Diamond Heart, Hard but Fragile

Warning: Sad post ahead.

I had the intention of keeping it to myself but I am so sad and discouraged!

It was bad enough to lose my Satchie when I moved to Windsor.

But then Mama Cat came into my life and despite all the soap opera drama with the neighbours, she brought me much happiness.

First, she impressed me with her motherhood skills.

Then she gave me such an unexpected gift when she decided to stick around and adopt me even after all her babies were gone to good homes.

She made me laugh with her crazy silly antics and she stole my heart with her affection and her altogether sweet disposition.

Schrödinger’s Life

I can’t grasp Life.

It eludes me.

It taunts me.

It laughs at me, as it playfully prances around a the corner, not too fast that I lose track of it but not slow enough that I can catch up either.

Life can be so beautiful you feel your chest it’s going to explode, incapable of taking in so much beauty. All you can do is sit there and let the tears flow so you don’t explode.

Conversely, Life can be so heartbreaking you feel your chest if going to implode, incapable of taking in so much grief. All you can do is sit there, wishing you could cry but thankfully unable to do so, lest you implode.

It is a mercy that most days lie in between. And yet, for someone like me, a day can be – mostly is – full of uplifting hikes and stomach-turning falls.

A break in the news, a phone call, a letter.

Echoes of sadness and pain from all the corners of the world.

Today, I was rejoicing on the beauty of this day and the happiness in my life.

Naturally, I turned to Facebook to give witness of this when I learned a few bits of unsettling news.

FAQs Re: Windsor and Satchie

I decided to write this FAQs because I keep being asked the same questions by well-meaning people.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not being snarky. Or having rock star delusions. I am simply under severe stress and just one step away from doing that thing that makes people uncomfortable when spoken out loud. So if you asked and I gave you a link to this post as an answer, please don’t take it personal.

FAQs about Claudia being in Windsor, ON

Q: Why did you move to Windsor? Or its most common variant, why would you leave beautiful Ottawa to come to Windsor of all places?

A: For love. My fiance lives in Lansing, MI. The commute from Lansing to Ottawa is too long and too difficult when you struggle with anxiety and/or panic attacks. Windsor is as close as I can be to Lansing without leaving Canada.

Q: Why did you come to Windsor without first having found an apartment? 

A: Because I actually had a plan which was not by any stretch of the imagination, being stranded in Windsor. When it became obvious I wouldn’t have a place for December 1st (having to vacate my Ottawa place on November 30th), I decided to put everything in storage in Windsor, and then continue to Lansing. The initial plan was to come to Windsor, get settled at the new place, stay here for a week or two and THEN head to Lansing to spend the Holidays with the fiance and the Sidlets. Going straight to Lansing on the same day wasn’t too much of a deviation of the plan anyway, so that’s what we did.

Q: Why are you still here, then?

[All I want for christmas is]

All I want for christmas is…

How many times it has been said.

A dad. A job. Love. A house. A promotion. A raise. A miraculous remission. Those skates. That bike. A pair of shoes for my daughter so she doesn’t have to walk barefoot to school. For the war to end. For that bastard to die.

I, too, have said it from time to time. Not every christmas. Most years, I had everything I needed. It seemed ungrateful to ask for more.

As this year’s christmas approaches, I sure have a few things I wish for. [All I want for christmas is] For this stupid farce of a life to end, for example.

You win

I hate life.

There I said it.

I have spent decades finding gratefulness for what little I had. No parents? oh, who needs parents anyway, I can totally fend for myself. Pain? Oh, at least I have a roof under my head and I have food on my belly. Being told that everything is in my head? Oh at least I have my books and a great imagination. I can always escape to better worlds in my mind when nobody is looking.

I have tried to find strength and peace in the beauty of the little things. The birds coming to my balcony. My cats. Later on, when I finally made it to Canada, the falling leaves, the snow. The squirrels and chipmunks. The groundhogs. The Rideau canal. Swing Dancing.

But the truth is my life has been crap since day one. I was born extreme premature and spent the first months of my life in an incubator. The doctors told my mother not to get too attached to me because I most likely wouldn’t make it. And yet I did. I am pretty sure some god(s) with a lot of time in their hands and a very twisted and sick sense of humour had something to do with that. Perhaps they even made bets on how long I was going to last after all the things they had in store for me.

I spent my the first two years of my life in and out of the hospital and after that in an out of the pediatrician’s office with recurrent ear and throat infections which are the cause of my bilateral hearing loss.

I had no friends, as it is so common for children from very dysfunctional family environments.

Nonetheless, I puttered along. Hating every minute of it.

Surviving is not living

Of pain life is made

intense pain and grief.

In pain we are born

and in pain we leave.

We may loudly profess

our chains we can break

But the embrace of the shackles

no, that, we can’t shake.

Hoodwinked and confounded

we reach for the stars

forgetting our fetters

despite the old scars.

Cruel are the gods

always laughing at us

hurdles and moats

putting in our paths

And what do we get?

and for what, I do ask

well, nothing but pain

now, where is that mask?

Who mourns our losses,

who dries our tears?

We’re here to entertain them

throughout the long years.

Surviving is not living

but that’s all we can do

and then one day, maybe

we will be gods too.

Musings on Grief & Mourning

Recently, I’ve been privy to two close bloggers’ grief. One lost her father, the other her grandfather. The pain they are experiencing is beyond what words could ever express and my heart goes to them.

Thoughts of death always make me go into introspection. I can’t help but examine my own feelings regarding the deaths of my parents. Which are pretty non-existent when I am in survival mode, which is to say, my every day mode.

When my mother died, I didn’t cry. I even wondered at some point why I didn’t feel like crying when everyone else was but I just couldn’t. The answer -at the time, was very simple*. I was glad for my mother. I was glad that she was not going to suffer anymore. There was even the possibility that she had gone to a better place where she could be happy. But even if one takes the approach that there is nothing after death, that was still good news. If there is nothing, there is no suffering, so I was relieved and happy for her.

Needless to say everybody thought it weird I was so composed. I am pretty sure more than a few thought I was a bad daughter for not showing the appropriate mourning signs. A year later, I was really sad because I lost a trinket that I treasured and that brought tears to my eyes. One of my uncles saw me and said to me: “You didn’t cry when your mother died and you cry because of that stupid thing?” How can one explain the nature of one’s trauma when one is merely 15 and doesn’t really have a grasp on one’s own psyche?

When 8 years later my father too died, I didn’t cry either. I only had the feelings of relief for him. He was a tortured man and that is no way to live.

The most beautiful person I have known

I stumbled upon this quote today. Some of you may have heard it before. It was the first time for me and it hit home so hard, I wanna share it with you:

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Then, I wanted to add a picture but that wasn’t an easy task. A search for “beauty” and “beautiful” didn’t precisely show what I wanted. Then, it occurred to me that Colombian women know a lot about defeat and suffering. About struggle and loss. And yet they are compassionate, gentle and deep loving. So I googled “Colombian women” and in spite of almost getting lost in the sea of pictures of Sofia Vergara, I found this one.

                                                Beautiful Colombian women

The resemblance between the woman on the left and my mother is uncanny. Even as I type this words, I am so deeply moved by it that I feel both like laughing and crying at the same time. My mother definitely knew about all those things. She was the sweetest, most gentle person I’ve ever known. If only I could tell you about the sacrifices she made, about the way she touched the lives of those around her regardless how how hard her life was…. And she hard an incredibly hard life, from the minute she was born. A life that was lost to domestic violence at 34 years old. Something Colombian women know very well too.

Yes, my mother is the most beautiful person I have known.