Another Time Today

Remember the time when we were a little freer, our minds were more open to new ideas, and our hearts were more open to not judging others based on differences. Am I imagining a time that wasn’t, a time that only existed in my mind?

I think these might have been only fleeting moments when we all seemed to step closer to each other and to understanding. Then, as suddenly as it came, we were pulled back into the all too familiar grip of division, fear of others, and hate. I know it is human nature, the longing for connection, yet here we are, building barriers, shouting slogans, and tearing at the connective tissues of hope.

Unfortunately, some of the people I once believed I knew, who were part of my inner circle, have changed, and I no longer recognize them. It saddens me, as I have grown older and expanded my own understanding of the world, to realize what it means to be open to new ideas, people, and cultures, just how small some people’s minds truly are. My worldview changed as I traveled and saw the world, while others tightened the cocoon around themselves and demanded that nothing change, or worse, that things return to a time they do not even remember.

Even more importantly, my understanding of how we individually affect others expanded, and I became more self-aware of the impact that both acts of kindness and acts of cruelty can have. I walked the grounds of Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. I was soul-sick for days; something in my spirit folded up. As a young person, I visited Southern plantations and warehouses where human beings were bought and sold, beaten and belittled simply for their higher melanin. Their humanity ignored in favor of a monstrous false layering of ‘not like us’, therefore inferior to justify the hundreds of years of brutality this nation imposed upon a people they stole from another land, beat, and bred into inhuman enslavement.

By the time I was old enough to understand there was something fundamentally wrong in the world, I had begun to question my place in it. I questioned everything. My place in my family, how I fit with my peers, and where I fit in the world around me. My conclusion? I didn’t fit anywhere; I always seemed oddly outside of those around me. I rebelled, and I paid dearly for my rebellion. I broke my own heart more times than I can count. I had my spirit and my body broken by those who wanted me to fit into boxes that made them comfortable. Yet even when I thought there was nothing left of me, something rose up and fought, demanded I survive.

There are days even now that I question my place in the world, and I wonder why I fought so hard to get this far. There are mornings when I wake up after a restless night of bad dreams, where my body aches, my heart hurts, and my spirit is lonely; I wonder out loud why I fought so hard? There are days when my solitude weighs heavily on me, and I wonder aloud, why am I so alone now when I poured so much into so many for so long?

There are times when my spirit feels weighted down, and my heart is cracking. Those are times when I remember there was another time when it wasn’t like this, and I wonder if maybe the reason some of us from that time are still here is as a reminder of those days when we were walking toward something better? I think maybe it is, and those of us who still remember are the quiet reminder that it is worth the fight, even as we break inside.

Yes, it’s terrible today, and it feels as if everything has gone sideways, but some of us remember a different time. We remember, and we know there is a better way, but we also know we failed when we turned our backs and became passive. We own this failure; we may not have voted for it, but we failed to stand up and demand better, so we own it. Now, we must own correcting fifty years of ongoing and persistent destruction of everything we fought for.

If we don’t stand up now, tomorrow is lost, and the promise of this nation, however imperfect, will disappear forever and for all of us.

Dear God XV

Dear God, I know, you grow weary of our cries for your intervention after we make our stupid mistakes and our own ignorant choices.

Dear God, the world trembles under the weight of cruelty, indifference, and greed. Across countless lands, where humanity should find its unity in compassion, the fractures deepen, and the cries of the suffering echo louder. The shared blessings meant to nourish and uplift are instead hoarded, wasted, and weaponized against those who need them most.

I don’t blame you; if it were me, I would be sitting back on my throne and saying to my angels, well, it is time for them to reap what they sowed or FAFO. I am sure your patience must be worn thin, your last nerve must be frayed; certainly, mine would be watching the shenanigans of those who speak in my name. But God, they are the worst of us; they are the dregs and corrupt beyond measure; they are not all of us.

Dear God, it is difficult to watch as the once most generous nation in the world becomes the most selfish and self-serving. It is hard to know there is food rotting in warehouses that could save the lives of the starving, all to serve the ego and evil intentions of the most powerful and the ultra-wealthy. I am appalled and ashamed of my once wonderful nation and its people as so many cheer on these terrible crimes of slow genocide, whether by starvation or acts of war. God, I can only find one thing in common, other than starvation; these nations are all populated by people who are “not like us,” they are African and Middle Eastern nations. The people in this administration, this President, and the people he surrounds himself with despise them and look upon them as beneath them and beneath their contempt.

