The mask

Image

a mask that smiles

covering a frowning face

telling lies to hide its disgrace

it spins a false reality

 forgetting its own truth

a face on a body that lacks its soul

Soul

Honesty shining through

an uncovered life of

love, care and hope

feelings express inner beauty

spreading self for all to see

sharing the light

supporting the dark

hide no evil

keep no good

there is no mask

smothering the shine of joy

here there is truth

with the self that has soul

Trust is the foundation that relationships are built on.  Trust in the other person encourages you to believe that they are who they appear to be and will remain that person through the trials that life presents.  It helps you to show all sides of yourself without the fear of being outcast or shunned.  You trust that you are seeing the real person and not a mask that they are putting on to hide something evil.  Trusting someone else requires a trust in one's self.  You have to believe that you are capable of distinguishing who is trustworthy and who is not.  When you start caring about someone, you have to believe that it is stemming from a healthy place trusting that you know what is best for you.  I no longer trust myself and therefore don't trust anyone else.

When we are children, we love our families blindly.  Trusting that because they are the ones taking care of us, they must be looking out for our best interest.  This must be love.  This must be what it feels like to be loved and love back.  I loved people who were threatening to my physical and emotional well being.  How can I trust my heart when my heart was telling me to love such harmful people?  How can I ever believe myself again?  I loved my family, I still love my family.  I loved a person that could leave me with only a two sentence email two days before moving half way across the world.  I loved an alcoholic who told me I was a bad daughter who had betrayed her family.  I loved an abusive person who scared his wife into submission.  What does that say about my ability to love?  

After my dad left for Missouri, my mom fell into a crazed depression.  She would drink every night until she was a sobbing heap on the floor.  She would sit across from me with red swollen eyes telling me all of the horrible things my dad had said and done to her begging for my sympathy and help.  I would tell her over and over that she had been a good mom; that she was a wonderful person who deserved so much better; that she could start over without him.  As I was telling her these things, I could look right through her eyes into the soul of a person who believed the lies my dad had fed her for so many years.  She was a bad mother, she was a bad wife, she was unlovable, she didn't deserve better.  My words would never be strong enough to drown out the abusive lies she had taken on as her reality.  I couldn't fix her with my love.       

A Fall Felled Forest

I would be in this state of uncertainty between denial and facing my harsh reality for three more years. If leaving a bad marriage is hard, think about trying to leave your entire family.  Think about telling your mom that you love her, but you can no longer be in her life.  Think about going against the one person you have never dared to disobey.  Think about facing the reality that your brother, who you once built tree forts with, had reached a point of instability that put your sanity and well being at risk.  Think about losing your entire family in one fowl swoop.  This is what my reality was comprised of. This was my path to freedom.

I would return to my family two more times before finally making the choice to walk away from them forever.  Despite my awareness of who they really were and how detrimental they were to my mental well being, I couldn't bare the thought of standing alone in the world.  Our families give us a tie to the earth.  They are the reason we exist.  Willing or not, we take on their past and become their future.  Family is the most fundamental form of community.  Without a family, I pictured myself floating around the earth with no line of connection to anything.  I would be a house with no foundation.  If a big storm appeared in my life, I would simply crumple up and blow away.  Where would I be without my family?  Nobody would ever be there for me unconditionally, nobody would pick me up when my life fell to pieces.  My life was falling apart and the people that were supposed to be there to pick me up were the ones pulling it apart piece by piece.  I had no where left to run.

When I returned from France, my dad was in the process of leaving my mom for the umpteenth time.  Every time that he left, he would peel away giving the impression that he would never look back.  I never saw my dad cry.  He was a stone wall.  He approved or disapproved, but never loved.  I figured he was incapable of the sentiment.  Sometimes, I would get an email once a month checking in and giving me a status update.  The last two times he left, the only communication I had was a two sentence email on my birthday.  While he was gone, I would comfort my mom telling her that she deserved better and could start over without him.  Every time, I would hope that it would be the last.  Every time, he would show back up broke and lost, and she would let him back into our lives.

This time, I was sure it was going to be the last.  He had taken leaving to a whole new level.  For months, he had been planning his perfect escape.  He created a secret bank account and was slowly moving money from my parents mutual account into his own.  Once he had completely drained their account, he left everything in my mom's name and refused to pay any of the bills that they had shared; the mortgage, the business loan and the car loans.  He moved to St. Louis Missouri to fly planes and left my mom to deal with all the open ended disasters he had gotten them into.  His last words to my mom were, "I never loved you, this was my plan all along, I just needed a way out."

