Growth around the pain and wound

There's a theme to a conversation I've been having with many friends lately, learning to let go of the pain, grief, and anger we've been holding onto longer than it is necessary.  It's a topic of importance to me because I've been known to hold onto pain and grudges for decades.  It prohibits me from being a more fulfilled woman.  It's hard to let go because it takes work to actually free yourself of bad  habits.  Much like my weight loss I find that I need to commit myself to making a life difference for myself.  G*d-willing, I'm going to wake up tomorrow, get to next week and next year so I might as well win, or try to shed the pounds, anger or whatever else is holding me down.

When I was about 23, I had just gotten free of a 2 1/2 year bad relationship with THE EX, who was verbally and physically abusive.  We were never meant to be together however, having been raised in violent home I was just repeating my life-patterns as I knew them up to that point.  I needed to feel like someone was taking care of me and this relationship fit the bill at the time.  I traded off my identity for what I perceived to be security.  These were dark years when I did not allow myself to write or be creative.  I gave up friends and nearly lost my best friend, Rachel, during this tumultuous time of my life.   This painful time period also left me nearly unable to do for myself, I was so locked down.  It was one of my most depressed times of my life.  I felt hopeless and suicidal because I thought I had no options. 

Just as I thought I'd never be free, THE EX left me for another woman, someone she considered far more interesting. Towards the end of this relationship, I found letters and THE EX's journal laying on our bed. She had  things written about me to the new girlfriend. THE EX told the other girlfriend that I was a dullard and a dolt and she didn't know how to let me down easy! The other woman, who I despised, turned out to be a truly crazy person but she, THE EX, and their problems were not mine to bare. I don't remember how we came to the point to end the relationship other than we finally both admitted that it wasn't working for us.  I do remember finding strength within me to stand up for myself and make a commitment to move on with my life. I was both a new person and my old self again.

Once I was out on my own, in my very first apartment, responsible only to myself, I felt a mix of euphoria and trepidation.  There was one night when I heard Sting's version of Little Wing  and I crumpled at the sound of the song.  The song was on a mix tape that THE EX had made for me and I loved it.  This was my life's soundtrack and I felt so alone that I missed THE EX!  All that pain, all the abuse and I missed her! I must have been crazy.  It was at that moment when I realized that letting go of the hurt was more painful. Allowing yourself to heal, hurts. It was a revelation to me that night.  It continues to be just as profound.  We get so used to the wound or proverbial thorn in our paw that we grow accustomed to it.  We foolishly grow around that wound instead of lancing it, in the process suffer through it.  The scar becomes a part of our identity.  Some part of us  is broken.  Have you ever had a broken bone that didn't heal correctly?  It may have fused back together but forever you will live with this defect within your body.  I felt defective during my first 32 years of life. 

At the breakup with THE EX, I didn't have a broken heart, if anything, my heart was fuller with possibilities of my new life.  The hurt from which I needed to heal was the previous 23 years of my life.  A life that had been in turmoil from almost my first breath.  I knew only abuse - physical from my mother and step-father; verbal from my mother and THE EX; sexual from not only my step-father but also by several other boys and men.  I survived all of this, now I had to figure out how to deal with the aftermath.  Therapy was of course the best option.  I had been in therapy several times before, first as a teenager for a year, then in college with a counselor at the campus health center.  Both times didn't help me much, there was too much stress in my life that I was letting get in my way.  Therapy in my mid-20's was the first help I got and gave to myself that made a difference.  So much of what I learned about myself then still holds true to this day, some 20 years later.  Through the difficult process of healing my broken self I somehow learned to be a whole person.

A woman I am casually acquainted with recently told me that she and her husband got divorced.  I don't know the details about their relationship but I can sense that he was a controlling scoundrel. She's far happier now that she's a single parent, seeming more relaxed and grounded.  She admits that it will be difficult to raise her kids on her own but that the thought of staying in a loveless marriage, being lied to and cheated on was not an option for her.

