I can’t be the only one who has suffered rifts in their family over politics in the last five years. The reason I agitated the mods of this board to accept some political discourse here was because I was being outmanned and outgunned at the dinner table and since everybody knows I’m an atheist, they already don’t grant me the slightest amount of assumed dignity about my intentions, morality, or intelligence. What made it difficult, however, is that when I would repeat something I had heard from CNN, I had an army of conservatives pull out it their phones with memes and clips and articles ready to go for exactly a moment like this: an opportunity to put a militant liberal atheist in his place.

I did not leave the church because I wanted to play for the “other team” anymore than I backed the church because I considered it my tribe. Something in my head does not register the world tribally that way the way other people seem to. I’m not claiming to magically free of all all bias and human emotions. But my natural cognition leans heavily towards objectivity; otherwise, I get pretty anxious. I think other people hide behind from their feelings by melding into the perceived group consensus. I can’t do that. I wish I could sometimes. If I could, I would be just like everyone else. Maybe I’d still be Mormon and indistinguishable from any one of my heteronormative tbm brothers. But I’m not. I’m a thinker. Not an overthinker: I have to think just to make out social details about another person that most other people can infer from a glance or gather with much less thinking. As a BIC, this quality of mine was destined to screw me over.

Mormon testimonies are nothing but conviction that our professed tribal morality, or ideals that set our tribe apart, will have to be good enough, because if we don’t like it, we can go it alone in a hostile world that we have been conditioned to think is more hostile than it really is, a world they haven’t lifted a finger to give us any skills to live in autonomously — only as borg drones for the hive. Give God all the glory —- and since rituals are how we come to him, and since rituals have to be authorized to be considered valid, and since that authority can only be found in this church, what this means is stay in the church, do whatever it says to do, and induct other people into it and strengthen your own brainwashing as often as you can. Anything less to Mormon thought is not giving God the glory. Current events in the world are to be thought of as God attempting to open up mission fields with wheat ripe ready to harvest, and constitutional rights and domestic issues are to be thought of as events that either maximize or encroach on our rights to be Mormon, our rights to persuade other people to be Mormon, and the church’s rights as a legal incorporated religious entity to be exempt from taxes, hoard food and ammo, and buy obscene amounts of real estate because they’re sticking it to the Gentiles for Missouri and the blood of the prophets or something.

The church and all doomsday prepper religions have biases about the world that, as far as I can tell, make them prime mental real estate for Christian nationalism (“this country was founded on judeo-Christian values”), to a lesser extent white nationalism (“we didn’t sign up for THIS amount of immigration”), and — to make it a three-pair — some amount of Deseret nationalism. Deseret being the name of the single unified proposed state that the Mormons wanted their occupied territories to be called when the Union reabsorbed the Utah and surrounding terrorizes from the Mexican American war. People think DesNat is simply the Mormon alt-right, but technically any Mormon who sees inside the church a political organization that would outlast the downfall of the federal government and eventually rise to become the government of a Mormon-dominated state is a Deseret nationalist. Just the preppers who indulge in the insane corners of the internet to nurse how ostracized they feel in real life are the lonely isolated losers who get called DesNat extremists. Everybody else in the church is happy to kick the blossoming of the church into an actual government on earth, aka the kingdom or God or modern Israel, back to sometime just before the second coming or not until afterwards — which is soon, they hope, but the difference is that they’re not trolling online spaces threatening people who live in the vicinity of Mormons. The church leaves open the door to this stuff though. There would be no DesNat, no polygamists in Utah, and no Bundy family trying to start shit with the Fed in the name of God and country if there was no Mormon church.

Ah, but me wishing for a world in which the church never existed will sound to some ears like I’m wishing it would go away by some means or another. It will sound to those ears like I’m just a different kind of zealot, a godless kind, which “militant atheist” is meant to convey. It will sound to them like I have an agenda, an liberal agenda, to destroy their religious liberties. And since the CIA has done such a good job wrapping capitalism in the trappings of democracy and freedom — the American flag — and in turn wrapping those values up in the religion of Jesus Christ, it’s a skip hop and jump for these folks to assume my militant liberal atheist agenda is a communist one too. I know how this works, because I did not always take positions I now hold. I started on the other side and worked my way into my current persuasions just out of curiosity to be exposed to new ideas and hold on to them if they made sense.