I remember walking outside while he was packing up his car; the only thing that he was loading in was his old record collection. He looked at me with hollow eyes that reflected his soulless body and muttered, "I'll miss you."  He drove away without looking back.    

The Lost Tree

The crazy thing about addictions is that everybody knows their harmful effects, yet starts and continues the behavior anyways.  It is comparable to jumping off a cliff.  You know that it is going to hurt,  you know that it may kill you, you know that it will require a laborious recovery, and you do it anyways.  Why?  Do you hate yourself?  Do you think that you are stronger than the addiction?  Do you tell yourself that this time will be different?  Are you incapable of seeing past this very moment?  Whatever the reason for starting, all addicts end up at the same grand finale, as a victim of their own behavior.  They now have something else motivating their every action and thought.  The person that they were before is hidden behind the obstinate demands of the addiction.

When talking about abused women, people always say things like; "why doesn't she just leave?" "how could she put her family through that?" why does she always let him back in?" "doesn't she want to be happy?"  Believe me, I ask myself the same questions everyday.  Dysfunctional relationships are as addictive as the most potent drug.  They take over your life.  You become them.  In most cases, you will have been forced to disconnect from every other healthy relationship.  You will have been told so many times that everything is your fault that you begin to believe that you deserve the abuse.  You stop wanting anything better for yourself, believing that you don't deserve it.  You start believing that nobody else will understand you or want you, because you are so bad.  Ultimately you feel like without this dysfunctional relationship, you will be left completely alone in the world.  The longer you stay in a dysfunctional relationship, the harder it is to break away.  The dysfunction encompasses you, making you believe that you are the crazy one.  You doubt your own memory, your own feelings, your own sanity, then you doubt the whole world.  You are lost, you are alone, you are dependent on the only thing you know to be true, your relationship.

After my experience at Christmas, I returned to France knowing the daunting task that lay ahead of me.  This time, I would not forget what happened.  I would not let myself fall back into a blind state of denial.  Realizing what you have to do and carrying it out are two entirely different demons.  The realization hits hard.  You flip flop back and forth between realities so fast that you lose track of where you are.  Part of you wants to go back into denial, because life is simpler there.  It is all you know.  Although it hurt you, it was where you found a sense of belonging.  Without it, you have nothing to hold on to.  Without it, your whole belief system crumbles.  For so long, you listened to the lies and altered your life around them.  How do you start reforming your truth?  Here, I started my long battle between denial and the reality that left me lost and alone in what was starting to feel like a very large world.      

The Beginning of the End

Sacrifice

Lend all but your leg to feed love's hunger

forgetting that you were happier before

blinded with images of what could be

losing track of what it means to be free

Disappointment

Hope is always followed by pain

every excuse sounds the same

love is hiding behind a dark curtain

making you believe it will come again

heart ache appears around every corner

It's finally time for this to be over

The End

Hope flickering like a suffocating flame

Memories that brought laughter no longer remain

tears fall freely now

bringing release and cleansing

all that was is no more

holding on to images now so far

positive outlook ripped and torn

realization that nothing was as it seemed

falling from the summit like a bird without wings

The Fall

Like flesh ripping over asphalt

how can this be what is best for me?

eyes burn, head throbs, stomach churns

but oh the heart

suffocating agony clenches your chest

you feel it beat

yet it feels hollow and collapsed

how is heart ache so physical

this kind of pain shouldn't be possible

memories swirling through your head

you question the choice you made

so much is lost

nothing was gained  

Alone

Quiet surrounds me

pain encompasses my body mind and soul

my heart beats but lacks its life

so much time fighting, clenching, hoping

all is lost

time passed carrying meaning

what meaning

I fell into loves trap 

not knowing that love seldom gives back

alone, alone, alone

feel the word engulf your being

this end does not feel like a new beginning

Two days before Christmas, Rich had one of his explosive tantrums.  He was in the garage fixing something on his car and it was apparent that things weren't going according to plan.  Betty and I were sitting in the kitchen fixing soup for dinner and all we heard was a continuous stream of cuss words and loud clanks from car parts being thrown at garage walls.  I started to recognize the feeling swelling inside of me.  Fear.  It took me a long time to identify fear as what had filled my childhood with sickening anxiety.  Because I was never allowed to discuss what was wrong, I was never able to name what was making me so sick.  As we waited for Rich's imminent entry, I started to notice that I was becoming shaky, reality seemed to become more and more hazy.  My hands developed beads of sweat and my head began to spin with tiny dots of bright light.  These were the feelings I had as a child when I had no way of escaping.  My defense had been to endure the moment and quickly forget that it had happened.  I had become an expert at altering my reality to remove these moments from my consciousness.  This was one of my first encounters with my family's anger that I was able to process and place into memory.

