Catching Hell

In my therapy practice, I frequently work with adult clients who have survived childhood emotional and verbal abuse. I see the crippling, ego-smashing toll it can take, sometimes even worse than physical abuse--at least those scars heal over time. Joshua defies the odds.


Joshua spent his childhood catching hell. He didn’t even know he was chasing it.

“I swear to God, Joshua, you are good for absolutely nothing. Even that retard down the street can hammer a nail in a board,” his father yelled so loud that the neighbor down the street whose child was the said “retard” was probably offended. “Go on, get outta here before I backhand you,” Mike Perky said. “Nobody needs your help,” he mumbled under his breath as he focused his attention on aligning the board just so.

Deflated, Josh shuffled over to the old oak in their back yard, parked himself beneath the overhanging boughs in the shade and leaned back against the trunk. Through the curl of his long lashes, the kind no ten year old boy wants, he watched a singular ant crawl up and down one blade of grass after another accomplishing nothing of value that Josh could see. “Stupid ant,” he said, and thumped the insect so hard that it arced into the air and fell like a miniature comet.

The kitchen door opened and Marcella Perky, hair in pin curls partially covered with a red bandanna knotted at the base of her neck, stepped out on the back porch. She pulled the belt of her chenille robe tighter. “Joshua, what are you doing just sitting there? Nobody respects a lazy bum. The yard isn’t going to rake itself you know.” She retreated back into the kitchen slamming the door behind her.

Josh pursed his lips and expelled the air that puffed out his cheeks. It sounded like a moped engine. He dragged himself toward the potting shed where the Perkys stored their gardening tools, and grabbed the rake. In the garage, the sound of his father’s hammer rhythmically striking wood matched the pounding in his head.

Josh raked the leaves into a pile in the back yard. He wiped his forehead on his shirtsleeve and went inside. “Mom, can I have some lemonade?”

Marcella stood at the kitchen smoking a Camel cigarette. She tapped the ash into the sink basin and turned to regard her son standing just inside the door. “Your arm isn’t broken far as I can tell. Nobody wants to wait on you hand and foot, mister.”

He poured himself a glass of lemonade from the fridge, turned a kitchen chair around, and plunked himself down. “Can I go to the movies? Everyone’s going to be there.”

“Nobody’s going to want to hang out with you—look at you; you look like a ragamuffin.” His mother shook her head, rolled her eyes, and heaved a sigh. She lit another cigarette from the glowing ember of the last one and expelled a long stream of smoke through her nostrils.

Months and years faded into one another. Joshua struggled through junior high. When he brought home two Ds and a C- on his final report card, nobody cared. When he came home after midnight in the middle of the week, nobody noticed. When he started hiding boxes of cookies and crackers in his closet and munching them in bed at night, nobody knew. And when his weight shot up to 160 pounds, Marcella merely said, “Nobody likes a fat boy. Nobody will ever love you.”

Joshua, worn down by years of repetition, began to believe that was true. When he turned twenty-one, with his critical parents well internalized, Joshua moved to another town, took a job at a low-life bar on the wrong side of the tracks, and began his career as an alcoholic.

At a gathering of “influential people,” to which he was invited to tend bar, he slipped out onto the balcony for a break. A lovely young woman stood in the moonlight, sniffing, and wiping at her tears. Joshua screwed up his courage and said, “Hi, I’m Joshua. Who are you?”

“Oh, I’m nobody,” the woman replied with a sad smile and downcast eyes before turning her head away.

“I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet you,” Joshua replied.


“What’s this?” Mike Percy asked, tossing the envelop on the kitchen table.

“Looks like a card from the kid,” Marcella answered, ripping the top of the envelop with her red-polished nail.

“Haven’t heard from him for a year or so, have we?” Mike glanced at his wife.

Marcella extracted a wedding announcement from the envelop, and eyed the date which had passed a month earlier. She read from a note scrawled at the bottom of the invitation:

Mom, Dad, you were right; Nobody loves me, Nobody will take care of me, Nobody believes in me. Nobody respects me. Nobody wants to be with me. And I’ve never been happier. Joshua

Bits and Pieces

I woke up one morning with the thought, "What would happen if you came into your house and saw confetti all over your floor?" Truly, I don't know where these thoughts come from, but they're usually the precursors to a story unfolding or a new piece of music that wants to be composed. Here's the end result:


“Babe…” Wendy called as she stomped snow from her boots in the foyer before padding stocking-footed down the Italian-tiled hallway toward the kitchen. The strident chirp of a bird was the only response.