I must seem an odd caricature of an anti-Mormon to some of these eyes, but my first ideas about who “they” are who always trying to get us — those nameless faceless godless commie liberal anti-Mormon anti-American bastards (as though it was the same homogenous group of people and ideas) that the scriptures and the Q15 every six months warned me about and whom my elders talked about for some amount of time at the dinner table every night especially since Obama got elected the first time. Well, when you get into politics, “they” suddenly have a face — Ben Shapiro explains it every night. Glenn Beck. Rush Limbaugh. Michael Savage. Alex Jones for some. Now Q-anon. These are great men, from a particular prepperism-tainted-by-cold-war-propaganda point of view, who tell you about the troop movements of the commies, the force deployment of the armies of Satan, and any significant develops in the liberal agenda which is a war on true worship, modes of family conducive of childhood indoctrination of true worship. Recently the liberal agenda was slowly phased out for the “gay agenda” besides the original liberal agenda and finally the “LGBT agenda and the BLM agenda” or simply the “commie agenda”.

When I “durst” to lift up my head and question whether my shame, my anxiety, my curiosity-repression and the accompanying depression. were just the symptoms of a lie invented by men and meant to control me, it was very much in the language of Korihor, for behold these the were the words I was originally given and up to that point they were only words I had for such things. And, yes, these words had been deliberately chosen or redefined to discourage or even make impossible to conceive of rebellion against the church and actually carrying out such rebellion. But I would not be bounded by that. I don’t like boundaries on my mind and tolerated them up to the age of 25 simply because that is how terrified of being abandoned that I felt. But by then I was low-key cool with it; I even expected it. I knew nobody was ever going to talk to me again the instant I admitted I had “fallen”. What I never expected though is that they would vote for an open demagogue right after this happened and that I would regret losing the favored position I had once had in their hearts. There was a time when I had the ears of many people through my parents, but the thing was that I wasn’t happy and I was dying inside keeping those connections open and minds losing them anyway the more I aged and still wasn’t married. 25 is the limit on which they will allow you to be a bachelor without considering you simply anti-social in the menace to society sense. You need not do anything except not have a ring on your finger by this age to garner this ire in some Mormon families.

I couldn’t talk them out of it. I couldn’t convince them he was a liar until it was too late. I couldn’t convince them that was forever altering political norms that ought not to be altered until it was too late.. They countered me often, to my surprise, with facts and information about the people on “my side” (and the ‘liberal media’ also counts as part of ‘my side’) that were not defensible. The facts are, it seems, that we live in a time of extreme corruption (or things which ought to be illegal even if they aren’t) that made my glad tidings of great joy that the liberal secular world is not what they thought fall on deaf ears. Not only deaf ears, but ears which were trained — willfully trained — to recognize key phrases in any liberal’s political pitch as an admission of guilt of the entire liberal agenda that what some libs dubbed “hate radio” had been earning them about for thirty years and more. I just didn’t want them to, on the eve of my escape from Mormonism, take the secular world away from me too, which I was just starting to like.

Everything on my father’s side of the table is all part of a bigger truth: the fact that the church is true and that I am damned if I will have none of it. These are facts in that house. They demand that it be treated as an uncontroversial, incontrovertible given, something manifest by reality itself through the senses, even if they in the next breath knock ”the critics” (said with contempt in a particular way every time the word is used this way) for seeking signs and tempting God and wanting to know things through their physical senses for themselves. Some realities are even realer than the definition of “real” to them, and their eagerness to make this feel true to protect all the feelings they’ve heretofore invested in this hill is why they voted for that man. It’s also why they seemingly believe anything as long it doesn’t require them to regret anything else they’ve done before in the service of God and country as long its king is Jesus.

