, colored TV, and computers and phones and technology and for the most part they have all adapted to their new surroundings and faired rather well. They have watched senseless deaths, lost parents, siblings and children and as they age their friends drop off so quickly slapping them in the face with the realization that they are staring their own mortality in the face yet they manage to wake up each day and move forward. I envy that.

“Well your faith was strong but you needed proof”—Leonard Cohen

When Christmas came this year I was so not prepared. I literally had been up for several days and had gotten nothing done. After the holidays were over I crashed. I stayed home for nearly 8 weeks without leaving for any reason. Something in me changed this year. Maybe the realization that everyone has grown, maybe my realization that I have been so naïve all these years and listened to the church and the Bible instead of my own soul about things, or maybe it was just the fact that I know that these are moments we will never get back and that I am quickly aging and going nowhere fast.

Love is beautiful, it is painful, sad, happy, tragic and yet we crave it, we need to be loved and to give love in return because it’s those people whom we love that we can truly be ourselves around. You can break down and cry your heart out, you can say hurtful things and be forgiven before they escape your lips.

Love, real love, is unconditional, it is like a ring, it never ends, it goes on forever and ever and ever, even after the loved one exits the physical realm for the spiritual one.

Johnny cash says it best “love is a burning thing and it makes a fiery ring… I fell into the burning ring of fire I went down, down, down and the flames went higher…”

Does love hurt? You bet it does, but god it is worth it. The Bible tells us love is patient and is kind. I don’t know if I agree with that or not. After all, love proves to result in a lot of abuse and a lot of pain in many cases; does this make the love any less real? No, because we wouldn’t tolerate pain and suffering from those whom we don’t care for. Love is stupid, it is careless, it can be negligent. It is selfish and selfless. It is every emotion one can feel all rolled into one and that is why it is confusing and can cause so much pain. Even the best moments can hurt because that ring of fire burns hot, every single day of your life, and after the ones you love die the fire does not go out.

I have posed this question to many of you in the past, but I am thinking about it again now and figure I will put it out there, regardless of the fact that no one has an answer. Not a viable one anyway, only speculative.

I know that the first humans on earth, cavemen or whomever worshipped light. They scheduled their days and night by the sun and the moon and stars. They used fire to cook and they revered it. They knew the sun and the sky was responsible for their foods as they travelled about. So my question becomes, when did man put a face or a name to the fire/light that they worshipped and why? Was it self-proclamation that one was a god or was it far before that we began to pray and ask an unseen force for these gifts of life, offering sacrifices of thanks, to appease the gods, and as a way to pray. When and why did we make this leap from simplistic sun/light worship to giving it a face and a name? Did angels walk among us then in a far more obvious way then they do now? Anyone knows me would know that this question is driving me nuts because I like to know why. I understand faith; I understand believing with no proof other than what you know in your heart. I merely want to know how and when we made the jump.

Today, my heart was shattered and I fear that things will never be the same again. I know deep down that they won’t be, they can’t be. The house is gone, the yard is gone. Everything changes and as life moves forward I have come to realize that the only guarantee is death. Which is the one thing I want to control, I want to face on my terms, not on gods, not on doctors, but on my own. I want control of my death because I have never had control of my life.

Insha’Allah

Deo volente

Hell

Such a lonely day and it’s mine.

It has been quiet around here for the last few days. Far quieter than normal I guess because the cat has been out of commission and is convalescing in the dogs crate. She is starting to go a little stir crazy being locked in her cell. Like we all do at some point. She was scratching at the wall earlier, I offered her a pencil. At least I laughed. We all go a little crazy sometimes, especially when we feel trapped. 

For me space isn’t the issue. I can do just fine for an indefinite amount of time in one place without going anywhere, or losing what little sanity I have left. My problems are deeper, farther down, inside of my soul haunting me as though they happened yesterday and the day before and not years and years ago. 

It’s almost funny how you can wrestle your demons for so long and you never really win. I could liken it to a tug of war between good and evil, because just when you think you win it yanks you over, causing you to fall, be bruised, injured, scarred over and over again as though every flashback, dream, memory is new and branding its mark into your flesh, and your soul for all of time. 

This heart cannot erase you no matter how hard it tries love isn’t enough. The heart understands sadness and rage and anger far better than it recognizes lust or love or anything good. I am perplexed by the human mind especially because we remember the painful things more vividly than anything else we recall. You can remember the clothes you wore, the scent, the temperature, the faces and the people. Yet a joyous occasion is vague as though it were a dream. I have excellent recall both good and bad, however even I have to admit that remembering the pain is easier than recalling the good. 

