Full circle?..

[stillcool]

the one on the left is my dad. I don't know when the picture was taken. There isn't very much I know about him at all, except he was never the same after the war. He was in the Merchant Marines (I think). My mom died when I was around a year old, and I was placed in the care of one of my dad's sisters. Whatever information was filtered through to me is questionable. I was 35 when I first saw pictures of my mom. I was 45 when i learned that contrary to what I'd believed my entire life, she had not died from breast cancer, but from non-Hodgkins leukemia. My dad did not work anywhere and did not live anywhere. I never thought of him as 'homeless' ...he was always somewhere.
I know more about George Bush's history than I do my own. My mom's family goes back many generations in the same area, yet I know no one. My dad was one in a family of nine boys and two girls, and I have contact with no one. Life was a shameful, lonely, fearful, confusing, embarrassing existence, for a very long time, for a multitude of reasons, or consequences. The ties that bind were so elastic..more like worn threads...but I held on for dear life...fearful of traipsing through to a netherworld, never to return. Eventually the threads broke, and the netherworld brought me sobriety and psycho-everything, and I've never really returned. Once in a while I find myself back there, not understanding or remembering how, or why I returned. Many back there are no longer living, but it doesn't make any difference. I used to fantasize blowing them up with a shot-gun...like skeet shooting...to get them out of my head. They come and go, but rarely stay for long these days. Today, I read an article about war and the shipping industry. Hi Dad!
When I consider my insatiable interest in politics, or the results of politics, I equate it with the search for truth. As though any morsel of any one's truth is a great triumph, and a noble quest. But truth is so flimsy, so fleeting, like a chameleon..changing in different light. I don't know if it's the constant shifting of the earth beneath my feet that makes me yearn for something of substance to hold on to as real. I know there is no there, there is only here, and that's just for now. If there were a God, I imagine this whole war thing were being provided just for me...to figure out me.

[DemExpat]

1. Extraordinary post, stillcool47.....

Thanks for sharing this along with the foto of your Dad.

Especially poignant to me is your description of how you experience your search for truth in its ever-shifting light. I have learned to hold on to "me" as my anchor, but this has taken me my whole life to achieve, and I cannot be absolutely certain that my hold will last until I die.

Day by day.

It takes writers to articulate things that more people feel but cannot express.

Thank you!

DemEx

[stillcool]

2. hey thank-you...

I come by here often, post, delete the post ...and leave. I'm sure it is the shame and guilt of my emotional fuckedupdedness, and on a deeper level...myself. I had read an article about the Shipping Scandal...from way back when...and the word "Merchants", and "Marines" invited back in all the ghosts. After I posted it here, I actually posted it in GD. It's not comfortable putting it out there, but it's not comfortable keeping it in. My therapist's on vacation...can you tell?