Two things...

Marie has told me two things that I think are just beautiful:

I was talking with her about how awkward it has been for me to be around people.  I cannot say my whole life.  But most of my life.  I feel like an alien.  I do not know how to stand or where. I do not know where to look or what to say.  I am fine, mostly, one-on-one. I was really fine whenever I was teaching or leading a workshop or speaking at a conference.  But in small groups ... or large ... I didn't know how to be around people.  When the cumulative shame of my life—and all the secrets—broken through, I found myself really unable to look at anyone outside of work, outside of the role I had to play to survive.  Anyway, I was talking about social awkwardness and Marie chimed in that when she is talking with someone and another person walks up, she oft does not know when her conversation is over or what to do with the conversation at that point.  She becomes lost.  Music to my ears.  I totally understand that confusion.

Today, Marie came over to help her sister transition to her way station along the way to them living together in a fiscally brilliant move to save costs on all parts whilst her beloved stays at the seminary next year to get his graduate degree.  Whilst she was here, I was spewing forth symphony talk, gushing as I do the first few days after a performance, assuming that she had not yet read my blog.  Marie sort of interrupted me to tell me that she had.  That wasn't the beautiful  part.  Nope.  The beautiful part was that she said she totally understood what I was saying about Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland.  I am not alone!! I am not the only one who finds the chaos of that text anxiety producing and altogether discombobulating!!!!

I have been trying to encourage someone to be a more honest writer.  My own feeble attempts aside, I believe the person could have good things to say, could help others in sharing more honest thoughts and feelings.  Later, I was talking with that person about an email I got.  I offered to do something and was essentially told "don't."  The email hurt.  To me, it was yet another instance of where I volunteered—or tried to do so—and was not wanted or found useful.  The person said that it was more likely that the emailer thought I didn't really want to do what I offered and was trying to spare me.  My first thought was:  That's bollox!  Then, I wanted to weep.  Mostly, because it seems to me that actually no one ever believes anything.  Or rather that all that is left in the world is verbal dancing.

Now.  I am the black pot.
I know that.
I am trying to learn to be otherwise.

For the most part, if I say that I want to do something, I actually want to do it.  I have also worked at speaking when I do not want to do something.

There was this beautiful moment with Becky before she and her mother were coming to visit.  I had called her and wailed all the things I was worried about the impending visit.  After spewing my fears, Becky's response is to say that I was better, that she was proud of me.  I was stunned silent.  Then I asked how she could think such a thing, and she replied that I was voicing my fears, something I wouldn't have done her last visit.  That was not the response I was expecting.  I tell her nine and twenty reasons why I am afraid her and her mother's visit will be a disaster of grand proportions and she responds with grace, mercy, gentleness, and pride.  Huh?

So, for example, with Becky's store business workings, I am willing to help her edit grant proposals and can even discuss questions/answers with her and provide advice and feedback on a grant application, but I asked her not to ask me to write a grant proposal.  If she asks, I will agree.  And the stress and strain and burden of what getting that grant would mean to her and her beloved would destroy me.

It bothers me, thus, when I offer something and that something is declined and the reason for the decline, spoken or assumed, is that the other person doesn't really think I want to do what I offered.  It bothers me immensely.  It is both as if I am being called a liar and as if the other person is agreeing with my secret thoughts and feelings that I am essentially a waste of space on the planet now.

I went from the person who did everything to the person who does practically nothing.
And falls apart doing nothing.
And who still hides in her closet.

Silly Myrtle found out the name of whom she should contact and wrote the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, giving a plethora of ways I might volunteer for them, as long as it is not in the mornings.  They really do not need volunteers.  They need funding.  And fundraisers.  I am too fragile for fundraising work.  Unless it is folding, stuffing, labeling, and pulling the cover off of the sticky strip of an envelope.  That. That I can do.

And I can give advice.
And write or edit.
And I can talk strategic planning or board development or communications planning.

When I am not nauseous or fearful or drowning in an ocean of spiritual fear.  Yes, well, I didn't put those things in the email.  I might as well, though. I think.  Seriously, I am not fit to be in public.

The other day, Becky asked me a curious question.  Of course I cannot relay the gentle, round about manner in which she asked, but you can just imagine that for yourself.  She mentioned how much I have disliked it when others treat me like a child and noted that that was at odds with a person who finds comfort in wearing stubby braids.  The childish stuff, really, is more when I am told what I am thinking or how to think, what to believe, what to feel, what I am not feeling ....  That stems from both abusive folk and folk who believe they can (and should) fix me.  I don't need fixing.  I need healing.  And healing comes from Jesus and from it being okay to be me.

Tonight, when I mentioned that I was still thinking about her question, for it distresses me in ways I do not understand, Becky, being most magnificent, quipped that she had realized that my desire to wear and comfort in wearing braids comes from my Mexican relatives.  Hah!  She was saying it is an atavistic proclivity!

My great-great grandmother.

My great-grandmother.

While not stubby braids, I come from a long line of women who wore long braids wrapped around their heads.

I don't care how much my head aches.  I am not cutting my hair off again!
I miss my braids.

I do not like to even think about, much less acknowledge—though I want others to acknowledge and understand it—that there is a part of me who is still that scared little girl who stopped growing when she was violated by others.  I still have her thoughts and feelings about certain things, instead of the thoughts and feelings one growing ever closer to her 50th birthday (come Lord Jesus ... before then).  I still respond as she would in certain situations.  And some of her, no matter how much I learn, might always remain.

Then there is the one who is growing backwards in her cognition.  Losing what she has gained.  Becoming confused over the smallest of matters.  Lost to time and place.  Flooding her home.  SIGH.

There simply are too many Myrtles.  The Myrtle who make others uncomfortable. The Myrtle who scares me.  The Myrtle I was. The Myrtle I am now. The Myrtle I want to be. The Myrtle I am afraid I actually am.  The Myrtle I am becoming.

The Myrtle who eschews being around others in social situations because she doesn't know where or how to stand, where to look, what to say, and if she actually manages to be part of a conversation, doesn't even know when that conversation is actually over.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!