The Art of Happiness and Reflection and Mother

Sometimes I am not sure what makes our brains do what they do, though given that science is not either I suppose getting it at all puts me a step ahead. I am adjusting to this happiness thing. Its an omnipresent pleasant sensation that has no real sensory equal. I like it a great deal, and am often just sitting in the moment and feeling that purr deep in the space between mind and body. I am also reflecting a lot on my past. It is not painful, and if it feels so I stop. It is different than when my brain screams to understand something but is more a cataloging of how I achieved my joy.

When I can I do this by looking at pictures. I am not posting them here because mostly I do not want to look at them again. I look back and see a twisted body, heart, and mind. I see in the pictures my pain, and remember just how I got into that tight spot. Then I put them away and look at the reality. My body is not better off but it is stable again. My competent doctor, I will always revel in having a competent doctor, has helped in such astounding ways. The simple gesture of trying medicines in a different family that I am not allergic to unlocked a door for me. Its such a simple concept and it does mean malpractice on all fronts. It was never a lack of medication options but a lack of damns given.

I find my mind is not quieter despite being happy. It babbles on and on, noticing everything and pushing on to seek and discover about itself, about the world. I am so different every day than who i was before, and I cannot help but embrace that. A year ago I would have never admitted to anyone that I do not read DC comics anymore. I am still the biggest bat fan… except that I am also not unaware of the serious issues with in he DC Universe. Batman, my childhood hero, beats on people like me. The different of mind. Batman uses his money, whiteness, and power to get away with what could be literal murder in many cases.

I suppose I lost my hero in my reflections, but it is also a case of not needing him to be a hero. I still drown myself in Bat things for the pleasure of it, without the hidden hook of needing a hero. I no longer want a real Batman to swoop into my personal gotham and wreak havoc for the villains. I did that for myself. I no longer need rescuing and my world is no longer so dark that the slighest thing will bump me over into no return. It is not a world without sun, except that I still never open my curtains. It just isn’t the same.

Mother’s Day is coming, and this year it is not an agony for me either. It was not last year but that was the first time. Cutting my mother out of my life made this weekend less painful. There are some slight twinges in that I am not there for my siblings but I do not think they need me to be so much so. They are adults now and able to choose to be free of Mother’s clutches. I am taking quiet time, not to reflect but simply because I do not want to hear all the cacaphony of both joyous and obligatory Mother Stuff. I feel left out that I do not get to celebrate with my mother this way.

I am a motherless child. I am a fatherless child. I am a child of the world. Raised by the village. Given strength by the village. I know in that aspect I am not left out but a conglomeration of the best of every woman I know became mother, same with every man I know becoming father in some aspects. It all is simple and direct yet I still am reflecting. Instead of taking part in the shouting from the rooftops or hiding from the idea of what Mother used to be I am going to just reflect.

I am going to reflect on the women who I know who are amazing mothers. Some are also amazing fathers. I am going to reflect on how they changed me for the better. The idea of a good parent is still one I sometimes struggle with. The concept of loving arms gently wrapped around me is no longer a terrifying nightmare because it is unheard of to my mind, it is just an option I am less familiar with. I think of all those mothers and I will reflect on the gifts of seeing them for what they are. The best mothers are guides, and I know many people who are guides.

In achieving my own omnipresent joy I can see the strands of time and people in my life and I can see that while my own parents never parented, I was saved from being so like them by countless good mothers. The strangers who could not ignore the abuse and said something. The people who clothed us, fed us, and sometimes just offered a space where the sensory depravity of the world did not drown us. My opportunities were rare, but each one was a glimmer in the night sky. Not a signal like the Bat signal I hoped for but something much more durable. Stars, twinkling into the darkness I thought an oblivion. House lights in windows showing me there was civilization beyond what I thought was the entire world.

The world is so much larger than I knew. There is so much joy to explore. There is so much joy I was given and so much I want to share.

