The Spiral

The Spiral


I sit here in my house in the country, Barney my dog curled up tightly in his little bed sleeping away so peacefully. The sun has just risen and streaks of pink reach across the new days sky slowly searching for the hope that lives just beyond it’s touch. It is a new day, another chance for peace. Sitting in my study sipping the first cup of hot coffee of the day, I sit and wait for the calm. My cat, Obi leaps against the glass sliding doors struggling to play with a little bird outside the window. The bird does not move… it just sits there and stares at the crazy little black priestess. She sits there perplexed at why that bird is so unattainable. It looks at her and flies away I can hear it snickering with every wing flap. It leaves behind a confused female wondering why she can never break through that glass wall.

The calm is not easily achieved this morning. I look around my little home. The floors need to be vacuumed, books need to be placed on shelves, clothes washed and dishes done. Hundreds of CD cases lay empty… with a stack of discarded music along the wall… music I can not listen to. My keyboard stares at me…no words fly from my fingertips…WHY CAN’T I DANCE? What happened to my precious music vibrating through my very essence? Music my blood, running through my soul bursting into a white light so immense I can only believe it is God. Where is it? My energy dissipated, I am lost in the darkness. A tear runs down my face as I mourn the loss of my music and the dance. A stack of art books lay discarded… nothing speaks to me. All my loves, my distractions, my drugs stripped from me. Now my house cluttered and littered with my disenchantment of this life is a work of art that reflects my mind. Even the coffee is flat. Normally I take a deep whiff of the warm embracing aroma… just before I sip with delight. Gulping today, I smell nothing. Cigarette after cigarette smoked and put out, my ashtrays overflow. Food tastes bland I numbly place each bite in my mouth chewing without taste.. a function only, sadly I continue to chew even when I am not hungry. Finally, I reach down to that sleeping bundle of love Barney, stroke his tiny head….my heart breaks! I can not feel the love.

My senses are dying…for a sensual woman so soak in the warm summer breezes, rich silk of chocolate laced across my tongue or the tears released from viewing a shooting star… this is worst than death! My heart sunk to the bottom of the sea lost with the city of Atlantis as the thought of living like this forever drenched my being. No more lost moments in union with a Mozart symphony, heart racing with the reading of Shakespeare’s sonnet 18, flying to God as I dance through hours of music or the sharing of a soul holding my love’s hand. This is too much to take. He is gone and I am alone with the pain. It is all about my love for him and nothing about my love for him.

When and how did this happen? More important why? How did I get here this desolate tormenting moment in my life? I close my eyes, breathing slowly knowing where I have to go….not to last night or even 2 weeks ago when the pain started, no it began years ago! That is the road I must travel now or forever live a false life.

I had believed that the spiral down was finished, it had started June 9,1999. Newly graduated from college with honors I was living in the middle of the universe. Happy, proud and ready to start again at 38 years of age, the world had laid a red carpet before me…many in fact which way should I go? I laughed regularly with the excited joy of new adventures. I opened an email thinking it must be joke or a riddle from my Uncle Jack… the replacement father I loved dearly. What I found there was one of those moments when time stands still. My grandmother on my father’s side had died. I had not seen her in years but still the ache of loss echoed through my heart. I was determined at that moment to go to the wake! SO WHAT if my father would be there. He can’t hurt me now… I can do anything, I thought to myself. Did I not just accomplish more than anyone dreamed I would in this lifetime? Strong with emotion I read on……there was no mention of any of us. No Denise, Frank or Patti when they listed grandchildren. Time stood still and the darkness came dragging me out of the center of my universe to a catacomb of my mind. We did not exist. I was nothing… as if I had never been born. It was at this moment that the black spiral down to my core began…. I thought.

