The Big Breakup: Addiction, Pain and Promise

It has been a long, long time since my last post but, in my defense, there has been a lot going on in my life lately that made it difficult to get my blogging mojo working. First and foremost, my fiance and I broke up after a little over two-and-a-half years together. After valiantly battling his addictions and being sober for nearly five years, in the last several months he began slowly replacing his old addiction with a new one to buying and reselling things on EBay in a way that I imagine is very much akin to how someone with a monstrous gambling addiction approaches the roulette tables. As innocuous as an EBay addiction may sound, the results of it were just the same as if he had been downing a bottle of vodka every night--he repeatedly spent all the household money that was earmarked and desperately needed for bills or groceries on EBay merchandise, especially silver, and isolated himself more and more in his room, slowly but surely alienating all of his friends and family, including me and his eighteen-year-old son that lived with us. While I had to sit in line at food banks to make sure the family didn’t go to bed hungry, he sat in his room and made purchase after purchase on the auctions hoping to resell for huge profits, which he never did. While I was hauling in bags of charitable people’s leftovers in hopes of stocking our pantry that became progressively more bare, he was hauling five to six packages out of the mailbox every day. As he proceeded down this path and the situation at home got more stressful, he became angry and irritable and only pursued his addiction and isolation more. 

In all honesty, I don’t think I can tell you the single thing that finally pushed me to end the relationship, but as, I suspect, it is in most cases of love gone sour, it was a mounting of a thousand little things that finally made the pain of ending it less than the pain of staying there with him, unloved, alone and carrying the entire burden of supporting the family on my shoulders while he blissfully clicked away in his room. Our boat was sinking and I felt that while I was frantically bailing water, he was drilling larger and larger holes in the hull. And because I always hate when someone tells their breakup tale as if it were entirely the other person’s fault, I will say that I was definitely culpable in not having spoken up about his behavior much sooner than I did. I hate conflict to an intense degree and so I tend to stuff things until I can’t stand the situation any more, then just move on. Perhaps if I had screamed and stomped my foot a few times, or thrown a few plates, it would have been a wakeup call for him, but I am not that woman. In my heart I know that for the future success of any relationship I may have, I MUST learn to stand up for myself more, but there is a balance to be achieved there as well--I must stand up for myself, yes, but I also must not let someone turn me into a screeching harpy simply to attempt to achieve in them a basic level of common decency.  

So I left him. I packed up my animals, (three dogs and two cats), and whatever belongings of mine could fit in my mom’s van and hightailed it back to California, to the city where I grew up. Because of my eyesight I cannot drive, but my dearest friend Angela and my mother drove for three straight days across the wastelands of west Texas and Oklahoma to come rescue me, then three straight days back with me and five animals in tow. I am much blessed and much beloved. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you want to look at it, both my friend and my mother have experienced similar breakups in their lives so we were able to commiserate the whole way home and I knew that for the first time in a long time, I was truly not alone. 

I am living at my mother’s house now until I get my feet firmly back under me again--I guess that makes me one of those “boomerang children” you hear about on the news--and between fighting feelings of loss and failure, more and more I allow myself to feel excited about the new life and possibilities I see stretched out before me. I can go back to school and, at long last finish my degree. I can go on to get my M.F.A. in creative writing--a deeply held dream of mine for many, many years. Because I am no longer supporting an addicted spendthrift, I can finally get my little epileptic dog the proper medical attention she needs. I don't have to go to bed hungry ever again or wear worn out clothes with holes in them. I have friends here and family so I need not be isolated anymore. There is a fantastically active CUUPs group in a neighboring city that promises much Pagan fun and new friends. There are writers’ groups ALL OVER THE PLACE that meet regularly, hold readings and contests, and even offer the occasional scholarship.

I took a long, circuitous path to get here, but for the first time, in a long time, I feel I have found my home. 

Blessed by the Mystery,

-M. Ashley

PS
The artwork for today's post is actually one of my own creations from about fourteen years ago. I am no Picasso by any stretch of the imagination, but I do love making art and perhaps now I will have the time and energy to pursue that once again as well. 

The Hero's Deepest Wound: A Veterans' Day Post for My Father

My father did not turn out to be a good man.

He was a brilliant child--he got fabulous grades, could play the guitar by ear, and, by the time he went to high school, he was a champion runner. But somewhere between his horrific childhood home life and his time serving as a naval corpsman during the Vietnam War, he did not, as I said, turn out to be a good man.

With a false glee, my dad used to tell the story of how, coming home one day after a high school track meet--which he won and which none of his family attended--he found that his family had moved without him. At sixteen, he wandered the desert streets of California’s “Inland Empire” for six days looking for them. When he finally found them--his raging alcoholic father, his promiscuous mother and all eight of his siblings squatting in some rathole by the tracks in Fontana, they laughed at him and told him he must have been very stupid to have taken so long.

My mother tells the story of my dad enlisting in the navy and, in the process of getting all his papers together, found the last name on his birth certificate did not match the last name of the abusive alcoholic he had grown up thinking was his dad. When he confronted his mother about this she acted nonchalant and said, “Oh yeah, your real father’s last name was Wyss--he worked at some tire plant...I think.”

Then, in the navy, my dad served as a corpsman--officially a medic with the navy but traveling on the ground with the marines seeing to the dead and dying. Once, when I was thirteen, he dug his duffel out of the garage and showed me his gas mask, his boots with a bayonet hole in the toe and, most proudly, his white medic’s tunic still stained with the blood of some marine or other whose name, face, and fatal injuries he had long since forgotten.

