Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Evil Exists in the World

Today's post is inspired by a conversation I had with a very dear and very wonderful friend of mine. She has talked me down out of many an emotional tree, and for that I can never thank her enough.

About 16 months ago, I found out that my husband had been having an ongoing affair with what I thought was one of my friends and who definitely was a co-worker and had been for five years. My husband and I had only been married about a year and a half at the time, and I was deeply in love with him and convinced that he was my knight in shining armor after a 20-year-long bad marriage that felt more like a jail sentence than a loving union. When I found out what my husband had been doing, it almost killed me. Literally. I had to start taking tranquilizers, I found myself lost in my own neighborhood without any idea how I had gotten to that street or how to get back to my own house - I was a strung-out mess. My husband was remorseful and wanted another chance - because my own past was quite checkered and I'd done my share of bad things, I felt that, karmically, I owed it to the Universe to grant that one chance. My husband and I have been picking up the pieces ever since. His infidelity is still a dominant thought in my mind, however, and I'm not sure that I will ever be entirely free of it. The unwashed slut that was my co-worker and supposed "friend" hi-tailed her ass out of this company and went to work for another law firm here in town, got herself fired after three months for gross incompetence, then started working at a local beauty salon as a hair sweep-up and phone girl, then started selling parquet wood floors, then, lo and behold, found herself back here in downtown Seattle where she took another job as a legal secretary in a lawfirm.....next-friggin-door. So, after months of healing and feeling better and better.....thinking that it was all done and being so very happy to be moving forward.....I saw the "creature" (that's what I call her now...."the creature" and use the term "it" when speaking about it, rather than the feminine pronouns of "she" or "her."

I had been aware that the day would come when I would spot it....I just didn't know when, and for 15 months had been very fortunate ineed. However, the time had come and the spotting was done. I found myself fighting off shock and dismay. A cadre of emotions welled up inside me and were put down. I felt physically ill - dizzy, short of breath. Everything was fresh again. Everything was new and terrible again. I began to think of all my progress as having been a sham....I flailed about for answers. Days went by and I headed down into a black hole of depression and absolute RAGE. This is where my conversation with my girlfriend Chris comes in.

I had the brilliant idea last night that what I really needed to do was to have some closure on the other side of the equation of the betrayal that I was a victim of a year and a half ago. I needed to find out how someone could pretent to be your friend and could look you right in the face and say, "Maryellen, you know that I love you and I would never do anything to hurt you," when she sees you falling apart over the fact that you believe your husband is pulling away from you. I believed that answers for questions like, "how could you do this to me? We've been friends for five-friggin' years?" would somehow help me in my healing and recovery process and perhaps, just perhaps, put to rest some of this enormous rage that I have to wrestle with on an almost daily basis. However, there was something inside of me that told me this would not be a good idea. To send and email to the creature soliciting reasons behind why it could be so cruel, would alert the creature to the fact that I was still thinking about this stuff. This knowledge would, in some ways, give "it" power over me - and I didn't think I wanted to do that. So I called Chris to help talk me out of my newly planned course of action.

She asked me what I hoped to gain by emailing the creature.....I told her "closure" - and we talked a bit more, and she said that she didn't think I would get the answers I needed or was seeking. She said that what had happened and how the creature was able to do what it did was due to the simple fact that "evil exists in the world, and she (the creature) operates on the basest level of instinct and the most gutteral sphere of human nature." And that's true. It does. I didn't see it because I give people the benefit of the doubt. I assume goodness in people and, unless they show me differently, will continue to assume that goodness for the duration of our association. Never in my life have I been so grossly and rudely awakened to the possibility of evil and treachery so great. I am not going to go into the details of their affair here, but suffice to say, it had a hard-nosed counselor near tears and sitting on the edge of her chair saying that she simply did not know how I was going to get past all of it and come out to a place of forgiveness. And counselors just don't say that shit. They pretty much know how things are and that splitting up a marriage is one of the hardest exercises to which you can subject the psyche that exisits in the modern world.

