Musings

I love orchids.  I have them all over, and I am a sucker for searching them out anytime I go to the garden store.  I immediately look for the broken, half dead orchids I can bring home and get them to gloriously bloom again.

But it wasn’t always this way.  

I never got flowers.  Ever.  From anyone.  Except one orchid…….. once.

I don’t know why, it seems like it’s some normal custom in modern society, and of course in movies… but never for me.  Somehow I escaped the custom and never got any.

Sad but true.  But there are a lot of things other people do or are part of a normal life, that somehow I never got exposed to.  

I’ve never been to a bar.

Never been to a club.

Never went to prom, an American staple of culture.

Never went to my graduation.

Never been on a real date…. 

Nope none of it.  

I escaped culture somehow.

But in terms of flowers, well that one always bugged me the most because I absolutely love them.

So I buy them for myself.  Potted or cut, I buy them and always have blooms somewhere in my home. 

Even when I travel, the first thing I do is search my Airbnb for a vase. If none exists I buy one on the first day.  Then I find the nearest market and buy glorious flowers to make my temporary place home.

But orchids are especially dear to me.  See I was given an orchid once.  It is the single exception to my “never got flowers” story.  

I was working in a very prestigious job in Chicago.  Managing a department in a very posh studio.  The owner was an older gentleman who was a famous photographer.  But there was a problem, he was a colossal dick.

Oh there are no words for how much of an ass this man was.  

His wife worked in the office, and he screwed every pretty young girl in the studio two walls away.  He screwed the interns, he screwed the clients, he screwed the assistants to the clients, I think he would have screwed a dog if it was available.

Now I was an overweight bleach blonde 20 something.  Not much to look at, but that didn’t stop him.  When I said no.  Well my job wasn’t that secure anymore.  

He tried, and I said no.  He persisted, and I stood my ground, ethical to the end, to hell with the job, I would never compromise my self-respect.  

The only thing that saved me was  the fact I was exceptional at what I did.  

I could save his ass over and over.  

This guy would take a $500,000 job photographing some high powered wedding, and because he was so vain he wouldn’t wear his glasses. And this in the day of using all FILM cameras, not auto focus digital, but old school medium format film.

Well as you can imagine all the photos would be shit.

So my job was to find faces in focus and literally rebuild important wedding photos of the rich and famous.  I had to be so good nobody would know their half million dollar wedding was botched.

And I was that good.  I could digitally retouch anything and make it work.

Well one day a high paying client needed help.  

The boss wasn’t around, so I took the call and helped the client.  I went above and beyond to deliver exactly what the client needed before the deadline.

This client was so happy.  She was over the moon.  

Her products would launch, contracts would be signed, and success in the multi-million dollar range were all but guaranteed because I could get the job done.

So in came the gifts.  Baskets of goodies, and one absolutely spectacular orchid.

I had never seen an orchid before, but I was in love.

And the boss was furious.

He didn’t care about the fact I pulled off the impossible….. 

He cared that I received the gifts and praise and he didn’t.

I was fired that day.  

I was not allowed to take my gifts, my orchid, or anything of my personal belongings.  I was allowed to grab my backpack and told to never come back.

It was then I decided I will always have orchids no matter where I lived.  

Not just to spite this colossal ass who fired me, but because it was something of exquisite beauty, and I always wanted to be able to look over and see something that lovely.

It reminds me that there are shitty people in the world, but no matter what, kindness and beauty will always win in the end.

I live in a world of personal distortion.  I know it.  I am not blind to my own warped sense of self perception.  I grew up with the constant reminder that I was a grotesque.  In the most literal sense of the word, I was the haunting gargoyle of a creature, keeping spirits away.  

It was beaten into me both physically and mentally.  

This isn’t some poor me soliloquy, but more about simple survival and overcoming.

I was drilled in the belief I am ugly, hideous even.  Red hair, jade green eyes, skin so white I could shame paper….. a horrible freak of nature.  Nobody looked like me.  

As an adult I can see this for the manipulation it was always meant to be.  It was an attempt by my father to drill in a self loathing, an attempt to watch me destroy myself for his amusement.

To be fair, he also was horrifically abused.  Not that he ever talked about it, but I remember clearly his father, my grandfather, taking steel wool to my face to scrub off the freckles on my exceptionally porcelain skin.  Leaving me a bloody painful mess…. Scabbed over for weeks.