Another friend told me about two of her friends who recently braved life changes and started healing themselves.  One woman survived breast cancer at the same time she went through a divorce.  She almost died but now has a willingness to live her life to the fullest, taking trips and chances whenever she can.  The other friend was in a terrible marriage but was afraid to admit it to herself let alone make a life change. It wasn't until these two women met over lunch that the second felt brave enough to realize she had options.  One friend nearly died and wants to fight to live, the other friend is alive but was not living her life.  Who has the richer life?
 
Again, I was reminded by these stories that we hold onto what we know even though it may be detrimental to our well-being.  The familiar is comforting. We wrap a blanket of hurt and bitterness around us hoping to keep ourselves warm but instead it has a chilling affect on everyone around us, including ourselves. It's not all that we have but it's hard to know that in the moment. 

I would be dead had I not gotten out of that abusive relationship with THE EX.  I thank the goddess for having introduced the other woman into our lives. Oddly I owe that other woman a bit of gratitude for giving me a chance at a new life.  In the intervening years of my 20's and into my very early 30's, I stayed in therapy, working on myself, living a crazy, full and interesting life.  I realized the cost to hold onto my blanket of pain was far more expensive than the monetary cost of paying for therapy.  Thousands of dollars later I am a healthier and happier woman.  I may still have a few defective war wounds but for the most part I'm not living with pain.

Journals

February 8, 1991

I'm borrowing an idea that my boss does on his blog, Like Letters In a Bottle that was previously borrowed from another blogger, The Pen and Paper Blog.  The premise is that these bloggers still journal and write with pens, fancy ink and nib pens on nice paper or in nice mole skin journals. They then take a photo of their writings and post it on their blogs, inviting their readers to delve a little deeper into their blogs to decipher the written words.  It's also a way to stay connected to what is fast becoming a  dying art - writing.  Physical contact by hand to the words in your mind, being put down by human touch.

February 9, 1991

I too used to write with a nib pen in journals, all sorts of journals, since I was a kid up until I was in my 30's.  It wasn't a constant endeavor, there were years when I didn't write and times when I couldn't write - for fear of my mother finding my journals, fear of facing my own voice, not having my own voice, the years when I was in abusive relationships and the pain of writing anything was too much to bare.

February 7, 1991

February 7, 1991, Back of letter that I used to write to a personal ad

There were also years of writing out of frustration and loneliness, as a way to stave off the horrible depression and anxiety that I felt for so many years of my life. In my better, more manic days of my young adult years, I journaled more creatively, making collages as a part of my entries, to further illuminate my life experiences.  It was the influence of famous diarists and artists such as Frieda Khalo, Anis Nin, Joseph Cornell and other influential artists who's work I love that started me on that journey.  I stopped writing about 10 years ago but I occasionally will write whenever we travel - especially if we travel to far off destinations where I really want to capture the entire experience of our trip.  I still enjoy the collage and scrap-booking aspect of my journals and wouldn't want to lose the ones I still have in my collection.  All told, my the journals I have in my archives date back to 1984.  I have about 20 books, maybe more, and I've managed to save a huge cache of letters that were written to me and by me from the early 1990's - a period of huge development in my life.


Delving into my past, I decided to look at some old journals for dates that correspond to this month, February.  I thought it might be interesting to post some pages from similar dates from the past to see what was going on in my life at the time.  I couldn't find the exact corresponding date, but I found a few that were close to the early days of February in 1991; 1998 and a letter that I wrote to a stranger, in response to a personal ad I saw in a gay newspaper.  The over-arching theme of these entries is chronically what I did, who I spent time with, how I felt.  The ad response letter is more telling about me and my state of mind of who I was at age 23 then anything else I wrote at the time.  I did not hear a response back from the person, but now that I re-read it, at age (almost) 45, I can see that if I were a 39 year old woman wanting to meet a special someone, I would not reply back to a 23 year old girl, no matter how sophisticated she wanted to seem!  I'm mildly embarrassed by this letter but mostly, I want to give a warm hug to myself and tell that 23 year old that better days are ahead.  As it was, I did meet someone within days of having sent this letter.  I met, for me at the time, someone who I thought was the love of my life. She was, for a few years and then she wasn't.  But it was the first real love affair I had with someone that taught me a lot and helped me on my way to becoming a more fully realized and whole person. 

