Guardian training part 3 - (for real)

12-17-13 Edit - I am not satisfied with this version. Something is missing and every time I read it, my gut pings me.  I will let it set for a few days and see what more the story its telling me.

1-6-14 Edit - well my "gut" finally told me what was wrong so here you guys go. Sorry it took so long to get this back up, winter break with kids roaming around just doesn't make for much time to get lost in blogging. The only changes are to the very end piece. - P



(Continued part 3)

*************************** TRIGGER WARNING ********************************
discussion of suicide - self injury-and all that other fun stuff that rolls around in my head
******************************************************************************

She felt it smile proudly in her hand. Fire.

I'm in training to be fire.

The gasp stuck in her throat.

Slowly she looked around at the devastation. She was unable to blink as her mind tried to process it.

A strange sensation startled her and her head snapped back. The sapling was gently touching her raw arm. Cleaning away the blood and gently smoothing out the ragged flesh.

The kindness and compassion it was showing her broke her.

"No one ever treats me this kind...I don't deserve it." She at last spit out. Trying to pull away.

"Nonsense." said the sapling holding her hand.

Her head swam. Fire?

"Fire?" she at last whimpered. Looking again at the charred trees. "You spend a 100 years growing to learn to be fire?" she stumbled to her feet, her voice escalating. "You stand day after day in the same spot to BECOME FIRE!! To live a silent quiet life to be gone in a flash? What kind of madness is that?! To be tall and beautiful and make fruit and offer shade and peaceful Eden's to die by fire? A lifetime of waiting for what? a moment of fire?"

"Yes." said the sapling.

The insanity of it ripped through her chest and exposed her heart. "What about those who live and die with out becoming fire?" she asked as the pain spasmed her soul.

"Not all of us complete our training. Just like guardians who are in training, some of us do not survive."

"and the tables and book shelves made of wood? Was there life wasted by never becoming fire?" her rant continued ignoring what she was just told.

The sapling shook its leaves, "No, there still in training. Everyone's training is custom made for that individual."

Her body, suddenly heavy gave way and she  fell into a heap in front of the sapling. The tears fat and round falling in a steady rhythm.

The sapling let her sit with her grief for a while. It caught and held her tears in its leaves. A few minutes passed before it again repeated. "Not all of us complete our training. Just like guardians who are in training, some of us do not survive."

The words slowly penetrate her heart. "I'm not going to make it am I?"

The sapling leaned over and spilled her tears onto the scorched earth. "Make it to what?"

"To be a guardian." she whispered.

"Guardian of what?" it whispered back.

Her mouth fell open and nothing came out.

"Pain?" it whispered, gently touching her bleeding arm.

She felt her head shake no.

"The souls around you?" it whispered its voice cracking.

She felt her head shake no again, but this time her voice chimed in, "Maybe? But why must I suffer so others can be comforted?"

"How else are you to lower yourself into the depths of anothers pain unless you know the depth of pain itself?"

I'm drowning in this pain, it hurts to breath, it hurts to live, I can't go on....how can I help others when I am submerged and drowned myself? That can't be it...

fire...

I'm in training to be fire.

"You are a liar!" she screamed and stood up. "You are lying to me!" The anger infused her body driving out the sadness. "Trees offer love, food and protection and humans. I will not buy that your whole existence is a lie to humans!

The sapling bobbed its head, and continued to listen.

She roared on, "YOU MAKE OUR HOUSES! YOU ARE IN OUR HOMES YOU HOLD US AS WE ROCK IN THE CHAIRS, YOU GIVE US WOOD TO MAKE CRADLES, YOU SUPPORT US! YOU LISTEN TO OUR FEARS AND FEED OUR EMPTY STOMACHS, YOU MADE THE PEWS AND ALTERS WE PRAY ON,YOU GIVE YOUR WOOD TO MAKE TOYS AND ART, YOU HOLD OUR BODIES WHEN WE DIE... AND YOU EXPECT ME TO BELEIF THAT ALL THE WHILE YOU ARE DOING THIS YOU ARE LIVING TO BURST INTO FLAMES AND BURN US TO DEATH? THAT YOU ARE GLORIOUSLY HAPPY WHEN YOU BURN DOWN A HOUSE AND KILL EVERYONE INSIDE??!!!"