She stopped short and grinned at the profusion of red rose petals and brightly colored confetti that littered the entryway to the kitchen. “She remembered,” she said, her eyes moist with emotion. Wendy was a sucker for romance. Visions of chocolate dipped strawberries and champagne, brie, pate, and her favorite crispy crackers danced in her mind as she stepped lightly over the confetti and into the kitchen.

A chirp and a twitter greeted her from the cage on the counter top. “Can you say ‘Happy Birthday, my favorite person’?” she addressed Pesto, the green parakeet she’d inherited along with the apartment a little over a month ago.

Wendy cast a glance around the room. Not only was there no Xena, the current love of her life, and no strawberries—dipped or otherwise—the sink was still full of last night’s dishes abandoned in lieu of impulsive, hot sex followed by a shared bubble bath. Wendy grimaced at the marinara sauce tenaciously clinging to the white china plates. It almost canceled out the frisson of excitement at the memory of the preceding evening. Almost. She smiled.

“Xena?” she called into the emptiness of the rooms beyond the kitchen. Perplexed, she returned to the plethora of confetti and petals strewn about the hallway.

“Hunh,” she mumbled, as she bent down for a closer look. There were letters on eight of the tiny squares of colored paper which she carefully extracted from the mass. She returned to the kitchen and laid them out on the table like Scrabble tiles. “She knows I love a good game,” she said over her shoulder to Pesto, who squawked his agreement.

Crossword puzzles came easily to her, and her mind, trained to see patterns, quickly picked out the word ‘bitch.’ “Well,” she huffed, “that’s some birthday greeting.” There were three letters left. Her hand began to shake as she arranged them in front of ‘bitch’. Wendy gasped for breath as she read ‘die bitch’ spelled out in colorful confetti in front of her. She glanced furtively around the kitchen. The shades were drawn, the door to the patio locked. An ominous feeling of dread and danger began to seep its way into her muscles, and she hunched her shoulders self protectively. She’d read in the tabloids about roommates who turn out to be serial killers.

It was true, she didn’t know Xena all that well; they’d only been officially dating for a couple of weeks. Xena had shown up last month to look at the apartment the same day as had Wendy; they had quickly acknowledged a mutual spark over dinner at an intimate little Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood. In fact, they’d gotten on so famously, they had decided to share the two-bedroom apartment. In her head she heard the exasperated responses by her straight friends when she told them she and Xena were moving in together. “You’ve known her how long?” was the now-familiar refrain, followed by snide references to the clichéd lesbian second date involving a U-Haul. Two weeks ago, the attraction between them had grown so intense, they’d waived the white flag and surrendered.

Wendy was deep in thought and didn’t hear the door at the end of the hall click shut, or the quiet footsteps approach.

“Happy Birthday,” Xena shouted, grinning broadly and waving a bouquet of iris in one hand and a dozen purple balloons in the other.

Wendy screamed. Pesto began flapping about wildly in his cage, squawking and screeching hysterically.

Startled, Xena lost her grip on the balloons; they floated up to the vaulted ceiling and clung there as if in fear for their lives.

“What the…” Xena stammered.

“Stay back,” Wendy hollered, grabbing a spatula from the sink. She held it in front of her like a weapon. A dried noodle clung comically to the handle.

“Wen, get a grip. What’s wrong with you?” Xena, hands up in surrender, backed carefully away from her spatula-wielding girlfriend. “You’re freaking out the damned parrot,” she added.

“He’s a parakeet, you psycho,” Wendy retorted. “Do you want to explain this?” she shouted, jabbing the spatula at the lettered squares on the table.

Xena came forward carefully, not taking her eyes off Wendy. She glanced down at the table. “Die bitch? If this is some new game of yours, I don’t think I want to play,” she said.

“Game of mine? You left this for me in the hallway,” Wendy accused.

“No, I didn’t,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “It’s so like you to go to the worst case scenario.” Even as she said those words, Xena realized she didn’t really know what was ‘so like’ Wendy. She’d only known her a month, and truthfully, anyone could be on good behavior for that long. Wasn’t there a personality disorder where people had erratic mood swings?