I know that not every person who reads this will understand why someone who knew both biological parents could be orphaned at birth in the mental sense. The idea that all parents are good is their default. TO that person I say, you are more than lucky and perhaps you will be someone’s star.

So I will reflect now, in my sea and perhaps the world will only be brighter for a reflection of a light brightens it. I am the sea of stars, each one illuminating a choice, a chance, a path that lead me to being not just who I am today but a person who could survive without hate. I understand the village now, and it is in my freedoms to know that I am there, and maybe I will be someone else’s star.

Well Practiced Survival and the Art of Happiness (Potential PTSD Trigger Warning)

I hit a speed bump tonight. My brain splatted as I hit the mental pavement and I am sitting here stuck. The speed bump? Happiness. I am happy so it makes me sad. I keep thinking about why that is and I suspect it has something to do with the tenets of survival. I have well practiced fear, anger, sorrow but I have almost no experience with happiness. Happy was the fleeting moment that escaped so quickly and I held on to for years. I can name my happiest moments and its a very limited number. 1. Comic book convention last June, 2. Sprite and the first time I had a flashback and she was there, 3. Gothmas with M, 4. My first time being published.

That last one I had to struggle to pull through the mists of time and survival. I was thinking too about the domestic violence cycle and how cut off people are. I grew up without friends. Even now my friendships are limited. Some of that is the autism factor, I just struggle there but a lot of it is because I trust very few people. How can I trust you? You might be out to get me. I am working on this alone but I do not want to. I never wanted to do it all alone. I never wanted to have to figure out how to beat domestic violence by myself. It should not be about clawing my way up ever. Yet it has been.

I have been trying to find a therapist for five years. Since I escaped my exhusband. I thought I might not make it. Maybe I should settle for one of the quacks who try to lure me in with promises of touching me while praying but I do not think so. I don’t think my wanting to mock this person for being what I perceive as a predator on the vulnerable with their unproven techniques and faith healing is going to be a valuable moment in time. I still survived him alone. It was not even over then. It is just over. Does that make me now really a survivor?

Yes and No. I was a survivor all along but in a way not being afraid has opened up all of these memories and painful things. Its over so now I can process. I am thinking on things from when I was five, that I never considered before. My brain is just now allowing itself to sort through nearly thirty years of stuff. Not all of it is bad. Not all of it is abuse. Not all of it matters. Yet it is there burbling around. If I think of my friends instead of them I end up with my first day in Kindergarten at the age of four, walking in and being called weird before I said a word.

I think on the isolation that goes with abuse and I want to try new things to see if its actually my way or if it is a side effect. I grew up surviving and being too out cast and bullied for friends. Am I so alone now because I just never learned how or is it because I am afraid of my own friends? I don’t know. I do not feel fear when Ithink of each individual. I feel happy. Yet I worry.

I talked a lotof this out with a couple of my friends. I have had friends for seven years now, but it still amazes me when I can say that. One suggested a support group. I looked some time ago, I believe last year, but figured maybe I should. She went to bed and I began to google. I found many local support groups. Tons for folks with cancer, tons for things I do not understand such as video games, and yet for all of the domestic violence groups listed with the local news papers, online in google, and even with the various agencies that help you get out if you are not disabled the only groups are for the ABUSERS. Oh there was one for single parents. Not a one for women. There is one for soldiers with PTSD but I am not a soldier. There is one for everyone but me. I still wrote some down and may call but I already feel that is an intrusion. I do not fit by not having a child, by being a woman, by not being with my abuser now.

I am not at a point where I can just remedy this by going “Okay we meet here, come on ladies and lets survive more.” That is not what I can do right now. I did it before for another need. When I first was disabled I helped with creating a chronic disease support group. Then retreated from it because I was not ready. I will not make that mistake again. So I am left hanging between faith healers and the disabling abusers getting help and my own independence. It cannot just be a side effect of abuse or I would not have survived being alone but I am wondering why I am supposed to do this part by myself too.