Gaza * Sudan * Democratic Republic of the Congo * Lebanon * Jordan * Syria

Refugee Camps – Afghanistan * Sudan * Yemen * Bangladesh

Dear God, human beings are dying of starvation while food rots in warehouses.

Dear God, human beings, entire family trees are being wiped out by drones and missiles – Palestine * Ukraine

Dear God, have you noticed a trend? I certainly have, but now it isn’t a trend; it is a national agenda to destroy the country then the world that doesn’t bend the knee to their chaos and disorder. This President has one agenda, to dismantle all the past progress to make this nation Free and Equal for all people. Have you watched the outright cruelty? The attacks on people simply for the color of their skin, their country of origin, their sexual orientation, their gender. These attacks are blatant, no longer under the sheets and pointed hats of yesteryear, but now under the power of the President and his sycophants.

Dear God, admittedly, we did not make the progress we should have. We took baby steps rather than great strides, and for every three steps forward, we took at least one step back. Now though? We aren’t just undoing progress; we are undoing the very foundations of this nation. We are undermining everything we built on, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and two (2) centuries of precedence. Dear God, are we truly and forever lost?

Dear God, we have become mean, bitter, vengeful, vicious, and petty. Indeed, there were always people who were all of this, people who could not get beyond themselves without stepping on others. Yet now we have an entire population that is bent on the destruction of those they see as the reason for their own failure in life. Whether these failures are personal, professional, or something else entirely. Their misery is being transformed into a living object, something tangible and so filled with venom that it poisons everything it touches. Whether it is a person, an ethnic group, a concept, a Right, or even a Nation, the poison is flowing fast and spreading, killing everything in its path, everything it touches.

Dear God, we are falling fast as a people. Perhaps it is simply that all our failures are finally rising to the surface, so we can no longer avoid them. We can no longer turn away from how mean-spirited and terrible a history this nation is built on. We can no longer ignore the foundation of cruelty and abuse. We either face it full on, or we sink further into the quagmire of self-deception that we are somehow better, more moral than other nations. But the truth is, we are not. If anything, we are worse because we continue to turn a blind eye to our history, even going so far as to attempt to erase what makes us uncomfortable or challenges our ‘high ground.’

Dear God, I am an imperfect spokesperson. I acknowledge that my voice has not always been raised in protest when it should have been. I know there are days I have remained silent, sometimes because I am weary, other days because, like so many others, I was afraid. But God, this is enough; we are all afraid, all weary and yet it is growing worse. The hounds are baying at the gates, and soon, there will be no place for the righteous to seek sanctuary. The guns are being turned on the innocent, and poverty, sickness and hunger will follow; not just in this nation but across the world because of our actions. Those who speak in your name from the pulpit rejoice in evil, while those who pray on their knees in the quiet of their prayer rooms, as you command, are fearful to speak in your name.

Dear God, something evil this way comes, and it is us. Without the reins of moral consciousness, we are doomed to repeat our history until we commit every atrocity known to man, but with far greater efficiency. Families are being torn apart by the divisiveness within our nation, by the greed, pettiness, and unencumbered desires of a group of small men who want everything for themselves, no matter the cost. Fear rules us, and at the top of the heap, we have one man who has tapped into that fear, uses your name when convenient and his own as a substitute, to divide us as a people.

Dear God, maybe this is your plan. Perhaps my cry for your mercy and intervention falls on deaf ears, not because it is just one of many, but because you think we should fix our messy world on our own. I don’t blame you, as they say, FAFO. But God, some of us knew, we have known for decades, and we tried. Maybe you could just gently nudge some of the worst of them off the map, you know, balance the playing field a little bit.

Dear God, my apologies for the length of my entreaty today. I know I had too much to say and waited too long to say it. Maybe you could also nudge my writer’s block out of the way for me? That is all I will ask for myself. Thank you, God. I know you are busy; there is much to do in the world every day and I know your calendar is full. Your people, all of us, surely could use a bit of help.

History, Silly Me

Some things I know are irrelevant and meaningless, but may make you laugh.

  1. Rain is not a hazard; driving with your hazard lights on in the rain makes you look stupid; just sayin’.
  2. Love is real, and really difficult.
  3. The day-to-day is much more complicated than it looks from the outside.
  4. We were not meant to live without partnership, friendship, or human touch. We have convinced ourselves otherwise.
  5. Yes, we all have preferences, and the pool is much bigger when we are young.

The above is not everything I know; it is simply a silly list of ‘things’ that on the surface feel connected to why I continue to sleep alone every single night.