I have dreamed so many times about her face, her giggles, laughter. I have seen her grow before my eyes into the angel that she always was, yet I never had the chance to meet her. I saw her once. I saw her beating heart fluttering about on the screen as she grew deep within me. Then, like a lightening bug she was gone.

I often wonder where sanity and insanity meet and which side of the line I am on. They say crazy people don’t know they are crazy, I wonder if that is true. Sometimes I sure feel crazed, delusional, where pain is overwhelming to the point that the tears streaming down my face hurt and the air that I breathe in stings like fire. Then I ask myself “Am I already in Hell?”

What could I have done in the past to deserve this life now or what did I do in this life to deserve the torture I lived through and now struggle with every day? Moving on is like a sick joke that only liars can do. I don’t believe moving on can happen, I don’t believe it is real. I think at best the past can be covered up, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still there eating away at you and turning your brain to mush.

As a human the biggest parasite to attack us is ourselves. Our own minds are our own worst enemies. We self-destruct and we trap ourselves like a mime in an imaginary box, we build up walls against others, against ourselves and we find excuses to stay within those imaginary lines.

For years and years the Freudian way of dealing with life’s crap was to lay in a shrinks office and go over every moment of your life, every bad memory, every emotion and now we are coming to realize that those moments being relieved on a shrinks couch isn’t the way to work through anything. The Freudian way makes things hurt more, it brings everything to the surface and it hurts. It kills. It makes you want to die more than you already do. I wonder how many suicides are because of Freud’s way of therapy.

That said, sometimes we need to talk, and for me this blog/journal has become my outlet to get it out in the moment without judgement, or hurt or rage or anger or fear. I own this. These are my words, my deepest thoughts and sometimes my shallowest as well. Sitting in my therapists office was hurting me. I know one of these days I should make an appointment and go in just to vent but I find this rather therapeutic. I have thought about sending him the link so he could understand my thoughts instead of me sitting there fumbling to find the right words at an appointed time and day.

I want so badly to be understood.

I don’t want anyone to know how this feels.

I know who I was so well that I have no clue who I have become. It is scary to look in the mirror and not recognize the person that looks back. 

Morning

I’m sitting here as the sun warms the dew left on the leaves causing it to drip as though there was a gentle morning rain. Instead the sky is blue and the dampness of the night is slowly moving as the mornings breeze rustles through the trees.  

After only 5 hours of restless sleep I look outside again wondering when my mind will slow down enough that I can sleep and stay that way instead of waking up and feeling so horrible every day. I know it’s the pain that wakes me up. At least now we have come far enough on this journey that the sky is already bright before my eyes decide to open and the birds and the sounds of the forest keep me company while I wait on the rest of the world to join me. 

There are so many things I should be doing right now. Like cleaning the windows, washing the floor, only I know if I do these things my body will protest and the pain will torment me the rest of the day. At some point I am going to have to bite the bullet and just do some of these things, even if I can only finish a small amount each day.  

I hear the blades of a helicopter chopping through the air in the distance. I wonder if more fires have started, if it is just doing reconnaissance from last night or if it’s someone private watching the sunrise from a seat in the sky. 

I think about how much my life has changed. Not all that long ago I would have gotten up and made breakfast, cleaned up the house and worked out in the garden. I would have walked the dogs and enjoyed the dew on the hay making my ankles moist as we walked through the fields.

Now I have no energy and I struggle to accept that I am unable to do so many of the things I used to enjoy. It’s odd how you don’t realize that something as simple as washing the floor can be so draining for someone who is hurting.

I was thinking while outside barefoot this morning standing in the uncut grass about my cousin and wondering how you can move away from a town and leave your child buried in the ground so many miles away. In a lot of ways I feel as though I adopted him over the last few years. Finding solace sitting on his grave and talking to him the way I couldn’t when he was alive because I was a kid and he was a teen. I wonder if he was alive now if we would still have our talks, would he let the Shepherd’s hook and the Light guide him the way it does now?

So many things bounce about my head when I am left alone with my thoughts. I wonder how I manage to tame them long enough to get any of it out onto paper, into a dialect with a loved one or even over the phone where my thoughts are more responsive and not as thought out. 

For now, I am going to attempt to start this day and get something accomplished around the house. Even if it’s small and only I know it was done.