They’re only allowed to regret not knowing the will of God more perfectly than they did before, which is why we’re having limited success convincing them to tolerate gay people but only up to a point and with stipulations. Just forget about the trans thing. That’s a redline and I’ve never met anybody from my old life who even paused before they said “no” to whatever they thought I was about to say in defense of trans rights. That’s a shame, because I have a whole sleuth of arguments I’ve come up with on my own that the trans lifestyle is just as choiceless as the gay issue and that how someone identifies, talks, dresses, and even modifies their bodies is no different from the rights Mormons defend every day when as long as they are traditional religious practices that have been around a while. What’s the difference between a Mormon and a trans person? They’re both born in an awful situation of fog it really dissonance in the which their curiosity which could save them is forbidden under threat of becoming a social pariah. They both feel like outcasts that society loves to hate. They both have their own unique views about themselves that not everybody is cool with. They dress differently, even wearing underwear they’re not “supposed” to wear, and they modify their bodies because, idk, it’s what society expects them to do. My parents chopped part of my dick off when I was a baby and didn’t think anything of it, because it’s just normal. It’s fascinating to me how they refuse to think about that or just regurgitate some crap to me about how it’s cleaner or doesn’t hurt anything, but then spend all this energy refuting every single talking point a liberal has to make about why people should get vaccinated. They fancy themselves independent thinkers on very narrow subjects. Vaccination is the only issue I’ve ever heard my father disagree with the prophet on. Muttering something about globalists and George Soros in reference to the president of the church was… different. In the same light, many conservative congressmen are being disowned and pushed away. My parents even decided that Fox News had sold out when they called Arizona for the liberals and then tried to call a spade a spade on January 6th. They feel so entitled to having their feelings comforted and their god-fearing egos stroked, they don’t know how to exist in a world where the kids don’t want those old time values and vote for a socialist instead.

They don’t understand, and it’s not because I’m not there begging them to let me explain it to them. I am there. I was there with my arm stretched out for far longer than I was obligated to be. I’m text, nobody even wanted to dignify my pose with any kind of acknowledgment. I was there, the same bright kid they used to know only become a man and using his gifts to learn how to live in the world they swore to hate the same way I used to use my gifts to defend the church and articulate the gospel to people. I was there. I didn’t know everything, but I knew a new way of thinking that I felt unlocked my potential and a gift for articulation. I was there for them in the long-suffering example I learned from many lessons about being like Jesus, offering to use my gifts to ease them into an evidence- seed worldview even just a little so they didn’t vote for fascism because in their ignorance it was all they could think to do, and they all but spit on me and cussed me out for it. I waited until I reached my limit. After their guy was gone out of office, I blew up on them in ways I regret — not for what I said, but the rude and bridge-burning way that I said it. But I’d had enough of being lectured about respecting other people’s feelings when they never respected mine nor recognized what me respecting their feelings look like until one day I didn’t care anymore.

I don’t know if things could have worked out some other way. I have had to invent an approach, because these things get talked about in my parent’s house, and unchallenged as they go they’re almost taken as part of their religion or something. Winning an argument is not important to me. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I wanna show them how to think, how to reason, how to tell what is true through falsification and skepticism. That is the hill that I’ve been dying in for a long time. But I’m tired. I’m so tired of feeling alone. I’m so tired of feeling like the people who they love me the most are doing everything in their power to make sure I can’t be happy if it isn’t in the way they prescribed. I’m tired of not having every good opinion and every ally I should have had in order to defend very basic questions like what a society without god is going to be like. I have no idea, honestly. I just thought if more people accepted a science-based worldview, we could be more constructive with our democracy or something. My family are convinced that they’ve seen a glimpse of what is to come through the liberal agenda and the None movement and they’re having none of it, by which I mean they intend to destroy it with their vote and then shoot at it after that fails. They will have their way. God, the most odious dictator there ever was and the hardest regime to depose, is on their side, they think, and like any totalitarian regime they dare not question his will and all will be made to bend to the knee and confess that his ways are just. Truly did the words of Christopher Hitchens speak to me that wishing for a celestial North Korea situation is the saddest thing a civicly-literate man of culture can witness. Talk about ceaseless praises. Talk about Big Brother. Talk about anxiety. I know that anxiety, and I pity them still and wish better for them, but they don’t want to be saved and they look upon me in much the same way.

