journal to myself re: moving on

Maplewood, MO

May 20, 2012

Thinking over the transition I am currently accomplishing for myself, moving from this third floor apartment that has been a quandary for me more often than not, but which I have lived in, sometimes in a lively and sometimes in a struggling manner, for twelve years now.

I moved here partly out of financial need for the lower rent, partly for location, but would not have freely chosen the third floor in this type of century or more old brick building, where heat rises to the top, and the original air conditioner furnished by the landlord was not worth running. (It was ninety degrees up here the first summer. My blood pressure was up at one clinic visit before I bought my own two year old air conditioner.)

Actually I had moved in sometime in early 2000. Back then I was working retail part-time in my first nonnursing job, while receiving SSD. Some of my friends helped me lug the stuff up the stairs, and we were still going at it into late evening. By then my plump legs were giving out on me. Afterwards I still had to go back to the Webster apartment, where I had raised my daughter, to clean it up. The landlady there had evicted me on the basis of her raising the rent. Also people from my family of origen seemed to be stalking me through religious and other groups. They were playing the shame game with their delusion that PTSD equilibrates out as “false memories,” lol, like they had not given me all the clues I needed over the years to believe those many flashbacks which have continued into more current times. I am sure I am not alone in such a history of shame-based child abuse and then re-abuse of grown children who finally meet up with the Pandora's Box of emergent memories.

That following morning I called in sick of exhaustion. My position as a stock clerk was not indispensable. So one four hour shift they could do without me, and my supervisor was a kind, caring person. Later on in the spring I did get myself kicked out of the damn place. I could not put up with some of the weird stuff perpetrated around me.

Before that job I had attempted a part time stint at AmeriCorps, but the expectations there were so huge that I couldn't stay with it while my daughter was wanting to move back in with me and begging the landlord back there to let us stay, since it would increase the total income between us.

No way. In the courtroom the property owner said something to me which referenced the word “mother,” regarding that “30 days hath” calendar rhyme. I had also seen across the street from me there a sibling back planting flowers in a front yard of a little house that was being upgraded for sale. I had radically distanced myself from my family of origin because none of them even responded to my request for mediated counseling among us. Street theater is the word for what those folks do, attempting to get you to take their bribes of silence, while people “in the program” dance around you too, attempting, for all I know, to obtain a real estate contract from the abusers for some enabled criminal intent.

Meanwhile my daughter's father wanted her to live by herself and set that up for her without my knowledge, consent, or knowing where she was living. Sheesh, life stinks sometimes.

Now, over a decade past living in Webster, it has been about three years since my mother died, and I am past a great deal of mourning, with a small fund left to me that can benefit my future.

So much for that awful history. I wish that PTSD was really a curable disorder, but it is not. You can never really entirely believe that one more flashback will not surface again sometime, and some kinds of environmental stimuli can suddenly catch you unaware, surfacing distress in the mood or body compartment of one's own person. More recently though I seem to be in remission from some of my symptoms including the depression and the physical symptoms of body movements and falls. So I am feeling blessed with this time during which I can forge my way forward to another place to live, another way to grow again, another group of friends and family around whom I may believe more strongly in my abilities, talents, and creative expression.

Already I have an apartment rented in another town, and am looking at houses there. From here forward I will have a place in which to garden.

During my life in Maplewood the United States went to war under George W. Bush, after blaming Nine Eleven on one individual in Afghanistan, a premise I really cannot buy. We are still the most energy dependent nation on the planet, and the winter season of this past year was stunningly warm. The park across the street from here was so green and blooming so stunningly early in the spring that I ran around it on St. Patrick's Day photographing it. I also noticed scads of maple seeds, the helicopter variety that usually spin in the wind, scattered over sidewalks in profusion with very little time aloft, and most of them appearing to be immature in size. The birds outside my window in the red maple have always cheered me from year to year. One year I saw robins in a nest that hatched on Mother's Day. This year I came across a blue egg in the grass down the street during the week before Easter, which was April 8. So the birds may or may not be on their same schedule as usual, but part of the squirrel and small mammal larder could be re-budgeted by global warming already. College students must be noting these things in their field studies too.

Last year the American Friends Service Committee analysed the Federal Defense Department's spending at sixty-two percent of the Federal Government Budget . This year it is still sixty percent. The U.S. Military is probably the most energy dependent organization on the face of the Earth. People are still occupying Wall Street in various manners, including friends and family of mine. But more and more of us are cogently aware that we live in an oligarchy in which the rich get wickedly richer and the rest of us are mostly lower class. Very little middle class exists anymore.

My personal power to change these conditions is limited by exigent circumstances. At the same time I find it personally empowering to choose to use less, discard less, choose products and energy sources as wisely as I can, and team up with like minded people. We all have a huge stake in the future for our children and the children of the world.

As it happens, I had the joy of hearing two youth assemblies in schools in which the children were performing popular songs of recent decades. Both of those music directors chose, in two separate towns, Michael Jackson's song, “We are the World.” It is so beautifully stated as an ambition of young folks everywhere to continue to work to benefit the needy and protect all of the less fortunate. Yet, as a culture, we are still the most flagrantly selfishly using the most energy and natural resources way above all other countries. How can we realistically change this around, or are we one country, under money, divided, until we surrender to the fact that Asia will naturally surpass us in a matter of decades, as has been predicted for some time?

Some matters of justice and human rights have indeed moved forward, but others still stun us in the news frequently. We are so human. We are so frail.

Are we also so predictable, or can we get past the divisions yet in the sense of our country's best foot forward? I have my doubts. But I will forge my own path forward as conscientiously as I am able.