All of this is to say that my dad had every right in this and any other world to be completely and totally screwed up--and he was. His depression kept him from ever holding a steady job. His anxiety led him to a devastating Valium addiction. His outwardly acted, self-hating, power-needy PTSD led him to violence and the alienation of both his daughters. All of these things together led him to die absolutely alone on March 1, 2009.

My dad was a brilliant, strong, heroic young man who valiantly served his country and the many, many young soldiers who died in his arms. I tell this story not to detract from the honorable things he did--because they are many--but I tell it to make a plea to Ares, Apollon and any of you who may know and/or love a similarly brilliant but tormented young soldier--that you may help them to heal--that the brilliance and honor may not turn into madness and ignominy.

And for those, like my father, who have already passed, send your prayers with them that in the Kingdom of Hades--in the gray Fields of Asphodel--they will be welcomed as the heroes they are and be given the courage they need to fight one more battle in that place--the battle to reclaim themselves from the terror they knew and had become.

Esto.

Blessed by the Mystery,
-M. Ashley

PMS Beast and Other Scary Halloween Monsters

For me, PMS isn’t always bad, but when it is, it’s BAD. 

Today is one of those days for me when every sound and every word spoken (especially by men) is going right to that single nerve I have left and jumping on it. I hear things coming out of my mouth that my internal, rational voice is saying, “Wow, that’s pretty bitchy,” but that it has no power whatsoever to stop. I’ve apologized in advance to my partner who smiles quietly and passes the chocolate. There is a part of me, frankly, that’s offended by the passing of the chocolate, as others diagnosing PMS is a surefire way to have its full wrath descend upon you, but, on the other hand my body is screaming for it so I take it, grateful but with premestrually glaring eyes. 

A biology major friend of mine once explained to me that PMS results from a severe and sudden drop in hormone levels, so what we’re feeling is very much akin to drug withdrawal, or, being a smoker, I can relate it more effectively to the world’s worst nic fit--with cramps!

In that vein, I offer the following video which pretty much expresses how I would be feeling today if I were a tiny kitten:

Here's to a better, more hormonally balanced tomorrow,

-M. Ashley

Goddess Hestia: Love in Our Lives, Light in Our Hearts

It's a lovely, rainy day outside today. My partner and stepson are lazing on the couch--one on the computer, the other blissfully watching an action movie and munching on purple grapes. Our fifteen-year-old Siamese is keeping vigilant watch nestled into the cushions behind them while our younger tuxedo cat stalks and slinks through the boxes in the storage space under the stairs. On the floor at my stepson's feet are two dogs: One, red and hairy, rescued from the pound seven years ago, sprawls on his back contemplating the ceiling, while the other, black and white beagle mix, sits upright, adoring, secretly praying he may reap the juicy windfall of an errant grape. I am sitting in my soft, oversized chair, writing, with a tiny gray dog asleep and snoring on my left knee. Soon it will be time to make an autumn Sunday peasant feast--roast with potatoes, green beans and apple bread for dessert. 

This is our perfectly imperfect happy home. This is the foundation we walk upon. This is the love in our lives and the light in our hearts. This is the warmth of our hearth that radiates within and without. This is the spirit of the Great Goddess Hestia--she who is first and last among all the Gods.  

Invocation to Hestia

Hail Hestia,

Ancient hearth Mother

Goddess of the Spiritual Flame,
You who are first and last,

We thank you for your constant love and care.

We ask that you come and dwell here.

Make of our home your home.

Make of our hearth your hearth.

Make of our temple your temple.

Make of our hearts one heart, your heat.

Hail Hestia!

Blessed by the Mystery,

-M. Ashley

The Childhood Makeup of a Mercurial Life

I've been thinking a lot about my Great Aunt Kay lately. She passed away nearly twelve years ago. I miss her and I feel her influence in my life all the time. She and my Great Uncle Chuck provided the safest place I knew as a child. When it would thunder I would crawl into bed with them. Even when it didn’t thunder I would crawl into be with them, scooch in between them and sleep happily. I got to doing it so much they called me “the blond bomber”.

I remember once my friend and I saw a show on TV where they promised people free makeovers and, refusing to let the person look at themselves while they put the makeup on, they made them look like clowns or crazy streetwalkers. We decided it would be a good idea to do the same to Aunt Kay. She had an old makeup box full of groovy sixties makeup--greens, yellows and oranges. She ended up with yellow eyeshadow that extended above her eyebrows and coral shaded cheekbones that went pointedly back to her ears making her look a bit like an elf. When we first gave her the mirror to look at herself, she said, “Oh my!” and you could tell for a moment she wasn’t sure how to react--her first concern not not being her clown face but whether or not reacting to it as a clown face would hurt our feelings.

Had we intended to use lip gloss to highlight her hairline?

My friend and I burst out laughing and she did too--a breathy laughter mixed with relief that no, these children knew better.

What we didn’t know however was how hard it was to get makeup that old off of someone with such fragile skin as hers. Now that I think about it, it was a fitting revenge in a way--after we had all laughed about it, my friend and I went to wipe it off and couldn’t get one bit of it to budge. She let us prod and pull and near panic before she told us that she had some cold cream that would take care of it with no problem.

Now, right at this moment, twenty years later I am realizing that this might have been intentional--a little practical joke gotcha back--letting us develop heart palpitations--letting us suffer just a bit before telling us she could fix it. My Aunt Kay was like that--a slightly shady, impish, extremely intelligent and sharply humored lady--a lovingly Mercurial lady who impressed that presence onto my life from my earliest years. No wonder I delight to hear the laughing leaves dancing in the wind and feel my heart lift to bask in the endless prairie sky. I'm a Hermes girl and have been, apparently, for a very, very long time.

Blessed by the Mystery,
-M. Ashley