CD, some serious advice I hope you'll take in a positive way: you throw down some really REALLY TLDR posts. I wonder how many on this board actually read, even skim, them. Please understand, I simply can't.

My suggestion is to get a good journal and write this out--LONGHAND. By writing (I bet you're a fast typist!) longhand, you force yourself to slow down and think about what you're...thinking about.

Long stream-of-consciousness worked for Jack Kerouac, but I think it's counterproductive for you.

I appreciate that you have profound and complicated issues. Use a journal to collect and organize your thoughts and emotions, then work with a therapist to, um, work them out.

Hope this is helpful. "Godspeed," and good luck. Live long and prosper, and peace.

K, that was an ominous comment. Thanks?

Edit: “too long, didn’t read”. Ah. You didn’t read it but informed me I need a therapist? Based on what? You didn’t read it, so based on which part? Just my eagerness to discuss some things generally which perhaps some don’t want to hear? Is this how most people come at my posts? I’m genuinely curious if that’s how I usually come across when I deliberately use stream of consciousness to express myself. The board is, among other things, a sounding board for what works and doesn’t work.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2022 12:51AM by Cold-Dodger.

Please understand, that I don't mean it to be ominous or in any way negative or hostile. This is a recovery board, but we do venture into other matters, some light & amusing, others non-LDS but still serious. It's not rare for a person to present personal matters for discussion and others to offer advice from their knowledge and experience. All well and good.

But your posts are often very long, which works against meaningful response. Should I respond to your religious issues? Your hostility to religion in general? Your alienation from your parents' politics? Your thoughts on who runs the world, and how and why? It's way too much.

Maybe a bit of self-help reading would work. There's a lot out there. You could go for a classic, like Peale's "Power of Positive Thinking." Or check out Adm. William McRaven's "Make Your Bed" --how mastering little things in your life in systematic, consistent ways, can add up to major improvements. Identify things in your life (emotional, but mainly practical) that you can get in order, and proceed from there.

Hang in there!

The long version:

I’m not in any distress at the moment, or wasn’t until I got your response. If anything, I was just bored and flipping through my news feed, getting annoyed at how much I know there is that the legacy media doesn’t cover, flipping open to my RfM tab to share a thought about current events, but then remembering everybody there thinks I’m a loony too only because some things are out of bounds that when the opportunity presents itself nobody knows how I got to some of the conclusions I did. So then that makes me want to rant about how my mind works, and to do that I have to rehash the experiences I have, hoping that opens the board up to how some political discussion here is necessary in a recovery from Mormonism sense.

The short version: I’m fine thanks. I guess I’m just a long format sort of guy, too narrowly focused and not dynamic enough, which consequently makes me socially and emotionally incompatible with most people — even postmormons.

Cold-Dodger, I think that Caffiend gave you sound and gracious advice. Not only was his post said with kindness, but also he is a seasoned writer, whose advice I wish were available to me.

Your topic headings are intriguing, I open them and see huge blocks of text and think I'll have to get back to them. Then they go around the bend.

I LOVE your writing style and your thoughts, but I see those bricks of words, and I have to move on. I'm a slow reader--I read every comma and need a lot of white space on the page.

Caffiend's advice was good.

People don’t know how anxious I get about how awkward the sound of me, look of me, and thought of me must be to other people. For a long time I felt like affliction at best that was merely tolerated even by God.

I get where Caffiend is coming from, but the way he phrased, um, some of his words was off-putting and I wasn’t sure how to respond.

Im not a snowflake with thin skin.

I’m a blind man,
in a restricted sense
that occurs behind the eyes
(I see just fine,
but I miss or misconstrue
social cues galore).

