trying to be what she's not.

Bunny has been down, again, still, whatever. it is the same tune, different day.

so whatever. she is sad and is not getting really any better. she has hit a plateau in her grief. is there another place she should be at, or on? she cannot see it from where she is. just one day after another. that's all she does. she has no real future.

shit. bad vibes again. stop it, Bunny. keep those negative thoughts for your personal journal.

brighter posts. faux good times.

they let us wear Halloween costumes at work for that weekend. Bunny has been working on hers. she wants to be a forest fairy. here are the wings she made. she has been working on them off and on since July.

so here she is.
and the back.
Bunny loves her wings.

she wishes she could "fly me away with you, my love."

Bunny smiles to herself when she thinks about what Dragon would say about her silly, glittery forest fairy wings.

*sigh*

material things & esoteric dreams

i am still out here, still working on my place, ahem, my home. i am gradually going through everything and bringing some things back with me from my daughter's garage.

all this stuff, these material things that were mine, are mine, are now being sorted through as if i died, or am dying.

"don't need that anymore." "do you want this? no? then toss it." "put this in the box to donate."

holding something close, studying it; something that used to bring me such joy and fill my previous home with the common clutter that we fill our lives with, weighing it's importance now that i no longer have the space. it is a difficult thing to do. sorting through the debris of my life and seeing it from this side of my husband's death. i feel as if we are getting things settled before i die, doing this sorting of who gets what so that it won't be hard when i am gone.

my daughter is taking a lot. we are setting off in a corner all the things we know my son {her brother} will want. and i am filling my little car, Midnight, each trip with things to bring back here ~ back home......

like my piano shawl. have i ever mentioned that i used to play piano? i started lessons when i was 4. by the time i was 6 i was pretty good. by the time i was 8 i was competing. at 11 i was entered in the Van Cliburn Competition. that was a long time ago, a lifetime. my teacher gave me the shawl then. it was an antique back then. it is more so now. very old. beautiful.

i sat in my old chair and held it around me tonight while i listened to Beethoven's 7th, the 2nd movement. a beautiful piece i learned to play when my hands could barely make the octave spread. i was never without a piano until the divorce. i sold it to pay for things my children needed. it was an old studio piano of blond maple. my mother bought it second hand in 1961 when i first started playing. i sold it in 2002 for $100 that i desperately needed to keep the phone on after V. refused child support for a while. it killed me then. it is a hauntingly ugly scar now. i miss my piano.

i miss my Dragon. i remember him going to the church in Rockport to talk to the priest to see if i could be allowed a couple of days during the week to stay after morning Mass and Rosary to play the piano there. he was so happy to have gotten the okay. he and i would walk to church for Mass, and then we'd stay and i would get to re-visit a past that had once been my own. i got to close my eyes and play for my own soul the music that has always haunted me. classical. mostly Beethoven, JS Bach, GF Handel, and other more deeply spiritual composers. music moves me. i played the scores that seemed to reach for something no one could ever have imagined without that music to take them there.

looking at all my material things that i am going through, getting back, i find myself more somber. i am so relieved, humbly so, but i am also wistful and melancholy over all the dreams that no one but my children and my Dragon shared with me. there is no one in my life anymore, besides my daughter and son, who knows me. there is more to me than my sewing, my writing, the work i do for others, and my grief. i am a woman of depth that no one really takes the time to get to know.

i do have my Marlene Dietrich friend, and she is lovely to know, but she does not live close so we have never met.

i have a widow who lives fairly close, and we have lunched, but my work schedule, and tight budget for things like that, keep me a little on the humble side. i do not talk as much about myself as i probably could, or should try to. i am so afraid they will abandon me as others have if i talk too much, say what's on my mind.

i am a wuss.

no one ever knew me but my children and him. oh, God, i miss him so much tonight.

would that i could play for you. i guess my writing is a form of music. silent lyrics to feed my own needs, to echo through time to announce that i was once here. i am leaving a legacy of lyrics behind that can never be put to music.

some dreams do not come true. some were never meant to. the difficult journey in accepting that carves away at me,

but,

i am so very blessed that once upon a time,

i did dream.

Bunny's Newsy News! w/ pictures!

this is Bunny's news. it is happy. it is also melancholy. in a nutshell, without fanfare.............

Bunny got her stuff back.

when Bunny's first husband evicted her and her son from their home, she had to put all her things in storage. when her lovely, wonderful Dragon died, she could not bring it with her. and being down here in this "other land," she could not drive by her storage unit and touch the doors. she could not put her little forehead against the metal door and remember all her things that were inside.

but her daughter and her son-in-law surprised her two weeks ago by getting on a plane, flying up to New England, and putting it all in a truck and driving in back to their house and unloading it in their garage.

