I M Perfect lady

Author: bjukuri

  • Healing Won.

    I dropped the letter in the outgoing mail; it sat in the box for a few hours, with me working nearby.

    Every now and then, I wondered if I should take it back; pull it out and retreat back to silence.

    When the time approached for the first mail truck heading south, my confidence waned, my insecurities arose, at times it was like holding a yoga pose to not walk a few steps and take it back.

    It is amazing to be nervously anxious and brave in the same breath.

    In the outgoing mailbox lay my restraining letter to my mother; it’s bold statements clear and concise, there is no mistaking or misreading its intent.

    I recalled a few of the lines in my one page letter.

    “It is not healthy for me to be around you.”

    “My silence is the kindest thing I can give you.”

    “I need you to honor and respect the silence and space I need to heal and be whole.”

    “If you fail to honor our separation as it is, you are deliberately seeking to disrespect and hurt me; I will take it as such.”

    The letter was easy to write, harder to send, and leaves my emotions scared inside, even though I mean every word, it just seems too harsh to send.

    There is a part of me that is still loyal to the mother/daughter relationship that has long ago dissolved, a part that feels it just isn’t right to actually send. It is okay to feel these things, but it is certainly not right to speak to your elders this way.

    A part of me feels there will be dire consequences for my words, punishment for being so ballsy for speaking to a mother this way.

    Yet on the other hand the feelings of self-empowerment and self-love are being flooded with strength as I did what no daughter wants to do.

    Restrain her self from having a relationship with her mother.

    How unnatural to leave a mother and to set up firm boundaries that lock you out, cutting the ties that sever the lines of communication.

    Becoming an orphan on purpose.

    What I failed to notice is that it is me that was restraining me.

    Restraining me from leaving.

    Restraining me from staying.

    Inside is the battle of the dysfunctional daughter and the healing one; how grateful am I healing won.

  • I found my soul.

    “Pen to the page to find and create sanctuary and asylum for soul. “ Margot Van Sluytman

    My blog is an asylum for my soul, a sanctuary for a confused mind, a place where I feel free to dialogue and debate the inner turmoil of unraveling a life too confusing to live, let alone understand.

    It is the place I run to when my emotions need a voice, when my feelings need to be heard, when I have discovered another part of me that was missing, it is a place for me to rest and be me.

    I speak in the asylum and I also listen to myself there, it is the oddest of things, and most often I receive newfound wisdom, wisdom I didn’t have when I put pen to paper, yet wisdom flows as I write.

    In my writings I discovered my innocence, explored my beliefs and challenged my thoughts, worked out crossed wires of dysfunction, expressed long pent up emotions, shed tears, and wrote words of comfort, all in the space of neutral white paper, my sanctuary.

    It is a sacred place, a soulful place, a place littered with emotion and tears, sorrow and pain, as well as decorated with wonderful moments of joy and gratitude and wisdom fills the air.

    I arrived to this place a very broken disillusioned girl, who had lost more than her heart could hold, and all I knew is that I seemed to feel better by writing it out.

    And it seemed to hear me, my great confidant.

    The sanctuary is my private space, to let down and let go, to not have to worry who I will offend or disappoint, for there is no one here but me.

    A space where you can go mental, rant and rave, and a place that is set aside to work on solutions, to find the answers you are seeking, to heal so you can once again rejoin your life.

    In this sanctuary and asylum I found my soul.

  • “Lights on but nobody’s home!”

    As I caught sight of me in my rearview mirror I chuckled, I had left home quickly for I was in the middle of making soup and found I was one ingredient short, it was too late to stop the soup, so away I went.

    I just tossed on a jacket and boots, hoping it would hide all ills (pajamas). It did, except my hair.

    Sticking out on one side.

    It was then I remembered I hadn’t showered yet, well really done a thing, except put on a jacket and boots.

    Well, I wasn’t turning back, I just walked in the store hoping no one would notice, I carried myself like I was totally put together, while appearing not!

    I know I was a sight, for my husband who truly doesn’t care what he appears like noticed, you went to town like that?!”

    Yep, I did. “Like that?” he asks again… Yes, I say again, he walks away shaking his head in utter disbelief.

    And on the way back many drivers were flashing their brights at me, and it wasn’t until I was almost home in the almost dark that I noticed I had no lights on.

    I had thought to myself, boy these people are all seeing if their brights are on…mmm, what a coincidence so many tonight are testing them out.

    Yes there I was dressed as I was, with no lights on, None.

    Talk about a crazy lady, driving in semi darkness with no lights and not even dressed to be outside.

    The total image that I projected on that quick ride into town is scary and hilarious at the same time.