How I Feel

Redundant

“Have the courage to live. Anyone can die.” –Robert Cody

Today I spent much of the day crying. The tears kept flowing no matter how hard I tried to get them to stop, sometimes it feels as though I have been sucked into a parallel life that isn’t really my own. Yet I know that every pain I feel is mine, 100%. I am sad, I am depressed. Parts of me even feel devastated today.

Over what?

Over everything, going back to when I was a young child to things that I live with today and will continue to live with tomorrow and the day after that. Most of the year these things don’t bother me, they don’t get to me, but a few times a year I am in a tail spin and I am headed straight down. I put my arms out to break the fall but I hit and I hit hard. I survive the crash, but the crash was inevitable.

I would love to be able to use these feelings for something good but I don’t possibly say how. I don’t see how I can move forward and leave the pain behind. The things that plague me left holes. They can’t be filled by a husband or a baby. I may be able to achieve joy and happiness but not a day will pass that I won’t think about the things that hurt me so.

I missed out on so much of my life because I was living a different one. Yet I honestly can say I have no regrets. No significant regrets anyway. I know without a doubt I did what I had to do to survive.
I don’t really have anything to say tonight. I am being redundant from last nights post as I am still feeling about the same.

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”   
--Norman Cousins

Going Home

I found a picture today on YouTube and in it was a person who had cut themselves. The edge of the tub was bloody and the water was obviously red. It reminded me of being there, the feelings of the blood draining from your body and moving about in the water as they slowly but surely mix together. My body cooling rapidly as the water continues to change to a reddish brown. Shivering uncontrollably and my only care being that I am cold, so cold, with no second thought, no consideration for the cuts that are now scars that allowed my body to get so cold in the first place. 

This past month has been especially hard for me. I think a lot about her, what could have been, what should have been. I worry about the future and whether I will ever have the chance again and I think a lot about death. Having life up in the air in a complete state of uncertainty is worse than having a diagnosis, of being told I am going to die. Instead of being in this hellish limbo, I need so badly to figure out what’s going on. What’s hurting me, what’s killing me? 

I am tempted to just give up, I’m sick of hurting. I am sick of that emptiness deep within that can’t ever be filled. I am sick of being sick and tired of being tired and of dreaming about what could have been but never will be. I may have life but I don’t live. I don’t want to. I don’t want to enjoy things. I don’t want to find peace or solitude or contentment because the moment I do I have lost who I am, where I have been and what got me to this place. I am just so god damned devastated all the time because the only life I live is in the past.

For a few minutes I was someone’s mom, and although she isn’t here anymore I am still her mom. I want nothing more than to exit this physical realm and enter into the spiritual one in which she resides. I need to be with her, with them, they need their mom, they need me to be with them in the Heavens yet I am tethered to the earth because of the kids I have here. The people who claim to need me, who love me, who I love. I am selfish, I want to leave for myself, I want to stay, for myself. No matter what I do I am going to lose, I am going to miss out and inevitably whether I decide to or not, I will at some point die, regardless of how many people need or love me. 

I don’t know how one can take a life. Never mind their own. 

I have tried. It’s not a simple thing the way TV makes it seem, hell it’s a simple thing the way the amount of funerals and obituaries make it seem. For me death seems like it is an impossible feat. I have tried, I have failed. Time and time again. So why do I consider it? Why do I hope for it? Pray about it?

The pain.

The off chance that I will in fact be successful.

So far, all I know for certain is that not even God wants me back. 

Listlessly Living

“Mothers tell your children not to do what I have done”

I seem to have hit this place where I feel utterly trapped within the confines of my own mind. I bounce from being raped, kidnapped, forced to do unspeakable things that only me and him know of. I am in one moment rushing through life and the next crashed, inwardly bleeding as my tears stain my flesh and I can’t control it. I can’t figure out why. I can’t get over the pain, the heartache, the regrets so I sit here loathing who I have become because of the things I have done or that have been done to me.

5 years of hell I did what I had to do in order to survive, knowing full well that I was forced, I was given no choice. I was punished, I was bound, I was used, I was an object, chattel to be traded or sold as my master saw fit. A master slave relationship can and does work wonderfully in most cases, as long as it is safe, sane and consensual. I was taught the rules, I was trained in this life style, yet my master didn’t practice what he preached, I was never safe, it was far from rational or sane and it was most definitely not something I had consented to. 