February 8, 1998

Nine years and several more journals later, I started becoming much more creative with my writing and journaling.  The collage aspect became a regular part of my writing, more important at times in helping me express what I was either afraid to say or didn't know how to say.  The blogging has taken place of my physical pen to paper writing; my photography is now my visual outlet.  I'm glad I have both but I do miss aspect of the old-fashioned arts.  For someone like me, who came from an abusive background, physical, emotional, sexual, having a diary or journal in which to confide was a lifesaver.  I regret having destroyed some of my earliest writings.  I burned a journal I kept in junior high because my mother had read parts of it.  A further violation of my body and mind.  While the musings I wrote were probably childish and banal it would have been illuminating to me to read it as an adult and parent today.

This project will continue on this blog from time to time.  I hope you will read some of the journal entries I've photographed and please, leave comments on your own thoughts and experience with journaling.

Of Fairy Tales and Family Tales

My grandmother died a few months ago and I find I'm still going through the grief cycle.  As I often tell the newly bereaved that I meet or know from my job at the synagogue, there is no expiration date on grief, we need to take as long as we need to heal and go through the process.  Faye died at the end of August and I spent the better part of a year visiting with her at least weekly, doing her shopping, checking in on her, listening to her stories, reconnecting with her.  Faye was my grandfather, (Poppy) Pete's 2nd wife.  So she was my step-grandmother.  She was a hell of a lot more of a grandmother or relative to me than nearly any actual blood relative in my life.  She was also more of a relative to me than just about any of my relatives, via marriage or through the extended family lines of my life.

While we were not exceptionally close most of my life, I felt a bond with her that I did not feel with any other relative.  She was a special lady to not only her friends and family but to my grandfather and by extension to me as well.  One of my most vivid dreams that I can still remember is of her.  When I was about 6 or 7, I had a dream that was in some ways sort of the backdrop of the story of the Wizard of Oz.  In my dream, Faye was the Good Witch of the North, beautiful and kind, showing me the way to a better place.  This dream, or my memory of it was as rich in technicolour splendor as the scene in the movie when Dorothy reaches Oz and steps onto the yellow brick road.  Nearly 40 years later I can still sense the dream and remember how many times I forced myself back to sleep just to restart the dream.

The story of the Wizard of Oz, as well as the movie are my absolute favorite.  There is something about this young, misunderstood child girl who longs for a world and family of her own.  I've always been drawn to tales of orphans who had to fend for themselves in the cruel world.  My own upbringing isn't too  far fetched of a fairy tale story - complete with the evil queen of a mother, an absent or dead father and many friendly woodland creatures and friends who help along the way.  While I never wanted to be awakened by a Prince who would kiss me and carry me off to his castle, I did, as a young person, want to be rescued and taken away from my hovel.  I liken my life story to equal parts Cinderella - cleaning the home and hearth with only the critters for friends; Snow White because I had a jealous mother who thought she was the fairest of all; Little Red Riding Hood because I was abused by wolves in disguise.  

Faye and I were not in close touch for many years.  We didn't see each other often and there were years that went by when we lost track of each other.  I was to busy living my life, figuring out who I was and what I wanted to be and do.  Faye was working, going to the casino's, taking care of her sisters, nieces and other relatives.  When we did talk it felt as though no time had elapsed.  I was bad about calling her, as I am about keeping in touch with a lot of people.  I also think that given my distrust of family and my problem with trusting bonds, I just didn't want to be connected.  I loved Faye a lot but we weren't about to say it to each other.  I was not openly out to Faye either, so I'm sure that played a big part in my distance.  However, when she called me back in the Fall of 2010, and told me she needed my help, I went to her.  Little did I know how far along she was in poor health.  Faye was this ageless woman; it was a shock to see this frail 90 year old woman. Where did the vital, spit fire woman go that I knew and remembered? Faye had caught up with her body's real age.  It happens.  Her mind, it seemed was still as sharp as could be.  It was the rest of her that started to decline.

