Healing A Heart You've Broken

If you have broken someone's heart, and you want to repair your relationship with them, say "I'm sorry for breaking your heart" to them. Lots of times. Every chance you get until they tell you, "I know". They will probably act like they don't want to hear anything from you. The wall they have up, where you are concerned, is to protect themselves from you. You've been dangerous in their life and they still see you that way, even if they look like they have healed, you will never be welcome in their life. They need your apologies to be healed of the pain you left them with.

Do not defend yourself with excuses for what you did, just say you are sorry. You have to really mean it. Practice saying it to yourself if you are not really sorry yet and wait until you mean it. Keep your excuses to yourself or the apology will mean nothing and it will be worse than it already is. Both of you know that you were selfish and did not care whether you were tearing someone apart. A broken heart hurts, a lot. Probably more than you can imagine.

It takes courage to face the challenge of easing another person's pain before you can be concerned with whether you may be forgiven. You may not be forgiven. That can not be the reason you apologize. The reason is to give the person you hurt the gift of the possibility of healing from a stunning amount of pain.

If you are fine with what you did, the pain you have caused this person, I guess this letter is not for you, but consider that you might be cold-blooded and in need of growth as a human being.
I believe we all can grow.
It takes time.

Typical Me

I got to an appointment early this morning. At the check-in desk I was told that my appointment was in November not October. I was really surprised and I said, "It's a wonder I can find my way to the grocery store!" After I left I thought what a random thing that was to say. When you have complete strangers wondering if there is something wrong with you for coming a month early for an appointment, I think it is probably good to top it off by saying something that makes no sense. Leave them looking forward to your next visit.

Bad Manners

I have been told that it is bad manners to call someone a cunt. It was my husband who was shocked to hear me use the word to describe his girlfriend. I have a completely different take on what constitutes bad manners. I think it is bad manners to put your penis on someone else's wife. I also think it is bad manners to put your pussy on someone else's husband. And you are both cunts.

I Was With You In The Big Bang

I like to think about the fact that everything that exists now, also existed in the Big Bang. First, just as dirt, now as fancy dirt. All of us were there. The particles of the universe rearrange themselves all the time. Into people or plants or water or sky. There is no thing that was not there. Those revered by religions were there, my TV was there, the moon was there, the walls of my bedroom were there, mitochondrial Eve and her parents were there. Everything living and inanimate, present and past, we were all together once. You were with me at the Big Bang.

Japanese Wonderful Dream

That's me in the middle. I lived in Japan when I was little

I had the most surreal childlike dream about being in a Japanese airport at night. It reminded me of a cartoon for little kids where life is only sweet and snuggly and safe. The airplanes were like chubby little colorful glowing paper lanterns decorated the way little kid's kimonos are. They were fragile, made of paper and bamboo, and about 3 feet long . Each plane held one or two passengers snuggled into soft blankets, no working parts or pilots. The travelers turned into toddlers just before they were put in a plane, but their inner maturity was still intact. There were lots of darling babies, who spoke different languages, crawling around where they would board their airplane. People were very nice to each other. I was saying goodby to my sisters, who were ready to fly away, when I realized that one of them had the car keys with her and I needed them to drive home. The keys were retreived by one of the lovely staff. I was so happy that the dream didn't take a bad turn here. These are so often the spots where the vibe can change. You can't get anyone to help you or you can't find your car or your way home. I was so glad it stayed pretty and comforting for the whole dream. Outside, I was watching the little plane shaped lanterns, glowing, floating off into the night sky and the pretty way they looked lined up for take off in the dark.

Leave Out The Sad Parts

There are no do-overs, but I was thinking about how much in love my daughter and her husband seem to be and it made me remember how much I loved my first husband. Nothing about our marriage was perfect, but I loved him with all I had. I hope she gets to live the loved life I couldn't. There must be couples on this earth that chose so well that they stay dizzy with love their whole lives. Why couldn't that be true? We all know there are all levels of suffering. Let Buddha be wrong just once.

My first husband, me and our son, 1973

Maybe I could retell my life's stories and put all the bad parts in footnotes. That way, if you don't read the footnotes, you can see what a blissful life I've had.