I do not want to. I want the experience of people who do not get frightened by happiness. Or people who do but can tell me what the difference between estatic, joy and elation is. My brain cannot stop pressing on the happiness to see what is wrong with it. There is no room in my head for joy. I want to change that but I am lost out at sea without a compass or the north star. There are no maps. It is just silence and placid and gentle waves. I do not know how to be gentle. I do not know how to let go of the anger. I am still angry at my abusers but it is smaller every day. They are dead. I out lived them and can focus on doing more than just clawing through every day.

I am also very tired. I do not want to spend the rest of my life fighting alone to figure out if its okay to smile all the time. My face is sore. Its not the usual sore of the jaw dislocations Its my mouth. From smiling. I keep doing so for no reason. I keep laughing more and more. This is not just a side effect of the surviving either. This happiness started growing long before my exhusband died.  The sensations when I stop thinking or just feel are not the same. It is no longer a hard sandpaper or stabbing pain. It is not a pain at all. Nor is it really emptiness. It is soft and quiet there. The passions are still burning in me but they do not scream to be heard over my sorrow. It is simply quiet, and I have never had that either.

I never expected the thing that would make me cave in on asking for help with my PTSD and other struggles would be happiness. I suspected someday I might have a challenge bigger than I could face alone. This is not even true. It is just that I know I do not have to do it by myself and I do not want to.

I am a ship at sea, no port to call home. The current pulls me, so I go to roam. I am a ship at sea, the waves a song to me. Far from even the open road. The winds rise and my ship sails on, to new lands will I go? Tomorrow I may find land ahoy but tonight I am just adrift in the sea.

Advocacy: Lets Help Amanda Baggs

Long ago when I first started this blog I received comments from several people. It startled me. THe idea people would read this blog. Then I had to put it away and found out people didn’t quit following. So with that in mind I am writing the first advocacy post in two years. A great deal of what I learned about advocacy I learned from Amanda Baggs. She was kind enough to email with me for a short period when I had just survived my exhusband and I found comfort in her words. I was able to keep going because I did not feel alone. I didn’t feel trapped by all the things in my mind or the way I see and think anymore. Amanda is one of the most powerful advocates I have met, not in the sense others see power but in her effect that I can see.

These links are PTSD trigger alerts. Simply put, Amanda has been tortured by the hospital that should have helped her and is being bullied into a dangerous and potentially deadly situation. Here are the links and they do include how you can help. Sharing this post or these links will also help.

http://paulacdurbinwestbyautisticblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/no-anesthesia-for-disabled-woman.html

http://webmuskie.tumblr.com/ This tumblr has an entire series of documentation posts about the event. This is the first hand source of the info.

Please do what you can to help Amanda get her needs met and not be punished for the malpractice of her medical team. I am going to go curse into a corner and figure out how to make the calls around my brain tomorrow.

Update: I redid the links to the blogs, they should both be working now. I am not sure why they weren’t since the links are the exact same. If issues persist please let me know.

 

No Fear!

I have been struggling since my discovery that I am free of reasons to be afraid. Some of this is my consistent issue with the identification of emotions, which is not new and I found out is an actual diagnosable medical thing so I will be perusing. No idea if there are treatments or “trainings” to help identify feelings but it is good to know I am not alone on that. I found this out from an article about autism. The term is alexithymia. The discovery has helped me to cope with some of the not knowing. It removes it from “I am a sociopath aren’t I? Why don’t I ever know what I am feeling?” territory and puts it firmly in, “Well it is okay to not know” ville.

I am happy my exhusband can no longer harm me. It feels very good. I also have a spot of sad. Then comes these confusing emotions I have never felt before at all. It took me a little while to figure out why they were so confusing and then I realized, I have not ever had a chance to feel them. In my entire life I have not had one day, until now, where I did not have a reason to be afraid. I was born into a toxic wasteland of abuse and fear, and while I managed to not live that way as an adult most of the time I still had the fears of my family seeking me out for escaping. There was a very real fear until I was freed enough that they would harm me to force me to comply with their abuse and to make me go back to it. They tried, but I endured it and then came out the other side. There was also the fear that my father, the murdering sociopath, would decide one day to harm me. Being someone that he felt threatened him, especially in our adult encounters, was incredibly dangerous. I destroyed one of his marriages in a fit of rage at the age of 13 by telling the woman the truths I could make my mouth say of what he had done. When he did not deny it, she left him. I had never expected that because it was new to me, and he told me he would kill me. By the time he died I was married to the Ex. After surviving being caged and harmed, he continued to try and kill me. My brain has no idea what to do.