The elder trees, answered her. There voices smoky and rough. "You are right, young one."

She whirled and faced them. The anger hardening her face.

"Imagine for a moment the chaos it creates within your soul when you are be rooted and unable to move....unable to flee the fire. The pain it causes when you are in charge of providing a warm safe environment for the humans who you fall in love with. Have you ever seen a house fire? How the beams scream in agony as they hold out as long as they can, protecting there charges as long as they can...to make sense of that madness we choose this path to ease the torment."

"You add order to chaos." she said at last her voice calmed. "But to be rooted and vulnerable...that must be an unbearable burden."

"You don't know?" said the sapling. "We are rooted to keep us still, part of our purpose is to be here to cast shade so the young guardians in training can find comfort and peace. If we walked the slow guardians of stone would not be able to catch us and find the shade."

"And what do you get out of that deal?" she said looking down again.

"Company." said the young one dissolving into tears. "We get company. The years pass slowly, and despite growing a new ring of bark around our hearts to protect them, the loneliness claws at us."

"You have all the other trees around you for company." she said.

""Around us yes...to be surrounded by others and never touched is a painful thing. I can't go over and hug my mother, it will be a lifetime before my roots find hers and we can hold hands. It will be even longer before I am tall enough to lean in the wind and touch the leaves of the others." The sapling answered, its voice finally cracking.

The rising wave of compassion rose within her and spilled over her stone walls. "What keeps you going? what is it that powers you? what is that golden carrot that motivates you? What makes life worth it for you?"

The saplings leaves perked up. "It isn't a moment or a day or one thing. Its everything. The good the bad, the journey."

The elder trees sighed and twisted her way. "It is being here with you. To watch you grow and become the beautiful thing that you are."

"I'm not beautiful." she said," I'm a hardened heart encased in a stone wall of hate and anger. I am a scared up broken woman that can't live in peace. I am nothing to anyone."

"You are everything to someone." the elders began to weep. There tears washing away the ash and showing the raw unburned bark underneath. "your training is nearly complete."

She spun around. "What?"

Hold out your arms the guardians said in her heart.

"What?" she repeated looking around, "its over? my training is nearly over? just like that?"

Just like that

The sapling leaned over and smoothed out the dirt at her feet. "You can't be born to fly if you are not a bird. You can't breath air if you were meant to swim the depths. You were born to be a guardian."

guardian of what? she tried to form the words. but her throat was turning to stone.

Hold out your arms the guardians echoed in her heart.

She pushed hard....and felt her walls give, and the light flood in as lanterns appeared in her hands.

...She was left here by the elders. Alone and out of sync. She was seven, always seven. She didn't understand that she wasn't on a path, she was the path. She didn't understand her pain was not punishment but her training. For guardians are not born of stone...they must be turned to stone."

Thend


I exhaustedly stumble around in the darkness when I am depressed.  I don't always tell the outside world that I am struggling. You can see my journey written in scars on my body. Years ago a person trekked across the US to come to my house and meet me. She spent a few days with us. She had a migraine the first day and so the planned coast trip had to be canceled.

I commented that what a shame it was to come all this way and miss seeing it. She shook her head and said..."You don't get it do you? You are a lamppost in the dark. You stand here in pain and offer compassion and warm light to those of us struggling around in the dark forest. You are what I came to see."

you are what I came to see

.....you are who I write to reach

you.

Even if its to stand silently in the forest and allow you to hang your crumbled lantern on my branches. To offer my cool shade to rest in for a moment. To offer you my scared up hand to hold. To come after you if you need a hug and have fallen and don't have the strength to get up. To make our lives journey a little less lonely. I can't fix you anymore then you can fix me...but when times get tough if we both lean a little bit, we support each other. knowing full well, "Not all of us complete our training. Just like guardians who are in training, some of us do not survive." That doesn't matter, I will love you for as long as I get to, and even then I won't let go of your hand. You are a piece of me, you are part of my walls that make me strong. You are part of the path...That I know and understand  so well.

