womanNshadows has been around for decades ~ my first identity. it is the most apropos. abandonedsouls is from my Dragon for all my sculpture, my paintings, my wood carvings. i am using it for the photography because i can't make anymore sculpture or wood carvings since i cannot go outside and find driftwood in the parking lot. my paintings? i have sketches. someday i will be able to afford oils again. but i have my dreams and images that i turn into sketches.
lucy came about in the 5 years before i met my Dragon. i still use her out there in surreal land but, like her namesake in the poem, she isn't right out by the curb flagging anyone and everyone down. and since my Dragon died, she keeps to herself now. my other incarnations are too busy trying to keep my head above water.
when i first met my Dragon, i was not ready to just start going out. i needed to get to know him slowly, build some trust and so he suggested we talk online as well as on the phone. {on the aside, it's funny. i can talk on the phone as long as you want to talk but the only people i "sit on the phone" with are my children and my Dragon.}
i had never done the IM thing. my children did it a little, but even they did not do it a lot. computers were for homework and research. after that, my son did the online gaming thing with headset and his "teams." his first screen name in those military games like HALO and such was i hope you slip on my guts. but then he got really good and his avatar was seldom taken out so the online crowd told him to change it. so my son set me up with the IM chat thing and while he was doing that he asked, "what do you want to be called." i liked our Dragon very much, really a lot, so so much, too much too quick that i was intimidated, but i wanted to be sure of him, of me, of our situation, that what he was feeling was more than lust. i thought of Clytie, the water nymph who fell in love with Apollo. so that is who i became. my
Dragon liked the name. i was Clytiesunflower.
but she is silent now. she is no longer Clytie. she isn't even a sunflower anymore because her sun has set.
it is real life i face and i follow the moon. i wait for it to rise and then i take my pictures. i worry about cloud cover. i panic when the moon is 95% full, 97%, 99%. what if the actual full moon is covered with clouds? so i take my pictures each night. click. click. clickety click click. if i have one of that night, i actually have 27, or so.
i am no longer Clytie who became the sunflower watching the object of her affection drive the sun across the sky. the light is gone. all that's left is the moon. my beautiful, cool, silvery moon.
i was up late last night working. i was watermarking and then uploading photos until, well, later than i wanted or needed to be. but while on Facebook, someone did the instant message chatty thingy at the bottom. it is a pretty little tone that chimes when someone types to you. it is almost like a little smile for the ears.this woman talked to me. she asked about the dentist, the crown. {btw, i am finished with him. i have the crown. i am never darkening his doorway again.} she asked how i was doing and though i could not hear her voice, the little tone was appealing so i responded with how i was doing. and she kept talking to me. it was so unexpected and so very nice.
she asked about my Dragon and me. she asked about where i had lived with him. she was looking all my new photographs. she gave to me her time last night and asked me pointed questions that allowed me the release of talking about things i have only gotten to talk to my daughter about.
i cried while we typed. she did not know that last night. she does now since she will read this eventually. but it was the kind of tears i never get to shed. i cannot get that low in front of my daughter. and last night, i got to wallow and get some of the terror and longing i felt the night he died out of me. this is some of the stuff that i think people get to get some of it out during their first year of mourning. i did not get to do that. i had no where to go to talk about it so i kept it all inside. very lucy-esque.
it was very nice of this woman to talk to me in depth like that. i have so much pain that is still inside me and though i write about it, i sometimes think it would be nice to be able to speak of some of it to someone. but when i get the chance to actually sit with someone, i get very nervous and i mess it all up. i do not get said what i would like to get off my chest. i try not to take up too much of their time. i worry if i am boring them. i sometimes suffer flashbacks when i try to talk to someone. other times. other horrors.
i have the unfortunate circumstance of being a captive audience. everyone else can come and go as they wish. i am trapped here, or where ever i get to be when a conversation occurs, with no way to entice someone to come to me, and definitely no way to encourage someone to stay with me a little while. i am afraid to bring anything too deep up knowing that all they have to do is get up and leave. it has happened countless times before. i have been corrected by those listening that i overestimate my importance to them. sorry, mom, Voldemort, family, et. al.
listening to someone's story takes patience. it requires the desire to want to help them. it takes time. it may also take encouragement from you to get them to realize that it is okay for them to talk. it takes empathy to see that they may need to talk. it takes intuition to know their circumstance and couple it with the wish to help.
so many things come out from the past when we get older and/or when tragedy befalls us. all the creepy crawly horrors from our past come out to slither and encumber us when we are so stricken, so vulnerable.
being in a place where i know very few, and not having much luck in holding someone close enough for them to see past my nervousness to the person my Dragon saw has kept me lagging behind on this journey. i can see people are milling about out there in this new darkness that has come over us all and they all seem to have really good flashlights. they have friends who have gathered around them, who call frequently, who go sit with them.
i have two worried children and i have the moon. all said and done, with no money and a smidgen of hope, i am not doing too badly. i have all the incarnations of myself to face my existences with. it is like i have a multiple personality, not disorder, but enhancement that i use to keep walking with me. i have my friends to whom i can talk, and from whom i can speak to the world. womanNshadows. Beach Bunny. abandonedsouls. lucystarshadow.
the only one who is silent is Clytiesunflower. she has gone to sleep forever. now it is the other four and all of us pay homage to the moon.
i love you, my Dragon. i always will.