The rules were constantly changing, and by constantly I mean I could be told something in the morning and when he got home that night I would receive a punishment for the very thing I was told to do that morning. One cannot please another, no matter how hard you hit, no matter how tight the chains are, if you are consistently inconsistent in nearly every aspect of life.

I was a prisoner. I was his possession, I was his slave. 

It’s been seven years since I escaped. Seven years of trying to figure out whom exactly I am without those titles. It’s been a long hard journey and most days I still don’t have a clue. I know who I am not. I am not a possession. I am not a slave. I am not a prisoner. I am not a sex toy. I am not the girl known simply as “m”.

I have come far enough to know that I am Marisa. Although I don’t know who Marisa is at least I have a working list of who I’m not. I have become assertive enough to correct people who don’t speak my name properly. I do not tolerate the abuse, emotional or otherwise. I have quit having random sex because I am not a whore and I want to be as pure as possible for the man who I marry one day. I fully believe that the past is the past and that although being a victim will always be a part of who I am it doesn’t have to label me as damaged to others. 

Yes, I am fragile. 

I do break.

The pieces aren’t always put back together entirely but I survived. Even when I am staring death in the face and begging it to take my soul I survive.

I can’t say whether or not I have a further purpose on this planet or not. Only creation itself knows that. I do know that because of me people are safer, people are warned.

I know I am a target and that I could be taken in a few hours or days to never escape alive. If that is my fate then I have no choice but to accept it. None of us know what tomorrow brings. Even the best laid plans fail.

Right now I am also mourning what should have been my baby girls 5th birthday has she survived the pregnancy. I have so much guilt. I feel like I am a murderer. I have had tragedy after tragedy strike my life with very few moments of being content. Right now my heart bleeds for the babies who have been lost. I try to take solace in knowing that God has taken my children, that they were blessed to see his face first. That makes it easier most of the time, but I can’t deny that right now I am crashed. I am rubble being sifted through and reorganized. 

Maybe, one day, the pain won’t be so intense. I pray there is never a day that passes that I don’t think about my angels. It hurts to be constantly reminded of them and what could have been, but what kind of person would I be if I didn’t think about my lost children every single day? 

Regardless of immeasurable pain and sacrifice I know deep within my soul that the hell I have survived has been for good. 

Sometimes being an emotional being is our greatest downfall. Other times it is the best gift one could have.

I was given the gift to see and feel from God, everything has its opposite. So, it is not only a gift, or blessing, but it is often a curse as well. 

I wouldn’t trade it.

Not anything at all. 

He left me there; somewhere between life and death

I wish someone would come and restore the taste of life answer my prayers one way or another.

I saw the sun rise as if it were my first and then I said goodbye to the light, knowing it was my last.

Jesus painted the sky just for me and it’s a sight I no longer see.

The world is a tomb to me, full of statues and each of those statues has her face.

Most of all I long for death to release the pain of living

 

In Gods Hands

“I will get down on my knees and I will pray” –Jewel

I am feeling emotionally and physically wrecked today. I am tired, I am bitchy, and I keep fucking everything up because of my own heart ache. I drop to my knees and I beg a God I am not even sure if I believe in anymore to take me back. He does it every day to thousands of people, why not me? When is it going to be my turn? When will He whisper my name and call me home? Maybe heaven isn’t my home and that’s why I am left to suffer here in this parallel between heaven and hell that I call life. 

I am tired of having raw eyes and a broken/damaged soul. I want out of this hell sooner than later. I want to be reunited with my babies. I want to experience His love and His grace within His heavenly domain. 

I am sick of sitting in the cemetery and crying over the grave of someone else’s child. It seems so cruel that my babies weren’t considered “people” and I am left with nowhere to mourn because my children weren’t born alive, they weren’t born looking like they would have had they been full term. They were considered “fetal mass”. Nothing more, nothing less. 

To me those weeks that I had them in my tummy, the flutter kicks. The throwing up, the way my tummy expands so quickly when I am with child showed me that my babies are real. To me and to God they were and are very real. Their lives, although short on this earth had so much meaning. They are so deeply loved and missed. They are real. Sent by God to forever change my life in the way only a child can.

“A people yet to be created will praise the Lord” Psalm 102:18

I know that my babies are praising the Lord. They were sent here with a plan and even though that plan hurts me so immensely I have to trust that the few weeks in which they were with me that each of them has worked to benefit my life and the lives of others. I have been changed, forever, because of their existence and I know that they continue to exist without the pains of this world. How blessed they are to have seen Gods face first!