I have spent the past couple of years attempting to find Mr. Right, because I believed somewhere in the world he had to exist. I realized I spent too much time alone and was weary of trying to do it all alone. After putting myself out in the dating pool, several attempts at first, second, and third dates, and even a couple of short and abysmal failed relationships, I have realized I will probably have to accept I am past my expiration date.

I am sad about this, but perhaps not surprised. Some of the things I have heard from some of these so called mature (e.g. grown assed men) are:

  • To old
    • Wait, aren’t we the same age?
  • To flawed
    • This was a body-shaming comment, specifically, I am not a Barbie doll, I don’t wear make-up, dye my hair, or any of the other things that would make me socially acceptable.
  • To opinionated
    • Right, I have them, and they are usually backed by facts. I am a font of fact-based opinions, which I will hold up to anyone any day of the week. Don’t bring it if you don’t want to get burned.
  • To smart
    • Yes, more than one man has told me my brain is intimidating. They are looking for someone more arm candy-like who will not embarrass them by speaking.
  • To unavailable
    • This meant I didn’t drop everything to serve them on a whim. Yes, that is what they expected. Leave work, defer my plans, even put myself at risk if needed, so they were served. Really, Sir, I don’t know you like that.

In the simplest terms: too much or not enough.

Those were just the highlights. Fantastic right? The men I have met have all behaved as if they were somehow doing me a favor. Fools who have convinced themselves their presence is enough and nothing more is required of them. These man-children have somehow gotten it into their heads that they are THE GIFT, despite their inability to provide even the simple things necessary to create and sustain a relationship.

If I weren’t so depressed by it, I would find it fascinating.

I have always found human behavior interesting. Where do people get their ideas? Why do they behave the way they do, especially when it is contrary to their best interest? Don’t misunderstand, I have been known to do the same thing, in all honesty, I have been told that my desire for ‘privacy’ in certain aspects of my life is in large part the cause of my divorce, yes, it is true. My desire to keep aspects of my history as just that, history, led to a disconnect, misunderstanding and mistrust.

Well, I still don’t disclose. Strange. I write my history in these pages under a name that isn’t mine. Sometimes, I disclose my blog to anyone interested in reading so that anyone genuinely interested could dig through a decade of writing and find what they were looking for. I am reticent to discuss, and I suppose it is my nature because I do not wish to look at the pity, answer the questions, or even sometimes see the naked ugliness of blame that many in my generation still assign.

What I want to know, why does everyone believe our history is their business? It is a mystery to me. You can’t fix it, you can’t change it, you can’t kiss the booboo and make it all better. Let us keep our secrets if that is what we wish. Not all of us want to tell you about our trauma’s and drama’s, not all of us want you to know we were gang raped at 11 or that our first real ‘love’ partner beat us into unconsciousness, more than once. Some of us want the past to stay in the past, where we have locked our demons away so we can live our lives.

If I tell you I don’t blame all men, I am telling you the truth. I am also telling you the truth, if I tell you I don’t drag my history into my future. But I should not have to tell you the intimate details of the brutality of my past to make you comfortable. I rose up, I survived, I am more than my past. All of those things those men saw, those things that intimated those man-children, those things that created me, the woman I am, the warrior-queen, THE GIFT I am; those are my past, and I am not ashamed but they are mine and I feel under no obligation to share them.

Unfortunately, it leaves an overwhelming sadness to know that now the road ahead is shorter than the road behind, and I seem destined to walk the rest of it alone. This wasn’t what I had envisioned when fighting those battles to survive, grow, and heal.

Letting Go

There was a time I believed ‘once upon a time’ was a beginning

If I could just love you more than I hated me

You would save me from my nightmares

Charge in sword held high and slay my dragons

Put out the fires that burned my spirit to cinders

I thought ‘happily ever after’ was the real ending

That isn’t the way life happens though, is it?

The tower didn’t have a door with magic locks

My mind was a labyrinth of secret rooms and demons

I tricked you into thinking I was fine

Every single day I put on the mask of ‘fine’

I locked the door of untold secrets and history

Thinking if I could only love you a little more

I would stop hating me enough to let you in

Maybe ‘happily ever after’ could be real

One day I realized fairytales were written to teach us

The real tales contained real monsters with no ‘happy ever after’

I knew my ‘fine’ was a deception, just like every fairytale I wanted to believe

That was when I knew you would be better free of my pain

I was never going to love you enough to stop hating me

Worse, if you knew my secrets you could never love me out of my darkness

The severance of the ties that bind was the only gift I had to give

Now you will hate me just like I hate myself, I will never tell you

How very much I love you, how grateful I was for all you gave to me

Fairytales aren’t real, but this was the only ‘happily ever after’ I can give you

To be free to love

I always told you, I want you to be happy

4/19/2025

Maybe Next Time

You know that feeling? You know, the one when you think to yourself, ‘this is it, this might be that one I was looking for!”  Yes, that feeling. It doesn’t matter if it is a person, a job, or even some inanimate object; you get that high when you think, “This is the one!”