For the next 10 months, I would go to see her, talk to her almost daily and hear her tell me stories about my Poppy.  I got to do things for her.  I spent quality time with her, learning about how she met my grandfather; hearing tales about her upbringing on 7th and Washington Avenue in South Philly.  I heard stories of how my mother was as a little girl - just as mean and bitter then as she is now. And I heard Faye lament on how she felt she had failed me and wanted to make it up to me.  I don't blame her for what did and didn't happen to me as a kid.  She was busy taking care of my grandfather and fighting his illnesses and trying to fight my mother were more than she could bare.

My mother would often pit me against my grandparents, keeping me from seeing them as punishment against them.  It only went to spite and hurt me in the end.  My grandfather died with not only a bad heart but with a broken one too.  And Faye went to her grave with a sadness in hers that stemmed from not doing enough for me as a kid.  I guess since she's the only one who ever admitted this I love her even more.  And that's what makes me even sadder about her death.  Just as we reconnected we ended.  The bright spot in this is that I have no regrets.  I don't feel as though I missed an opportunity or that I lost a chance to gather a piece of my family history.  I find it ironic that the story of who I am and what my history is comes from someone who isn't related to me.  Then again, while we cannot pick our family but we can pick out who means the most to us.

Job Confessions

I work for a religious organization, as a bookkeeper.  I've spent the majority of my adult life working in the non-profit sector, mostly in the arts and almost always in the business office, doing the finances and bookkeeping along with any and everything else that needs to be done.  When I wasn't working in an office, or even in addition to my office work job,  I've done a myriad of other things: cheffing, catering, special events; house management, concessions, poster and flyer deliveries.  Ticket taker, soda jerk, house cleaner, baby sitter/nanny, pet sitter.  I've gone door to door selling candy back in the days when it was relatively safe for a teenage girl to do so.  I scooped ice cream, slung burgers and made so many funnel cakes that people would sniff me and say that I smelled like a doughnut. 

When I was 8, I washed car windows at a local gas station, to earn a buck or two, so I could buy a pack of  Happy Days bubble gum cards.  I set up lemonade and iced tea stands.  I styled myself the local girl-detective, in the mode of Encyclopedia Brown.  For that "gig", I hand printed business cards that were the a riff on my fiction hero sneaker clad gumshoe's calling card:

"Gorniak Detective Agency.  31 B Jefferey Road. No case too big or too small.  25 cents."

I put these in all the mail boxes of the apartment buildings in my neighborhood.  I got one "case"; I was hired to find a missing basketball.  It was never recovered and I moved onto other engagements.  Magic shows, fort building, Halloween Parties, solving the case of the mysterious neighbor who were convinces was up to no good.  

The kind of jobs I've had in my lifetime have been interesting and mostly entertaining, with a few stressful and short-lived diversions for organizations that I quickly left.  The three shortest jobs of my life time were - 1) As a bar back/runner for a long gone restaurant on South Street called Mont Serrat.  I thought I was being hired to be a waitress.  I left after one hour.

2) I worked for less than 2 months at a major corporate accounting firm in Center City.  On my first day there, almost every woman remarked to me that my short hair was interesting and that their husband or boyfriends would never let them wear their hair so short.  It was back in the mid-90's when the Caesar/Pixie haircut was all the rage in the gay community.  I heard so many lunch-time stories about diets, dinner with Rice-A-Roni recipes as well as what the men in their lives wanted.  I swear I had stepped into a time capsule from another generation.  The job was soulless  and the working conditions were uncomfortable.  I had to work a 9 hour day and was lucky to have a moment for a coffee break.  There was rampant racism, classicism and the boss was a tyrant who made everyone afraid of her.  One day I came in at about 9:05 am.  She was sitting ON my desk.  I causally and with a chipper demeanor asked what was going on.  She tersely remarked to me that what was going on was work, for which I was late.  This wasn't how she was running her office and I'd either have to shape up and get there earlier or face the consequences.  I resigned within a week.  A few months later a lawyer contacted me on behalf of two other employees that were suing her and the company for discrimination.  As I didn't have any obvious discrimination lobbied toward me, I declined to comment.  Fortunately for me, a better job found me just as I was fearing I'd be unemployed.  I left the accounting firm on Friday and started at my new job, for a theater company, on Monday.  My guardian angel was intervening on my behalf.