So, anyway....yes Virginia.....evil exists in the world. And sometimes it slimes you. You cannot reason with it....you cannot plead with it....it has no more sense or congnisense than a lobotomy patient who endlessly masterbates all day. Evil such as the creature is cold, calculating and a slave to the self-serving attitude that causes wars. All you can do if it has touched you is to try to wipe it off and move on with your life. Move on and love. Love everyone who will love you back. Spread that love around. I try....I am trying....as I write these words I still struggle to understand even while I know there is no understanding what happened to me....but I try.

Heavy writing today, huh?

Blessed be, and may this never, ever happen to you. But if it does, may you find a way out and to the other side where there waits forgiveness which will set everyone free.

Az

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Too Much Going On


I remember when I was bored . . . when I didn't have anything to do. Now there are too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. I wish I could go without sleep without becoming completely goofy for loss of 3 to 4 hours of it.
Check out my web page at http://www.theinvoker.com. I want you to see my new window project. This is a single pane of the 4-pane window I leaded and painted. Well, gotta go to bed now so I can get up and do it all again tomorrow. Ciao!

Friday, September 09, 2005

Katrina.....YOU BITCH!

Well, New Orleans....will it ever be the same? I can guarantee you that it won't, and maybe it shouldn't. But I'm not worried about Bourbon Street or the rest of the French Quarter or any of the other touristy-schmouristy crap down there. What I am worried about is all of those people. Those poor people who found themselves wading around in a bowl of human feces and dead bodies. I can't seem to get them off my mind. I'm also mindful of how much time it took our illustrious government to respond to their desperate need and situation. You can bet your ass that if they had been white middle-class citizens they would have been friggin' air lifted out of there as soon as the winds died down. I find it really scary to realize we are essentially living in a caste system here in the United States. Probably the reason it's been so long in dawning on me is that I was born into the privileged class. I'm sure, had I been born black, or hispanic, I would have realized this a very long time ago indeed.

So what is the point of this blog entry. Not one really. I just pray for the people of New Orleans. That they have the strength and courage they need to pick up their lives and move on from this point. That's really all they can do. I pray that the people who are holding on to their homesteads down there realize that they are holding on to death and decay, and that they let go and get the help they need.

Blessed be to the people ravaged by Katrina. Blessed be and may light cover you and may the Goddess see you through these incredibly trying times.

Friday, September 02, 2005

My.....my.....my....September already

So I'm sitting here on my cranberry colored camel-backed sofa typing away on my laptop as my husband sits on the other end of the same cranberry-colored camel-backed sofa typing on his laptop. It's Friday evening and we're waiting for our friends to come over so we can "do something." What this something is that we are going to do is anybody's guess.

Everyone, including myself, is bummed and upset about the poor hurricaine victims in Louisiana and Mississippi. It is incredible to see that kind of devestation on your own lawn....the few photos that I have seen of it look like the aftermath of the bombing of a 3d world country. Or, perhaps...oh...I dunno....maybe reminiscent of some of the photos coming back from Iraq in recent memory.

These times they are a'changin'. Our economy is in the sewer -or, if not quite there yet, well on its way. Gasoline is over $3 a gallon here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, the cost of living is going up faster than wages, interest rates are rising along with unemployment, and well....we are headed for tough times.

We will weather these tough times and life will go on, but I have to say that I am really not looking forward to what the leeward side of a second Republican presidential term brings. I've seen this several times in my life already. Once with Ronald Regan, and once with Big Daddy Bush, and now with Junior. Each time, prices rose, wages stayed static, people became worried and didn't spend money (which just drove the process further into the abyss). **sigh** Hang on, those of you who don't remember, you'll get to see what I'm talking about soon enough - and for those of you who do remember - well, here we go again.

Pray for the hurricaine victims though. They need our support now. No matter how tough it may seem for you because you don't have the cash to go out and party tonight, or maybe you can't afford that new dress or car....if you're reading this blog, chances are you have a roof over your head and your house isn't under water, and you have electricity and you don't have dead bodies lying around in the street.

Blessed be, everyone. I don't mean to bring anyone down. I'm just kind of in a funk right now myself.