“What do you mean, worst case scenario? How else would someone interpret die bitch?” Wendy said, slowly lowering the spatula.

Xena reached over and arranged the squares to spell ‘itch’ and ‘bide,’ then rearranged them to spell ‘bit’ and ‘chide.’ She raised her eyebrows and shot Wendy a look.

The phone rang and Wendy jumped. She backed up slowly, still keeping her eyes on Xena, and reached her arm out to lift the receiver from the wall-mounted phone.

“Happy Birthday to you,” her mother sang, “Happy Birthday sweet daughter, Happy Birthday to you. Did you get my surprise?”

Wendy turned toward the wall and lowered her voice. “Did you leave it in the hallway?” she asked.

“Yes,” her mother said gleefully. “Wasn’t that fun? So when will you go?”

“Go where? What are you talking about?”

“The gift certificate for that 5-star restaurant you and what’s-her-name have been wanting to visit. What did you think I was talking about?” her mother sounded genuinely confused.

“Her name is Xena,” Wendy said, casting a quick glance back over her shoulder. “Hang on a minute, Mom,” Wendy said, and laid the phone on the counter. Xena looked at her quizzically as she rushed past her to the hallway. Wendy brushed aside the pile and retrieved a red envelop, camouflaged by the petals and confetti. She ripped it open, extracted the certificate, and squealed with delight as she ran back into the kitchen and grabbed the phone.

“Mom, this is wonderful! Thank you so much. But, I need to know, what’s with the lettered confetti?”

“The what?” her mother said.

“The confetti—it has letters on it, and…” Wendy realized she couldn’t begin to explain what she’d just been through.

“Oh, I didn’t realize that. It was sold by the ounce at the Smarty Party Store; I guess they recycle it. Honey, Harriet is honking outside; I’ve got to go. There’s a sale at Macy’s. Love you. Happy Birthday.”

Chagrined, Wendy hung up the phone and turned back to face Xena.

“I think you can put the spatula down now,” Xena said.

Virtual Choir

One of the joys in my life is singing with approximately 80 other beings of light in the One Heart Choir (see left) through the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa, CA. Occasionally, I step off the beaten path and into spontaneous gatherings where music is being made—a group that travels to rest homes and hospitals and sings old tunes from the 30ies and 40ies, or a flash mob that breaks into song at the local mall.

Not having been born into an era where the technological concept of virtual space was common, I find things like the video (URL below) spine-chilling (in a good way). Eric Whitacre’s amazing virtual choir puts a whole new spin on singing in a choir. Please enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7o7BrlbaDs&feature=player_embedded


My great-grandma Godlove could never quite grok the idea of the automobile. Perhaps it’s genetic coding, but I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the miracles of the computer. I’m working on it.

When Your Brain Breaks

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

I’m so glad I chose the focus of creativity for my blog—it feels giddily limitless, like when I watch an escaped balloon float off into the sky until my eye can no longer track it.

One of the ways I recognize creativity is by noticing how different individuals utilize life experience. What if you woke up one morning and couldn’t recognize who you were; couldn’t do the regular things you’ve done every morning for most of your lifetime? I have a friend who had a brain aneurysm some years ago. It changed everything about how she did and saw life. I believe she is stronger for having gone on that journey.

In this week’s video clip, another survivor, Jill Bolte Taylor, a researcher fascinated with brain chemistry, utilizes a life-changing moment when her brain short-circuited due to an aneurysm. She explores in detail the process she was going through and shares it so eloquently and with such heart-opening authenticity, that I couldn’t possibly not pass it along. I laughed, I cried; it moved me. Creativity of the human spirit is what she brings to mind. Enjoy.

Don’t Go Numb

Once again, technology trips me up. On January 18, I saved a blog entry along with a video on vulnerability, connection and the role of shame, to be posted this week. It seems that when I tried to bring it out of the Edit file and post it today, it chose to cling tenaciously to its January 18th original date. Please scroll down to January 18th and check out this inspiring video.

Toilet Paper and Creativity

The Web is an amazing and strange instrument, mysterious to those of us who didn’t grow up in the cyberspace era. It’s Saturday morning, my mind is on idle; I’ve checked my e-mail, peeked in on my blog to see how many hits it had gotten in the last week, checked a friend’s blog, all in hopes of some moment of inspiration that would grow in the crawlspace of my mind and lead to another blog post idea. I click on Google, and type in Visual Arts, just to see what will happen.