Rich stormed into the house yelling.  He was attempting to remove his coat, but it got stuck on his arm.  He thrashed and tore at the coat as though the coat itself was the reason for all his failures.  The coat was stubborn and held on to his hand as he swung it around onto the ground where he stomped on it and finally removed the life from its limp fabric.  His eyes were burning with rage as he searched the room for something to take his anger out on.  I felt myself tremble as his eyes passed over me and slid over Betty.  His bowl of soup was sitting ready for him on the counter.  He reached out to pick it up and as he did, the bowl tipped spilling hot soup on his hand.  "Mother Fucker!!!  This soup is so god damn hot!"  The bowl of soup went flying across the kitchen watering the floor with chicken and rice before shattering on the tile.  He glared at Betty as though the hot soup had been her secret plot against him.  He took her by the shoulders and shook her before turning and running into the laundry room slamming the door before kicking the wall over and over until a huge hole had torn through the dry wall. 

Betty ran to the basement escaping into the cool dark guest room.  She sat in silence letting her head fall limply to her chest, her silver hair falling over her tear stricken face.  I tiptoed into the room and sat next to her putting my hand over hers.  She was trembling and her silent tears turned to sobs.  "I'm so afraid.  I'm so scared.  I don't know what to do.  He gets worse and worse everyday.  His anger is taking control of everything."  I recognized the state she was in.  I had been there many times, but because I had never had a way out, I had kept myself from focusing on the truth.  Denial had been my only means of survival.  I knew Betty had other options.  This was my opportunity to save someone else from the entrapment of an abusive family. 
I couldn't believe the words that were coming out of my mouth.  The truth sounded so foreign after I had spent my whole life defending a facade that I had clung to as my only life line.  "Betty you don't have to stay with him.  You need to get out now.  There is no reason for you to endure this suffering.  I had no option, but you do.  Leave."

 The next day I packed up my things and left.  Telling Betty that she had the option to leave reminded me that I did too.  This was my first step to freedom.  I drove away staring into Betty's sunken eyes, hoping that she too would take back the control of her life. 
  

Letting Go

Letting go.  What does that mean? Can we ever completely let go of something that was completely assimilated into our life?  Will it ever be completely gone?  Probably not.  I will forever carry pieces of my past with me, but they will eventually loose their power over my actions and thoughts.

I never thought that Rich would be married before me, if ever at all.  From the way he spoke about women, you would think that he would rather keep one locked up in a cage to poke at than to share his life with. He despised women and everything they represented.  Yet, when he told me that he was in love and getting married to his ideal woman, I believed him. 

I was finishing up college at Fort Lewis in Durango when I found out that Rich and Betty had plans to be married.  Looking back, I judge the person that I was calling her blind and naive that she was unable to see through the facade.  There were so many signs that something dark was hidden behind the curtain of perfection.  The person I was before believed them, all of them.  They told me that my life was great, and I believed them.  They told me that we had the perfect family, and I believed them.  They told me that if I had a problem or thought something was wrong that I only had myself to blame, and I believed them.  I grew up thinking that if I admitted to myself or anyone else that things weren't perfect that I would be the one on the chopping block.

Betty's family didn't like Rich and hated that Betty was marrying him.  They saw the truth.  They saw my families darkness, so why couldn't I?  Soon after the wedding, Rich made sure that Betty was distanced inch by inch, mile by mile from her family.  A few months into the marriage, Betty had nearly cut off all communication with her family.  Rich's first plan was to build a hand crafted 10ft by 10ft trailer to live in during their road trip to Alaska where they would start a homestead and live off the land. When they ended up in Homer, Alaska broke cold and tired of the dark, Rich decided that they would move to Florida and buy a sail boat which they would sail around the world.  He had never sailed a day in his life.  The first time that they took their old decrepit boat out into the bay, the engine broke down and they didn't have the skill set required to sail it in.  Penny-less and out of ideas Rich moved back to my parents' house where he would take care of my fathers slowly dying business, while my parents were "saving the world" in the Congo.  This is where I met up with Betty and Rich on my Christmas break from teaching in France.

Fear and dysfunction filled the house like an impending storm .  Betty's once weightless black hair had turned into tired streaks of grey.  Her womanly figure had diminished into one of a ten year old boy.  If you blew hard enough, you would have snapped her wrist in two.  Deep circles of fatigue haunted her face.  Her light was smothered out, her living was reduced to survival.  Rich always had a temper, punching holes in walls, smashing computer screens, lashing out and bunching me so hard that I would fall to the ground gasping for air.  I thought it was normal.  I thought this was how all older brothers acted.  Somehow, seeing the affects of his dysfunction on Betty was what I needed to wake up.  My false reality slowly began to crack.

