In the last few days I have had space to look yet again at the way I live my life and what if anything it offers to others and to my self. The impetus was not just the ‘scene’ I recounted a few days ago and the comments that some people left though this did set off thought but the daily considerations I make as I go through each day with a body that is less than co-operative when it comes to standing straight and not swaying:0) and with the understanding of who and what I am and would stand for if asked….and stand for no matter that I am not asked.
I live alone in most senses that others understand but have constant companion and friend Mr Bryn by my side through each day so never really see myself as living alone. But the reality is that though Mr Bryn does help and aid me in many ways when it comes to facing the vagaries of this body and the thoughts, feelings and beliefs that motivate this life, as with all other human beings, it is squarely my responsibility. As much as I might wish to have another human being sharing my day I accept that if it were a need it would probably have been filled by now and that living alone is the true gift to my life at this time for it affords me the opportunities to learn how creative one stubborn woman can be :0).
On practical levels it means many things make my days sometimes very long and convoluted. I rarely think about the absurdity of much of my day to day ‘managing’ as it is just my life much the same way that I do not constantly consider whether I am wealthy or poor I just get on with life as it is.
It is not until another human being looks at me quizzically or demands explanation that I may stop and realise the difference. It is others perceptions not the reality of my situation that throws up question, doubt even regret. The reality does bring vast amounts of shit both metaphorical and actual and though I may make light of this often the reality is there to be coped with, cleared up and continued on from so lessons of self reliance have been forged in uncomfortable heat and the scars are there for my heart to understand if not for others eyes to see.
That the ‘scene’ I recounted earlier this week in my ‘Rainbow Rivers?’ post should coincide with a downward spiral of the body just heightened thoughts did not cause either them or the less that co-operative body to happen.
I cannot say I did not feel a moment of ill ease after the exchange but in truth the outburst ‘from woman at my front door’ just made me feel sad rather than angry and concerned for her rather than me. As Maria said in her comment after that post this woman demonstrated so graphically not real hate of me but how controlled and manipulated her life was by ignorance and fear. I have come back more than once to the look in her eyes and cannot say I feel anything other than sadness for someone so wracked by loathing not of me but of the thought she could be me. I have also re-run the fish out of water exhibition she put on when I snuck in under her defences and questioned the viability of her ‘normality’ and it makes me smile each time. I could have easily told her to F off and loudly exclaimed it was her problem not mine – which in truth it is but would I be able to smile about the encounter today or would I be angry at my self for showing as much disdain for another human being as she did. I suspect it would be the second.
A sense of humour, of the ridiculous has saved me on many a dreadful occasion not by means of blotting out the reality but of highlighting the absolute frailty of the participants in the scene. Any grace that I may exhibit always seems to be more accident that intent. When I am attacked either verbally or physically because of someone else’s perception I have found it is then that my energies must first go to holding on to the reality of heart and mind that is mine. In those split seconds before I make decision to speak up, stand firm, run like hell in the opposite direction, laugh or just listen, I turn to a heart and mind that constantly holds themselves up for scrutiny where I find a space to be still enough to look the other in the eyes, sometimes seeing a rampaging beast, sometimes seeing an ignorant fearful human being, sometimes a questioning self but in fact almost always seeing something of what I am or could so easily be and having a sense of compassion for the attacker even as I may be breaking their nose with a blow or deflating their ego with a word. There have been few occasions when I have had to physically fight my way out of a situation but there have been some and always they have left me feeling saddened rather than elated for though I have been thrilled to still hold life I somehow suspect I have managed to diminish it too.
All my life I have found it difficult to ‘pass on the other side’ both in sense of hiding my being lesbian and letting assumptions be made about private life or of letting another life be diminished by action or word of ignorance or fear.
I see myself first and foremost as a human being one whose view of life and living is informed by her sense of self, which is built on firm foundations of love. Love expressed by a sun rise, a wave breaking on the shore, the laughter of a child, the recognition in another’s eyes, of silence, of bird song, of the smoothness of a pebble and the jagged touch of rock, of life lived with a truthfulness that forces me to accept the joy, the wonder, the magic of being me – a human being connected to all life, embraced by Earth and Sky and impelled by Unfathomable Other Eternity to see who I am as beautiful for I come from the elements known and unknown and will transform in to them once more in a moment not of my making or taking but given as gift.
That others perceptions, ignorance and fear constrain the joy, the wonder the magic that is each life’s right is the only thing worth railing, fighting and living against.
It doesn’t matter that time has past and we live in so called enlightened times or that knowledge power and plenty have come to many. In today’s world there are still human hearts and minds damaged by ignorance and fear but it is damage that can be repaired, they are lives that can be renewed and though as I begin to write this it feels overblown, I would say that it is my belief, it is the very oxygen that keeps me alive that I understand it is each life that counts in making the whole. Be it bigot, bastard or beauty the life counts and it is only in my endeavour day by day to actually begin to stop the diminishing, the disempowering, the destruction of even the most seemingly hateful life that the Unfathomable Other Eternity begins to find small echo in the place I call home.
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