Lady Kona, Nubian Imp & Tormentrix

Rats in the Walls

I’m REALLY upset with myself.

In fact, as I sat, peed, and thought a little this morning, I had this sense that this might be the THING that I take with me to my grave. I thought I had exterminated the rats I saw in my psychic house. They retreated to the walls and I thought they had died. But I’ve been hearing scrabbling noises lately…

When I was a child, OK, even afterwards and into the now, I would hear people, older people often, talk about things like regret. Or grudges or sacrifice or heart break. Things that I knew the book meaning of but not the Life Meaning.

When my heart broke in my mid twenties, I had been reading thick, adult books since I was 12. I had been reading about this thing called “heart break”. I had listened to Elvis sing about it.

I stood in front of my lover as we took the final steps to the end and something happened. I HEARD this… sound. A crack. Like thick ice, that’s not think enough, when it’s stepped on. I felt this sharp PAIN. Like a bubble moving through the flesh of my chest in a particularly aggressive way. It followed the pace and path of that crack. And I stopped. Surprised. Analyzing suddenly this thing that was happening inside my body.

And my lover, stopped. And I heard my voice being called through thick blankets of consciousness and the repeated question, “Are you OK? What’s wrong?” I looked at my lover through my clearing vision. Looked at the concern on the face of the person I was fighting valiantly to stay connected to. I don’t know how much time passed – but it seemed like a lot. Words took what seemed like a long time.

“I think my heart just broke.”

The rest of the conversation is a blur. Like much before that moment is a blur in my memory. Except this blur was because I had stopped participating. I was fascinated by this thing that had happened. I remember being frustrated that we were still talking because I wanted to really study the feeling and the lingering residue. To write about it. I suppose if I had snapped my tibia and the end was sticking out through the flesh… it would be similar. Horror. Fascination. Pain. Shock. The why receding and the fact dominating.

So I finally learned the Life Meaning of the words I had heard and read so often.
(EDIT: My friend S—- has given me this link to Broken Heart Syndrome and this one too.)

This thing I allude to at the beginning of my writing is inside a person. A single individual. It’s infected me. I have hope that I won’t carry this around inside me — being constantly reminded and affected and spreading my dis-ease — forever. I have hope. But I don’t really know how to do it. ‘Cause this person ain’t changing near as I can figure. And no one seems to… care enough?… to say to the person “ink, pink, you, stink”. And no amount of bending or trying on my part seems to be shifting this thing. And I want the way I act and react around it to shift. ‘Cause I want to be a better human than I am at the moment. I want to relate to the person, not the thing.

But I really HATE the way it makes me feel and I don’t want that to be in my scar as I continue to strengthen from my healing; I have a few fucked up things inhabiting it already.

I said once of my boss (to my supervisor) that “I’d rather have a live eel stuffed up my cunt than hug that woman.” And I meant it. At the time. The feeling has taken a loooong time to pass. But it has passed. I’d hug her before I ate a banana.

I’ve always had the capacity to give but not always to accept. A long time friend of over 25 years said to me, you’d give ____ (a horrible human) a place to sleep if they really needed it. And I would. I’m like that. I do what I can for humans, but not always for the things that inhabit them. Sometimes I restrain my giving — physical, emotional or spiritual — because I’d rather hold onto it and know I can plant those seeds in fertile soil with another or at another time. Soil with a chance, rather than rock.

This thing? The one I alluded to at the beginning of this writing? I was in a book store this winter and I found a book on the Trials of Oscar Wilde. Before I could think more I had dropped almost $30 on it because it is a tome of beauty this book. Hard covered and thick and… OH! I bought it ’cause I thought “this person would LOVE this!” I do that. I buy and give what makes sense. I’m not so good with occasion. I got out on the street and I thought: “why the FUCK would you do that? That person would never invite you to their home. They don’t regard you as an equal.” I didn’t give it. Why? Because this thing is rocky in it’s soul. It is meager with it’s care. It is like a parent that wants a prize every time it reads to their child at night.

The person, this thing inhabits is interesting and challenging and talented, and clever, and smart and capable and, and, and… But the thing inside is not so good. And I recognize it. So clearly. When it recedes, the person is funny and lovely. But the thing…

Contact can actually make me feel BAD about myself. SHITTY in fact. Like a WORTHLESS being. Like CRAP on the bottom of a shoe. SMALL. USELESS. It’s because I find that there is a miasma of mean that wafts. There was a time last year when it gave me NIGHTMARES and could cause my heart to beat faster. I ruminated on the words delivered by this person and they POISONED my sense of self. I now have a knee-jerk response that wants to kick the person away. My rational mind finds all of this intolerable.

I possess chunks of it in my being too. I see it in some of my action and I have learned to recognize it, at least some of the time, when it’s taking over my person. It’s powerful and can be destructive, and I can generate it purposefully. And sometimes it leaks like stale fart from under the bedcovers. Unintentionally polluting the air and making those around groan and grimace and gag and refuse or hate being around me.

It’s why I’m so ruthless in my self-evaluation. Hard on myself. Prone to setting high or impossible standards. It’s why I say out loud “I need/am trying to be better.” It’s why I state “that I am not the boss of everything no matter how much I try to convince myself or others.” I try to be a truth-sayer. To name the elephant and to encourage the cleaning up of it’s poo. And I encourage others to spot it in me and name it too. I have learned how to face my shit and how to say sorry. I’m not always good at it. But I want those chunks GONE.

I recognize this thing and I do not want to take it to the grave inside my body or interact with it inside the bodies of those who are around me.

2009 is the year of no ambition. Which is to say no struggling that is grounded in ego. The mantra, which was also given to the boi is: Love harder Try harder more Patience more Questions.

Gah. All this writing and the answer comes at the end. I guess that’s what this is all about, eh? (See my Canadian roots? No, I’m not planning on dying them).

How do I Love the being encompassing this thing? How can I Try harder? In what ways can I be and display Patience? What Questions, if answered might move this forward?

Some people keep rats as pets. I hear they can be good companions. I hear they have many redeeming qualities once a person comes to understand them. Perhaps I am asking a cat to be a bird? Maybe.

Thanks for reading. I wouldn’t have gotten this far.