Now back in the day, there was nobody who did anything.  There were no child protective services.  There was no intervention.

Nobody cared if I was covered in scabs or that my face was burned because my grandfather held my face to the fireplace glass to watch in exquisite detail the burning of a beloved stuffed animal when I was 4.  

Luckily I bear no visible scars or disfigurements.  I survived completely unscathed on the outside.

Mind you I am not that old, but I grew up in a small town where everybody knew everybody else.  Which is a covert way of saying, we mind our own business and don’t ask questions about your weird shit.

So yeah, it was pretty bad.  

But that’s not my story.  

My story is about learning that I am more than these words or scars. 

I didn’t need anyone to explain to me how wrong the words were, or how wrong the actions were.  

But I did need to have many years of anger and frustration to vent all that pent up hatred.  I did not seek counseling, or therapy….. Yes it is a wonderful tool, it serves many people and I have a great appreciation for it.  I have a close family member who is in the field, so my access to resources has always been exceptional.  

But I am a different kind of person.  I didn’t need to tell someone my stories, I tried that route a few times, but it went spectacularly bad. I guess I can chalk that up the court appointed shrinks my parents divorce lawers forced on me. 

I needed to find all the fragments of myself, to see everything for what it was, and incorporate all those beautifully shattered pieces back into me.

And I needed to do this myself, and once I made up my mind, I did.

I forgave all of this abuse because I recognized the toxicity and patterns that existed and I was not going to carry that baggage. 

I read, I processed, I worked out my issues in various constructive ways. 

Not only did I study philosophy, psychology, spirituality, but I became obsessed with studying  the genres of relationships and communication.  I was determined to understand what healthy relationships were, how people communicated, loved, lived, and became beautifully entangled in the glorious world of life.

I watched my friends struggle in their relationships, observing like some anthropologist watching the primitives of some foreign tribe.  I dissected the differences in communication styles, love languages, healthy and unhealthy.  

My focus was to understand how this beautiful world of love, support, compassion, and existence worked.  I needed to understand this if I was ever going to heal myself and become whole.

Not to mention I needed to understand healthy relationships if I ever wanted to have one.

And it worked beautifully.  

Of course I have my moments, when something sneaks up and bites me to remind me of some old abusive moment. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, but it does mean learning to clearly recognize things for what they are, not super impose past hurt over it.

I will no longer hostage to these concepts or old wounds.

I have evolved into someone with a deep love for life and all things hopelessly romantic.  I chose to see the beauty in relationships and love.  

I am not blinded by unrealistic expectations or placing expectations on my partners.  I come to a relationship filled with love and appreciation.  

Choosing to bring an attitude of support and healing to those in my life.  I know what the pain of worded daggers or unfaithful hearts can do. 

Nobody deserves to be hurt.  There is no excuse or place for dishonesty or cruelty.  

I have learned to overcome tremendous abuse, to heal my own scars becasue I made a conscious decision to become aware and to know I would never inflict pain on another soul.  I know too well what that pain feels like.  If anything I do everything in my power to protect those I love, doing what I can to keep their hearts safe and protected. 

Perhaps I do that to a flaw.  Overcompensating in some way.  Always trying to prevent the pains from seeping in, it’s the equivalent of trying to prevent the rain.  

But just because it’s a futile task doesn’t mean I wont try.   

If I believed in not trying because something is ‘futile’….. then I never would have tried to make myself whole.  

And that worked beautifully.

Just proves what we believe we can accomplish, we truly can.  It just may take some time and effort.  But everyone can learn to heal, everyone can become whole again.

There are a few things I really miss about living in a big city.  I miss the noise, the life, the bustle and energy of it all.  But what I really miss is having options.  I miss being able to do things, go places, and try different things.  

When I lived in Chicago I was able to do and try lots of things.  It was a virtual cornucopia of experiences.  If you wanted to try it, I promise there was someplace in Chicago you could.  And even better is NYC.  Anything you can dream of exists in NYC.

So imagine my disappointment of being in a small city, one with virtually no culture.  A dry and deserted rust belt of a city.  Filled with nothing but poor jobs, hopeless people, and a lot of arrogant attitude that we are somehow better than our neighboring cities.

So why hip scarves and shimmy belts?

Well before I left Chicago I took up both Turkish and Egyptian belly dance.  And I loved it.  