So as such I’m most insecure and most anxious about how other people see me and what I have to do to be ascetically pleasing to them to hold their attention long enough to finish one of my convuluted thoughts about something.

My social anxiety makes me verbose, I guess, because I’m anxious about articulating everything just right because I’m also anxious about lying to people and I was always taught false impressions are lies too.

No one is obligated to read everything I write.

Playing with spaces seems to do a lot.

But maybe I also need to write a lot less and only share when it’s a finished thought.

That's probably a good idea.

But any complaints on that score are superficial. Everyone here recognizes your intelligence, insight, and heart.

Please bear that in mind.

What you just wrote is airy, visually inviting and easy to read. Your use of white space made eye-tracking easy. Still, your impactful thoughts came through. For me, at least is was your emotion and intelligence that jumped toward me instead of geometrical shapes.

It’s beautiful.
:)

Cold-Dodger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But maybe I also need to write a lot less and only
> share when it’s a finished thought.

I think it's still OK, Cold-Dodger, to write what you want. You can take under consideration the comments people make but you can still do you - it's your choice.

I also don't think you have to wait for a "finished thought". If it helps you to puzzle things out by writing what's on your mind, that's OK too.

There's no hard and fast forum rule that you can only use so many keystrokes and no more.

It's good to get feedback and think about it but in the end it's up to you to choose how you express yourself, as long as it's within RfM guidelines (no partisan politics, for instance).

I write long myself so maybe it's easier for me to see that part of things from your point of view. I'm thinking, and feeling, as I write and that in itself can be enlightening, and healing.

So, it's all good, as far as I'm concerned. Long or short, there are incredible writers, thinkers and good people here.

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, CD.

Each to his/her own. Some people enjoy reading longer posts. Too, it can be of great help to the writer themselves, a way of processing their thoughts and figuring things out. We don't all have to be the same here, unlike in Mormonism. Readers are free to skim, skip or read the whole thing.

We can each take what we want from writing and/or reading. A live and let live kind of thing.

As for politics, that seems like a fairly permanent rule. When it intersects with Mormonism limited discussion is permitted at times. It's a fast way to make enemies and isn't this board's focus.

CD it may be surprising but I identified with many points you covered in your post. Even as a believer I experience many of the alienations you feel, especially with those who assume that my expressions of faith should fit the neat and tidy political views that are assumed to be the norm. After more than 50 years many viewpoints are at odds with my cultural upbringing which is a challenge of a different kind.

To argue with someone who has renounced reason is akin to giving medicine to the dead.

I simply won't discuss religion or politics with many in my family. I simply pity them for elevating ignorance to something they value.


HH =)

Nice. And, ditto.

Politics is a tricky subject to talk to people about. The main trouble is that most people don't think much about it, haven't studied much about it, so they lean in the direction of big dreams and promises without regard to who's going to pay for it all. But it's the job of everyone to be in possession of the facts, and it goes for mormonism, if someone asks what's wrong with the church we should be ready to defend what we believe, why mormonism fails, and not be triggered and immediately have to run to a safe space, the same goes for politics.

If we can't defend our beliefs and win people over to a open minded, tolerant, pluralistic, capitalistic, American values. Family values, way of percieving the world then we are at risk to losing freedom which is only one generation away from extinction.

I'd like to compliment you on your wonderful caricature. Caricature matters.

I don't read all of your writing, but what I can say is that I wish was I able to articulate in writing what you do. I couldn't possibly express myself and get it all out there, so I read what you write and I see a lot of myself in what you write and especially my son.

I, myself, have been in therapy for 25 years to deal with what mormonism and my gay/straight marriage did to me. I also kept journals for years and years. I think of throwing them all away as I don't believe anyone will ever read them. They did help me. There are a few I hope my kids read as I talk about those bad years from when I found out he is gay until about 10 years ago. Maybe they'll understand me better. At least my daughter. My son understands me. We are much more alike.

I agree that caffeind was trying to help. But if you need to get it out, I say get it out in any fashion you feel you need to. I'd suggest you print up what you write on here and save it. It always helps me to go back and read some things and I've printed them and I save them.