2019 Post Script: I do not define everything through my past pain anymore. Older / Wiser. I truly did not understand how to choose relationships that would be healthy for me. So, I see the past differently now and know that it was not someone else's fault that I was unhappy. Now let's talk about something funny!

It Wasn't My Car

I sort of accidentally married a guy who turned out to be a lot like my father. In the mid 1970's I moved to Austin, Texas after my first divorce. I didn't have a car so my dad let me borrow one of his. Now that he was single he had a little yellow TR-6 and a dark purple Jaguar XKE, aka the penis-mobile. I usually drove the Triumph. I don't know if my future mistake noticed me or the car first, but together we were exactly the package that a young guy, who thought just like my father, couldn't resist. I was too innocent/stupid to recognize that pretty much everything this guy told me about himself was a lie. He was so besotted with the cars that he didn't notice that, while I thought they were pretty cars, to me they were just a way to get from here to there. If I had to buy into "cars as symbols", it would be closer to the truth to say they symbolized my father's juvenile attempt to attract young Bond Girls to drink his fine wine, that he wanted to identify, sage-like, by vintage, with a mere whiff of its bouquet and to fuck without having to get to know them, just like Heff and James Bond.

One of these handsome men is my father.

Kryptonite

Years ago, when I drove back and forth to the mental hospital every evening to see Savant, a song by a new band, 3 Doors Down, would play on the radio. Kryptonite. It made me cry and it still can. Savant had always loved comics, so had my brother and my other son. All three of them joyously sported towel-capes in their youth. I had always associated Superman with them. And now Savant had gone crazy. My heart was broken. I prayed he was still in there somewhere, waiting for someone to find him and bring him back. No matter what, I would always be by his side, even though I had never felt so weak. It would take super-human strength to survive this horrible thing, for him and for me. It crushed me.

When I was young I had taken psychedelics a few times, one freakishly bad trip was all it took to put an end to that, so I had some idea of the places insanity may take someone. I remember how slowly time passed and how severe my fear was. I could not bear the thought that he was stuck in a similar place with a life sentence to spend there. No way to come down. The thought of it was agony to me. I would follow him to Hell and drag him out if I could and if I couldn't, I would stay there with him, he would not be abandoned by me. I love him with all my heart.

Dreaming of Horses

When I was four I began to dream of horses. My horse was parked next to our little house in the spot where my father would park the car if he was home. Saddled and bridled, ready to ride but I couldn't make my dream self sit on the saddle. I would hold the reigns and hover above the horse the way Superman would fly through the sky. Then we moved to Japan and I don't remember much about my dreams for a while. I've loved horses my whole life. I wished for a simple life with enough land to own a horse. I never cared about status or wealth, and still haven't achieved either. I also never owned a horse.

When I was in the second grade we moved to Austin, Texas where I learned to ride. God smiled on me and gave me a best friend who had horses at her house. My sister and I could ride together at any one of several stables that rented horses by the hour. They would let us ride unsupervised which we loved. No trail ride with a guide bull shit for us.

When we were little my grandparents put $100 in bank accounts for each of us. We would not get it until we were older, but it would be ours and we could get whatever we wanted. As far as I know, mine was the only one that came with a stipulation: anything but a horse. Why? I still don't understand it. When I was twenty and finally given the cash, I had to spend it on groceries.

Now Is Good

The past is part pain, part joy, a tiny bit bliss. The future could be similar. But now is good.

The space between the past and the future can be longer than a split second if you want it to be. Split seconds pass so fast I can get dizzy trying to catch one. I've decided to let now be a little longer, so I can savor it instead of watching it zip by. I'm searching for a way to dump the heavy blob of distress from traumas of the past and the fear of potential traumas. Some days I am overcome with fear of life; I wouldn't call it suicidal, but I'm thankful that I have a prescription that helps calm the terror. When I was little I would be overcome with a terror of death and fear of being alone in the universe. I just had to ride out my panic. There was no help.

Right now is OK. Right now is OK. Right now is OK.