marathon, a metaphor for a hard felt/run life?

Good Evening all you lovely blog readers, I hope you are still there? I apologize for being so gone....Sometimes I go silent, at least with my words - I take time to just reflect and wait for the words to form in my head and itch at my finger tips, it is the sensation of NEED - must get this out.... or else. I guess, seeing that I am here and feel a strange sense of urgency, the words are itching like a heroin addict. This week has been one I will never forget. A lot of important shit happened in my life. Before I begin cataloguing events, I must rewind to when I first knew that I was different. I was born to a Mother who looked at me as though I was a foreign entity. I am not positive that it was always this way, pictures of me as a baby reveal a smiling child who was seemingly content enough. I believe that I became foreign to her when I began to express my emotions freely, openly, maybe even unabashedly. I remember looking in her eyes for a sense of familiarity, camaraderie, direction - help - anything and finding nothing but shock and horror and in my perception a look that now as an adult I know to be fear. The thing I am quite sure of at this point is that the fear was not about me, it was all about her and that she would be found out - found out that in her mind, life, spirit - emotions equated to weakness. I was lost for a very long time because of the difference between my emotional life and my Mother's. I longed for her to comfort me when I cried for what seemed to her was no good reason, but to me....well the dying leaves that furled in fire hues outside my bedroom window, the ones that were clinging to their branch for dear life before suddenly being tossed on an unexpected breeze and flying on death wings that maybe came one second too soon, well....that leaf became me - or someone I loved - and then the metaphor would crystalize and the questions would begin and the acceptance take hold and the tears and all their good reasons would roll down my face. Or maybe I would laugh aloud, I did that a lot too and I found no solace in her eyes with giggling either. I am not blaming my Mother for anything here, not looking in this moment to rehash my toxic and lonely childhood. I am just stating that I realized I was very very very different from a good number of people on this Earth way back when and in said situations. Surviving childhood and adolescence in tact of some kind with this major obstacle the round edge to every corner I turned, seemed highly unlikely at the time....but with time I became more sure that my way of living was the preferred way - if you don't see the dance on the wind, you probably can't dance yourself. Just like, you are born with rhythm or not. Yadayadayada.....My whole life, regardless of my self possessed emotion I have had to contend with people who tell me that I am TOO emotional. To them I have learned to say "I would rather be me, than you" and TRY to leave it at that. The thing about people who are afraid to feel is that those types are usually also prone to being verbally abusive in some way shape or form in an attempt to seem stronger and somehow (does not work people) deflect all the attention away from their weakness. We live in a society that views expressing emotion as weakness....Especially if it is sadness, hurt, without 'pride', desperate, etc. and so on and so on....The more emotion we express, the more the greater population screams foul and points fingers at the crazies who need to clock out at work to go outside to bawl their eyes out when 21 kids are gunned down in their elementary class right before Christmas (Me, I did that, immediately following Sandy hook and then imagined and further blogged about, the dirt piles at the door that my kids sneakers leave that I would flip my shit if someone swept up if suddenly they were on a slab in a morgue and that dirt was their final footprint) See what I just did there???? I went there - detail - the fine grain details of pain and truth of the death of a child. A lot of people don't go there, because they are afraid to let themselves feel that much, me......well me....I think it is my fucking human responsibility to feel just that so that I APPRECIATE every single second of my life. I am different from most - no doubt. Sometimes when I hurt really really really bad - I think of the cowards I know personally and I get jealous that they possess the switch I was not born with - the shut off switch like a common light on a wall. ON/OFF. I feel that way - the jealous longing for about two seconds until I hear the echo of loneliness that drowns out everything important about this life. I LITERALLY just shuddered as I typed the words. Let me bleed out, Let me hurt, let me leave my pride in the dirt pile on the floor to profess an love which I know will not be returned, let me SUFFER if I must, BUT GOD JUST LET ME FEEL......... This week, someone I love who used to 'love' me buried me in their back yard under a mound of hate filled words, my hometown was bombed on Patriots Day/Marathon Monday and I was told by another someone, as my heart on my sleeve shattered into pieces over more death and destruction that I 'over react'...... When I was a child, I handed little itty bitty Dixie cups full of water to the Boston Marathoners who persevered Heartbreak Hill to make it at my vantage point near Boston College at the top of Lake Street. By the time they got to me, the race was already run and the homestretch was in sight, all the pain had turned to numbness and confidence so close to literal success. I remember the many women who would have blood spots at their nipples from the sweat and rubbing, wearing away the skin in their sports bras. I remember the Father who pushed his disabled son in a wheel chair every year because at some point the young man had been able to effectively communicate to his Father that when they ran, he felt really really alive and his body felt free from reality. You are not a Bostonian if you don't