Part of it is my frustration that our government and our media are so casually flirting with WWIII and our social media are being censorious to boot. That’s not caffeind’s fault, but it’s frustrating in top of my other feelings to have my sanity questioned by anybody who also says they didn’t read the material. It’s like… am I that odious that people smell me from a mile away? But the comments have helped clarify.

I reminds me though how powerless just one person is when they don’t know how to get social traction. I read your comments and thank you for seconding and thus validating my experience in many ways. I feel like you are a kindred soul. Keep your journals. I burned mine in a fit of despair, because I couldn’t even look at them anymore if I thought people in my irl were committed to never understanding me to protect their testimonies. Get rid of them if all they do is torture you. It’s all I can say. I hope my posts help you feel like somebody so where understands. God knows we all wanna feel connected in that way.

I read some of your posts all the way through. Others I do skim as I'm in a hurry as I'm taking breaks from work. But I skin everyone's posts usually. I'm sure others skim mine or skip them. I try to shorten what I write, but I'm not good at it. My daughter jokes with me about it. She said since I type for a living, I tend to have long e-mails, etc., but one of her good friends has the same job as I do and her e-mails are long.

I think you express yourself well and you have actually helped me see myself and MY SON much better, especially since his going through some extremely difficult life issues right now. I was shocked to read some of his stuff he posted on fb that I had no idea he was going through and he has the bedroom next to mine. We spend our days together. He is in California right now with two of his dad's old boyfriends, who we are really good friends with, and they treat him really well.

I think what we are looking for in life is for someone to SEE US. To see deep inside us and understand us. My mother wrote a poem about it and I never saw the poem until after she died. I've tried to find it to post here specially for you. My sister said, "You don't think she wrote that about herself, do you?" And I said, "Yes, it was about her." She struggled all her life with anxiety, depression, etc. She was raised by 2 deaf parents and was the oldest. She was their voice all the rest of their lives. She did so much that nobody took note of including we children. The poem is about nobody seeing you. Nobody ever completely gets us.

Now I'm getting too long. The guys I talk about that I worked with were the first people that seemed to get me in all my life. I worked with them from age 20 to 25. They were chemists and scientists. They think different than the nonscientific people. I love talking to them. But when I was going through my husband leaving, I was so broken that I didn't dare go see any of them. I finally had to go see my old boss as he was having a 50th anniversary and I was invited. I couldn't go to the party. I couldn't see anyone, but I had to go see him. I took him a really nice gift I made. I made all of them afghans over time. Anyway--he opened the door and looked at me and his eyes lit up and he threw his arms around me. In their eyes, I see me. They got me. And as long as I was lucky enough to have those men in my life, then I'll be okay even though a lot of them are dead. They changed my life forever.

Keep looking. You talked about the friend who got you the job. There are people who you will and can connect with, but there will never be anyone who ever completely gets you, sees you. I'm afraid to say, "That's life."

and most people here don't either. I was Democrat all my life. I no longer am. I've had people say things to me here about my politics and so I don't talk about them anymore here. My husband was Republican when we married and I was Democrat. I'm now Independent. All my siblings are still Democrat and we agree on nothing political right now, so we avoid it. They are all out of the church. My boyfriend is a Republican. I was rather surprised when we got back together 17 years ago as he seems to me to be Democrat material.

Continue to be unique. It is important.

cl2notloggedin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...you have
> actually helped me see myself and MY SON much
> better

> I think what we are looking for in life is for
> someone to SEE US. To see deep inside us and
> understand us.

> She struggled all her life with
> anxiety, depression, etc. She was raised by 2
> deaf parents and was the oldest. She was their
> voice all the rest of their lives. She did so
> much that nobody took note of including we
> children. The poem is about nobody seeing you.
> Nobody ever completely gets us.


cl2: Your words reminded me of a poem I first heard when I was a student nurse. I was class president and had to give a little speech at our annual gatherings. I always included the following poem I first heard in nursing. It's a tearjerker for me, even today to my surprise. I find it has a much wider application than just nurses and patients. I try to remember the message in all my interactions.