3) The other short lived job was for a non-profit Aids organization that was so chaotically run that all good and meaningful medical work they organization did was undermined by a vituperative executive director and an utterly insane managing director.  My job was to go through the medical files and code the clients information into a City run data base to track the progress of the patients' health.  I was stuck in a corner of the office, in a dark area and had to beg to be given a lamp so I could see better.  I felt as though I were Harry Potter, living in the cupboard under the stairs.  The two bosses didn't like me and there was some political unrest within the organization regarding my position and to whom I answered.  Eventually I was moved to a sunnier office with other people but this was short-lived.  It may have been brighter in the office but the woman who worked next to me was a dour back-stabber.  She was in tight with the boss who had it in for me. One day the entire staff went to lunch for a farewell party for a colleague who was leaving.  The girl was a well-liked and pretty with a sunny disposition.  I was the troll left behind in the office, not invited to the luncheon.  After that slight and several other incidents where I was clearly left out and ignored or worse still, not allowed to participate, I quit.  I was the wrong person in the wrong job and it was never going to get better.

In all my jobs, I've often been in the position of knowing stuff about people's personal lives - financial and situational.  It's that childhood detective in me to find out stuff, investigate or just discover things.  Because I'm someone who is self aware and sensitive, I can figure things out pretty easily about people.  I read body language, I hear things, I can sense stuff.  I'm often the person who finds out who's gay, who's had a troubled past, who has had a rough time of it in their childhoods. It's private intimate stuff and I'm not about to spill the beans on anyone.  Sometimes, though, I find that people will tell me things without regard to who I am, who they are and what our relationship is.  I'm easy to talk to and I enjoy talking, making it a natural combination of having personal conversations turn to the private and confessional.  Mostly, I enjoy this aspect of my life, being able to share our personal stories.  The catharsis can be healthy and occasionally, depending on the person, it's a bonding experience.  Unless it's a total stranger who has wandered into my world, virtual or in real life, face to face.  

You could populate a Tim Burton Film with colourful characters I've met over the years in my jobs, on trains, on buses and trains.  I've even "met" on-line strangers who wanted to unburden themselves and tell or write to me intimate details of their loneliness, grief, anger, frustration.  When this happens with someone I like or when we are building a friendship, it's all a part of the relationship building process.  I'm not so sure what it is when a stranger comes into your workplace and tells you their whole life story, warts, bankruptcy and all within the first half-hour of meeting. Nothing like meeting someone who came in to volunteer in the office only to have her volunteer her grief and frustration and then ask for advice on what to do about selling her business and starting one's life anew at the age when most people are thinking about retiring.  I could be flattered that people feel so comfortable with me that they feel they can tell me intimate things about themselves so quickly.  There are times that the information I know is too powerful.  Knowledge is power and every once in a while when that other person realizes you know something private about them, it can have negative consequences.  A person can turn on you.  It's moments like that when I sense that you never know when your number's going to be up, but sooner or later, it will.  Judgement day isn't too far behind you.

Silently Seething

I've been in a silent seething rage, since oh, about age 5.  Meaning that's been for the the past 40 years.  Over the past few months one of my primary issues has gotten stirred up a lot in regard to the stories and allegations swirling about the Penn State - Jerry Sandusy (who is a scumbag who should be castrated w/a rusty knife and no pain meds) scandal and the Joe Pa-Paterno is a saint who should be beatified immediately bullshit media-maelstrom.  Upon hearing the latest news of Joe Paterno's death this past weekend, Facebook was ablaze with posts and tweets re-posted extolling his greatness and how sad it is that he died.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy that the man died, it is indeed sad that his final days were marred by scandal and finger pointing.  I'm sure he did die with the proverbial broken heart and spirit.  What sickens me and has me so fighting mad is that there's been a constant barrage of media and social commentary about "Poor Joe-Pa", as though his inaction and lack of leadership during this disgusting child sex abuse scandal don't matter.  Joe's been painted to be the scapegoat in this scandal, the trustees of PSU have been made to look like members of some Skull & Bones Fraternal Order and Jerry Sandusky has not been vilified nearly enough in the press for the crimes that he's committed.  What no one seems to be saying, tweeting or lighting candles about is how sorry we all out to be towards the kids who were the true victims in this situation.