I am experimenting in ways to build on these good feelings or to even express them. The colors for good are still those dark jewel tones, blacks and the image is fire and air and water and earth all twisting up. Its a bit explosive, but it is not a bad explosion and I do not have the ability to paint it. Even writing this much I feel the torrent and my heart races, but it races differently from fear. I think it might be excitement. Its a good rush of adrenaline. I am doing things that get me closer and closer to restoring my life to where I had carved it into being before my Ex. Not entirely the same, it could never be as I am no longer that same person. I consider that a good thing however. I want some of the activities back, and I want to see in person some of the friends I feared he would harm. Little things at first, when I try to do more my health is hurting me some and then I am left to struggle with the energy drain of these strange emotions. I crept outside and sat there at night several times. Its not yet summer so mostly it is quiet though the sirens are getting more frequent and later at night. Still, I am outside. I am planning more than a month ahead for small things. Once my wheelchair is repaired I am going to the museum. Those things. Writing this blog is also one of them.

I am sitting here trying to formulate the words to explain things I have no way to, no experience for and the only words that fit are it is like a second childhood. I am reborn. I feel the urge to go running and playing. SO I am. Albeit slowly because my body is not nearly as energetic as a child’s. I have found that not having nightmares has actually disrupted my sleep because it is so new. Yet my sleep feels better. I am less exhausted even when I wake up startled by my dreams of sexy shirtless elvin firemen.

I feel like I can do anything, and I suspect some of the sad is in not having felt this before but despite those pockets of sad I feel… well I wish I could tell you. I feel as if I get not just a new chapter but an entirely new book. Book Two in the Series of Kateryna Fury, maybe three. My life is full of blank pages to fill with adventures and happy memories. So I will. I rebuilt myself to happiness and there is something like satin against bare skin about living without fear and knowing that I, with the help of very dear friends, made my life this good even with the fear. I have an awesome life. I have found too that this story which has haunted me for months and I have been working slowly on writing is no longer something I am afraid to write. It had no ending. It is a dark and somewhat frightening story but the ending exists now. I had not yet felt the things that I needed to in order to let the character feel them too. No fear.

It is strange to me that my brain reaches for things to be afraid of. It is seeking them out and trying to fill what feels abit like a void but none of those fears fit and my emotions kick that away before my logic does. I am working on trying to visualize happy things that might fit that spot. Is it a want? Is it a need? I have no way to know. Something about the unknown is frightening, but this unknown is a kaleidoscopic whirl of potential and I am going to start exploring.

Bad Romance

I woke up from my nap today literally singing Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance. I had been dreaming strange things, but nothing frightening or bad. My brain is still processing the death of my exhusband and this song came out just as I was having my awakening after surviving the horrors he put me through. For the last few years it has been a comfort to me in ways, because I do not live down to the lyrics. The catchy tune was there to be a stress reliever when I needed it. It was my anthem to not return to the abuse, to not trust his platitudes through my door, and that the fears that I felt were valid. It was the musical reminder that I had survived.

I have been thinking today about all that I have survived. I cannot list it because my hand, recently injured but healing, won’t last that long and while my health has never recovered from his abuses and never will my mind has. Without knowing he was dead I had begun to push myself, because I decided to live. I went to the mall we used to frequent. It was his favorite place and I needed things. Instead of just getting what I needed and bolting I went through the entire mall and had fun with it with my carer. I even went into the bookstore. We made a day of challenging my PTSD while rewarding the impulse. I found things I would have bought online for four times as much, which for me is a reward. Apparently frugality is all I need? Frugality and dolls.