What is my golden carrot? I have none. What motivates me to go on living is the same nonsense that motivates dogs to chase their tails. There are times I lie quietly on the porch, lazily watching life come and go...and there are times I run and leap for no reason. Sometimes...I chase my tail for the shear sport of whirling dizzily. Makes no sense to those watching, but it puts in the moment.

We all have to find out own way on this journey. Find what helps. Writing helps me.

The pressure of wanting to die comes and goes within me with the tides of my depression. Other people its chained to them. I hope knowing you are not alone in the struggle helps.

As for me, right now, right here, I am going no where till the trees tell me what I am the guardian of. That might be a while as their stubborn and known to be liars.

well, here is the poop.

After fighting my mental health since June and the forced switch off of levoxyl, I finally reached the end of my ability to cope with the mayhem and madness in my head.

I was started on Buspirone (Buspar) on the 9th and peace has rained down within.

happy, relieved sigh.

Of course its only been six days but I will take this calm over that thyroid-mayhem any day.

So what does that mean?

it means that the end of the guardian story is going to be different.

Different headspace = different writing from me.

I write what is in my head...and right now its all sunshine and bubbles.

heh.

So if the conclusion is not satisfying I will re-write it in the future when I find myself once again on the nutty side of the toast.

I hope this medication continues to work for me, I am LOOOOOOVING this break from the 24/7 anxiety.

Kids are home sick and I have caught there coughy-crud.  I am working on the real part 3, buts have to write in small chucks. I hope by Monday night to have it posted.

cabin fever

we are snowed/iced in.

The kids are home from school...this is day #4, they're a bit stir crazy.

The story will have to wait till they go back to school. I have grown to really love the quiet uninterrupted morning time to write in. Its hard to write with one ear open and trained on the kids. the stuff I hear can be distracting....

"It won't break go ahead and throw it..."

"If I can pick it up you can catch it"

"eew YOU EAT IT!"

*dead silence* then, muffled laughter.

I was a kid once, I got into plenty of mischief with my 5 brothers and 3 sisters....I know what little cabin fevered minds can dream up.

Heck I know what our everyday normal minds dream up..(incase you don't know what this a picture of..its pant's dogs. Best way to get your kids to fold laundry with you. woof)

They're 7 and Just about 12 now, but these two still need supervision, even though I have equipped them with all the necessary life skills. Imagination and a good side arm.

Opened their minds to the wonders out there...

 

Um, yes that is our version of the Hadron Collider, Everyone should try to open black holes/micro fractures in subspace in their backyards, great way to spend the evening.


oh summer, sunshine how I miss you....Okay may be I am bit stir crazy too. I'm not used to being house bound.

We got hit with more snow then we have seen in 15+ years on Friday. I was on my way to Target and it got so bad I had to leave my truck and go ahead on foot. Then had to walk home from target in 4-5 inches of snow.

It was wonderful, silence, snow, the squeak squeak of the snow and I stepped on it. Very relaxing walk.

A few blocks from my house I happened upon some kids having a snow ball fight with a dad and his young daughter across the street.

I stopped and made two snow balls and then continued down the street.

As I got into range I called out. "HO UP! CROSS TRAFFIC!"

The mother of the two kids called out too. "Stop guys, let her pass."

I got 1/2 way  across and called out "AMBUSH!!" and pelted the two kids with my snow balls right in their chests. Then ran away as fast I could on the snowy/icy road. Their return fire snow balls zithing around my weaving form.

I could hear their mother's hysterical laughter all the rest of the way down the block.

It made my night.

The Guardian training part three

"and they all lived happily ever after."

Thend

WAIT! WHAT?