*sniff sniff*

when they opened the garage doors for Bunny to gaze at her stuff for the first time in years and years, Bunny, well, she crumpled to her knees. it was one of the most emotional things Bunny has had to go through. happy, wistful, melancholy, so hard, and yet, so very good.

all of Bunny's things.

almost.

some things were lost. rugs were ruined. beautiful Yankee braided rugs were ruined. Bunny's lovely little sofa was ruined, too. there was a wonderful flat file that she had had for decades was not allowed to come {denied by Voldemort who said it was simply too heavy ~ and it is; a very heavy piece of furniture.}

the other heartbreak was her Dragon's chair. Bunny has written in the past about wanting her Dragon's chair. it was not there. simply NOT THERE.

so Bunny cried bitterly over that loss last week. her daughter held her as they sat on the driveway looking at all their things. Bunny still gets teary about it if she thinks about it too long. she needs to let it go, as she has so many things and people.

she has spent all day today with her things. 1/2 the day in her daughter's garage. 1/2 the day setting things up in her little place. it will be a work in progress for quite a while.

so here are the promised photos.

see Bunny sitting on a box of books? so much stuff shoved into a two car garage. a lifetime of stuff.

Bunny with things put in her car, as much as she could carry up her stairs.

Bunny got her Hello Kitty phone all hooked up. when someone calls her, Kitty's wings and little heart wand light up.

the start of Bunny trying to make a home out of this place where she lives. she wants to feel at home here. it is where life has put her. she needs to find a way to feel at home. and yes, the goose on the table to the far right lights up!!

it will be a slow process of dividing furniture up, giving up things that won't fit in her little place, but those things will go to her children. they will stay within the family and kept with all the memories they hold. Bunny's place is starting to look familiar now. and she knows her things are safe until she can get through it all. it is all within her reach. all she needs is time to go through everything.

tonight, Bunny is going to sit on her sofa and watch some television. she is not going to sew. she is going to relax. she works a 10 hour shift tomorrow, and can hardly wait to come home, open the door, and finally,

finally,

feel like she has come home.

the Bun poking her head out.....

.......checking to see if it's safe to emerge from where she goes to hide when people and life get too rough for her. she's got some news. she won't say it now because she wants pictures of her news. what's news without photos? "a picture is worth a thousand words." Bun believes it. some people don't read anymore. they scan.

"did you read the book?"

"don't have to. i saw the movie."

*Bunny shakes her head* anyway, she is taking her photos tomorrow, on her day off. then she will come roaring back with a post to let her few readers know how she's doing and what she's doing.

pssssst. it's good news, melancholy news, but good; heart-rending in a way, but very good news. check out the labels. <~~ Bunny's attempt at a cliff-hanger. Dan knows what she's talking about.

break for the damned Bun

oh, my gosh. oh, heavens, oh, my. Bunny is slumpy tonight. slumpy, life-tired, exhausted Bunny. see that face? that's the face of a Bun who is damned. damned if she doesn't. damned if she does. what's a Bunny to do?

she saw one of her blog comment and she got a note sent to her. oh, how she trembled and cried a little. Bunny was wrong again.

and now something big has happened to her and she wants to tell it but she is afraid. something in her life has happened and she wants to share it, but she is unsure of herself. it's not about work, nor her health. not about a man. {Bunny just threw up in her mouth a little bit at the thought of that.}

it is about something else, but Bunny feels she needs to think long and hard about how she writes now. she needs to choose her words carefully. last posting, oh, gosh, well, she mucked it up, she guesses. somehow it was taken wrong. she went at length in the comment section of that last posting to explain herself. now she is exhausted and awash in hesitation at trying to write about her news.

how to write it. what words work for everyone. will someone get upset with her? will someone point out her flaws. this is her space but not really. this is not the first time, nor the third time, that Bunny has been gotten after, in a manner of speaking, and speaking, or writing, is what gets Bunny into trouble. she gets misunderstood a lot.

no place for a Bun to write. *sigh* fingers quiver over the keys even now and she is still teary in her blinky blink eyes.

break time. Bunny needs to step away from the keyboard so all hurt feelings are soothed by her excuses and her apologies and hopefully her absence. Facebook, too. Bunny is too strung out from stuff going on. she does not want to, cannot find the strength in herself right now, to risk being seen. it was her strategy with her mother. it was her strategy during her first marriage. be quiet. go about your day unseen. nothing to pick apart if no one sees you. no reason to carve away at Bunny if she is silent.

yes, carefully planned blogs from now on. careful word usage. no more freedom to speak her mind willy nilly. no more stream of consciousness, will nilly Bunny so there will be no more complaints. no more people who get angry with the Bun. she is so tired, so very tired of people getting angry at her for her just writing down what she feels.

eggshells.

dancing on the head of a pin.

all she wanted to do was try and get stuff off her chest, but she is damned. it should be so simple. write what you feel. but it isn't. she is damned if she keeps it all trapped inside eating away at her. she is damned if she writes from her heart to let it out.