I feel further agitated about all the crocodile tears spilled, the looting and riots, the lighting of candles and lights on in his memory at Beaver Stadium, the flags flying at half-staff in Harrisburg and in (Not-so) Happy Valley all in his honor and memory instead of in honor of the children who had their lives ruined and childhoods stolen.  This is all in the name of F^C%ING FOOTBALL.  I've always hated the sport; now I despise it.  Then again, I'm more a fan of baseball, America's past-time.  It may have it's issues, hello, Juicers and Big-headed arrogant pigs who think they are better than the sport and its fans, but as far as I know, there aren't any continual issues with raping kids and covering it up so as to not upset the money machine.

I did not attend Penn State - I never wanted to go there. The campus was too big, too far away and I had no desire to be lost in the brain-washing culture of the WE ARE PENN STATE mentality  It's all about conformity and football, two issues of which I have no interest.  I just don't "get it".  My partner's brother, his wife, their cousins and friends, and many other friends and acquaintances of mine are PSU alumni.  The school is so huge that it's impossible not to know several dozen people who attended.  I could easily get into a fighting war of words with all the people I know who changed their Facebook profile pictures to the Nittany Lion with a tear drop, or those who now sport the illustrations of Saint Joe wearing his trademark fedora and a halo floating above it.  Buying into this mass culture loving memory of all that is sacred and holy at PSU smacks of people not thinking, of towing the line and yes, feeling a part of something that is larger than they are.  And that's what bugs me a lot too.  There's no individual thinking.  There's also the being a part of a community that makes me a wee bit envious, as I've never really shared that feeling, having been an outsider all my life. When you grow up with shattered trust, it's pretty difficult to want to join others and feel safe in the collective group.  Being beaten by your parents, verbally and emotionally humiliated your whole life and molested as a child does that to a person.

A facebook friend I know from high school posted an article from the UK about not rushing to turn Joe Paterno into a martyr or saint so fast.  It takes someone from across the world to be able to objectively see the issues of turning him into a hero.  Last night I was raging with anger and pain over the non-stop tributes, the tv media talking to PSU students who were lamenting that his last days shouldn't have been like this.  He should have been allowed to go out with dignity, blah blah frickin' blah. Cry me a flippin river.  To this I add, he was a FOOTBALL Coach.  He didn't solve world peace, create antidotes to disease or help the economy outside of Penn State.  I know all about his hard work and dedication, the money he gave and helped to raise to and for the school.  What I cannot get past, and this is where it turns so personal for me, is that he didn't do anything to help those kids who were raped and abused by Jerry Sandusky.  He did the bare minimum and turned it over to those who did nothing, for years.  There are other posts I found today, shared or written by people I know.  A friend wrote that she didn't understand why the flags were flying at half staff.  A link to a blog was added, that sums up the anger and rage that so many of us survivors of incest and rape go through.  It's angrier than I could ever be and knowing the depths of my own rage, that's pretty intense.  It's called, F@cK Joe P.  It's worth a read as it captures things that I've not wanted to say out loud before.