line the streets on Marathon Monday....My Grandparents are buried along the marathon route right across from the Saint Ignatius Church on the Boston College campus, right down lake street from where they now rest was Willoughby street, my home, where my Grandfather would listen to the sox game out on the screened porch on Marathon Monday/Patriots Day.....watching my city on TV, my home on the news, Boylston Street where I walked in the fog of bomb smoke - well I will suffice it to say that it was just too much for over emotional me to bear. I felt, feel, personally assaulted and saddened beyond words even still today - five full days have passed since then. I still have no words.....It is not simply that it is my home - as we all have homes and mine is no more homey than yours - it's that what was simple is gone and we are living in a time where this kind of disregard for life and death is becoming more prevalent every day. Humanity is dying and I watched a public execution of my own people in the town square on CNN and NBC and FOX and CBS and so on and so on... There is an image ingrained in my psyche from yesterdays events as the manhunt in Boston locked down an entire city and was broadcast in real time - a woman holding a toddler in her arms and the hand of another child who straggled behind her, the Mother looking afraid and rushing, both children's mouths agape and looking behind them following a soldier in full bomb squad gear as he walked alongside a tank which slowly moved down the New England neighborhood of Watertown......I went to high school in Watertown. Kissed David Arend under the apple tree in front of Palfrey Street school until my lips were raw and puffy (puffier) in Watertown. I texted him....I told him I was thinking on those kisses and that I loved him now like I loved him them and that I would promise to keep that innocence frozen in my heart....Children die everyday in all kinds of countries because of this sort of violence. Up until now, we have been both lucky and ignorant. 911 the most heinous terrorist attack America has ever known is marked with ceremonious anniversaries - are we getting to the point that this will be common place, where the attacks on each other as humans will be marked with an anniversary every day, every minute, every second?....We are killing each other at an alarming rate and it frightens me....Mary and I discussed my growing anxiety and "over reactiveness" the other day - she stated that this is as old as humans - the killing, and I agreed - yes - yes it is BUT what is so scary to me is that 1.) have we not learned from history at all? and 2.) our attention spans for empathy and responsibility seem to not last beyond the news coverage. I said it after Sandy Hook and I say it again now, I quoted Dave last time too as I will now "PLEASE WAKE UP." I believe the differences in who we are as humans is the beauty of this world. I also believe that people need to stop being so afraid to imagine that they are the autumn leaf on the tree and act accordingly preemptively - be more human and feel more - fear less - feel more - fear less - feel more. Feeling more is the only way we will again pay attention to the beautiful striking contrast of the person next to us on the bus who is so vastly different and yet remarkably the same. Feel more and with that EXPRESS MORE. The dialogue of the human race needs to be cracked wide open, we need to not be afraid of all the reactive things that make us human - OUR EMOTIONS......We react EMOTIONALLY. If we take the fear out of feeling, maybe fear will lose it's power of intimidation..... I heard on the news a Bostonian who said "In Boston we are concerned with three things - politics - sports and revenge" I laughed my ass off when I heard the words roll of his tongue, I love the R sound in revenge - like when a Bostonian says "you wanna drive to Revere (Rahvere) and get a roast beef grinder (ghrinda) at Kelly's?" RAHVENGE.... Yeah you don't fuck with Bostonian's for sure - a bunch of gritty generational hard working immigrants who break their back and each others balls - I am as Boston as the next girl. BUT my revenge will come in the form of living and loving and feeling even more than I did on Monday. Or...when I was six. I am going to FEEL even more so.....To those who think I am over emotional, you better buckle in or get out of the CAH, cause I am in the drivers seat of my life and seeing that I am so old I better FEEL to the max while I can..... Being me is a challenge and sometimes very isolating - I threaten the existence of many in denial with my incessant need to speak the truth in emotionally charged metaphors and images. I am kryptonite to those who want to remain numb - I weaken their power to deny. This is so shitty when it is someone I love.....Love is accepting but NEVER ever settles for less than what the person you love IS CAPABLE OF. Potential is meaningless if it is not aspired to and encouraged. LOVE SHOULD ALWAYS LIFT. I am not a 'yes girl' - I never have been - I NEVER WILL BE. I will never say yes - if yes is not the truth. Someone I love very dearly has a revolving door of yes girls/guys and I am both the sore thumb and lost in the crowd of mediocrity. THAT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH for ME or YOU. Even if you "used to love me but had to kill me and buried me in the back yard" under all your meanness and lies, even if you have succeeded in opening the door to the next YES - my ghost will haunt you until you are ready to be that man or until you die, whichever comes first....And boy you never can tell when a bomb is going to go off these days. I say to you ALL Feel more, but especially those who are crippled by my kryptonite. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO FEEL YOUR EMOTIONS they are the only things that make this life worth living for and dying for..... I hope next week is better for everyone, I know it will be for me because I am about to over react to just about everything :) Peace and Love and Leaves.....