In those struggles and the darkest moments when I couldn’t even go out my own front door, I found my willingness to live. I was never willing to let him imprison me in this home because of fear. It wasn’t about him winning, but it was about being alive. I felt free of him before I knew he died and the freedom feels all the sweeter because I overcame those emotional things that I could. I will never sleep with my door unchained or unlocked, but I will go out more. Being afraid is exhausting.

I may date again, I may not. All I know is that the end of that last Bad Romance merits a playing of the song one more time. I am trying to remember why I fell for him and I can. That easy charm, saying the things I needed to hear on an emotional level and even the cats liking him. I wonder where that man went, but even him I do not mourn. I find myself mourning for his children. Not because of their father dying but because of the pain I know is in their lives. In the end though, it is a party at my house. Ra ra ra!

The Return of the Ghost I Was

I have haunted this blog since I stopped posting. Every day my fingers hovered over the keys but I couldn’t write without reprisals and my life being endangered. My voice was silenced. I became an echoing refrain in my own mind. I would write the words in my head and try to put away the desire. This was true of even my fiction work. I couldn’t publish anything under my name without my exhusband trying to murder me.

His stalking me is well documented in parts of this blog, even if most of those posts were hidden as I learned safety. I have had immense support from you, and I know some of you I couldn’t contact worried. Well, Textual Fury is back because my exhusband is dead. I do have mixed feelings but I am finding that the sad ones are for me. No one who knew thought to contact me and go “Yeah he is dead.” Which I can understand. That would require them to not be enabling his abuse, it would require them to not blame me. He blamed me, and on his last attempt on my life made it perfectly clear that I had to die so he could commit suicide.

I am obviously not dead.

In the last while I tried to blog under new names, I tried to push through. It didn’t work. I was a mute not just by choice but out of an instinct for self preservation. I have approved all pending comments, including his threatening one that wasn’t deleted. Its there for posterity. A permanent (as permanent as anything is on the internet) reminder of my survival. He died. I lived. I never expected to out last him. His body was healthy. Mine? Its MY body, with its well documented fragility, constant illness and general shorter than average life expectancy.

I no longer have to haunt my litany spot. I can simply write. Hello again, old friends.

 

Some of my adventures in the last while? Two car accidents, internal bleeding not yet resolved but not necessarily life threatening (its been around for a while now, and I actually feel pretty good despite that), Sprite needed surgery and nearly died on me from a mega abscess, I started collating my poems into a book, my art will be a part of an exhibition in Australia, The Dark Knight Rises was pretty danged awesome, my monster high collection is great and brings me joy, and my shy cat Sylvani is mostly a normal cat who jumps like popped corn. I even have a great carer. Not a good one, not a failgiver. A GREAT caregiver.

In short even before I knew he was dead my life had reached a critical point of happiness which I had once imagined as a child. My life is nothing like the actual imagined life, but I think it is far better. Sure it would be great to have my own pony and dogsled team (yes both on one sled) but I sit in my humble home with what feels like the world at my feet. I do not promise regular blogs but the turmoil of the world effects me. There is so much in this world that needs to be observed. So much to be experienced and I cannot NOT write.

Christmas Murder: A Family Tradition (Trigger Warning)

I wanted to write something cheery, about how good I am doing. I really am doing well. I am going to a friend’s for Christmas, and while i am not religious and they are, they respect this and its about communing and being together, unlike most of the other invites I have had. The things to give people and kitties is in a stack taller than my tree, with some bits on the couch since I just ran out of room. I am still fighting the endless battle of finding a caregiver agency that doesn’t remove the caregivers I get along with, because we get along but I am not grasping by a single thread and falling down a cavern of despair and fear. I am still okay.