Well I couldn't leave you hanging and I have no time to write today....I am doing the 19 page obamacare stuff....(let me tell you blogging would be more fun then reading this drivel....bleah)

We can wait for the rest of the story...don't end it like that!!

I had one simple question that I needed answered before I started filling in the forms and I spent 7 min listening to the "CoverOregon" ditties on hold before I gave up. Then an hour later they called me back. Umm that's freaky that the government is using caller ID to track us down, but I digress....

One question, simple one too, "Do I need to fill out separate 19 page form for each child?"

I was on the phone with them for 18 min before I got off....If it takes you 18 min to answer one question I have issues with your support line.

Then she wanted my name. Good heavens! don't ask me questions like that!

"P" I said

"How do you spell that?" She asked.

"It's spelled Raymond Luxury Yacht but it's pronounced 'throat- wobbler mangrove'" I say before I can stop myself  from channeling Monty Python.

You fool! they have your number!

Yeah I know, LOL. But I don't worry about the state coming and carting me off...They still think the previous 4 tenant still live at my address, they will never find me.

Welp off to the store to stock up on lube. After reading the forms I am sure I am in for a year of sodomy from the government. Bend over, while we rape you for 12 months with a required plan you can't afford and will never be able to use cause the deductible is 12,500.

Look on the bright side, its guaranteed blog fodder.

Good to know that the government is now mandating that I pay for blog fodder....

Guardian training part 2

(Continued)

*************************** TRIGGER WARNING ********************************
discussion of suicide - self injury-and all that other fun stuff that rolls around in my head
******************************************************************************

Moving down she stopped next to run her hands over the large weeping Buddha's hunched shoulders. She had no delusions, she knew faith doesn't keep pain at bay. That it only gave you another hand to hold in the storm.

Faith dangled a shiny brilliant carrot in front of the faces of those who walked that path. A heavenly reward to make the pain worth while.

There was no carrot before her.  "No reward for this pain" she whispered the tears welling.

The door to the store jingled happily as another person entered. The wind snuck in and blew a reassuring waft of incense to her and set the glass wind chimes to softly tinkling.

"You are a guardian" they said. "the carrot before you is simply this...more pain."

her weight sank to the floor and rooted her there. The sorrow weeping like thick sap down her insides.

How do you keep walking forward when the reward is more pain?

She turned slowly and walked to the bin of rocks. Each step heavy and woody. She dipped her hands in and let the shiny stones encase her. She shut her eyes and let the soothing bubbling from the near by fountain fill her mind with the rushing voice of the water.

Flow on. It said in a quiet voice.

She bought her treasures and stepped from the store.

The magic dissipated quickly and before she was a block away she was returned to the world.

The world where others dance in joyous flight. Where others smiled and laughed and lived with effortless ease.

No one seemed to notice she had to struggle to breath.

She returned to the forest, always the forest.

But today she found it destroyed. Charred limbs and blacked shattered trunks.

"NOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!" she screamed as the pain ripped through her. 'My friends!' she gasped painfully.

The sobs wracked her body and sent her tumbling down. The sorrow to much to contain inside and she clawed at her arms ripping her skin till it was bleeding bloody tears.

They dripped with soft patters into the ash.

My friends! her soul cried again.

The wind stirred and the large trees twisted, their trunks, stiff like old men's backs, groaned as they leaned with it.

"I'm so sorry" she sobbed.

"For what?" the trees asked.

"If this is part of my training, I'm so sorry you got hurt. I am so sorry my madness invaded your world. I am poison, I should stay away from everyone."

She stood up and with head hung low, turned to go.

Behind her was a small sapling just ankle high. Its undamaged leaves looking out of place in the blackness.

"Don't step on me, please." it said bowing politely.

She knelt down and touched its leaves.

"Oh little one, you must be so scared." she sniffed. To find yourself in this madness.

It shifted excitedly in her hand. "I'm not! I'm in training!"

"I'm in training too," she sighed, "To be a guardian....what are you in training for?"

She felt it smile proudly in her hand. Fire.

I'm in training to be fire.