I could go on and on but what's the point? It's already been written by far more eloquent writers than me.  What I will say is that the trigger point for me is about the fact that responsible people in charge of kids did nothing but look the other way, wring their hands and let this happen for years, again and again.  As a child who was molested by my step-father, Ray, and then by others in my childhood, this kind of damage lasts forever and mars whatever chances you have at having a normal sexual identity. Just about everyone in my family left me to the wolves.  If it weren't for outsides, teachers, the kindly old lady from down the street who took care of me, I be another tragic statistic, turning to drugs or worse.  No one in my family stepped in to stop the abuse.  Everyone was too afraid, didn't want to get involved, worried that my mother would, I don't know, turn her Medusa look towards them and turn them to real stone?  I felt damaged from my earliest memories, far too young to know for certain what age I was when it happened to me, but it was between the ages of 3 to 6.  Is that normal? No.  To be sexually abused, physically abused, verbally abused as much as I was before I was 6 years old gives you a certain perspective - a bit skewed and very fcuked up when it comes to authority figures, giving and receiving love, and feeling normal.  You never feel normal because you aren't.  When those in responsible positions either do nothing to help or help to perpetuate the abuse either through inaction or by further adding to the abuse, you feel more than let down.  You feel depressed and worthless.  So reading about this memorial tributes to Joe Pa and how he's been maligned really pisses me off.  No, he didn't rape any kids but he sure as hell helped to make sure it continued by not doing something more than tell somebody else.  He's as culpable as Jerry Sandusky and that coward who witnessed the infamous shower scene, assistant Coach Mike McQueary.  Funny enough, he's not been made out to be a hero in this debacle, thankfully.  I do think he needs to be held accountable too for his role in not stepping up and taking action where it was needed.

So all of you at PSU, think about this for a moment when you are mourning the life of Joe Pa - he was a mere mortal, who did some great things but he left this world with a stain on his soul, one that can never be removed.  A stain like the one smeared on all those boys, and all of us who have suffered such abuses.  Pray for us when you're saying your prayers for Joe's soul.  We all could use a bit of peace too.

Hidden Secrets

Every house and consequently everyone has secrets.  Things that are hidden away, carefully packed or tucked away from prying eyes for only you to know and see.  If Life is A House, then the life lived inside of that house could be a house of: horrors; mystery; cards; straw; pain; the rising sun; or a fun house; the list could go on infintium.

We recently moved to a new house, a bit bigger than our previous dwelling and absolutely free-standing.  Having resided in row homes and apartments for my whole life, living in a detached house with its own driveway, porch, yard is completely new for me.  I haven't wanted to rush into decorating it rather I want to live in this house to have it tell me what it wants, how it should be dressed and layered. It's an interesting house, done in the early 1920's Arts & Crafts style and it is rich with a mysterious history, a tale of celebrity and intrigue.  There is rehab work here literally and figuratively and the neighbors have been slowly filling us in on the details of what it used to look like and about the former owners.  The house was a shambles over the past decade.  Sometime within the past 4 or 5 years it was purchased and flipped — transformed from its decaying decrepitude and rebuilt with its character intact.  Since we are the third set of owners since the rehab, I didn't think I would find much in the way of things hidden and left behind.  The past owner carefully stripped away all of her physical material traces and left the house bare but beautiful.

One night when I was putting away clothes and trying to empty some boxes, I got a powerful feeling to look inside of the original closet within the walk-in closet room on our 2nd floor.  Really, we have a walk-in closet that should be our son's or could be a guest room!  Since it's so well appointed and organized, I'm not about to tear it apart to convert it back to a room.  Anyway, as I started poking around in corners I happened to look up into the corner of the original closet and I saw two pieces of paper sticking out of the wall and ceiling of what should be the door jamb of the original closet.  The photos opening this post were the finds hidden away up there, two old nude photos that look as though they fell out of a time capsule from 1943.  I felt as though I had discovered a secret about this house.  It reminded me of two events of my childhood, of finding things I should have found, hidden in secret alcoves.

When I was about 7 years old, I found an old box of condoms placed in the cornices of the area where the basement stairs form small shelves underneath of themselves. In this negative space is an area that can be used for creating nooks or shelves.  This was in an apartment building where we were living in the mid 1970's.  I was trying to find a place to hide something of my own, money, a secret code, some small spy toy with which I was obsessed.  I wasn't the first person to use this spot, obviously.  The box was small, 3 inches by 3 inches and about a half-inch high, kind of perfect for slipping in a few coins or a note.  I remember having no idea what the word condom meant and I thought the condom itself was some weird balloon.  Most likely I filled it with water and tossed it off of our balcony into the street.