I wanted to write about the Iraq war being over, and how apathetic I feel about this and the whys. The too little too lateness, the fact that just because we decided oh hey we’re done doesn’t negate the consequences, the disabled veterans who are now going to be struggling. I wanted to. I only have one article’s worth of energy tonight, and the others may happen later but this article demands my attention. You see I just had a serious flash back because I was skimming the news and I ran into my first murdered child holiday story this year. I had managed to dance around them for a lot longer than normal.

I am not certain if the effect on me was so much stronger than normal because I am doing well and my brain could focus, because the snow outside in the second obnoxiously white blizzard has me aching and everything already felt a bit raw, or if it is because I got a package from my mother today and it contained not only presents that she clearly put thought into and that I liked but some Xrays of my neck when it was broken the one time this hit as an adult. Not snapped but cracks in the bones show up. In my gift box. That this is the only abjectly weird thing in there actually impresses me, but with Grandma changing her number to get around the call block, texting daily despite my lack of reply (even telling her to stop fails), or any other confluence of events this link which comes with a serious PTSD warning made my brain go off into the dark spaces.

My mind whirled through every holiday where I expected to die. That means twenty five years of expecting to die. My wedding, with my sister and her lovely poison muffins which were so very nasty no one even pretended interest, every beating, each time my mother just went to bed, each time I was afraid because I just wasn’t ever good enough for these MONSTERS. My family. My serial killer father. My molester older brother who still whines about how I didn’t let him abuse me. My older sister who decided that its my fault she threatened my life, technically kidnapped me and crashed the car. These WONDERFUL (that is sarcasm) people? Each time they threatened me was right there.

The time my father murdered me for Thanksgiving was right there. The reasons I began to question religion. Right there. In the name of holiday statistics, people die. The part that really hit me was, this will be amplified in a year because of all of the people too blatantly stupid to use their critical thinking skills. The world really does end 12-21-2012 because of all of the people who will murder in the name of apocalypse. We see this with every cult, every Harold Camping, and every other failed prediction. Every single one has huge points of logic, like the Mayan calendars not being prophetic, but people still buy in to this garbage. Same as with their gods. There are reasons to question faith always and by refusing to do so, they demean their religious choices.

I am totally okay with people believing in whatever, so long as it isn’t just because they were told this is their option and never considered asking why. I am okay with people believing in the end of the world as long as its not an excuse for murder. Someday the sun is going to explode and incinerate people. In a billion more years. This is a scientific fact. So someday there will be an apocalypse. In that eventuality we can always hope that there will be a single child launched in a space ship to a distant habitable planet with a yellow sun, and he shall rise up to become Superman. Until then, every year, ever holiday, and every fauxpocalypse people get murdered because someone just needed an excuse.

I do not believe in crimes of passion. I do believe in self defense. If someone dies because they tried to hurt me, that’s cool. Means a threat is eliminated. It means that I will also be horrified to feel blood on my hands again. I will question everything in my life. I will cry. I will scream. I will thrash against it. I will also have survived. Too often in these Holiday Murder stories there is a component of pity offered for the murderer. Just as there is in any murder of the disabled or elderly. It is as if by putting Christmas lights on the murderer they become somehow pitiable more so this time of year. That woman murdered her child and her father. There does not need to be a why. She killed herself. Obviously there was some sort of problem. Its not okay to use that problem as an excuse for why she murdered the child.

It isn’t okay either for people to presume that the Autistic person at their holiday gathering who is withdrawing out of a desperate need to escape sensory overload just needs to stop ruining the holiday gathering, because of course a melt down is so much FUN for us Autists. We really want to be in so much agony that all we can do is scream and cry. Every autistic person who melts down, I fear will die. I fear it.

I see the traditional tree, the gleaming ornaments, and I feel fear. The gothmas tree being black and decked out with my own brand of decoration isn’t just because Black Trees are prettiest to me, and silvery black ornaments look cool on them. It is because I wanted decorations that didn’t leave me with vague sensations of fear. So I modified my tree to suit my needs. The need to not wonder in the slightly stuck in PTSD mode by the omnipresent holiday if mommy or daddy is going to love me this year. If I am the only one who hears rape in the song “Baby it’s cold outside”, if I am so evil because I think hitting is bad. I regress I suppose to the small child who was hungry, desperate, my entire childhood was one big act of desperation, and wondering if I am expendable enough and which of the adults in my life, and as I got older my siblings, was going to be the one to kill me.