(to be continued)

****************************************************
someone once asked me when I was doing these installment stories if I felt mean teasing my readers.

My answer surprised them.

I am reading along as I am writing. As in I have no idea where the story is going. It simply flows from my hands to the keys.

And tonight the saplings revelation, surprised me. Stopped my writing cold. I was not expecting that. I too am eagerly awaiting the rest of the story, because I have no idea where its going!

Guardian training

Sometimes as a writer the noise in my head is loud and rambunctious, like having a class of first graders hopped up on sugar running amok. To get me to focus on one story idea takes a bit of distilling and jotting down of the more persistent ideas until the one story I need to tell jells within me and I can finally hear it.

I have been through a stress filled week recently, like no other. I am struggling with physical and mental stuff within. My whole life a whirling chaotic vortex with disorienting roller-coaster ups and downs with the safeties disengaged.

Where do people find the strength to keep moving forward? What is that carrot that each of us dangles before us to keep up motivated and sometimes alive? What happens when the string breaks and the carrot falls?

I am spent and emotionally and physically. Completely fatigued and exhausted. My pain levels off the freaking chart.

*************************** TRIGGER WARNING ********************************
discussion of suicide - self injury-and all that other fun stuff that rolls around in my head
******************************************************************************

Its hard to run with the heavy pain chains that limit the mobility of my back. To try to stay ahead of what is chasing me but my own body is failing. The runners legs of my youth have been replaces with rickety old 1/2 broken stilts. I attempt to flee anyway.

Each stride sending a hammer blow of pain to my sacro-illiac joints. The ensuing numbness bringing a fear to my heart.

I can't out run this...

The darkness catches me and hooks my foot, sending me sprawling face first into the rocky ground.

I lay with eye clenched tightly.

Like some hunter posing with its bagged kill, I feel the darkness kneel on my soul. Its empty weight pressing down on me.

"Fine" I growl and raise my head enough to get some momentum and slam it back down onto the rocks.

The internal pain transfers to my now bleeding forehead.

I'm buried alive by this depression....

buried alive by pain I can't cure or get away from....

Life is kicking the shit out me and my ability to cope with it is gone.

Gone.

Nothing new here. Same old game, same players, same of broken Rubik's cube in my mind that I can't twist back into place.

No curing the PTSD. No reasoning with it either. My brain hard wired in barbed and damaged neuro-pathways. My brain hard wired differently then most. I honestly think that abused children minds work differently then normal kids.

When you grow up dealing with abuse the only way to survive is to somehow...somehow...just decide. This is what normal is....

 This is what normal is...

That even though everything else is telling me love = this. I am being told it's something else. I am being held in a prison camp and tortured and there is no army coming to liberate me. I must survive or die.

My first suicide attempt I was 3 years old.

Failing at dying, I was left to try to survive and make sense of the sunny bright happy worlds around me when I felt like a dark cloud was all around me.

That I was alone ...and even worse, invisible. How did everyone live so effortlessly? While I struggled so.

Did the abuse create these cracks in my soul that allowed the depression to settle in with out a fight?

So many questions.

no answers.

Just recently the shifting emotional currents in my head swirled downwards to the depths that create enough pressure that suicide rushes towards me like a life preserver with the promise that if I grab it and hold on I will be delivered from the depths.

I hate that head space. Its not necessarily that I want to die...I just want the pain to stop.

As a young child I used my writing skills to cope. Some of my stories I spun in my head, and acted them out. If the world made no sense then I would apply order to it within my head.

"...She was left here by the elders. Alone and out of sync. She was seven, always seven. She didn't understand that she wasn't on a path, she was the path. She didn't understand her pain was not punishment but her training. For guardians are not born of stone...they must be turned to stone.

Filled with life and hope and love, guardians are born unfocused and not committed to their roles. They allow their soft hides to distract them and keep them from becoming who they are born to be.

The rocks hurled at her by her fellow humans ripped and tore her hide. She tried desperately not to become bitter and closed off. She wanted...needed, to belong. Eventually the stonings took there toll and a hard crust developed on the outside. Now rather then shredding her soul, the stones just chipped the shell.