I would never be a performer, nor did I ever think about doing the dreaded dance recitals, but I loved the movement, I loved the freedom and expression.

This is a dance that celebrates femininity.  It is about being sexy and strong, using your curves in ways that modern culture considers taboo.  

Women are either expected to be strippers of ballroom dancers, the idea of using slow beautiful movements is just too much.

Where I am living now, there is only one class in the entire city that offers Belly Dance, and it isn’t even traditional.  It’s some fusion nonsense trying to make this into some form of aerobics workout like bastardize Jazzercise of the 80s.

It’s one of the reasons I am considering leaving this place.  

It’s a hard decision to make.

But I miss having the option to do things, to enjoy, to be alive.

I miss my hip scarves and shimmy belts.

There is a wonderful song called Tamo Daleko.  It is a beautiful song about being in exile from one’s homeland.  It was the song played at the funeral of Nikola Tesla when he died.  

The song is from World War One, and tells the tales of a soldier who is in the Serbian Army.  The soldiers are forced into exile on the island of Corfu in Greece and they lament that they will never again see their beloved homeland.  

I love this song.  I find it haunting and exquisitely beautiful.  

I also find some resonance in it.  I feel like I don’t belong in my own homeland.  I feel like I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time.  A strange but persistent feeling.

I have always been more comfortable in foreign lands.  Finding the attitudes and cultures far more in sync with my own.

Ironically I am American, and to my family’s immense pride, the first TRUE born American.  I don’t know if it is a myth or just some silly immigrant notion, but the third child born on American soil is deemed to be a TRUE American.  

So there it was, cursed immediately.

Deemed a TRUE American child of a family of immigrants, when all I wanted was to go back to where we came from….. Someplace other than the US.

I don’t dislike America, I think it is an amazing place, filled with fascinating people and an amazing unsinkable culture.  Matter of fact I love this country and am grateful to it for all its amazing opportunities it has given me. 

But the truth is it does not feel like home.  

I don’t know how to define that.  It’s a feeling like something is off…. Like this is a great place to be, but it isnt home.

What defines home?  

I am not certain.  Home has always been a place where the people I loved gathered.  Didn’t matter the house or the exact space, but it was a feeling. 

A feeling of love, acceptance, encouragement, and wonderful support.

A place where we shared meals and talked about people long gone.  A place where stories lived on and laughter was always present.

All of that has vanished from my life.  Partially because of the passing of family members, but in reality I never found a family of my own.  I never found a partner or found my place in the world.

So I guess home really is where the heart is.

However I have no idea where my heart is.

I presume home is wherever he is, wherever that life is.  

I hate being a hopeless romantic.  At least if I was a pessimist I would go on and forget about this concept of home.

Life would be life, get over it and just move on.

But I am stuck in this loop of actually believing in the concept.  And because I believe, well then there is no stopping me from continuing to search.

I guess only time will tell me where home is.  Here, there, anywhere…..

But no matter what I find peace and enjoy the moment, choosing to enjoy the journey no matter how long it takes. 

Time is a fascinating concept.  People use it to different advantages, to mark moments in life, as a scale of time gone by, spent, or remaining.  It’s part of our everyday existence and yet the single most frustrating concept we have.  

Yes for literal meaning, there is a sun rise and a sun set.  Days turn into weeks, those into years, decades, centuries and so on till we no longer exist to keep records.  

And as time goes by we mark our age.  I find this interesting as I never really think about age, nor my birthday.  Being an only child, and one who had no other contemporaries, birthdays were not that big of a deal, except to my mother.  To her my birthday was the highlight of the year, the single most important day of her life.

For that I say ‘Thank you Mom’.  

Her excitement for my birthday was the only thing that made it even mildly interesting.  

To me it was another day, another year to look at what I did not accomplish.  To feel like a failure in everything I wanted out of life.  

To this day, I still struggle with my birthday, choosing to completely forget it, because it just makes me feel sad and alone, especially now.

I think every adult goes through this.  We all feel some karmic pressure to have accomplished some laundry list of things by this age or that.

So I decided I gave up the concept of age.  Choosing to act how I felt and not allow some number to dictate my time wasted or what remained.  

Which brings me to an interesting point of this story.  When I gave up age as a concept something interesting happened.  

Not only was I happier, I stopped looking old.  

