Removing the knife in my heart

For several months some unhappy person has been making stupid remarks on my blog. As moderator I never post them. They are misspelled insults calling me fat, a whore, boring, and commenting on my lack of sexual attraction or prowess. At first I was upset, but those comments were so totally false and silly, I just would laugh and delete. Today, however, I felt like I had a knife in my heart. Today's comment read, in part:

"You really are a heartless bitch. Your mother, lost her soul-mate. He died! He is not going to come back ever. She is mourning and you are telling her she is repeating a tape in her head. You are the biggest fucking hypocrite ever.  You are a heartless bitch. You offend so many of your "readers" when you bitch and moan and complain about your thousand year old parents. You say your father was not much of a man. Let me tell you something - the acorn did not fall far from the tree. You are mean and nasty. I know the day she dies she will be at peace and away from a ungrateful heartless daughter like you". 


I wanted to cry, I felt so devastated. I have tried to be kind. I have tried to make amends to those I have hurt. I have used these past seven years to see that my parents had a good end of life. I go to the nursing home where my mother is at least five times a week and she is so happy to see me. I hope I haven't been complaining too much. What hurts the most is that someone in my life really dislikes me and doesn't have the courage to confront me face to face. I have not always done or said the right thing in every situation. I am a mother and if I see something I think is a threat to my children's happiness I will come out swinging and think afterwards.


Before I started this post, I went back and read my last blog. Nope, I was not mean, I was not complaining, I was compassionate, and sad, and hopeful. The writer only saw what he/she wanted to see. Yes, it hurts that someone hates me. But their words have no power. I have decided to remove that blade of malicious negativity from my heart. It is not true and I refuse to bleed. The shoe does not fit, and I won't wear it.

That tape in our heads

Sometimes people have a tape running in their heads and can't find the stop/eject button. It drives them crazy, and in the case of my 98 year old mother, annoys other people too. Right after my father died her tape became, with tears, "I miss my husband." Well, who could deny that? Lots of sympathy came her way. I used a positive message repeated over and over to change that tape. I told her how lucky she was to have had not one, but two men love her. Some women never even had one. She would agree and talk about her sister Judy and how she blew both her marriages. She told everyone how happy she had been for fifty-two years with my father. She would say, "Right before he got so sick he looked at me and said that I was a year and three months older than him, but even if I was a hundred years older, he would still have married me." For the record, her first husband was no jewel, and there were plenty of problems with my old man. If he was a diamond, it was in the rough and everyone knows that diamonds can cut.

The new tape in her head is not as easy to deal with as the old one. The new tape says, "When can I go home?" It begins every conversation, fills in every pause, and never seems to end. It is wearing me down. I have given her the message that she can go home when she gets stronger. She says she is strong, she says she has been eating. I tell her she can go home when she can take care of herself. She tells me she can take care of herself. She can't get out of bed by herself, she is too weak and shaky. Sometimes I vary the answer. The other day she called and asked when she could go home. I told her she sounded like a broken record and she laughed. She knows it, she just can't stop that tape. The other tracks on this tape are the "I'm so lonely, there is nobody to talk to here" and "This place is a prison." Nicest prison in town. I do have empathy and understand the boredom and frustration.

We all have tapes running in our brains. Sometimes it is a problem at work that bugs us night and day until we figure out a solution. Right now I have a game show song repeating over as I fall asleep and when I wake up. I will be kind and not tell you what it is so it doesn't take up residency in your brain, too. That kind of tape is annoying, but not harmful. But there are others that cause pain to ourselves and only we can change them. Those are the messages that we are not good enough, too slow, too stupid, too fat, too thin, unloveable, etc. I have found, by reading true crime stories, that some people who have a victim tape playing react by killing those who they think have harmed them. It can be a parent, or people of a nationality. So many different scenarios. I dislike any kind of fundamentalism. The indoctrination records a tape that is very hard to reason with. Hate Arabs, hate Jews, hate, hate, hate.

Many years ago I took my children to a puppet show at a fundamentalist church. The message given was that we were all born in sin and only by being washed in the blood of Jesus was there any chance of heaven. There was even a song about being washed, washed, washed, in the blood. Children are literal people. Where is Jesus and doesn't he need his own blood and wouldn't it make a mess? I was furious! When you tell my babies about God, you had better tell them that we come from love and we go to love and the message all your life had better be about being love and acting love. 

So to life and the message about not driving others crazy with our worn out warped tapes. Let's record something new. Let's do unto others as we would have others do unto us. Not a new song, but one worth covering in our own inimitable style. "Mom," I will say with a smile, "Let's talk about something else. You look very pretty today."

Alcohol

I grew up in a home where alcohol was lightly used and never abused. My father had a complete shelf of liquor in the pantry and a bottle of scotch or anything else lasted a very long time. In the summer he would make a Tom Collins and we were always able to taste them. Had we asked, he would have made us our own cocktail. A sip was enough for me. I disliked Manhattans, and that was about the extent of his bar tending. On hot days he would sometimes have a beer. One beer, not a six pack. One New Year's Eve, my sister and I stayed home while the folks went to a party. We had little paper party poppers and a bottle of Champale Malt Liquor to use in our celebration. Alcohol was never prohibited, never made to look especially attractive, and just not much of a big deal at all. It amazed me as a young adult that my friends felt the need to finish off a bottle of tequila, or rum or anything. I didn't understand why they didn't just put it back on the shelf for next time.

The first time I got stinking drunk was the night before leaving summer camp at seventeen. I had scotch and port and blacked out. I did not pass out and was sick as a dog the next day. I remember having to sweep the cabin with shaking knees. Anne, my co-counselor, had no sympathy for me at all. It was such a horrible experience that I did not get drunk again for four years. I would have a Black Russian or Harvey Wallbanger on a date, and that was that until I attended a McGovern rally in 1972. I had been drinking some tequila and did not realize how inebriated I was until I started drinking beer. I never drink beer because I can't stand the smell or taste. I guess I was a riot on the dance floor and the town because people told me about it for days. What I do remember is hugging the toilet for days, shaking and ill and wanting to die. I was twenty and told myself I was too old for that shit. On the fourth day a nice young man came by to take me to breakfast. I think he saved my life.

Over the next twenty-five years I had fewer than five drinks. When I started going to conferences I made a Baily's last all night. Sometimes I finished an entire hard lemonade. My daughter found a wine I could drink and hey, all grown up now.  These days I have a half of a glass of wine at Thanksgiving and I'm good for the year. I seem to have lost my taste for alcohol.

Last night I met a friend for dinner at Thanh Do. They were swamped and we sat in the bar. She asked for a Vodka Gimlet, and to make it green. She said it tasted like limeade. I had one, too. It was tasty. I didn't feel inebriated until we made our way to the table, then I felt it. Sharon is my age, widowed, and we have a lot in common. We both want to be adored again and talked about what we are looking for. Service was slow and dinner took about two hours. By the time we left I didn't feel the alcohol at all. I went home and watched TV, but midnight found me feeling amazingly sorry for myself and weeping.

Today I was not hungover in the traditional sense. No dry heaves or headache, just tired and slow brain function. A two hour nap after work did wonders. Woke up feeling that here was an other cocktail I could enjoy. I am not saying I won't have one again sometime, but maybe I'll just have limeade instead. All the taste, nothing of the tiredness.