       

Never Alone

There is no person that can live a life without feeling loss or pain.  We experience these on different levels, but non of us are exempt from enduring the sadness they induce.  No one person deals with the sadness and hurt in the same way.  Some never face it.  They go on living the distractions, keeping just occupied enough to never sit down face to face with their own self.  Some become the sadness.  They allow it to be their universal excuse, their reason for being, their identity of self.  Some retreat into a dark hole.  They never admit or deny, they withdraw from everything, from every feeling, every opportunity for growth or self discovery.  They don't care, they don't love, they don't live.  Then, their are the people who use the sadness as a ladder to self discovery.  They sit with their experience.  They acknowledge it, ask it questions, search for the answers and slowly make a complete recovery, one step closer to awareness.  Of course, their are people who fit none of these, but most people are a mixture of all four.

There are moments in my life in which I have used each of these methods for dealing with my sadness.  Most of the time, I switch back and forth between them all so fast that I start to feel schizophrenic.  After I went home for Christmas that year in France, I could no longer live in my stage of not facing the truth.  The truth literally hit me in the face.  The reason behind my constant state of anxiety, fear and doubt followed by my defense mechanism of flight was finally starting to reveal itself.  What I had been fleeing from for so many years was the hardest thing for a person to get away from.  Their background, the thing that set the stage for their first definition of self, their family.

Christmas was about the six month mark of Rich and Betty's marriage.  Rich is my older brother by 18 months and Betty was my new sister in law.  They had gotten married the summer before I moved to France.  It was a simple wedding set in an open field in the National Forest a quarter mile from our house.  We borrowed a tent from the boy scouts and put it in our front yard where we hosted the reception.  Our house was set on five acres overlooking what used to be the open hills between Monument and Colorado Springs.  All of our old family friends were there and family members that we hadn't seen in years.  Everyone looked so happy as people normally do at these staged life events.  Rich looked so in love and Betty looked so naive.  In two years, they would be divorced and Betty would have a restraining order against my brother.

    

Beauty from Sadness

       The thing about truth is that there isn't one.  It is the same with reality.  Reality only exists within yourself.  How real do you think you are?  How accurate do you think your experience in life is?  Your reality is simply your perception of events that cause a reaction within you that then remains in your memory as your truth.  Maybe your perception was wrong, maybe your reaction was wrong, maybe there was a lapse between when the event happened and when it became a memory.  Maybe your reality is a very skewed version of what really happened.  Likely.  Yet, the only way that we can continue living and not fall into a crazed delusion is to believe ourselves.  To believe what we are feeling and what we remember and how we identify with our self.  Without our reality we lose our self.  Which in some religions is considered the final goal of enlightenment, losing self.  I feel like I need to find myself before I am able to decide whether I am ready to let that person go.
     My story begins with me as a person that knew my reality, then had that reality collapse under my feet creating a spiral into a confusion so deep that I wasn't sure who was going to come crawling back out. I still have times of doubt between the reality I see now and the one I was hidden in before.  I go back and forth between which one I was better off in.  As of now, I always end up believing that I chose the right path out of my confusion and am starting to settle into my new sense of self.  While telling my story, I constantly have moments of doubt thinking that I am feeding not only myself but everyone else a series of lies.  My paintings begin at the beginning of my realization, my true awakening.
       This painting is titled "The Loss of Hope."  I painted it five months into my one year stay in France.  If you were to look at my pictures of my year teaching English at Lycee Lumiere in the quaint town of Luxeuil les Bains, you would never imagine that something so dark was stirring in my soul.  I appear happy.  I skied, snowboarded, mountain biked, rock climbed and hiked the French Alps.  I sea kayaked in the ocean off of Cassis and climbed the cliff sides of les Calanques.  I spent a week in Amsterdam smoking some of the best herb known to man.  I spent hours sipping coffee and eating almond croissants at the perfectly intimate cafes.  Yet, on the inside my world was collapsing.  Ever since I was 16, I had been on the run from something, moving from country to country, state to state, school to school trying to find the place that would finally give me peace.  My inner turmoil followed me everywhere.  Was I running from societal norms?  America?  My friends or lack there of?  Until this moment, one week after Christmas, while sitting in my little white painted cement block room in the teacher housing of Lycee Lumiere, I never knew what was making me run.  My own family.