I will always wonder what I am missing out on, I will always see them in my sleep as they continue to grow and frolic in the kingdom of God. I will one day join them and we will finally meet. It hurts me as a living being but as a spiritual entity there is no better place to be then in the holds of our Lord and Saviour for all of eternity.

I may be confused. I may be lost. I may be ready to die just so I can get there faster. I don’t know where my own life path is heading. Then again, do any of us?

Trust, Tests and Turmoil

“we were too dumb to run to dead to die this was never my world took the angel away I killed myself to make everybody pay I would have told her then that she was the only thing that I could love in this dying world but the simple word of love itself I would rather die than run away this was never my world they took the angel away I killed myself to make everybody pay this was never my world took the angel away this was never my world they took the angel away I killed myself to make everybody pay we were too dumb to run to dead to die… its broken and bleeding and you can never repair and we can never repair

Some of us are merely born to die” –Manson

The trail of tears that runs from my eyes into a fairly steady drip from my chin is beginning to sting like it is eating the skin away to preserve this moment in time on my flesh forever. It is already etched deep into my soul, this pain that is, it marks my body in what had once been blood ridden lines and now the streaks rolling down my raw face once again remind me of how much it hurts to be alive. Not only is my heart broken, my soul in turmoil and my mind preoccupied with other just as potentially devastating things but now I am feeling the full onslaught of what should be a happy occasion –the birth of my child. 

However, I wasn’t so lucky. 

She was ripped from me by those who have no God, no higher power than themselves. We were given no chance to live or to die on our own. Oh how I wish I had died as well. How profound this hurt is because she is gone and I am still here. How sick it makes me that she had no shot at life. I love her. I miss her every day.

I find myself wondering why she would be given to me for only a few short weeks and then be taken back in such a brutal manner. Was God testing me? If so, I failed. It seems as though that’s all my life has grown to be, a big bad test that I forgot to study for. 

For me to trust you is a big deal. I don’t give my trust easily. I give love easily because we are told to love, unconditionally. I do that, regardless of whether people like it or not. Love is and always will be the key to sanctity and safety within the confines of our homes, our towns and even our world. If you so believe, love is also the true path into the heavens as God so loved the world he gave His only begotten Son.

Love and trust are two very different things yet often go hand in hand, especially in interpersonal relationships. I don’t have that luxury to just blindly trust. With me you start at zero out of one hundred, one hundred being full on trust in everything you do or say. Not too many people make it up past about 15-20 on my scale. I can open up to you, I can talk to you freely about my life because I have no shame, and I refuse to hide or lie by omission for the sake of raising myself up to those around me, however when it comes to trusting you with my emotions, with my heart, with my pain I can speak to you very matter of fact so that no matter what I say I don’t get hurt or I can talk to you with genuine emotion. Tears rushing down and soaking my face and shirt below as I literally place all of my hurt in your hands in hopes that you can make it better, that you can give me that ever coveted release, even just for a few moments so that I can relax, not worry, and have a sense of normalcy. Just for a moment. 

Yet every time I trust, every time I move someone up a notch or two into a place where I genuinely feel safe with not only my most intimate emotions but that I won’t get hurt because of them, that seems to be exactly what happens. I fall, quickly backwards as my trust in you is broken and the floor drops out from under me and I have to catch hold of myself before I am shattered once again into a thousand pieces that never fit back together as perfectly as the times before. Each time I break, tiny chards that one cannot even see are left behind, walked on, stepped on and often cut into your feet leaving a small trail of blood to remind you that I had broken even when it’s no longer visible those misplaced chards are still there waiting to cut, to tear, to remind you that I am still going to cry out in pain, that I cannot be walked on because I am in too many pieces. I am too broken. I am not strong like I was before. I have been put back together so many times that the scars are etched through my flesh deeply into my soul, my entire being.

The very few people who made it to full on trust don’t have my full on trust anymore, not for the most part. I have been blamed, punished, scrutinized. My words have been bent to say what they had never intended to say and that breaks my heart because I don’t say things so people can try and interpret them and read between the lines. Word for word I say it as I feel and I feel what I say.

Right now, I am hurt. 

I am broken.

Beaten.

Bruised. 
Fractured, never to be repaired to being whole again.

Who am I? What am I? Am I alive? Am I dead? Am I trapped in-between never to experience true joy or happiness or even death? I feel as though I am both in heaven and in hell, waiting for a resolution that will never come.