    Thank god no accident happened, for I would have been committed.

    I can hear them now, “Porch lights on, but nobody’s home!”

    And in this case No lights on and nobody’s home…

  • Birthing the New Me.

    “How often in life we complete a task that was beyond the capability of the person we were when we started it.” ~Robert Brault

    This paragraph sums up how it is that I began my journey to find myself, in a state of total mentalness, upside down and backwards, emotionally and mentally in need of something bigger than I.

    I recall early on in my writing, when I was driven to paper for my head couldn’t hold the juxtaposition between what my old beliefs wanted me to do, and the new emerging me challenged, how incredible inept I was at being me.

    Two drastically different approaches to life, one driven by the outside the other by the inside.

    The new emerging inside me seemed to have this amazing and tantalzing connection that was beyond anything I had ever experienced, its orchestration would leave me speechless and totally supported.

    No matter the most dire of situations, I found humor and incredulousness at the audacity it expressed to bring me awareness at just how off base I had lived my life.

    The condition of my old self was unstable at best, blind and totally caught in a web of religious and family restrictions, tied down and gagged.

    There is no way in hell, this girl should have been able to extricate her self from that old life with no self esteem and self worth. She had nothing within her to guide her, yet she set out anyway, poorly packed, no destination, alone on a trail she had no clue where it was leading, and if that new person would be someone she would even like.

    I am not certain how far into this journey I am, or who I will be when it is all said and done, but I am totally amazed that someone like me has gotten this far.

    It is indeed by the Grace of God, go I.

    What is so thrilling to me is that the person I started out as and who I am today don’t even resemble each other.

    One was lost in the darkness without awareness.
    The other became aware of the darkness.
    “I was blind, but now I see.”

    It is like heading out blind for a destination unknown and finding it. Who is more amazed than me? Oh my God, if you only knew how big a task this has been, to tear your life apart while you are living it.

    And I am not done, my journey isn’t over, and actually it feels as if I have just begun.

    As my friend said, “it is like having a life review while alive…”

    It is like watching the old me die while a new me is being born, or the old me birthing the new me.

  • A safe place for Me.

    The sentiments, feelings, expressions, emotions of this blog may appear childlike and perhaps unbecoming of a big lady like me, but what I have just realized, is that the healing I am doing isn’t about a big lady, rather that of a little girl.

    The wounds that happened to me, happened as a young child, and what happens then the body grows big, but inside of me I am stunted and remain emotionally immature.

    Expressing my feelings now, about events long ago, sound like I am lost in my past, but what is really going on is that I am healing me in my past and allowing my emotional body to catch up with my big lady body.

    What is also very incredible is that an event today is orchestrated perfectly to heal a part of me that was hurt a long time ago.

    The gifts that I received by my mother leaving a message on my daughter’s phone, is multifaceted.

    Empowering, grieving, to seeing things I failed to notice, nothing happens by mistake.

    Each event that stirs up emotions is here to teach, to bring a part of me back to me.
    Just so you all know the little girl voice is a voice of little girl who had no voice growing up, and I am thrilled beyond words, that I have the opportunity and the vessel for her to heard.

    Whether another soul reads this or not, I am reading it as I write.

    It is an incredible experience to speak as me and to hear me, to feel the sorrow and be the one to comfort, to allow tears to fall that have been repressed for years, to feel after so many years of being afraid to, I am talking to or as the little girl in each post.

    What sacred space this is.

    A safe place for me.

  • The Life of Me

    About 5 years ago my daughter received in the mail a manila envelope from my mother, inside were pictures of me.

    Baby pictures, school pictures, snapshots of me alone and me with siblings, even my high school graduation picture, all stuffed in one envelope.

    There didn’t seem to be any care as to which way they were put in, I remember seeing me at various ages all jumbled up.

    At the time I was in shock and didn’t know what to think, and my mother had note on there for my daughter to create a scrapbook for me.

    Like it was her task to put together my mother’s memories of me. I told her don’t worry honey, I will do this myself someday.

    As I sit here today with the latest request still fresh in mind and me pondering how to articulate a restraining letter, this hits me with great sadness.

    Sadness that my mother didn’t want any pictures of me at all, that she sent them all back.

    I looked at them just now and was struck by my innocence, my trusting eyes, my faithful smile…how cute I was, how awkward too, how caring, for I was always holding a child or a hand. The evidence is all there of me, and she sent them all back.

    I may find the time this year to put together a book of me, to get them out of the envelope she shoved them in, to bring them out and honor them by making a book of me.

    Carefully putting back together the life of me.

  • Reality shows a hole.