I am convinced that many of us are trying to recapture something that made us feel good in our past. The adrenaline high we got as children when we flew down a hill on our bikes without braking or climbed to the very top of a tree and then looked down. That holy shit feeling when we snuck out of the house to see our favorite band. Or even that time we stole away to our first teenage party at the beach, drank terrible wine around the bonfire and listened to music with our friends.

We are looking for that punch of Dopamine we got from first love. Maybe it was when we felt great about ourselves and how we moved through the world. Possibly, it was the feeling of buying our dream car with our own money. Or even when we purchased our first home, and they handed us the keys. It could be anything; each of us has our own idea of what that ‘it’ moment was when all just seemed like it was, well, perfect.

The days move at an uneven pace these days. As if there is no rhythm to them anymore. It use to be there was some dependability to my days; I knew where I should be, what I should be doing, and honestly, who I would be with most of the hours of the day. I didn’t always love all of it or the people I had to spend time with, but at least I understood the days. Now? Now, I feel as if there are simply broken people, broken promises, and broken dreams somewhere screaming, save me, in a bottomless chasm.

Honestly, I don’t have the energy. I spent most of my entire life trying to ‘save’ other people when I should have been trying to save myself.

You would think I would know better.

You would think after all this time, all these failures, I would not fall prey to the fairytale of happily ever after. But I do because I very much want to believe the following things are real in this world;

Kindness and compassion –

Real love –

Sustained devotion and commitment –

Truth-telling –

Joy, yes, I said it; joy. Prolonged and encompassing joy.

The world is upside down these days. The things we thought we knew about life have been upended, and many of us are left floundering for anything to hold onto. We beat ourselves up for our failures and shake our fists at God and the Devil in equal measure for the holes in our lives we once believed would be filled with love, laughter, companionship, pleasure, and that elusive thing we cannot quite identify, but know might be joy.

Something shifted in the world. Something fundamental in our spirit changed how we saw ourselves and the world around us. Was the shift in the world, or did we somehow lose that spark that made us dance in the rain, laugh at silly jokes, or want to cuddle with someone we loved. When did this happen to so many of us that now we live these terrible lives of isolation, fear, and ever-increasing aloneness?

I think it is both good and bad, uplifting and soul-crushing. I am at the bridge of the Baby Boomers, born in 1957; my mother is on the bridge between Boomers and the Silent Generation; it is strange in many ways; we had the same experiences and witnessed the same social disruptions no matter where within the generational range we fall. The one thing we have in common? We both find ourselves wondering what in the hell happened to that damned fairytale, that whole ‘cake and eat it too’ we were promised if we just did all the right things.

Okay, I know; I didn’t always do all the right things. But hell, who did? What I did do, was I busted my ass, all day, every day and provided when no one else could or would. I lost everything more than once and rebuilt my life from the ashes of heartbreak. I loved immensely and hard, even when I wasn’t loved in return. I got up, brushed myself off and laughed, even when I wanted to cry until there were no more tears, even when I didn’t wonder if it would be easier to lay down and never get back up.

Here we are; the world is changing, and being called a Boomer is now a slur. Strange. The generation that marched to end war, to move the nation towards more freedom, that invented many of the things that make life easier. The generation that freed women like me to have careers, own homes, and choose different lives from our mothers. The generation that changed this nation in very real ways, at least for a while, is now the same generation that is miserable because of those changes.

Did we look away? Did we grow apathetic? What happened to us? I ask myself this more days than not. It seems we lost some spark, some passion for the things that mattered. I am desolate that my generation forgot about justice, empathy, compassion, and yes, more than anything else, we seem to have forgotten joy.

Somewhere, I know that spark exists. Somewhere buried inside it is still in there just waiting for something to re-ignite the flame. But not today, not yesterday, and likely not tomorrow either. These days? These days, all I hear is to much, to smart, to fat, not enough, oh yeah and today, desperate… to mean, to honest, to much history.

All if it might be true, but like they say, “Want a perfect girl, buy a Barbie doll.”