I told about my find of the box to the lady down the street who was my guardian angel and adopted grandmother, Mrs. Rhoads.  I remember when I told her about how the box was labeled, she grew pale and concerned.  Now, Mrs. Rhoads was the epitome of a grandmotherly type.  She had grey curly hair, a round soft apple pie face and she wore big, round owlish glasses.  She smelled of sweet talcum powder and rouge and she was always crocheting.  Mrs. Rhoads was the first person in a long line of angels in my life who saved me, cared for me and told me that I could be anything I wanted.  Her consternation about this intriguing little box was warranted.  But to the 7 year old spunky tom-boy that I was, I wanted to keep it for myself.  Oh, the arguments that ensued.  She wanted me to bring the box to her immediately; she'd give me something else for me to use as my treasure box.  It was an old dirty thing, why would I want such a thing?  Now, having come from a broken home where inappropriate sexual deeds were common, I think I had some idea that what I found wasn't fit for a 7 year old.  Then again, by the time I was 7, I had already had my fair share of inappropriate things happen to me that weren't fit for a 17 year old.  An early sexual education is putting it in too clinical and mild of terms.  Poor Mrs. Rhoads, if her hair hadn't already been going white, I'm sure this incident added a few new silver streaks to her curls.   After a few weeks of hanging onto this precious box, Mrs. Rhoads prayers were answered, it fell apart from repeated use.  I found something else to use and another hiding spot for my spy gear and mad money.

As a teenager my first cousin, Darcy and I were oddly obsessed with my father and his early death. My dad died when I was 6 years old, on my 6th birthday, from a drug over-dose.  It's the fact of my life and I'm not sad or melancholy about it, it just is.  By the time he died, my mother had already been married and divorced twice — first to my father for about 2 years, and then to Ray, the horrible and abusive step-father who molested me.  By the start of 1st grade, in September of 1973, I was already damaged goods with a twice divorced mother.  I was an original latch key kid living in a single parent-household.  We were not a common sight in suburban, lower-middle class Aldan, PA - Delaware County.

By the time I reached 13 I was ripe for all kinds of mischief and eager for delving into the back story about my father, about whom I knew almost nothing.  Darcy and I were spending the weekend at our Bobbci's house and were sleeping in what used to be my father's room.  We were conjuring spirits, taking sheets of tracing paper and making pencil rubbings from his desk and bureau to find evidence of his handwriting and to read what he had written.  Remembering my find from under the stairs from years before, we went down to the basement to rummage hoping to find some tucked away scrap or hidden map to his life.  Up in the cellar eves we found a letter shoved under the floor boards.  I can barely remember what was written.  It was a letter to my father, from some friend of his who was in jail.  My dad had been in and out of jail a few times, probably for petty theft and drug offenses.  We had the letter in our possession all of ten minutes before my grandmother came down to see what we were up to and she saw what we had found.  Before I could even read it, Bobbci grabbed the letter from Darcy and tore it to shreds.  We were yelled at, punished and prohibited from poking around the house ever again.

My father's death had taken a toll on my grandmother and she was forever crying whenever I saw her.  As an adult, I can see that my grandmother had a lot of loss and sorrow in her life.  She was a proud woman from hard-working, cold Polish stock.  I'm sure seeing me reminded her keenly of my father, I look just like him.  It couldn't have been easy to deal with, his young death and my erie resemblance to him.  But as a kid and a teenager, her tears were like crocodile tears and her cold demeanor was off-putting.  The shredding of that letter felt like whatever small part of him I had as my own was taken away from me.  We never talked about the incident again and I felt ashamed and angry for a very long time since all I really wanted was to know who my father was and what about him was in me that was good.

Finding these nude photos in my new house brought back a rush of feelings for me, about sexual conduct and hidden sexual secrets.  These photos have probably been in this house for over 60 years.  How no one else found them before is a mystery that will never be solved (unless they belong to the past former own, and then the mystery of how they came to be behind a door jamb of a closet within a closet is another tale).  I choose to believe that some young man had a cache of stag photos in this room and this hiding spot was out of mom's, grandmother's or his wife's knowledge.  They may have been titillating for their day but in today's world they are a quaint reminder of a secret that no longer needs to be shameful.