The next four years I threw myself into the material world producing money and power. Funny I did not become joyful, in fact I sunk deeper the harder and more powerful I became. Until after a disastrous love affair with a man whom only thought I loved and just realized that the pain came from the fact that I could not save him from the death living in his eyes. This realization had me driving towards a bridge at 90 miles an hour praying for the courage to close my eyes and just aim. It was then I heard my voice again. It had been silent for so very long I almost did not recognize it! The voice screamed STOP THIS NOW! And I woke up from the dark catacomb swerved away and pulled over to the side of the turnpike and cried for the first time in years. I choose to live at that moment, to crawl out and learn to love. My walk towards the light began right then and there at 41 years of age, sitting in a dark car on the side of a lonely highway.

So I ask myself how could I be here now? No more tears to cry….dehydrated from the racking sobs of the last week. I gave this man all of me! The first time I was honest, open and loved unconditionally. Why did he abandon me? A sob crawled to the base of my throat, I pushed it down and screamed Not Now! I am so close. In my deep state I walked past this man who I blamed for this pain, pushed aside the anger and need to have him love me…. for as I said it is all about my love for him and nothing about my love for him. I so want to reach out and touch him feel his hand in mine one last time but I know it is not him that holds the key… I gave it away along time ago…that is where I have to go.

My mind holds many locked doors from my childhood. Slowly through the years I have found the courage to open each buried memory and face the past. Always the most painful times of my life both then and now. Each time it is like the lifting of a veil that covers a dead child. As I lift the veil I watch the child breathe again….resurrected in order to take my hand down the meadow of pain I will walk.

I am 9 years old. It is my brother Frank’s birthday and we are all at my Grandmother Rena’s house. My father’s mother did not tell us he would be here… but there he is, my mother is not allowed with us and he wants us to sit in the room with him. I sit on the couch alone and fearful….my brother and sister are on his lap gleeful to see him. He calls to me but I do not want to go…and I want to go with all my heart. Tears run down his face as he pleads for me to come to him. My mother is divorcing him and now is professing his love for us. I stay strong, fueled by fear and biting memories of the past tortures he has placed on me. At the same time I want to believe him, I am dying to believe the words I have never heard from him before….."I love you Denise." The desperation for my father’s love wins…..I go to him.

His tears run freely, I believe he loves me… my sister and brother hug me as we all sit on his lap. I let the walls down, those strong thick walls built through years of beatings and torture! Amazingly, they fly down within seconds with his words and tears. It is then he hugs me close, it is more than I ever thought I would know from him my father, the man with the belt and a rage so bright it burned in the sky. He loves me! I relax and fall into the hug….he whispers oh so softly then ….so only I can hear…. I don’t love you…. never will…. No one can and ever will….I fly back through time, straight past the man I love to the cluttered study and the silent keyboard…. The sobs rack my soul. You see it was all about love ….

My eyes open when I am finally done…there is nothing left….but the music and the keyboard. I look around my house…a home I was so willing to throw away …just to seek love….Love lives here! My walls painted in soothing yellows, pinks, desert sands and vibrant reds hold hours of my mothers and my laughter and love as we splattered paint and sweat poured down our backs. My rows of bookshelves lining the walls in front of me, laugh back.. holding joyful memories of our adventures in carpentry, as I struggled to hand twist each and every screw that now holds up the hundreds of books lining my walls. Wonder and amazement vibrate under my kitchen floor … I think back to my mother’s laughter as I was covered with glue and struggling to get the Armstrong linoleum in place. When we were done, we sat for an hour staring like children at the job we thought we could not do. The tiles of the small bathroom hold my tears of the dark time before the bridge…my birthday… when I felt no light in my soul and my sister and mother came to force me to live. With each and every tile… my darkness and pain left my being and were buried deep with in the tiles grout. Love lives here. I do not have to leave. It breathes within the walls of this house and the garment of skin that holds my soul. I never have to go back to that couch living in fear and desperate to hear the words "I love you!!" It lives here. The pain lifts and I realize this man who I blamed earlier for the death of my dream has given a gift far greater than roses, candy or diamonds for Valentines Day! I am free…the music is playing! I have broken through that glass wall and have played with the bird! I know now I can live and love, the calm has come….realizing this I get up to make the bed, my voice is humming and Barney bounces at my side! I sigh thinking, it was all about my love for him and nothing about my love for him!

Thank you all....

Love + Light

Lady Lorraine du Lac