    As I walked down the driveway to get our mail, my foot slipped on the ice and I did an impromptu triangle pose, stretching further than my muscles actually stretch, it was as if the ground shifted beneath my feet and caught me way off guard.

    You find your self in a position of surprise and pain, slipping out of control, trying to restore balance.

    That is exactly what happened when my mother’s request came in, it caught me unaware and it took me awhile to gather myself back into control, for it felt like she had snagged my life for a few hours, upending my plans by sidetracking my emotions and me.

    One minute you are walking along with a firm ground underneath you and zip its gone, replaced with rolling upsetting thoughts and emotions, going from a placid empty space to a state of turmoil.

    It is amazing that she still can tromp in and trash my space with just a few uttered words and make me feel that she has tampered with my child.

    The request is secondary to the position she inadvertently put my daughter in, playing monkey in the middle in a game of insanity, where it is impossible for my daughter to win.
    It’s the price paid for allowing my children to define their own relationship with my family, I knew it would leave them vulnerable and open to being a conduit for information about me.

    I just hoped it would never be used, or my children would be used.

    Being used is exactly how I feel my daughter was treated, my mother didn’t see the girl who she was asking to perform this act, she just wanted the picture and took the route easiest traveled, she didn’t want to ask me directly.

    I have tried hard to not use this access myself; I have tried to maintain a neutral stance as I witness their involvement with my family, allowing them to leave or stay as life unfolds.

    A phone call wouldn’t suffice, for she has hung up on me before when the words coming at her were not what she wanted to hear, so I will write a letter.

    A restraining letter.

    A letter that requests her silence between her and I, letting her know that my kids are not to be an open line for her to Use.

    This behavior of hers going to the second generation really boils me, asking others to do her dirty work.

    She knows without a shadow of doubt that if she asked me the path would be unfruitful, she wants what she wants and it matters not how the mission is accomplished, who she steps on and mistreats along the way, what she wants most is a complete set of daughter pictures.

    She wants no holes or vacant spots and she is using my children to patch the hole.

    My glaring open hole in our family will remain that way.

    She isn’t interested in knowing my life; she just wants my photograph to fill the hole in hers.

    The simple thing would be to fill the spot.

    That is what she has wanted all along, for me to get back in line, to rejoin the family, to not be standing out here alone, making her family look shattered, she wants to paint a pretty picture of all her children, to see them all unaffected and looking no worse for the wear, it will soothe her conscience, and make her feel like a whole mother.

    My refusal to slide back into position leaves her with a broken family.

    It is amazing that she wants a picture of the one who ran away.

    The striking juxtaposition of asking for a picture, when she has yet to ask in all these years, “How are you?”

    How are you feeling and dealing, how is your life going, how is it being abused my husband, how has that affected your life? How are you…?

    Nothing, silence…she doesn’t want to know or hear or wonder how I am, she just wants a pretty picture to fill her spot.

    The one sidedness of her world blows me sideways.

    Once again, she doesn’t see me or see my daughter, she sees us both as fulfilling a request.

    A request from a very selfish woman, who is so self- absorbed she is unable to see beyond the end of her nose.

    She doesn’t see the lives behind the pictures, just the pretty pictures; we have no life beyond what we can give to her.

    She doesn’t see the lives beyond the hands doing her dirty work, we have no purpose but what we can do for her.

    My giving days are over; I was done giving to this mad charity a long time ago.

    By keeping focus on the picture, you don’t see the madness orchestrating the life in denial.

    The picture completes a perfect set of six.
    Reality shows the hole.

  • Wants to see.

    My mother leaves a message on my daughter’s cell phone, wanting a recent picture of me, asking her for 4 or 5 of them. What??? Saying on the message, “she is still my daughter and I love her,” like that gives her all rights.

    What about mine, my daughters? And further more, why is she involving her granddaughter in this estrangement, making her feel like she has to pick which one to please, meaning she has to disappoint the other?

    She is okay dragging my daughter into the middle of our broken relationship, asking for a piece of me…asking an innocent bystander.

    I do not have access to her directly nor do I want to open up a line. Instead I want to close the line of communication that she feels she now has, my children.

    I will have to contact a sister whose house she is living in…and pass on that this is simply not acceptable, not now or ever.

    My home line has not changed in 15 years, she is aware of the number and can call. If she truly wants a slice of me, she will have to ask me to my face.

    The overall audacity and ignorance should not surprise me anymore, yet it does.

    Thank god she loves me… Not.

    If she truly loved and seen me, she would honor our silence, leave me alone to heal and be, letting my distance be as it is, and not try to come in through the back door stealing a ‘recent picture’.

    There is no recent me in her life.

    There is no recent her in mine.

    There is no us.