so Bunny the damned is going to take a break. she has to decide which side of the "damn" she'll take to communicate with the outside world; the only world Bunny talks to because it's not like she can talk about grief at the "bear store."

she will come back with her newsy news when she is ready and able. she'll come back when she's stopped feeling so bad about her damned self.

winter in my soul

Dan posted an interesting thought. i responded with a comment as to why i write here. here is what i wrote:

i think some of us write because we are, by nature, a narrative species. we have always been storytellers. i also think that we seldom feel truly listened to. blogging is a way to put our words out there for all time. it is a technological carving in stone. we want to be heard, by someone, at some time; hopefully during our own lifetime. it is not lost on me that schizophrenics suffer from a loss of their story.

we write to break the silence that surrounds us, or at least i do. for all i have written of in my own blog, it is truly the tip of the iceberg. so much i wish i could say but do not out of fear. i, sadly, am one who blogs to, yes, see if anyone is out there, and if anyone is listening to me.

i have always been honest; told i have been brutally so. but here is the only place where i can be. i have not had benefit of friends to open up to, nor grief counselors who stay with me for longer than a handful of weeks. i am bereft of anyone to tell my story to. i have things i need to say, my heart aches to speak of, my mind screams to let go of, but i cannot here. not this publicly. and so, i use Beach Bunny, the Ambassador, my photos, and metaphors to try and give voice to what i cannot say/write.

i am tired. i feel used up. i feel like i am living with winter in my soul, and i love winter. or used to. i think in ways i still do though winter here is not like my winters up north with him. winter here is anemic. winter there, winter in Rockport, the nor'easters were magnificent.

winters there were spent walking outside for photos, to feel the cold on our skin and see what no tourist sticks around to witness. fierce winds. blinding sleet and ice that stings. waves whipped up throwing themselves like demons on the rocks around the town. even sunny days, with no storms on the horizon, held a power that kept me in awe.
on sunny days, the cold could be so brutal that it could kill if you did not keep track of the time. the sun seems so far away, smaller than in summer time, as distant and uncaring as a mother's rejection. and yet, i was not alone. he was beside me, behind me, holding my hand, handing me a flask of hot chocolate. always there with me.

and going home, the smells of stew simmering on the wood stove. the dogs needing to have ice balls slowly combed from their fuzzy bodies. the warmth of sitting on the sofa between his legs and leaning back against his chest, both of us reading. both of us warm. entwined physically. our souls essentially melting into one another until you could not tell where one left off and the other began.

such was winter with him.

and then he died, and i was left alone.
only my children but they have their lives. i have tried to connect to widows here, but i cannot. they do not want or need me. and i do not want or need them. after the pneumonia of Jan. this year, and what was said to me, i became angry at the world, angry with people, quicker to judge motives. i am ice cold inside. winter has come and i am alone in it.

there are things i wish i could tell someone. there are things i wish i could sit across from a person and say out loud; say it out loud and witness their reaction, feel some kind of compassion come across to me.

i feel hollowed out. life has taken me and carved me up and then stuck a knife in and hollowed out as much as it can and still leave me breathing. then it said, "there, you bitch, make something of that. make something of yourself now."

so i sew. so i stuff bunnies and bears and wolves, and say words over them, heart ceremonies. and i write. i send a stuffed bunny to do what i cannot do. but do anyone of you who host her know why she is there? really know why? because i need her to be. i live through the photos. i crave the attention. and it is all because i am lonely.

just before Camp Widow this year, a widow wrote to me and asked if she would see me there. i wrote her back and said, "no. i have no money for something like that. and the job i have pays minimum wage therefore i can never take off. i will never have enough money for a vacation."

there is this ineffable sadness that dwells inside me. i feel it all the time. even when i am smiling and laughing at work, it feels like a lie. i do not want to be there. don't get me wrong, i love my job. it is giving me a food in my stomach and gas and paying for my electric and other stuff, but i feel like a marionette. this is where life has dumped me. i am not where i want to be, should be, or with whom.

i am alone in winter. i am knocking on the door, {or am i already inside} the winter of my life. i am older, 53, and i am sad and angry at people. i hurt so much of the time. there are things that are going on that i cannot write about but know that i am hurting over them and it is nothing i can fix. it is something that i will have to let wash over me and fight to not let it drown me.

as odd as this sounds, i miss winter. even though it lives inside me, it is the barren winter of blowing ice and snow, of the distant, uncaring rejection of the sun. i want the winter i knew with him to come back. i want to drive up to the warm glow of my Dragon waiting for me at home. i want to walk into a place that smells of his stew and cinnamon and brewing hot tea. i want to sit on the sofa against his big body and feel his warmth radiating into my back.

i want what i can never have again. him. and i am bereft.

so i will write it and then sit back and wonder if anyone truly reads, if anyone understands what i mean.

i am without solace.

winter is in my soul and i am cold and tired.