There seems to be no particular definition for visual arts. It’s definitely not a ‘one size fits all’ sort of proposition. For me, it’s a visual, rather than tactile or auditory experience, that elicits an emotional response. Still a pretty broad category. It could include paintings, drawings, computer generated art, sculpture, photography, silent movies, installation art, even mime. As I scroll through the infinite possibilities at my fingertips, I come across the School of Visual Arts website and see some photos that stop me up short—rolls of toilet paper. Yes, toilet paper—glow in the dark toilet paper, paper with a Valentine’s Day motif, paper printed with Kakuro puzzles or Origami directions, to name a few. One roll was all black. Ponder that.

Not only do I find myself chuckling heartily, but I begin to wonder just how one would create personalized toilet paper. Okay, so that’s another part of my definition for visual art—it’s inspirational, it loosens any hold on logical or rigid thinking, gets the brain cells firing.

Maybe personalized toilet paper isn’t your thing, but you have to admit, as a concept in the larger scope of design, it may have some merit. What would be my signature toilet paper if I were to go out on a limb for this? Since one of the things I enjoy most in life is composing music, finding a way to transfer sheets of music onto a roll of toilet paper would make me chuckle. Admit it, aren’t you just a tiny bit caught up by this idea? Don’t you wonder just how someone would actually pull this off? Those of you stuck in the literal will probably answer, “Oh, about six sheets at a time.”

If it gets you thinking though, that’s creativity in action. The product is secondary. It all starts with those creative juices flowing, refusing to be suppressed. What you do with this (product wise) is up to you; but for a moment, just enjoy the feeling of being in touch with that source and surge of creative energy that’s available to us as our birthright. No one can take that away.

Lost in the Dessert

You know those ideas that get stuck in your head, the ones that you don’t know where they came from? It’s 3 a.m., and I wake with the peculiarities of a spelling dilemma on my mind—of desert (that sandy place) and dessert (those sweet things). Don’t even get me started on the ridiculousness of the English language (two, too, to, tutu), (do, dew, due) Stop! Stop!

So, as I’m laying there, noticing that I’m not sleeping, my mind wanders—sort of gets lost in the desert of those arid, vapid thoughts that are a part of the 3a.m. landscape. What if I were writing an essay or a story about getting lost in the desert, but accidentally typed dessert, and Word Check didn’t catch it because it doesn’t do context? That idea bridged itself over to, well, what would it be like to be lost in a dessert? Chocolate mousse being my favorite, could I lose myself in it? And, what does it mean to lose yourself? Or better yet, what is the Self that one fears losing? Do you see how quickly this goes from bad to worse?

There’s no one to talk to at 3 a.m. Well, actually, there are probably hundreds—perhaps thousands—of women up at 3a.m. (it’s a menopausal thing), but just in case this is the one morning their sleep hasn’t been ripped from them by hormonal fluctuations, I certainly don’t want to risk jangling them into consciousness via a phone ringing in the dark. That’s always bad news, right?

I’m stuck with the cobwebby trail of trying to follow the obscure thought of being lost in a dessert. Let’s suppose for a moment, that lost means totally given-over to, or absorbed by the experience or idea of something, as when you lose your heart by falling in love.

I’ve had a total absorption experience like that—with a dessert—where there was nothing for that moment but the taste and texture living its life to the fullest in my mouth. For an instance, I lost track of who I was with, the hustle and bustle of wait staff, the clatter from the kitchen at the far end of the room that had just a moment ago been hugely irritating. Gone. Absorbed. The culprit was a slice of Double Chocolate Caramel Torte with Hazelnut Gelato at a local pizza house. There was an explosion of flavors all over my tongue—the more I chewed, the richer and more complex the flavors became. There was nothing but the moment. If you could take a bite of Heaven, that might be what it would taste like.

Where did I go while that dessert was busy blowing out my brain cells? I’m tempted to make reference to the 60ies when this sort of experience was more the norm, but not all of you lived through that era, and it might be lost on you. However, surely, I’m not alone.

There’s a Comment button just below the post. I’d love to hear about your experience of being lost in a dessert. Let me know a little something about who you are, what the dessert was, and your experience of that moment. I’ll be glad to post it on my next blog update.

Oh, and it was around 4:15 a.m. when I finally got back to sleep…