    She just refuses to let me die, to let me go, it feels like abuse all over again, this time with my daughter passing on the message and getting dirty in the middle.

    Oh the picture I would send…It is not a pretty picture.

    Will my picture capture the agony and pain, does it show the torn up insides where the wound is healing nicely, now.

    What is it she wants a picture of?

    The absence of any recent pictures slams this home.

    It shatters the idyllic fantasy she carries of us.

    A picture is worth 1000 words and so is the absence of one in this case…

    I do not feel she has earned the right to own a recent picture of me.

    She doesn’t see the whole picture of me, just what she wants to see.

  • Thank you.

    As I sit here on Thanksgiving morning, I look back at this year and find so many moments of gratitude, it seems I had a year full.

    My moments of gratitude are interrupted with moments of sheer pain, frustration, sorrow, confusion and tangled thoughts; it is only when I truly see the whole picture that I am overwhelmed with gratitude, knowing I was spared.

    Spared a lifetime stuck in that thought pattern, or held prisoner by that belief, to be forever at the mercy of another, while never seeing me.

    It isn’t so much that they didn’t see me, but I didn’t see me.

    Seeing and feeling me, learning how to respond that is respectful of me, what honors my soul, bringing forth a new version of me, one that is authentic and uniquely me, one that brings me to life.

    Gratitude of such magnitude, there isn’t a word that adequately expresses this freedom; it is like breathing or not breathing, love or fear, living or being dead in your life.

    To not be dead in my life is beyond what words can hold, to be alive in each moment, aware that I am connected to the Universe, that there are no mistakes, just opportunities to expand further and further, that even the darkest of the darkest moments are bringing me back to myself.

    The Universe only wants the grandest version of me; it doesn’t want a replica of someone else’s dreams.

    This past year I have been shown all the places I was still stuck, lost in the dark, and each time I become aware, I bring peace in to me.

    In peace I am overwhelmed in gratitude.

    I am thankful on this Thanksgiving Day for all the moments of pain, the untangled thoughts, the dark stuck places, and sorrow of what isn’t, for they all came bearing gifts.

    They all delivered a part of me that wasn’t free.

    Hell doesn’t seem like hell when it comes bearing gifts.

    I am grateful for my pain and for my suffering, for it was grieving the loss of me.

    It was telling me where I wasn’t present.

    In the darkness I mourned the loss of me.

    It was in the dark that I found me.

    On this Thanksgiving day, I thank you.

  • Devils in Disguise.

    I am finally seeing how literally birds of a feather flock together, clinging to the same version of heaven and hell, love and fear, good and evil, that depending upon your level of awareness and type of energy you carry, your heaven will reflect that.

    Somehow heaven on earth seemed to be a statement or a flight of fancy, perhaps a daydream or a wishful idea, but we all have our heaven on earth and we all flee from what we think hell on earth would be.

    And sometimes a tragedy happens and you arrive at hell in an instant, your worst fears are realized.

    Walking through hell changed the energies within me, little by little the negative energies were replaced with positive ones, until the balance tipped and I no longer was the same inside.

    Oddly what I called hell was actually the place where I found my positive energies.

    I found pieces of myself I didn’t know were missing, patches of self-esteem long forgotten, newfound love, bits of passion, parts of authenticity, chunks of courage, that slowly arrived as I trudged through hell.

    Hell before was reality, and reality now became my new heaven.

    I am not sure I can articulate this wonderful view that I now have of where I was and where I am, how walking through the ring of fire totally transmuted me inside.

    I know my family came close to the fire, were singed and burned, some came in for a short while, but the heat was too strong, the truth seared their illusion, and they scurried back to safety, to their old life, to old habits and routines, catching a glimpse of hell and retreating.

    When they fled, I went in deeper, and explored all the caves of hell, looking for the self I had lost there.

    Imagine I found myself in hell!

    In the darkest of moments, during the most excruciating sorrow out I popped.

    The me who went into hell and the me who walked out bear little resemblance to each other, we are not the same lady inside.

    It is then no wonder that I respond to my family different and they to me, that our hells don’t match nor do our heavens, for my hell became what I call magical and transforming and filled with grace.

    While I wouldn’t wish my hell on anyone, it is the greatest thing that ever happened in my life, it has transformed me in ways just regular old life can’t do.

    I can’t remember how the country song goes exactly, but something about when your going through hell, keep on going,get out before the devil even knows your there….

    But what if the devil is the truth, and you keep going, not stopping for it and you slip out before the truth catches you…what have you escaped, Heaven or Hell?

    It is so intriguing to me to see that perhaps our heavens and hells do match, but that you haven’t become aware…that you are dancing with angels who are really devils in disguise.