Please wake up

I sit here before this blog screen and I feel a little put off, slightly intimidated. I have been away too long....I would like to be able to say that I needed a break, but that just isn't true - I never need a break from writing, ever. I simply have become, like so many of us in this Country sucked in completely by means of survival mode. The economy is such that I must work all the time to be able to put food into fridge and watch it disappear faster than the US Mint can print more money to buy more food to put into my always sparse refrigerator. I refuse however, to not be responsible for my own family - this means blogging is way way back burnered for the time being. Life is what it is....I am off today, my first Saturday off in I don't know how long - like working like a dog of late, this day of rest is just as necessary considering I am in between Dave Matthews shows. At my age to think that I can work Friday all day, go to a show right after, dance like the God's intended and then repeat... - well that would be full on lunacy. Despite the rumors, I am smarter than that. My lower back this morning concurs, good call Lady love, good call. The music was so big last night, my dancers soul/body couldn't help full on muscle engagement - this equal pain in a forty two year old even being as fit as I am. I need a heating pad and some advil to do it again tonight. God damn those boys know how to get to a girl like me..... Although I would be better served alternating the heating pad and the ice pack right now, I must say a few words about the tragedy in Connecticut yesterday before I proceed in licking my so unimportant and self inflicted wounds. I was at work when I heard the news, a customer said something in brief about "another shooting" - she had minimal information to share. I went on my lunch break and tried to access the internet on my smart phone which on the down town mall can be a trying task sometimes. It seems that little plot of Earth is in some kind of technological bubble all it's own, it's floaty to say the least. I could not get the information and was really frustrated. Then....seconds before getting back on the clock, I read the news feed on CNN.com. 27 dead in a Connecticut elementary school, 18(at the time)of the confirmed dead, children between the ages of five and eight....Now, anyone that knows me well, knows that I am not equipped emotionally for this kind of reality. I have never been the kind to hear something of this nature and immediately resume to sipping my coffee and begrudging my own difficult existence. Something like this happens and...it happens to me. All my life my Mother referred to this trait and "histrionics" in fact when my step Father died, I got the phone call from her, the voice wound tight like the Tin Man's jaw "We don't do histrionics" - this from a woman who has nothing to do with her own Grandchildren BUT...I digress. My point is, I have always been this way and to those humans who are not, maybe my inability to just move along quickly in the face of pain is confusing and deemed a bad trait. I would disagree with the whole of my histrionic heart. I cried uncontrollably, wept like my own child had been shot in the head execution style. I walked back into work and stood in the store before my co-workers and said "Well I am no good right now" because in my head on loop, were the five year old faces of my own children. I could see them as though I was looking at a digital frame on auto shuffle, my four babies at five....I could see their shoe laces untied, their milk moustaches that begged to be wiped away with the spit off my thumb, the untainted - unruined innocence in their green, hazel and blue eyes, the puffy swell of their little lips which begged for kisses at bedtime to know that the world was safe enough for slumber, I could hear the excited stutter in their high pitched voices as they asked about Santa Claus and what kind of cookies he might like best. On LOOP in my brain....assaulting images of my precious children before they were corrupted by inevitable outer influences of the world. And then, like I said, I imagined them in a blood bath, execution style, watching their friends, their first go round at relationships with peers, their buds cry and want their Momma's seconds before their confused and overwhelmed little minds became blood splatter on a dry erase board that reads 11 Days til Christmas. This is how I work and there is not a damn thing to be done about it. To be a writer, you must know the fine details of the fine grain of life, the nuances are where the real emotions live - I know them. I feel them. I live them. I write them. I cried like a baby and stuttered like a five year old "I just can't......" I said, "the Mother in me is broken" and yes today, she still is. My babies are safe at the moment, but twenty Mothers in a sleepy New England town are screaming when the valium wears off, they are clutching their child's pillow which smells of them and looking at unopened presents under the tree that will never be opened and looking at the dirt by the door that fell from their sons sneakers yesterday and thinking if anyone sweeps those crumbles of earth away she will kill them like a wild beast protecting her young. If someone swept up the dirt Matthew tracks in my house daily, if he were dead and that trail was all that remained of his footprint, I imagine it would feel like a gunman had opened fire on me - again. It took me a while to compose myself - I felt raw and without skin - go figure. Someone suggested to me that I should not wallow - I get that mindset I guess and I fault no one for their opinion - HOWEVER, I disagree. I think that we all should wallow. Everyone of us who has heard that news report should wallow in the grief of those parents - put ourselves right there with them as if we were them and their hell was ours. Because.....isn't it? It IS. And maybe this is where we are fundamentally jumping off the ledge of humanity. DESENSITIZATION. Will my grief bring those twenty innocent beautiful babies back from the dead? NO, BUT IT will bring an awareness to my spirit that I always need and benefit from. Our society (in my mind) has lost it's way - this is clear. When we are submerged in video games that objectify killing and glorify it - when blood splatter and broken necks get us points and wins, we are losing our grip on reality. When we don't look each other in the eye and instead pass our fellow man on the street and miss the opportunity to say 'hello' because we have our faces in the Iphone instead, we are not taking care of each other as we should. When we don't take responsibility for a culture that glorifies gluttony and rather makes piss poor excuses for our excess - we are missing the mark which is man. I am not on a high horse here I assure you and I don't blame the gaming industry or the gun manufacturers or the internet - I blame myself. I blame you. I blame all of us who are not living to our human potential the way my God intended. My histrionics serve me well, trust me. We may never know what the hell was going on in that young gun mans head that made him cut down innocence while they colored Christmas pictures for their parents - we may never know for sure. But really we do. I say we need to wake the fuck up and take personal responsibility - stop feeding what has become the precedence in our greed and confusion. Be human and realize it is all that really matters. Love each other. Give to one another. Be aware of your fellow mans state of mind, because you care for him as much if not more than you do yourself....This is the season of good will and giving. I will give love in lieu of meaningless shit. I will give tears and smiles and hugs and kisses and ask "hey, you okay? Cause I am, so what can I do for you?" I love my children more than anything in this world. I have little by way of possessions, poverty in the last few years has been a blessing in my life. I want for nothing other than what it takes for me to care for my babies and provide for them a stellar example of humanity. I am grateful for my mindset and my bare bones existence. I give of my spirit daily to everyone I come in contact with and will work harder now because of these lost children in Connecticut to give even more. Hug your children, love your babies, teach them well, lead by example. We cannot change the mind of the mad man unless we do this and lend him a loving hand too. It may not help, but you never know if the guy pumping gas next to you has a glock in his car and is gassing up to head to your elementary school or mall or movie theater. The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself - I am afraid. But I am more afraid of myself than the next guy - because the next guy might need my smile and kind word to diffuse his aloneness and despair and if I don't offer it up he cannot accept help. I will wallow today and wallow tomorrow and wallow until the wallowing subsides. It will take a while I am sure, I hear the Mother's screaming in my head - I hear myself screaming alongside them. I will not silence that for the sake of my own comfort. I say the world needs to scream with those parents so they feel a little less alone with their empty sneakers by the door. Be blessed my friends and share whatever it is you do not NEED. My heart is in Connecticut.