My mother was the only one who never said “I will kill you” with words. She still said it with her actions. Choosing my step father over me. She loved him more than me, and warehousing me was more convenient than murder. I got lucky. If they’d thought about it and figured out that at that point no one would’ve even noticed if I was missing, I think I would be dead. My mother may not have had the stomach for it but the rapist she married surely did.

In this moment I recognize why I have eschewed the holidays even with friends for the most part. The family traditions my family has end badly. They end in bloodshed, violence and tears. I cannot stop crying as I write this because I know each keystroke is another child somewhere in this world who is living as I did, or dying as I thought I would. My choice to believe in Santa was a conscious one. I always knew he was fictional but I wanted to believe in the goodness that he represented. I wanted to believe that there was someone somewhere who brought pleasant things. I wanted to not spend my holidays afraid for my life, or any other day. That is what the holidays are to so many people, and myself.

The holidays mean family and togetherness. Family and togetherness mean being tied up in a closet, lying awake at night waiting for one of the adults to get mad and demand the ritual beating. I mean literally the ritualized holiday beating. You knew it would come, the question was not a matter of that but if you would survive. Then you had to endure pretending nothing was wrong while making offerings to the parents, and hoping they were good enough. In my case there were offerings to the people around me for a lot longer. This is why I only buy Christmas gifts for people I want to. There is no obligation now, to survival by having managed a nice enough present. I reclaimed gift giving into something of joy.

Yet I cannot reclaim that little girl, who suffered. I cannot give her grandfather back his last moments and make them pain free, horror free. I cannot give voice to every child who is being abused in some way right now. The amount of violence and hatred that spirals up during the holidays, isn’t because of alcohol. That is an excuse that enables domestic and other forms of violence. It is because we all take time off to be together. This means the victims have no out of the house refuge from their abusers, and a smart abuser uses this to their advantage.

There is no excuse for the Family Traditions I have. There is no excuse at all. I look over to my Gothmas lanterns, my tree, and it still makes me happy, its a creative outlet after all. Nonstandard tree means a lot of customization. I look back in time and remember praying I wouldn’t drop the ornaments as we pretended to be a happy family, praying I didn’t bunch them wrong, praying I did the tinsel right. Praying that this year, God wouldn’t tell my father that I was evil. Praying that this year my mother would let me come home and that I would feel like I belonged. Praying that when people showed up to visit, or claimed to, they either would show up and if they did would not act in a way that hurt me. Praying.

I only miss prayer when I have no power to at least reach out to someone and gift them with my understanding, with the knowledge they are not alone in their suffering.

With the article I linked, I cannot overlook the clear premeditation. The gun she obtained without record of obtaining it. The sending her husband away. Did she just love him more or was it less? It was one or the other. The fact she chose the basement, which would’ve muffled the sounds.

This is the holiday season. Readers, if you are feeling depressed, please remember you can always write me. I may not write back immediately but I will try to. you don’t have to be alone. YOu can also find your local crisis line, and anonymously vent.

If you are an autist, advocate for your need for quiet. Even if it means locking yourself in the bathroom for an hour, take the time you NEED to get away from the overload.

If you are alone, volunteer at a homeless shelter. Go help the people who have less than you do, because you can.

If none of that applies, or if all of it does, make a new holiday tradition this year. Do something to either reclaim your holiday from similar circumstance or to share love and joy in new ways. WHile the holidays are arbitrary the need for human companionship, comfort, and to celebrate is not. These are important things and should be done without violence or fear.

You aren’t alone, I am with you and you are with me by the simple act of living. We are alive, and that means you are my new family. Happy Holidays if you celebrate them, and if not, stay warm this winter, enjoy the light displays with their pagan roots and remember the primal need for companionship winter brings out is normal.