Until the day a heavy boulder crushed the shell and knocked her unconscious.

She awoke bloody and alone, always alone.

If I lay here and die, no one will miss me. She thought and nestled back into the ground. 

But they did see her and the painful process continued, even though she was already down and refusing to get up.

The stones piled up and buried her.

and for the first time, she felt safe. 

Buried under a mountain of stone.

'This is home.' She thought and set up house keeping, arranging the rocks into thick walls.

as the years past they grew tall.

Yet the pain continued.

Crying endlessly she found herself in need of human interaction. The loneliness clawing at her heart.

She poked her head out into the sunlight.

the warm sun light nourishing her pale skin.

Safe now? finally?

She climbed out and looked around. Maybe they had all forgotten about her. Maybe she was invisible. maybe her pain didn't matter anymore and her prison term was over. 'Maybe I will fit in now.' she thought.

But just in case danger was close she took off running, her hair trailing behind her as she headed away from the pain. Through the forest she hopscotched shadow to shadow, finding peace in this eden of silent green and brown. She felt safe as long as she was running, "You won't be able to catch me to hurt me.' she thought.

Life sent swift punishment. It took her youth, then it it took her legs. Crippling her. Panicked and fearful she re-evaulated her life. 'If I can't run, the pain will catch me.'

The insight and realization was slow and painful.

'I am not like the others on this planet.'

'I am not meant to fit in.'

'I am something different."

"What am I?" she shouted to the universe.

"You are a guardian." replied the trees.

"NO!!" she snarled angry and agitated. "I do not want to be a guardian! I WILL NOT be a protector to those who hurt me! I WILL NOT walk this path you have set out for me!" She whirled and took off running.

She doesn't get far.

Life again presses the issue and more of her mobility was eroded away as the journey to become stone furthered with in her.

Each time she ran, the faster the rising tide of stone engulfed her.

The pain chains finally stopped her all together.

She tumbled into the cool shadows of the trees and laid with eyes clenched.

"Why can't I choose to be something else?" she whispered to no one. "why is this my destiny?"

The leaves in the canopy overhead rustled as the trees conversed with each other.

"Why does my life have to be so hard? Why can't I have a happy fulfilling life?"

The leaves rained down on her like little tears."Because" they  whispered "You are a seed. You are a guardian in training."

She unclenched her eyes and allowed the forest to dilate them. She stared with saucer eyes upwards to the sky.

At last she spoke. "Well so far I have learned that guardians are made of stone and have bitter angry hearts."

The trees leaned away allowing the sun to lay a warm blanket over her. YES. The warmth pressed into her heart. Yes.

She again closed her eyes. "Then I have learned all I need to learn. I am fully trained. I am done. DONE, you hear me?"

A curt wind blew the sunny warm blanket from her and closed the trees. She felt the darkness's shadow pressing coldly down upon her. Guardians, do not speak, guardians do not fight. Guardians guard that is all they do. It hissed.

Her training continued.

She tried to smile and pretend, but nothing changed within. She was being slowly taught something she didn't want as the years slipped by. She found no rest or peace within her pain fulled body. Sleep only allowed in another teacher.

Every time she argued that she didn't want to BE a guardian, life whacked her in the knees and left her laying bleeding on the ground.

you are what you are, the scars seemed to say.

She found an escape one day, a place where the pain was held at bay, a place where the darkness didn't shine.

An import store.

And there among the incense and strange textiles and shiny talismans, she found her soul could breath. A hide away. A bubble where the madness could not find her.

A store filled of adventure. A store filled of seeking. She ran her hand over the Tibetan prayer wheels. Envious of those with faith to hold onto and wear like armor.

(To be continued)

******************************
I am feeling a little better, and the stress at work is slowly resolving (I hope). Working with nurse practioner on my pain levels, so hopefully there will be relief in sight. I was supposed to finish this story today, however my little one is home sick. So a cliff hanger today.