See Me

What do you see, nurses, what do you see?
Are you thinking, when you look at me —
A crabby old woman, not very wise,
Uncertain of habit, with far-away eyes,
Who dribbles her food and makes no reply,
When you say in a loud voice — “I do wish you’d try.”

Who seems not to notice the things that you do,
And forever is losing a stocking or shoe,
Who unresisting or not, lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding, the long day to fill.
Is that what you’re thinking, is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse, you’re looking at ME…
I’ll tell you who I am, as I sit here so still;
As I rise at your bidding, as I eat at your will.

I’m a small child of ten with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters, who love one another,
A young girl of sixteen with wings on her feet.
Dreaming that soon now a lover she’ll meet;
A bride soon at twenty — my heart gives a leap,
Remembering the vows that I promised to keep;
At twenty-five now I have young of my own,
Who need me to build a secure, happy home;
A woman of thirty, my young now grow fast,
Bound to each other with ties that should last;
At forty, my young sons have grown and are gone,
But my man’s beside me to see I don’t mourn;
At fifty once more babies play ’round my knee,
Again we know children, my loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me, my husband is dead,
I look at the future, I shudder with dread,
For my young are all rearing young of their own,
And I think of the years and the love that I’ve known;
I’m an old woman now and nature is cruel —
‘Tis her jest to make old age look like a fool.

The body is crumbled, grace and vigor depart,
There is now a stone where once I had a heart,
But inside this old carcass a young girl still dwells,
And now and again my battered heart swells.

I remember the joys, I remember the pain,
And I’m loving and living life over again,
I think of the years, all too few — gone too fast,
And accept the stark fact that nothing can last —
So open your eyes, nurses, open and see,
Not a crabby old woman, look closer, nurses — see ME!


(This poem was found among the possessions of an elderly lady who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital. No information is available concerning her — who she was or when she died.)

-----

cl2:

> there will never be anyone
> who ever completely gets you, sees you.

I've always thought this - that there's a little piece of myself that nobody gets. It can feel lonely. I'm so fortunate to have a very good friend who has known me a long time and she sees me better than anybody else does. I don't think we can ask for more than that. If we find more, we are fortunate indeed.


cl2:

> he opened the door and
> looked at me and his eyes lit up and he threw his
> arms around me. In their eyes, I see me.

Beautiful, cl2. I come close to feeling this with my best friend. She surprises me constantly with how much she understands me, even though we don't see each other often as she lives up country. Her husband recently passed away and yet she's the one consoling me. She's incredible that way. She didn't mind me crying all over her after my mom died. I needed that kind of friendship. So fortunate to have had it for so many years even though physically she's far far away.


PS: Sorry to anyone who doesn't like long posts. As cl2 writes about herself, I'm also a transcriptionist by trade these days and my fingers fly and things get long. You can always skim - or skip.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2022 02:02PM by Nightingale.

I suspect those who are clutching pearls at the length of your posts disagree with you politically. You have no reason to censor yourself nor shorten your posts for their benefit. You write lucidly, and you grace us with paragraph breaks. If they don't want to read what you have to say, they don't have to read it.

Tyson

I have some double vision, worse when I am tired. I have considerable difficulty with paragraphs more than 5 lines long because I lose track of which line I am on. When I see a wall of text, regardless of the author, I skip it. Nothing personal. It is my own inability to process the text.

C-D has gotten better about inserting white space, but for me, putting a blank line in about twice as often would help. He did one post a few weeks ago where it looked like every line was ten words or less. My initial reaction was to be off put by the appearance, but I found it surprisingly easy to read, even with very little white space, just very short lines.

Not that I’m recommending that format. It was a little weird, but it solved my problem with long close packed lines.

I find “you wouldn’t believe how crazy my father was/is” pretty interesting. Don Bagley and Punky’s Dilemma (“my father, the anus”) used to serve up some doozies. I think I would enjoy CD’s posts if they were less challenging for me to read,