I’ve been a long proponent of taking care of myself, so I have always taken care of my skin.  But I literally stopped this progression of visually aging cold.  

I’ve had no surgery, no treatments, just me and my everyday simple skincare.  But whenever I have to disclose my age, people just look at me weird.  

Like I know some secret.

Maybe I do.

Perhaps the secret is to just stop caring about it. 

So I find myself in social circles with people younger than me.  I tend to date men younger than me, and I find that absolutely wonderful.  I am focused on being around people with a love for life, an attitude of optimism, a true belief in their ability to conquer the world.

I love it.  Every bit.  Not a single one has any idea I am older than they are.  Or at least if they do they are polite not to call me out on it.  I think they honestly think I am a couple years older.  

They have no idea.  

We talk the same language, love the same things, laugh at the same jokes, so why on earth should my age or theirs matter.  

So I say forget about this concept of age, forget about this imaginary yardstick we use to measure our lives.  

Because none of us knows how long we will be here, so live every moment to its absolute fullest regardless of age.

I have known Octogenarians who were kids and Twenty-somethings so old and bitter they rival any nursing home resident.  

Somewhere there is a portrait of me, growing old…. 

I say thank you to that painting, because you are giving me the best gift I could ever ask for…..

The ability to live life and enjoy it to its absolute fullest without the pressures or stigmas that come with some number.

A random post for today.  I was thinking about how much I miss having a break.  Yeah that thing people do, they go on a ‘holiday’ or ‘vacation’.  Yeah, well it’s been years since I got one of those.  

So I am going to complain for a moment, but typically I love to travel. 

I tend to save up all my vacation time and blow it in a big mass, taking some epic trip and being gone for 6 weeks or so.  

When I travel I like to stay in a place, someplace small, residential, definitely not touristy and definitely not trendy.

I love small spaces, winding streets.  The kind of area nobody vacations in.  

I dont stay at hotels, always renting a flat in some district.  I want a kitchen and a full home to call my own for a few weeks.

Now I don’t go to the tourist traps.  I may go to a museum or two, but I prefer sticking to walking around, seeing little corners of the world that nobody except locals know exist.

That is the perfect trip for me.  

Oh I always like to be near water.  If I can walk to a water feature or river all the better.  If I can see it from my flat, well I am in heaven!  

I will seek out parks or botanical gardens to visit, opting for places I can just exist and enjoy the moment.  Calm and peaceful will always win me over.

And yes, I do enjoy the city, I love the people, the sights and the sounds.  But I don’t want to be caught in it 24-7, so I am not a trendy person, I’m a nerdy person.

I have never been to a club.  I have never been to a bar.

But I have been to libraries, cathedrals, and galleries all over the world.  I have seen ancient monasteries and gardens once home to royalty.  I have seen viking graveyards with wagon wheel tracks dating back before the modern era, and I have visited catacombs under Paris that were as morbid as they were beautiful.  

Those are the spaces that thrill me.

So back to the point.  

I WANT A VACATION!!!!!!!!

In all fairness Covid threw a wrench into everyone’s travel plans.  And that was ok.  It gave me three years of being home, taking care of my Mom when she was dying.  

Those were the best three years of my life and I don’t regret a moment of it.

But that’s the past.  Covid lockdowns are a memory, international flights are back up and running…..

And that’s where I get cranky.  See I have been asking for a vacation from my job since the lockdowns officially ended.

I keep getting told NO, that I need to finish a project first.  But the problem is my boss is slow walking the project for whatever reason… which means my ability to travel keeps getting pushed further and further away.

And I get closer and closer to just wanting to snap the head of someone.  

So it’s been 5 years since I had a vacation.  My last trip was Christmas 2018.

Now to throw shade, my boss has taken vacations, and is starting to ask me about when I plan to go on vacation….. As if almost to tempt me to put in a request to be denied.  

Most hilarious part is that I work remotely.  I could just leave my desk and take my laptop and work anywhere.  And to be honest I just might try it.  

And if that wasn’t enough, I have to work at least two days a week when on vacation.  Why?  Because nobody can do my job.  So I have to reserve a few hours each week to clean up any needed items so I can continue on my vacation.  

You better bet that goes on my timesheet!

I just want a moment to unplug, to be me, to sit on some stone steps somewhere and watch the world go by.  

A day, a week, or more, I don’t care.  

I just want a moment to breathe.